new for the garden

I braved a trip to local nursery recently. There were only four other customers in the store, and it felt strange that still made me uneasy. Edging around to keep distance. Even standing on the opposite side of the pallet stacked with bagged topsoil speaking to one of the employees, had to keep reminding myself that wasn't quite six feet, and step back.

Anyhow, I did not stay long, nor splurge on a lot of plants like I usually do. I bought a few alyssum. I've found a new blog to follow, of a relatively local sustainable market farm. I figure whatever they can grow, I should be able to grow, too! and am excited to try some of their methods and plant varieties in my own little yard. They plant sweet alyssum among cabbage and broccoli; it attracts predators of the cabbage looper and aphids. I'm all for that. Going to put these among my greens- the collards and chard could already use some help. I hand-pick and use the insect net, but it doesn't completely alleviate my pest problem.

I also bought a brown turkey fig.

Here it is next to my older chicago fig. The nursery man said I ought to rethink my strategy of bringing the figs indoors for winter, said they need to go dormant and the chicago fig will easily survive outside planted in the ground, even in my exposed front yard. I did mention that I keep them in a cool basement window, and the fig dropped all its leaves so it appeared to go dormant. But yeah, am rethinking it. The fig would look awesome in my front yard (with some annual pruning to keep it manageable size) but I'm so afraid of loosing it to cold winds and really don't want to make wire cages stuffed with leaves every fall.

And a rosemary plant. Because mine die every year. Last year's survived but only barely- it doesn't look too great only two stems actually have leaves. I am not confident it will make it through summer. So here's a new one.

I was going to buy a new tarragon plant, but mine is getting another chance. Not eating it for a while.

I also wanted to get stevia and salad burnet replacements (mine didn't make it through winter), but they didn't have any. Might try and place a phone order at the other nursery and do curbside pickup (including some grass seed before it's too late to sow the bare patches out front).