Looking over my list of what I'd bought at Richter's Herbs, and how I'd broken it down into categories, it occurs to me to ask - what are your garden goals?
Are you growing for the Pretty?
Do you know, or want to learn, the use of medicinal herbs?
Are you a natural dyer crazy enough to risk the seriously invasive woad for that wonderful blue?
It doesn't have to be a crazy thing, it can be controlled. Or so I tell myself about the forget-me-nots and creeping charley and peppermint every darned year. But those are the previous home owners problems that I inherited. I'm choosing woad, and hopefully in a careful manner.
Anyway... is it a cooking thing? Growing veggies and herbs for your next meal? Or for sustainability?
Gods but Anti-V must want to kill me sometimes. Her Zone 4 climate and the esker running through her land makes gardening difficult, and she's passionate about cooking!
Maybe it's a Zen thing... the peace of gardening?
Or the pride of having bounty and knowing you've worked darn hard for it?
I'm in the 'all of the above category'. Though admittedly the dye plants and Pretty factor usually end up with top priority.
I'm hoping the dye plants will keep me busy through the next winter. :)
Karen
2 comments:
Me? Several reasons: Food (because it just tastes better coming out of your garden), herbs for cooking (because if I need a hand full of thyme, it's easier and nicer to nip out the door and hack off a bunch, not to mention cheaper than buying a small plastic-encased wilted bunch at the store), The Pretty, and because it's cheaper and more satisfying than Prozac and therapy. I feel for anti-V. I'm zone 4, too. My motto? "At least it's not zone 3."
I'm doing a bit of everything.. On the farm we grew for food.. the next house didn't have garden space, so just flowers went in. Here in the new house, I'm switching the gawd-awful little white flower garden to a different configuration of beds with some veggies and herbs, some dye plants and some flowers. Zone 5 with a dog who for some reason loves to lie down on the madder, so it's not really growing all that quickly.
Post a Comment