It’s been a month since I planted the garden seeds and I’d say my experiment has been a success. About 2/3 of the plants are growing from the holes I dug and the remaining 1/3 are from the seeds I simply stomped into the dirt. That’s in line with the way I planted them. We’ll have to wait to see how much fruit the plants produce, but these early results suggest that I’ve been wasting time and money buying more mature plants at farmers’ markets and at the big box stores.
The previous owners of our house had dogs. Anyone who’s ever had a dog knows that they leave hard-trodden trails that usually lead from the back door to various views through the fence. Well, our back yard was one huge dirt trail. The erosion was so bad, and the grass was so sparse, that any trip to the backyard resulted in red footprints throughout our house. So when we dug out the beds for our garden, I spread the leftover soil around the worst parts of the yard and dropped some grass seed.
This is what it looked like last Spring.
The weather is finally nice, so we decided to get the garden in before the rain this week. So last weekend, while I cut and seeded the grass, my wife tilled and planted most of the garden. We had some survivors from last year’s crop. Our chives are thriving, as well as our parsley, sage and oregano.
The right side of the garden will have herbs (rosemary, thyme, Greek oregano, parsley, chives, basil, mint and lavender), red and yellow onions, strawberries and cantaloupe. The left side will have heirloom, roma and green tomatoes, red and green bell peppers, cayenne and banana peppers, squash and zucchini. There’s more room, so maybe we’ll plant some radicchio and eggplant later this month.
