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.