Success of the Green!

I've been enjoying my lovely greens garden all weekend and I must say it feels good. I love venturing out in bare feet with a bowl to pick my own salad. I sometimes venture a bit further to my neighbors driveway to pick cherry tomatoes! All in all my experiment of throwing a bunch of seeds in a barrel and watering daily have worked, though I'm not sure it's the type of garden for me.

I had read about this type of gardening in The Urban Homestead book. Basically you plant a bunch of different stuff to cover the whole area and eat your thinnings. That way there are no weeds and with the variation, not as many pests. I definitely liked the no weeding aspect of the method, and there were only a few holes in some of the lettuce leaves from insects. My main problem, is that if I wanted something in particular, say cilantro or chives, I really had to search. I did find a tiny amount of cilantro, but I am the type of person who needs A LOT of cilantro. I may have to have a barrel just for cilantro!



I also found that I am not a big fan of the mustard greens a planted, to tough and twig like. I gagged a few times while eating my salad and that is never pleasant. So no more mustard greens and tons more cilantro! In the future I will use this planting method again, but restrict it to varieties of lettuce only, and maybe the odd herb here and there.





Very soon I am planning to figure out exactly what to plant in the spring, and also what to plant this fall. I'll ordering some seeds for West Coast Seeds soon, and couldn't be more excited! Garlic is one crop I want to plant this fall, and see about some carrots as well.

Since first dumping a thick layer of bark mulch on our front lawn, I've been adding some order. I've carved out a pathway and area by the driveway, so we can get to the car and home without tracking bark mulch inside! I lined the pathways with landscaping cloth and piled on some pea gravel. For a border I just used some river rock that we had laying about. I think it turned out rather well.

We bought some large pots from Capitol Iron and plan to put something in them .... maybe carrots? Not really sure, but they look nice. We decided to have the pots in place of the grape arbour we had planned. Building things are just not on the agenda right now, so that will have to wait. So that's it for now. We are slowly getting there. I can't wait until the spring to plant edibles in our mulched areas!!

Before shot .... didn't get the patio space (it had a big california lilac and big river rocks)!

My work as of this weekend! Just imagine how nice things will look once I put edibles in!