The Things They Buried

The Things They Buried

Posted by Heather Harris

I went out last weekend to finally plant my raspberries. I know from past experience that one spindly little cane will miraculously explode into millions of shoots in the spring, soon poking through every inconvenient place in my garden. I planted two at my last house and had enough raspberries to feed my marauding children, wandering dinner guests, and the neighborhood's entire bird population with enough left over to stuff my freezer for the winter. This knowledge however, did not prevent me from buying more, five to be exact. (Well six if you count the cutting overwintered from our last house, which I should, but I won't.) I got a discount for buying in gross!

Anyway, planting anything right now is a major chore and ill-advised if I want to have any sort of master plan for my vegetable garden. What looks like fairly decent grass in pictures, is really a special mix of 70% buttercup, 10% prickly weed, 8% crab grass, 5% morning glory, 5% blackberry shoots,  and 2% turf. This lovely blend is supported by 6,234 gopher mounds. Greg has planting boxes stacking up higher every weekend on the back deck to help me tame the wilderness, but getting everything ready for vegetables is still several weeks off, and the raspberries won't wait (well, I won't wait) .

So I took out my spade and shovel and found a most likely terrible spot with a dubious prospect for sun, that's only recommendations are that it is out of the way of the vegetable garden project and along a fence. This plot of ground that I crammed the 5 (okay, 6) raspberries in is only about  8 feet long by 3 feet wide. Nevertheless, here is what I found as I hauled up the clumps of heavy, waterlogged "sod":

2 retaining wall blocks
3 long edging bricks
9(!) tomato cages
3 huge rusty nails
1 broken garden cultivator






This is what was buried in 24 square feet. The vegetable garden is going to be 1,080 square feet. If my math is correct, and this yard debris per square foot ratio holds, there are 810 objects waiting to be unearthed. The only thing encouraging about this is the evidence that someone else has attempted to do something with this weed infested field as well. It's a bit like a person trudging up a mountain on the Oregon Trail must have felt when they saw the broken wheels, chairs, tin cans and trinkets strewn along the path that had been chucked out of a wagon by a an earlier pioneer. Something like,"Times are bad. My oxen are stuck. Mom has smallpox. The last moldy biscuit is gone. My feet are blistered and cracked. But I'm not dead and, and by God, someone else has suffered too!" Comforting thoughts for a backbreaking day in the garden. Oh! AND I have 9 more tomato cages! I just doubled my tomato production capabilities!

Ballad of the Impatient Gardener

Ballad of the Impatient Gardener

Posted by Heather Harris

When the rain starts falling, and doing any kind of gardening, even planting the five raspberries growing wan and sickly in my garage, is impossible, I turn, like any addict facing a supply shortage, to the next most desirable activity: reading. Last night I came upon this gem of a poem from  Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon:

From the Ballad of Blasphemous Bill:

 You know what it's like in the  Yukon Wild

       when it's sixty-nine below;

When the ice-worms wriggle their

       purple heads through the crust of the 

       pale blue snow;

When the pine-trees crack like little guns

      in the silence of the wood,

And the icicles hang down like tusks

     under the parka hood;

When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden

    off, and the sky is weirdly lit,

And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns

    like a red-hot spit;

When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the 

    frost-fiend stalks to kill-

Well, it was just like that the day when I 

   set out to look for Bill.

-Robert Service

So, I thought I'd take a stab at one for our winter climate:

Ballad of the Impatient Gardener

You know what it's like in the Western Wood

when the rivers overflow

When the earthworms wriggle their

swollen heads through the muck of the

mud below

When the fir trees blow like angry beasts

in the howling, fearsome gale,

And the rain runs down like slimy trails,

from the wet and loathsome snail;

When the clammy cold seeps sudden

in; and your bones begin to ache,

And the comfort of your woolen sock is

lost in your boot's lake;

When the gutter's clogged with rotted leaves, and the

storm drains start to fail-

Well, it was just like that the day when I

set out to plant my kale.

Winter's Heartbeat

Winter's Heartbeat

Posted by Heather Harris

I've been reading a lot of gardening literature lately, and whenever I get to the section of the story,column, or essay written in February, they all say," Winter is a great time to look at the bones of your garden." Every. Single. One. It seems to be the only thing to say about February. But what on earth does it mean? I get the whole metaphor that the garden is dead, you're looking at the bones that are left to see the structure, plan for the year to come, etc., but what earthly good does it do to look at the "bones"? How does leering at my naked trees tell me anything about what the garden is going to look like in late August? Does a doctor look at my X-ray to see if I'll be healthy in the coming year?  Does looking at an empty plate clue me in to dinner? Does I-205 at 3 o'clock in the morning enlighten me to my evening commute? No. I think the February writer
should simply say, "Winter is a good time to...see what your garden looks like in winter." Or, more poetically, "Winter is a good time to find the heartbeat of your garden".

Moments ago two mallards were attempting to murder each other in our pond. They spun around in a frantic, synchronized circle like ninja figure skaters. They sliced at each other's heads with the tips of their wings and then stabbed their bills violently at each other's neck. The female, who I can safely surmise was the cause of the death match, dove for shore and flew off. After one jab too many, one of the males did too. The victor swam around in confused circles wondering what had just happened. Suddenly the female reappeared and began shoveling her bill into the muddy grass searching for a slumbering slug. The male waddled over and peacefully dined with her.

During the snow storm last week I strapped on my snowshoes and crunched across the field out to our creek. I watched, motionless, as the water wove in an out of the snow-covered ice bridges that had formed on the surface of the creek. Ice hung like crystals off the ancient weeping willow tree, while squirrels stripped bark off of the redwoods, leaving the trunks fuzzy and red like scarlet sweaters.

Little fritillaria leaves are pushing up through the mulch near my doorway. I've spotted daffodils and hyacinth too. A tree on my drive home the other day had grown through a brick sidewalk in the same fashion, pushing the mortar up and out over the years as easily as the little flowers were emerging from the earth.

After the snow melted, I walked under the birch tree in our front yard and collected the branches that were too delicate to hold up under the weight of the ice. I had a huge pile of broken pieces and decided to make a trellis for the vegetable garden. The casualties of winter supporting spring's peas.

My February advice is this: Don't waste your winter studying your garden's bones. Go feel its pulse.

Buried Roots

Buried Roots

Posted by Heather Harris

I planted bare root strawberries last weekend. Last weekend it was a sunny 51 degrees. Last weekend I didn't even have a coat on. Last weekend I thought, "This is the loveliest winter we've ever had. A gardener's dream!"  Today there are three inches of snow squatting on top of those delicate, naked little roots, mocking me and my naivete.

During all assumed planting disasters, I turn to the Internet. I do not do this when I'm actually planting. Why stop and consult the experts when there are cute little bundles of strawberry plants ready to be planted? How hard could it be? No, it is only when impending doom is before me that I decide to look up what I was supposed to have done before lovingly tucking the roots into the ground for burial.

This time I discovered that no one knows what they're doing. There was so much contradicting information on the proper way to plant bare root strawberries that I now know less than I did when I began. Soak the roots, don't soak the roots. Plant within 48 hours of getting the plants, wait till March. Trim the roots before planting, don't trim the roots. Mix in fifty-five soil amendments, leave the soil alone. So I did what all of us do when seeking a more informed opinion: I only looked at the facts that confirmed what I thought to begin with.

1. Plant the bare root strawberries right away. Check.

2. Make a hole a little bigger than the roots and leave the crown above the soil. Check.

3. Space them fourteen inches apart. Check ( Although I didn't measure it. Let's be real.)

4. Plant them in a raised bed. Check.

5. Plant local varieties. Tristars and Hoods, Check.

6.  Bare root plants can take alternating freezing and snow cover after planting. Hooray!

It turns out I'm an amazingly intuitive gardener! Just follow these steps, and I'm sure your bare root strawberries will turn out perfectly. And if not, just go look at someone else's blog and I'm sure you'll find the list you're looking for.