The Vegetable Garden
by Donna Schoenkopf
I am a pit bull.
When I want something I do not give up. I grab that thing with my powerful pit bull jaws and I do not let go.
(Well, there have been a couple of times when I have given up, but just a couple.)
For instance, I would like to grow my own vegetables. I have what it takes. I like plants. (They are our friends.) I want to exercise more. I like to water things. I have plenty of land. I have been poor enough in my lifetime, just like the children of the Great Depression, to have actually been homeless and very close to being really hungry while I was trying to take care of my children. This makes me want to grow my own food.
And I love, love, love vegetables.
But even with this enormous force, I still haven’t made it happen.
And this makes my pit bull self all anxious and confused.
Why the hell am I not getting this done?
This is why:
There is the soil. It is clay. Pure clay. Hard, dense, cement-like clay. When it’s wet, it turns into the most viscous stuff I’ve ever encountered in nature. It’ll suck the shoes right off your feet. And if you manage to keep your shoes attached to your feet, the mud will build up on the soles until you’re teetering around on four inch platform shoes.
And after I had dug about fifty (50!) holes in this clay to plant red-tipped photinia for my windbreak, and rhododendron and elephant ears for my outdoor shower and cottonwoods to shade my deck and morning glories to climb the wall of my shed and lilacs to grace the front yard and rosemary to use for spaghetti sauce and two apple trees for aesthetics and deliciousness (whew!) I swore I was never going to dig another hole.
So I would have to have a raised bed for my vegetable garden.
That meant money for boards. And they cost a lot.
But, as Fate would have it, my former neighbors, John and Helen and son Chris, stopped in for a couple of days for a visit some months back. They had come all the way from California. Being wonderful people and perfect house guests, they disappeared one afternoon on what I thought was just a little excursion, but turned out to be a thoughtful and loving surprise. For me!
A few hours later they returned ... with a load of fabulous lumber.
(You see, John is an inveterate gardener and he could tell that I needed a vegetable garden. The closest thing I had to a garden were the four large planters on the deck—three for tomatoes and one for basil.)
He began immediately unloading boards, beautiful, heavy 12-by-8 lumber, and told me he was going to construct a raised bed garden for me and where did I want it? I pointed.
It was a really hot day, that day. Seriously hot, as only Oklahoma can be. John had on his hat, had a beer in hand, and plotted his strategy.
He laid out the boards, bolted them together and then pounded rebar into the hard clay to brace them even more. But did he quit there?
No.
He got a pitchfork and pried clumps of weeds out of the bed of the garden, stood back and smiled.
He was sweaty and happy.
So. I have a really beautiful raised bed vegetable garden, right?
Wrong.
Remember the clay? To have a truckload of soil brought in would cost an arm and a leg.
I just let things lie for a few months. I even began to think I would never have a raised bed vegetable garden, and that the framework would stand there, a testament to my laziness and poorness.
But opportunity knocked.
Orval had mowed my hillside, east yard, and south yard. I had lopped down a bunch of bushes and saplings and his mower did the rest. He asked me what I wanted to do with all those pokey, snarly branches.
And then I had one of those magical thinking kinds of ideas.
“Hey. I can throw these branches into the ‘vegetable garden’ and they will magically turn into compost.”
So we dragged them up the hill and threw them into the “vegetable garden.”
Of course I knew better. They are still there, giving me a headache.
I have fussed and fretted over those branches and found that using my big loppers to cut them down to six inch pieces was a price I didn’t want to pay. I lasted all of ten minutes doing it. Pull a branch out. Get scratched from the briar vine tangled around it. Get the loppers in the right position. Cut. Oh. Didn’t go through? Do it again. No, Donna. HARDER. Whew. That’s one. Look over at the pile. One down, a million to go.
Crap.
So I thought, “I’ll compost directly onto the ground inside the framework.”
Take the vegetable scraps and the egg shells and the coffee grounds out to the raised bed and throw them in. Cover them with newspaper torn into strips. Whoops! The wind just blew the newspaper away. Okay. Let’s not tear it into strips, just lay down the paper whole. And then soak it with water. And make sure some of the stickery pokey branches weigh it down.
Sigh.
Okay.
So eventually, in about a thousand years, I will have enough compost to fill the raised bed. That’s gonna take a while.
In the meantime I offhandedly made a remark about wanting a pickup so I could haul a bale of hay over here to spread over the compost. I got two, TWO, offers to bring me over a bale of hay. (Don’t you just love people?)
But before I can bring in the hay, I have to take the damn branches out.
And before I can do that, I have to buy some wire and rebar, to make a cylindrical thingy to burn the branches in. Then I have to haul all the branches out of the “vegetable garden” and burn them up.
The ashes will be great for the garden.
And, best of all, as I see this all happening in my mind’s eye, I can have chickens!
You see, once I get the garden started, I can build a hen house right next to it. I’ll fence in the garden and put netting over the top so deer and raccoons and skunks and an occasional wandering cow won’t eat up my hard-won lettuces and beans and basil and tomatoes and carrots and all. And the fencing will include the hen house! The three (that’s how many I see in my imagination) chickens can go straight into the garden and do their cute little dance as they gobble up all the insects. While they are cluck clucking in the garden, I’ll collect the rich, organic eggs there in their little nests and think back to the time when I almost gave up on ever having a vegetable garden.
So come on over anytime in about a year. Or two. We’ll have an omelet. Want yours with spinach or onions or basil or tomatoes? Or all of them. Whatever your heart desires.
Nice.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
Oh, boy. Yup, you got your work cut out for you. If you live near a bigish city wherein tree-trimming companies reside and trim and grind up trees and have to do something with the truckloads of ground up trimmings besides taking them to the town dump, you might be able to buy (or cage) a truck load of tree trimming for mulch. Still, huge project. Well, pit bulls are known for keeping at whatever they’ve bitten into. So, happy chewing.
Or, research Oklahoma native plants that love hard clay soil, plant them and just go to local farmer’s markets to buy your veggies.
2010-11-30 by Ann CalhounWhere there’s a will, there’s a way, Darling. I suggest a dirt shower—everybody brings 2 or 3 bags of garden soil or a few bucks to make up the cost of a dumptruck load (For that size garden, it’s a really small dumptruck load). I can attest to the fact that it (the party idea) works with bagworms—I just furnished a couple of boxes of cheap wine and bags for everyone, and, before the evening was over, the bagworms were gone from my evergreens!! Don’t give up—I see a garden with homegrown tomatoes, lettuce, onions, broccoli, & corn in your future.
2010-11-30 by Helen PriceI have to side with Joan on this one. Visit an active chicken yard before you commit to some chickens. You’ll see it’s barren of anything but chickens—they eat everything. I admire your enthusiasm and energy on this one. I think the idea of a dirty party sounds great. Have friends bring food and dirt. That box won’t take too long to fill up.
2010-11-30 by DoyalDear Donna, get the branches out. pile then a long way from the house in an area with short grass and burn them when the first snow is on the ground and the wind is still and you won’t need a container.
Clean out your raised garden of weeds and turn it over. Continue to use it as a compost bin and have a dirt party as suggested. Ask people to bring top soil not potting soil though. Continue to add the west newspaper layers, turn the mess about every two weeks and maybe by fall you will be able to plant broccili, spinach, and parsnips.
At swap meets you can often find large plastic barrels with lids that originally had food stuff in them and you can use for compost too. They work really well if you put the lid on and roll them around a little once a week. We cut them in half and use to grow vegetables in as well.
Remember not to put any dog doo doo in your compost. Dogs eat meat so it does not make good compost. Cow and horse dung do though.
2010-11-30 by Jo. DavisI think you need to find someone who has a pile of Organic Gardening magazine going back 50 years. Or maybe Rodale Press has it all online. Lo these many years ago before the city of San Diego finally extended trash collection to our part of town, and when open burning was still legal, my dad would burn our trash in an old rusty metal barrel. Of course, nowadays we would have more concerns about what might have been in that barrel, so I guess that’s out. I once put a lot of bouganvilla branches in an old koi pond in a futile hope that it would break down. Goodness only knows what the people who bought the property thought of that - a raised 6’ X 10’ cinder block tank full of stickers.
2010-12-1 by Gary Richard
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Hate to burst your bubble, BUT chickens will eat your garden, they love green leaf stuff not to mention little red and green tomatoes like to peck holes in them. But it will work if you put some chicken wire around your raised bed. Just a FYI. Nothing is easy in the country as you are finding out. Keep ON Keeping ON.
2010-11-30 by joan smith