Time and (limited) experience in the garden has taught me that the only way to learn anything out here is to do it wrong at least once. I’ve run this theory by several experienced gardeners, and they always nod then tell me stories.
So, here are some things I’d like to tell past Alison.
– Plant perennials that need time to mature the second that you decide you’re interested in gardening. Do not wait several years so that you can wait another couple of years to eat your raspberries and asparagus
-DO NOT PLANT OREGANO IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, you idiot. It is monstrous!
-Do not leave the greenhouse closed on a 86Degree spring day. Everything will die. It will roast and die, and you will cry.
-Don’t skip soil amendment just because it’s far away and heavy.
-Don’t plant strawberries or raspberries without some heavy defenses. They will conquer the garden.
-Don’t take free plants with holes chewed in them. You. Are. Dumb.
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Okay! Enough berating. One thing I did so right was to use the leaves as mulch on some of the beds and between our neighbors very weedy yard and our moderately weedy lawn.
The patch of green in the middle is a transplanted perennial sunflower. g.
I spent the morning weeding (if there isn’t an old saying about the difficulty of pulling grass from the onion bed there should be.) and placing a second bed for peas (west e). The poor peas that I planted in the lower bed have not been able to win the war against whatever is eating them (I have all kinds of theories, but no luck… Something is digging there. /: ) so if they come up in the west bed, I’ll have to reorganize a bit more. (Squash, peppers, and okra need homes.)
Things that weren’t roasted in the greenhouse LOVED the warm sunny weather. I think some greens are starting (kale, chard, romaine), radishes are getting bigger, grapes… many things.
