Edible Yards

Snow today, sunny and warm tomorrow! Yes, it is time to start your spring gardens. Don’t let this snow fool you! It’s a good time to build your garden beds, prepare your soil, and sketch out your spring planting plans. You can still plant some cool weather crops in your garden like lettuce, carrots, and beets, but you can also work your soil in anticipation of planting your tomatoes in early to mid-March and your peppers in late March. Yum!

I am experimenting with some interested borders for raised beds this spring. My kids call the snow-covered coil next to our snow gardener (snow gardener because he has a flowering rosemary feather, a bamboo nose and a yarrow smile) a coconut snake. It is actually coir or tightly wound fiber from ground up coconut shells. (Coir is also used in some potting soil mixes since it is considered more sustainable than peat moss.) My husband uses the coconut snakes for erosion control in his trail building projects so I thought they might make lovely, soft and round borders for raised vegetable gardens. You can lay them out in any shape and stake them down with wooden stakes or metal pins. There are no sharp edges on the snakes that might be dangerous. Like most materials that are used to outline raised garden beds, they do weather and change colors. But these coconut snakes last many years out in the woods, along trails, so I think they’re worth a try!

After figuring out the shape of my beds, I’ll stake the logs, prepare the soil (by forking the existing soil, spreading some newspaper, and then adding some “rose magic” soil), and plant some vegetables. I’ll let you know how things work out.

Joe Henry helps me lay out the coconut snakes.