Ready for Spring -- April 5, 2006

It's been a mild winter here in Pewee Valley, KY - a small suburb east of Louisville - but I'm so ready for spring. A big storm - I think 80 mph winds qualify - Sunday night will, I hope, usher in warmer weather. I've got big plans for my acre of prime Pewee Valley real estate this year and a new little Mantis tiller I'm dying to try. I usually do all my digging myself with my trusty Hechinger's shovel I got with our first house and garden in 1992 in Woodbridge, Va. It's dug through hard packed clay in that raw new subdivision, then through rich Michigan soil (hiding a layer of submerged cement and brick) in the postage-stamp yard of our 1917 house on an established city lot. Now that I've got a whole acre to play with (and I'm edging into my 40s - gulp) I need a little help. My family prefers the great indoors and are not big on manual labor -- but since I have control issues anyway where the garden (among other places) is concerned, it's just as well. Anyway I hope this miracle Mantis can provide the muscle I need to bring my plans to life.


A Bit About This Garden
We moved here from Lansing, Mich., in August 2003. There was a small vegetable garden that had a year's worth of grass and weeds over it that backed to a wild-looking perennial bed. There was also a small pear tree loaded with fruit and a rather decrepit apple tree loaded with scabarous-looking apples. In early April 2004 I paid a guy down the street with a tractor $40 to break up a 20 by 50 foot plot and got started.

Our house was built in the late 40s-early 50s. The original owner was a stone mason who dumped a lot of his excess materials at the back of the property and in the small creek that runs along the back. My first find was a terrific terracotta column - now a plant stand in the garden - then a huge cement drum now upturned at the center of my herb garden. Also piles of bricks -- all nicely aged and mossy that I used to outline beds. Some great mossy and slightly split railroad ties that I rolled and pushed end-over-end into place divide the herb garden from the veggie garden. I laid out a classic semi-formal herb garden with a $5 estate sale park bench at the back for seating. In the veggie garden there are very slightly raised beds with an open area on the end. I put down plastic on the paths and threw down many bags of hardwood mulch -- some of the plastic is just the mulch bags that I opened up with scissors along 3 edges. I also uncovered an old compost pile so had some free organic material to augment the stuff I had to buy. My family bought (and hauled ) 25 bags of compost for me for Mother's Day that year. I never thought I'd actually ask for dirt as a gift, but there you go.


It all looked great until the end of June when I ran out of steam -- or perhaps the life was just sucked out of me by mosquitos - no-see-ums - and the unrelenting humidity of the Ohio River Valley. Weeds took over though I did harvest tons of tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, and green beans. A cutting bed for tall State Fair Zinnias also produced a riot of color. I didn't get a single pepper though -- everything that went in that particular bed was doomed and believe it or not no zucchini. I got one lowly butternut squash, a handful of snap peas about 3 carrots and 4 beets, and four smallish ears of corn.

I blanched and froze many baggies of Kentucky Blue Lake pole beans and made tons of fresh salsa, spagetti sauce and jars of refrigerator pickles. Of course my children - epicureans that they are - decided that only store bought produce would do and would only eat "real" - read frozen - green beans and store-bought salsa and pasta sauce. The husband is only marginally less picky. More for me.

Garden Year Two
In year two I moved some plots around -- beans to the front to discourage the deer buffet that was open the year before. Some French filet bush beans in addition to the pole beans -- my heavy yield the year before snapped many of my bamboo pole teepees. I doubled the poles I had left to make the new supports. Peppers in another area, strawberries and thornless blackberries instead of corn - as well as a couple of rhubarb plants -- Fruit is a bit more popular with the kids than veggies. I tried broccoli - not enough return for the small plot I had. And several types of potatoes. I also tried to rejuvenate the apple tree - a serious pruning, feeding and spraying. I couldn't stick to the schedule and felt like I was poisoning myself when ever I sprayed - so I quit part-way through and didn't do much good. There were plenty of apples though -- they weren't pretty but I discovered they did make nice pies.

The herb garden has a row of different varieties of sage down one side - common, pineapple and variegated. Oregano and French thyme in a small bed at the front - a few dill on the other side of the cheesy arbor I planted there after I took down the Chrismas lights (it has a trellis of white lights) and didn't have room in the garage. Lettuce and onion beds are overflow from the vegetable garden. The 4 center plots are chives - started from seed on site the previous year, basil -- the short summerlong variety. pink creeping thyme; and Italian parsley. The the thyme and parsley pretty much got taken over by wild violets. Moles got the dill. The basil was wonderful as were the chives. The garden was edged with French Vanilla Marigolds -- gorgeous pale yellow - raised from seed. These faltered half-way through the season - it may have been the moles -- they did so well the first year.


I tend to go for a slightly wild-looking cottage-y feel in the garden. My girls like running around the paths -- I have a Brownie troop with my youngest daughter and they run through it and pretend they're bunnies. Ideally I'd do drip hoses, but with so many beds I just go ahead and use the sprinkler. I got an automated timer last year - it's battery operated and programmable - hook it up to the spigot, hook the hose to it and it will water up to 5 times a day for whichever days you choose. I had it set up for 35 minutes in the morning and evening. Ah the sprinkler - it never loses its appeal.


Anyway - much like the first year - weeds, heat and rampant tomato growth got the best of me by mid August. I did clear a few beds and try for a second crop of spinach, golden beets and peas but by the time I got around to it -- end of September -- it was too late. I did have bumper crops of peppers -- especially jalopenos -- beautiful potatoes -- onions and shallots (started from sets), beans and spring lettuce and spinach. However a second crop of lettuce failed miserably, beets didn't do too well, neither did the broccoli. I got 2 eight ball zucchini before the plants gave up the ghost and no eggplants (these were in the same doomed plot as the peppers the year before). I didn't get many cucumbers - the vines turned yellow and died early. All my fruit plants were too new to produce -- any flowers were pinched to help store energy for their second year. This photo of the herb/perennial garden in August was carefully framed to edit out unpleasant weedy views and show off the vintage glider chair I found at Goodwill for $15 and rejuvenated with purple spray paint (I don't think anyone has ever sat in it but it's a great focal point).

Well that brings the garden saga up to date. Hope springs eternal for 2006.