It's not my fault! The garden just doesn't understand "no!"

So, I'm on a squash growing moratorium due to squash vine borers being full of hate and eating of my past squash crops.

APPARENTLY, the garden didn't get the memo.

Opening my compost pile, what do I see?

(Yeah, pardon the giant crumpled up newspaper, sometimes I gets lazy...)

Yep, those looks like some kombucha squash (seedlings now)  husband and I ate some time ago.  I had saved the seeds for another time when squash growing was more favorable, but apparently I missed a few/need to turn the compost pile.  Man, these guys are straining to get some light.  AND boy, do I want to let them grow out the compost pile....mmmmm Japanese squashiness.

But gah.  Can you imagine how terrible it would be to have squash vine borers lay in your compost pile?! TURN PILE! TURN!

The garden can't stop dropping hints though!

(UPDATE: apparently this photo didn't load earlier though I swear I saw it had)

Yep, them be some self seeded cucumber seedlings.  For reals Garden?  You know that the husband doesn't even like cucumber!

So... shall I "let things be?" or become Persephone, SQUASH DESTROYER?

It's official: Melissa officinalis sure gets around

As I mentioned before, the lemon balm, aka Melissa officinalis, LIKE THE MINT, is slowing making its way around the garden.  In the path... in the gutter areas... by the compost bin.. in random places in the yard.

In the yard it will just get mowed of course, cool, fine.

In random places in the garden beds, not so good.  Plus, I like to utilize this stuff or at least give the herb away so others can enjoy the agony of keeping it in order it's lemony presence.

As its Greek/Latin name says, Melissa means bee and you can surmise this is a great bee attractor with its tiny little flowers develop later.  This is a plus as I am trying to attract more pollinators, so the plan is rather than seek and eat/destroy this herb, I'll be moving it around to far corners of the yard to try to increase bee/pollinator production, yet keep it in places where I hopefully will not accidentally drag seed around when I cut the stalks.  It's always so hard for me to cut the stalks when there are flowers on it because the nectar starved bees go at them even when they're in seed it seems.  Another note: CARRY A PLASTIC BAG TO HOLD SEEDS IN WHEN I CUT THE SEED STALKS OFF.  This would probably prevent all the seeds from going everywhere in the first place.

Unorganized gardening (bending down for a weed here that catches my eye, pruning there) walking aimlessly around in the garden is fine, fun and relaxing, but you'd think I'd have learned my lesson with crazy plants like perilla/shiso/beefsteak plant and now lemon balm.  Brill.

Self seeders. Gotta love 'em. (and some perennial veg goodness thrown in for good measure)

A boon to having a ridiculous amount of plants/herbs: self seeders.

Many years of letting the plants "just go" has made my garden basil/parsley/cilantro/oregano (a perennial.. I know, but it's flowered and seeded too!)/garlic (off shoot bulbs, yada)/Egyptian walking onion (YES!)/dill (sort of) and now recently feverfew, California poppy and bells of Ireland seem to be going on autopilot.  I find my India mustard to be easily self seeding too, but I know I'm supposed to "rotate" my beds and etc to avoid pests and disease.  I try to tear up the mustard from the bed each year and replant it in a different place, but those everlasting seeds always crop right back up in the bed or wherever I've dragged the plant off to.

Not that I mind (I eat all the errant little child plants), but it can be a little weird when I find self sown seedlings in the garden path or in the flower bed or by the trash can.


Ah, an entirely self seeded vegetable/herb garden is THE perfect garden for me...
 
Diane Meucci at Gardens Oy Vey has self seeded Siberian kale ALL over her nursery, not just for looks, but for eatin' too.  Definitely a worthy goal to aspire to. 

On top of the self seeders, I'm working towards the perennial vegetable garden and have the asparagus bed, mache/corn lettuce/lambsquarters, (hopefully sunchokes), strawberries and garlic down.  I'll probably be getting rhubarb sometime soon-ish from my awesome mother in law.  Artichokes are a possibility, but seems a bit limiting for the space they use and I understand that sunflower buds are just as nice.

I'm still working on getting the horseradish to take to the pot I've been babying it in, but it was an abysmal mess last year.  Incredible for horseradish too.

I had an air potato plant that I was worried would be invasive but never got to eat it.  Then I lost the little seed air potatoes in the great frost/amongst the vines.

This book: Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles caught my eye a while back and I am somewhat interested, but I think it's geared towards those who are lucky enough to live in very nice zones, ie 8/9+


If you live in the right climate, lots of vegetables can become perennial.  I hear in Florida eggplants and tomatoes are known to live just about forever .

Either way, I can't move my garden to Florida (and I'm not a huge fan of beaches anyway).  So it's best to make do, get tricky with Mother Nature and build cold frames.  Lots of them.

Shiso Fine

sSo I have this plant called Shiso, Purple Perilla, Beefsteak plant, what have you, and it’s lovely. Except for the fact that it is, shall we say, a rolling stone? It’s actually quite funny, I had previously bought Shiso seeds prior to attaining this plant, with the thought of some exotic herb growing in my garden. I never saw one seedling come up from it and was not very happy, cursing the lack of the exotic to my garden. Since I was not so quite up to date in the gardening world (aka, did not research/was not observative) I did not notice the striking similarities between the Botanical Interests packet’s lovely, artistic rendition to my real live Perilla plant.

The perilla/shiso/beefsteak plant got huge and I separated it, moved bits and pieces of it around, pulled it up and moved and its various selves to approximately 80 different locations in my yard. Little did I know that that was not enough for my little Shiso. She is so everywhere. In the garden path (HOW?) ALL around the raised bed my husband and I made around the tree (she was only in 3 different places too!) Admittedly the purple, green, gray seedlings do look great with the Japanese painted lady fern and the other various coincidental purple flowers that sprung up around it, but have mercy… my perilla from last year got to be at least a foot and a half tall from one plant. And now I have literally hundreds of them everywhere.

I have been doing great amounts of research into what I can cook these into, from pesto to wrapping them around meat bits. (why do I always seem to write double entendres? Better yet, why don’t I edit them out?)

So, hey, if anyone wants to horror/glory of this plant, please, contact me. I have a few to spare.