Update on my plot

The advantage of the medium of blogging is the ability to bypass the editorial process and post news as it happens. However, today I find myself breaking this important rule to present you with photos taken three days ago (the horror!) and report on Thursday's and Saturday's MSG visits. Imagine if the Boston Globe waited until today to report an incident that occurred on Friday? Luckily, My Dirt is unhampered by the pressures to keep current or suffer from more financial consequences; when you have no budget, you have no budget to lose.So with this in mind I'll keep to the business of earning through my harvest, which is now picking up, and I'll update you on the estimated value of my yield sometime this week. In the meantime, here's a photo of the first June-bearing strawberries, picked from my plot on Thursday. When I returned yesterday I filled a recycled pint container with more and picked four small heads of Romaine lettuce. I was rushing around on errands yesterday in preparation for company last night, so no time to take out the camera.The leaf miner on my spinach had reappeared on most of the few leaves I had left remaining, so I pulled out all but my two healthiest plants. But my biggest concern was that a few of the lower leaves of my broccoli plants were showing a similar blight. On Thursday, I pulled off those leaves and took this photo of one of my plants out of concern for a few holes in the upper leaves. Luckily, there were no new signs of the blight yesterday, and, surveying the broccoli in other plots, I have come to believe that the holes are not necessarily a sign of danger (alternative interpretations are always welcome!).
In the flower department, I planted zinnia seeds in a new location, because I needed last year's space to start some Kentucky Wonder pole beans. Better late than never, I guess. No worries with the California poppies, however, they self-seed every year, and have been in bloom for the past week or so. One of the coolest features of this annual is the contrast between the papery bright-orange fully-opened flower and the way it looks closed, a delicate light-green cone served on a bubble-gum pink plate. As for my perennials, I can see the white beginnings of buds on my blanket flowers, the plants' eggplant-colored leaves can be seen in the right rear of the poppy photo.

I will finish this post now so I can take advantage of the glorious weather we are having; it would be sacrilegious to squander this opportunity by spending it in front of a screen. I'll leave you with my garden envy photo for this post: some irises from another MSG plot. I had never seen irises of this color, sort of a combination of sepia and pink.

A swift demise

I have been meaning to get back to my plot with my camera after stopping by Tuesday afternoon.  What a difference a killing frost makes.  Most of the annual plants in my plot are showing the effects of rigor mortis.  I thought the wind had blown a dead tree branch into the plot; upon closer inspection I discovered it was my eggplant, which had been bearing enough to feed a family the week before, now brown and lying horizontally across my still-proliferating strawberry plants.  There was a stark contrast between the dead and the living.  My lettuce, though stunted, remained crispy and supermarket green while my green peppers, zinnias, and others appeared to have been sprayed with the same can of greenish-brown paint.  All of the color had been leached out of my zinnias.  A graveyard of skeletons,  just in time for Halloween.

I suppose that leaving the camera at home forces me to write more descriptively.  In any case, I just wanted to acknowledge these passings before they are really old news.  There will be more to write about over the next few days: a work day has been added tomorrow and the stones for the John Carroll memorial will be arriving soon.

Annuals or Perennials?

Some time ago, some gardeners gave a friend of mine a bumper sticker that read something like, "Friends don't let friends plant annuals."  The obvious message is that growing perennials is morally superior.  I wondered if there was much of a polarization among gardeners over this issue, some analogy such as "annuals are to native perennials as genetically modified food is to locally-grown organic food."  In fact, on a large scale, there is some research indicating that annual cropping systems have a negative effect on soil quality and water use.  But when it comes to which flowers to plant in individual and community gardens, those who defend their preferences have different points to make.

Though annuals complete their life cycle in one growing season, some gardeners prefer their longer and sometimes more abundant blooming period.  They can be grown easily in containers and baskets, an advantage to those short on land.  Another point made in a forum I found is that a gardener can plant different flowers in different places from year to year, with ease.

I recently received a comment by a gardener who called herself "lazy" because of her leaning toward perennials, which live for more than a year and therefore do not require replanting.  If you don't plant your flowers from seed, perennials can be cheaper in the long run for that reason, though they are more expensive than annuals when first purchased.  Perennials can also be divided to give to friends and plant in other places.  As one commenter in the forum stated, "It's like having a garden centre in your own yard."

Many gardeners like the challenge of growing the right combination of perennials so there is always something in bloom throughout the season.  These folks may not only regard annuals as "too easy," but find some of their gaudy colors unnatural in fitting with the native landscape. 

Which do you prefer?  I think that many people prefer a combination of the two types.  If they are like me, they have a few favorite annuals, like zinnias and nasturtiums, and might throw a few others in a garden if nothing else is in bloom.  But in times of laziness there is still something that will come up.