Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Spring Feverish


We've got it. The first days of spring gifted me a flu bug, and I’m ready to squish it and get outside. After melting lettuce crops*, the Florida iguanafreeze, and the huge snowstorms that dumped all over the East Coast (including our Baltimore crew), we're probably all ready for some sunshine and sprouts.

If you've got the fever, here are some ideas to get your spring garden going:


Start here to check your area’s last Spring frost.

Try your hand at Companion Gardening.
It’s a well practiced idea of planting different varieties near each other for mutual biological benefit—everything from pest control to soil enrichment. We’ve discovered a number of charts online (here’s one) to figure out vegetable friend and foe. Sad onions never get asked to the ball.

Short on space? Meet the Vertical Vegetable Garden.
We successfully turned our wire balcony railing into a trellis for our tasty pearl cucumber vine last year. Right now, we’re doing it again with the peas. But these people take it beyond basics with an idea we found clever (the stinky shoes would have to go).

Gravitationally Challenged? Just grow them upside down.

Let us know if you give any of these a try.

*As a follow up to our Hooptie Houses post, we found our low budget mini greenhouses got us through a fickle winter. Except for the lettuce. Arugula, beets, carrots and peas did fine but the lettuce melted.