I realized, reading the Bennington Garden Blog this morning that I have neglected to document my miraculous garden. I am lucky to be planting on soil that has been uncultivated for years; it’s rich and full of worms. With the addition of some compost to lighten up the clay, it has produced what seems like instant results. I started planting in February, and now have more lettuce than we can eat (just ready to transplant the third crop of seedlings), snap and snow peas, kale, baby tomatoes, and vigorous corn, tomatillos, cucumber, squash, artichoke, eggplant, edamame and bean plants. I also have first year blueberry bushes, raspberry, and blackberry vines, a young Celeste fig and Hachiya persimmon, and a pepper tree. Here come the photos:
The peas grow visibly taller each day!
These are planted with a technique called Mayan gardening. The corn should be a stalk for the beans, tomatoes or tomatillos, the cucumber provides ground cover.
Can you spot the slug in the lettuce seedlings? I didn’t know it was there till I looked at these.
Here’s the front. You can see the beginning of the labyrinth here:
Some of the herbs and salad greens in the labyrinth are already going to seed—I’m letting that happen, figuring I’ll have a summer crop later.
The garden is a world of pleasure, changing each day. Soon to come: red mulch for the tomatoes! Stakes for the berries, taller stakes for the peas.
Meryl,
Have rooted around in your poems, reading, garden, labyrinth, and recipes and enjoyed meeting you through them…
Thanks, Marly. Just looked briefly at your blog. I love that Richard Wilbur poem. There’s a good review of him by William Logan online in The New Criterion. I look forward to more time spent getting to you through your blog, too.