My Kitchen Garden, Part 1

One of the first things I wanted to do once my schoolwork was finished was to relearn how to grow a garden. In my fairly recent past, before going out to BYU for summer terms, I nearly always had a garden in the backyard here in Lake Ridge. I can't remember that I was too awfully successful, but there were occasional bounteous crops. One of my first gardens at this house saw a huge harvest of green beans, and I decided to freeze them rather than spend hours over the water bath canner in the kitchen. So I had our second freezer in the fridge in the garage stocked to last us through the entire winter. Then, midway through the summer the fridge broke down (needed a new compressor) and I lost ALL of my harvest! It was heartbreaking, because, believe it or not, I really did spend a lot of time out in the hot, humid, muggy, sticky, debilitating weather working in my garden; which somehow forges an intimate connection with my plants and the fruits of my labors. It really hurt to see it all go to waste.

Another year we developed a bumper crop of rabbits in the yard and, although we have a picket fence around the garden plot, it was definitely not rabbit-proof. I planted several rows of green beans, and as always, was excited and delighted when the little sprouts emerged from the soil. I kept watch on them, weeded them, watered them, and then one morning came out to no sprouts. Each and every plant had been eaten down to the nub by those darn (albeit cute) rabbits! Frustrated, but undaunted, I planted again. Two weeks later, my seedlings were eaten once more. Determined and stupid, I planted again, and after the rabbits had feasted a third time, I gave up.

Beans are not the only thing I planted in my garden. I usually try to grow a variety of things, including pumpkins for Halloween. One year I devoted fully half of the garden space to pumpkins, and the crop was growing beautifully. I must have had between 15 and 20 pumpkins growing in various stages of development, and I was so excited to come out every day, rotate the pumpkins so they wouldn't be misshapen, water, etc. Then one day, disaster struck: almost all of the vines had withered because of some nefarious cutworm and I lost all of the pumpkins!

The year before I went to my first summer term I got smart and staple-gunned chicken wire to the picket fence and kept the rabbits out of the garden, and that was a fairly successful gardening year. Last year I was going to have a garden, and to get ready for it Gregory donated his time and labor to cleaning up and weeding the garden space. After four years of lying fallow, it really needed it! In his zeal, however, he completely uprooted the marjoram, lavender, and oregano that were well-established in the perennial garden space, and he decided his job would be much easier if he just ripped out the chicken wire fencing. I ended up never getting to planting the garden because of schoolwork. I think I just didn't want to face the labor-intensive job of putting back up the chicken wire!

This year, with the enthusiasm of someone who has forgotten all the disasters and disappointments of past years, I weeded the garden myself (and found to my astonishment that the oregano had come back), rented a roto-tiller from the local Ace Hardware and dug up the soil myself, gathered a composite soil sample to send in for analysis myself (surprisingly, the garden soil is too alkaline, which requires adding sulphur to correct the ph), re-stapled all of the chicken wire myself, and then I planted the garden myself. I have a feeling that before the end of the season this is going to be a "Little Red Hen" story! In preparation for the planting I bought a book from Barnes and Noble with a giftcard Celesta gave me for my birthday in January. It's called The Family Kitchen Garden, and it's written by a couple of English ladies who turned a neglected manor house formal garden in the middle of London into a kitchen garden with the help of about 1000 London school children each year. This book is a wealth of information on everything from soil preparation, composting, mulching, and when, how, and what to plant. So, it's kind of my "garden Bible" now, and is helping me make a come-back into the world of gardening.

I'm finding that the authors of this book have some very practical advice that I would do well to follow. For example, when planting onion sets, they advise that you "net" them (I don't know how to do that or what exactly to buy to do that, but I'd better find out, as you will see) because "the tips are very tempting for birds, who do not even eat them but just yank them out." So, my onion sets were doing just great for the first three weeks; then one evening this week I checked on the progress of the garden and found that something, I assume birds, had uprooted fully half of my onions and left them lying on the ground! Stubbornly, I replanted them only to find more uprooted the next day. You'd think I would learn my lesson from the rabbits, wouldn't you? Next item on the "to do" list--check out netting at Lowes. Oh, and buy more onion sets.