The weather's finally gotten nicer. From Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening we went from raincoats and heavy jackets to shorts and t-shirts. (The clever, gear carrying ends we put those jackets to on the 8 mile bike ride home will be the subject of another post, so stay tuned).
With the nicer weather we've had plenty of planting to catch up on, as the rain delayed the delivery of soil, and what few sprouts were outside in the cold didn't do so hot. Nonetheless a hearty Basil Plant stood like a sentry over our Northeast bed on Saturday, and out we went to marshall her friends in orderly rows.
We'd learned our lessons from planting carrots about a week prior; hard soil and the hardware store seed grab-bag had combined to produce an anarchic array of carrots, despite our best efforts to clean up the rows. (Ok, maybe not our best, eventually we gave into the second law of thermodynamics and let the seeds fall randomly).
Saturday, however, was different. We inter-planted carrots, lettuce and onions together. The three are complementary in leaves and root structure: The tall, narrow onion stalks don't obstruct the sun too much, while the carrot tops shade the letuce a touch (hopefully keeping it from getting too hot and bolting). The root structures are similarly complementary; onions are bulbs, carrots tap-root like, and lettuce has diffuse roots. This little system, with the lettuce in between the carrots, allows us to plant more densely than sowing each plant in a separate bed.
It will be fun to compare the bed of scattered carrots to the ordered inter-planting. Maybe it will turn out the random method was good after all. Perhaps the random carrots will better shade, and therefore out-compete, the weeds. Only time will tell. (Read that ominously if you like, either Alan Rickman or little-house-on the prairi-drought-approaching style).
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