Tag Archive for 'integrating vegetables and flowers'

Garden Peace

Bob thought it’d be no problem to catch that squirrel.  He went to grad school at Harvard, for Pete’s sake.  He was sure that he could outwit a rodent.  But he was wrong. 

So he declared Peace.  No chickenwire, no mesh, no traps

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and of course the squirrel suddenly disappeared.  Funny thing how declaring peace changes the atmosphere. 

I sprinkled the lettuce bed with dried blood (thanks wkf) and the plants with cayenne, and if that doesn’t do the trick I’ll put it under strawberries for next year. 

 I integrated some vegetables into the flower beds this year.  I put onions grown from seed amongst the daffodils.  They were threads in May, 

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but not anymore.  The daffodils are dying back and the onions, with the same kind of spiky foliage, are taking over.  I have fifty onions tucked into the daffodils, and you can see they’re kind of cute–the crashed-over leaves are the daffodils, and the perky blue-green spears are the onions. 

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Here I have a half-dozen fennel tucked in amongst the coreopsis.  Doesn’t look like much right now, but in August they’ll be four feet tall.

And my favorite plant of the moment is

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patchouli.  They’re annuals at this altitude, and I put in three.  They’re getting racked by the sun but are setting their roots down nonetheless, and will be fine in a month.  Sam said, Patchouli?  I said, You know: Hippy perfume.  According to Wikipedia, patchouli is in the mint family. 

Mark Twain called brussels sprouts  “a cabbage with a college education”.   Would that make patchouli a mint that dropped out, turned on, and had a lot of casual affairs?