It’s not quite time to start planting those spring vegetables, but we’re oooooh so close! Today I could no longer resist the pull of the garden, and ended up buying enough seeds to sow half the neighborhood. A girl can dream. My exact garden configuration is still up in the air, pending various community garden and sharecropping arrangements, but at the very least I’ll have a 4′ x 11′ plot, my tiny front yard (mostly herbs), various containers, and a strip on the side with an unknown amount of sunlight. If all goes well, I’ll have a second 4′ x 11′ plot and possibly the run of a friend’s backyard. This is, perhaps, ambitious.
I always stock up on seeds, on the theory that even if you have only a little space it’s more interesting to grow little bits of lots of things than to have all, say, cucumbers. This strategy has served me well in the past, when I grew more than a dozen vegetables in my 6′ x 8′ partially shaded spot in the backyard of my old house. Here’s the list for this year:
various kinds of lettuces and chicories: red sail, oak leaf, arugula, raddichio, curly endvie
snow peas and shell peas
wax beans, filet beans, lima beans, and Roma pole beans
Brandywine, Purple Cherokee, Sungold, and at least one other tomato
crookneck yellow squash
tomatillos
Jalepeno peppers and sweet banana peppers
broccoli and broccoli raab
canteloupe?
chard
dinosaur kale
spinach
beets
turnips
carrots
parsnips
radishes
pickling cucumbers
leeks
green onions
Since I moved, I also have to restart my herb garden from scratch. Nothing I transplanted, including the rhubarb, seems to have survived. (No comment on what that says about my green thumb.) Hopefully by this time next year I’ll have a yard full of sage, thyme, lavendar, rosemary, tarragon, majoram, anise hyssop, and who knows what else. I’m also toying with the idea of planting some berries in the side yard, but I’m not convinced there’s enough light. But berries! Oh, it would be wonderful! We’ve also fantasized about putting a fig or apricot tree in, but there’s really not enough room.
So here’s the real question for you, dear readers: how soon can I put those turnips in??
