Lil's Garden

I am still dealing with the grief of unintentionally poisoning my own garden. We are making plans to convert the garden to a demonstration grass garden, with the hope of harvesting viable seeds to sow back into the prairie. The grasses should not be affected by the herbicide.  When we returned from our trip to Lake Tahoe to lead a retreat on Experiencing Resurrection Through Nature, we found a few things flourishing a bit in the garden. I harvested some kale, Crawford lettuce, green onions, and a little bowl of blackberries. So perhaps all is not lost.  I did a biological assay on the soil in the garden and soil with our own homegrown compost. The difference is remarkable. We will begin again. It's not too late to plant some summer vegetables, I think. Perhaps we will buy a few tomato plants from a nursery. We're very thankful for the lovely showers.  

I have a sad story to tell about Lil’s Garden. After a disastrous year of gardening last year, we were determined to make every effort towards a successful garden this year. We drew a garden plan, reformed the raised beds, made a special trip to David’s Seeds to purchase seeds, grew 80 tomato plants and other things from seeds, and set up trellises for the tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers.  To enhance our soil, we got three truckloads of manure compost from a neighbor who was mucking out her barn after 10 years. We worked the compost into the beds with the tiller. We planted the plants and sowed the seeds and waited. Many of the seeds didn’t germinate.  The potatoes were very slow to come up, and when they did the leaves were cupped and curly. They just didn’t look right. I got on the internet to diagnose the problem. It appeared that the manure compost may have contained herbicide. I contacted our rancher friend and asked if they had sprayed herbicide on their pastures. She sai...

  The Wendell Berry poem, "The Man Born to Farming," says  "He has seen the light lie down in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn."  I'm not sure I was actually born to farming or gardening, but every year about this time I forget about the unbearable heat and the worry about rain and the Bermuda grass and the sore knees and I am reborn to gardening.  This year we were especially blessed when a new friend of ours who is a Brahma cattle farmer mucked out her barn. She had 30 years of wonderful compost to share. We got three loads of the black gold and spread it on our newly prepared beds. We are ready to start seedlings, plant seeds, onion sets, and seed potatoes, and see them rise up again. Judy Collins has a great line in her song, "Fallow Way": "The black earth dreams of violets." I hope on this cold and drizzly day that our manure enriched garden soil is dreaming of tomatoes and peppers and potatoes and onions and beans and sunflower...

 It's been a while since I've written anything on Lil's Garden. Both gardens were not very successful in 2022. Between the late frost and the early 100 degree weather, gardening did not get off to a good start. The drought and the heat of the summer made it almost impossible to grow anything, even with the irrigation system. I have a lot to learn. I did learn that zinnias, basil, peppers, and eggplants are the most tolerant of extreme heat. We even harvested a watermelon for Thanksgiving this year. The recent freeze has taken everything except a lavender bush and some oregano.    I'm attempting to refresh the herb garden. We got an attachment for our BCS Walk-Behind Tractor that chips wood. So we made some lovely mulch for the paths. All the landscape timbers are rotting. So the next step was to replace them. We are also finding it difficult to recycle glass in our area. So... since glass doesn't decompose anyway, we decided to recycle our glass bottles as edging. T...

It's time to begin thinking about the spring garden. We downsized our garden from last year. Hopefully it will be a little more manageable. I am hoping to plant some native fruit trees at the back of the garden — wild plum, agarita, wild persimmon, and some citrus trees. This week I planted onions—Red "Karmen," Sweet "Pentium," and Yellow "Stuttgarter."  I cleaned up the romaine lettuce bed that survived all the freezes. I'm surprised that lettuce is so hearty. I cultivated the strawberries and borage bed. I read that borage is supposed to benefit the strawberries. It also has pretty blue flowers, I'm told. There's still a bed of Crawford lettuce (It survives everything.) and some kale and Swiss chard.  We'll see if they make a comeback or if I just need to replant. I've started some seeds—tomatoes, peppers, chamomile, basil, and catnip (for Coco),    The potatoes are in a warm sunny spot making sprouts.  The herbs in the herb garde...

  After the summer harvest, gardening was crazy. It was sooooo hot, and then the rains began. I'm not complaining. We need all the rain we can get. But just when we were ready to tackle the weeds, it would rain, and it was too wet to get out in the garden. Then the weeds proliferated. Because of the extreme heat, our work hours were from 8 to 10 in the morning. After that it was just too hot. Finally, we just took out the irrigation system and let it go. We still have jalapeno peppers  and basil "trees" with no irrigation.    We did have a good crop of pecans this year, and we got to them before the squirrels and skunks. This week we began again with a fall/winter garden. The BCS walk behind tractor and Robert made some lovely rows.  We decreased the size of the garden by about half. Our plan it to plant fruit trees behind the garden plot. We bought red cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli plants.  I got a few bare root strawberry plants. ...

  With the abundance of recent rain, our garden is overrun with weeds. However, we are still harvesting cucumbers, peppers, cherry tomatoes, cantaloupes, and watermelons. Does anyone have any dill? We also have basil and zinnias and a little okra. I just harvested a basket of mustang grapes this morning. They're in the pot making juice. There are a lot more, if anyone else wants to make jelly. They're on the front fence, and Robert mowed down the weeds so they're easy to get to. I'm happy to share!