(no subject)

[rafiwinters]

Last year I had ambitious plans for our strip of raised garden bed. I ran into several obstacles: inexperience, drought, fibromyalgia flares, and lack of planning. Also the ambition--and the expletive deleted morning glories/bindweed. Even the herbs that I brought inside for the winter died, partly because I didn't water them enough but partly, well, I dunno why. I kind of gave up and thought, "Well, that's never going to work."

However, I want to make another try at it. And I know some things now that I didn't know last spring. So here are my current thoughts.

J is willing to do the heavy work like chopping up heavy soil and hefting bags of new soil around. That kind of work is what brought on fibro flares.

Research some methods of keeping down the horribly invasive bindweed. YES, THEY'RE PRETTY, BUT THEY STRANGLED MY GARDEN.

Make lists of everything that catches my eye to plant--then plan. It was all a bit random last year. I mean, tomatoes, marigolds, seven kinds of herbs, Asiatic lilies (like those pictured above) that were in the garden bed already... and some other things I don't even remember. Too much.

Here's what I'm currently thinking about planting this spring:

--tomatoes

--basil (yummy with tomatoes; plus a website tells me that planting basil near the tomatoes improved the flavor of the tomatoes!)

--lavender

--a bunch of different things like stonecrop and hens-and-chicks and creeping thyme--these might keep down weeds (my thinking), and would certainly serve to cover up the ugly cement blocks that are the walls of the raised bed

--some spring-planting bulbs, for pretty flowers--maybe begonias and freesias

And next fall:

--fall-planting bulbs such as crocuses and snowdrops, to bloom next year in spring.

The bed is mostly in full sun during the summer; there's one tree (not sure what kind) of moderate height that casts some shade on the bed at times.

I already have what should be all the tools I need. I think better preparation of the bed would help, though I worry that adding any more soil or any fertilizer at all would just help the **#)$(&*ing bindweed. I also learned that the bindweed LIKES having its runners chopped in half; it just makes more. So there will have to be some way to deal with that.

In case you're wondering, the bed is four feet deep (back to front, I mean) and 24 feet long. It is easier to access along the long wall, so maybe we plant in a strip along there. But maybe plan to put snowdrops and crocuses at the foot of the tree. I so like that effect in spring.