Backyard Chaos

I am a little embarrassed by my backyard because I haven't given it as much TLC as the front and it shows. It has however been productive in some ways.

The best thing I've got going here is my cilantro bed. Everything in here is self-sown and though I should probably weed it, it is mostly cilantro. In addition to cilantro are chives and numerous mitsuba, a japanese herb that I am not fond of but I haven't had the heart to eradicate. I did however pull up the original generation of mitsuba and replant it in a dark corner. That is why there is some bare soil here. I also poked in a couple tall growing snapdragons just for fun.

This white queen tomato is my centerpiece. In front of it is some giant red mustard, all self-sown. To the right behind it is some birdfeeder sunflowers that I transplanted here. There's more stuff in the background. I'll try to get to that later on.

Here's the Dr Wyche straw planting. I have tided up this area a little bit. The bark mulch helped a lot but I think Iwant to lay down some sort of stepping stones as well. I might want more bark mulch too in other bare spots.

Here's a spot that was planted with a thyme groundcover that has turned into weeds and parsley. The jug has some weed tea. I am trying to really go all organic and LOCAL, as far as fertilizer is concerned. So far I think it is working out pretty well. I feel I'll feel certain as to whether this really works for me when this growing season ends.

My Backyard

Gentle reader, you may have noticed that I give little airspace to my backyard. I find it a bit of an embarrassment. Well, I have decided what I will do with it this year. It is a gardening technique I used a couple years ago in some cases with great success. I am going to do some straw bale gardening.

This is quite useful for spaces that are not tame rich clean beds. These misfit spaces include the wild and weedy, the poor possibly toxic, and perhaps all you have is concrete, or maybe you're into being experimental which is much of my reasoning.

Anyway, I learned a bit when I tried this a couple years ago. My biggest success was a couple cherry tomatoes on my front concrete stoop. They needed a considerable amount of water but they were very productive on that hot alley way. I have pictures somewhere.