Ending and Beginning

Next, on to some generalities about the garden.

I spent very little time in the garden over the summer, and with the heat and rain, you can guess what happened to it. Entering the east garden space is like walking into a jungle. There are some vegetables in there, but the weeds outgrew them like crazy — another year where the weeds won. One of these years, I’m going to get make sure they don’t win. In a few weeks I’m going to mow the whole thing and then rototill.

The west garden space is much better. I mulched heavily between the tomatoes, and the corn does a pretty good job of competing with the weeds if you give it half a chance.

The west garden is right outside the back door, and that is so excellent. I feel like I should use the east garden for growing staples (corn, potatoes, whatever’s going to keep us alive through the winter) and the west garden for growing the stuff that needs more attention. It’s great to be able to step outside the back door and snip a few leaves of kale or pick some tomatoes.

Had the first salad mostly from the garden tonight. Used looseleaf lettuce, a few baby beet leaves, a few kale leaves (from the stuff that survived the winter), a bit of the new purslane (from the seeds I bought — it’s lighter green, larger-leaved, and more upright than the common one), a little parsley, a leaf of swiss chard (which I don’t like raw much), plus some dill and chives. The chives are from a plant growing up between cement blocks underneath a maple tree — we surely didn’t plant it there, but it’s a big and healthy-looking plant.

You look at one thing and you think you can’t possibly have enough for salad for everyone, but then you walk around picking a bit from this and a bit from that, and pretty soon you have enough. It was awesome, too!