Old Dog Learns New Tricks

This year is different. The garden is starting late. Maybe it was me being too laid back. Maybe it was the weather -- it was an unusually cool Spring and we had two late freezes back to back.

Many (most) of the seeds I planted prior to the last frost didn't germinate. (Hey, maybe it was the seed company? Probably not.) I thought they were cozy and warm under the ground but it just wasn't so.

I was busy attending to baby goat births, baby chick hatchings, ducklings, goslings...

Anyway, things are finally starting to come up. I've got a bumper crop of black-seeded Simpson lettuce, for example. The peas were sporadic. The beets just didn't come up.

So, I'm trying something different this year. It looks like I've got a bumper crop of black plastic growing in my garden. Actually, we put down some heavy duty black plastic to keep the weeds at bay and I decided to just go ahead and plant vine crops, tomatoes, and peppers in the area. They will appreciate the heat and the fact that they won't need to compete with the prolific weed crop we always have. I can see some little green seedlings just starting to come up. So, for the amusement, and possibly the edification, of all -- I'm taking a "before" picture and hoping that the subsequent "after" pictures will show that it's working.

This is risky. What if nothing comes up? Oh, we'll all have a good laugh and I'll never do this again! Let's see what happens. It's an experiment. I'll try to take a picture each Thursday so we can see the progress, or non-progress of the plastic garden.

Oh, by the way, it did finally rain after I posted the last blog installment. Please disregard the weeds in the photo above. Thank you.