Gardening

Everyone who thinks of living in the country also thinks of having a garden. In the Spring of 2008, our first Spring here, we decided to have a garden. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both Virginia Gentleman Farmers like myself, had large gardens. Clearly, it was the right thing to do. Really, how hard can it be? Humans have been growing their own food since Adam and Eve. All manner of ignorant societies subsist on the crops they grow. Gardening is going to be a snap.

Not so. Gardening is the great equalizer. If you don't believe me watch the "The Godfather". If Don Corlioni had not been so enamored of his tomato garden he would still be with us and Michael would never have become so evil. I often wonder exactly how gardening came about since the trial and error method so common to human history and agriculture should have ensured the death of the human race the first winter outside the garden of Eden. Not long after moving to our little place we identified a perfect spot in the yard for our garden. It was a South facing gentle slope that got sun all day long. As we walked the ground we realized that our forerunners on this land had identified the exact same spot many years ago. The rows of a garden were clearly evident. We envisioned long rows of tall corn swaying in the summer breeze, prize winning watermelons, numerous healthy tomato plants bending under the weight of huge, red, delicious fruits. We would be giving away paper sacks of vegetables to our neighbors and friends and basking in the light of their praises. With these visions of cornucopia dancing in our heads we instantly began procrastinating until it was nearly too late to plant anything. At the last minute we dashed to the home and garden center and bought the last few remaining sorry looking tomato plants and some assorted flowers. Having prepared the ground in our "garden" not at all we compensated by buying a few bags of potting soil and some green liquid fertilizer. Having mowed the tops off of all of the ancient rows in the garden with a push mower, which, by the way is a proven scientific process for finding huge, native Virginia rocks and creating clouds of dust where none should rightfully exist, we set out with a shovel and a hoe to plant our garden, just like our pioneer ancestors. God bless our pioneer ancestors! I now understand why one half of my family decided to stay in European cities and put up with German invaders every so often. It seems a small price to pay for not having to dig in the New World's rocky dirt to plant a small number of garden center reject tomato plants. Finally I broke down and went back to the home and garden center to rent a gasoline powered tiller. I quickly realized that tilling the entire 40’ x 40’ garden plot was not feasible with this device so instead I tilled in individual beds across the slope for the various plants we wanted to grow. Then, after removing at least a bushel of healthy native stone, we assaulted the now softened ground in the beds with our garden shovels and bags of potting soil. Soon after we had tomatoes, green beans, strawberries, watermelon, squash and cucumber plants in the ground. Soon we were growing a healthy crop of weeds. The weeds were invasive, they took over the garden, seemingly overnight. Clearly, this garden was not going to work into my schedule of walking into it to survey my wonderful crops every Sunday afternoon. It required work. So, we pulled weeds. In fact, we mowed weeds with a push mower. I learned one important lesson that summer: fertilizer makes the weeds stronger. Another lesson was that tomatoes are weeds. Thank God! They were the only thing we got that year, besides a few handfuls of weak looking green beans. The cukes and squash plants died before producing any fruit, the strawberries suffered predation from some unseen strawberry thieves (we did get one tiny, red berry) and the watermelons kept rotting from the moist soil. At the end of the summer our garden looked horrible. Tall stands of brown weeds dominated. So, we spent the winter reading books about gardening. 2009’s garden was a great improvement. We actually harvested more tomatoes than we ate. We got a few cucumbers, a reasonable number of squash, although our attempts at potatoes suffered and we learned some valuable lessons. Potatoes can be planted in beds with straw covering them instead of deep soil. Notice how I said straw. If you substitute straw with uneaten hay you will have a bumper crop of hay grasses, which will choke out your potatoes and give sanctuary to insurgent insects that will eat your squash and cukes. Ask me how I know.