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.
