My husband is out right now getting breaks put on our van. His other accomplishments this three day weekend include building a garden box, scanning all of the tax documents, installing a water heater, talking to a man about repairing a leak in our roof, hiking to a waterfall,and attending church and two extended family dinners.While I have done several of those things as well, I would categorize most of my time under the heading, "wandering, gazing, daydreaming."
Phase II
The problem is that nothing can really be done in the garden yet. Sure, I can dump some compost in the vegetable beds, sweep the deck and prune the roses, but that's about it. It really doesn't help that it is 64 degrees and sunny out. I have to chant "It's only mid-February...It's only mid-February" over and over to keep myself from running wildly out to the garden with seed packets and spade clutched in my feverish hands. With all of this chanting, I find myself standing still in the center of the yard a lot, staring at the plot of ground soon to become my herb garden. I am quite certain that our retired neighbor thinks I'm insane. I rake up pine needles for a few seconds and then abruptly stop and stare out into space for ten minutes. To my neighbor it would appear I'm just looking at a lumpy, mole hill pocked field, but if he saw the vision in my head, he might understand. Phase II of the Grand Project is about to begin and he doesn't even know it yet. Dill, thyme, and rosemary is spilling out before me. Guests are sitting around a fire on a long summer evening, gravel crunching beneath their feet , sipping herb infused cocktails with the sent of sage and lavender wafting around them. A billowy vision of silver, blue and purple.
I looked back at the early pictures of installing the vegetable garden the other day and then through the end of the summer season. The transformation is remarkable; almost too easy. Clear some grass, bring is some gravel and boxes. Fill with dirt and poke in a few seeds. It hardly seems that this all I should have to do to create a bountiful, beautiful retreat. Gardening is so rewarding. I really can't wait to get started on the next phase. Time to resume my chanting. It's only mid-February. It's only mid-February...
I have returned from a week of camping in the high desert of Oregon, just long enough to let my garden shake of the minimal control I exert upon it and enjoy a rumspringa of sorts, under the lax care of a middle schooler. She was given instructions to water every other day, and leave the rest to me when I got home. Before leaving, I carefully picked any zucchini that were bigger than a matchstick, harvested all the beans, chopped down the kale (again), plucked any tomato that looked close to red, and nestled everything on the top of my 120 quart cooler for a brutal week of being pummeled with ice, crushed by hunks of bloody meat, and exposed to 100 degree blasts of dry desert air. Not exactly the storing method recommended in any gardening book. As I left, the tomato vines were securely lashed to their cages, weeds had been exterminated, and all the greens were razed.
Turns out it was a hot week at home, and my middle school hire was very effective with a water hose. Not only was everything still alive ( even my hanging basket with lobelia!) and twenty times its original size, but there were things growing that I did not plant. Well, didn't really plant. I realize that I have always given the impression that I am a carefully detailed and exacting gardener (ha), but you will be surprised to note that I do a lot of my gardening on accident. Despite the fact that I read all kinds of advice on growing vegetables, I rarely intentionally follow any of it. If it seems too elaborate of a technique (for me anyway), I check nature. For example, " Tomatoes prefer to be watered from the ground. Their leaves do not like to get wet." Really? Since when does the rain burble gently up from the ground, considerately avoiding the delicate leaves of a tomato? Most of the time I just forget the multiple steps suggested to me in the literature, and do only the parts I can recall. After all, I'm not trying to make a living or survive the winter. (Thank God.)
The success I do have is generally accidental. This year, most of my real planning was centered around aesthetics. I put nasturtiums on four sides of my center boxes so that they would spill out and surround the little bistro table. I planted scarlet runner beans so that I would have red flowers climbing the birch trellises that I made this winter. I planted pink zinnias and sunflowers to break up the green. As luck would have it, these lovely flowers were placed in the same plots as my zucchini, which require pollinators to take the male pollen to the female flowers. Hummingbirds and bees are joyfully skipping from flower to squash blossom.
I also like to bury things in the winter and see what pops up when it gets warm. I often forget that I've done this. Apparently I chucked a few pumpkins in the large bed after Halloween because I now have huge pumpkin vines wending their way through the cherry tomatoes, that I also did not plant, supported by the sunflowers that I selected for their deep magenta color. In fact, I inadvertently planted potatoes, dug them up, planted lettuce in the bare spot, and then grew giant pumpkin leaves to protect them from the hot August sun. Now if someone in a book said, "Plant a rotting pumpkin in November and bury a few moldy cherry tomatoes, then plant Yukon gold potatoes in February, plant a sunflower seed in the middle of the plot in June, dig up the potatoes in July and plant some lettuce," I never in a million years would have tried it out. But it turns out I have this crazy little ecosystem pumping out vegetables all by accident.
So, if I can grow all of this stuff by only paying attention to beauty and experimentally burying rotting stuff, you too can pick what you like to do in the garden and politely nod your head to all of the advice with three hundred steps to success, and then merrily go your own screw ball way. You will surely grow something.
I have a problem. Its origin is a term abroad in Italy when I was the very romantic age of 20. One should never taste their first glass of wine under a jasmine covered pergola on a warm evening at a 500 year old Tuscan farm with fire flies and a locally sourced five course meal.It really does a number on your head. Your expectations for life blow way out of proportion. And you can't get the warm, reddish glow of the sun setting on the rosy stone and gravel paths out of your head.
And thus begins my problem. My dream garden design is a Mediterranean, warm, drought tolerant, geometrically precise, gravel strewn masterpiece. Something like this:
My reality is a Northwest, damp, water-logged, chaotic, grass choked field. A yard much more likely to yield a garden like this:
It's lovely and all, but I'm not sipping wine on that bench. I'm drinking a hot coffee, bundled up in four layers with an outer rain parka.
So, I have started my experiment of creating a Northwest Mediterranean garden on a small scale with the vegetable garden. Of course, there are five redwoods at the southern end (yes, someone planted five of the fasted growing, largest trees in the world in my yard) , but the color of the branches exactly matches the needle thin Italian cypress trees growing all over Tuscany, so they'll do. And alas, there is no rosy pink crushed rock at Portland Sand and Gravel, but they do have every imaginable size in gray, so I will just have to compensate with copious amounts of terracotta pots. Greg laid out a perfectly rectangular plot using Ed Smith's "Magic Triangle" (well really the Egyptians came up with it, but I'll give Ed the credit.) Thank God I have a husband with the patience to measure, because Lord knows I don't. We have the square vegetable beds laid out geometrically, and I left room in the center of the garden for a black, iron bistro set, so that hopefully, I will be sipping wine on a summer evening, surrounded by the bounty of my raised beds, while delighting over a caprese salad made with my own heirloom tomatoes. I'm thinking a Chianti...
Luke helping shovel all of the dirt.
Dirt in, April seeds planted, gravel ready to go in this weekend!
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...
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!
* WARNING: This post contains profanity. (Or does it?)
The other day I was teaching my after school group of fourth graders, and said, "Okay everybody, type MobyMax into your search bar to find the math program we will be using today." Typing began, and slowly a head rolled up from the hunched body slumped nearest to me ( a seating placement that was no accident). Two shifty eyes peaked out from the side of his head, and he said, just loudly enough for his classmates to hear, and just quietly enough to feign genuine concern, "Why does my tablet say Moby...dick?" And then just a glimmer of a well-practiced smirk flashed across his face. He looked up at me oh-so-innocently while nine other students jerked their heads up anticipating what could only be a great show.
What they didn't know was that I'm a hardened veteran. " Oh, Moby DICK!" I exclaimed, loudly enough for the class next door to hear, "Moby DICK is a very famous book! You might get to read Moby DICK when you get to high school!" Eyes grew three times their normal size and then quickly dove back down to the tablets. Silent, on-task work prevailed for the rest of class because the last thing any of them wanted to hear was their teacher shouting that word again. Victory!
And here's where I get to planting seeds. What may not seem evident at first, is that while I was masterfully executing classroom management, I was also planting a seed. This disengaged pupil of mine may now have just a glimmer of hope that somewhere in his future, in the mystical land known as High School, he might get to read a whole book about dick, and not just any dick, but a Moby dick. And that my friends, might just get him to pay a little more attention in reading class tomorrow. Ahh...planting seeds.
Of course I don't just plant metaphorical seeds. I plant real ones too. What I love about seeds is that they are the cheapest and laziest way to get something to grow in your garden. I've tried starting seeds indoors so that I could put strong seedlings out in spring, but they always ended up meeting a cruel fate. They'd mold, they'd get straggly, or they'd get knocked over by curious children or an idiotic dog. So I've given up on that for now. I am now becoming an expert on seeds that can just be plunked directly into the dirt and left to do their thing.
To select seed, I find anything that was either developed at Oregon State to meet the fickle demands of an Oregon growing season, or an heirloom that was brought over from Russia, preferably Siberia. This is the same strategy I use for selecting tomato plants. If some babushka got a tomato to ripen in Siberia, and it was good enough for her to save the seed and try again, then it's good enough for me.
I buy my seeds from a seed catalog, which is to say that I go a little overboard. In a store, you see how many packets of seeds you have loaded up in your cart, and the reasonable part of your brain kicks in and tells you, "That's probably enough." You throw in three more packs and then you're done. With a seed catalog, there is no visual clue that you have outdone yourself, yet again. You start with an organized list of the things you need, then you get blissfully distracted by all of the amazing plants you never noticed before, and before you know it you have enough seed on your order form to supply a forty acre farm. Yet somehow it always comes to $50.00. See what I mean about cheap!
And every year there is always the darling, new plant that I can't live without, even though it probably does not pass the "plunk-it and forget-it" test, it's never even heard of Siberia and was most likely taken directly from somewhere on the Equator and placed in a seed packet for my torment. This year it's the cucamelon. I ordered it in December because I was afraid they would sell out. It is an absolutely adorable cucumber that looks exactly like a miniature watermelon. It is supposed to be intensely crunchy, with just a hint of lime. I'm in love. But I'm not alone. Check out the Sutton gardener video below. He might just be the hunkiest gardener waxing about the most sublime vegetable that has ever been caught on tape.
I put a list of everything I ordered for this year's garden below, just in case anyone actually reads this blog for useful information, which I'm not necessarily recommending. But if you're a "plunk-it and forget-it" kind of person like me, then most of the seeds should make you quite pleased. (I can not yet vouch for the cucamelon,). Of course the Grand Dame of my garden, the tomato, will not be planted from seed, so don't panic that you don't see it on the list. My lust for boxes full red ripe tomatoes will not be left to the capricious whim of nature. Let's not be silly...
Cucamelon
Chive Seeds
Cilantro Slow Bolt
Dill Dukat
Oregon Blue Lake Pole Bean
Scarlet Runner
Baltimore Carrot
Purple Haze Carrot
Neon Color Mix Chard
Fennel
Bak Choi-Mei Qing Choy
Cascadia Sugar Snap Pea
Jackpot Zucchini
Sunburst Scallop
Echinacea
Cosmos
Empress of India Nasturtium
Jewel Peach Melba Nasturtium
Italian Parsley
Moulin Rouge Sunflower
Supreme Mix Sunflower
California Giants Violet Queen Zinnia
The Project has begun. You could say it really started in June with the frantic plunking of eight tomato plants into a solitary raised bed. Or maybe the hurried toss of a few dahlia tubers by the deck late in the spring. But no... I think the project really began today. For today I took out the graph paper.
I NEVER take out graph paper. It runs completely contrary to my willy-nilly nature. My husband, weirdly, has graph paper as his notepad. Can you imagine?! All of those serious little boxes staring at you while you're trying to daydream, doodle, or deliberate? The only reason I even own any is because I thought I might take up cross stitch as a means to improve my undeveloped attention to detail. I don't think it worked.
However, as I tromped out into our soggy field to measure the perimeter of the new vegetable garden (I use the term "measure" loosely, since I am also adverse to precision with a tape measure) I came to several sobering conclusions:
1. This yard is freaking huge.
2. My vegetable garden will have more square feet than my first house.
3. Greg (my husband) is going to kill me when he sees how many tons of gravel and dirt he is going to be shoveling.
4. This is only Phase 1 of 3,678 phases to complete the garden of my dreams.
5. This "Project" is going to take 20 years and 5 million dollars.
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