Comments On Article: Spring Cleaning And Keeper Of The Home

I would grow runner beans and climbing French beans, two easy vegetables which crop heavily over a long period. 

If I had enough sunlight, it would be tomatoes and basil, because there is no wild substitute for either around here, they are so delicious together, and there is nothing like home canned tomatoes in the winter.  I miss gardening in the sun!

In the real world, the only vegetables worth growing in my shady garden are butternut squash and greenbeans, so I am down to only being able to grow two plants, but not the two I would have chosen.

I wouldn't give up eating greens, but I'm assuming foraging is still allowed in this thought experiment?

Anne E- I love all the simple things you mentioned. In fact I could smell and hear them too!

Karen S- We went to see our daughter about an hour  and 15 minutes away. We calculated the round trip cost us $50. So we will be going less now. I bought some clear plastic pots to put over our broccoli seedlings. I figured that I can use them over and over again. I've been spotting white butterfly and we have a slug kingdom here. 

Oh no, only two plants to grow. I'm tempted to put three but it would have to be potatoes/kumara and broccoli.

Thanks for another very interesting post.  

I saw with interest that you have a zucchini growing in a pot. I have been growing mine vertically this year ( just finishing my summer garden in southern Australia).  The plant is growing  up a stake which has saved a lot of space in my small plot. The plant is tied to the stake as it grows and any leaves below the flowers are removed. A bonus is that the Zucchinis are move visible so no "hidden treasures"  of massive ones this year. 

Tomatoes and Basil for me too. Because I love them and they both grow pretty easily. I LOVE homegrown tomatoes!!! 

Huckleberries and apricots....are we allowed to pick fruit?  HUckleberries are rare, but so delicious.  My college roommate lives in the Montana mountains and sends me jam and syrup when she ventures up and picks them.   And apricots... haven't had a good one since my friend's mom had a tree some 30 years ago.  

For practicality, bananas and broccoli.

But, if I'm ever sent to a desert island with two foods, it's gonna be guacamole and salsa hahahaha!

Two plants, oh dear, that’s a hard choice.

I don’t care for butternut squash so that’s out.

I’m going with berries- do I have to be specific?  I have blueberries, blackberries, mulberries and boysenberries growing. If I had to pick one it would be the blueberries or blackberries. 
And for the second, I think okra. It has a long growing season here and I plant a variety called “Heavy Hitter” that produces better than regular okra. I also adore the beautiful flowers they have. 

Mmm... probably basil if I could. I love it and it's so good fresh. It's so difficult to grow anything here in AZ. But I've even tried basil twice and it always dies. So maybe I'll move on to garlic. Maybe I won't kill that. LOL.

Angela B 

That caught my attention about the cookware. I have my mother-in-law’s cookware that she bought from a door salesman in 1962. It’s Flavorseal stainless  cookware and we have only replaced knobs and handles on it once because a few had chipped - we found the replacements online. Do you mind saying what brand your mother’s is?

I use mine all the time. Sixty-four years and counting. 

The two I would grow are also tomatoes and basil. We usually grow 4 or 5 tomato plants and I will freeze a good deal of them for sauces and soups in the winter time. I dehydrate the basil and use it throughout the year.

My son went out to the garden to plant peas. He couldn't do it. When he started moving aside the hay mulch to plant, he found that one of the local rabbits had already planted baby bunnies there. :) He carefully put the mulch back. I guess we'll have to try planting fall peas!

To everyone, many great choices of what you would plant if you only had two choices. I also learned some new things with the added details some of you posted of why you would plant your two choices.  I am glad that we do not have only two choices.  :)   

I just came in from the garden from planting Bok Choy and Tom Thumb lettuce to add to the many other vegetables and herbs I have planted so far this spring.  Much more to do in the garden this week.  Grandma Donna

Joan S, I love okra. When I was still at the community garden I grew it for several years. I too love the flowers. I've read the young leaves are edible but I was too chicken to try them.

Stephanie G., 

Aww, how cute!  I love baby bunnies:)  But once they grow up you might want to fence them out of your garden, or else I know who will be eating your fall peas!

Does anyone else remember the children's story The Friendly Bunny? It's a cute story about a little boy who tries and tries to keep a bunny out of his garden, only to end up planting a second garden just for the bunny.

Just read that sweet potato leaves are edible and more nutritious than spinach! (However the leaves of regular potatoes are poisonous!

I would grow only garlic and sweet potatoes, but in huge amounts!  I'd rather grow normal potatoes (I live in the UK), but, as someone already noted, you can at least eat the leaves of sweet potatoes and  they grow easier and  don't have as many pests as white potatoes.

Garlic has many medicinal uses as well as being a fabulous alternative to onions, you can eat the leaves as well.  I live in a rural area so I'd be able to forage for most other herbs and greens; I'd really miss tomatoes though!

Here in the UK petrol prices have risen exponentially, and I'm pretty sure that they won't be coming down any time soon.  I paid £5.20 per gallon last night but was just glad to be able to top up my van (only form of transport so I'm only using it for trips over 3 miles each way). I volunteer at a military base that's over an hour's journey away so that if they start to ration fuel, I'm stuck!

Thankfully I not only live less than 2 miles from a supermarket and 3 miles from the nearest small town but have a well stocked pantry and gardening skills.  I've amped up my vegetable plans for this year though. I have been horrified at how much the cost of chocolate has risen (I don't drink coffee and will stock up on black tea although I have dried nettles, chamomile and catmint that I can drink at a pinch; I'm British so would rather not go without my tea, thank you very much!), and as I currently live on a small private pension, money has to be juggled and carefully allocated.  I'm so very thankful that I have no debt and have knitting/sewing/gardening/budgeting skills  that I've acquired over my lifetime.  My cat and my camper van are my two luxuries! 

Every spring in our yard!  Before our first mow, my husband has to walk the entire yard in case there's a nest.  The odd part is that we have a dog and the Momma bunnies still nest there.  So, we keep a close eye on him in early spring.  He will stare at the nest up close, but he's more of a chaser.  If they run, he wants to pursue.  No casualties in 11 years, but we're diligent.  He's not the brightest crayon in the box so one zag and they usually lose him.  

I love seeing the sweet little bunnies in the grass.

Debby B that's wonderful that you take the time to look for bunny nests!

Tea S I have very polite bunnies. They mostly leave my garden alone. They love crocus leaves best, and I have my saffron crocuses fenced off, but they prefer clover flowers in the lawn to things in the garden. They occasionally will chomp on some beet or Swiss chard seedlings, so we cover those until they are bigger. 

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I bought too many seed potatoes this year. I changed to varieties that are good keepers, and ordered too many. We planted all of them. We dug up two of the seed potatoes so I could have room to plant parsley. I put those seed potatoes in a couple of flower pots with pansies in them. We lost all of our leek seedlings in the big freeze and I ordered some leek plants, though if I had stopped to think, I would have realized that I had plenty of time to start more seedlings. At any rate, the leek plants are going to show up in a couple of days. This means I have to move some more seed potatoes out of the garden. Some will go where the fig tree was. I planted rhubarb in a pot and squeezed some more in with the strawberries, so I didn't use the fig tree area for those. In our flowerbed expansion, behind the row of columbine volunteers my son planted, we planted a row of cabbages, not having room in the garden for them. I guess the rest of the seed potatoes we're removing for the leeks will have to go to the flowerbed and pretend they are flowers. I am really out of room this year! I found out why my asparagus was being miffy with me. I kept giving it nitrogen when it wanted potassium. It's going to get some langbienite now. 

One thing we don't have here is rabbits - in Queensland, they're banned - there's a huge fine if you're found with one so not even pet rabbits are allowed.  We do have hares but you see them in rural areas rather than the bigger places.  All other states have them as far as I know, but we don't as they're a pest for agriculture and destroy the environment. 

I wish I could reply to all of you but I would never leave my computer. :)  I am enjoying all of the answers, all of the conversations from cookware, to bunnies in the garden to how far one lives from the supermarket. Those of you that love okra, planting sweet potatoes, to Debby B's guacamole and salsa and so much more.  

Now I want to make sure to look for bunny nests, I do have a grocery store 2 miles from our house called Piggly Wiggly so Charles and I can walk to the store if necessary.  Maybe we should take our gorilla wagon and take turns pulling each other.  ;)

Stephanie G, I too have been digging up and replanting things to make space including leeks.  I moved my leeks yesterday.  I am now trying the Root, Fruit, Shoot, Herb and Flower method just so I can get more into the beds.  I have looked at so many small space gardening articles and videos I do not know where I have gotten the information from.  But when I read those five things were grown in grow bags and pots, I started putting other plants even in my smaller pots.    All I know is I hope to have many more veggies, herbs and flowers this year.  I am trying to keep the type of flowers needed to bloom at different times to keep the bees in the yard.  

With the Root, Fruit, Shoot, Herb and Flower, It is a bit of a balancing act and I look up companions and I think I am catching on now.  I love this method because now I have a root growing under a climber and when something tall is growing something else is growing underneath, even if it is some lettuce or thyme.   Normally I would plant my cucumber up a certain trellis but now between cucumber plants I have beans growing up with the cucumbers because they can share the same trellis and just in front of those I have turnips as a root growing under those and some extra roots which are Daikon radish. I have a little of this and a little of that all over the place so I don't loose all of my plants if there is a location that is not that great or weather issues.  I have eggplants sharing space with other plants. I decided to plant asparagus in different places all over the garden because  I was having problems with our asparagus and purchased some new crowns and decided in stead of planting them in a row I would plant each of them in different beds.  I am very pleased because all of the vegetables seem to like their neighbors.  I have Utah celery growing even though I am in southeast Alabama and this is my fourth year growing it.  

I just wanted to give an idea for small space gardening.  Also the grow bags do very well for us too with so much shade.  I can move them around and follow the sun.  Now I put them in the wagon and pull them around as the sun changes location. It is a lot of work but at least I feel that this is something I can do here at our home that is very important.  This is a combination of companion planting and growing the most you can in a small space.  

Jenny C I've been growing my zucchinis in the same way this season, and I have loved not ending up with any giant ones that were hiding, as we have many previous years!

After reading the comments, I have decided to grow my zucchini vertically and surround it with onion plants. I'll surround it with onion plants by planting it in the middle of my onion bed! This should save a lot of space in my space challenged garden, and hopefully keep bugs away. I invested in an inexpensive tower support for my zucchini to climb.

Such good and helpful comments! :)

If I could, I would grow pears since the entire family loves them. I would also grow leeks since they're so hardy, nutritious, and versatile. 

I plan to start spring cleaning this week while the kids have Spring break. The kitchen and bedrooms are going to be my priority this week. 

As for cooking, I have also incorporated more beans into our meals. I stopped buying the "healthier" cuts of meat such as chicken breast, steak, and fish. Meat is no longer the center of our meals. I've rejected the notion that we need tons of protein. I think that it's a fad and a ploy to buy more meat. IMHO, eating so much meat is harmful to our bodies and the environment. 

Instead, I buy cheaper cuts of meat for flavoring our meals. Ham, sausages, smoked turkey necks and ham hocks. I cook beans with them just like Grandma Donna. So, the meats may be considered less healthy, but it actually isn't since we only use a little and pair ut with beans and veggies. 

As for gas, we are seeing soaring prices in the South. I spent twice as much on gas than I did a month ago, and we have used the car less. I don't see things getting any better. 

In my area, they are tearing down the woods to develop more homes and businesses. They're now tearing down my favorite nature trail to build a bigger road. It's depressing. I don't think people understand that less trees equals hotter summers and more bugs. They're actually putting a Mercedes dealership in part of the area. I just shake my head. Who can afford such luxuries these days? The materialism blows my mind. 

Melissa S., 

That's heartbreaking about the woods and nature trail.  It's like people don't realize how finite these natural areas are. . .  Sad.