Garden Thoughts
Think gardening is a casual pastime?
THINK AGAIN!
It’s work!
But since Margaret and I both grew up on farms where we kids were expected to help plant and dig potatoes, pick peas and raspberries, and keep the weeds at bay, we naturally have maintained the tradition.
Margaret wistfully longs for her Tama County family’s rich, black soil, but we have gradually added enough manure from a neighbor’s cattle lot and compost of our own that most vegetables do OK on our Clayton County clay hilltop.
This season’s work started last fall, when we double-checked the chicken wire fence that should keep the prolific cottontails from nibbling off the raspberry canes. We also tucked the strawberries under a blanket of straw to protect them from Iowa’s freeze/thaw cycles.
Even before Thanksgiving, the first of dozens of seed catalogs and an avalanche of email ads began arriving. What seeds to buy? Will last year’s extras still be viable? Should we wait for a “deal” before ordering?
We’re chronic procrastinators, so we usually put off those big decisions. Then we look in the freezer and see the bags of green beans, peppers, raspberries, and strawberries. Or we chop our own stored onions and potatoes and carrots into the stew pot. Or we open a jar of home-made tomato soup or salsa – and we’re struck by the reality that the produce didn’t just magically appear. It takes some planning – and effort – to grow those goodies.
By late February, we’re already thinking spring, laying out a map of what to plant in which garden bed. Time to make a spot in the sun porch for the grow lights.
Then comes the careful planting of tray after tray, pot after pot, of seeds.
They go under the grow lights, with the timer set to provide 12 hours of “daylight” for the sprouting seedlings. The heating pad under the trays also speeds up germination.
Tending the “babies” becomes a constant chore. Is the potting soil moist enough? Be sure to raise the lights step-by-step so the growing seedlings don’t touch them. But keep the bulbs close enough so the plants don’t get leggy reaching for the light.
But, ah, when to transplant to the garden? We hope to get them in the ground early, so we can feast on early lettuce and spinach. What about frost? Plant TOO early, and they’ll get nipped – unless, of course, we diligently cover them with blankets when the weather forecast turns frigid.
Will there be a window of dry enough weather to dig in the soil? We cross our fingers!
Seeing the deer on the edge of the woods reminds us of the essential fence. It takes a couple hundred feet of 5-foot-high mesh electric fence to deter the deer and raccoons – IF . . .IF we remember to plug it in at night
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Alas, when the planting window arrives, it’s also a perfect time for fishing, turkey hunting, mushroom hunting, canoeing, bird-watching. And for cutting the emerging asparagus. The rhubarb is flourishing, too. Oh, keep an eye on the strawberries. Lots of blossoms, and the first red, yummy morsels. Priorities, priorities! Hurry to put the chicken-wire tent over the berry patch, in an only partially successful attempt to avoid sharing too many berries with the robin and brown thrasher
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We’ll soon be eating strawberry shortcake and fresh lettuce. And, of course, dealing with WEEDS.
Mulch helps, but it doesn’t eliminate the continual need for pulling and digging.
As I grumble about the work, I force myself to anticipate the benefits: sugar snap peas, broccoli, zucchini, green beans. And TOMATOES! The cherry tomatoes may not even make it into the house, as I pop them into my mouth right off the vine as a snack while pulling weeds.
We’ll slice some of the larger red tomatoes for BLTs. But come August, most will go into the canning kettle for Margaret’s signature tomato vegetable soup. During a January blizzard, opening a jar of that soup makes this spring’s gardening a delight. The drudgery is forgotten
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This makes me yearn for planting a garden again. I have too many black walnut trees that thwart vegetable gardens where I currently live. (Believe me, I tried.) I'm reminded of a large, bountiful garden at a former home that converted me into eating only organic produce - it just felt full of life and taste. And how my then toddler used to toddle out to that garden and eat nearly all the sugar snap peas off the vines clinging to the rabbit fence. None of them made it into the house. (I finished them off.) There is nothing like produce from a vegetable garden, and the efforts of you and your wife are inspiring.