Another gorgeous day and another step closer to producing our own food. As April draws nearer, the time frame in our region for most spring planting is upon us and with that in mind we took to the garden today to hoe it up. With the machine tilling behind us it was time to kick it old school with some real antique, back-breaking labor. Where's an ox when you need one?
Thanks to Alex, there's finally a little proof that I don't just wield a camera but a mean hoe as well (please excuse my sheet white legs, sunglasses recommended).
As I climbed (stepped) over our, newly installed (expertly stuck into the ground), tiny white border fence, I have to admit, I was half expecting the actual process of hoeing the rows to be an ordeal. Surely a job that was originally performed by beasts of burden on a farm wasn't going to be easy? The actual grunt work though, wasn't really all that bad, but the having to redo the width and amount of rows three times was the real pain.
Do yourself a favor: draw up, measure out, rope off or even guesstimate (!) ahead of time how many rows you plan to make out of your little plot. Bright eyed and bushy tailed I skipped that step and because of it unfortunately, I had to add a few more.
We weren't totally acting impulsively though, as we did decide early on that as our yard slopes down the length of the garden (away from our lovely shed you've been staring at the back of) that the most logical plan would be for the rows to run same direction allowing water drain naturally. In theory this should prevent any pooling of excess water between our rows.
We want spinach, not mosquitoes.
After I finished carving out the rows, Alex went back through with the shovel removing the excess dirt from the ends of them and redistributing it among our five mounds.
I feel it's my duty to point out that there are a couple of schools of thought among backyard gardening experts on the best way to set one up. While some prefer shallower mounds, others prefer deeper, some say not to mound at all and there are even experts that claim that you don't have to even till your garden to begin with.
After doing a little bit of reading on the different types of vegetable garden plots, ultimately Alex and I simply went with what seemed to make the most sense to us. We went with relatively deep mounds, clearly distinguished by broad valleys, in part because I envisioned us being able to more easily access every corner of our little plot if we had some decent sized areas in which to walk.
For those that are local, Cincinnati's Civic Garden Center located on Reading Rd., is a great resource for anyone looking to explore different gardening methodologies.
The CGC is the home of the Hoffman reference library where you can browse nearly 2,500 gardening related titles or participate in a number of gardening related classes, some of which are free (!) while most others cost around $5 to $10 dollars. We're signed up for their backyard gardening series that is spread out over three dates during the next couple of months.
After we finally finished moving dirt around Alex and I went through, row by row, patting down the loose soil and shaping our rows into the lovely, adorable mounds that are pictured below.
Cute huh?
With our rows in place and looking their best, we carved a line down the center of one and planted our first (!) seeds in the bed itself. Our indoor starter seeds are already cozy in their greenhouses and have been for a week or two but our spinach seeds were the first to grace our rows.
Alex kissed them goodnight and tucked them in and hopefully in a week or so we should be seeing the first signs of green among our bed of brown.
I have to say, with our first sprouts peeking shyly from their greenhouses and the garden implanted with its first seeds I already feel a little accomplished and extremely pleased. There is really nothing that compares to a little bit of manual labor with something to show for it at the end of the day.
With society and all of the ever changing and quickly evolving convenience technology in today's world, it's never been easier to be complacent and lazy. But with all the great weather we've had this spring so far, it's been great to have a good excuse to go outside and play in the dirt.
And a little honest dirt has never hurt anyone.
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