A Beautiful Sight

After collecting a bunch of lovage (left), sage (top), and mint (bottom), I decided to dry the majority. Lovage is a great perennial herb that I never knew about until now and it's one of my new favourites!  Its a very pungent celery/parsley-like flavour. Sage is great for cooking or for a throat soothing tea, and mint tea is one of my go-to's for digestive tonic. 





I also cut a bunch of nettle (hanging far right) to make into a cleansing tea in the future. One of my new favourite sights!

Asparagus Donation

So Derick kindly gave me 2 asparagus after we spend a day planting a field-full on his farm. Instead of planting from seed, you can buy "crowns", a root system of a 1 year old asparagus plant. It totally looks like an octopus! These went in my garden on top of a small mound of vermicompost, with the roots spread out to either side in a bit of a trench. Crossing my fingers that they take!

Strawberry Patch!

I'm so excited for this!!!  It was completely unexpected and unplanned.  My friend Derick gave me a whole flat of alpine strawberry seedlings, and I had 6 everbearing plants given to me from various places.  Now i have strawberries, rhubarb, AND raspberries!  What a wonderful fruit bearing surprise!  Next year, I'm totally adding currants to this beautiful perennial garden that developed!

Plot Planning–Layout

Here's the layout of my plots.
My house:
A small collection of garlic, tomatoes, basil, and giant sunflowers near my front gate.
Potatoes in sacks along my fence with morning glories climbing for some privacy.
A west-facing perennial and herb garden, with a few callaloo near my my stairs and some blue cherry tomatoes to climb by railing near my porch.
A corner full of radishes and peas to be replaced with winter squash.
A slightly shaded (by the giant maple) south facing wall of cool hardy veg.
Wild ginger to be planted under my maple.
A larger south-east plot of climbing beans, peas, cucs and a few okra plants (if they germinate!)

My plot at Scadding Court:
An simple and easy to maintain collection of bush beans, pattypan squash (also bush) and delicious paste tomatoes.  Simple and easy to maintain because it's farther from my house than last year. I may potentially plant some radishes in what will become the shade of the tomatoes if I don't have enough room at my plot (if I decide to plant more peas!)

It's very exciting and kind of terrifying.... Beauty!

Plot Planning: Genus Separation

In planing my crazy plot, one larger than I've ever planned before, the first step I needed to take was to split up all the seeds I acquired into families, or genus.  The ones I seem to have acquired are:

Perennial Herbs:
Sorrel
Sage
Lemonbalm
Feverfew
Korean Mint
Thyme
Marjoram
Oregano (cutting from my mum)
Echinacea (to buy seedling)
Lavender (to buy seedling)
Rosemary (from last year)

Annual Herbs:
Parsley
Cilantro
Dill (saved seeds!)
Basil (to buy seedling)

Perennial Plants:
Rhubarb (to transplant from my grandma's house in April)
Raspberry (to transplant from my mum's house in April)
Wild Ginger (to buy plugs from Richter's Herbs in April)

Nightshades/Solanum:
Tomato (chitting potatoes as we speak)
Potato
Caynne Pepper (to buy seedling)

Alliums:
Garlic
Leeks
Onion (upstairs roommate has sets)
Chives (cutting from my mum)

Beta Vulgaris:
Beet
Swiss Chard

Beans and Peas:
so many kinds!!!

Curcubita:
Summer squash
Winter Squash
Zucchini
Cucumber

Cruciferous Veg/Brassicas:
Baby Brassica Salad Mix
Kale
Broccoli
Bok Choy
Arugala
Watercress (perennial)
Radish

Lettuce:
Romaine

Annual Flowers (to attract the polinators!)
Sunflower
Zinnia
Calendula
Poppy
Morning Glory

And my major experiments:

Amaranth (for the grain)
Callaloo (for the greens)
Okra

HOLY GARDEN!

The reason I started with this was to ensure "crop rotation" for the future.  Basically this just means, don't plant one family in the same place you planted it last year.  Each family sucks up specific nutrients from the soil so, in order not to have to use pesticides, Organic farmers use crop rotation to keep their soil happy and healthy.  

I also did this to make it easier to plan my plot.  I'm going to be experimenting with companion planting this year but keeping families together allows for ease of watering (ie-lettuces like to be sprayed on, roots and fruits like a deep water with no water on the leaves) 

This year will be a grand experiment in having a massive kitchen garden. I'm more interested in variety then monocropping my whole plot and my friends keep dumping seeds on me, which seems to be supporting that plan! Step 2 soon!