Edible Landscaping

As I mentioned in my most recent post, we just moved to the Denver area and have settled into a comparatively palatial house on a 12,000+ square foot lot. I love the house. It has 2,800 square feet of living space and 3,600 square feet total (unfinished basement). While the house is awesome, I'm even more excited about having so much land to develop for food production! We are really going to need it up here. I've been to just a handful of farmer's markets, but have been generally unimpressed by the quality of produce and the prices are crazy. That's the one advantage California has over Denver - the cost of great food. I'm really not a great gardener, but I've met with some success over the past few years. My mealy tomatoes would have blended right in at the markets I've been to - and those were the ones I was embarassed of! Even more depressing is the fact that a LOT of vendors aren't offering organic food.

So, next year I'm eager to get started on our garden. With any luck I'll be able to produce at least the lettuce and tomatoes we enjoy so much, along with greens like chard and kale. Eventually we would like to get a greenhouse so we can produce for more months of the year. In the meantime, however, I'm looking for great ideas on gardening at altitude, growing food in an area with short summer bursts and general tips on food production. Fortunately, I just stumbled across Rosalind Creasy's blog and book "Edible Landscaping." Her blog has a GREAT intro to growing food post that I wanted to tag for myself here (that way I can find it later!). I can't wait to get a hold of this book! Too bad our local library doesn't have it, but it gives me a great excuse to buy it!

New State, New Altitude, New Garden

This last year of gardening was a bust. I was finishing graduate school just when I should have been getting my plants in. I was all set to go, but then my husband got a job offer through his company that required a transfer and... five months later, here we are in Colorado!

We actually arrived in July, but were in corporate housing for several months. It's ironic that when I staged the house in California for sale, I potted a bunch of herbs as entryway decor and they bloomed gorgeously. Ironic, of course, because I'm the plant killer and anything I plant with the true intention of helping blossom usually falters, withers and chokes off. Things I neglect tend to be bountiful.

In order to cut down on shipment / moving costs, I gave away our smaller square foot garden beds that my husband built a few years ago and gave our excellent soil from the deeper garden boxes I bought on Craig's List to a neighbor. The saddest part of our move, for me, was saying goodbye to our amazing lemon tree and giving away the house plants I'd picked up a few years ago at a yard sale. Fortunately, they went to a great home - again our neighbor with the green thumb who got our good dirt. I really struggled with the decision to give those plants away. I'd hoped they would survive our trip out here to Denver, but my gardening friend believed they wouldn't and thought it unfair to stress them further.

So, now we are here, just south of Denver in a home on a 12,000 square foot lot. I'm really excited to get gardening ASAP and am planning out our harvest for next year. I'm especially excited that the land is essentially a blank slate - it has a gorgeous lawn, but has been largely unlandscaped as the previous property owner loathed gardening or tending to the land. I don't have to worry about messing things up! I can just get started and see what happens!

The back yard is totally secure from deer and coyotes with over 6 foot wood fencing. The lawn is bordered by a wide swath of rocks that had been laid in for week control and xeriscaping over 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the rocks have shifted and thinned over the years, so they no longer serve their purpose of weed control. The positive side of this is that I have no sense of guilt at the propet of dragging them all out and redistributing them as I want. It also means that there is a perfect border space set around the yard so set in all sorts of plants. One side of the house sits on a slight hill and I'm eager to get pumpkins in there next year. I grew up working on a pumpkin farm every fall for many years and I love the idea of getting my children to grow and sell some sugar pumpkins for a small profit to put into their college funds.

My husband has expressed an interest in getting a greenhouse (this is Denver, after all and it would be GREAT to grow year round!), and I like the idea of chickens... or at least fresh eggs. All that is super down the road, but it's lovely to be in a spot where there's enough land to really think about different projects!

Green Thumb, Black Thumb

I bought these two succulant plants about two years ago from a neighbor's yard sale. I intended them to be house plants, but they've somehow remained outside suffering from my usual drought / flooding routine. This past fall, I bumped into the neighbor, who I didn't really know that well. Without telling her I'd purchased some of her plants, she got around to telling me she was widowed and how her husband, a long time sufferer of Parkinson's, had found working with his plants to be therapeutic. So, essentially I have this fellow's legacy plants.

I noticed one was failing in the backyard and brought it into our bathroom where it gets warm moisture and soft natural light. It has thrived.

Because it's winter and we don't go in the backyard much, I wire forgot about the other poor thing. Today I spotted it, forlornly sitting half dead and drowned in its pot amongst sone other long-since dead, less hearty things. Remembering this dead man's legacy, I brought it in today and set it next to its cousin. I think I will get them some fertilizer and see how the tortured one returns. Fingers crossed.