Furrows

I spent almost too much time on Sunday working on preparing the garden for fall plantings. R and I inherited a pretty incredible back yard, complete with its own compost pile, large trees, grass, and the start of a garden. The only thing is, the garden was partially fenced to keep out doggies, and grass had begun to grow through the fence.

So on Sunday, I took down the fence and, aided with a garden fork, an edger, and my trusty "yard butler," I restrained the grass and started to loosen the soil in the garden bed. I managed to get a good portion of the prep work done, but there are still a few errant patches of grass to go, and I didn't have time to start planting yet. Still, I like to think of this as the pre-planting contemplation phase. Most of the work is really in the preparation--the actual planting will be the icing on the cake.

Fast-forward to this morning. Our yard is also flood-irrigated, which helps keep our big, shady trees healthy, but the irrigation also puts the vegetable garden under a few inches of water for a few days. This means that, in addition to having to rethink planting advice about what goes in the sun (well, not much) and what goes in the shade, I need to think about how to arrange the planting in the face of the flood irrigation.

What I think it means is mounding the soil into rows, so that the plants don't drown when the yard is flooded. But I can't work with the soil again until it has had time to dry out. I also have a nice length of soaker hose to work with, so perhaps what I'll do will be to first lay out the soaker hose, then mound a substantial amount of soil over it, and then plant things.

There are a couple of people in my ceramics class who are incredible gardeners. It's humbling to embark on a similar endeavour--I have a feeling that I'll have mixed success at best this year. But at least it will be a beginning.

And all ya'll who garden in much milder climes--you have no idea how easy you've got it.