I used to have a really huge garden with hundreds of feet of soaker hose and a TroyBuilt Pony rototiller to get it ploughed and turned over at the start and end of the growing season.
I grew all kinds of vegetables and this time of year meant a steamy kitchen with vats of tomato sauce bubbling away on the stove.
My best crop was weeds, including one voracious sort I introduced via Shepherd’s seed catalog: Rustic Italian Arugula.
It’s a very delicious and peppery salad green known as Rocket in the UK and for very good reason because that is how it grows. (Actually both names are derived from Italian.)
How nice to have all those tasty salad greens, people would say. As if anyone was capable of keeping up with pulling it up let alone eating it. So most of it ended on the compost heap where no doubt it continued to quickly go to seed ready to restart itself all over again the following week, month, year. Demonstrating yet again that a weed is merely a plant growing in the wrong place. When you trying to grow scarlet runners you don’t want that garden row to be overtaken by hybrid roses.
Shepherd’s – which was taken over by White Flower Farm – was started by Renee Shepherd who now has her own excellent line of seeds – including that 
aforementioned arugula.
This kind of arugala thrives in well-drained sandy soil. So if you want a salad green invasion and you want to tempt fate – go for it. It is quite delicious.
These days my garden consists of a raised bed of herbs and a collection of tubs and grow bags of tomatoes.
So imagine my outrage looking out of the window and seeing a disgraceful chipmunk on the patio with its head inside an almost ripe Early Girl! I had to have a cup of tea to recover.
And yes – I do know that we have a wannabe fascist in the White House and he is setting about destroying the USPS as he plots to steal the election and install himself again. My capacity for outrage is large and growing.
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Wow, you can use vinegar for just about anything. Is there anything you can’t do with it?
I pull all our weeds by hand. I think I’m going to try the newspaper mulch idea. And I have a few stubborn weeds that I will douse with vinegar. I think that would work great for the ones that grow in between cracks in the concrete.
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Thank you for sharing this. Keep posting!
Such an amazing reading for me. I really thankful to you to share this amazing article. Thank you for sharing it.
A downsized garden is still good and more manageable!
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Thanks. Yes, gardening fun for everyone – it’s such a good feeling to make things grow and thrive.:)
I recognise this person from many years ago, now grey and possibly the slippers have moved on! We have Rovket appeared in our garden in London and very pleased am I. It is all there is to eat in our garden and it’s delicious. I was so pleased to make my first arugula acquaintance back then along with the rototiller and all the delicious food..and times that followed. What a fab reminder.
At least it wasn’t a turkey! That is our current invader.
We do have tribes of turkeys wandering by now and then. Even once in a stand-off with a fox. But they have not appeared to eat my veggies.
Oh, I recognise this, though I can’t claim that my weeds are hybrid roses, I do have sweet rocket and forget me knots filling all available gaps. Also, we have grey squirrels.
Outrage, in all its forms, is valuable. Long may we continue to express it 🙂
We have grey squirrels and black squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs and deer. Gardeners have the odds stacked against them. It’s amazing anything survives!
Thanks Josie. An ‘entertaining’ post. I was considering growing Rocket earlier in the year and now I’m glad I didn’t. I’ll stick to the red and green leaf mix. Growing in pots, I have a very small garden more like a back yard actually, has been great fun and thankfully no chipmunks! Grey squirrels though! I raise my cup of stress reducing tea to you and hope that the chipmunks in the White House will soon be gone.
I would still consider rocket Ashley. It is so delicious. Perhaps not the rustic variety unless you want a garden takeover.
Chipmunks in the White House. Lol. I would take the chipmunks any day.
Very entertaining, as always, and I like the way it takes my mind off the affairs of the day (until the last paragraph). I am outraged that rocket grows so abundantly and easily, considering the price in the UK when it’s been wrapped up in cellophane.
This variety is a little more rustic – more peppery, smaller leaves. But deep green and delicious and no doubt packed with goodnesses. It also has a pretty yellow flower that attracts beneficial insects – but of course, that is a warning sign. Flower means seeds And seeds mean you are going backward on the treadmill of weed management.
So many things to be outraged about it’s good to keep a healthy balance! Cheers Johnny.