Farmer Russ
posted in Garden |I don’t consider myself much of a gardener. I just plonk the plants in the dirt, throw some water at em, and wonder later why they don’t have any fruit. But I have been doing this garden-thing for about five years now, and I have to admit, maybe I’m getting the hang of it.
For instance, on the paper route, one of my customers has a small raised bed, and I walked past it last week and said “Hey guy, you let your red sails go to seed.” As if I knew! Well- I’ve let my lettuce go to seed often enough to recognise what it looks like, and red sails seems to be the most common kind of red leaf lettuce grown ’round these parts.
When I plant, I hate having to weed- and my response to that is usually just to plant closer together. However, this year I put grass clippings on the dirt around the zucchini plants (no seeds in the grass) to “mulch” the dirt. Last weekend, I happened to be delivering the Sunday Paper and it was light enough for me to see a customer’s tomato plants. They had put brown hay - or maybe dead grass - around the base of their tomato plants. Not much, just some. Which reminded me of the description of mulching I had read in one of my gardening books: that if you mulch with green mulch (ie fresh grass trimmings), the mulch sucks nitrogen out of the dirt, and when the mulch turns brown the nitrogen goes back in- also the organic material is good for the dirt. So I could put some more grass clippings around the tomato plants and the cukes, et cetera, but I probably want to use the brown grass left on the patio from last week’s mowing.
I don’t consider myself much of a gardener- but I’m getting there 
Maybe someday I’ll actually have strawberries the cutworms (caterpillars) don’t eat.
