Volunteer

We had some friends over last night to have a cookout and play some euchre. As they passed through the front patio into the house, they were all struck by some vegetation happening there - some intentional, some accidental.

Before Dad and I started our big-ass garden project, I resorted to container gardening to have some fresh produce of my own, show my children what it takes to grow vegetables, and (as Margo says) "get my fingers in the dirt." There's very little yard at our house, and what we do have has a sprinkling system in it, so a garden would not easily be done. I wanted to see what I could produce with a container garden experiment.

I've done lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, onions and herbs in containers on my patio. I don't think I planted any lettuce in pots last year, because I had about thirty feet of it in the big garden in the country. However, I did have "volunteer" lettuce come up which, in my neglect, went to seed and blew their spawn all over the patio area. THIS year, we're seeing just exactly how far and wide the seed did blow, as I have leaf lettuce ruffling about in nearly every pot in the set and even...

...in the cracks of the patio floor!

This year, my containers mostly hold herbs, but I also have the volunteer lettuce, some chili peppers and onions. I like to have onions right outside my door because I often have recipes calling for green onions and if I hadn't planned ahead, it would mean a special trip to Dad's. Here they are, leaning toward the sunshine, as we all seem to be right now.