Redneck

This unfortunately describes me as I finally take the blogging seat after a full day of working outside. After three decades (and then some) on the face of this planet one would think I would make the connection between long hours of exposure to a hot sun and the resulting burning and redness of exposed skin that I am experiencing at the moment. You could cook an egg on the back of my neck.

I spent several hours putting up a somewhat amateurish, semi-permanent, but effective fence around my garden to keep the dogs and my four year old out of it. Pounding metal stakes into hard ground is probably a fun and pleasant pastime to some, but a rather time consuming and physically demanding task for a sedentary person who has spent all winter either sitting at home blogging or sitting at work doing whatever it is I do there. It’s easy to come up with elaborate plans in the middle of Feb. while in the comfort of an office chair in a heated abode. It is quite another actually implementing it for six hours on a Sunday afternoon exposed to the elements. I also planted 14 pansies today and transplanted a bunch of tomato plants I am trying to successfully raise from seed (just another side experiment) from one size pot to another.

I also started to prepare the garden for planting. I hired a gentleman to come out and rototill it on Sat. morning for $25.00 (interestingly enough was “Dave’s Rototilling”) and today I set up a number of wooden stakes, support fencing and tomato cages. I am also trying something called “depression gardening” which is actually the complete opposite of raised bed or hill gardening. It is designed to reduce the amount of water needed to raise a crop and relies on hand watering instead of more wasteful sprinkler watering. Everything is planted in shallow “bowls” about four to six inches deep and approximately three feet in diameter. Other crops can be planted in short rows (like carrots) but also noticeably lower than the surrounding ground level. This is not a wise plan in a wetter climate, but in a dry, semi-arid climate like it is here you don’t really run the risk of large amounts of standing water that the hill and raised bed school of thought is concerned about.

This is my first attempt at an all out 14×40 garden with a large variety of crops. I have done some limited gardening over the last couple of years but this is the big time, baby. Farmer Dave is wading in with a shovel in one hand and a hoe in the other suffering from sunburn and dehydration. It is a take no prisoners, spare no weeds, operation that hopefully will end in a harvest that will be able to feed a small Caribbean island nation.

My daughters were funny today. They are not used to seeing me working outside all day and about every hour or so one or more of them would wander out to ask “whatcha doin’ ” and apparently check on the progress of my project. The four year old was also frequently stopping by to ask ”can I help”. I put her to work watering the fruit trees and the strawberries so she felt useful. She also made sure that various edging stones, gravel beds and bare dirt got watered as well proving she is a multi-capable and multi-talented waterer.

Overall, the day was a good one. My eleven year old proclaimed my fence to be a success, I got what I wanted accomplished, and the only casualty was my wife who had a heavy decorative edging stone that was up on a railroad tie fall over onto her toes putting her out of commission (we don’t think any are broken but they are scraped, bloody and swollen).

Next weekend. Fertilization of the yard and the first early plantings of peas, lettuce and perhaps another item or two.