is to believe in tomorrow.”
Actress, (and apparently gardener,) Audrey Hepburn said that. I agree with her. The action of gardening IS believing that tomorrow will come, and in that, there is hope and vegetables to harvest!
But between planting day and harvesting day, a lot of ‘ground work’ (see what I did there?) 🙂 must happen. First, when the earliest hint of spring comes to your area, you run as fast as you can to your local garden center to paruse the seed packet displays. This is when you more than likely will buy more seeds than you have room to plant– or is that just me? Just looking at the packets of seeds makes me excited!
Next, when it gets a little warmer, the land must be prepped. That means removing ground cover, such as grass or weeds, then tilling the land. There are a variety of ways to till. We are fortunate to have a tractor now, before that, my husband used a rototiller.
Now that your soil is ready, you must decide where to place your plants and seeds in the garden. I always draw up a plan on a sheet of paper, naming where the plant is located and its maturity date. This helps me remember what I planted where, and when it will be ready to harvest.
Now it’s time to put those plants and seeds in the ground. It’s time consuming, but so worth the effort. And if you’re fortunate, like I was, your planting day will be a sunny one!
Now, my dad was a master gardener. He went to great lengths to make an aesthetically beautiful, as well as productive garden. I am not as patient nor as particular as he was, but I did learn everything I know about gardening from him and my grandmother. My dad would have planted rows that were arrow straight. Mine are straight-ish. My dad’s garden never had a weed more than and inch high in it. He weeded and we weeded regularly- almost daily, really.
I have had big battles with weeds over the years.
I don’t like to weed, and I can put it off for far too long. More often than not, the weeds win. Sometimes, while weeding or harvesting, I silently apologize to my veggies for letting the garden get so bad. This year we decided to try putting landscape fabric between our rows. I was against this idea at first, thinking our garden was too big for such a plan, but Tim thought it would really help our weed situation.
We put down over 200 feet of fabric and used nearly 600 fabric pins to hold it in place. The more we worked on it, the more excited I got. I hope this is the golden goose for our garden. The weeds may win the battle a few times, but they won’t win the war!
Finally, water your garden. Our garden is located on farmland without access to running water. However, we have a creek nearby. We hauled five 5-gallon buckets of water from the creek and gave everything a good drink of water. We will water as often as we can, and otherwise pray for timely rain!
I’ll let you know in future blog posts how the garden is fairing. Now, I’d like to entertain and inform you on some pretty amazing garden facts!
We also planted pumpkins, catalope, and wild flowers, but I’ll save those ideas for another day. I encourage you to plant something. Maybe a garden plot won’t work for you. That’s o.k. How about some herbs in a pot on your step or in your kitchen window? Maybe flowers? Or maybe a nice leaf lettuce, such as Bibb or Slobolt, in a half barrel?
Let me know how your garden grows. I’d love to hear from you.
Until next time,
Be good to yourself.
~Nadine
Nadine M. Roth 