Today marks the beginning of the second full week of Spring in the northern hemisphere, even if some of us are stuck in second winter. Share your garden goals, projects, challenges, and successes for this growing season; share your tips, tricks, and garden hacks, or anything else you’d like. Let’s all help each other grow something beautiful together!
If folks are into it, I’d like to make this a weekly thread for everyone to share updates and assistance as the year progresses. Please let me know if that’s something you’d all like.
I moved to a new house last year. (Belgium, doesn’t follow the weather of the zoning system well) We are in the process of stripping it down to the bones, just got a new roof, have to dig out the floor down 35 cm to pour a cement slab, etc…
Suffice to say I don’t have the time for a garden this year even though we have a lovely 1500m^2 plot with around 60 trees that haven’t been upkept for years.
I would love to know some super easy low upkeep plants to help the soil in our future garden bed areas (one used to be a big compose pile, so the soil there seems pretty good already).
I was thinking some potatoes in the method of loosening the soil, throwing a ton of seed potatoes and maybe onions over it, and covering it with a bunch of dead grass cuttings that we have.
Then maybe some bush beans too. If it is a wet year like the winter it has been, they should grow very well.
Hey congratulations! And yeah, USDA zones and similar categorization schemes are just part of the picture and deal more with overwinter lows and plant hardiness than anything else - you may find that one of the Köppen systems helps you to better envision your climate particulars.
Potatoes and onions are pretty easy in my experience, having done what your plan is. I’ve also found radishes and beets to be fairly low maintenance as well as being useful for breaking up compacted soils (and tasty to boot).