Urban Pioneers [Garden]

"Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow." – The Secret Garden

I am growing a garden this year. One might think that I would be an expert, or at least familiar with this sort of thing, since I grew up on a farm and my mom grows a huuuuge garden (enough for me to run a mini-CSA at the office last year). Not to mention I edit a magazine called Home & Farm and work primarily on agribusiness publications, all with gardening sections. But I've never done it before. I remember when I was about 7 or 8, one of my mom's friend's kid's (so, my friend) read The Secret Garden and got really excited about helping her mom with a vegetable garden. Yeah, not me. Sure, I loved the book, but I don't recall spending hardly any time in my mom's garden between that age and my sophomore year of college, when I read Fast Food Nation for history class and became quasi-vegetarian and realized where my food came from and how fortunate I was to get all these fresh veggies for free.

So in my college apartment we had an herb garden, which I continued in my Brent(ioch)wood apartments. But now I have a backyard, and so I went to my parents for advice on how to start a real garden. With vegetables and everything.

My mom suggested raised beds, and so two weeks ago, my parents came up along with one of my dad's workers and two trucks to get to work on two raised beds. My dad designs and builds houses, so raised beds were no problem for him. I expected it to take all day, but he busted out two beds in about an hour.

After the frames were done, we put in the dirt. This is the point where I get on my soapbox about certain writers who think that gardening at school doesn't teach kids the things they should be learning. I simply don't see how that's possible. Science was one of my least favorite classes in school, but on this day alone I learned (or was reminded) that plants need certain chemicals, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, so you add compost and lime in addition to the truckbed full of dirt.

Then, you start planting. Well, you plant onions if your mom has brought them to you and says they can go in the ground that day. 

Everything else needed to wait for a rain, but fortunately it rained the next morning. Then you have to go back to Home Depot and buy more topsoil because the rain makes the soil settle. 

But eventually, you have a garden. I'm convinced I'm going to kill 80% of what I planted, but so far the only casualties are some pansies my mom brought for me to transplant, and possibly some other transplants, because I probably waited too long (Saturday to Friday) to plant them. I watered them during that time, but that didn't seem to help. But I have a job, and I didn't have time to plant during the week.

Everything else was in seed form, so hopefully those will survive. On Good Friday, my work oh-so-kindly let out at 2 p.m., so we were at Lowe's by 3 and in the garden by 4. I bought a lot of pretty flowers, because my mom really wanted me to make one of the beds a flower bed. And she's right, colorful flowers really liven things up.

There's hyacinth, the now-dead pansies, marigolds (good companion plants for tomatoes), begonia and I forget what else, but I have the little label things. 

And on the other side of the bed: dianthus, salvia and dusty miller. We'll see.

In the vegetable bed, I planted seeds my mom gave me: kale, radishes, chives, pak choi, swiss chard and maybe another kind of lettuce. All spring greens, for the most part.

I had forgotten that I was supposed to soak the spinach and carrot seeds to help them germinate, and I was a little nervous about the pea trellis, so I saved those for the next day. My mom actually had me soak the peas too – "regular" peas, edible pods and something called "experimental variety." We shall see if those make it... mainly, we shall see if my trellises survive tonight's storm, let alone all the spring storms to come.

The only thing we haven't planted (that we have seeds for) are green beans (snap beans). Waiting until after frosts are no longer a concern. Although with this 80-degree weather, I've almost forgotten the horribly cold and snowy winter we just had. Almost.

Anyway, fingers crossed that some of these veggies survive my non-green thumb. My coworker says being a homeowner in East Nashville is being an urban pioneer (for reasons you can probably understand if you watch the local Nashville news). Just like the pioneers, I'm trying but probably will not succeed at keeping everything in my garden alive. But unlike them, I'm not afraid to ask for help. And I'll be very grateful when others like my mom share their bounty with me.

Cast of Characters, so far:

• Planted 3/27: onions (yellow and white) - veggie bed

• Planted 4/2: kale, radishes, chives, pak choi, swiss chard, lettuces - veggie bed

pansies, dianthus, dusty miller, salvia, begonia, marigolds, hyacinth - flower bed

parsley, cilantro, basil, oregano, pineapple sage - herb garden (container plants)

• Planted 4/3: carrots, spinach, regular peas, edible pod peas - veggie bed

experimental peas - flower bed

• Planted 4/7: hibiscus - side bed (thanks, previous homeowners)

(RIP, pansies. Sorry about that.)