Tuesday, May 13, 2008

what happens when two perfectionists get together...

Okay, so I'm more the perfectionist but Jeremy has his moments and can be very demanding about precision and exactness. This will all make sense shortly.

Weeks ago, after the nasturtiums were up and ready to be potted, we started planting other seeds in our starter and planning our garden. Jeremy is a little bit obsessed with square foot gardening and its creator, Mel, so he's been poring over this book and all the details, writing lists and drawing diagrams, and planning, planning, planning.

In the meantime, I've been doing the hard labor: digging up the yard to make our garden plot. Three garden plots actually. One in the front about 8 foot by 2 foot, one in the back about 14 foot by 1 foot, and the big one: 17 foot by 5 foot.

The first spot finished was our pea/bean patch next to the front porch. Someone had put down plastic and then tons of rocks so I had to clear that all out. We ended up putting rock back in front of the patch because that is where the water pours from the house when it rains.




Then we went to work digging up the back yard spot. Actually, I did most of the work. This is Jeremy working on a small patch one of the days he stayed home sick. He was able to do quite a bit even in that huddled over position.




Here you can see the garden is still in process! We deconstructed the fence in the front yard and used the wood for our garden.





You can see that the spot against the garage wall is ready to go too.

And here's proof that I actually did work on the garden myself. This is digging in the compost, fertilizer, and vermiculite.



Here's where the perfectionism comes into play!





What's planted in these gardens you ask? Oh, just a few things:

Amish Snap Peas
Scarlet Runner Beans
Summer Squash
Spearmint
Christmas Lima Beans
Rattlesnake Snap Beans
Five Color Silverbeet (swiss chard)
Blue Lake Pole Beans
Sweet Genovese Basil
Micro Greens (lettuce)
Lacinato Kale
Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch Kale
Long Island Improved Brussels Sprouts
Chives
Dill
Fennel
Parsley

We're also going to plant some tomatoes in another week or two and we've got Bay Laurel and some other herbs in pots. We're hoping to get some rosemary too. How I miss the northwest where rosemary grows as giant ornamental bushes year round! Rosemary can't stand the weather here and you have to buy a new plant every year.

4 comments:

Jed Carosaari said...

Times are getting tough in the U.S.- we're planting Relief gardens again!

Aimee said...

I suppose it does look like that. =)

Anonymous said...

cant you just move the rosemary inside in the winter...that way you can have it year round.

revheard said...

Oh Aimeeeeeeeeee... the garden is not a library. The shelves don't have to be so neat!!!