Deer haven't bothered by garden when I use the repellant spray you can buy at a farm/feed store. It is very stinky. Holy basil has a wonderful scent but it is mostly used in Thai cooking not Italian. I also grow Thai basil since I like that cuisine. But I also grow several other kinds of basil because you can never have too much basil esp if you make pestos. I know people say the flavor of flat leaf parsley is better than curly but I don't think it matters. Parsley is a biennal. This year's plants will return next spring but try to make seed heads. I kept cutting out the seed heads and got some decent parsley when I just needed a bit. Agreed with nasturtiums all over the place. They are edible. Taste very peppery. I also grow pot marigolds or calendula which is still blooming near my porch here in NH. It is also edible but I grow it for show. I self seeds. Thyme is a perennial. I also grow Greek oregano (it has a white flower, you don't want the tall, wild variety that self seeds all over the place). I wasn't using them too much for cooking until I discovered a wonderful zucchini and potato gratin. In your area, rosemary might winter over. It's a tender perennial here. I grow both variety of chives plus a broad leaved variety for its bloom. Keep chives dead headed or they will seed all over the place. It's best as standard procedure to snip off flower buds because once a plant flowers it usually figures its job is done and will get scraggly. Cilantro and fresh dill are also nice to have in the summer. Dill weed and fresh cucumbers are yummy. Cilantro for Thai or Mexican dishes including your own salsa. I have had good luck with peppers planted on the south side of my house for 2 years. I plan to grow them in the main vegetable garden next summer (rotate crops) and use a stone mulch for warmth. We had a cold, rainy summer so I didn't get as many red peppers but what we had was wonderful. To freeze, simple cut out the stem and seeds, slice and put into freezer bags. I enjoy diced peppers in my morning eggs. I am able to get some heirloom varieties from a local grower who takes orders. I have been growing lettuce mixtures which gives you a nice variety but I think next year I will grow more romaine and try some red butterheads. I think lettuce is a very generous crop until it bolts on the first hot day. Best wishes for 2010.

Larry, My garden started small, and I added to it every year until about 2005 when we started having more persistent drought and our family started spending a lot more time fighting grass fires, brush fires and wild fires. Since then, my expansion efforts have been hit and miss. Every now and then I've added a little more growing space, but I've wanted to add a lot more. This year, I am adding a lot more. I don't know just yet how much more we'll add this year, but the area we just rototilled and fenced adds about 2000 s. f. more. However, that doesn't necessarily mean I will have 2000 s.f. more than before because we are abandoning a lot of the west and north end of the original garden because it has become too shady to grow many veggies. It might be that if I measured the area we are abandoning to the shade (I will grow shade-loving flowers there and maybe some herbs there), it will just about equal the size of the new gardening area out back. My expansion plans include another area of about 1200 s.f. north of the garage. It is the worst possible clay in the world and there is no way we'll be able to rototill that very deeply, so we'll likely build above-ground using hay bales to build the outline of the raised beds and filling in the interior like a hugelkulture bed topped off with compost from our big compost pile. Then we'll put down cardboard on the remaining area around the two long raised beds and cover it with spoiled hay and chopped/shredded leaves. If we don't have too much rain the next couple of days, this is the area where we'll be working this week. I've always let my pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble throughout the entire garden which makes it hard to harvest the other stuff at times because the vines are everywhere, so I'm looking forward to being able to let the pumpkins and winter squash roam and ramble without having the vines bury the rest of the garden. If the vines grow outside the fence, I am sure the deer will prune them back as they do when the vines escape the big garden. Then there's the lily pond......which sits right outside the sunporch, in between the house and the detached barn-style garage. You walk right past the lily pond as you go back and forth from the garage to the house to the dog yard. I love my lily pond, but ever since we started having more persistent and long-lasting droughts, it has been hard to enjoy it because once the creeks and ponds dry up, the water moccasins move to the pond. We never had water moccasins in the pond regularly until the drought of 2008-09, but we've had them for part of every year since then. For the last couple of years we've contemplated taking out the pond. After one-too-many close encounters with a water moccasin being a foot or two from a human being, dog or cat, we've decided to fill in the pond this spring. I'll miss having the little fish, frogs and turtles there close to the house, but I sure won't miss the water moccasins. We can't fill it in until enough rain falls that our one remaining pond that still holds water has enough in it for us to move the fish and the water lilies there. Once that happens, we'll fill in the lily pond and plant some sort of a garden with raised beds on top of it. It might be a garden of strictly ornamental plants, or it might be a small potager filled with herbs, flowers and just a few veggies....likely a couple of tomato plants, peppers, and some greens. If we get all this done this spring, that will give me three new growing areas to make up for the northern and northwestern edges of the current big garden where the shade from the adjacent woodland is taking over. Then, there's two more areas I want to develop into new gardening areas, and I also want to do something to change the Peter Rabbit Garden. Maybe I'll take it out completely. It sits directly north of an adjacent cow pasture and is a snake and bug haven throughout the warm season. I've always worried the neighbor's cows will reach through the barbed wire fence and eat the Peter Rabbit Garden's plants, though they never have. In its early years, the Peter Rabbit Garden didn't have those issues with snakes and tons of bugs migrating into it, but as the droughts have worsened, all the wild things have, naturally, flocked to any area still green and moist. This is a year of many changes on our property, and it sounds foolish to be making all these plans and new areas when we are in Extreme Drought, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I always say I'm cutting back, I'm simplifying things, etc. but I rarely do it. I also would like to plant a lot more fruit trees and grow more than just peaches, plums and figs. I now have my eye on a new area south of the new garden we're building. I haven't checked its soil yet, but it looks like it might have some fairly decent soil there. We could fence it off and plant a small orchard there. For the last few years I've put a lot of gardening plans on hold because of persistent drought. I've been waiting for better weather. Well, I don't know that we'll ever have better weather, so I'm just going to go on and expand and do the best I can with whatever weather we get. Dawn

Dynamic lifter is a good fertilizer but before you do anything you need to see what the soil is like. Fertilizer won't improve soil and is a waste of money if your plants are struggling in soil that's too light or too heavy, or full of roots from competing trees. I would salvage what I could from those gardens - perennials herbs etc, weed out the rest (saving the sunflower seeds for the birds :-) ) and dig it over. What you need is good soil to grow veggies. Too sandy will need compost added to bulk it up and reduce water loss. Too old and heavy may just need breaking up, watering, compost and working over. You may even need to bring in some better soil to work into what you've got. So, I'd go for compost and soil improvement first. That might also involve adding some organic fertilizers. If you are on a budget, you should also start setting up your own compost area so you can recycle your "good" kitchen scraps and "good" weeds. I notice a number of skinny things on top of the soil that I would normally call "catkins" and suspect come from a pine tree or similar - do you have any overhanging trees like that?

ok i want herbs that heal and help a variety of things. now I am a novice at this. but i do have garden space to plant on. so if anyone has any herbs they would like to share i would greatly appreciate it. and the second thing is if you have herb advice i would appreciate that too. I heard some vegetables and fruits and such help advice on that would also be welcome thanks yunkerfaith@aol.com Michelle Downs PO Box 173 Olive Branch Il 62969 (yep where we flooded and was a state of disaster and so far no help).