With A Heavy Heart...

I will begin demolishing much of my vegetable garden in back. I will leave in place the slower maturing Summer plants such as tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peppers, peas and permanent perennial herbs such as the lovage and tarragon. Although I am a bit sad to pull a still producing garden, I am excited to begin again. July through August is a whole new planting season which represents a relatively narrow window of time in which cool weather crops can be started. We are still pulling out massive amounts of lettuce and various greens which we eat daily, but these plants will go down hill through July and in to late Summer - bolting is inevitable even with the hardiest of varieties. So, it's time to look forward to the fall and winter crops ahead. In preparation, I will amend the soil around the plants which will remain in place. The soil must be thoroughly and organically re-built so that it will properly nourish the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, beets, collard greens, spinach, fall variety lettuces, endive, parsnips, turnips, carrots, garlic, onions and shallots that I plan to cultivate. Having such crop overlap is one of the biggest reasons why I am so anxious to pull out our lawn and get raised beds and naturally drought resistant landscape to take its' place. Being able to rotate crops to different beds each year, who's seasons normally overlap is priceless in the world of four season gardening. Furthermore, the amount of gas used to mow & trim along with the petro-chemicals, and water it takes to maintain a well manicured, pretty lawn is just plain expensive and bad for the environment. We've already started to let our grass die. I'm sure the neighbors will be pissed but it won't be long before we have far more interesting and environmentally practical landscaping in place. We are planning to do this at the tail end of Summer just before the rainy season begins so that we will need to expend less water on it.