I don't really mind HAVING the slowest, tardiest garden on the planet. It's just trying to EXPLAIN the silly thing to other people when they ask. Yes, we have a vegetable garden and it is, uh, moving right along. Seems like we're ALWAYS down there doing something to it. For two years we've been busy working on one thing or another. Fence/gate, soil amendments, cover crop, weed whacking, irrigation, compost, irrigation (again). But actual plants growing? We-e-l-l-l-l-l, not so much. We talk a good garden.
Until today!! ACTUAL plants IN the dirt!! Woo hoo!
To recap: This year, I started my little seedlings from actual seeds, as usual (and, yes, I'm a little stubborn about that part), in March--thinking I'm a little late out of the gate as it is. I would put them out to sun during the day, and bring them in at night. Usually. Turns out, that plan doesn't work so well up here as it did in San Diego because it's just too cold during the day. They sprout and just sit there, shivering and refusing to grow. Until I forget to bring them in on a night when it freezes (in May!!) when they mostly all die (sigh). I started them again, and they're now just about an inch (or less) high. Note to self: make a little greenhouse or cold frame for them next year. Check. Then, there was the great cover crop I planted (inoculated with special nitrogen-fixing bacteria!). Got it cut down and turned over in late April, I think. So far, so good. Then, our outdoor electrical system developed a short and we couldn't (can't) find it, so we had to find a work-around to operate the irrigation (grr). Tom figured that out, today.
So I finally planted. Yay! So, while, to the casual observer, the first photo (before) might not look very different from the second photo (after), I know that all those yellow tags mean little plants are getting ready to shoot up and feed the earth! It's not that nothing is growing down there, mind you. The berries, trees and sweet grass are all looking great. Now, we'll see about the veggies. Maybe we'll have the first tomato (out of 12 varieties) by, um, maybe September? But everyone else's will be old and tired by then! AND I think I've discovered a new (to us) secret weapon:
WORMS! Red wigglers, to be specific.
A little more than a week ago, I'd never heard of them. Sounds like a kids' water toy, to me--"turn on the Red Wiggler so's we can play in the water!" You see, we've had nice compost heaps before, all steamy and bacterial, but I've been more lazy about this one, and, though stuff has been breaking down (even under the snow!), it's been very slow because I haven't paid that much attention to the proportions of brown (not enough) and green (too much), as you probably guessed, already. But, for a change, my laziness has produced a big, beautiful crop of RED WIGGLERS, transforming all our table scraps, etc., into lovely worm castings (yup, it's poop--but "castings" sounds so much better--dog castings, bird castings--see?)! The heat of a real, functional compost heap kills red wigglers, as it happens.
Last week, at the first of the summer's weekly evening street parties/growers markets, a woman had a bin of reddish worms that I recognized from ones living in our heap, which I thought were garden variety earthworms (night crawlers, I found out), even though they seemed the wrong color. She explained that they are nearly miraculous at creating amazing compost, even indoors. Wow! Who knew!
I went home and studied up on vermiculture (not "vermin-culture"), and sometime next week, I should have a special composting station in the mud room where my new little friends will be working away, night and day, year 'round, producing SuperSoil for our garden and trees! How cool is THAT? YOU just might want to do it, too--you know you will! For now, they are happily munching garbage under that black thing, but I can hardly wait to start my special worm farm!
So, here we are. Now I no longer fear the casual "how's the garden?" question. Plants IN the ground. Worms "casting" IN the compost heap. Life is good!
