The Garden

Shortly before my birthday in April, I started preparing for my first garden experience. I have gardened before: planted flowers, pulled a few weeds, shaped some shrubs.  But I have never had ownership of a tract of land that I had to maintain and then further aspired to GROW things on.

Last fall I filled a compost bin with food scraps, leaves, grass clippings and newspaper and let the worms go to work.  I had complete confidence in their ability, but I was still amazed to witness the transformation of potato peels and carrot nubs into nutrient rich soil.  I felt obligated to put this gift from the worms to use!


So a quick trip to Grandma's for some tools, tips and reading material, and a respectable order from Seed Savers Exchange and I was GARDENING.  Or more accurately, I was growing seeds in my dining room.

But they were growing ... Fast!

I needed to prepare the LAND for transplanting these seedlings.  April was almost over and on the last day of the month I hosted Garden Party #1 to weed and seed as much land as possible!



We started on the side of the house, ripping out weeds, digging out stumps, and tearing criss-crossed entrenched weed roots from soil.  We planted various bulbs sprinkled wild flowers and grass seed, and prayed that something would grow back besides weeds.  The grass came up beautifully and the flowers, in dry tough soil, bloomed slowly and sparsely.  Much better than weeds!

May was a blitz of demolition (note the dumpster in the picture above) as it was finally warm enough to "open up" the house. The weekends flew by, the veggie plants got bigger and begged to be moved from small peat pots in the laundry room (where they were being hardened off in the warm afternoon sun and evening breezes) to The Garden.  At this point though, the garden was much more theory than veggie-habitable space.


Memorial day weekend, I scheduled Garden Party #2 and we got to work clearing the plot.  This picture of the backyard before we bought the house is a slight exaggeration of how overgrown the land was this past spring.  The space between the shed, on the right, and the rock wall, edging my raised garden bed and not visible on the left, had been cleared back a few feet since we moved in, but the space was thick with old tree stumps, overgrown grape vines and ivy.

It was no small undertaking.
  
Over three long days and with countless helpers the land was cleared.  The was ivy hacked, metal pipes formerly used as grape trellises were cut and concrete posts were dug out, stumps that couldn't be removed without destroying the rock wall were left in place, but the root system was chopped back, and finally the soil was turned and my compost was mixed in.  Late Monday night, Memorial Day, alone I planted peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, eggplant, squash, basil, parsley, carrots, peas, beans and with a final exhausted sigh I dumped the contents of a mixed lettuce leaf packet amongst the squash, only half expecting it to grow.


Despite the Squash take over (who could believe those tiny sprouts really needed 4-6 feet of space!), a minor Mole invasion and a few pesky squirrels with a taste for gourds, it has been a pleasant adventure.  I learned how to stake up tomatoes and beans, the function of rocks in edging the garden to keep soil from washing away, and the constant vigilance required to keep weeds at bay. The lettuce has been used in salads and sandwiches, green beans were a special addition to last night's beef stroganoff, and cucumbers and squash are starting to fill out (if only the local wildlife will keep away - deers and squirrels: beware of my husband, I'm not a bad shot either!).  Next year, I'll be one season wiser and prepared with trellises and deer fence!