Monday, May 7, 2007

My Garden

Growing up we always had a garden. I vaguely remember coming home after school and helping siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles plant the seeds into the tilled earth. Next memory is enjoying the scrumptious bounty in late summer. There was always plenty of squash, corn, carrots, cucumbers and many other vegetables. Why don't I remember anything in between? Probably because I didn't do any of the watering, weeding, harvesting, etc. You know, all the hard stuff.
I have lived all these years with a very romantic idea of becoming a gardener. I always said that when I have a house with a yard I want to grow a garden. I mentioned this to a friend and she told me of square-foot gardening. I thought it sounded interesting and looked it up on the Internet. It claims to be a full garden with as much produce but the space and work load are reduced 80%. I told my idea to Chris and the deal was that I could do it but that I had to do it--he was willing to help and but he didn't want to spend his precious Saturdays pulling weeds.
I did all the research and came to Chris with a list of materials I needed. We went to Home Depot on Saturday and bought all the supplies. He helped me (or I helped him rather) make a 4-foot square box to put my garden in. We took it to our "spot" and it was not level. It was my job to make it right. I started digging some trenches just the width of the board--I don't know! I have never done work like this before! When Chris saw what I was doing he chuckled and I handed him the shovel. He pulled out his level tool, turned up the dirt and made my garden square nice and level.
I filled the box with peat moss, compost and top soil. Then I sectioned off my garden into 16 1-foot sections with string. That wasn't too difficult but I still needed a little help from Chris. Kennedy helped me plant some seeds and then we watered.
My 4-foot square garden looks nice and tidy but we will see if it produces anything. I am beginning to wonder if I will be able to manage this. What was I thinking? I guess this is how it starts when you learn something new, right? Maybe it's a good thing I started with a 4-foot square! Stay tuned. . . .