The Mint Patch - Spring Time

When I first started this blog, one of the first pictures I posted was of a patch of mint brown and dry sticking out of the snow. Mint is a perennial (it comes back every year) and it also spreads. Here it is in the spring:

Nice Nursery Pots

This year, the local nursery is offering slightly larger transplants in slightly larger pots in addition to the usual “flats”. The plants are slight more expensive ($20 vs. $12) for fewer plants per flat, but I think the hardiness of the plants more than make up for it.

The pots are also a better size for seed starting:

Organic Plant Food & A First Feeding

Both the home and community garden were looking a little pale, so I fed them both. For the home garden I used an organic product from http://www.espoma.com. The web site is very well done and very informative.

For the community garden, I used a product from a different company which is a mixture of ground tree bark and lobster shells. The product used on the home garden suggested an application once a month and the other product did not specify. I’ll watch them both for a month and then switch to whichever of the two does better.

Heirloom Tomatoes @ The Nursery

The eco boom is catching on with the local nursery and they have a host of heirloom varieties which they have not had in previous years. They are sold by the single plant and are slightly more expensive then the usual nursery stock, but the plants are bigger and healthier. Ox Heart, Old German, Mr. Stripey, Cherokee Purple, and Mortgage Lifter are a few of the names offered.

The Mystery of the Mystery Plant

We throw any vegetable scraps (e.g. carrot peels, rotten fruit, etc …) directly into the garden to rot away with other yard waste and every year we get mystery plants. Mystery plants fall into a strange gray area as they are not weeds in the familiar sense, but they are plants not intended which grow from seeds thrown out from the kitchen. Given that it can be tricky to start plants from seed, there is a temptation to want to let them grow if for nothing other than to see what they are even if they are out of place. Cucumbers and melons are the most common mystery plant, but tomatoes and potatoes have also made previous appearances. One year, a grape vine even managed to sprout which we later transplanted to a nicer spot near the backyard fence.

Stopping Off After Work

Today we stopped by the victory garden after work and spent 10 minutes planting carrot and radish seeds.

After the seeds were planted and watered, we walked the rows to see what the other gardens were doing. A few of them had some very impressive results already for so early in the season.

Being outside like this was also a very relaxing segue in between the drive home and getting home.

Victory Garden - After

Here is a picture of the victory garden after clearing out the rocks and weeds, putting up the fence and planting the plants.

The fence is made out of plastic "poultry netting". It is the same premise as regular chicken wire without all the scrapes on your hands and arms.

The dirt itself is very nice. The dirt at home has a lot of clay in it and is very dense. This is much more loose and will hopefully be good for carrots and radish.

The home garden is for things which get used every day: tomato, cucumber, etc ... and this space for the slower growing items like melons.