Gardening 2010 reposted

Reposted June 10, 2011  http://hipurbanfarmer.myblogsite.com/entry19.html#body

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Welcome Gardening 2010

by Melissa Jeter on Friday, March 19, 2010 at 4:13pm

 

Every year in the garden, I surprise myself. I go outside on the most spring of Spring days, when the sun is shining bright like it is today and I clean up the dog poop. Yep, someone has to do it and it has to be done before anything else, specifically gardening, can occur.

But after cleaning up after my pup'ster (who is about 12 years old if not older), I pull the dead decaying plants away from the new green shoots that are coming up. It's at this point that I begin to remember last year's garden. "Oh yeah, there was cabbage in this spot," I think as I pull out what is left of the stalk. I think about what I will rotate into that place this year. I ask myself if I grew tomatoes in this other spot, because if I did, I think, I can't grow peppers over here; they are in the same family. And you know how family can be at times; I believe in the crop rotation method. Something else must go there this year.

These thoughts are all that is left of how I used to garden. I used to garden by a strict plan. You see, in January, I'd get out my Square Foot Gardening book and graph paper, and I would draw the garden and decide where I would plant every single vegetable. Maybe it's because, I've been poking around on this planet a little while now, but I am giving up the planning. As I told my friend, I'm going to be 40, I used to plan, but now I don't.

I was not planning on a lot of things last year. As I finally get through all the gardening spots, pulling and yanking on the dead plants, I get to the part of the garden I love most- my raised bed. In the years, when I planned, I had created a sun box, according to the Square Foot Gardening book. I lift the the lid on the sun box and I begin to dig in the dirt. The soil is warm and I spy with my little eye the tops of carrots. Wow! I dig some more.

I find there are not only several carrot tops, but along with a teeny tiny tot of a carrot-one big carrot still in the ground. I laugh out loud. I see the pup'ster lift her head and lay back down on the ground. I wonder what people would've done with this carrot when they knew food was scarce. Would they clean off all the bad parts and eat it?

I smile and throw the carrot onto the compost pile. I think that there must be a great lesson in this. I get down on my knees as if to pray and I put my hands back in the dirt. I pull up a dead plant. I study it only to remember that this was the lettuce I grew last year. I let it go to seed. I let it grow wild. At that moment I know. The tiny little green plants growing in that dirt- is new lettuce. I smile fully. What a great surprise!

I surprised myself. I remember being tired, last year, when I was "putting away" the garden. I let that lettuce grow wild. I let it go to seed and I found and abundance of tiny little lettuce plants this year. They may not all survive, but I know they are stronger than any lettuce seedling I have started indoors.

There's a lesson in this I think. I don't know what the lesson is, though I suspect there may be many.

• My old planning provided me with some foundation on which to grow.
• Seeds sown wildly are much stronger than the ones coddled inside before they go outside on their own.
• Lastly, beneath all that dead stuff, something new is growing.

It is a surprise that continues to give me faith in life.