(No, not that kind of high…although marijuana is now legal in Canada.)
In this year’s edition of the battle with the bindweed, spouse and I decided to put in raised beds for our vegetable patch. There is now landscape fabric underneath the beds (with a hole so the worms could get through and work their magic on the soil), and fabric and mulch on the paths between the beds, and new, uncontaminated soil IN the beds to give us a head start. And all the digging and weeding will be an awful lot easier on our backs.
Having the beds built in the spring meant that we got a slow start on the planting. It was too late for most things that go directly in the ground as seeds, so we only put in a few–beets, carrots, and bush beans (unlike most beans, these don’t need to grow up a pole, so they won’t shade our neighbours’ vegetable patch that is directly to the north and now two feet lower than ours). I keep meaning to try a fall crop of seeds, too, if we can get anything harvested soon enough so there’s space. (Our first frost date is somewhere around the end of October or beginning of November.)
New this year, we’re trying potatoes, which are growing like mad, so that’s exciting. I’m hilling up the soil around them so they’ll be easier to harvest later, but they’re growing so fast I can barely keep up.
We’ve also got hot Scotch Bonnet pepper, sweet banana pepper, cucumber, basil, parsley, oregano (planted in with our perennials), and of course two kinds of tomatoes (Roma and San Marzano). Why yes, we learned half of we know about vegetable gardening from our Italian neighbours… This year we bought all our seedlings from corner stores rather than the big-box garden centre, mostly because we didn’t feel like going down there and, inevitably, coming out grumpy three hours later. The seedlings are being a little slow to take off–so time will tell whether that was a bad idea.
I’m also growing basil indoors for the first time ever. My home office has windows on two sides, the basil is in one of them, and I’m endlessly fascinated by watching the leaves tilt to follow the sun all day and then droop at night.
And that’s what I love about gardening. There’s always something new to learn, and always something changing…slowly, at plant speed.