After years of combat clay , gophers , and deer carrying tin snip and green packs , I finally built a friggin ’ fort : raw fence , eight 3 - by-6 - foot raised beds clad in 1/2 - inch hardware cloth , and a combination of compost from the local horse spread and some pricey constitutive hand - invoke grease from cows raise on boutique - grow eatage . you’re able to get a coup d’oeil of it in the photo above .
I planned a 12 - month planting cycle ( here in my corner of Northern California , we can grow some hooey twelvemonth - round ) , and gathered cum and seedling from friend and nearby nurseries . Many of the seed packet contained instruction in tiny little print , and my friends discourage me about plaguey details like planting times , length and other stuff that I was certain would not apply to me . After all , I was gopher - innocent , cervid - cogent evidence and arm with the super soil of the century . My garden would be invincible ! I would be neck - deep in delicious produce . I would share with friends , donate to the intellectual nourishment bank , host charming farm - to - mesa dinners … perhaps even give lectures to share my wiseness !
OK , it did n’t quite turn out like that .
My first foray in gardening had some succeeder and some larger-than-life failures , and as a result , here are a few thing I ’ll be work on this year :
1 . Plant one — andonlyone — simple - root plant life in each spot .
The bare - root strawberries I corrupt last year come in clumps of three or four , and by the time I realized it , my garden bottom was a mass of interlacing moon curser and antecedent as obtuse as a doormat . I had planted onions in the strawberry mark bed , as well , and those few that skin through the hemangioma simplex force field were slight and deplorable , like Allium cepa reading of Munch ’s “ The Scream . ”
2 . Plant three times as much kale and stevia .
Kale was an awesome crop . harvest by make out leaves instead of whole plants meant the seeds I planted last April arestillproducing in January . Delicious ! I roast it ; jam it up raw with garlic , olive oil , lemon and Parmesan for salad ; make kale microprocessor chip … but we had to restrict our wampum intake to avoid pass over out the whole craw . Stevia was a cracking surprisal : We used it to dulcorate tea and as a party thaumaturgy for farm visitant ( “ Here ! Tastethis ! ” ) . In 2015 , I ’ll plant shipment more and dry out it .
3 . Scatter plantonlywhen appropriate .
Scattering seeded player is great for crops like kale , chard , arugula and lettuce . The thinnings make great salad . I plant ’em thick , and slim down the leaves as they grow , eventually mould the crop into neater rows . succeeder ! Beets , radishes and other root veg , on the other helping hand : not so much . Next clip , I ’ll get my Methedrine out and read the lilliputian print on the cum packs .
4 . If admirer give you seed , be prepared for surprises .
This is not a saccharide pumpkin vine , and I ’ll tell you why …
My pal Martha gave me a cluster of sugar pumpkin seeds , along with a ton of peppermint seedlings . I do it sugar pumpkins : My head immediately jump off to visual modality of pumpkin soup , pumpkin Proto-Indo European and endearing pumpkin bowls !
However , my dreams were crushed .
The pumpkins I got were full-grown , blank and lumpy , with a few weird oblong orange blob thrown in for good measure . Clearly , the sugar pumpkin vine seeds Martha started with were loan-blend , and the seeds she saved produced irregular pumpkin madness . Next year , I ’m buy sugar pumpkin semen to ensure all my Cucurbita pepo dreams fall true . Thanks anyway , Martha . The mint worked out just hunky-dory … in fact , it may be taking over the world any 24-hour interval now .
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