[Garden plan done on my www.growveg.com account--man, I love that software!]There she is (well, once you click on the image so you can see it). As you can see, I've got all manner of things going on in there. The strawberry bed is coming into its third year, and doing well so far. I know that the plants should be dying off soon, but I allow the runners to replant themselves almost entirely unchecked, so I'm hoping it will self-perpetuate (advice here would be welcome). We get enough strawberries for a few desserts & breakfasts during the early summer, but not really enough to put up. I typically buy strawberries from a local farmer for that. Similarly for our blackberry bush, which is now in its second year--I expect to get much greater production out of it this year. Well, I would, anyway, if my crazy next door neighbor would stop whacking off canes of it the second one crosses over onto his side of the yard. You'd think he would want the free berries? Or at least, tell me and I'll corral it (I must stay vigilant this year, lest another amputation occur!).
As for the herbs, here's what's going on:
Perennials (those marked with an * are new this year):
- Sage (x2)
- Tarragon
- Rue
- Lavendar (* will be adding more this year)
- Rosemary
- Feverfew
- Soapwort
- Lemon Balm
- Lovage (huh, that one's not labeled. Silly. It's the unnamed herb to the right of the sage.)
- Winter Savory
- Hyssop
- Lady's Mantle*
- Thymes (x2)
- Horehound*
- Thistle*
- Yarrow*
- Sweet Woodruff
- Cilantro
- Parsley
- Summer Savory
- Chervil (whoops! That one didn't make it onto the plan! Will fix that soon--probably put it between the hyssop and the lemon balm)
- [Basil] This is actually in the main garden, but I thought I'd at least note it here, lest any of you think that I'm a nutcase who doesn't plant basil.
Oh, and a word about my rosemary. I've named it "Harry Potter" because it's the rosemary that didn't die. Rosemary's are not hardy in my zone. By rights, that thing should be dead. I did nothing--possibly even less than nothing--to protect it over last winter. In the spring, I went out resigned to having to pull it up and replace it with something else, but when I went to test the branches... they bent! They didn't snap! And when I snipped one off? It was green on the inside! Wow. So I've got fingers crossed that it made it this winter, too (and this time I even cut it back and heavily mulched it, so there's some hope). We shall see.
lol! ahhh you're like my dodi then? A master gardener! :0D He too just 'sticks things in the ground' and then leaves them....
ReplyDeleteI on the other hand am the gardening equivilent to the Grim Reaper.... I touch it - it dies....
sigh....
Ahavah--
ReplyDeleteYou know, I would love to be a master gardener, but I can't ever seem to get AHOLD of any of them around here to take the courses! Same goes for the Herb Society--someone else was just complaining to me about how impossible it is to join that group, not out of strenuous requirements, but just out of plain old being able to find out about their meetings. They have NO WEBSITE or web presence that we can detect. grrrrr
But no, I am not the grim reaper. My husband comes close, though.
What I know about Strawberries is what my mom taught me. She bought some plants, then she would let them go the first year, trimming off the blossoms, basically not having any strawberries that year. She would plant another set the following year to do the same, while the first set produced strawberries. She always cut the runners off too, because the further they get from the actual plant, the smaller and less juicy they became...or so she was told too. I never did what you are doing with strawberries, letting them run and become their own plants, so I'm not sure as to how that will work. It also may depend on the type of plant that you bought. I'm not sure what she had, I just know what she did. And we had a little garter snake named Sammy that loved living in the strawberry patch for a few years. He kept away the mice that also loved our strawberry patch ;)
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