Gardening

Despite the 3 inch April 3rd or five inch April 15th snowfall, people do occasionally say the word "spring" in conversation.  When I hear the word "spring", my mind returns two words "gardening" and  "failure".  My parents taught me well how to be a failed gardener and I lived up to those lofty expectations over the last 38 years.

Gardening was an activity my parents completed every year with a dogged determination.  One reason to garden was to provide food for five kids, four boys and one girl. Another reason, the more important reason, was to save money on food despite the fact thy both had jobs and had enough income to buy what was produced in the garden from a grocery store.  When you factor in the time, cost of seed, and the amount of failures, I doubt that our garden production was much cheaper than buying it at the store. The produce from the garden might have been cheaper due to cheap labor from the kids, of course, if the garden produced some type of edible product.

In the early years, my dad had a garden located in back of the house.  He planted peas, beans, corn, potatoes, radishes, lettuce, kohlrabi, tomatoes, and Swiss chard.  The soil was not very fertile but he and my mother worked hard to have the garden produce something.  My dad even invested money in a rototiller so the soil would be at optimum consistency for plant growth.  He would always have some plants produce vegetables while others failed.  The failed plants and the successful plants each year were different.  The difference depended on the weather, animals, and the kid's routes through the garden taken to retrieve balls or visit friends.

Allow me to supply more information on the rototiller. A rototiller is a contraption consisting of blades in the front with a mounted gasoline engine.  The gasoline engine powers a belt turning the blades of the machine which then dig into the ground and loosen the soil.

We had this rototiller for many years and it churned soil in gardens in back of the house,  the House Garden and a later, larger garden a block away, the Depot Garden.  Anyone using the rototiller would become tired after a limited amount of  time because as the rototiller churned dirt that was either extremely or mildly compacted, the rototiller would buck like a crazed horse.  Keeping it in line required a lot of energy from the attending person. Neither my parents, mainly my dad, or us kids, when we were old enough to steer the rototiller, were enthused about operating it.

We suffered while operating the rototiller for a number of years until near the end of its useful life.  One day a neighbor borrowed the rototiller to complete some work in his yard.  He returned the rototiller and said he "fixed it".  He explained fixing it meant changing the direction of the blades.  He said we would notice a marked improvement in performance.  We did.  No longer did the rototiller buck but it dug into the soil and tilled it without much effort.  My dad, who passed along to me his lack of  mechanical ability, was astonished and could never explain why the blades were installed the wrong way and kept that way over many years of gardening.

My dad was not happy with the production of the House Garden decided one year to move the garden.  The production of the House Garden was hampered by soil infertility and the kids playing whiffle ball, softball, hardball, and football also in the same area.  The garden had trouble producing when the plants were trampled.

My dad was a railroad agent and the depot where he worked was a block from our house.  Someone, whether it was the railroad or someone else, had a large area in back of the railroad depot that was swamp. (Today a house sits on our garden spot.)  My dad decided it was an excellent spot for a garden.  The new Depot Garden was 3 times larger than the House Garden.  In addition to the items planted in House Garden he added strawberries, raspberries, and rows of tomatoes. 

The people located next door to the Depot Garden where in a descriptive word, "weird".  Doctor Gene, his wife Daisy, and their vicious dog peered at us as we toiled on the Depot Garden.  Doctor Gene was tall and slight and no one ever knew why he was called Doctor Gene.  He watched us as he worked in his garden while  Daisy  sang off-tune church hymns.  The dog would be constantly growling.

 Our family was always on the cusp of terror.  What would happen if Doctor Gene's dog got loose and decided to visit the garden?  Who would die first?  This concern worked its way out when I went to college.  Daisy died first.  Doctor Gene died a few years after Daisy.  The day after Doctor Gene died the police department was summoned  to take the dog to the pound.  The dog did not cooperate and attacked the cop. In an act of self-defense, the cop shot the dog.  To our family members the death of the dog allowed us to relax while working in the garden trying to avoid sunstroke and mosquitoes.

The Depot Garden was much more productive than the House Garden.  The problem with the Depot Garden was the time needed to make it productive.  We had to keep weeds from assaulting the strawberries, raspberries, beans and other produce .  We also had to hill rows and rows of potatoes. Most of this work was done in the late afternoon when the air in the garden was cooler.  However, when it was cooler the mosquitoes descended on the Depot Garden in swarms and it was pure agony working  even with liberally applied mosquito spray that did not deter the mosquitoes but made you a target. If the mosquitoes were absent then other insects, snakes, spiders, and mice took their place as a distraction.  For example,  the snakes liked to climb the raspberry bushes to sun themselves.  If you were removing weeds and counting the minutes until sundown, looking up and seeing a snake made your heart move a few more beats per minute.

We had an over-abundance of produce from the Depot Garden.   My parents, led by my mother, spent a good part of their extra time in September and October canning.  The big item for canning was tomatoes although pickles were canned when the tomatoes were ripening and awaiting their turn.  They canned tomato juice, stewed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, and some other concoctions with a tomato base. 

The kids, who could not escape working on the tomatoes, were employed grinding par boiled  tomatoes so the seeds were captured and the remainder of the tomato became juice.  At first my parents tried the deception that grinding tomatoes was fun.  This deception worked for the first bushel of tomatoes.   After the first bushel the grinder saw through the deception and quickly determined cranking tomatoes was tedious and hot and knew the only reason they were grinding was because my parents did not want to do it themselves.  The grinder then snuck away using excuses such as going to the bathroom or doing homework even if school was not in session.  As we got older, we got wiser and did not go anywhere near the kitchen when bushels of tomatoes were sitting outside the door. My parents were then left to grind tomatoes for some nights into the wee hours of the morning.

As a kid one learned to love, or at least tolerate, tomatoes after a successful tomato canning season.  Tomatoes of some type were incorporated into most at home lunches and dinners.  I do know people that cannot stand eating tomatoes or tomato byproducts today.  I wonder how they ever got away with this tomato avoidance when they were younger.

Even the Depot Garden had failures. However, the kids did not feel a failure was bad because the failed plants would not need weeding.  Failure would allow more times to pursue fun activities such as playing ball and sleeping.

That was many years ago.  Currently, our house has much less area and is even more infertile than my parent's House Garden.

The infertility of the land was a surprise to me because a farm was located here before the subdivision was built. You would think the soil would be fertile from the nutrients furnished by the farm animals.  In the first years of owning the house, I tried a garden in the southwest corner of the property, a garden along the west side of the house, and a garden on the southeast corner of the property.  All of the gardens were miserable failures.  The reasons for failure besides the infertile soil was lack of sun, too much sun, and lack of rain.

But I have continued trying to get something to grow. 

"Why?", do you ask.  "Madison has the best farmer's market.  He can buy all the stuff he tries to plant and someone else would have all of the headaches!"

To be perfectly honest, I have asked that question to myself many times.  I guess it has something to do with the House and Depot gardens of my parents.  I want to think I have the ability to grow something edible even if it does not turn out that way.  I believe, which over time has not been true, that I can fail less than my parent's two gardens.

My garden now consists of four boxes filled with dirt.  Because the boxes are relatively small I can add the nutrients the plants need to grow without adjusting the nutrients to account  for the many rocks in the soil. The four boxes sometimes grow beans, tomatoes, and lettuce.  Failures include raspberries, squash, cucumbers, and melons.

Not all of the failures can be blamed on the boxes.  We have an assortment of critters that attack the boxes. All of this occurs in a city.  We have rabbits the size of small gunboats,  opossum, squirrels, chipmunks, and birds.  They stage attacks at different times during the growing season and their attacks are usually successful destroying most of the plants starting to grow or growing at that time.  I have tried to erect barriers around each box over the last few years using chicken wire and PVC pipes.  This prevention has not worked.  This year I will need to construct something using wood, which is not something I am looking forward to nor good at doing.

Because of all the failures, I have decided to acquire some expert help.  I view YouTube.  One guy advised to buy a sack of MiracleGro potting soil, plant some seeds, and place it in some sun.  Voila, the plants grow and give you endless produce.  I tried the suggestion and the rabbits ravaged the plants shortly after the seeds came up producing a lot less than the guy in the YouTube video advertised. Another guy showed you how to grow vegetables in a bucket. I had some success with that approach although the buckets were used as a rearing spot for  an impressive number of spiders. Some of the YouTube presenters also had innovative, odoriferous ways to prevent animals from attacking the garden. I don't think spraying urine around the yard would be acceptable to my neighbors.  The YouTube presenter did not mention in his video where his property was located in relation to a neighbor.  Perhaps his neighbors left after his garden protection spraying. 

I also have books on the subject.  Mel wrote two books on square foot gardening.  He divides his boxes into square foot blocks.  He then plants different plants in each square foot box.  The pictures in his books are flawless.  I tried doing what Mel wrote and the problem is that some of the plants are more aggressive than other plants.  The aggressive plants shade out the more timid plants and killing or limiting the size of the companion plants. A picture of my square foot garden would not make Mel's book.

I do have some hope this year, as I do every year.  I do have an electric rototiller with the blades turned in the right direction.   I can work nutrients into the soil with the rototiller.  I have more time because I am not working.  My neighbor across the street has been aggressive in reducing the number of rabbits, opossum, squirrels, and chipmunks.  As a resource my parents never had, I still have Mel and YouTube.

So, hope springs eternal; that is if spring ever comes.

Perhaps I will have some success this year.  However, I have to be realistic after all of these years of gardening and expect failure. As Winston Churchill said:

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

If that quote is true then I am very enthusiastic.