Readying the Ground Garden for Spring

        This is what our front porch patch looked like a few days ago.  A few freezes had destroyed the tender tissues of the three perennials we'd been growing in that space, and they'd browned and gone limp.

The hori-hori knife has done its work!

        This is what it looks like now, after cutting most of the butterfly ginger to the ground, as well as the canna lilies and 'Black Jack' ornamental sweet potato.  I'm preparing this space for a spring planting of as-yet undecided plants.  Undecided because we've had big problems with the landscaping crews spraying glyphosate (Round-Up) and other herbicides along the edges of and far into the planting beds, despite my repeatedly asking them not to.  They destroyed the perfectly healthy, original beautiful perennial plantings put in by the landscape designer many years ago along our neighbor's entrance sidewalk - and then didn't bother to replace the dead plants, even a year later. It's remained an ugly brown-grey scar.  So I'm afraid to plant any edibles in the soil here, and our awesome ag agent was also concerned about the soil being contaminated by the bleach and detergent coming off the roof and walls when the building is cleaned.  So, ornamentals only in this rather damp soil.  But I can make magic with containers!!!

        That's because they haven't sprayed herbicides on anything I have growing in containers. There's always the risk of blow over when they're spraying, but all I can do is ask them, again, to NOT spray any kind of herbicide near our apartment.

        While mulling over options for vertical growing, in this patch, or just behind it, I've considered using containers, cord, and the old shepherd's crook we've been hanging hats on.  Before we moved here we used it to hold a hummingbird feeder (forbidden here - no feeding the "wildlife") on one side and a hanging planter on the other.  YouTube has turned out to be an excellent source of information about vertical growing, recycling plastic containers for growing edibles and ornamentals - especially videos by incredibly creative Vietnamese people who do not have yards, yet find ways to cram in as many plants as possible in their rooftop and balcony gardens.  There's no narration, no speech, but they do a great job of demonstrating how to turn water bottles and soft drink bottles into planters, how to build a frame from which to hang them, etc.

        I have some rather old flowering vine seeds and some fresh  nasturtium seed to grow (nasturtium blossoms and leaves for salads).  My extremely old nasturtium seeds failed to germinate.  They were really old, but it never hurts to try!  As our wonderful LSU AgCenter agent says, 'if you get just one plant out of it, it's worth it'.  And I never tire of experimenting - there is always something new to learn!