{"id":73,"date":"2008-01-08T05:57:47","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T13:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=73"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:25","slug":"edible-ornamentals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/edible-ornamentals\/","title":{"rendered":"Edible Ornamentals"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDIBLE ORNAMENTALS
\n<\/font><\/font><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>I have discovered that I do some of my best garden work when I am motivated by a grand scheme or a master plan.\u00a0 Last year the “garden perfection plan”\u009d impelled me to take one year and make the garden as close to perfect as possible.\u00a0 That plan doesn’t really end until February, but it’s time to think ahead to the next big scheme.\u00a0 I’ve already decided that next year’s theme will be “ornamental edibles.”\u009d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If I could only appropriate my neighbor’s property, I could create the potager or ornamental vegetable garden of my dreams.\u00a0 My potager, which I have planned down to the last detail on nights when I can’t fall asleep, would be hexagonal with raised, pie-shaped beds filled with various vegetables, fruits and herbs.\u00a0 It would be surrounded by a beautiful but prickly Rosa rugosa hedge to deter at least some of the local varmints.\u00a0 The central feature would be a solar-powered fountain created by a coppersmith and shaped like a giant cabbage.\u00a0 The shiny copper would age to a lovely and appropriate verdigris color, blending neatly with the surrounding.\u00a0 My husband had the temerity to laugh at the fountain idea, but I can’t think of anything more appropriate.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s highly likely that my neighbor would resist the idea of having her property appropriated, even though I would be perfectly willing to let her do whatever she wanted with her own house.\u00a0 Therefore, I had to think of an alternative.\u00a0 It is a good thing that I don’t take any of those much-advertised prescription sleep aids; otherwise I would never have worked out my new edible ornamental plan.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t have enough sunny space to create a dedicated potager, but I can incorporate edible crops throughout my planting scheme.\u00a0 Since I already grow lots of plants on my sunny back porch, a couple of large pots of lettuce will blend right in.\u00a0 This will help deter the rabbits and groundhogs, who aren’t disposed to hike up the back steps.\u00a0 I will figure a way to cover the lettuce pots securely at night to deter raccoons, for whom steps are no problem.\u00a0 Of course the local raccoons are generally much more interested in the buffet experience that they get when they topple my garbage cans, but you can’t be too careful.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I can interplant green and purple basil around my roses and other annual and perennial plants as rodents won’t eat the basil or any other members of the mint family.\u00a0 As long as the next generation of raccoons doesn’t figure out how to make pesto sauce, my basil should be perfectly safe.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A vegetable garden isn’t complete without tomatoes, and I have often thought that tomatoes could be grown on attractive tuteurs rather than gangly tomato cages.\u00a0 After all, a sturdy tuteur can hold a reasonably robust ornamental, so it should also be able to support a tomato plant.\u00a0 I have a couple of fancy tuteurs with wirework details that will be perfect for the experiment.\u00a0 Beans, especially pole beans, might also thrive if the vines were trained up decorative supports. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have always wanted to grow potatoes and strawberries.\u00a0 Potatoes take a fair amount of space, which makes me resume casting covetous glances at my neighbor’s property.\u00a0 I’ll have to give the idea more thought.\u00a0 The strawberries can go in one or possibly two extra-large strawberry jars that I am planning to buy.\u00a0 The back porch may be the safest place for them as well, though I can also imagine a pair of handsome jars flanking the entrance to my upper back garden.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I would love to have some cucurbits or members of the squash family.\u00a0 Zucchini is almost a suburban clich\u00c3\u00a9–albeit a delicious one–but I may succumb to it anyway.\u00a0 Even though my college-age daughter will be away from home when much of the planting and harvesting takes place, she still wants pumpkins.\u00a0 I am not sure how I’ll fit in a pumpkin vine, but if I manage it, the pumpkin will be one of the smaller, tastier types rather than a Halloween behemoth.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My edible ornamental plans seem to be getting bigger and bigger, but after all, it’s January, the perfect time to think big and do little.\u00a0 By the time I get down to ordering, I will have tamed my wilder plant acquisition urges and considered the projected workload, honing down my seed and plant wish list as necessary.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Happily, one edible plant is already in my garden.\u00a0 It’s a wild blackberry, “planted”\u009d by birds and tended by no one.\u00a0 Every year the offspring of last year’s blackberry rises from the earth and begins climbing its way up one of the big holly trees on the south side of the house.\u00a0 By mid-summer we have tasty berries for nothing.\u00a0 I think I’ll really appreciate that next year as I struggle over my tuteurs and tomatoes.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDIBLE ORNAMENTALS \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have discovered that I do some of my best garden work when I am motivated by a grand scheme or a master plan.\u00a0 Last year the “garden perfection plan”\u009d impelled me to take one year and make the garden as close to perfect as possible.\u00a0 That plan doesn’t really end until … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1706,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/1706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}