The Write Ingredients

We have broken ground.

It’s May now, and about time that we’ve stuck our hands in soil. Saturday was in the 70's and the yard was calling our names. We have a lot of ambitious plans this spring for the yard, and we have a perfect Saturday to get ourselves started. We have a minimum of four gardens planned for the summer.

First, there's the vegetable garden. That's an obvious one. This will be my fifth summer planting one, with a one year hiatus taken because of possible construction (the garden moved, the construction didn’t happen). I've always done a combination of herbs, tomatoes and peppers. But each year I try something new, which usually ends up in heartache and a pile of leaves.

This year I wasn't planning to do anything too exciting, but then I went to our neighborhood nursery. Minnehaha Falls Nursery. I ran over there to pick up a few lettuce plants, and in addition to Bibb, Red Leaf, Grand Rapids (not sure what this is) and Romaine plants, somehow Kohlrabi and Cauliflower plants made their way into my basket. With some research, I learned that Kohlrabi is a hearty plant that takes little maintenance, but the Cauliflower can be quite finicky. I threw them both into the west third of the garden, and have little hope that I will see any cauliflower land on my plate. The kohlrabi will be a nice surprise.

The second garden we're planning is a rain garden. I’ve been to two rain garden workshops through Metro Blooms and have ordered a package of native plants. We started to prep the area for them, but I won’t pick them up until May 19th. Until then, we'll just prep the bed and count the days until we can start to block the view to our neighbors.

Gardens three and four remain only in our imagination. On the south side of the front yard, lining the fence we hope to plant native grasses and fill the area with rock. In the front yard we want to extend the circle below the large pine and fill it with shade-loving hearty ground cover. I have a few options to choose from, but since timing isn't crucial for these, we'll get to them when we can.

I have to say it was nice to be working in the yard after the long winter. We cleared the leaves off the north side fence and I could almost hear the hosta breathe a sigh of relief at the fresh air and sun they were finally able to see. When I uncovered them they were barely out of the earth. A day later I can already see their progress, and now in their third year with us, I hope they can grow to their potential.

The rest of the week is supposed to be warm (60s and 70s) with rain on Monday, so we'll water the lettuces and coax the hosta along. Until next weekend, when we'll hit the Metro Blooms Day and take the next step to creating a gardener's paradise.