Gardening for the Future

To the Journal Jar, once again!

Have you ever planted a garden?  What was in it, and why?

I have planted several gardens.  One year we had tomatoes and peppers planted, but the peppers didn't really produce very well.  But we had good tomatoes that year.  A few years back we had an artichoke plant that produced a few meals for us.  And some pretty flowers. We had tomatoes again that year, along with a couple strawberries and a jalepeno bush.  The strawberries were good when we could get them before the critters did.  Same with the tomatoes.  Jalepenos didn't fare so well.  But that artichoke produced for a couple years-- might even still be there.  But we moved away.

I also tried planting asparagus one year, but it never produced anything.  Not even a asparagus weed of some sort.  Just dead dirt.  I've planted a few trees in my time, too.  Got a few seedlings from the City on their Arbor Day celebration, where they hand out seedlings to the kids.  They always seemed to have leftovers, and I'd get a couple of different things-- one year my mom, my aunt, and I got Japanese maple tree saplings.  I ended up with them all-- six trees.  I nursed them along through heatwaves during the summer and ended up keeping a few of them alive long enough to plant in the ground.  One, I know, is doing really well in the back yard at our former house, unless the new owners chopped it down.  But it was so healthy, growing so nicely, I don't see why they would have done that.  We had also planted a 5 in 1 fruit tree in that same back yard.  I wonder how it's doing.  It had two varieties of peach, a nectarine, a plum, and an apricot all grafted to one trunk.  Probably finally producing some nice fruit this most recent season.

We've yet to get things going here at our new homestead.  I'm in the planning stages still.  I don't tinker around in the yard like I used to.  Not sure why.  Mostly because I was so depressed that I just couldn't do it.  Didn't feel like it.  Now, I want to redo the whole yard.  Take out the lawn and put in crops.  Or berries and grapes.  No more of this lawn crap.  I want food.  If I'm going to have to work in the yard, it should produce something for me.

Where we're at now, we have more front yard square footage than in the back yard.  And we have a few trees planted already.  We have a Navajo ash and a crepe myrtle that are "City trees" and then an Oregon ash that I planted over a year ago that I don't know for sure if it's going to make it, but it's trying.  There's also some sort of pine tree that I'm not sure what to do with...  In back we have an orange tree, a tangelo tree, and a lemon tree, plus another shade tree that I planted to help keep our bedroom cool in the summer.  (I forget the name of the shade tree or I'd put it down).  I want to utilize the philosophy of permacultre when designing my landscapes.  And I've misplaced my permaculture books.  So until the time when I organize my house so that I can actually find books that I want to read... the yard must wait.