Interests wax and wane for me. How about you? [View all]

My garden interests seem to change with time, and then I end up switching gears. Many years ago, we as a family were into growing produce in a major way, selling some and preserving a lot for our own use. Of course, things changed with time, we stopped using so much, and children left the household (except me, I never left, what can I say!). So, I switched gears from utilitarian to ornamental, putting in a lot of decorative features such as water gardens, mixed borders, etc.

Then I became concerned about food and health issues, and went back heavily into growing edibles. And then really had kind of a big freak out with the economy going south, the "global food crisis" etc. a few years back and planted edible plants anywhere and everywhere.

Only really to discover that my ability to produce bounty is vastly out of proportion to my family's needs. And, giving it away hasn't really worked all that well, either. People are willing to take the common things, IF I do all of the work and basically give it to them ready to use in the state they would buy it from the store. But anything slightly out of the ordinary gets weird looks or "we don't eat that" or whatever. Fine, I say, be that way, your loss.

So, now, I think I'm going into a new phase where I am "window dressing" the utilitarian plantings and making things pretty as well as productive. I am cutting back on the produce I grow to "just enough" for household use, and well, the extended family can just do their own if they want it. My biggest project vis a vis that is a garden I created in the 1990s, which is about 70 x 70. I initially used it for an herb/perennial garden, with raspberries, blackberries, and currants as borders around it. Then, I ripped out a lot of the herbs that were excessive (who needs a 25 x 3 solid block of Oregano???), some of the perennials died off, and I have planted it mainly in vegetables such as peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, and corn the past few years.

I decided yesterday that, since its already dry here, and we have had several hot days, I'm just NOT planting anything in there this summer. I am going to work on getting it all prepped for late summer planting, and going to put it back into mostly herbs, perennials, ornamental grasses, and some spring and summer bulbs, and leave just a few spots to grow a couple of the more decorative edibles there, especially eggplant which for some reason just LOVES the soil and site in this garden and thrives.

So, that is my latest phase. How about you?