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The Foster Garden
When my neighbor, an environmental engineer, moved in six years ago, she meticulously planned her garden in excel sheets. She mapped the plots, which plants, how many of each, and even used a measuring tape to space them. She’d ask me about a certain plant I had growing, or what was wrong with her cucumbers. I’d shrug and say, “try moving them.” She’d shrug equally baffled by me, all willy-nilly, and the happy recipient of her extra plants that didn’t fit when “properly” spaced. For me, a garden always begins with dragging the discarded or unwanted home.
I take the back way, behind the building, to my favorite coffee shop to avoid the puttering in the parking lot, and there, beside the dumpster were two glorious wooden pallets. I jumped out and checked the number (you have to know these things- they’re not all good for food!). Thrilled, I put them in the back of my old SUV and call my spouse to share the good news (he is not as excited but plays along). It just so happens a 2x4 fits perfectly inside the crate, so we made feet and stood it up. Now vertical, the blue pallet first provides a little wind break for small seedlings of dill, and then I added lettuce seed because even if I don’t eat it all, the nitrogen is good for the soil. As the cucumber grows, it climbs the blue pallet as a trellis to keep the cucumbers off the ground.
I set the second pallet horizontally to provide a weed barrier for the radishes, greens, and herb seedlings. There’s garlic in the back next to the wattle fence we built last year, when I was a on quest to teach the kids about the last thousand years of fencing (no, not of the rapier variety, that comes later). We stripped a bazillion switches of ligustrum without any guilt, and made curved fences of stone. The toddler acted as the force majeure to demonstrate how curves withstand far greater force than a straight barrier. And any time I have green onions “butts”, I just stick the ends in the soil and two weeks later, I have more onions, as if by magic!
I couldn’t dig the mulberry stump out of the expanded garden, so I left for a bean pole. I planted tomatoes, cubanelles, and zucchini until it was full on dark. I tucked them into their beds…
