Friday, March 20, 2009

I am so excited....... about a weed!

Dude! Seriously I am so excited! I was just looking online how to grow artichokes, since I bought a pack of seeds and have no clue how to do it, but was a little concerned when I noticed on the back it said 180-360 days until harvest. Whoa! How long????? I live in a cold place here, our growing season is so not long. Then I found out it's OK, they should be ready in about 100 days and I can totally start them inside. Cool! But as I was reading along I also happened on a site for Jerusalem artichokes. I totally love them, and they are a tad expensive, so I don't buy them often, not to mention the nearest grocery store I know of to buy them is about 2 hours away, and we only get to go there about once a month if we are lucky (DH has a once a month class/conference thing and I go along so I can go to the "big city" and go grocery shopping for all the stuff I can't get where we live). So anyway, I find out Jerusalem artichokes are super easy to grow. As in some consider them a weed, that is nearly impossible to kill. Are you kidding me? I'd love to be overrun with these things! I can even grow them in a big pot, so that means I could have them year round even, maybe. I am so excited about this!
I like gardening, but I grew up with my parents method of gardening, so my idea may be slightly different from the average gardeners. See we planted seeds, and plants, and all that, and we were really good about weeding, at first. But then around the middle/end of the summer, it was like why bother, just step on/over the weeds pick what you want and don't worry about the weeds. Now my dad does try, his newest way of dealing with weeds, and this does work fairly well, is to mulch with all his grass clippings. So anyway how cool is this to find a plant that you can pretty much ignore and you are still going to have a ton of crop!
On a similar note, I am so freaking sick of winter I have decided to grow, just about anything I can in a container. I of course have the usual herbs, but I am now trying salad greens, soybeans, beets, strawberries, peppers, kohlrabi, potatoes, kale, broccoli rabe, avacado trees, radishes, carrots, turnips, pretty much anything I can get to grow. Ha! Take that winter! I will see green things growing! Yes I do know it is technically the first day of spring, but if you look outside my windows you are going to see plenty of snow still. It is finally melting, and I can see grass where our septic tank is, but there is still a bunch of snow out there and honestly, the grass that I do see isn't exactly green and growing. So at least I can have my bit of life inside the house.