atlantalarry

Frankly, our cat would prefer that my entire garden consist of catnip

Needless to say he loves the stuff.  The photo is him reminding me when I came in from working the garden that I forgot to bring his sprig of catnip.  His other suggestion is that I start growing catnip indoors.  He promises he'd help me cultivate it.

Today I mowed the grass in the front yard,  dumped half the clippings into the compost heap, which I then turned, and spread the remaining clippings onto a tarp to dry.

Today three of my seed plantings have begun to sprout after three days in the raised bed.  Two are, predictably, radishes (Cherry Belle and French Breakfast).  Radishes are the instant gratification vegetable.  They sprout quickly and mature quickly.  The third was Kohlrabi.  This is the first time I've grown Kohlrabi, so I didn't know what to expect.  Now I know it sprouts quickly, anyhow.

Our yard isn't very big, but my goal is to have it planted from the street to the back property line, mostly with edible plants (attractive ones in the front, more ungainly ones to the rear of the house).  My other goal is gardening twelve months of the year, which in Georgia is quite possible, even if it isn't always pleasant.  It's a lot more palatable working in the yard in May than it is in February.

 

Starting my fall garden

Yesterday I set up a raised bed for my fall garden, and put in two parsley plants, mostly to have something to look at before the seeds start sprouting.  I assembled a 4x8 foot cedar raised bed from a kit I'd bought some time back, and filled it with a mix of 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 peat moss.

I use the Square Foot Gardening method developed by Mel Bartholomew, as outlined in his book All New Square Foot Gardening.  This method has several advantages, including space efficiency, ease of weeding and watering, high yields from remarkably small area, and attractiveness.  Most of the expense and work is up front, since once you have a bed set up and prepared, it can be used for a long time (until the material for the structure of the raised bed degrades) aside from regular addition of compost. 

The key trait of the method is that it dispenses with row gardening, and divides rectangular area into 12 inch by 12 inch grids of squares.  Depending on the size of the plant, you can get 16, 9, 4, or one  plant per each square.  Since my bed will give me 32 squares, I'm doing staggered plantings of 8 squares each over a four week period.  Staggering my planting avoids the problem of too much of one crop maturing at once.

My first week I'm planting Baby Finger and Royal Chantenay carrots, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, Red Winter Kale, and a Bloomsdale spinach.  All the seeds are organic, and all except the spinach is an heirloom plant.  I'm considering adding beets, turnips, and chard to the mix in subsequent weeks.  Lettuce, carrots, and spinach will be planted every week, since we can eat as much of those vegetables as I can grow.

My goal this year is to garden all fall and winter, with cold-hardy plants like lettuce and kale dominating the outdoor gardening, and sprouting done indoors.  Sprouts will be a topic for a whole future post.  At the moment I have a batch of brocolli sprouts ready to eat, and soy and sunflower sprouts in progress.