Tag: herb garden

Happy Mother’s Day 2014

Marie Haigh1 Comment

Dan made me breakfast.

Elly gave me a beautiful necklace and pin.

I spent the rest of the day in the place where I hope to spend every Mother’s Day: my garden.

I planted the after-frost seeds today, inserted all the cages and frames, and laid down the soaker hose system.

I purchased my soaker hose system from Gardeners Supply Company. It is worth its weight in gold, especially since I detest standing over a garden in the heat holding a hose. With the soaker system, I just attach our hose, turn the water on and walk away for 2 hours. It’s a thing of beauty and the only reason my garden survives the long, hot summer.

Vegetable and Herbs in my grow beds and garden bed this year:

Asparagus
Strawberries
Tomatoes, of course
Jalapenos
Parsley
Basil
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Rhubarb
Marigold
Chives
Thyme
Sage
Rosemary
Lavender
3 different kinds of mint for tea
Lemon balm

Gosh, when I write it all down, it looks like I went and lost my mind. It should be noted that the asparagus, rhubarb, chives, thyme, sage, rosemary, lavender, mint and lemon balm are all perennials and thus require little to no effort. All I have to do is keep the weeds at bay. Here’s hoping our local shop hurries up and fixes Dan’s lawn mower soon. I could use some grass clippings to mulch around all the plants and help discourage the weeds.

After a day of gardening, I am sore and a little chewed upon thanks to the swarm of gnats that followed me everywhere. It was a wonderful day though.

I hope your Mother’s Day was just as wonderful!

Hooray! My Garden is Growing!

Marie HaighLeave a comment

Barely.

Seeds have only just started to poke their heads out of the ground, but I am already dancing for joy!

Spinach!

Swiss Chard!

Asparagus!

Peas!

Carrots that Elly and I planted last Fall!

Unfortunately, I need to remove the lion’s share. One, they are growing too close together and two, I need room to plant seeds of corn.

Other plants require less squinting to find, such as the garlic and herbs.

Just this past week, I tossed the dried thyme in my spice rack because the thyme in my garden is available year round. And fresh is better.

Soon I will be able to toss the rosemary too. Even though it dies back in the winter, I can whip out my dehydrator and dry my own supply in the Fall before the first freeze.

It’s rewarding and really fun to reap what you sow.

Grass Mulch

Marie HaighLeave a comment

It is a goal of ours to eventually replace all the grass in our front lawn with trees, bushes and an overabundance of ground cover plants.

Dan hates to mow. He especially hates to mow under the low hanging branches of all the dogwood trees. Apparently, it is difficult to get the mower underneath the tree to cut the grass without getting whacked in the head.

Perhaps most importantly, we don’t use the lawn in the front yard. It is strictly for decoration. The backyard is where we play, lounge about and run barefoot.

Slowly but surely, I am eating all the grass up with my ever-expanding vegetable garden and miniature trees.


Japanese Maple and Japanese Stewartia trees
When I am 100, they might be as tall as me. Which is to say, they are terribly slow growing.

In the meantime, the grass is earning its keep by providing free mulch.

Dan saves the grass clippings for me every time he mows. The grass mulch is used all over the yard, but most heavily in the vegetable and herb gardens.

My Biggest Garden Yet

Marie HaighLeave a comment

After 2 years of neglecting my garden (pregnancy and Elly’s 1st year kept me busy), I made up for lost time this year.

Not only did I fill the 3 raised garden beds, purchased from Garden Supply Co, with the following vegetables and herbs:
Spinach
Tomatoes
Parsley
Basil
Curry
Carrots
Peppers
Zucchini
Onions,
But I also made a herb bed.

The herbs I chose to plant are all perennials (the annuals went in the raised beds).
Rather than start from seed as I did in the raised beds, I purchased saplings from my local nursery, Achin Back. The following herbs were planted:
Lavender
Rosemary
Sage
Thyme
The chives were originally in the raised beds, but I moved them over to allow more room for vegetables.

Then, because I lost my mind, I made a strawberry patch and a pumpkin patch.

OK. So, this patch looks nothing more than cleared land with some flowers and mulch, but trust me there are at least 70 seeds just under the soil. If they all take, I’ll be doing a bunch of thinning. Goodness knows, I don’t need 70 pumpkins.

And this doesn’t look like a strawberry patch either, but you have to trust me on this one too. The green plants under the lilac bushes are wild strawberries. The itty bitty strawberries that do ripen are disgusting. So, my goal is to let the strawberry plants that I picked up from my local nursery to take over this bit of land.

Here’s hoping.

Even more exciting, I’ve already reaped what I sowed. On Mother’s Day, I made a spinach and strawberry salad with spinach from my garden. It was delicious.

Tomorrow I plan to make a pesto from the spinach.