Okay, when your boss at the garden center tells you to dump the veggies and you still haven’t planted your tomatoes, you know you’re a little late. At least, I won’t have to worry about a late frost I thought, but is it too late to get any fruit from my labor?
“No,” says Don Wolverton, a master of the Veggie Garden, and my vegetable guru. Don’s only interest in ornamentals are if you can eat them or if they repel critters. Practicality and thrift is what Don’s style of gardening is all about.
By extending the season, rotating warm season and cold season crops, and just downright American ingenuity, Don believes that a family of four can eat for very cheaply minus the meat, milk, potato chips, and Twinkies of course.
The Very Little Garden
Don demonstrated this at Kingwood Center a few years ago to show people how much food could be grown in a very small area. It was called the Very Little Garden because it took very little space, very little time, and very little money.
Every seed, every plant, every piece of material in that garden was either saved, recycled, or bartered for. There were plants growing there from March through October. Other than a few extended work periods to dig the 20 x 20 garden, it was all done spending just one hour each week in the garden. In the end, Don harvested $700 worth of produce for just $7.68.
It was a truly amazing demonstration by a truly inspiring gardener. So with his pronouncement that it wasn’t too late, I worked to get our garden planted this week.
Just the basics
We only grow two things at the Makley homestead, tomatoes & peppers. I’ve dreamed of a vegetable garden like Don’s providing most of our needs, but to be honest I’m not much of an herbivore. Love growing plants, I just don’t care too much about eating them.
The tomatoes and peppers are Barbara’s. Her Italian heritage requires them. The most important are the peppers, long sweet red ones called Jimmy Nardellos. Barb fries them in a little olive oil with garlic, salt, and pepper then freezes them in baggies to be savored throughout the winter and spring.
Last February, alarm bells sounded when she pulled the last bag of peppers from the freezer. It was much too early for her Roman blood to be without peppers, but the crisis was averted when four more bags were discovered buried in the corner of the freezer.
Now if I were to be allowed to give an excuse for planting so late, I would say it’s because we relocated the garden this year. Of course, my neighbor would say I’m always late with our garden. That is true but perhaps it’s because of CCS, better known as the Cobbler’s Children Syndrome. Perhaps it’s just because I’m always late.
Hope springs eternal
So the process began with borrowing a sod cutter and stripping away the sod. Please do not tell this to Mr. Don for he certainly will admonish me for such a waste of good organic matter. Sinful as it was, time was obviously of the essence.
I did stack it all up next to the compost bins as essential elements to be used at some future date. And Don would be proud that I actually used my compost on the garden.
Composting is a good thing, and I often pontificate on its virtues; however, the reality of my backyard compost area is that it is more of a dumping ground than a resource for enriching my soil. I never used it before. One reason is that backyard compost piles are weed banks. They’re never big enough to build up enough heat to kill any weed seed. Even big piles that do heat up are never completely free of weed seed unless they’ve been turned regularly.
I know I will pay a price, but with everything planted now and free of any weeds, there is hope that this will be the year when the weeds are kept at bay, and the garden is a picture of domesticated bliss. I’m also hoping that next year I’ll plant the garden on the first of June instead of the first of July. Unfortunately, I’m old enough to know better. But fortunately, hope springs eternal.