Victory Garden Update

Just a week ago, the house would get chilly enough for the heat to be turned on; now warm weather has settled here, and seeds are sprouting. This evening, I'll be planting basil seeds, but I noticed today a small one-inch basil plant that reseeded from last year's crop. The Swiss chard (Bright Lights) is up--hope the weather won't get too warm before we can harvest the leaves. The cilantro that re-seeded from last year's crop is going to flower, as is the arugula that over-wintered in the bed next to the house. The red stems of beets are bright in a bed next to our front steps and near the red geranium I planted in a hollow piece of wood. The tomatoes we planted earliest are flowering, and various mixes of leafy plants have sprouted. While photographing the garden, I nibbled on a few tasty leaves of arugula sprouted from seed this spring.

I have a lot more work to do in our Victory Garden. We're going to try to fashion a border to surround the beds--out of bamboo that a neighbor thinned from a patch in his backyard. Tom and I plan to cut the bamboo in one-foot pieces, nail pieces to two-feet strips of bamboo, and then submerge each two-foot strip of bamboo pieces six inches into the soil around the Victory Garden. I'll try to remember to take photos of this process and will post later--provided we're successful with our plan! Although I won't get all this done before the end of the growing season, I plan to create more beds in the front lawn: one along the sidewalk for low-growing herbs and flowers, and another bed between the two trees, perhaps for taller flowers, such as zinnias. Anyway, it's all a work in progress. The last photo is a picture of our home, pre-Victory Garden.