The Mutant Veggies

On a side note, before I start to rant about my veggies, I recently realized that Facebook has had a negative impact on my blogging. When I decided to get on the computer in the evening for some down time, I find myself on Facebook for the simple fact that it's mindless entertainment. Damn society and it's easy entertainment! As I watched Dick Prenicky's Alone in the Wilderness (PBS special- if you've not seen it, a must see) with my students today, I longed for the days of simplicity....my modern day simplicity promise to myself was to try to blog more.

Now back to the veggies. Since we moved, I had to motivate Jarred to make me a raised bed so we could have a garden. Regardless of whether or now we end up purchasing this house, I wanted a garden. I don't understand why more people don't have gardens and figured if we had to move out of the house, the next person who moved it would have the pleasant surprise of a garden. A friend commented to me the other day, "I can't have a garden, we're gone every weekend, who will weed it?" She is also a teacher and has endless hours during the summer. I reminded her that I plant my garden, weed it a couple of times, set up a low maintance watering system and then leave for Sun Valley for a month or so. I generally come back in August to a great- but weedy- garden with veggies waiting to be eaten. Gardens can't get much more low maintance than that.

I planted all my veggies from seed except my lettuce, swiss chard and basil, which I bought from local growers. I've never had good luck growing my own swiss chard or basil and $2 per plant seems worth it, especially after last year (check out past blog post where I'm sitting amongst basil trees). We're still eating basil from last season. I also planted all the veggies in half composted horse manure- if you look close at the photo, you may be able to discern a horse turd or two. I know this sounds gross to most but horse manure does not gross me out. Mostly because horses eat one thing- grass, so their manure is simply grass. It composts really well and does not smell to bad. Plus it's a great way to use up the hundreds of pounds of manure horses produce. My friend Lisa, spent all last winter building up a garden spot. She lives on really hilly property with poor soil so she spent the winter building up a big flat garden space off one of her hills. She planted everything from seed and had so many veggies she could have started her own Saturday market.

So now it's May and I have lettuce ready to eat and all of my seeds sprouted and are growing like weeds (and I don't have any weeds in my garden). I can't decide if the veggies are growing because of the manure or the rain or the fact that Western Washington is just a mecca for growing things. Regardless, I'm impressed with my garden this year and horse manure can't be worse than the crap in processed food!