All Systems Go!

After the fiasco of last weekend, it looks like the stars are aligned to get things in shape this coming weekend. I have a furniture delivery coming on Friday (teak table and chairs for the deck) so I have an extra day to get caught up on getting the topsoil spread. Then, I'll make a few of the beds and, finally, actually plant a seed or two. Lettuce round 1 and peas will go in this weekend. Ah, musn't forget about irrigation (I had until I wrote this sentence), that means I'll have to have the watering sorted out for next week. This I see emerging as the big vexing project of the weekend.

Speak to you next week!

Week 2: 22 April -- A Wash Out

As predicted, Mother Nature wasn't on my side this weekend. I made it up to the house in good time on Friday with my folks' dog Bogey in tow. The weather then was warm and dry and I set about getting as much of the soil spread as I could.

I've taken a picture of the mound of dirt which at first sight wasn't as big as I thought it would be. But boy, as soon as I got my shovel into it I realized how big a job this was actually going to be. After 90 minutes and 10 barrowloads, I managed to get the bottom right quadrant of the garden dumped and spread. I also measured and staked the beds in that quadrant so the peas and lettuce can go in next week. I do still need to build the beds and straw the paths but I should be able to do that without too much effort.

It rained buckets all day Saturday and Sunday so the rest of my dirt is covered with a blue tarp until I can get my spade into it next Saturday. By the way, dirt really is deceptively heavy. Each shovelful really had an impressive heft to it.

Topsoil + Rain = Mud

Now I'm in trouble. I just checked with the dirt-dealer who confirmed that my four yards of topsoil have been duly delivered. I also checked with weather.com where I learned that there's a 70% chance of rain on Saturday (which we certainly need, but Sunday would have fit so much better in my plans). The clock is ticking on my getting this stuff spread.

As I see it I have two options:

1) Work like mad to get this all onto the patch starting on Friday afternoon/evening and try and beat the rain. I may actually take down the fence of the garden so I can use the tractor. This could end up being an exercise in futility.

2) Get another tarp and cover the pile. This is the logical choice and definitely buys me some time.

The real answer will probably be a combination of the two. I'll keep you posted.

Week 1: 15 April

Over Presidents' weekend in February, Jim and I spend a few extra days upstate. When we left mid-week there was a strange car in my driveway. I'm a bit off the beaten path so it's rather unusual to see a car in my drive. I went to investigate and found Melissa at the veggie patch with a tape measure in hand creating a map of the garden.

This past weekend Melissa and I met and she showed me the fruits of that labor. She drew up a to-scale plan of the garden laid out with 12 beds of 30 to 60 square feet each with two foot walkways between each bed. My two initial thoughts were 1) "wow, she really knows what she's doing" and 2) "what is she crazy? How am I going to go all of this?" But we sat down and she demystified everything for me. The actual plan in attached to the fridge upstate but I'll bring it down with me next week and add the exact dimensions to this blog for those keeping track (by design I don't have internet access upstate).

The modular approach to the beds means that different crops go in at different times and we can adjust what we're growing during the course of the season or call time at the halfway point if I'm getting too overwhelmed.

On Saturday we also mapped out the first three weeks of activity. Week one was 15 April and was a pretty light one. All I had to do was till over the soil once again and collect the supplies I would need. The previous owners left me with some garden tools but I didn't have some basic things, like a hoe. So week one also marked the first expenditure on the garden.

I was prepared for this part. My friend Brian who has a place a few miles away in Sheffield, Massachusetts joked that he once spent an entire summer producing 4 cucumbers for $3,000. I'm hoping my yield is better than that.

So first to Ward's (in Great Barrington, Massachusetts) where I got a hoe (and a new spade to match even though the one I have is fine and well-worn) as well as lettuce seeds (lettuce, round one of three, goes in next weekend at the same time as the peas), and a few other bits ($98.34). Then to Taconic Lawn and Garden (in Hillsdale) for some fertilizer and a new wheelbarrow ($233.26, high but includes some non-garden expenses).

I also this week placed an order for four yards of topsoil and compost mixed together (did you know that a cubic yard of soil weights 2,700 pounds!) and laid out a tarp near the garden so that the dirt-dealer would know where to leave it ($168).

I have a compost heap but I haven't gotten it to get all loamy and composty yet. I've been good about adding material to it but lax in turning it over. Another project to add to the list. There's something very natural about adding back to the garden the scraps of what comes out of it.

This coming weekend is big doings. Those four yards of soil (i.e., 5 tons!) need to make their way into the garden enclosure evenly spread in a three-inch thickness. It should take 18 trips using my new 6 foot wheelbarrow.

When that's done I will put down a light layer of Espoma Garden-Tone fertilizer and will stake and string the beds and lay straw on the walkways. I should be thoroughly exhausted when it's all done. I may stretch this into two weeks and put the peas and lettuce in a week later, we'll see how it goes.

In the beginning...

Well, in the beginning there was not a whole lot. This blog will recount my experience in raising a vegetable garden for the first time. Before this year, I've never planted a seed and had an actual plant emerge. Don't be surprised if our conversation grows beyond the garden and includes seemingly unrelated issues.

Actually, to be honest, I still haven't sown a seed, but the lettuce and peas are due to go in the weekend of the 29th of April. Which is less than two weeks away, and boy is there a lot that has to happen in the ensuing ten days.

But before we start all this tilling and sowing, let me give you some background. In late 2004 I bought a country house in Hillsdale, NY, about 2 and a half hours from Manhattan where I live and work during the week. It's not a huge house but it's on a nice chunk of land and the only serious work it needed was two new bathrooms. The rest of my enhancements have been cosmetic and now, in 2006, I'm finally at the point where I can dial down the spending on house stuff. My boyfriend Jim and I are up there just about every weekend, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends or family. We also know a few other weekenders who we hang out with up there.

The previous owners were avid gardeners and created a number of really stunning perennial gardens among the six acres that include a fish pond (which needs to be re-lined this summer, another huge task which will probably end up described here), two boulders that have been covered with rock plants, a primrose path, and a vegetable patch. I have since learned that they used a concept called Xeriscaping which essentially means that I don't have to water anything (how lucky is that?).

As part of the experience of owning the house, I wanted to maintain things as much as possible by myself. A bigger challenge than one would think. My parents never had much success with their lawn and despite her best efforts, my Mom never got much of anything to grow in the hanging pots in our sunroom. I was starting with a huge disadvantage. How on earth was I going to manage the renovation of two bathrooms, furnish the rest of the house, maintain 4 acres of lawn and garden (thankfully, two of the six acres are wooded), work full time shuttling between New York and Frankfurt and sow and harvest a vegetable garden?!

The answer was provided by a higher power, Melissa, my garden consultant (or the Plant Whisperer as my Dad and brother call her). I got in touch with Melissa a year ago while coming to terms with the fact that I didn't know the difference between a weed and a daffodil and that I was going to need serious advice and support if I was going to do this all myself. She thankfully suggested that we take the vegetable garden off the table and deal with it in 2006. I spent last summer getting familiar with the rest of the land and keeping the existing landscaping in shape. We covered the vegetable patch with black plastic for the summer to kill all of the alien growth which had taken root. Then, at the end of the summer, I tilled everything in using my Mantis tiller and put down a cover crop of clover. I don't remember why we did a cover crop but I think it had something to do with conditioning the soil.

And now it's April 2006 which means it is time to get started.