Last week I amended the Georgia clay in our Victory Garden with compost that the county creates from lawn waste. This week we have been planting herbs and vegetables we purchased at local nurseries and hardware stores. And I am waiting for a seed order so that I can begin sowing Rustic Arugula, Thai and scented basils, cilantro, Asian lettuce (baby leaf mix), nasturtiums, and zinnias. The basils should be sown when the ground is warm; I have sown basil too early in the past, and the seed doesn't germinate well when the soil is still cool. Meanwhile, plants from last year are leafing out and poking through the soil of my herb garden near the front door. A couple of months ago I found some souvenir wooden shoes at Goodwill. Tom drilled a hole in the bottom of each shoe for drainage, and I planted what looks like a kind of stonecrop in each shoe. (The plants had reseeded from a plant I gave my mother when we moved from Texas; I dug up the tiny plants near my mother's front porch.) Near the shoes are growing several thymes I purchased last year and planted.
M-M has been setting stepping stones through the Victory Garden as a short-cut to her strawberry plants, which are bedded on the south side of the house.
The lemon balm in a corner near our front steps is a healthy, brilliant green. 
Yesterday Tom and I set out some tomato plants. We were disappointed to discover that all of the nurseries we visited yesterday sold the same kinds of plants, from the same sources. We did purchase five plants, one of them an heirloom tomato. We were hoping to find some interesting cherry tomatoes and peppers besides bells and jalapenos. Tom wants some yellow habanero peppers; since he's going to Austin in a week or so, he may buy some pepper plants in Texas and pack them in wet newspaper for the journey back to Georgia. Although we should have begun earlier, we are going to attempt to sprout some heirloom tomato seeds and pepper seeds. Friday evening, Tom and I walked a little over a mile to the local community garden and purchased some flat-leaf parsley plants and some kind of Asian green. I'll post more photos of the Victory and herb gardens as our plants grow.
There I am--on my spring break over a week ago, amending the soil with compost. And here is a photo of some of the herbs before I planted them.
1 comment:
I love reading about your gardening, Anita----and seeing the photos!
We're doing a little ourselves today----I planted a couple of flowering plants in the yard (gora and some tiny-purple-flowered vine that'll grow on the arbor Jon just nailed up on one side of his shed) and also the small daffodils that I couldn't resist at the Safeway when we stopped by for milk. Jon's off to Home Depot now to get some fuel for our barbecue pit to cook our fresh fish for supper (one of his employee's sons is a fisherman and gave Jon some of his catch yesterday!), and he'll also pick up any interesting herbs he sees there, even though he wanted to hold out for the locally grown ones from Flora Pacifica. I asked him to get some anyway because it's sunny today and I just want to get some more planted in our kitchen herb bed, where we already have parsley, thyme, oregano, garlic chives, yarrow, . . . Maybe that's it. Anyway----it's SPRING!
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