The Urban Gardener

"And so it criticized each flower,

This supercilious seed,
Until it woke one summer hour,
And found itself a weed."
-Mildred Howells, The Different Seed

It's finally the time of year in Canada for gardening, yay!

Gardening...a fancy three-syllable word for "pulling weeds"!!

As you can see, we simply could NOT ignore the weeds any more. It was time to clear the way (by hand...no nasty chemicals) for this year's organic vegetable garden.

Each year my husband and I expand our tiny vegetable patch little by little. This year we are taking it out by another foot.

We purchased our home 4 years ago from a vegetarian family who had lived there for 5 years. They, too, used no herbicides or pesticides for their organic veggie patch. For "official" certified organic status, the criteria is typically 3 years pesticide and herbicide free, but it can take a transition period of 5-10 years to become totally organic, so I'm pretty sure that it would be safe to say that our backyard goodies would now qualify as organic, yay!

Don mixes the composted organic soil from our two composters in the back yard with a small amount of local, organic sheep manure and digs it into the soil bed to add some nutrients.

Now it looks ready to plant!















This year we are planting:

• rhubarb (actually, it comes back every year)
  
• tomatoes
• red leaf lettuce
• mixed greens
• swiss chard
• green peppers
• hot banana peppers
• jalapeno peppers
• chili peppers (alot of hot peppers, I know...we like it HOT! We freeze most of them and use them all winter!)
• beans
• herbs galore: basil, thai basil, thyme, mint, rosemary, parsley, cilantro, sage, oregano
  

One of my most favorite things to do after a long day at work is to come home and stroll out into the back garden and pick my dinner ingredients from the back yard with a pair of kitchen scissors and a big bowl! Paradise! These lovelies should be in the ground by the weekend. Let the growing begin!