i had considered the possibility of raised beds but the only suitable wood around here is redwood and it gets expensive to do a redwood raised bed compared to regular treated lumber which i have no idea whether it's food safe or not... instead we just got some old wine/whiskey barrels last year and are using those in lieu of putting in the money for proper raised beds. i have the majority of my herbs (listed below in reply to DomA) in barrels with the exception of chives which we put in the ground because the container we bought them in was mislabeled as leeks i need to get my mint into a containment scenario, we end up using way more than we have growing and it's always a battle to wait for more to grow before cutting it back again.
have you tried making your own vinaigrette? i used to drown my salads in ranch/bleu cheese before i became lactose intolerant. i find that making your own dressing is a lot better tasting but it does require some trial and error before you find a combo that works well. we waffle between a balsamic and this asian style dressing which is super spicy. balsamic is good for leafy salads, but the spicy asian one is great for a chunkier salad (i.e. lots of tomatoes, cucumber, onion, etc and light on leafy stuff)
Makes me wondering where Druid is at, we had a spring garden thread every year but last and the last one we kinda bogged down on compost bin design.
Hmm... what am I growing this year... I've been doing a lot more small patches with the whole square-foot raised bed approach in recent years but am kind shifting back more to prior habits, especially with the post-harvest reconfig I did of them.
Expecting the trumpet vine to finally achieve total absorption of the cedar trellis near my goldfish pond, the roses on the one nearest the house will probably continue to have positive if disappointing expansion and the middle one continues to fail to grow anything. As mentione din the other thread, various perennials are doing between disappointing and okay, partially form last years drought. I've broken all my 4'x4' raised beds up and reconnected them into a comb pattern, one long spine 2.5' wide and 60 feet long with two edge sections 6' foot long and 3' wide, and various 3'x4' 'tooths' down the middle. See if I can draw this
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edit:yeah that didn't work, picture a comb
Like that only with more tines, 10 total. I've transplanted my thorny plants to the edges, I'll be growing some stuff with them but they're anti-deer, and I've got a rolling fence (the dotted line on the bottom) I can string across when I'm not using it. Not the most aesthetically pleasing arrangement but I'm confident it will minimize deer pillaging.
I plan, for this piece of my garden anyway, to use the 8 short middle tines, 3 feet wide and 4 long, as cut in half, one plant on one side and another on the other, which gives me 16 options but I'll likely double up and one is already all strawberry. The comb setup plus the other garden bits, can't be sure all what I'll grow this year but potatoes of course, some blue ones. Onions, radishes, maybe some turnips for a change, tomatoes, rhubarb, probably skip carrots this year I always get those fat stubby monsters. Some squash, peppers, some Romaine lettuce, cabbage is kind of tempting, but i'll probably pass on that, beets maybe. Probably some spinach, endives, etc I'm not a big salad fan and i tend to smother the stuff in chunky blue cheese but I'm trying to do more soup and salad as part of the new front in my ongoing war to regain my sorely missed military physique... or at least stop losing ground... the war does not go well
Herbs... probably bring that down, I like fresh Thyme, chives, and mint on hand but otherwise I've been using a lot more curry and cayenne then prior years and less parsley, oregano, marjoram, basil etc. Of course the mint is more about confinement then growing these days, its spread all over the place.
Of course, I'll probably change around the whole dynamic next week, you know how that goes.
"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman