I had to email Sasha directly to say I, at least, thought keeping a veggie garden is great. So what about the rest of you? Do you have a garden of any kind? Would you if you could? Or is this turning into one big dork-fest?

-- Anonymous, June 04, 2000

Answers

Gardens are fun. It's a good excuse to play in the dirt. I've got about 63 vegetable plots, flowers along the pathways, several fruit trees including an apple tree my son started from seed (yes, it bears Very Good apples), an outdoor wash basin for scrubbing up the goodies, a watering system Rube Goldberg could be proud of, and now that I'm retired it gives me no end of fun stuff to do.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2000

Maybe I should answer my own question....

We've put in a rather huge garden every year for the past 10. The plot is about 50 by 100 FEET and provides more-than-enough food for the better part of the winter. We grow a *lot* of potatoes.

Last year, we had a forest of tomatoes too. :-) Mmmm.. nothin like fresh tomato sauce. We also grow squash, sometimes beans, corn, peas, grains for the chickens, parsnip, brocolli, turnip, beets, sunflowers, carrots, just basic things like that. We're going to try making some flour from the wheat we're growing this year. And we're going to try The Great Mulch Experiment because weeding a plot that size by hand is a lot of hard work.

Growing wild in the yard is strawberries (really dinky ones) blueberries and raspberries. We also have some decent crabapple trees. We're in Zone 4, so not much fruit will do well here unless you baby it, and we're all about being lazy!

I have a flower garden, too, but it's rather pathetic.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2000

First, I want to thank Andrea for posting this terrific topic. Of course, I should have thought of it, but I've been a bit dull-brained lately. Anyway, while I do enjoy planting vegetables, I don't have the space in my garden to be a hardcore vege gardener (I wish I did). One thing I've done for years though, is to keep an herb garden. I planted herbs for healing, cooking and even some poisonous herbs (the poisonous herbs were just for fun). I haven't had an herb garden for the last few years because my life has been so unsettled but now that I'm enjoying growing my squash, I'd like to plant another herb garden again. I've come to realize that when I'm feeling happy and content...I garden. It's like a manifestation of the peace that I'm feeling inside. I think gardening isn't all that geeky afterall and I'm going to love doing it again.

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2000