What the Garden Teaches

    If gardening teaches patience, I must be a stubborn learner. From the beginning I've been trying to jump ahead and take shortcuts.
    I did it again today. At Costco I came across some tomato plants in 3-gallon buckets. And not just any young tomato plants.  No, these were three feet tall, already with fruit on them and many flowers. There were three plants to a bucket, all for only $13 and change.  So I got some.
    Problem is, I don't have a place to plant them. Yet. The first garden box is filled with the tomatoes and peppers we bought at the Grower's Outlet last week. The second has plants already in a third of it, but the rest of the box is waiting for enough good soil. And the third planting box isn't finished yet. It still needs a retaining wall and more excavation, not to mention planting soil.
    So why did I buy the them?
    Because I thought how great it would be to have fresh grown tomatoes in April, instead of waiting until July. This isn't the first time I've done this. Last fall, as Lowe's was closing out the season, they put their remaining plants on sale. I  bought three raspberry plants and a pecan tree (a stick, really). The raspberry plants are still in their plastic pots in the garage. They've suffered a little damage during the winter, but I watered them and stuck them out in the sun whenever I could, and they are starting to look pretty good now. The thought of having fresh raspberries this summer wouldn't let me pass on buying them long before I was ready. Now, if only I can figure out the good spot of ground for them . . .

    I did plant the pecan tree, but you can only tell it's there by the clasps holding it to the pole. Although it's four feet tall, it's only about a half inch in diameter. I'll certainly have to be patient before I get any nuts from that one, but the impatience was manifest in buying it when it was on clearance. (Maybe I'm not impatient, just cheap.  Hmmm.)
    I also bought blueberry bushes and two apple trees in December and gave them to the family as Christmas presents. Knowing it would be a couple of years at least before I get a pretty good crop, I had to go ahead and take the jump. I planted one of the blueberry bushes a few weeks ago, but the other is still waiting on--you guessed it, excavation and retaining wall and soil. But I've made progress.
    As for the apple trees, they're flowering and looking nice. I got one Honeycrisp and one Granny Smith. I think I've identified the (third different) spot of ground for them, but I'm concerned that it's not yet a good one. It has a water drainage problem (the whole back yard does), and I read that apple trees need well-drained soil. So now I don't know what to do. I had thought to put in French drains, but now I need to think through whether the roots would damage them. And if I wait to plant them until the drains are finished, that could be the end of the summer, or maybe even middle of the winter. I told myself I would first finish the garden boxes before I do the French drains. But, hey, that could be just in time to plant the apples in their proper season!
    See how my impatience perplexes me? It puts the pressure on to take action, but my inexperience leads to indecision. And even when I do make the decision, the action must still wait, because of lack of time, knowledge, or resources.
    Part of the challenge is that I'm trying to plant things I want in their proper season. So even though I'm not ready, I go ahead and buy the plants because I don't want to wait a whole year for the next optimal planting season.  That's why I have fifty strawberry plants (roots, really, but that's another story) in my garage waiting for that third garden box.
    Another challenge I create for myself is that I'm trying to do all the yard and garden on the cheap. While the Lord has blessed us with sufficient for our needs, I don't have lots of extra money to hire landscapers and rent equipment and all that. Sometimes supplies and equipment must wait for that tiny bulge in the budget or a tax refund. In fact, I've been digging and moving dirt and rocks for a year and a half now without even a wheelbarrow.
    But not anymore! I bought my first wheelbarrow today on that same trip to Costco. I'd been looking around and comparing cost and construction and found this to be a good deal at $60. It has metal rather than wooden handles, and a metal box instead of the plastic ones that seem to be popular now. It took me two hours to assemble it (go ahead, laugh), but even in the short time left that I used it tonight, I was reminded that the right tools can make all the difference.
    Maybe it's not just patience I'm supposed to be learning.  Maybe it's also judgment, forethought, wisdom . . .
    Amazing all the life lessons you can learn digging in the dirt.

Of Junipers and Cranberries

    I don't like junipers. At least not the horizontal ground-cover type common in landscaping use here in Northern Georgia. I readily admit that they have their uses. They maintain a green ground cover year round.  I think they're also often used to keep a hill in place, perhaps due to the tangled, spreading root system.  But to me they looks boring, they're difficult to weed, and they're scratchy.
    Now if I had a type with berries, or softer leaves, or one with a pleasant aroma, I might love them differently.
    As it is, I find myself trying to root them out and banish them from my yard. The problem is how to replace their color and, more importantly, keep all the dirt from sliding down in a big rainstorm.

    Cranberries.  From everything I've read, cranberry bushes tend to make great colorful ground cover, and can also hold the dirt in place on a hill.  Plus they produce edibles (though Tryn is concerned we could never eat as many as we would grow). All else being equal, I'd rather have a bush that provides me food than one that just stands there filling space. I guess I want a plant to give me something back. If it's not providing beautiful flowers or color, a sweet aroma, or shade or privacy, then it should give me something tangible. (Just admitting that brings to mind the selfishness in Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree" and haunting refrains of "Feed me, Seymour.")
    I would have liked to replace all the juniper at once, but I thought I'd try one bush to start. None of the nurseries here carry cranberries, though. Apparently they're not very popular in the South. Should I take that as a message about their viability?
    So I ordered an American Cranberry bush from a mail-order nursery. It arrived looking much more frail than I expected, with thin, flimsy branches and leaves that almost resemble some types of fern.
    After work the other day I gathered my tools and began removing junipers. I thought perhaps just one would be sufficient, but I finally removed three and parts of another one. Not an easy task. An established juniper on a hill is like a crusted barnacle on a ship's hull. It took a shovel, a pick, two-handed pruning shears, and a lot of backbreaking pulling, but I finally got them out. By then the sun had gone.

    I dug a hole, added some compost and Miracle-Gro and placed the plant.
    I have great hopes. In my mind's eye I see that hillside covered with low-growing, fruit-bearing bushes awash in colorful flowers in the spring and fiery tints in the fall.
    I anticipate someday having enough cranberries for my children to bag and sell during the Thanksgiving season.

An Unlikely Gardener

Two years ago I didn't understand the passion for gardening.  Oh, sure, I knew that it is a good thing to plant vegetables, and I appreciated a well-laid-out garden.  But to garden properly requires time, and there were so many other things to do.  Also, I couldn't help but noticing that people who really got into gardening were just so . . . well, not so much like me.

For years my part of gardening was to go to the fairgrounds and get a load of manure, which I would then haul to the garden plot and dump.  I mixed it into desert soil and then left the choice of what and how to plant to my wife, Tryn.  She seemed to enjoy it more than I.  I also had to construct sprinkling systems, and motivate the boys to weed.

I liked the fresh tomatoes, and sometimes the squash.  I rarely go to taste the strawberries because the children ate them whenever they found them ripening, always before I got home, it seemed.  I did care about the fruit trees we planted, but couldn't seem to get them to produce very well.

In the fall of 2009 we moved into our new house in Georgia.  It has a good-sized yard, which needed some work.  We knew we wanted a vegetable garden, and I wanted fruit trees and bushes.  So I began trying to figure out the best place for the garden, which I decided was on the hill behind the driveway.  That required terracing, and a lot of work.

Somewhere in the process of moving the dirt, I began to acquire a taste for this gardening stuff, and my ambitions began to grow.  I began to understand in my aching muscles and peaceful, satisfied mind, the anonymous quote, "You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt."

Now I find myself spending free time working in the garden, and even reading books on plants and garden / landscape architecture.

Remember those people I mentioned?  I've become one of them.

But I'm still a novice, knowing very little about the science and art of planting and growing things.  I'm experimenting and learning.  And this is where I'll record and share my experiences-good and bad-and insights.  Maybe you'll pick up an idea or two, or maybe you'll share some of your own.  I look forward to the encounters.

Let's dig in!