Simper Living
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate Canada

I even considered growing a little something for the chickens, but I quickly realized things were already starting to get a bit out of hand.

Below my first list, I wrote a second list of things that would be fun to grow in the garden, vegetables or fruits that my kids would enjoy looking after. I came up with plants like watermelon, popping corn, golden beets, purple snow peas and potatoes. OK, potatoes aren't really fun, but I've read that you can grow them in a pile of old tires, and we inherited a bunch of those with the farm.

Then I wrote a third list of herbs that I wanted to grow, either for cooking, medicinal purposes or as companion plants. Did you know basil is a good companion to tomatoes because it supposedly improves growth and flavour and repels flies and mosquitoes? I thought it was just tasty in my spaghetti! That list includes: chives, dill, mint, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage and thyme and perhaps lavender, chamomile, lemon balm and the aforementioned basil.

As herbs can be somewhat finicky to germinate, I may opt for buying seedlings this year. That's probably the first, and only, sign of restraint and reason that I've so far exhibited with these seed catalogues.

And no vegetable garden would be complete without sunflowers, sweet peas, marigolds (considered by many gardeners to be the ultimate pest deterrent) and nasturtiums (to lure aphids away.)

For anyone keeping track, I'm now up to almost 40 varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers. So much for my starting-small idea. I guess I'm back to my lists again.

But March calls for another kind of list as it'll soon be time to place my chick order at the local farm supply store. And I've got big plans for the poultry yard: I'm thinking chickens (layers and broilers), a few ducks (Muscovies for insect control, Rouen for algae control on the ponds), turkeys for holidays eating, maybe a rare breed or two....

You can read the previous installment of Simpler Living here.

Fiona Wagner is a freelance writer and new farmer in Hastings County, Ont.