The Baby Garden – Day 2

Sorry, I’ve been gone a while.  Many things are happening in my world.  Some good, some bad.  I am trying to find a middle road where I can remain intact.  For the past 3 weeks or so I have been working on creating a garden.

I grew up on a tobacco farm in Eastern North Carolina.  We had a large garden as we grew and preserved most all of our vegetables.  I HATED it.  I bitched and moaned and groaned the entire time each summer.  We would work like mad to harvest, prepare and store the produce.  Sweet corn was planted in a separate field.  It usually was ready sometime around the first of July.  My dad, granddad and uncle along with the men who worked for them would go at dawn and pull the ears of corn.  The kids and older ladies would sit under the pecan trees with tobacco sheets (large burlap sheets) spread in front of us.  We would shuck all the corn.  Then it would go inside to the younger women who would wash and blanch the corn.  We would cool it down in ice.  Then the perfect ears were bagged whole.  The rest was cut off the cob and bagged.  Then it was placed in the freezers.

The rest of the produce was prepared along all summer long.  Really looking back veggies have never been so good.  My family has string beans that have been in our family for five generations.  We save seed every year.  I am the only one left with seeds.  I miss those beans – they are the best.   So now for the irony.

I now live in a neighborhood.  I guess it qualifies as Suburbian.   I finally convinced my husband to let me take over the side yard in back for a garden.  My prior attempts haven’t gone well – too much slope and too much clay in the soil.  My new idea –  raised beds.  We had to take our wood privacy fence down for the city to repair a storm drain that runs under our property.  We have decided to not put it back up and use a radio frequency collar system to keep the dogs in. So I now have a lot of wood available.

I have been popping boards off the fence and measuring them.  My husband bless him, has been cutting boards and constructing the beds.  I have been tormenting my children for 3 weeks now getting the beds in place and mixing the compost, vermiculite and peat moss for the soil.

Above is the fruit of our labor.  Nearly finished with the last 3 beds.  Just need to pick up Vermiculite and mix in – then the rest of the plants.

I have a baby garden!!