For the last few years I’ve shared garden duties (and joys) with one of our downstairs neighbors. Every year we make a list, head to the garden shop, then spend a weekend day weeding, planting, and then sometimes celebrating with a cocktail in the backyard. In Mid-April we planted our garden for the spring. We made the list, went to Flowercraft, and we only forgot one thing (cilantro). This year we didn’t have to spend half the day weeding our small, but mighty little backyard beds. Last fall we decided to cover the beds with newspaper and cedar to slow the weed explosion that happens annually, and it worked pretty well. We raked back the cedar pretty quickly to uncover happy, relatively weed-free soil. I was a little worried that the heavy cedar might kill the good stuff in our soil, but I was happy to see some fat worms as we amended the soil.
This year we’ve planted snow peas, parsley, zucchini, cucumber (it died already, but we’re going to try again), strawberries, fox glove, celery, mixed lettuce and thyme. From previous years we still have artichokes, figs, blueberries, rosemary, garlic, nasturtiums, honeysuckle, lemons, lemon verbena and oregano. Last year we harvested one artichoke, but I let it flower, then dried it because it was too pretty to eat. This year we’ve got a handful of blueberries on the bush, and I’m hoping we’ll get to eat them before the birds do.
Every year we want to plant cilantro, but we’ve yet to be successful. Why? Lots of plants starts look like cilantro! We’re trying, but failing here guys. Last year, instead of cilantro we bought an insane amount of parsley starts. It grew and grew, and we forgot all about cilantro. This year instead of cilantro… we bought celery starts. Who knew we’d do it again? I’m hoping this will lead to more bloody marys… because what else is celery good for?
