Quieting Life

Making Good Dirt

In order to get and maintain organic certification, an organic farmer must adhere to a strict set of guidelines, which include a prohibition of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Growing healthy plants organically requires building fertile soil through careful management – encouraging a healthy ecosystem of molds, fungus, bacteria, and insects that do the work of converting their surroundings into plant food. The best way to do this is to add natural (organic) material that breaks down into usable nutrients as it decomposes.

As a self-anointed organic home gardener, I have only myself to answer to – no one is testing my soil for chemical residue, no one would know if I were dosing my plants with Miracle-Gro (or spraying poison on the circus sideshow of bugs). I adhere to organic methodology as a matter of sustainability and self-sufficiency, and out of concern for my local environment and my own, and my loved ones', health.

A Cutting Garden

Because our property is still in a fairly raw state, perennial gardens are limited – which means there aren't a lot of flowers for cutting and arranging. But I love having fresh flowers around the house, so I've established a bed for annual cutting flowers. I chose the spot that features the drilled well's pump head and the old dry well, thinking to serve two purposes at once: provide a source for abundant cutting flowers, and disguise a couple of sore thumbs.

Last year's bed in action.

The bed sits at the bottom of an untamed hillside, so maintaining it requires a regular beating back of tall grass along the rear edge. Worth it, I think, for all those little beauties. I plant smaller things at the front, taller more expansive things in the middle, then a mass of sunflowers bordering the back. Because, well, sunflowers.

I'd loaded up my wagon at the nursery on Thursday and needed to get all those plants in the ground over the weekend, since I actually have paying work to entertain me come Monday. Rained like the dickens on Saturday, but today broke perfectly clear...with rain forecast for late afternoon. I'd already cleaned out the early season weeds from the bed, and cut back the rear border with some deep spading and much yanking of grass and its roots. TJ let me take the truck to pick up a load of doo for amending the soil. There began a race to beat the rain.

Planting Day

Current Vermont folk wisdom says you should wait until Memorial Day to plant out warm-weather crops. I've been monitoring the long-range forecast on Accuweather, and temperatures looked to be on a warming trend, with nighttime temps in the low 50s and daytime in the 70s and 80s. When Saturday broke with clear blue skies and promises of temperatures close to 80, I decided to go ahead and plant.

In other years, I haven't had the time to get an early start on the garden, so Planting Day would mean a full 8 or 10 hours out in the sun and dirt. But I already had onions, spinach, cabbage, celery, peas, lettuce, and arugula in the ground, so I could afford to be a little leisurely. It was such a gorgeous day, I decided we should have a late breakfast out on the deck.

Starting Seeds

This threatens to be a long and rambling screed, but I promise it will be full of useful information. It may be a little late for some types of plants and some locations, but my hope is that it will be a resource to be bookmarked and returned to over time. Note that you can get a bigger view of any photograph here just by clicking on it.

There are plenty of good reasons to start your own seeds: to take full advantage of the vast selection of plant varieties available; to save money (in some scenarios); to ensure you're not bringing disease home to your garden (as was the case a few years ago, when plants infected with blight at a large commercial greenhouse were distributed to the likes of Lowe's and Home Depot, and a cool wet summer provided perfect conditions for the spread of an epidemic). For me, the number one reason for starting my own seeds is that I get about a 2-month jump on gardening season. Instead of waiting until the conditions are right for planting out starts from a garden center, I'm busy grinding dirt under my fingernails and nurturing little green babies while it's still snowing outside.

Fresh Starts

I've been wanting to get back to blogging. I kept a cooking blog – A Cooking Life – for a few years, but failed miserably to keep up with it, for several reasons. I quickly felt boxed in by my choice of subject; while cooking takes up an enormous amount of my psychic space, there are so many other things that interest me and that I want to share. And then there was my job. 

I'm a 'freelance' graphic designer who, over a period of about 20 years, morphed into a technical editor for a car company. I found myself charged with helping overhaul the entire technical training curriculum for two luxury brands, and that including hiring and overseeing someone to handle the web-based course development. This came on about 6 months into my blogging foray, unforeseen, and has consumed my time and energy for the last 4 years. We've finally completed the overhaul, and now I have some freedom to re-balance my interests.