Green Thumb Report

My garden is now fully planted for the year, and I'm sitting back waiting to thumb my nose at the local Giant and Safeway herb and produce prices. After last year, when my motley collection of herbs took off like a runaway experiment from a 1950's sci-fi movie, and with the price of food going through the roof, I decided to cast my agricultural net wider this year.

For 2008, I'm doing plots and pots: revitalizing the two herb plots from last year, and adding seven pots of various vegetables...

Here's the status, as of yesterday, of plot #1:

The parsley in the front came roaring back from last year, and is farther ahead than anything else. Behind it are the chives I'd given up for dead, which are also nice and big, but which don't seem to be spreading. To fill up the empty space I added two marjoram plants in the back center, another tarragon in the back left corner, and a token cilantro up front next to the parsley. We don't use much cilantro, but I figured I'd give it a try and see how it does.

Here's plot #2 as of yesterday:


That's basil on the left, rosemary on the right, and in the center, back to front, tarragon, dill, and thyme. These plants have now been in for about three weeks...you can check their progress by comparing them to the pictures I posted here back on April 14th.

You may recall that last year my #2 plot was overrun with tomatoes I didn't plant...they grew from seeds that had been in my mulch pile and eventually choked out everything but the basil. This year, I decided to plant tomatoes on my own terms, along with a few other things. Here are the pots that go with the plots (the house and the two plots would be on your right as you look at this picture):

These pots contain red and green bell peppers (which we use lots of), straight-neck yellow squash, zucchini, and two types of tomatoes. If things go well, I plan to put up trellises behind the pots and train the vines to grow along the fence.

One of my goals is to produce a zucchini to match the famous "Bubba" grown by my friend Katherine (who comments here occasionally as "KKTSews") a few years back when we all lived in Germany...she proudly brought Bubba into the office with a fork lift to show him off, and he long ago went to that great ratatouille in the sky. If this works out, you'll see the pictures here.

Gardening is a fair amount of work, and a large amount of fun. There's a grand sense of accomplishment when you can eat something you grew with your own hands, and with food prices being what they are, I figure that by the end of the summer I will have easily made back the money I spent on the plants. Next year, I'll try to grow from seeds.

After all, seedy person that I am, what could be more appropriate?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo