Garden Plans

[osprey_archer]

Spring is coming! We had a tiny two-day foretaste of seventy degree temperatures earlier this week, after which point the highs plummeted back to forty, but it was enough of a taste that I’ve begun to turn my thoughts to my garden.

The sage and thyme are perennials, so they should plump up again once the warm weather comes; they’ve haven’t entirely shriveled even now, but they do look a little limp after the rigors of winter. I’ll need a new basil, of course (if you can only grow one herb, it’s probably worthwhile to make it basil), and probably rosemary, and I’m thinking chives, because they’re supposed to be very easy to grow and if you sprinkle it on top of, for instance, little cheesy toasts, they instantly look classy. (It also adds a mild flavor boost, but it is very mild.)

The herbs will grow on the sunny spot alongside the brick wall. I’ve also got two raised beds, and I’m thinking one of them - the small sunny one, also close to the house - I might use for tomatoes. As for the big bed - I’m thinking I might branch out to flowers - one of my friends gave me a little round red flower bowl that I’ve put on the bookcase next to my desk, and what could be more Anne of Green Gables than filling it with my own flowers?

However, I’ve never grown flowers before, so we’ll see if this one goes through.

Stretch goals:

A compost heap, or a compost bin or whatever the cool kids use for compost these days. (It looks like expensive composters have become a sort of status symbol.) I like the idea of turning heaps of kitchen scraps into usable soil, although if I go this route obviously I’ll need to do some research on how precisely one goes about doing that.

Raspberry canes. I love raspberries, and if I put a lattice up along the fence the raspberries could grow up it without sacrificing any other garden space (although I would have to excavate from actual soil from beneath the current covering of big rocks). Fresh raspberries! Sun-warmed! I love picking berries too, so that’s a bonus.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I endorse all these plans. If you buy rosemary as a small plant rather than seeds, then you can bring it in each winter and take it back out in the spring. Unlike basil, which gets pretty peaky if you do that, the rosemary really thrives. I had the same portable rosemary bush for many years (then it got sick, or got plant fleas, I can't remember which, and passed away).

[osprey_archer]

Ooooh. Did you keep it in a pot for ease of transport?

[asakiyume]

Yes--though the pot got bigger and bigger and less transportable over the years. (Nothing on the loquat trees I've got now, though.)

[carmarthen]

Hmm, will raspberries grow up things? Ours are pretty freestanding/not viney (and also send out runners like nobody's business - they have claimed all the spaces between the patio cement, as well as about 12 square feet of lawn).

Rosemary, basil, and thyme definitely get the most use out of our herb garden.

[osprey_archer]

I think I've read that they can, but it's possible that I'm misremembering or that this would take more intensive raspberry pruning than I'm prepared to do, so we'll see if the raspberries happen in the end.