Posts tagged ‘gardening’

April 27th, 2010

The Constant (and Geeky) Gardener

by Tarable

My husband’s green thumb amazes me. I try to keep up. And by try to keep up, I mean that I water while he’s away and hope to God I won’t kill anything.

(We started gardening together last year. And by started gardening, I mean that I helped him prepare the soil and hoped to God I wouldn’t kill anything.)

Seeds are now in the ground for our second garden. I did help with that. But what’s always really interesting to me is just HOW much my husband knows about gardening. He’s a virtual garden master. A level 70, hoe-wielding garden guru.

(Between his ability to grow food and his ability to make soap, you best be running to our house when the apocalypse hits. Well, not all of you. Just the cool ones. Or those with skills that can be bartered.)

The best part of all is that he doesn’t just keep all that knowledge to himself. Oh no. He is happy to share all that dirt(y) know-how by writing a guest-post for a friend’s blog, explaining how hard it is to garden in Colorado’s climate and how you can start composting at home and how square-foot gardening works.

Be still, my green-loving heart.

You can read his guest post (since he never blogs anywhere else, ahem) over there and be sure to submit any questions you might have in the comments.

In my opinion, this is the best part of the entire post…

adam-gardening

His first adventures with soil

I’m lucky to married to a man who can geek out about seeds with the best of them.

And now I ask…how does your garden grow?

March 16th, 2009

Sowing the Seeds of Love

by Tarable

Weekend before last, I eloped with him.

the official elopement shot

In Kato's words...awwwww...how cute

This past weekend, we started a garden together.

Radish, scallions and kale, oh my...

Radish, scallions and kale, oh my!

To be honest, I was way more nervous about the garden because I don’t have a green thumb. Quite the opposite in fact…. I’m like the Jack Kevorkian of plant life. But he asked if I would be interested in helping with the spring planting. And what’s a newlywed to do?

He's just so cute...

He's just so cute...

Plus he totally bribed me.

The pink watering can did the trick.

The pink watering can did the trick.

Before we could even think about planting anything, we had to prepare the soil. This process took almost four hours and included digging up roots, shoveling old soil out, adding in a compost/peat moss mixture (along with many other nutrient rich substances) and mixing it all up in order to make sure our garden had a fertile foundation.

a lovely manure and compost mixture

a lovely manure and compost mixture

After our soil was ready, we had to enable the partitioning that was to set the stage for our garden. I was informed that square foot gardening is “one of the geekiest ways to garden” and that thanks to my own geeky spouse, we already had a spreadsheet of where the different crops were going. ‘Twas a good thing that he knew what he was doing.

Ides of March, my ass

Ides of March, my ass

All the time spent working that close to the earth left me feeling more grounded than I had in a long time. No pun intended.

I realized that tending a garden is a lot like tending a relationship. There is planning, heavy lifting, uprooting,  maintaining, and big piles of stuff you have to move around. It’s hard work, your hands will get dirty and without enough attention, your efforts will be for naught.

Always the dirty girl

getting down and dirty

As you put seeds into the ground, you can’t but help but  be overcome with a feeling of optimistic hope. By planting a seed, you are siding with the belief that there is potential in the future…that anything is possible, that life will provide and that with the right care, you can grow something to be proud of…all the same feelings I had during my wedding.

If these are the salad days, pass the homemade vinaigrette please because we’re growing three different types of lettuce. (Who knew?)