Brielle's Avalon

Every once in a while I get asked about gardening or someone makes a comment about how they wish they had a garden or could garden. Sometimes I take the bait.

Find a nice, sunny spot, about 2 or 3′ x whatever, convenient to your kitchen door, dig out the grass, rocks and weeds, dig in some composted cow manure, maybe put in a low edging and plant a few vegies you know you like and/or herbs you’ll use or at least like to smell (lavender). Stepping stones are optional but helpful if the garden is wider than 3′. Water, weed, repeat. Don’t let it get too wet or too dry. Some of it won’t work (it never does, even for experienced gardeners) and some will do spectacularly. Go from there every season. That’s how I learned. Most people now-days don’t try things because somewhere along the line they picked up the idea that they had to learn it somewhere, had to be talented or good at something to make it worth doing. Fuck that. Give yourself permission to try stuff, push your limits, see if you like it. Give yourself permission and space to fail. Repeatedly. That’s how you learn. That’s how you decide if you like it, if it’s worth doing for YOU, whether anyone else ever cares for whatever the thing is besides you. I think I just wrote another blog post… *continued*

In Wisconsin (or other climes where you have winter) you might want to wait for April or May to do the actual planting and growing, though. If the ground’s still digable you can dig up the area & border it out now in preparation for spring. If not, you can measure, draw out your area and plan it out on paper. Look up how much area things need to grow. Start with square foot gardening style of gardens, they take less room and look more decorative.

Conversely, in areas like Phoenix where we hibernate through the summer because of heat you might use the summer months for planning and setting up hardscape like seating areas, pathways and trellises. Over the summer I marked the walkways with random, stones, bricks and blocks and installed the base for the seating area that will eventually have a pergola built over it and (someday, I hope) will have a Lady banks rose growing over that, I hope one grown from a cutting from the Tombstone rose will work here. I used blocks leftover from someone else’s project with old branches to edge my yard and direct feet to the pathways and away form the yard area where I’ve (finally) gotten rid of the Bermuda grass and have seeded Sonoran desert wildflowers. I’m hoping for a nice show this year. The cheap solar lights don’t give off mush light but do manage to mark the paths and look magical after dark.

Also, in the mean time, if you have sunny spaces on windowsills or on the floor near sunny windows you can plant window boxes and flower pots with herbs, peas, carrots and even tomatoes and peppers. A window box can give you lettuce and spinach for cut and come again salads once they get going. Regular flower pots can grow all sorts of herbs like lavender, basil, dill, rosemary and whatever you want to try. A bigger flower pot can grow a tomato in the middle ringed with onions close to the base, carrots between the onions and the edge and alyssum around the edge to spill over. Another big pot can have a pepper in it (bell, Anaheim for chili rellenos, paprika or whatever) and onions, carrots and allyssum or nasturtium spilling over the edge. The nice thing about indoor gardening in pots over the winter is that you can transfer much of it into the garden in spring for an instant spring garden and start the indoor stuff again or experiment of have space in the pots for all the extra stuff you buy that you don’t have room for in the garden. You’ll also find gardener friend you didn’t know you had who will trade you for your overflow or just hand you cool stuff for your garden that they don’t need. Nobody wants to let anything die unnecessarily or go to waste. Pots can also make convenient garden ornaments in between plantings,

Or even make homes for little ceramic critters you find while shopping.

I save space by landscaping with food. Ignore the orange cat, he belongs to another house. And he’s mean. And whiney. This year’s front garden has my usual allyssum, carrots and onions around the edges with jonquils along the back. Inside there is an Iceberg rose are the end point, grape hyacinth under that with some parsley, lavender d’ Provence (seems to do better here than Munstead or other varieties), Itoi onions from a friend, watermelon growing next to the improvised pea trellis that has peas starting up it, a bay tree starting under the pea trellis (I need to take off that pillow case, the bay doesn’t need the shade any more), lemon thyme, chocolate mint and peppermint between the stones, saffron, sage and tarragon between the stepping stones and jonquils. Eventually the basil will sprout and replace the lemon basil that’s not doing so well at the moment. I figure if I’m going to put in time, money, energy, water and whatever I should get something back. In FL there were evergreens in front if the front porch pillars. I put in a border of strawberries and thyme between them and ended up carrying that through along both sides of the walk leading to the front porch, too. Thyme makes the strawberries sweeter, is good in cooking and they’re both really pretty. I kind of did that sort of thing all over the property we rented. I used a square foot sort of planting method/style, bordering everything with alyssum (to attract beneficial insects), with carrots behind that (carrot tops are ferny/ lacy and pretty) and onions behind that (useful in salads and cooking if you just want to cut the occasional spike-leaf here and there and the flowers are pretty). I didn’t find out til years later when I moved back home that farming the front yards in many towns in FL was illegal. Nobody wanted to look at rows of corn or whatever in someone else’s front yard. Nobody suspected that my pretty flower bed was actually an edible garden.

Whatever you do, have fun and don’t despair if it doesn’t work out at 1st. Even if you only end up with a Zen garden that never grows anything but serenity you Have fun with gardening, no matter how big or small. And I do tend to get carried away talking about gardening.