Winter Gardening

So this past 'sprummer' (late spring, early summer), Jeremy and I attempted to create a garden. We spent the better part of one evening trying to dig up grass on a 10 x 6 plot in Jeremy's back yard. We only got about a foot border dug up before we called it a day and subsequently quit the whole process. Our plan was to plant peas, Roma tomatoes, beans, peppers, multi-colored carrots, strawberries and perhaps potatoes. Well, we did "plant" my Roma tomato plant naked in the light of the full moon. Well, technically I was in a swimsuit on my deck putting it into a topsy-turvy with the deck light on, but it was still a full moon! The strawberries ended up getting planted in a planter on my deck. Neither the tomato plant nor the strawberry plants turned out to be fruitful.

Skip ahead a few months and it brings me to November when our teacher decided it was more important for us to attend a seminar during "Green Week" at school than to learn about 'wirtualization.' I learned a few things at the seminar I attended, Urban Agriculture, which was put on by Seattle Tilth (go to their website!). I learned that planting garlic in the winter is just fine because it'll "hang out" until spring when it is time to sprout. The second thing I learned (and I found most interesting) was how to prepare your garden for spring. See my layered word diagram:

burlap

compost/leaves

newspaper or cardboard

grass

The cool part is the newspaper/cardboard will kill the grass and the compost/leaves will start to make new soil on the disintegrating paper product. The burlap is there to not only protect the under-layers from flying away due to wind, but keep moisture and heat trapped underneath. So Sunday after the Seahawks "game", Jeremy and I put down newspaper, leaves (mixed with some random grass clippings) and put burlap over the top. Now we wait.