OYB Gardening: the most for the least!

OK, we were so swamped this summer, me with the Catazeen and Martha with her LazyGal booths, that we didn't put in a garden.

But we still had a bit of the true OYB garden anyway.

Well, first, we did do some gardening: we at least got the garden mulched. Ha. Funny. At least we're ready for next year, eh?

But we had a bumper crop of berries both tame and wild. And that's where the OYB comes in.

An OYB Garden is one that gives you most for least, given your location.

Like, here in mid-Mich I could go for apples and spend half my waking hours spraying and pruning. A pretty apple tree is a nice thing. But so is a nice berry bush.

Berries need their canes cut back in the fall.

Otherwise, that's it.

No bugs or critters seem to bug them. They LOVE this area. So I say go for berries!

I have two kinds of cultivated berries that I tried: one is tender and mild, the other is Everbearing, giving two tasty, robust crops and spreading hard. So Everbearing is where it's at for me! I'm going to let em spread and grow into multiple rows. The whole yard could end up berries. We got gallons of them this year so far and the second crop will be bigger, in a few weeks.

The wild berries grow around the edges of our yard and wild-spaces. I let em. Sometimes they make an archway over a small sapling. Neat. They look nice and just love to grow here. And again: nothing bugs em.

Daddy Longlegs seem to suck at a few of them, but we can share.

Anyway, I read about pre-Civil War Southern culture and it turns out that Crackers also greatly prefered crops that required no work. I hear ya!

I say to grow what grows and forget the rest.

OK, on to Stage Two of the OYB Way: grow stuff where you go. Put plants and little gardens everywhere in your yard where you go the most. Like by your front porch or outside the window you work or eat near.

Our main garden is at the back of our yard, beyond our huge, vast brushpile. We don't see it. That's WAY bad in terms of OYB vibe and results in both neglect and overt labor.

The OYB Way is to garden as you go. When you have plants by your front door, as you leave the house, you can bend down and easily do weeding without thinking of it. Or when people stop by for a quick visit---as you chat, you can weed.

Next year our kids will both be in school: Phase Three bigtime for our household! Martha will get a lot of her life back. And she declares a rebirth for the garden.

So OYB gardening is mostly: #1--grow what grows!, #2--grow where you go!

We'll see!