Garden Update

One of the things I love about our new house is the yard. Our old house had one of the biggest lots in the subdivision, but the back yard sloped down to a little wooded 'creek'. I don't know if the creek even stayed flowing all year or if it dried up now & then. It might be more accurate to call it a ditch. The back yard would have been good for sledding if it didn't go straight from grass to trees & bushes full of thorns.We leveled out a spot in the middle of the yard for the garden, but even that had a little slope to it. Plus it was real hard clay, didn't exactly soak up the water.

Our new yard, on the other hand, is flat as a pancake. And the soil is nice, fertile silt from all the floods. Fertilized by Mother Nature & the Mississippi River. The only problem is there are a bunch of great big maple trees that shade the back yard all morning. Plus, we have a septic tank. At first I thought it would be a bad idea to plant anything over the septic field. You always hear about produce being recalled because it was sprayed with water or fertilizer contaminated with 'fecal matter'. Somebody on the computer said it would be okay because I wouldn't be spraying the septic water over the plants, they would be sending their roots down & absorbing the good stuff & ignoring the icky stuff.

Still, we put the garden on the edge of the garden away from the septic field. Not because I was worried about salmonella or whatever you get from poopy water, but because I'm worried about the septic tank breaking down. It would suck donkey nuts to have an award-winning garden & have to bulldoze it down because the septic system went bad. We had a lot of trouble with it this spring because between all the rain we had & the river teasing us over & over again I think the water table was about 6 inches below ground.

The 'garden' would have been perfect for mud wrestling. I didn't even plant anything this spring because it was so muddy, & then when it did sort of dry out we still didn't know if we were going to end up getting flooded or not. It sucked because I started all kinds of plants in 6-packs under florescent lights. Broccoli & cabbage & tomatoes & lettuce. Tons of stuff. It was just too muddy too long to plant anything so I ended up letting it all dry up & die.

Eventually Keith saw one of our neighbors with a big, beautiful garden planting some stuff & he decided if it wasn't too late for them to plant shit it wasn't too late or us to plant shit, so we did. It was late enough I went ahead & planted more broccoli & cabbage & cauliflower & peas. I didn't bother planting any peppers, but I planted some tomatoes & melons & squash. The garden was going great but there just wasn't enough time. I did get a couple of squashes. Fancy French heirloom squash called Potimarron. Big orange teardrops. A little smaller than bowling balls. They were yummy. Their skin is so thin you don't have to peel them, you can eat them skin and all. I saved some seeds since they're heirlooms, but I also had some other squashes, a pumpkin & a buttercup squash, so they might be crossbreeds.

The buttercup squash was a big surprise. I keep my seeds in metal coffee cans. Yes, cans, plural. I have 4 cans full of seed packets. When I'm ready to go out & plant I pick out the seeds I'm going to plant & put them in a plastic container. Who wants to lug around a cardboard box full of coffee cans full of seeds? But I've got to put the seed packets in something so they don't get blown around or covered in mud or soaking wet. But sometimes the plastic container gets knocked over & seeds fall out of the packets & end up rolling around in the bottom of the container. This year I decided to plant the orphan seeds. I ended up scattering them along the center of the garden.

Bad decision. Watermelons took over the garden. Plus a monster squash popped up right in the middle. I didn't know what it was for the longest time. At first I thought it was a zucchini because it stayed in a little bush. Little is a relative term. It was one bush, but the leaves were the size of pizza pans. It finally set out some fruit & then it was easy to see it wasn't a zucchini. Instead of the fruit being long & skinny it was round & stubby. It took me a while to figure out what it was because a couple of years ago when the grocery store put their seeds on sale I bought one of everything there was & there were a bunch of squashes. Last year I planted a bunch of them, but one of the seeds must have fallen out in the plastic container. That garden sucked for melons & squash, but I ended up emptying a bunch of seed packets so I threw them away, & then this year when the mystery seed sprouted I couldn't tell what the heck it was.

Keith kept complaining about the garden being an overgrown eyesore. He wanted me to rip out all the watermelons that were taking over the middle of the garden. I have to admit he had a point. You couldn't walk down the center aisle at all. You couldn't even see the center aisle. I just couldn't do it. How can you kill a plant that is growing so beautifully? Lots of little baby watermelons, hiding under all those big green, perky leaves. Unfortunately, none of them grew up to be big, sweet, juicy, watermelons.

There was a cold snap. We tried to save the garden. Keith & Deana went out every night for a week & covered the garden with sheets & tarps, then in the morning after I took the dogs out I'd pull everything off & inspect things. It would have worked except one night it didn't just frost, there was a deep, bone chilling, almost in the 'teens freeze. Everything died. It sucked. There were only a couple of tomato plants but they were covered with tons of tomatoes. There were even a couple of tomatoes that were starting to ripen up, but they just didn't have a chance.

Next year, on the other hand, I'm planning a dream garden. Or at least Keith is. He told me he's going to be in charge of the garden next year. No wild & free plant riot.

That's what he thinks.