Garden Obsessed
At some point during each gardening season, I lose my mind. Usually I’m not aware of the exact moment, but this year I happened to notice. Today I finally got all the vegetables into the ground. It’s the second week of June, so I was getting just a bit panicky. In fact, I started panicking about a month ago, when I realized that the tomatoes I started back in March still didn’t have their secondary leaves yet. So I bought some Russian tomatoes that don’t care about the cold, and followed up a week later by buying tomatillos. All of them have been in the ground for weeks now. It’s been cold and raining for a month, mind, and they haven’t grown a bit, but they’re planted and busily developing their secret roots under that red “mulch” that’s supposed to help them set fruit better. The garden is so ugly early on.
Once the purchased plants were in, the tomatoes I started in March promptly developed their secondary leaves. I’ve been avoiding thinking about them, because the space that was to have been theirs is now full of Russians. But today, after planting the squash and the peppers, I was left with only the tray of struggling tomatoes and finally admitted to myself that because I caused them to germinate I now believe that I’m morally responsible for their little lives. Although they’re still only about an inch tall, I am not the kind of gardener who can just toss seedlings out because they happen to be less than robust. No, I’m the kind of sadist who will plant tiny leaflings that have no chance of fulfilling their biologic destiny before frost shuts them down, that's the kind of gardener I am.
So out back there’s this patch of bare ground where I killed a bunch of invasive things this spring.
Because everything I killed had miles of insinuating, friable, tough roots, I haven’t planted anything perennial there yet, because I know that the weeds will all be back and need more killing next year. Suddenly the orphaned tomatoes and the bare patch seemed like a perfect match, and… I lost my mind. They’re much too close to each other. (Perhaps they’ll hold one another up, she weaseled.)
The dead-looking things on the right are columbines from the former cottage garden that I tossed there yesterday; believe it or not, they’ll be blooming by this time next year. I also planted an orphaned squash in an even less likely spot: between two of those tarps that I stretched over the former thorn bed to smother the canes. No baby pictures, but watch this space…
Once the purchased plants were in, the tomatoes I started in March promptly developed their secondary leaves. I’ve been avoiding thinking about them, because the space that was to have been theirs is now full of Russians. But today, after planting the squash and the peppers, I was left with only the tray of struggling tomatoes and finally admitted to myself that because I caused them to germinate I now believe that I’m morally responsible for their little lives. Although they’re still only about an inch tall, I am not the kind of gardener who can just toss seedlings out because they happen to be less than robust. No, I’m the kind of sadist who will plant tiny leaflings that have no chance of fulfilling their biologic destiny before frost shuts them down, that's the kind of gardener I am.
So out back there’s this patch of bare ground where I killed a bunch of invasive things this spring.
Because everything I killed had miles of insinuating, friable, tough roots, I haven’t planted anything perennial there yet, because I know that the weeds will all be back and need more killing next year. Suddenly the orphaned tomatoes and the bare patch seemed like a perfect match, and… I lost my mind. They’re much too close to each other. (Perhaps they’ll hold one another up, she weaseled.)
The dead-looking things on the right are columbines from the former cottage garden that I tossed there yesterday; believe it or not, they’ll be blooming by this time next year. I also planted an orphaned squash in an even less likely spot: between two of those tarps that I stretched over the former thorn bed to smother the canes. No baby pictures, but watch this space…
posted by Alison at 9:20 AM
2 Comments:
Looking good Constance!My garden was full of rope twitch grass-I strip mulched everything.Layers of wet cardboard, newspapers ,horse poo and compost.Worked a treat-mind you if a weed can survive your winter it must be dam near indestructable.
That big empty bed on the near right is going to be the potato bed, if I can ever locate some mulch hay and get my mule (Mr. Sorrow to you) to help. Right now what you see in there is layers of wet cardboard with wire mesh over them -- lost half my crop last year to rodents but the little bastards aren't getting any this year. These are going to be some pretty expensive tubers, though, by the time I get them caged.
Psst, Calamitysue, did you notice today's Blog of Note? Farm Fare, with a (lovely) farm photo of the day. Perhaps we should link to it? Not sure of protocol or etiquette here.
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