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.