Breaking Ground

Breaking Ground

Posted by Heather Harris

I blame the frogs. Their wild, raucous sex blasting through our bedroom windows for the last several weeks had me fooled into believing that spring had arrived on March 7th. The clouds parted for a few precious hours, giving me just enough time to plant all of my early seeds (kale, lettuce, peas, chives) in the one raised bed that is already out in the garden, and to do some serious damage with my pruners. Of course, it doesn't take me too long to do damage with pruners. Clipping and snipping away at blackberries and other brambly nuisances is a passion of mine, and while I'm blissfully chopping and whacking my way across the yard, I always forget that there will be a massive pile of sharp, thorny junk that I will  have to cram into my much-to-small debris can when I'm done. The best day of my life was finding out that the Happy Valley garbage men collect yard debris every week! Sometimes I just leave the pile for awhile, hoping it will "dry out" and shrink up a bit, making it easier to cram in later. Ha! On March 7th, however, this was not an option because come hell or high water I as going to strip the sod off of my much anticipated vegetable garden plot on March 8th, and the pile of blackberry canes were directly in the way, so heave-ho into the can they must go.

Well it turns out that March 8th did not get the memo about spring. It did, however, deliver hell and high water. It started so well with the rental of the best agricultural invention since the cotton gin: the sod stripper. I don't know if you've ever tried to remove sod in the more traditional way of using a shovel, but it is the worst gardening activity, hands-down; especially if you were born a woman and lack heft and/or brawny muscles. I have to jump onto the shovel with both feet and then pry the giant clods of earth up, using the ground and shovel handle as a lever and fulcrum. Then I heave the thirty pound clumps up and into a wheel barrow, wheel it somewhere trying not to tip the whole dang thing over, and then figure out where the heck I'm going to put them. After all, the point is to get rid of the grass, not relocate it.

I was not going to do that for
 1,080 square feet of grass (or should I say I wasn't going to make my husband do that). So we rented the sod stripper. It's a sexy name for a sexy little tool. It looks sort of like a rototiller, but it has a long horizontal blade that slips just under the surface of the sod and slices the grass right off the top, so that you get a long strip of rollable turf, just like what you get when you buy it at the store. The only problem was that it decided to pour rain ALL day long. The ground was already well saturated from the last few weeks of rain, but without the grass covering, we had turned the garden plot into a slippery, boot sucking mud wallow. And we had 1,080 square feet of water-logged turf to roll, heave,cart, and unload into a sod mountain at the back of our yard. It was not fun. Let' s just leave it at that. However, the whole time I was slogging through the muck, I was imagining the chore without the sod stripper, and imaging myself impaled, out of choice, on the dull end of my shovel. So it could have been worse...so much worse...

Ed Smith, Patron Saint of the Vegetable Garden

Ed Smith, Patron Saint of the Vegetable Garden

Posted by Heather Harris

Three times a week I get forty-five minutes all to myself. Forty-five beautiful, usually interrupted, minutes. Luke, my four-year-old takes and nap, and my six-year-old takes a "play nap". What is a play nap, you ask? It is an incredibly brilliant invention of my mine that requires my daughter to stay in her room for forty-five minutes, doing whatever her weird and creative mind would lead her to do, as long as A) I don't hear it, B) It doesn't make a mess big enough that I need to come and deal with it, because God knows it will make a mess, and C) She doesn't come out of her room asking me for anything. Almost always one of these conditions is not met, but I'll take what I can get.


The first five minutes of freedom are spent getting tea ready and scrounging some piece of chocolate out of the pantry, or a kid's treat bag. The next thirty minutes are spent reading a devotional. This week I read one about Francis of Assisi. That is one weird dude, but for some reason I really like him. Maybe because I'm quite certain he would appreciate a good garden. He might even preach to my stubborn carrots. The last 10 minutes are spent daydreaming, planning, or pinning about my garden. This week I returned to my dear friend, The Vegetable Gardener's Bible. The cover has nerdy Ed Smith, holding a bountiful wicker basket of vegetables, in a button-up short sleeved shirt, denim jeans, and a straw hat with a vaguely wild fabric band, indicating, perhaps, that there is a little uninhibited side to Ed. He has helpful section headings like, "Some Kernals of Wisdom with your Kernals of Corn." Like Francis, I'm inexplicably drawn to Ed and his WORD system: Wide Rows, Organic Methods, Raised Beds, Deep Soil. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Amen, preach it Ed! 

Since I am very near the start (dare I hope for this weekend!?!) of peeling back the sod from my vegetable garden plot and finally getting the project going, I dusted off my old trusty friend for a refresher on the basics of preparing a garden site. I crossed my fingers and prayed that I had selected a location that Ed would approve of.  Here' his advice:

1. Let the Sun Shine In: My site is pretty much in full sun all day, although the neighbor's collection of rare and bizarre trees block the late afternoon sun. I don't think I can cut those down though.

2. Judging Which Way the Wind Blows: Seeing as we are on the east side of Portland now and everyone talks about "The East Winds" I'm guessing that that is the direction the wind comes from, although to me, when our huge Norway Spruce is blowing like an angry harpy, it would seem the wind comes from every direction. If it is from the East, then the plot has no protection, but when the harpy tree blows, I don't think a wind break is going to do much good anyway. However, Ed does say that a site that slopes to the south, which mine does, will warm more quickly in the spring. Hear that, tomatoes?

3.Nobody Likes Wet Feet: The slope also leads to a lot of water at the southerly end of the garden site, (hence the overabundance of my mortal enemy, the buttercup) but I think it is just beyond my last bed and I'm hoping that raised beds will take care of any soggy problems. 

4. "A Bird in the Hand..." This heading title, while very Francis of Assisi, is a bit of a metaphorical stretch. I think what he means is that you want your garden close to your house, or at least within view, so that you think about it and enjoy it. My garden could be in East Idaho and I would think about and enjoy it, so I don't think this one is a problem, but luckily for me I have a full view of the site from my sliding glass door. 

Thank you Ed! Once again you've assured me that everything will be alright. And now, if this blasted rain would just let up so I can get going!