The Garden Blog

I have established gardens before- created new beds where there were none, expanded and recreated beds that existed. Weeding, pruning, planting, cleaning, creating, rage weeding- none of this is new. We’ve had small runs of growing tomatoes, I have my kitchen herb planters every year, we’ve even grown large garlic patches…

But for some reason- this veggie patch has basically consumed us from February up until the end of October when we cleaned out the frost killed 6 feet tall Cosmos. The combination of emotions- Excitement. Fear. Dread. Worry. Anxiety. Overwhelm. Bliss. Happiness. Pride… it’s just honestly been incredible.

There was the planning stage- designing blue prints, figuring materials & cost, combing through a foot tall stack of seed catalogs- one of which being the most beautiful catalog I have ever laid eyes on, redesigning blue prints, discussing where the beast was going to go, arguing over costs. Then the beautiful seed packages start coming in the mail. Then it was looking at the calendar, checking start times and germinations, buying seed starting mix, and a greenhouse, and growing lights, and tiny little starter pots, and sprayer that mist just enough water, spending an evening planting seed by tiny seed, labeling popsicle sticks, and waiting. All the waiting. Light schedules, watering, waiting, buying heater mats…

Collecting the building supplies- traveling to a lumber mill in the middle of where the hell are we, badly overloading both truck and trailer (trailer mostly) and hauling it all home, to unload. The splinters! Oh my gawd the splinters from those damn pine boards! They would go clean through work gloves- leather, neoprene, or otherwise, and the splinters would leave splinters when you pulled them. So you had to wait until they festered and popped. Building the raised bed boxes piece by piece, then carting them over to the garden area freshly covered in wood chips and finishing their builds and placing them. We borrowed a friend's tractor and when the first came- Hubby loaded the frames by tractor bucket full and I raked them out between loads. 
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Then once we were finally frost free- which was actually the first week in June (almost a month past where you should plant)- the time had come for the babies to go outside…  where a lot of them died almost instantly. Talk about breaking your heart. This is when the drought and the heat started.  We went from frost at night to 80 degree cloudless days.
Soon enough we realized there were hardly any nutrients in the soil we bought for the boxes and we didn’t know we should have added compost or at the very least compost manure to them before we planted. Then it was playing catch up with fertilizing. Meanwhile our little veggie patch had clearly caught the attention of the neighborhood so it was almost nightly and daily tours with the neighbors, showing what was where, what things were for, and my my my how strange the little cluster of luffa sponge plants were. “Sponges? Sponges are plants? I thought they were plastic!!”

We collected tomato plants from the greenhouses we were regulars too from other gardening adventures around the house- because it honestly didn't appear as if many at all were going to live from the babies I grew in our basement greenhouse set up. Then for a month came stress, finding bugs eating everything, finding organic bug killers, and the non-stop watering schedule because, of course, it was a MAJOR DROUGHT this year!! Walking out in the evenings with our black light flashlight to find the horned worms (which glow in the dark by the way) to pick them off and smash them. Also nightly treatments to the stems of the zucchini and summer squash because of the damn vine borers. 
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We avoided all deer and rabbit issues our neighbors were having by simply planting marigolds in every single box all the way around (rabbits and deer hate them). And we made a haphazard fence from wooden stakes and fishing lines around the perimeter. When deer feel it but can't see it, it scares them away from that area. They were literally sleeping in the garlic patch next to the garden, but never came into our garden. Marigolds, as it turns out, were multi-purpose. Rabbit deterring and mood satisfying little balls of sunshine. Popping their deadheads off (oh so satisfying) and tossing them in the aisles of the garden- to keep the bunnies away also gave it a festive celebration feel.

We learned that later in the season, Monarch butterflies who have ignored the plethora of milkweeds I let grow every year- turns out they LOVE carrot tops to live in and eat to the nubs! We also learned other important things- like Lola will eat crabgrass and weeds by the handful as she follows you when you weeded the beds. You will pray on and wish for success everyday until the first small yellow tomato blossoms turn into tiny green globes of promise.
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For myself, I found peace in that garden. If I was mad, or stressed, or having a huge blowup of medically uncontrolled anxiety I went to pull weeds. There were always weeds, even after we buried the beds in straw. The smell of damp garden soil altered my brain chemistry and brought me back from whatever hellbeast of an emotion I was suffering from. I enjoyed walking down in the early morning and just listened to the sounds of the garden waking up. Especially when things started blooming- it was full of honeybees and bumble bees. There’s also something about wandering down through the dewy grass, bare foot, in my night shirt to pick a handful of Tulsi (Holy Basil) for my daily quart of anxiety reducing tea. The quiet pride of growing your own medicine has definitely got me hooked to continue doing it.

Our harvest started mid August and stretched long into late October given the warmest Autumn season I could remember. And still when it finally looked like the cool was to set in, I brought in almost an entire bushel of green tomatoes we came up with uses for and canned up late in the season. Soon after we harvested the 30+ luffa gourds, tossing over half that since they’d not mature once off the vine, and processed the rest green. This far north, processing them green is about all you can do instead of hoping they would dry inside and instead turn rot. We then cleaned up the beds, pulling the straw, weeding, and pulling plant remains. We dressed a box with compost, tilled it in, and planted a fine little garlic patch for next year. Our first hard freeze hit, turning what was left blooming into beautiful little icy dancers that soon shriveled and were pulled during our last bit of planting and cleaning before the leaves fell.
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Now the garden sleeps and I’m already planning for next Spring. Catalogs come in the mail, I make lists of supplies needed for next year, ideas of things to build to make gardening easier. Ideas on how many more boxes we will build from the leftover lumber and fill to make more garden beds, fence ideas… Just… Hope. Planning for spring will help me get my anxiety riddled brain through the dark cold winter. Until then… time to sip a warm cup of chai tea and read my new favorite book…