Gardening

[cjsmith]

CA Bay Area garden-savvy folks, if you wanted to plant herbs and/or a few veggies (corn, tomatoes, cantaloupe, carrots) and you hadn't done a blessed thing up 'til now -- no seedlings in pots in a sunny room, nothing -- what would you choose to plant soon?

Comments

[moriamerri.livejournal.com]

Summerwinds has lots of veggies and herb plants.
I bought 5 tomatoes, a 6-pak of parsley, zuchinni,
and some flowers. It feels a little early for
planting tomatoes to me, but I don't think I have
a good sense of the proper time -- I am pretty random.
They have lots of all the "standard" herbs -- I
already grow most of what I'd want, but did buy
a camomille (sp?) and an oregano plant.

Common Ground (off of ECR in Palo Alto) has a
great Bay Area gardening calendar. What I like
about it is that it is very concise. For each
month it lists plants to start from seed, plants
to plant from starts, and any general gardening
tasks recommended for this time. All on one page.

Common Ground calendar

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

Turns out there's an online version of this calendar <href="http://www.commongroundinpaloalto.org/plantingcalendar.htm">here - thanks for the pointer!

My spinach is starting to come up nicely, tomatos are a few inches tall, onions and chives coming along.

Re: Common Ground calendar

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

Urg, I've forgotten how to do hyperlinks in LJ. Cut and paste calendar URL: http://www.commongroundinpaloalto.org/plantingcalendar.htm

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh AWESOME (the online calendar). Thanks!

Heh, I never thought of growing chamomile. I drink it (as herbal tea) by the gallon. I wonder if I could just stick a plant in the dirt and then go pinch off some "tea" when I want it. :-)

[moriamerri.livejournal.com]

It's very cool that the calendar is online -- although I think the printed version has a bit more stuff.

Chamomile tea is made from the FLOWER of a chamomile plant. So, um, it is a teeny bit more complex than what you said. Stick plant in ground, water, enjoy, etc. When it flowers, cut and dry the flowers, and then stick dried flowers in tea drawer, etc. Other things work more in the "pinch off a piece of the plant" mode, like, um, mints come to mind (peppermint, spearmint, lemon balm...) Chamomile also smells fabulous, so the plant is nice to have around. (I've grown "the other kind" a lot. I've forgotten which is Roman and which is German. Ug. I think German is the tea one, which has flowers with petals, and doesn't spread. I've grown mostly the creeping kind (Roman?) which is NOT used for tea and has flowers w/o petals.) I *thought* that both have foliage that smells great -- but I just went and smelled the tea kind (my new plant) and it DOESN'T smell like the creeping kind! So, huh, I guess one gets either great smelling foliage OR tea, not both.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh darn. Well, I do like chamomile tea, so maybe it'd be worth the extra effort. And mint is scrumptious! I have a few favorite herbal teas, one of which is peppermint. :-)

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

You had best be pinching off mint roots as well as leaves, so it doesn't take over the garden and strangle you in your sleep.

OK, I exaggerate a bit, but mint does like to spread via root network if not watched... morning glories are the ones that grow so fast they'll strangle you in your sleep (but oh, so pretty).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we used to have some form of mint in our Palo Alto apartment's garden and it was nearly evil in its ability to take over the world. When we redid the entire plot -- including ripping out the ill-conceived concrete-and-wood tiered structure underneath all the dirt with a sledgehammer -- the mint didn't die. :)