The Garden: Making It Up As I Go Along

     I have become completely obsessed with my garden. Mind you, it's not much of a garden as yet. I only planted it for the first time last year. It takes time to turn a yard into a garden. Last year, I just jumped in and did the best I could. I was making it up as I went along. I still am.

     That's not to say that I didn't do research before starting last year. I did. It's just that research on when and how to start a garden is not a linear process. For every "fact" I learned, there was a contradicting "fact," all of them asserted by people with very strong opinions about what "works" and what doesn't. Now, I could go on and on about the various reasons I did not go to a large, central authority for answers. I could have gone to the local farmer's co-op, the county extension office, etc. Rather than waxing self-reflective about why I did not make a bee-line for these obvious authorities, let me just chalk it up to the reveling in my dyslexia I have enjoyed since I quit my job in academe. So, my "research" was a disorderly but voracious reading of everything ordinary gardeners were putting online about their own gardens. I felt there was a greater truth to what they were telling me because they weren't doing reductionist experimentation like scientists, they were doing it the way people have done it since the idea of planting first occurred to us. It was fascinating to see on YouTube and read on blogs all these people's experiences. I felt I was learning faster and better than I ever could from a textbook presentation. It's hip to dis the internet but I feel better educated by playing around online than I ever have sitting in a classroom. (Again, we can chalk that up to the dyslexia thing but it seems to me there's something so natural about learning this way.)

     My success with a fairly large ornamental garden while living in Florida (1999-2003) only served to teach me how to garden in the most forgiving setting in the world. From what I was reading online in planning my northeast Oklahoma garden, growing vegetables is fraught with dangers. Just getting started with when and how to plant the seeds was a subject of some debate in the blogosphere. I ultimately concluded that if planting a seed can have various theories, then absolutely everything about growing the plant will too. So, it would be best, I reasoned, to just jump in and try something out, see how it goes, and learn along the way. I picked up ideas and attitudes from many different people online and made decisions about what appealed to me. My dislike for rows of desks in a classroom lead me naturally to seek out gardeners who refused to enforce such unnatural rigidity on their plants. Yet, I found myself drawn to theories about staking and pruning tomatoes (my primary crop) that were tightly controlled. Again, this affords me an opportunity to wax self-reflective about the effect years of Catholic schooling might have had.

     One of my favorite ways to find interesting garden blogs, forums, etc. is to type something like "vegetable garden with flowers" or " beautiful vegetable garden" into Google Images and check out the sites posting interesting pics. For example, this

inspired me to map out a potager garden. I will have these kinds of beds in 2012 but without the raised aspect (i.e., the boards allowing soil level to be higher than the path) and I won't put in any gravel pathway until I decide how well I like it. If it goes well, I'll install the boards and gravel in 2013. Some of the images I found led me to discussions of the practical issues of potager gardens and the history of potatger gardens. I guess I'm plenty visual because this is how I've gotten inspiration for garden plans. For the how-to of planting and growing vegetables, I've been pleased with YouTube's community of gardeners. My favorites are the ones that show me both the failures and successes of different methods they've tried. It feels like I'm getting the benefit of many people's experiences with out having had to go through the trial and error myself.

     In any event, I learned enough to make a fairly good go of it last season. The tomatoes were a huge success in a year when most of this region's growers were having a terrible time getting fruit to set.

I learned that I had to pick my tomatoes when they started to turn pink or the birds would get into them.

The eggplant and bell peppers were less productive. The peas were interesting to grow but the pay-off was not very satisfying and the potatoes were a bust considering how much labor they involved. As for the lettuce, broccoli, and spinach I sowed directly into the garden, well, let's just say that I underestimated the local bird population. I knew that the soil would need to be developed before the veggies really produced well, so, on the whole, I was very encouraged by last year's attempts.

This is my best bell pepper plant on its best day. They were nice but small and thin-walled.

     What I had forgotten in the years I'd been away from gardening was the hypnotic effect a garden has on me. I can pass hours there, fussing with the plants or just sitting and watching them and the insects that visit them. Spending a lot of time there, I got to know the birds, mice, snakes, and moles. In the case of the moles, not a face-to-face communication, but I watched the soil moving around as they visited the garden. I can lose myself completely in the garden and I always return to the house in a blissful state of mind, feeling that the whole world is beautiful and fruitful. And ever since dismantling the garden at the end of October, I have pined for a return.

     So, I'm spending the winter planning my little Eden. Last year, I was only able to break the sod on half the backyard. It would have been overwhelming to try to do the entire 1000-foot area all at once.

This is a view from the southwest corner of the garden with the house on the left and garage in the center.

     If the photo above had been taken in the summer, it would have shown rows of staked tomatoes, bush beans, basil, and a failed attempt to grow a mirliton vine. Now it shows some green that may appear to be grass but is actually sprouts from the straw that is decomposing there with the brown paper under it and the soil and grass from last October. I'm taking the sprouting straw (whatever plant it is) as a sign that all beneath it are decomposing richly. The theory is I will till this under in the spring. However, I'm toying with the idea of not digging it again and just putting another layer of paper and straw into which I will dig the places I will set the new plants into the soil. Among things I haven't decided is where I stand on the tilling vs. no digging theories.

Here, on the far eastern edge of the garden, you can see the layered paper and straw. This shady area under the tree behind the garage was just grass last year, but I covered to too in hopes of extending a nice shade garden here.

A view from the northeastern corner of the garden

     As you can see from the photo above, The southern boundary of the yard is flanked by a jumble of privets that have just been allowed to grow for ages along the chain-link fence that separates our property form the alleyway that runs behind it. The wildlife use this privet as cover and food, so I'm not disturbing it. The only shade it casts on the garden is in the late evening -- in July and August, that shade is very welcome. Below is a closer view of the soil around the only tree in the central area of the yard. Last year, the garden stopped about five feet before reaching this tree. It's not really a shade issue because of its size and shape. The roots aren't much of a problem at this point and I'm hopeful they won't start doing any wacky growing in response to the tilling.

I will mulch over the grass around the drip line of this tall, thin fruit tree.

     The property is a corner lot and the west side is open to a street.

This view from the deck shows the relationship of the street to the garden.

I don't have the funds to build a fence and the needed gates to close this off, so I'm planning a 6-foot trellis on which I will grow purple hyacinth bean vine this year and rotate the tomatoes on it next year. I've also put a rose of sharon and purple butterfly bush in the northwest corner for increased privacy. The only reason privacy is an issue is that I'm self-conscious about the extent to which I'm making this garden up as I go along. In my experience, people see a diminutive female doing yardwork and immediately want to offer advice on how to do it "right." I once had a neighbor roll up in his car on his way home from work to tell me, "Be careful." in all earnestness upon seeing me cutting a hedge. Maybe I could just put up a sign: "I realize I don't know what I'm doing. Please look away. See my blog for explanation." Or the hyacinth vine. Either way.