A Healer’s Geste

Garden Overboard!

That’s what will probably end up happening, since my plans are always overboard. :) I always do this: when I first tried sewing, I began with a satin Sunday dress for myself; when I first learned to crochet, I began with a granny-square baby sweater; when I got into cross-stitch, I tried my mother’s patience too far to spend long on her little boring beginner projects before I was off on a “real” project. If I want to freezer cook, I get three different meals going in the kitchen all at once with two others waiting in the wings and I go crazy in the middle of it all. If I volunteer to buy the food for Women’s Retreat, I completely revamp the menu and list. About the only thing I don’t tackle head-on and delve into deeper than I should is laundry and yardwork.

Well, that yardwork thing is about to change. Supposedly. I have the garden bug. I’ve had it every spring since we’ve been home owners (5 years now with a one year hiatus), but the conditions were never favorable enough for it to get out of my brain and into the dirt. I did container tomatoes two years, both of which died untimely deaths in full Tri-Cities sun; watering once a day turned out not to work. I never got one good tomato out of any of the plants.

But now we have a new house. A new house with a new yard. Well, a new house with a soon-to-be-new yard and a lot of dirt upheaval. Matt has dug out the soon-to-be garden area and made what was a mound into a yard flush with the rest of the yard and now the boys and I are tasked with clearing our little planned plots of rocks, gussying up the soil a bit, and planting some seeds and plants. Hans is very excited. He really wants to grow some pumpkins, because several of his friends gave him pumpkins that they had grown last year. I wasn’t sure we’d have enough room for pumpkins. Then Matt showed me his plan of the yard and asked if a 10-foot by 30-foot plot was enough garden area. Ok! Hans! We’re planting pumpkins!

I checked out Square Foot Gardening from the library and finally read of a plan that made sense and that “clicked” with me. But perhaps you still need some more back-story. This is all coming from the pale-faced bookworm who only played outside when her mother turned her out or she played “run away” with her friends. This is coming from the girl who, when her mother gave her a garden task in her eighth year, went out to do it in her Sunday shoes. This comes from a girl who has never gotten dirty — as in, gotten actual dirt on her clothes — on purpose her whole life. Yeah. That girl. She’s going to start a garden.

But — oh, no — not just any garden will do, of course! Since we are undertaking this endeavor, we must make it worth our time! What would I do with random sewn remnants, practice crochet squares, rows of meaningless cross stitches? Nothing! So why bother?! What I wanted was to sew myself a dress, crochet baby gifts, and create frame-able pieces of art! So, that’s what I did. And what I want now are flowers to cut for my table and garden-fresh vegetables for my table. See, in the end it’s all about the kitchen and dining room table. My motives revolve solely on bettering the inside of my home. If I must dig in the dirt a bit to accomplish that, then I’ll give it a go. I’d be just as happy to have $100 extra dollars a month to spend at the Farmer’s Market in season, but seeds and plants and amendments and all are more a one-time investment that also improves the fixer-up home.

So, here are the seeds I already have in my possession:

Tiny cherry tomatoes (Jenny hybrid)
Mini sweet peppers
cucumber
yellow squash
winter squash
zucchini
watermelon
green onions
pumpkin
sugar snap peas
bush green beans
turnips
little finger carrots
mesclun
spinach
lettuce mix
radishes
dill
basil
savory
lavendar
cosmos (double-click)
sunflowers (solar babies)
marigolds (touch of red)
daisies (crazy shasta)

Yup.

Seeds still to purchase: rosemary
mint

Plants purchased: strawberries (but these are from a catalog & won’t arrive until April)

Plants to purchase: tomatoes (2 beefsteak-type)
peppers (1-2 bell peppers)
hydrangea (2 bushes)

I am considering buying a couple raspberry plants, but I think that might be too much. :)

Plus I’m going to attempt to transplant some bulbs that are in random places in our back yard into the front area of the house.

Did I mention I like to start things off with a bang? :) Did I mention that I think I average pulling off about half of what I attempt (or most of it, half as good as it should be)? Yup.

I’m going to have four four-square-foot vegetable garden plots, the herbs in pots, the strawberries might be in a strawberry pot or the ground, the hydrangeas and lavender up front, and the daisies and cosmos and marigolds in front of the vegetable garden. The Square Foot Gardening book claims that I can plant one seeds directly where I want one plant to grow, so minimizing waste, and claims that if I properly store the seeds I can continue to use them for a couple years to come. So, I have, for example, 20 zucchini seeds of which I will be planting 2 (or 4 to thin to 2 if I want to play it safe), leaving 16-18 seeds for subsequent years and subsequent gardens.

So, thus my new “role” category: Gardener. I will tell you how it goes.