Question of the day sent in by Svarga Loka
Time for a gardening update.
How is your garden doing? Are you trying anything different this year? Any setbacks?
Guest Post by Chris Martenson
Oh crap! Bermuda grass? In my garden space? The kind with underground runners that’s nearly impossible to eliminate except by digging up every single root and rhizome?”
For reasons I cannot fully explain I became absolutely inspired to “find a place” starting last September.
Today, my partner Evie and I are settling in to our new home. We closed on it on January 28th and it took a solid month to move things over from our former residence.
First things first, we set about correcting a decade’s worth of deferred maintenance. The furnace relay switch was quite dodgy, the gravel on the driveway was way past due for replenishment, the gutters leaked, and the apple trees were in desperate need of pruning.
Guest Post by Crimson Avenger
In “How You Got Screwed” I suggest that people start doing things for themselves: Learn to cook, change your own oil, sew, or do other things that build your skill set and make you more self-reliant.
Among other things, I garden. And honestly, I’m really bad at it. I spend a lot of money and grow mostly weeds. I’ve had a handful of successes – the occasional bounty of carrots or tomatoes or lettuce – but never approaching consistent greatness. Mostly I have a handful of true successes, a decent number of adequate outcomes, and more than my share of total failures.
But I have learned a few things, namely:
Doing something yourself is humbling, and thought-provoking.
WHAT WENT WRONG??
during WWII …..
……. today.
“For 17 years, Tom Carroll and his wife Hermine Ricketts tended an organic garden in the front yard of their home in Miami Shores Village, Florida. They grew everything from arugula to zinnias, mostly for home consumption. Then, one day in August 2013, disaster struck. It wasn’t a hurricane, a flood, or a drought. It was the government. Armed with a newly amended zoning ordinance geared toward home aesthetics, Miami Shores ordered the couple to uproot their vegetable garden or pay $50 a day in fines.”
http://govtslaves.info/government-cracks-down-on-gardening-as-self-sufficiency-becomes-illegal/
We’ve started our vegetable garden in the last week. I used my power tiller to get the 5 foot by 10 foot section of my back yard ready for planting season. Avalon planted the seeds for lettuce and peas. I started the seeds for cucumbers and carrots inside. I don’t have a big backyard, so 5 feet by 10 feet is about all I can do. We will supplement this with three rolling raised beds that we can keep on the patio. Last year, they worked great for tomatoes and red peppers.
Our ground is hard clay, so it needs plenty of topsoil. Carrots didn’t grow well in the garden because of the clay. I’m going to do carrots in the raised beds this year. We’ll do a few other plants in hanging pots on the patio. Last year, our corn and watermelon crops were duds, so we’ll concentrate on the stuff that will grow best and will get eaten.
We’re amateurs when it comes to this stuff. Our red peppers were abundant last year, but as soon as they turned red they developed a black fungus that ruined them. I think it was missing something in the soil.
I did till a new section on the side of the house that is in the shade for much of the day. Any advice on vegetables that do well in the shade would be appreciated.
I’ve decided that I will spend less time on the site at night. I turn 50 in nine days and can’t wait to get my AARP card. I can join the Senior FSA and get what’s coming to me. I will spend more time taking long walks with Avalon, working in the garden or reading books on the patio. I’ve declared it to be the summer of me.
What are you growing?
