How Does Your Garden Grow?

I take to gardening about as well as well as Keith Richards takes to sobriety. As well as Billy Joel takes to leisurely drives through the Hamptons. As well as Julianne Moore takes to movie roles that don’t require nudity.

I just don’t have a green thumb. I never have. House plants, flower beds, or gardens. They all wind up looking the same after just a month or two.

Dead.

But as Alexander Pope once wrote, Hope springs eternal. This year we are making our most ambitious effort ever to grow something. Well, not just something but somethings. Tricia’s dad was here a few weeks ago and built us two new garden boxes for the back yard. He had already helped me build two other boxes a couple of years ago. So now we have two 4X4 boxes and two 4 X 8 boxes for a grand total of 96 square feet. That’s enough room for quite a few dead plants.

I’m optimistic we’ll finally succeed. I think it’s somehow a cop-out to declare you can’t grow plants or cook or even program the VCR (but who programs VCRs anymore?). These are all tasks that can be performed if the proper steps are sequentially taken. To grow a pumpkin is not the same as creating a beautiful watercolor or performing a ballet. Plant it in the right kind of soil. At the right time of year. Water it. Fertilize it. Weed around it. And it will grow. There’s little art involved.

Right?

Yet for years I’ve declared that I can’t keep anything alive. In reality this was because I’d forget to water. And weed. And care. Often times I’d just get bored with it. We’ve started garden boxes before, both at home and in community gardens, only to neglect them. Along the way there have been a few glimmers of hope. There was the year we were able to grow a few mangled looking carrots the size of a thumb. And the year we produced enough peas for two or three dinners. But that’s about it.

This year will be different though. We’re set to see this through. Tricia started by doing some research with the Clemson Extension Home and Garden Information Center. She found out which fruits and vegetables are well suited for our temperate zone during the spring and summer months. Next she worked with her dad to make sketches of our boxes filled with what to plant in each and how far to space everything.

A few weeks later I went to Woodley’s Garden Center and bought the plants. No, we weren’t risking seeds. We’ll cheat this year and hope to build from our success next year. I picked up four corn, three zucchini, four eggplant, six tomato, four pepper, sixteen strawberry, and twenty-four green bean plants. The kids worked hard helping Tricia plant each of these in our boxes as I constructed a climbing structure for the pole beans out of bamboo and twine.

By the end of the day we had a garden that looked awfully promising. We’re still in the smitten stage right now. The one where everyone wants to be the one to go out and water it.

“Have you watered the garden?”

“No, I was just about to go out and do it.”

“Well I was just heading out so I could do it if you want.”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“Well I I’ll already be out there.”

“No really, I don’t mind. I was just going to finish up the dishes and head right out.”

“Oh….all right.”

The real test will be three or four weeks from now when we’re really busy, it’s blazing hot, and the garden is no longer like a new puppy everyone wants to feed.

We have high hopes. There are already plans for another large box, some planters, and maybe even a small lemon tree in the middle. We’ve dreamed of building a small bench suspended between two wooden planters at each side. And low bushes to serve as a decorative border. But perhaps we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. First we need to keep this garden alive.