Accidental Garden

What is an Accidental Garden, You ask?

Well it begins with leaving most of your seed collection outside on a rainy day.  Step two involves leaving said seed collection for a couple more days in warm weather.

By day 3 you have an array of baby sprouts.  This was not at all what I intended to do.

I usually sort my seeds in an accordion folder to separate seeds by the optimal sowing month. It’s a pretty efficient method for planning ahead, but also dangerous to have all your seeds in one location.

Sow, Sow, Sow

So what to do now?  Sow of course, I decided I would plant it all anyway.  Now that means that I will have to build (or have handy husband build) a nice new Hoop house to keep the warmer weather seedlings toasty during cooler months.  It was on my list of things to do soon, so I consider this instant motivation.

So… clearly I am not recommending this type of careless gardening, so  I will include some gardening practices that I CAN recommend.  Here goes:

Keep a Journal

I generally keep a calendar and drawing of my garden.  This helps to see what methods worked best and when I can expect a harvest. I don’t rely on myself to remember what I planted and when.  Old school markers don’t really work either because they tend to go missing our fade in the hot Texas sun.  I learned years ago that  a Garden journal is the way to go.

Keyhole compost bin

My garden is built around a keyhole composting bin.  I absolutely swear by this method.  I have a wire form in the middle of my raised beds and all of my kitchen scraps and animal bedding waste goes here.  I add a container of earthworms ( our corner store sells these since we are close to the lake) and presto! bango! you have a pretty amazing compost making machine.  You never have to turn it IF you keep layering it like a lasagna between brown (dry leafy material, straw, paper scraps) and green (veggie kitchen scraps) waste.

There are tons of instructions for keyhole composting on line.  You can see the basics here.  Mine is not exactly like that, but the concept is the same. Maybe I will do a future post on my bin.

Consult your local Ag extension.

This is probably the best tip to use because it is free and you can go there now.  Well actually, that will take you to the planting guide where I live, but you can see the ag extension sites can be pretty helpful.

So, there you go…I will cross my fingers and hope for some success. How about you?  Do you have any gardening practices that you swear by?

I’d love to hear from you.

~Eleanor