Just about all of the country has been inundated as of late. Some of our northern neighbors still have a pile of snow on the ground. This week in central NC zone 7a is a repeat of last week, only colder.

These weeks have been a great time to ponder and plan this year’s garden exploits, and to share more with you. We’ve not been that regular in communicating lately and wanted to share an update in case you’re interested.

CHANGES and THIS YEAR’S PLANS
For GardensAll as a whole, we’ve had to seriously reevaluate our vegetable gardening at this time. 

If you followed our emails, toward the end of the last season, we had to admit to planting too many sun-loving vegetables in overly shaded spots. There are tall trees surrounding our lower garden. The 4-5 hours of sunlight falls way short of the 6-8 hours needed for tomatoes, squash, beans, and eggplant. 

After last year’s numerous fails, we’ve come to an inevitable conclusion.

THE LOWER GARDEN
The property where we live just doesn’t have enough space in the sun for growing more and better. We’ve been on this 4.5 acre woodland sanctuary for almost 30 years, but alas… it’s great for shade gardens and some of the shade loving greens, but not for all the things we’d like to grow. 

THE UPPER GARDEN
We have 50 acres less than an hour away, with lots more sunny spaces. That property includes a rental cabin that’s popular in our area. We’ve also been gardening there in our “upper garden”, but as you know, for the best gardens, you need to check in most days.

BACK TO THE FUTURE
So while we don’t live there yet, it’s in our future. Until then, for this year we’re looking to transition more to landscape gardening this year.

In fact, that’s what I was doing for a living when LeAura and I met back in ‘87. And… when we got married in ‘88, I sold my house in the mountains near Asheville, NC and moved into hers in Greensboro, NC.

Most people move their stuff into the house. I moved that plus about 125 ‘heeled-in’ trees and plants that we hauled down the mountains in several trips. :-D 

Well… I couldn’t leave them all behind.

Thus, it just seems natural to return to some of those roots and get back into more landscape beautification. After all, I have a masters in park planning and horticultural training, so might as well put it to use!

LANDSCAPE GARDENING
For you veggie gardeners, we’ll still be growing food as much as we can. But we’ll delve into artful ways to work with shapes, materials, and colors such as:

• Landscape gardening
• Shade gardening and plants
• Flowers
• Yard artistry

Lower Garden:

• Tomatoes (because we can’t not :-))
• Leafy greens
• Broccoli
• Specialties like longevity spinach (gynura procumbens)
• Dandelions

Upper Garden:

• The sun worshipper varieties will occupy the upper garden that gets about 7-8 hours exposure a day.

OTHER CHANGES
A shift from straw bales to raised beds.
This will be a big changeover from our straw bale gardens, but we’re very keen to try some other methods that incorporate beds, such as:

• Square foot
• Biodynamic
• Organic