The whole garden thing was and continues to be a giant experiment. I'd never grown anything that requires actual tending. Pete is handy with plants, but he's only ever attempted the windowsill variety. So growing stuff in the dirt that we could later eat was like an adventure! Most of my adventures start off with little more than enthusiasm and in this regard, gardening has been different. I actually did some reading. I got some books out from the library and wracked up some hefty late fees in the process. Oh shit. Speaking of which, I took an herb book out a loooong time ago and it's still in our living room. Sorry, library. Don't blacklist me!
After all my reading and perusing many websites, I decided the best philosophy for gardening would be - let's just see what happens. We decided we'd grow a bunch of plants from seed, throw them in our beds and hope for the best. Due to lack of knowledge and plenty of procrastination, our little seeds got a late start. But they all grew! We started 4 kinds of tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, an eggplant, sweet peppers, hot peppers, and zucchini. We planted 4 seeds from each variety, assuming that we'd have quite a few duds since we'd gone with heirloom varieties. To our utter amazement, ever last seed we planted germinated and grew into a little seedling. Success!
There was no way we'd have room to plant all of these, unless we wanted to be graveyard farmers. So we had to "cull" (KILL!) all the seedlings that we didn't have room for and couldn't give away. I feel like our garden is now doubly haunted. We've got the ghosts of Quakers long since past the prime as well as the ghosts of baby vegetables to deal with. Wonderful.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Call me MegGuyver
I get a thrill every time I buy some on sale. Or find something at a garage sale. Or make something myself that I could have just bought. I blame my sale-hungry father. That's right - I'm lookin at you, JOD!
It comes as no surprise then, that Craigslist is one of my favorite places on the internet. So much cheap stuff! With pictures! Impossible for me to resist.
I also grew up in a house where the ladies outnumbered the man 3 to 1. (4 to 1 if you count our dog) In order to fill the void that (I was convinced) my Dad felt having had only daughters, I learned how to be handy at a young age. By "handy" I mean I like trying to fix things myself, whether I know what I'm doing or not. I also learned from my Dad that power tools are way more fun than manual ones. Sooo, when I saw a $15 dollar cordless drill on Craigslist, I pounced. I'd been wanting one. Your life cannot be complete without a cordless drill to fulfill all your screwdriving dreams.
The thing about Craigslist that's not so great is the actually having to interact with the seller when you want to buy something part. You email them. You often end up giving them your phone number. You have to go to their house and talk to them. These are not things I'm in the habit of doing, but what can I say? Craislist, that foxy minx, brings out the risk-taker in me.
After a prolonged email back-and-forth followed by a few phone calls (uuughhh! why! email works fine!) I arrive at the guys house and pick up the drill. I fork over my $15 and he hands me a drill. I give it a cursory inspection involving pressing the trigger. It whirs. Ok. Sold.
Upon closer inspection I realized that I'd purchased a Tim Allen "Tool Time" drill. Yup. This is not something that instilled me with confidence, but too late. The drill is mine.
Fast forward a few weeks to the garden. It's hot. We'd just been to Home Depot Hell and we were looking at an empty patch of dirt and a pile of lumber. Time to start building! I pulled out my Tool Time drill and got busy drilling pilot holes. The drill starts making screeching noises. I continued as though this were normal drill behavior. The drill started getting VERY hot in my hand. Hmm. Maybe it just needs a little break? I could use a little break too. Building is hard.
We were finally ready to slap some boards together to start forming the frame of our raised bed. It was time to switch from a drill bit to the screwdriver attachment...wait a sec. There is a flat head attachment. WHERE IS THE PHILLIPS HEAD ATTACHMENT!?!?
It took me a moment for realization to dawn - I'd been Craigslist Swindled. That's probably what the whole "talk to me on the phone" business was about. The drill guy was gauging my familiarity with power tools and decided that since I was lacking, he would sell me a second rate piece of crap drill. I hate you, Craigslist man.
Ok, time to regroup! I can drill bigger pilot holes and screw the drills in by hand. Ok. Good plan. Only when I proceeded with my new plan, the drill didn't whir. It didn't screech. It made angry, chugging, clicking noises and the drill bit didn't move. Apparently I bought ironwood? No. This drill is CRAP.
At this point another gardener happened by and gave us the, "So, any clue what you're doing?" face. He was a secret gardening angel of mercy, I think, because the next thing he did was offer us his own tools. He would have built our beds for us but there was a (insert thrilling sport here) game on that he'd been looking forward to watching. He and his wife live on the other side of the graveyard fence, so he lent us his tool bag over the fence like a true gentleman.
Armed with working equipment, we managed to knock out 3 beds and hammer them into our dirt. They're not going to win any beauty pageants, but these babies were a labor of love and I couldn't be more proud of them!
It comes as no surprise then, that Craigslist is one of my favorite places on the internet. So much cheap stuff! With pictures! Impossible for me to resist.
I also grew up in a house where the ladies outnumbered the man 3 to 1. (4 to 1 if you count our dog) In order to fill the void that (I was convinced) my Dad felt having had only daughters, I learned how to be handy at a young age. By "handy" I mean I like trying to fix things myself, whether I know what I'm doing or not. I also learned from my Dad that power tools are way more fun than manual ones. Sooo, when I saw a $15 dollar cordless drill on Craigslist, I pounced. I'd been wanting one. Your life cannot be complete without a cordless drill to fulfill all your screwdriving dreams.
The thing about Craigslist that's not so great is the actually having to interact with the seller when you want to buy something part. You email them. You often end up giving them your phone number. You have to go to their house and talk to them. These are not things I'm in the habit of doing, but what can I say? Craislist, that foxy minx, brings out the risk-taker in me.
After a prolonged email back-and-forth followed by a few phone calls (uuughhh! why! email works fine!) I arrive at the guys house and pick up the drill. I fork over my $15 and he hands me a drill. I give it a cursory inspection involving pressing the trigger. It whirs. Ok. Sold.
Upon closer inspection I realized that I'd purchased a Tim Allen "Tool Time" drill. Yup. This is not something that instilled me with confidence, but too late. The drill is mine.
Fast forward a few weeks to the garden. It's hot. We'd just been to Home Depot Hell and we were looking at an empty patch of dirt and a pile of lumber. Time to start building! I pulled out my Tool Time drill and got busy drilling pilot holes. The drill starts making screeching noises. I continued as though this were normal drill behavior. The drill started getting VERY hot in my hand. Hmm. Maybe it just needs a little break? I could use a little break too. Building is hard.
We were finally ready to slap some boards together to start forming the frame of our raised bed. It was time to switch from a drill bit to the screwdriver attachment...wait a sec. There is a flat head attachment. WHERE IS THE PHILLIPS HEAD ATTACHMENT!?!?
It took me a moment for realization to dawn - I'd been Craigslist Swindled. That's probably what the whole "talk to me on the phone" business was about. The drill guy was gauging my familiarity with power tools and decided that since I was lacking, he would sell me a second rate piece of crap drill. I hate you, Craigslist man.
Ok, time to regroup! I can drill bigger pilot holes and screw the drills in by hand. Ok. Good plan. Only when I proceeded with my new plan, the drill didn't whir. It didn't screech. It made angry, chugging, clicking noises and the drill bit didn't move. Apparently I bought ironwood? No. This drill is CRAP.
At this point another gardener happened by and gave us the, "So, any clue what you're doing?" face. He was a secret gardening angel of mercy, I think, because the next thing he did was offer us his own tools. He would have built our beds for us but there was a (insert thrilling sport here) game on that he'd been looking forward to watching. He and his wife live on the other side of the graveyard fence, so he lent us his tool bag over the fence like a true gentleman.
Armed with working equipment, we managed to knock out 3 beds and hammer them into our dirt. They're not going to win any beauty pageants, but these babies were a labor of love and I couldn't be more proud of them!
Raised from the Bed!
Have I mentioned that our community garden is in a graveyard? Yep. Let that sink in for a moment. Graveyard + gardening = haunted salad? According to the Quakers, this part of the graveyard was never used for its intended purpose, so why not grow some veggies on it? I was honestly a little bummed, the thought of growing tomatoes on top of old graves was oddly appealing. I mean, great fertilizer, right?
So this graveyard was really just a grassy field and the Quakers hired somebody to dig a whole bunch of it up. Bam. Garden plots. They took it upon themselves to get the soil tested and offered all the gardeners the results of said testing. The results read something like this "Soil is bahahh blaahh baditty blah, lacking (impossible to pronounce) nutrients, recommend gobbeldy-gook (or just giving up), etc" AKA, it was written up by astrophysicist argro-geniuses and not newbie gardeners. After some decoding I came to the conclusion that the soil sucked and would need a lot of supplementary nutrients added if we wanted anything more than dandelions to grow.
By the way - at this point I was feeling a little surprised. Who knew that soil quality was such a big deal? I mean, it's dirt. Stuff grows in dirt all over the world. I was a camp counselor for crying out loud! I know dirt. It's brown. When it gets wet it gets sticky and gloppy. It's hard to get out from under your fingernails. It's fun to play in. What else do you need to me know, for crying out loud?
But stuff like nitrogen and phosphorous are "important" according to real gardeners. Whatever. Screw all that sciency stuff. We decided to buy some soil and throw it into raised beds. More labor intensive, but less thinky. That's my kind of gardening.
So we did some very loose calculations about how much square yardage of soil we needed to purchase. This involved some graph paper, a bit of research, a few bottles of beer and plenty of good, old fashioned, winging it. We decided that 2 4x4 beds and 1 4x8 bed sounded good, cause why not? We'd see how it went. Woo! We're gardening!
So, around May 1 Chris and I went to Home Depot. Be advised - Home Depot on an early spring Saturday is TOTALLY INSANE. There were approximately 8 gajillion customers wandering around with giant empty flat bed carts and 3 people working there. One of those workers was sporting a peg leg and a neck brace. And he only spoke in sign language. It was a blast!
So we didn't really know what the hell we were up to, but I had made a list, so I was wandering confidently. I knew we could accomplish the Herculean task of getting everything on the list. Another lesson about Home Depot - this one is for the ladies. Wear pig tails. Or a skirt. Look confused. Approach the nearest Orange Apron and hand over your list. Proceed to let said Orange Apron gather everything you need, get it cut and then thank the Orange Apron. Never fails. Unless you get the guy with the peg leg. He's grouchy.
So we bought some lumber, some screws and some garden stakes. It only took 3 hours. Time to go to the garden and build some beds. Oh my. We had such high hopes! And such a flimsy grip on reality. Building stuff is harder than it looks.
So this graveyard was really just a grassy field and the Quakers hired somebody to dig a whole bunch of it up. Bam. Garden plots. They took it upon themselves to get the soil tested and offered all the gardeners the results of said testing. The results read something like this "Soil is bahahh blaahh baditty blah, lacking (impossible to pronounce) nutrients, recommend gobbeldy-gook (or just giving up), etc" AKA, it was written up by astrophysicist argro-geniuses and not newbie gardeners. After some decoding I came to the conclusion that the soil sucked and would need a lot of supplementary nutrients added if we wanted anything more than dandelions to grow.
By the way - at this point I was feeling a little surprised. Who knew that soil quality was such a big deal? I mean, it's dirt. Stuff grows in dirt all over the world. I was a camp counselor for crying out loud! I know dirt. It's brown. When it gets wet it gets sticky and gloppy. It's hard to get out from under your fingernails. It's fun to play in. What else do you need to me know, for crying out loud?
But stuff like nitrogen and phosphorous are "important" according to real gardeners. Whatever. Screw all that sciency stuff. We decided to buy some soil and throw it into raised beds. More labor intensive, but less thinky. That's my kind of gardening.
So we did some very loose calculations about how much square yardage of soil we needed to purchase. This involved some graph paper, a bit of research, a few bottles of beer and plenty of good, old fashioned, winging it. We decided that 2 4x4 beds and 1 4x8 bed sounded good, cause why not? We'd see how it went. Woo! We're gardening!
So, around May 1 Chris and I went to Home Depot. Be advised - Home Depot on an early spring Saturday is TOTALLY INSANE. There were approximately 8 gajillion customers wandering around with giant empty flat bed carts and 3 people working there. One of those workers was sporting a peg leg and a neck brace. And he only spoke in sign language. It was a blast!
So we didn't really know what the hell we were up to, but I had made a list, so I was wandering confidently. I knew we could accomplish the Herculean task of getting everything on the list. Another lesson about Home Depot - this one is for the ladies. Wear pig tails. Or a skirt. Look confused. Approach the nearest Orange Apron and hand over your list. Proceed to let said Orange Apron gather everything you need, get it cut and then thank the Orange Apron. Never fails. Unless you get the guy with the peg leg. He's grouchy.
So we bought some lumber, some screws and some garden stakes. It only took 3 hours. Time to go to the garden and build some beds. Oh my. We had such high hopes! And such a flimsy grip on reality. Building stuff is harder than it looks.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Not Having A Clue Builds Character, right?
I like jumping in head first to things, only to realize I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm up to. It's exciting and leads to occasional disasters and much hilarity. My big learn-as-I-go project for this Spring/Summer has been gardening. Or, more specifically, fighting Mother Nature to grow stuff in the dirt that I can eat.
Late in the winter a friend mentioned that she'd nabbed a plot in a brand new community garden run by some nearby Quakers. Was I interested in one? Hell yes, I was! (This is generally my stock answer to new projects involving any of the following: crafts, foods, the great outdoors, homemade goodness) Did I know anything about gardening? Sure - it involves dirt and seeds and you water them and then you have vegetables to eat. Easy peasy. One $35 dollar check later and I had myself a garden plot.
While I've been enjoying the gardening and am planning on making a Zucchini Galette on Friday to devour the fruit of my labours, this whole gardening adventure hasn't been without screw ups. Since we're just getting into the growing season, I have to assume they'll keep on coming. This is where I'll chronicle my adventures in gardening and any other hijinks I jump into by the skin of my teeth. (If this blog were a movie, that's when Pete would proclaim "And...we've got title!")
Late in the winter a friend mentioned that she'd nabbed a plot in a brand new community garden run by some nearby Quakers. Was I interested in one? Hell yes, I was! (This is generally my stock answer to new projects involving any of the following: crafts, foods, the great outdoors, homemade goodness) Did I know anything about gardening? Sure - it involves dirt and seeds and you water them and then you have vegetables to eat. Easy peasy. One $35 dollar check later and I had myself a garden plot.
While I've been enjoying the gardening and am planning on making a Zucchini Galette on Friday to devour the fruit of my labours, this whole gardening adventure hasn't been without screw ups. Since we're just getting into the growing season, I have to assume they'll keep on coming. This is where I'll chronicle my adventures in gardening and any other hijinks I jump into by the skin of my teeth. (If this blog were a movie, that's when Pete would proclaim "And...we've got title!")
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