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Garden update - hostile takeover
March 18, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, this brown thumb decided to break ground for an edible garden. A lot of back breaking digging later (with the help from the family), we have an almost plantable strip. Naturally I am quite excited about adding in compost and getting the planting part going.

But the project had a hostile takeover in the past week. Let’s just say when I was recovering from my flu, my husband decided to take matters into his own hands and virtually claimed the project as his own. When I went out to survey our backyard this weekend, I found bags of compost laying close to the planting ground. There was a sack of greenish sawdust looking stuff and a bag of whitish coarse powder. And a couple of new tools of course.

Opening my How to Plant Vegetables book, I found detailed notes and calculation on how far the seedlings should be. And there was even a schedule for raising seedlings!

Somebody has been eating my porridge, sitting in my chair and sleeping in my bed (so to speak). And it ain’t Goldie Locks! The project thief is my husband; it has his geeky engineering handprints all over it.

Apparently he started reading MY book last week and totally got into the bio-intensive growing approach. Enamored with the idea of cultivating our own food, he is throwing himself into the project like it is one of his satellite designs. We must double dig today before planting, he announced. Double what? And who made you my boss? And what the heck are those suspicious looking powder? “Alfalfa meal and granite dust,” he said with authority (surely just learned from MY book), “they help loosen and enrich our clay-heavy soil. It is depleted of Potash, remember?” Whatever, I walked away grumbling.

Then he asked me about the seedling timing and spacing and more additions into the soil. “You read the book,” I challenged him. Clearly not appreciating any ambiguity in life, he went to talk to the knowledgeable folks at Common Ground. They promptly told him that gardening wasn’t exactly like building a satellite. A little or a lot of trial and error would be a good thing, if not absolutely required. Thank you, Common Ground…

Then it was time for doubling digging – mixing compost with the first foot of loosened dirt (done two weeks ago), digging into one more foot into the dirt, mixing more compost and raking back to flat for planting. Our soil is more or less all clay, it was hard work to just loosen 1 foot of dirt a couple of weeks ago. One more foot down is doubly challenging. An hour later, my arm, hands and back began to hurt. Still smarting from MY project being hijacked, I sat down and watched my husband stubbornly dig a few inches at a time without much stop. Slowly but surely he was making reasonable progress.

It was then I realized that it did not matter whether it was my project or our project. I want to have an edible garden and we are making strides toward having one, no matter who leads the project. Come to think of it, I should be quite happy with his enthusiasm. Otherwise I would have to endeavor at most of this double digging.

We now have 11 strawberry plants in the ground. Many more seedlings to nurse and plant in the next few weeks.

Let’s see how many we can manage not to kill.

CindyW

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