Kitchen Lawn and Garden

getter — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:20:35 +0000

I am a veteran vegetable gardener, and have made all of the mistakes one can possibly make over the years. My most frequent mistake and one I can’t seem to cure myself of is planting too early. The heartbreak of watching just one year’s new sprouts reduced to blackened twigs by late frost should have been enough to prevent me from ever again giving into gardening fever too soon, but it didn’t. I still let it get the better of me every now and then after a few weeks of warm sunshine convinces me that winter is finally a thing of the past. That’s when I can get out and start enjoying my natural lawn care practices again!
But one area I have made significant improvements in is that of “grandiose ambition.” My vegetable garden plots are now smaller and more manageable. These days I plant them with strictly utilitarian purposes in mind. That’s why instead of using the term “vegetable” garden, I employ the more modest term “kitchen” garden to my vegetable exploits.
I have stringent standards to apply when undertaking each new year’s kitchen garden as well. First, assuming that it grows, will I or a family member actually “eat” it? No more do I plant 100 feet of zucchini, all the while lying to myself that I’m really going to get serious this year about Italian cooking. No more do I plant even four feet of yellow squash. The mania of squash once established is impossible to annihalate and I will have nothing to do with it planting-wise. Besides, the little yellow squash my family likes to eat makes planting even one preposterous. I will pay the 49 cents at the grocery for it in the off chance anyone in my household will even mention yellow squash once this year.
What I do in fact plant are lots and lots of herbs because store-bought herbs—even fresh ones—bear no resemblance to the luxurious, almost sinful delicacy of herbs straight from your own garden soil. Also many herbs actually enjoy living in pots—an added incentive and convenience. So I plant boodles of basil (and eat bunches of it right off the plants all year long), garlic chives, oregano, cilantro, rosemary, thyme, lavendar (great with beef and pork roasts), lemon grass, garlic and, many others.
And because I love good potatos and for some reason have good luck growing them, I plant a few varieties of those as well. A great thing about potatoes is that they keep a good long time, so you can stash in a horde, hide them in dark paper sacks, store them in a cool place and have fresh potatoes well into the winter.
Although I am personally wild about all kinds of tomatoes, I’m through with the big bushes. No one in the family shares my addiction and so the poor things rot. Of course I do beans and lettuce and onions, but on a smaller scale than years before. Remember, I ask myself before I plant the first seed or fledgling plant, who is going to eat it and how much?

Aviance » grass

Kitchen Lawn and Garden