The Haphazard Gardener

I have never been the kind of gardener who plants things in neat little rows, never having one thing overlap another. My gardens are like crazy quilts. And I've never worried until we moved to this house about what my garden looked like at all, but here it's in the front yard. It still looks crazy! but there is some order. Just not neat little rows.

After a long, cold winter, my garden is finally growing all over the place. The things that overwintered in the "old" side are tall and overgrown; the plants on the "new" side are coming right along. As I've been weeding in the last couple of days I've been noticing the new growth and potential in my garden. During Holy Week I was chagrined to find my bok choy going to seed, and I whacked off the top to try to delay the bittering of the greens. But by the next time I noticed it, it was way too far gone and now the mustard and kale have followed suit. I decided to change tactics and attitude, because I've noticed ever since I became a "serious" gardener that if you can just get something to re-seed itself, it will grow so much better than when it's direct seeded or planted. So I'm looking forward to lots of kale, mustard, and bok choy!

When it was so cold for so long, so many rainy days, I became lackadaisical and didn't care what was going on in the garden. For awhile I berated myself for it--would I fall behind? Would I not have as much growing as I wanted? But yesterday, we found, growing among the beet seedlings that we planted, many little tomato seedlings that were growing from last year's plants! And they are so much further along than the ones we were trying to start. Now the only problem will be to figure out how to grow beets and tomatoes in the same space, or how to transplant them and thin them for optimal growing environments.

Our herbs are going crazy!

Last year, I bought an oregano plant, and then when I needed more oregano that that plant could give me at that time, I bought another one. Now both were in my garden and both were huge! I just don't need that much oregano. So if anyone would like some oregano transplants let me know.

On the "old" side of the garden we planted, as a front "hedge", rosemary and lavender. Later I put some parsley in there too. All have gotten quite large and will need to be pruned back. There is one place where I can stick my face in and have lavender touching my right cheek, rosemary touching my left, and parsley touching my nose, and together they smell just amazing.

Every spring we live in Oregon I am amazed at the vast growth of the plants. They just seem to leap to life here!