When we moved into this house I intended to have a garden. However, the landscaping company came two days early and sprayed the entire lot with hydro seed and in my garden spot grew a lush green grass. For eight years I considered killing the grass and going back to my garden plans but summer life always went so fast.
This year, I knew I needed a garden for my emotional survival. There has been something missing and I've had nagging thoughts that it was playing in the dirt, planting seeds and caring for them, and harvesting colorful, healthy foods. So, I began my research. I didn't want to just do a humdrum garden, I wanted it to flourish.
Through random (though inspired) connections, LeRoy led me to a couple of people in our Hibbard area that know how to handle our sandy soil, what plants grow best here as well as when to plant and how to fertilize them.
Greg Liggett, who was the previous horticulture specialist and managing groundskeeper at BYUI, cleared the grass and tilled the ground and taught me how to prep the soil. I learned from Dave Woods, owner of Woods Gardens, all about a drip system instead of having overhead sprinklers and I, myself, changed every sprinkler head around the garden plot and laid out all my drip lines to make the system work right.
I played in the dirt. I carefully planned the layout and spacing of each row. I planted seed and cared for it. I loved every dirty, hardworking, minute of it and looked forward to it each morning. LeRoy and I built a long trellis for the peas to grow on and I invested in water walls and mulch to protect the tender plants. I researched garden bugs and how to naturally prevent them without pesticides. When plants and buds started growing I made everyone walk out to the garden with me to admire them.
The harvesting began with spinach and lettuce, followed shortly by juicy peas. As the garden rows grew in more full the boys interest in a garden started to flourish. When picking time came they were all in support of "Mom's garden". I would often find Brock and Hyrum huddled in the pea row snacking away and Nathan hidden deep in the raspberries filling his belly.
Suddenly, the raspberry patches were overflowing! The pea vines were as tall as the trellis and drooping from the weight of hundreds of pea pods. The carrots were still tiny and the cucumbers and tomatoes were coming along slowly but I had a real garden and it was feeding us!
August brought on a full harvest. I only had three cantaloupe plants but they needed to be picked daily and we ended up giving some to neighbors. The tomatoes kept a steady crop from the beginning of August clear through the middle of October. We found that we LOVE the small yellow tomatoes and next year we won't even plant the red ones. The carrots were getting larger, the beets were perfection, the onions coming along great, the strawberries held on fairly steady, and the beans were out of control in population. The pepper plants got some kind of bug (more research to be done before next year) and had to be pulled because it got out of hand before I even noticed it. The little baby watermelons and pumpkins were soaking up plenty of sun and growing bigger everyday.
All of this delicious, colorful goodness changed our cravings and by the time the boys started school we had prepared lunch ideas that were more nutrition based. The boys were excited to plan their lunches making sure to have a protein, fresh fruits and/or vegetables and a carb.
The garden even caused a refrigerator makeover! Though we had to cover them several nights due to frost, the tomatoes continued to produce clear into October. We dug up the last of the carrots (some of which were HUGE!) and layered them in buckets of sand from the empty back corner of the lot so that we would have them all winter. And, our two pumpkin plants produced 26 pumpkins! (Why no picture??) Several pumpkins were used for jack-o-lanterns, some were made into warm soup and pumpkin bars, some were blended and frozen and the final ones were stolen from our porch and smashed all over the road (several houses in the neighborhood were hit).
I already miss my garden and look forward to next year armed with even more knowledge and planning.
