Just bring your salt shaker into your garden

Everything is Green. Everything is pure. Everything is home-grown in downtown Mill Valley, or so it seems. People pass by my office with their "all natural" baked goodies, solar cooked pizzas from Stefano’s (the only solar powered pizzeria in the US, mind you), and freshly hand squeezed fruit smoothies all day long. Now, I find this an interesting contrast to when I worked at the Strawberry Frank Howard Allen office where cars were lined up and down the street to get into In-n-Out Burger and McDonald's. Perhaps they think that while walking down the street they will be seen by everyone, but they are invisible in their cars? No matter...

I happen to be blessed (got in long time ago) with a large lot and a huge (mostly) level yard. At the bottom of my yard sits a vegetable garden and every year my kids and grand kids plant our summer garden with the prerequisite tomatoes, pumpkins, pole beans and corn. That's it. We get our summer/autumn blooms and we're happy and done until next year.

So, I was very intrigued when a fellow Mill Valleyian told me that she was planting a vegetable garden in her front yard this week. "What can you plant now?" I asked. She said she had planted lettuce, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, parsley, mint, rhubarb, radishes and on and on. She plans to eat only what springs up in her color coordinated, organic garden. She even planted a blueberry vine! I examined her garden and said, "Wow! What's that beautiful red berry vine growing over there on your garden wall?” "Oh that,” she said, “is my plastic Christmas decoration vine. I guess it's time to take it down."

As I said goodbye, and chuckled over mistaking the decoration for the real thing, I immediately raced home to Google "year-round vegetable gardens."

Do you garden? What do you find grows best in our Southern Marin climate?