Garden time!

Gardens gardens!  tis finally the season in our corner of New England to do serious planting.  To be sure, I have planted the brave things--pansies and violas to brighten our kitchen garden.  KC amazingly threw some sunflower seeds in the kitchen garden and they grew too.  But tomatos and such have been growing under growlights in our upstairs bathroom. This is partly because we have had unpredictable weather.  Warm, then hot, then amazingly cold with frost warnings.  Very strange.  But it is also because we grow our veggies at a community garden plot and one can not plant there till they give you the go ahead.

This morning when i opened my email we had our plot assignment at last and the go ahead to plant.  Tonight, hopefully after Fiona's call we will head up and start to prepare the plot.  As we never get the same plot each year, this is not the organic garden of my dreams.  It seems silly to do lots of soil amending when I know i'll have to go through it all in another plot the following year. (we have been doing this for 4 yrs now and have never gotten the same plot) 

So we cheat. We use black plastic landscape cloth to smother weeds.  We use some organic fertilizers but also some of the dreaded M*racle Gro.  And we typically have a great harvest.  We tend to grow lots of tomatos.  We put up sauce and we can salsa.  We don't grow the peppers as the growing season is too short for us to get enough yield to make it worthwhile.  We grow Indian corn for decorations. (cornshucks for our light pole in the fall and we bundle the corn into decorations for our shed and back door.)  We, or I should say, KC and Elisabeth, grow pumpkins.  We usually do a late lettuce crop right near the end of the season.  At home, we container grow herbs and also sunflowers for the sunflower science project and cucumbers that KC planted at church.

I love gardens.  I am not really good at gardening.  K has the garden gene.  Also KC.  Either of them look at a plant and it grows an inch just in happiness. I am more the grunt labor in this endeavor but I still love it.  I feel close to the earth, I know where my food is coming from and it is all good.