Garden journal: keep planting!

We are garden rich this year. Eight. Count them: eight! gardens.

These three hold the record for longetivity: a lettuce garden, an herb garden and the asparagus garden. Michael says the railroad ties went in before the original cabin was completed. There used to be four gardens, but one came out when Clyde and Irene added the first addition in 2007.

The “big garden” went in soon after the cabin was completed. Michael thinks maybe 1998. We had to fence the area so the deer didn’t eat everything down to the ground. We hauled untold loads of compost. Then we moved to Maine in 2006 and the garden reverted to sod. We reclaimed it when we moved in with Irene after Clyde died.

We’ve had an on and off relationship with garden #5. We hauled loads of compost and improved the soil when we planted the currants ages ago. In wet years it becomes a quagmire and then returns to sod. It’s been a garden and then sod again several times since we moved here in 2014. Currently it’s our popcorn garden.

The tomato/pepper/eggplant garden grew out of an experiment. Last year we cleared this area of our first straw compost pile (it went into the big garden), so we stuck some winter squash seeds in the area to see what they would do. They grew wonderfully; we cooked the last squash a week ago. We widened the area, evicting the Creeping Charlie and quack grass, erected the fence to keep chickens from bathing here, and hope our nightshades prosper.

We cleared the last of the composted straw from Garden #7 yesterday. Michael installed temporary fencing to keep the chickens from scratching up the area and I planted winter squash (and sunflowers) today. We will remove the fencing when the squash are large enough to beat the chickens into submission.

This winter we will start to pile used straw atop garden #6 and last winter’s straw pile will mulch next year’s gardens…replacing Garden #6. Two winters worth of composting seems to be about right for repurposing straw. Why so much straw? Winter bedding for the birds.

Garden #8 is the “flag garden.” It’s the only flower garden we have. Some day I will have a dye garden as an excuse to grow flowers by the bucketloads. At the moment, I can barely keep this low-maintenance batch of blooms watered and weeded.

Today would have been my dad’s 89th birthday, an anniversary he shared with my friend Katherine, who turned 60 and is a Master Gardener. My father loved watering and weeding the flowers at his house. Katherine has been known to wear a headlamp and garden well into the night to get bulbs in before the first snow. Posting about our gardens during these troubled and troubling times is a fine way to celebrate their birthdays.