TheGoddess.ca

Well, I have finally begun. The garden, that is. Troubled by the thought of owning ten acres and not growing anything (on purpose- weeds grow without my permission), I started planning my garden in the depths of winter. (How else do rural Canadians make it through those dark days? Seed catalogues are as good as full-spectrum lights when it comes to fighting SADs) I borrowed every library book on gardening (well, on vegetable gardening- pools filled with Koi Carp and edged with heritage roses aren’t what I’m aiming for here), ordered seed catalogues and read on the ‘net.

I decided that the ‘Square Foot Gardening‘ method suited me best- you mix your dirt to the proportions in the book, which is great as we have little, our house being built solidy on a rock; you use raised beds which need little weeding because you made your dirt; and you can grow quite a bit in a small space. Ideal. So, as suggested, I decided what I want to harvest and worked back to what I need to plant. I drew sketches in my handy-dandy graphpaper notebook, made lists to my heart’s delight. Then I decided what I could realistically deal with this summer, made new, smaller sketches and shorter lists. Seeds were ordered, visions of carrots dancing in my head.
As the snow was pretty much all gone, Saturday morning bright and early the Badger and I headed to town. We had the boards for the raised beds already, but needed the ingredients for dirt. We had breakfast (we found a local spot that makes a single eggs benny- one little english muffin, just right!) then went hunting. First, we tried the local feed store, because I need some straw. They weren’t open, and the local nursery is (sadly) still in hibernation, so we ended up at good old Canadian Tire.
Peat, vermiculite and compost. Well, the peat was easy, as was the compost (once we converted litres to cubic feet- oddly enough it was the Badger who figured this out, but he promises not to let it go to his head). But the price tag on the vermiculite made the Badger’s heart threaten to stop, so after some hasty re-calculating we made a compromise, buying half the intended vermiculite. The Badger loaded the truck while I went to find some lettuce seed.

God is good, and when we got home it wasn’t raining. (That’s like sunny, only with less UV rays). My handy honey made my raised beds (including a nifty cold frame using one of the windows our dear friends F&B gave us), then we laid out a tarp and dumped our dirt ingredients onto it. The book suggested turning it by lifting the tarp edges- HA! I guess we tried to do too much at once, so we used the shovel. We filled the beds, and while one is a bit short on dirt (we didn’t think to buy more of something else to make up for less vermiculite), they look so neat and promising.

My other project in the evenings this week has been to salvage some strawberry plants from the old garden. They have all gone wild and last summer the bears got them all, as it’s too overgrown to pick safely with a sow and cubs in the area. So I (really, all by myself I) dug a bed where the chicken run appears to have been, once upon a time. I was able to dig 18 berry plants out of 2 square feet in the old garden. So far I have 34 plants moved, and I plan to keep going until I run out of space. The new bed is visible from the house, and I hope the bears won’t be as eager to come in that close.

I also moved some chives I found- they were so tightly packed I could barely dig the clump of tiny bulbs out. But once I did, the sweetest fragrance- a bit garlicky maybe- came from them. I hope they live, because they’re one of those lovely plants that are pretty and edible. (And quite hard to kill). I also moved a rhubarb that produced 3 stalks last summer- and no wonder- the root ball was like iron, and a good 10″ around, and surrounded by big rocks. So now I have 4 rubarb plants, 2 each of 2 different sorts I think. Yum (insert visions of strawberry-rhubarb pie here).

This afternoon I took my careful sketches out to the yard and planted one of the beds. Peas, carrots, brocolli, lettuce, turnip and radish, and onions. I’ll plant the other bed in a few weeks so we don’t have to eat 6 heads of brocolli all in one week. My favorite thing about lists it crossing things off them- excuse me while I go do some of that!