Tag Archives: herb-garden

Spring is in the Air, and Making an Early Appearance in the Garden!

iIt’s finally spring!

Here in the Northeast winters usually feel endless to me. This year I started early. The Cape is a little warmer owing to being on the seashore, and I have some early start herbs I’m putting in. WOOOO!

Cape cod soil is pretty much what you’d expect … sand and clay. And lots of it. So we trucked in some planting soil and started clearing away vines and debris in a sunny spot to the west of the house.

It doesn’t look like much right now but it will be full of flowering herbs this summer! And we’ve found a local fence company to put in a garden fence for us – it’ll have to be dug into the ground to protect my precious gardens from rabbits and woodchucks. Two stories come to mind whenever I think about rabbits and woodchucks decimating my garden: Peter Rabbit and Caddyshack. You wouldn’t expect those two to go together, would you??

slate stakes identify what's planted
early herbs include chamomile, echinacea angustifolia, comfrey

And importantly, our friends the garlic shoots have made an appearance:

small green blades of garlic emerging from a bed of leaves
garlic emerging from a bed of leaves

Is this garlic shoot seriously not the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen?

green shoots and leaves with red stems emerge from little planters
chard and onions starting to grow in a seed starter mat.

Finally, the onions and kale I started early are coming along. I added a few leek seeds in later, to the right, and I’m waiting for those to germinate. Later this month it’ll be lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower.

I am dreaming of spring flowers and greens, and beach walks. Soon!

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Filed under Herbs and Healing, New Kitchen Garden, Uncategorized

New Beginning, New Kitchen Garden

monarch caterpillar on asclepius pod
Monarch Caterpillar on Asclepius pod in our herb garden

We’ve moved house. Aside from adapting to a new place and new people, I’m adapting to new land, new trees, new plants, and … a blank-ish slate. The people that lived here before weren’t gardeners, so aside from some unhappy grass and some mature perennial plantings that include hydrangeas (it being the cape and all), it’s a brand new start.

Since it’s seed catalog time and it’s too cold to be outside in the garden, my obvious move is to start planning the kitchen garden. Oh, yeah! Culinary and medicinal herbs, flowers and vegetables.

There were some key things about the herb garden at the farm:

  • I could walk barefoot out my kitchen door on a stone walkway to cut herbs for dinner.  Pure bliss.
  • It faced east, which meant it got great morning sun and much of the garden didn’t bake in the late afternoon summer sun. The bits that did get that sun where home to things like chamomile, lavender, verbena, hyssop, zinnia, monarda, yarrow … plant spirits that were happy with that setting.
  • There was a window from the kitchen onto the garden, so I had a good view of butterflies, hummingbirds, yellow finches, dragon flies, and other gorgeous pollinators and birds that hung out in the garden

There’s nothing like looking out the window and being confronted by a humming bird staring back at you or a praying mantis perched on the window frame. It’s like living in a charmed movie.

monarch on verbena flower

So I’m choosing a spot next to the back yard slider from the kitchen area. An east facing area isn’t available without removing trees, so I’ll have to make a spot that’s south west of the kitchen work, and I’ll ask our carpenter, Norm, to make stairs on that side of the deck so that I can walk directly to the garden … barefoot! 

tax map of property in Falmouth MA
tax map of our new house with a box where our new herb garden is going to be

Other things to prep – the soil here is full of clay and sand, which will mean compost, and lots of it, some stepping stones from a local landscape store, and a clear calendar starting in April.

garlic scrapes last year

This year I planted garlic in October in a bed I threw together hastily just to the south of where the herb garden is going to be, so I will design the gardens and their contents over coming weeks … more to come as the plan and the work evolve!

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