I had lunch with my retiree group at Desert Botanical Gardens today (and by the way, I recommend Gertrude's...the food was delicious) and of course the conversation went to gardening. I told them about the contact I'd had with a Master Gardener who was doing an article for Phoenix Home and Garden, and how I thought I was going to back out from consideration because I don't think our backyard is magazine worthy. I do not plant things in neat, color-coordinated groupings. I let things go to seed, pick the seeds, and toss them somewhere else. Half the fun is watching to see what comes up, and where and when. I also like to experiment, and not all my experiments work the way I hypothesized they would. One of my friends said I should describe it as a "willy-nilly" garden! She's probably right.
This is one of my current experiments. Mike built this trellis for climbing things out of scrap wood, and right now there are snow and sugar snap peas growing on it. I planted the Zipper Cream peas I brought back from Alabama and a few Armenian cucumbers with the idea that they would take over once temperatures rise. The experiment is that I am open composting in the middle of the tent created by the trellis. I have been throwing coffee grounds, banana peels, eggshells, and other kitchen waste in this area for several months, and when it came time to pull up kale and Swiss chard plants to make room for spring plantings, I added them to the pile. Then I topped it off with a layer of dirt. And now, I'll wait to see what happens.
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