Plotting and Planting

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they garden.

J&R (that's "Glass Guy and his Girlfriend") have expanded their vegetable garden by almost 100% this year and it is giant. They labored for days in the planning and preparation -- digging, raising, installing gopher barriers (and more traps), planting and mulching with hay. Everything is labeled and looks very pretty. This year, they also have their extensive irrigation on timers.

They're quite academic about it all and seem to have done a lot of reading on "How to Grow Big and Tasty Vegetables."

The McC's, on the other hand, have little plots scattered throughout different parts of their zone. A bed of strawberries here, a forest of artichokes there, an L of berries, a plot of tomatoes and squash. Different stuff growing in different spots. Daddy McC fenced off this formerly untamed field for their garden and built a cute wooden gate with cut-out hearts. (At first, it even had a lovely stained glass circle in the middle but it kept falling out and breaking.)

Mine is even more scattered. It's looks like I have no idea what I'm doing. There are tomatoes, squash, peppers, peas and an assortment of greens in the regular vegetable plot but there are also more of them in the fringes of my strawberry bed. And this year, there are several containers growing vegetables around the house. It's a Hedge Fund of sorts.

"It's an experiment to see where the veggies grow best," I tell the curious.

The chickens are quite a nuisance. The Original Three weren't interested in pecking at the vegetables, but the Voracious Seven who are here now are tearing the place apart! They've made a total mess of the compost pile, pecked all of Mommy McC's spinach, lettuce and my chard. J&R already have their garden fenced. I haven't gotten around to fencing mine yet and have upside down gopher cages protecting my babies from the Terrible Peckers but wonder how long it will take before they figure out a way to lift those cages off...