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| From my plot, The Wonderful, Happy #24 |
Everybody thinks that there is a lot of labor involved in having a garden. Well, guess what! Not so much.
Plot # 24 at the Fenton Street Community garden is doing all the work. I show up occasionally in the morning when temperatures are expected to climb and I give it some water. That's it all it ever asks of me.
Well, okay. One day, after the June 29 derecho storm, I had to help the tomato plants find the vertical path again. They were tilting dangerously over and shading my neighbor's plot. So I pounded extra stakes into the ground and jerry-rigged them with twine until the plants were approximately back in place. And I thinned out the yellow leaves at the bottom of the plants, but my Better Boy, my Mortgage Lifters and my Romas were all standing tall again. The okra, meanwhile, were so strong, that not even a 60 mile per hour wind gust could budge those babies. They are producing so quickly that sometimes I think they grow a fruit while I'm standing there.
The soil in the plot is rich and well-dug. Last fall, I grew clover for a few weeks and then double dug trenches from the front of the plot to the back. I layered compost over it and then this spring I turned still more compost into the soil. So now when I accidentally step on the soil, my foot sinks an inch. Last summer, after I first got the plot, putting a stake in the soil was nearly impossible, the ground was so compacted. This year, it yields to just a few simple strokes of my hammer.
And the rain we've had! Almost every three days, either a gentle downpour, like the one we had this morning, or a monsoon, like we had the other night. So that the ground is always moist around the roots of my plants. We've had rainfall all through June and now into July consistently. At the expense, of course, of the Midwest, which is disastrously dry this summer. We'll take it here, though.
Now on to planning my fall garden. It's time to put in more seeds. What's next? The Putterer
