Before planting late this afternoon, I swirled around a batch of soaked peas (sugar snap and sugar sprint) in the recently-arrived packet; it created a rather evil-looking dark inoculant 'slurry' boasting 200 million live Rhizobium spp. good for peas, beans and other legumes.
I've had lots of fun sharing my enthusiasm for growing vegetables, edible flowers, and herbs in two recent programs. One was about Creative Uses of Herbs and Edibles, the other about Three-season Vegetable Gardening. I was inspired to extend my vegetable gardening seasons by Eliot Coleman, Four-Season Harvest, and Barbara Pleasant's Warm-Climate Gardening. If Eliot Coleman, in Maine, can be harvesting vegetables through the winter, surely here in South Carolina, even in the the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I can grow things for three seasons, working on four.
I had a great group of participants for both programs. I love my vegetable garden; gardening for nature may be a primary interest, but growing interesting and tasty vegetables is right behind. There's no better way to eat local than to grow your own. And many of us here in the South are fortunate enough to have sunny space to grow all sorts of things, thanks to affordable land. I found myself checking out lawns this afternoon, thinking about why wouldn't someone rather have an attractive vegetable garden instead of a lawn. Often that's the sunniest spot in the yard. Worth thinking about!
