Garden Dreams

This was the easy part. Closing the ends properly will be hard. I hope I don’t use a whole roll of duct tape.

Remember when there was no Internet and all we had to judge ourselves by was our next door neighbors?

Sometimes I long for those days.

Here’s the deal.  I am not a good gardener.  I want to be, but I am not. Gardening is not for those of use who like instant gratification.

A tomato takes about four months minimum to grow around here.  Each of my chickens lays an egg once every couple of days.  That’s a good feeling for me EVERY DAY, not to mention the happiness of the chickens.

Gardening, to me, is so complicated.  There’s the watering, the weeding, making the compost. Then there’s using tweezers to plant tiny seeds.  You’ve gotta KNOW STUFF to garden.  And then there’s all that WAITING…

Before the Internet, I could tell myself that most other people weren’t good gardeners, either. I’ve had some friends that grew a little of this and a little of that.  But I could fool myself into believing good gardeners were few and far between.

Pinterest tells me I was wrong, so wrong.

I am so in awe of those of you who turn yogurt containers and tp rolls and newspaper into seed starting vessels.  Your charts and graphs and knowledge of frost dates and sweet handmade labels – all fantastic.  Watering strategies and systems, trellises made out of the cutest thing found out behind the barn – awesome.  Basements full of grow lights and seedlings and misting bottles and compost tea – I’m green with jealousy.

I am unworthy.

But, I’m nothing if not dogged.  I WANT to have a productive garden.  I’m trying to go into this growing season realizing my strengths and weaknesses and working with my skill set.

I started with the following facts:

• I have very little extra space in the house for starting seeds.  That’s a fact, jack.
• I have three raised beds, each about 3′ x 20′ long.
• I have read and read and read about gardening.  And I’m hopelessly overwhelmed.
• I’m handy with power tools.
• I’m currently, on March 14th, motivated.

So, going with fact #4, I built myself a hoop-style cold frame for one of the beds.  It cost about $40 in materials.

Very Excellent Husband Don and I built these beds years ago. They’ve seen better days, but they’re what I’ve got to work with.

Nothing I love better than cruising Home Depot looking for hardware. These pipe braces fit the PVC pieces perfectly.

Progress!

No project of mine is complete without some duct tape, this time used to reinforce the plastic.

It’s not perfect, by any stretch.  I will need to unscrew all the boards on one side to lift the plastic when I tend to what I hope will be thriving, happy plants.  I secured both ends today with what is one seriously sketchy design.  Must keep an eye on that.  Sigh.  Then I put a load of chicken poop compost in and it smelled like…stinky earth, in a good way.  I threw all common sense to the wind, frost dates be damned (it was mid 70s today!) and stuck some seeds in the ground.  Let’s see what comes up!

It won’t make HGTV, but I hope the plants like it. Row on the left is planted with fifteen different cool season crops, square foot gardening style.  I think it’s a cozy starter home!

(Shared at Clever Chicks Blog Hop, Homestead Barn Hop, Backyard Farming Connection Hop, The Country Homemaker Hop, Down Home Blog Hop, The HomeAcre Hop, Link Love Thursday, Farm Girl Blog Fest, Farm Fun Friday, Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop and The Coop Hop!)