Sodbusters
Click any photo to enlarge
Under the aegis of St. Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners (about which, more later), we began digging up our backyard garden Thursday night. We began gardening in this plot shortly after we bought the house in 1975, and kept at it for about 15 years before losing a little of our back-to-the-land mojo. About that time, our son’s soccer coach and family had just gotten evicted from a city pea-patch they had been tending because the city was selling the property, so we invited them to tend our backyard plot as a replacement. We didn’t even pretend to help, and have been non-gardeners since then.
For the last two or three years, though, the coach-family’s interest has waned, and last fall they told us they were giving it up. During all that time, we’d never lost our appetite for filching an ear of this or a sheave of that from the coach-family’s bounty, and we made non-commital grunts to each other about farming the plot ourselves this year. This ambition was bolstered a bit by our son’s interest in better eating over the last couple of years, and his reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
So, Thursday night found me, Mrs. Perils and our son busting sod with whatever implements we could find in our garage.
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In about 3 hours, we had just about half of the plot turned over:
Friday night, with the help of a young friend of ours who had expressed an interest in participating, we made quite a bit more progress.
Today, Mrs. Perils went about town acquiring seeds and starter plants for a variety of vegetables, and we will start planting tomorrow. Oh, and about St. Fiacre - click on the interpretive sign below. We encountered this little shrine while strolling around Georgetown, SC last spring:
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Very nice!
But — boy! — you guys must have veeeeeeerrry long arms to plan to work such a wide piece of garden
We’ve always double-dug our garden beds (http://www.iirr.org/saem/page134-137.htm), and damned if I’m going to break my back on soil that will only end up being a path, even if it’s a narrow strip between the beds!
Help and inspiration for continuing and improving your backyard farm plot can be found at http://www.spinfarming.com. You are not alone. Keep up the good work.
Impressive work!
Trixie - Thanks for the reference - we’ll study it. Since you’re moving soon, you probably can’t have much of a garden this year, eh? Did you prepare your plot for a fallow year, or did you plant something for your tenants to enjoy?
Roxanne - That’s spam, but it’s tofu spam, so I’ll leave it. Interesting concept (spinfarming), but it seems inefficient to have to chase around disparate plots in order to get to market. The answer, which I despair of, is to quit paving fertile lowland suburban areas and compensate by irrigating remote desert areas. I pose this whenever someone like the Klamath farmers whine about not being able to suck every drop of water out of an ecosystem. Just in case you ever return.
Kathy - It was my Mother’s Day present to Mrs. Perils!
You won’t want to do double digging unless you understand that it is VERY HARD WORK. But has great results. Yeah, this year I haven’t done anything much. The Consort used the university greenhouse at his disposal to plant lettuces, chard, and kale, which we’ll be able to start harvesting before we leave. he also planted several tomato plants, which I thought was a ridiculous idea, seeing as they won’t start producing until July. But, for him, a growing season isn’t complete without tomatoes.
I hope the tenants appreciate this!
I really am impressed with the very nice sized garden! You have almost, but not quite, given me the push I needed to engage in similar back-breaking labor. Oh, well, it’s too late to be doing it down here, anyway.
What struck me about old St. Fiacre the first time I read that plaque was what a destroyer he was. I don’t want him sponsoring our back yard, but he sure fits some of the mentalities of where we found him. So much stripping off of the landscape and building up. They’re laying more waste to that area than the hurricanes ever did.
I’m a Lutheran, so I think you and yours are all saints, with or without your good work(s).
May your garden be fertile!
If your pronunciation is the least bit imprecise, “St. Fiacre” can easily come out “St. Viagra”. Go with what suits you!
Much more attractive than the area right behind my house where it looks like a bomb went off. New septic tank and the removal of two mammoth 75-year-old box elders. I wonder if there’s a patron saint of septic tanks…
In case St. Fiacre is oversubscribed, one gardening tip I’m passing along this year to every gardener I know: Haxnick’s Easy Fleece and Easy Net tunnels available from Garden Talk here in the East and Seeds of Change out west. I’m using the first to reduce insect damage and the second to deter deer, rabbits, etc. Leave it to the Brits to come up with such nifty garden stuff.
well i have and maintain seven acres in carbon sequestering Loblolly pine trees and the only way to go is with mechanization. but i planted every one of those thousand some trees by hand just because i wanted to. great for the lower back muscles. opened up the shop door the other day to go out and weed around my beloved trees and a copperhead snake raised it’s head ready to strike only twelve inches away from my naked leg. ever seen a fiddler crab backpeddle? that was me… heart rate up to max Scotty!
i have over three acres available (free) for you gardeners to work so i don’t have to maintain it.
no starting small for you folks. go for the big time. you certainly have worked up an appetite by now. we look forward to pics of the growing stuff. i recommend mulch. highly!
gardening must have some counterpart to the old saw about firewood warming twice. (once when cutting and splitting, once when burning).
Nice garden! Now all you need are some city chickens! I’ll be following your blog now to see if St. Fiacre has as much mojo as our garden deity of choice, the goddess Bhride.
SPIN farming was a new one for me. “It is the first method to adapt commercial growing techniques to sub-acre land masses.” Great. Are those the same non-sustainable techniques (monocultural, intensive usage without any recovery time for the land) that got us into this mess in the first place?
I like all the hard work you put into your garden space. I hope you’ll update us with pictures of many wonderful green things, tendrils and shoots everywhere. Good luck, and happy gardening!
I’m impressed. We try every now and then but because I love tomatoes and peppers, we never have much luck around here because of the sun (or lack thereof). So in our garden plot, we have strawberries and herbs and in pots on our deck go tomatoes and peppers where they get more sun.
What an ambitious project you’ve set for yourselves. My hat is off to you all! When my husband and I moved into our house 21 years ago, we felt the need for a wee bit more privacy from our neighbors, so we rimmed our property with white pines.
In the subsequent decades, they have grown so mighty they now shade most the backyard: Oh, dear, not enough sunlight for gardening! Tsk. What a pity. Guess we’ll have to buy veggies from the market and find something else to do with our “free” time…
(This is what I call excellent planning by two people who, despite the guilt feelings, do not want in their heart of hearts to weed *anything*…. Now you perhaps see why I’m in particular awe of you!)
Wow. My back hurts just looking at those pictures!
Actually, my back hurts because we’ve been doing almost exactly the same thing — only bigger! It’s a continuation of the re-landscaping project started, and abruptly terminated, last year the weekend I broke my ankle. We are long-overdue for an overhaul of all the over-grown beds in and around the house. Not sure if there will be time or energy left for vegetables, and we’re a little late for that down here now anyway. But I do have two potted tomatoes just waiting for the right spot.
Keep posting pictures as that project progresses, Phil — it’s very inspirational!