I attended a gardening workshop a while back. I’ll attend any gardening workshop I can get into as long as it’s free. I’m always looking for new horticultural ideas – state-of-the-art hints, tricks and cutting-edge ways to up my dig-in-the-dirt game. It’s a game that hasn’t managed to be upped yet, but I’m not dead yet either, so there’s that. This time round, the expert instructor really delivered; the man was bursting with vegetative creativity. For one, he recommended planting vegetables as close to the house as possible – and by close, he meant next-to-the-windows, wedged-into-the-flowerbeds close. “If your tomatoes are next to your house,” he said, “you’re more likely to remember to pick one on your way into the kitchen and add it to your spaghetti sauce. Likewise, if you see weeds growing by your front door, you’ll be motivated to get rid of them before the neighbors come over.” In other words, the closer you are to your garden, the closer it will be to you.
But I don’t know. His idea’s a hard sell for me. I’m thinking that maybe I have a different kind of garden than he does. I mean, I’m a dedicated straw hat member and all, but I’m pretty sure my type of garden works the same way my mirror does: The farther away I am from it, the sure-as-heck better everything looks. At present, my garden is banished way out back across the lawn, at least half an acre away, dug in next to the potato field. I agree that a garden’s location requires careful planning and exacting standards; I just need mine close enough to remind me that it’s there, but far away enough that I can mistake the kochia weed for a really good stand of beets. And I love having people tell me that my garden looks great, even if all the greens they are seeing belong on Idaho’s registry of noxious weeds.
Speaking of weeds, the instructor’s next suggestion was even more shocking. He told me to cut all my weeds off at the root, but not with a hoe. “Don’t pull them, either,” he said, “just use a pair of gardening scissors, and cut each weed off at ground level. This allows the root to compost into your soil. It will also prevent damage to the root systems of your vegetables.”
Scissors.
Really?
I had to blink three times. Just so we are clear, Michele’s unwritten book of gardening tips would be titled War and Peas, not Sewing in the Garden with Friends. I require a stirrup hoe, three wire weeders and a flamethrower just to get past the grass that’s burrowing in at the end of each row. I can’t be snipping away one weed at a time, or the red root will flank me. The dandelions will storm my ramparts. The thistle will carry me off. And let’s be honest, cutting down plants, whether by hoe or by scissor, only gets you so far. Apparently, Mr. Instructor-man has never met my friends wild geranium, wild grass and wild morning glory. “Leave the roots to compost,” my foot. Zombie plants never die.
By that point of the class, everything had become clear to me. I realized that once again, I had inadvertently stepped into a practical gardening class. I looked around me. Everyone definitely looked level-headed, well-rested and deeply engaged in the emotional well-being of their flora – and probably their fauna, too.
By definition, practical gardening means only growing what you can reasonably eat. Practical gardening employs planter pots, raised beds and automatic dripping systems. It entails puttering around happily, knowing each plant by name and buying special plant treats for everyone.
“Excuse me,” I said, “I think there has been some confusion. Do you know if there is an impractical gardening class available?”
Here’s how I know I don’t fit into the sane and logical gardening camp. Last year, my neighbor asked Dave if we wanted some spaghetti squash. His wife’s single plant had produced 13 squashes. Dave told him that I’d also planted a spaghetti squash, and it too had delivered 13 squashes. Until that moment, I had no idea that noodle-type squashes were such precise producers. That experience should have led me to conclude that this year I should plant exactly half a spaghetti squash plant. I have five.
My anti-math behavior doesn’t end there. I have 24 tomato plants, more cabbage than the country of Russia, six rows of beans and more pumpkins than I think I can legally own without a permit. And I have no control over any of it. I blame the men in my life. Dad always planted a huge garden, so I thought the word garden meant “a farm that is too small for labor-saving equipment but too large for you to take a summer vacation.” Admittedly, Dad was better at keeping control of his mini-farm than I am. I always plant in fear. Or I should say I overplant in fear. I fear that the cucumbers won’t come up, that the squash bugs are going to kill all the zucchini or that David is going to spray my plants with chemical again. Never trust a farmer with a tank of chemical he’s wanting to finish off.
Well, no matter. She who plants in fear harvests zucchini by the ton. Or is it thistle by the ton? I’m going to sit back here by the house, drink lemonade and think on that for a while.
