Garden is coming along

Amy, Marym, and Clint, June 2012

This past weekend the community garden took a huge step forward. We hauled in four yards of topsoil, that nice looking stuff in the beds behind Amy. I myself shoveled at least one yard all by myself. How much is a yard, you ask? Well, I now can answer that question. It fills the back of a pickup and is one cubic yard of soil. That's a LOT!

The way it happened is that Carol (not shown, but that's her son's pickup) decided to get a yard of soil to put on top of the hard clay soil (rototilled not very deep and mixed with horse manure) and everybody wanted some, too. I split a yard with another person because I had already planted at least a third of my plot.

My half topsoil plot, with Clint's plot on left and unused plot on right

That's the way my garden looked by the end of the day Saturday, with the already planted stuff showing itself looking pretty perky, and my virgin topsoil, which now has Swiss chard, a tomato plant, green beans, and cabbage in half of it. I still want to get some collard starts and more kale in the remaining two rows. I have been going outside to say hello to my veggies every morning before I head out to catch the bus, give them plenty of encouragement, and see if they are asking for water.

I've made some mistakes: I stuck the cabbage into the ground and Clint looked at it skeptically. He told me that there were EIGHT cabbage plants, and they all needed to be separated and stuck in rows, since they would get very large. What am I going to do with all that cabbage? Hope my neighbors like cabbage.

But what is so exciting to me is to observe the way the squash plants have begun to grow. The zucchini squash has more than doubled in size, and the two delicata squash plants are growing rapidly. My zinnia and marigold seeds have germinated and are showing pretty green sprouts. No sign of the carrots from seed yet, but I'm optimistic. I am enjoying myself far more than I ever thought I would, and it's a long time before I'll be eating anything from the garden. The community spirit is another side benefit; many of my fellow residents are now friends of mine, and we all have different approaches to the garden.

Amy decided not to plant in rows but instead companion plant in delightful randomness. At least it looks that way to me, but she has a notebook and is monitoring the plants' progress meticulously. It inspired Clint to dig up his already planted onions and plant them in a sine wave pattern, with his other plants whimsically placed around it. Mine are planted in rows, because I didn't know any better and I don't want to disturb them since they're doing so well. But next year, watch out!
:-)