Now its the Getting-There-Garden!

Here again is a small update on my veggie-herb garden to-be!  I went wild this week and procured the bags of dirt my dull yard soil desperately needed.  However, the joke’s on the yard, it won’t get this soil until AFTER the growing season!  I am taking an idea from Mother Earth News about getting started in vegetable gardening without dealing with the shortcomings of my current soil.  I have my seed potatoes soaking up some rays and getting their eyes ready in their handy egg carton tray.  I have two varieties; bintje, which is a golden yellow medium size tuber (seems like a Yukon Gold lite), and a French Fingerling which is a medium to large tuber with a distinctive rose-colored skin.  The only problem is that in some belated additional research I discovered that these are both mid-season varieties.  So much for a lengthy harvest!  Oh well, a lesson learned for next year 🙂

Eye on a French fingerling

 

 

In addition to potatoes seeds for a beautiful red poppy called “American Legion” went into the ground around my tulips and hyacinths.  I learned my lesson last summer when my fall bulbs had bloomed and finally dried up leaving me with a bed of depressing yellow husks and nothing to coming up to replace them.  If all goes well as the bulbs die out my hardy summer blooming perennials and new annual flowers will gently take over the show.

 

My final little announcement concerns my “herb garden.”  I have this in quotes because quiet frankly none of this is from seed out of fear that I would not be able to get anything started!  In the Northwest many of the popular culinary herbs can be tricky to get started because of their desire for such warm weather.  Instead I bought some nice starter plants; thyme, lemon thyme, rosemary, basil and oregano.  There seemed to be a million different varieties of each but I gravitated towards ones that were deemed hardier and had more pronounced flavors to cook with.

The start of my "herb garden"

 

I chose a metal beverage bucket to house the herbs so they could be more easily moved around, very few places around my house get continual sunlight and I wanted the herbs to get the most they could.  Ultimately I want to always keep a strong and varied herb garden so that I can begin making my own supplies of essential oils and dried herbs.  It is amazing to see how even the smallest projects can create big opportunities for satisfying many daily needs.   It can be a great example of self-sufficiency, even on a small-scale.

Advertisement