Blessed Spring, how I love to be outside with my hands in the dirt, squatted down giggling like I’m eight years old whilst watching little worms wriggle back in the soil that I have built up. The tiny germinated seeds send up greens and there is hope- always hope- for crops of spicy arugula, tender green salads, and colorful chard. The first tip that I can give you is that you will harvest approximately a third of what you plant, so you mustn’t be discouraged. It is the survival of the fittest out there and whatever is going to grow, will, and the others you will soon forget about and just replant!

I love to plant many things. One of them are shoots from my friends’ yards! I took off shoots that were popping up of elderberry from our friends’ large bush. Lilacs from my son’s yard. Raspberries from another friend’s. Free plants and you don’t hurt the main plants at all.

I always have loads of onions and their greens. Throughout the winter, I purchase organic green onions from the grocery store. They will stay in a glass of water for months as I clip greens for freshness to put in our meals. When they start to get very weary and half dead, I plant them in the garden, no matter the month. They begin to really take off in the spring and the seeds replant themselves and I really have nothing to do but cheer them on and water them each day!

As you can see from my photos, I also do not plant in proper rows very often. I find that so many of my spring crops just do not make it in this hot, dry climate, but ever the romantic (or idiot), I continue to plant them and am so overjoyed with what grows! I like to interplant in the first backyard garden. Perennial medicinal plants and wildflowers are interspersed with cauliflower seeds, carrot seeds, and strawberry plants.

In the next section I grow potatoes. You know the ones taking off on your counter? Sit down for this, ONE potato could bring you up to 60 potatoes! What?! Mother Nature is awesome. Just cut the potato in chunks with one eye in each piece and plant a foot apart.

Garlic bulbs are just desperate to grow right now. Grab an organic bulb from the store, break off all of the cloves and plant each one individually. I do this in April and in October. We like garlic around here.

Sweet Potatoes are amazingly delicious and nutrient dense, so let’s grab a few from the store. If they are organic, and they have any little roots coming off of them, plant them.

We may only get a third of what we plant (animals, insects, bad seeds), but we get so much! How amazing to grow food and medicine and herbs and delicious ways to nourish ourselves. And we get to exercise and count birds and drink wine in the garden and read and watch butterflies, and… told you, hopeless romantic.

Don’t forget to pick up my book on Amazon! Whiskey and Hoes; Successful Gardening in the Wild West, by Katie Lynn Sanders. It will have you laughing and gardening like a pro in no time.