How to not do any gardening.

My beautiful babies, Marc and Charlotte! You can sort of see the garden in the background... sort of.

You can plan, and you can hope, but planning and hoping won’t always make things happen.

My plan was to plant seeds on Tuesday. I got pretty busy between my two jobs, so this didn’t happen. Then it rained. However, it didn’t just rain. It was also very cold outside.

I consider below 60 degrees to be cold.

There was a brief moment Friday evening where our family was playing out in the backyard. Marc was doing cartwheels, Mitch was playing the guitar, and Charlotte was… well, Charlotte’s a baby. She was probably pooping. I almost went inside to get the seeds, but rolling around in the grass with my kid seemed like more fun. This also was sort of a blessing, because the chill we had this weekend could have killed my little plants. I considered just going ahead and starting them inside, but we’re going to have some warm weather in the next few days so I think I’ll just hold off.

What is the lesson we’ve learned from this week of no gardening? Sometimes things are more important than gardening, like hanging out with the fam.

If I get a chance to stick some seeds in the ground between now and next Sunday, I’ll do a mid-week update.

Why I Didn’t Plant Today

Mitch and Charlotte helped!

I did it again. I told you all I was going to do something before I did it, and then I didn’t do it. I went out to the garden to poke some holes in the dirt for seeds this evening, but when I flipped the paper envelopes of seeds over to read the instructions (I love how all things come with instructions these days), each one said to “plant in spring after the last sign of frost” or “plant in spring when the ground has warmed”. Well, the ground hasn’t really warmed. In fact, it was kind of chilly last night. I’m not really concerned about frost in April, but I also know that it’s going to be in the 40′s for the next couple of nights. This can be a good thing, however. I desperately want to include my son in this project, and he’s with his dad this weekend. I think if I get the seeds in the ground before the rain comes on Wednesday then I’ll be successful. This will hopefully give the ground a chance to warm up and my son a chance to get nice and dirty. In addition, Earth Day is this week. What better way to celebrate than to get seeds into the ground?

If you’re wondering what I did do this evening, I’ll tell you, and I’ll show you with my pretty camera phone pictures.

This is me, being resourceful.

First, I decided to cheat a little bit. I know that you’re supposed to take some string and section off the rows where you are going to plant. Luckily for me, I found some criss-crossy shelving that we never assembled after we moved. Instead of string, I’ll be using the metal grids to help me space the plants. Clever, right? I know!

This garden rocks. Get it? Rocks?

Then, I felt that where the dirt met the grass was a little boring looking. Now, we’re poor folk up here in the northeast part of the city, and I didn’t feel like shelling out the bucks to buy edging. Fortunately, I found some decorative rocks lining the the outside of the house. You should know that before we moved in here we had a deck built on the back of the house, and it is raised so that a car could be parked underneath.

This is my favorite rock. It looks a little bit like a brain.

Apparantly the woman who lived here before us had put a rock bed where the deck is now. Over the years the rocks had become covered and buried, but I dug them up and lined the garden with them. Beautiful! Beautiful and free!

Can you see Frogger's little arm laying on the ground next to him?

While I was being clever and beautifying the place, however, I broke Frogger’s arm. Frogger is a little frog statue that also came with the house. In fact, when we bought the house, we insisted on them leaving Frogger. So what do I do with our little treasure? I break his arm, of course.

I want to tell you that I’ll be planting seeds on Tuesday, but I don’t want to be a three-time liar. I can tell that they’ll be planted soon! In fact, I have a few plans involving tomatoes and cauliflower, but I’m afraid if I tell you what they are, I won’t do them. I have a poor track record with my garden promises.

Garden Zen

That is one messed up till job, Farmer Val.

I’m going to admit something to you. I really only have time to work on my garden once or twice a week. All week long, I was thinking about my next post and how I was going to title it “How To Give Up”. Yes, I was going to give up on tilling by hand and borrow my neighbor’s tiller. I didn’t, however, because I have a little voice inside my head. I call that voice “Imaginary Kristee”, named after my friend Kristee who has never allowed me to give up on anything the entire time I’ve known her. Once, I was going to skip class, and Real Life Kristee said “just go, it’s only a couple of hours of your life.” I told her I was just too tired, so she brought me a latte. So when I told Imaginary Kristee that I was giving up on tilling by hand and was going to borrow a tiller, she said “Just do it. You’re almost done, and the time it would take you to go get the tiller, till, and return the tiller, you could be done.” I felt this was right on, so I took Imaginary Kristee’s advice. Also, in the last post, I wrote about what I was going to do before I actually did it. That was a big mistake, and I apologize for that. In fact, I didn’t do any of what I said I was going to do, which makes me a liar. I’ll try not to lie to you again.

I also had coffee with a good friend yesterday, and as she was explaining to me her spiritual journey through a problem she was having, I started thinking about the problem I was having. Narcissistic, I know. I care deeply for my friend. But a lot of what she was saying about her situation I found could actually apply to several situations of mine. I thought about my garden and how I wanted to till it up myself without the aid of a machine. It was sort of therapeutic, like natural birth or the way a butterfly forces itself out of its chrysalis. Any mechanical help would be detrimental to the process, and this garden is about the process, not the product. Also, this garden is really less about a garden and more about my own personal transformation from a troubled thirty-something to a grounded and sorted individual. It’s a very zen sort of project. It’s a Zen Garden, I guess.

Carl Sagan said “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” In honor of that notion, I began, or rather, continued, making my garden’s universe. I put on my gloves, grabbed the potato fork, and got back to work. Here’s what I did:

1. I took the potato fork and pried the grass chunks out of the ground. I did this with more purpose than I did last time. I had intended on chopping up these chunks of sod, but that didn’t work out.

2. With my bare hands (just kidding, I was wearing gloves) I grabbed the sod chunks and carried them to the compost bin. When I got tired of walking to the bin, I pretended to be an ancient Greek Olympian and chucked them into the compost bin from a great distance like I was throwing a shotput. I found that pretending to be an Olympian is like, so way fun. So way. I had considering running around the house with my arms in the air singing “We Are The Champions”, but the only one who would appreciate that would be my son, and he was with his dad that day.

3. Once I got rid of most of the grassy clods, I took a garden rake, otherwise known as a “row rake”, and pushed and shoved the dirt around until I felt that it looked mostly even. There were still some large dirt chunks and grass, but I wasn’t worried!

More dirt!

4. Next came the fun part. I bought four bags of topsoil at the grocery store. It wasn’t very much, but after digging I found that we have pretty good soil in our backyard. If you are copying me, you may want to get more soil than I got, especially if you have particularly sandy soil. To avoid making a dirty mess, I just laid the bags of dirt on top of the garden space, sliced open the bags, and pulled the plastic out from under the soil. It was awesome.

5. I used the garden rake and pushed around the new soil until it all looked even. I also used the rake to remove some of the leftover sod pieces and bigger chunks of dirt that I couldn’t break up and put them in my handy compost bin.

Now, my garden is ready for planting! You’ll notice from the picture below there are still some grass pieces and chunks of dirt. I’m going to leave those there and hope they eventually decompose to fertilize the soil. When I go to put the seeds in this evening I’ll toss ‘em if they get in my way. I talked to my dad last night, and he assured me that it is nowhere near too late to plant seeds. I’m very excited about this, because there’s nothing quite like poking your finger in the dirt. I’ll be doing that later this evening. For now, I have papers to grade and lesson plans to write.

Nicely tilled and ready for planting!

How to Till With Your Bare Hands!

There have been some obstacles to starting my garden. I live in the Midwest, a part of the country with extremely unpredictable weather. Every chance that I’ve had from mid-February, when I wanted to start, until this weekend, it has either snowed, rained, or I’ve had previous engagements. Life and weather sometimes get in the way. But I won’t let that stop me! Oh, no. In fact, the nice lady at the lawn and garden store told me it wasn’t even close to being too late!

I marked my territory in the backyard. A 5 1/2 by 12 ft. spot seemed good enough for now. I know what you’re thinking: I need to rent a tiller. I had the same thought. But I looked at my small spot and decided not to spend the money. My dad-in-law brought me a potato fork for tilling, and I also had previously purchased a mini-Claw. I promptly went to the backyard and stabbed and twisted and twisted and stabbed and got nowhere! My poor son tried to help me out, but he also got frustrated. He cried and went inside. So did I. But a Facebook post asking for a light-duty tiller resulted in some great advice from my father-in-law. This afternoon, I went out to my backyard and tilled it up with my bare hands! Well, my bare hands and potato fork. For those following along, here’s how it all should go down:

1. Take the potato fork, which is a four-tined pitchfork-type tool used for digging up potatoes, and jab it into the ground at roughly a 45-degree angle using your foot for force. Then, bend back on the fork to pry up the sod, and follow that with pushing the handle forward to tear up more of the roots.

TIP: Don’t do what I did! I had to learn this the hard way! First, I used all of my might to stab the fork straight into the ground and then twisted and pulled until the sod came up. Don’t do that! It’ll make your arms hurt, and it might make you cry. In fact, it might make you cry a lot and you’ll take your aggression out on the poor lady at the grocery store while checking out. (Sorry, Grocery Lady!)

2. Continue pulling up the sod in this way in rows. Don’t forget to keep your eye out for really cool bugs. I found the biggest centipede I’ve ever seen this way.

3. Now that the sod has been pulled away from the ground, you can grab it in chunks. If you’re really careful, you can pull the sod up in really cool rows. Toss a few of these into your compost bin. It’s especially helpful if a few earthworms could make their way into your bin, as they will help to break down your compost. If you have an eight-year-old boy handy, give him a few dirt clods for throwing into the bin. Nothin’ says lovin’ like throwing dirt clods, am I right?

Okay, now this last bit of information is hypothetical and based on a previous tilling conversation with my father-in-law. I was going to throw all of the sod into the compost bin, but the bin was getting full. I have now put roughly half of the sod chunks into the bin. This is tedious work, folks! Mostly, I just really want the grass to know it’s not wanted in this part of the yard. So now what I’m doing is grabbing the pieces of sod and just flipping them over, grass side down. Now, I’m not a real farmer, and I’m not a biologist. But my thought is that the grass will die, decompose, and help fertilize the soil. I have no proof this will work, I’m just hypothesizing!

I’m not finished with the tilling. I have to get ready for work. There’s life, again, getting in the way! Once I get all the sod turned over and let it dry out for a few hours I’ll break up the chunks with my fork and then put a few bags of topsoil over it. It’ll be awesome!

The N00b Garden

When I was a kid, my father always kept a vegetable garden and I always helped. For nearly eighteen years of my life, I dug my fingers in the dirt, got seeds stuck to my hands, let mud mush between my toes, and plucked weeds out with my fingers. It was wonderful. I lived for spring when we would go to the nursery and pick out flowers and large bags of specially blended topsoil. So when I moved out of my father’s house and into another one, you can imagine my dismay at the reality of not being able to have a garden.

But I couldn’t just not have a garden. I also didn’t have a flower box, a pot for herbs, a bucket for tomatoes, or anything else. I was living in my aunt’s spare bedroom and did not have access to these things. I did help her with her flowers and bushes, but she didn’t plant things nearly to the extent my father did. Flowers are nice, but there’s a certain satisfaction one gets when food is harvested from a plant you’ve cared for.

When I moved from there to my own apartment, it was the same. There was one incident where I tried to grow bucket tomatoes, but it didn’t work out. I did live in a rental house where I tried to grow some peppers and other things, but the poison ivy ate them up. Oh, and houseplants! I am a houseplant murderer. I know, it doesn’t makes sense, but that’s how it goes.

And so it went for quite some time, until now. Now I own my very own home, equipped with my very own yard and my very own perfect spot for planting. It has been nearly fourteen years since I’ve been able to do outdoor planting, so I’m still sort of a gardening noob. But fourteen years ago I had magical powers that made outdoor plants thrive. I guess we’ll find out if I still have them. Wish me luck!