Suddenly, it’s veg season!

I’ve been so focused on the courtyard garden plans and progress that I failed to take a side concern into account ... until I walked home from the farmers’ market on Saturday morning with a half-dozen tomato and ground-cherry seedlings in hand. I knew this would be an in-between year for vegetable gardening here — between last year’s makeshift driveway potager and what I hope will be next year’s raised bed. Driveway Potager 2.0, in other words. But planting time for it snuck up on me, in the sense that I hadn’t thought to press for the pea gravel work to be completed before this moment arrived. Hopefully soon, I’ll have someone dumping two yards of gravel in the driveway, and someone else raking and tamping the underlayer, then spreading the pea gravel on top, all of which I know from experience is incredibly dusty work. But unlike ornamental plants, the planting of tomatoes can’t really be deferred, especially with our short growing season here.

My assumption has been that I would plant very little in the way of a kitchen garden this year, all things considered. As I’ve mentioned, I do have access to amazing small local farmers here and could get by fine without planting anything, but the idea of growing nothing is just not bearable. So I reflexively bought 3 tomato seedlings and 3 ground cherries. (Hopefully having 3 of the latter will mean we get a larger share of the split with the chipmunks this year. Or possibly just more chipmunks. I’m fine with either!) I was hoping to grow my fave blue lake beans. I have to have at least a few herbs. And how can I not have leafy greens? That really seems like the bare minimum!

So I went ahead and stuck two of the tomatoes in the two available cloth bags from last year (both of which had field peas sown in them in the meantime) and one of the ground cherries in another of last year’s pots. And stuck a small pot of mint beside them, which the deer find offensive. (The third cloth pot currently has fava beans growing in it, which I’m letting run their course, of course!) That’s enough to have to move/protect when the pea gravel work ensues — when they will get dragged into the garage or something — and it still leaves me 1 tomato and 2 ground cherries sitting out there in need of pots. The herbs and lettuces can actually happen later, and I might have to forego the green beans until next year. But it looks like I’ll be scattering the crops around the property, since they’ll all be containerized anyway: remaining tomato and ground cherries somewhere out front, herbs by the kitchen door. And likely lettuces eventually right on the picnic table, but we’ll see. 

It does make me a little sad not to get to draw out a planting scheme again this year, which is one of my favorite parts, but I’ve contented myself with the list above. Everything will taste amazing, wherever I situate it all, as long as the plants get what they need — as long as they don’t get cloaked in gravel dust along the way.