The Barefoot Gardener

I'm a gardening nut. I excuse myself by adding that at least what I'm into is useful; I know people who will go on for hours about the intricacies of brugmansias or cannas, and I confess to a small bite from the rose bug myself. But overwhelmingly, what I'm interested in is growing edibles. Vegetable gardens and fruiting plants, particularly annuals, are what I spend my time on.

This is perhaps partly due to the state of neglect most of the property is in. When I have no idea how permanent any existing tree is, nor what we're going to want to do to the area once weeds are cleared out, suddenly annuals look very appealing. That's not to say I'm not working on the neglect, but the first part of that (beyond planning) is tearing out the unwanted things and preparing ground, and that's a chore. The only ornamental I don't begrudge spending time on is the roses, and I don't spend as much time as I ought with them.

For pleasure, I turn to the vegetable garden in back. I have an L-shaped area about 75 feet on a side and 40 feet wide, called the "back forty"; not all of that is available to garden in, due to shade and walnut trees, but I've got a plots about 35 feet by 50 feet, which is just short of too much to work by myself. The land itself is "special", and I've had quite a time working out solutions to its unique problems.

I do, however, live in sunny Northern California, the place we can grow darn near anything, and there's no such thing as downtime. So take your socks off, grab a cool drink, and have a look around.

May 4, 2012: I really let this site go to seed, as it were, while I was finishing off my degrees and trying to get a foothold on my career. I think, like many of the yards I've been dealing with lately, this needs to be a little more "low maintenance"... I've archived the old stuff from 2004-2006 if you're really curious, but I won't continue making chatty posts and detailing what's currently growing here. Most of that ends up on Dreamwidth these days (or LiveJournal if you want archives). If you have an account on either, drop me a line and I can add you to the filter that gets most of the gardening stuff. Some picture albums are available to the public via my Google profile, as well.

I'm keeping the articles, and hope to add to them -- my explanation of Florida Weave in the How-To section is still surprisingly popular. I'll see what else I can put here that would be useful.