Planning the Garden

Photo courtesy Flickr

A great big gorgeous seed catalogue arrived last week. It’s from an outfit that supplies plants that are adapted to Puget Sound’s unusual climate. I used to settle in with the catalogue and lay out weeks of heavy labor for myself in the months to come.

Years of waste and incompetence have taught me that nearly anyone is a better and more responsible grower of vegetables than I, and the willingness to fail has served me well. A shop four blocks away will offer six-packs of healthy organic seedlings when planting time arrives. Corn salad and chickweed are established as the edible weeds-in-residence, and the wild roses glisten with edible hips.

The kitchen compost heap lies in a little sun trap sheltered from the wind. Last year in a hurry and on a whim I set several six-packs of edible greens into the heap without separating the plants. I mulched them with an inch-deep layer of complete organic fertilizer and did nothing else for them, not even watering. I’ve had flat-leafed parsley, green shallot tops, kale, chard, and beet greens from that patch for three seasons, and they’re growing like it’s not January. Any temperate day adds centimeters to the leaves. Potatoes turn up when new garbage is turned in, and two volunteer tomato seedlings are still standing against the cold.

-30-