The Gardening Ropes

Gardening in Georgia entails trying to rid myself of all the gardening patterns I ever learned in the West. None of those schedules apply here!! Planting time took us by surprise, and we didn't get starts going until April, when most of it needs to get going by January/February/March. Oops. It's only mid-May, but it's too late to plant anything but corn, sweet potatoes, and winter squash. I have whiplash. :) Of course, you can always run to Home Depot, eyeball the $3.88 per plant starts (OY) and give in to getting a couple of Japanese eggplants and a few $0.98 herbs so your herb spiral wasn't for naught. And some more-than-$3.88 salvia and primrose to bring in the bees. DH and I did have a lovely kid-less outing to Home Depot (thank you, Savta!) and got to relax and browse. We have heard rumors of $0.50 tomato starts at a local feed store and one can never have enough tomatoes, so we'll check that out tomorrow.

Now for the best news... we may have missed much of the spring planting opportunities, BUT in Georgia we get second chances! You can plant all of those delicious spring vegetables again... in August! And harvest them in October/November/December. There are two cycles of planting - February to May, and August to November. WEIRD! :) And there's probably only a month or so where NOTHING comes out of your garden. Just weird. So... this is our learning year and what a trial run. We've been having delicious salads, but I wish we had 10x the lettuce planted that we do now. The arugula is fantastic; definitely my favorite green. It's a good start, though. The tomatoes are coming along great, and there are little tiny baby cucumbers. Eggplants and peppers are moving along more slowly. Oh, yum. Such a joy after eating so much yucky, expensive produce that expires after 5 days. Wishing everyone a great week!