Garden Chronology of Colt Mazeau

2003 (Year 5)

This spring, my left-side neighbor took down some fence and rototilled the right-of-way between our plots. That much was good, but for some time after the rototilling the plot was not touched by human hands, which meant that weeds started reaching for the sky. Accordingly, so as not to create a weed magnet, I took down the chickenwire fence on that side of my plot, leaving the three-foot stake posts up as a boundary reference.

This spring was very rainy, with twenty-two days of rain in May.

INVESTMENTS:: Leased plot, $30; vegetable and flower seeds, $10; stonecrop, $6. Total: $46
WEEDS:: I've figured out that my entire plot needs to be completely mulched each year. I managed to keep to this mulch-everything goal this year, and the weeds have been kept at bay. With some heavy mulching in a couple of areas, I even killed off some poison ivy.
RODENTS:: Certainly, the rodents are around and they've been a significant but minor pest.
WINTER CROP RESULTS:: The annual ryegrass dutifully performed according to expectations. In the self-propagation department, some mustard and poppies came up here and there, and dill is bountiful.
SUMMER CROPS PLANTED:: Tomatoes, green peppers, black-eyed peas, and alyssum (a small white flower). Tomatoes did so-so, the peppers did not come up at all, the black-eyed peas did modestly, and the alyssum was rather pathetic. But hey, the dill did great!
WINTER CROPS PLANTED:: Annual ryegrass and spinach.
PERENNIALS:: The lemon grass died over the winter (it may not be a perennial like I thought, at least not in this climate), and the discarded evergreen shrub never perked to life like I had hoped, so those are both gone. I planted stonecrop--purchased from a nursery--and myrtle that I transplanted from a large patch in nearby woods. The blackberries did exceptionally well this year--they must have liked the rain.