Garden?

Can a ‘garden’ have just one plant?

One plant in the middle of a lot of mulch

At some point in the future, we’ll have plenty of space for a large garden on the roof. At our previous home, we had easy access to a garden with abundant herbs. Now, we mostly rely on those plastic packages in the grocery store for recipe needs. It bugs me because the quality and volume isn’t always what we’d want. The other day, I made a salad that called for fresh mint. The idea of paying for mint is most irritating. Mint is an invasive but useful weed.  The idea of paying two bucks for a couple wilted sprigs is painful. The grocery store had potted herbs for sale for $1.50 and they had one mint plant. A strategy came to mind.

Don’t plant mint anywhere where you’d ever want to grow anything else. Mint always wins.  Luckily, it doesn’t require enriched soil and it will grow pretty much anywhere. A robustly contained area is necessary to keep the mint from spreading beyond the capacity to use it.

We have the perfect spot

This patch is bounded by alley to the south, sidewalk to the west, former dumpster pad to the north and the BAB to the east. That should keep even mint contained. There was a lot of buried rubble, broken glass and rocks with a bit of dirt. I dug down about 4 inches with a steel wrecking bar to loosen the compacted mess and remove the detritus. A quick trip to the communal mulch pile finishes the transformation, some mixed into the now mostly dirt and a few inches layered on top. August isn’t typically the best time to start a garden, but I am looking forward to mint enough for Tom’s killer mojitos. And, one less grocery store irritation.

Lily kept a watchful eye on this project