Lil's Garden

  Right now our new raised beds are covered with freeze cloths to protect them from our cold weather. Although we did not have a successful summer or fall garden (at one point in October the soil temperature was 100 degrees), the winter garden is looking much better. Before they were covered a few days ago, the beds held radishes, carrots, peppers, onions, cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, Swiss chard, kale, several kinds of lettuce, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, Mexican mint marigold, several kinds of basil lemon verbena, sage, thyme, blackberry bushes, sugar snap peas, sweet peas, blue and white mistflowers, and two tomato vines. We'll see what survives the freeze. Meanwhile...with the help of the Wilson County Extension Master Gardeners, we have completed the construction of a lasagna garden in front of The Bee and the Clover. It's called a lasagna garden, because it has layers like a lasagna, Our intent is to plant a demonstration garden of fragrant, white native plants. The...

We did complete the construction of our new garden. We made six raised beds and filled them up with winter greens. We are in the process of adding more gardens around the fence to grow tomatoes. Here are the many shades of green that we are enjoying,   Shallots, onions, sugar snap peas, and mustard greens   Spring onions, sweet peas, and mustard green Turnips, cilantro, spinach, parsley, bib lettuce, and dill Broccoli, Brussell sprouts, Swiss chard, mesculin mix, and carrots Kale, red and green cabbage, beets, and romaine lettuce Poppies, spinach, Crawford lettuce, and radishes Romaine lettuce Cilantro Dill Spinach Bibb lettuce Romaine lettuce Sugar snap peas Mustard greens Second growth of broccoli Red cabbage Beets Green cabbage  

  We have been struggling with what to do after the fall of the garden and before the fall of the season. As you know we unintentionally poisoned our big garden out front this spring. That was devastating. This summer we have endured record-breaking heat and drought. Nothing is growing well, except the trees, and even they are looking a bit droopy.  We are re-thinking what it means to have a garden in this kind of climate. We've come up with some ideas, but it's too hot to implement many of them yet. We don't know how long the garden that we poisoned with manure compost that had residual herbicide in it will be unhealthy for plants. Grasses won't be bothered by the herbicide. So we are planning to convert that garden, the one in front of the Bee and the Clover into a grass and native plant demonstration garden. We plan to irrigate it so that folks will be able to see what the grasses look like when they have enough moisture. We hope that we will also be able to harvest ...