Garden

I think I made some mistakes last year in my garden. My wife warned me that if I let all of the squash volunteers go, I would have a mess. But I couldn't pull something that was growing in my garden. Sure that's not where I planted it, but it was growing in my garden. The picture at the right is the result. Does anyone want some squash? We still have some. We need to cook and freeze it pretty soon or it's going to go bad.

This year is going to be better. Instead of boards that you have to walk across to stay out of the garden, I actually dug some trenches and filled them with wood chips to make more permanent walk areas. We also have grass in the front yard instead of black plastic which will make it more attractive.

Monday I planted peas, beans and beets. I don't think the beans are going to survive, but that's OK, we have lots more seeds and not a lot of room to plant them (besides, I don't think my wife likes them). Tuesday I planted carrots, lettuce and spinach (I'm not sure that the spinach will survive). Last night I finished building a couple of experimental cold frames and planted broccoli, peppers, brussel sprouts and egg plant under the cold frames. I love experimenting in the garden.

A lot of people will comment about my garden saying that I need to rototil, or fertilize or use pesticides. They say that I planted things too early or too late. They have never seen a cold frame, but are sure that it wouldn't work. I recognize that there are a lot of people who have far more gardening experience than I do, but I don' think they really know. I really enjoy experimenting. How would we learn new things if we didn't go outside of the box and try them? So I will continue to run the unconventional garden on the street that everyone makes fun of. I am OK with that.

Another huge thing I'm doing this year is planting things in like groups. I'm not big on rows, but I at least bunched my carrots together and my lettuce together, etc. Last year was a free for all, I had a bucket of seeds all mixed together and I sprinkled them wherever. You may be able to tell that from the photo. On the other hand, last year it was kind of fun to find random beets that you didn't realize where there.