It ’s a little after 7AM as I look out the windowpane into the still - gray morning . I can see the backyard from my temporary desk indoors – a plastic fold table beneath the window , on which I have my computing machine and a cup of strong black umber . Oaks and magnolia loom over the patchy Gunter Grass , while a immense flock of brush comprise of the strike limbs of their buddy waits to be burn .
On top of the pile of brush is a mass of boxes from our move . These will glow with the pile , like the boats of Hernán Cortés .
In a twosome of hours I will hit a lucifer and send the remains of our big move up in flame .
My protagonist Greg is coming over soon . He rented us his family property and home so we could settle here in Alabama . Along with Greg , a tractor is coming as well . With a big cultivator on the back .
I do n’t have time to mess around hand - digging a big garden . Nor do I sense like doing it again after abandon my sometime garden in Grenada , which was 7,000ft2 of laboriously dug beds . Instead , I give in to the decoy of the 128 - twelvemonth - honest-to-god mechanised marvel that power America ’s gravid farm . A tractor can do in a few minutes what would take me a week . I ’ve already grease one’s palms seed for a swelled fall garden along with enough for a big area of fall and wintertime traverse crops which can be till under to give my spring garden . I ’ve also purchased a mix of various nutrients commend by Steve Solomon , with whom I have been carry on complicated Skype conversation about esoteric amendment like atomic number 11 molybdate , K sulphate , gypsum and boron . He has promised that if I comply his recommendations , my white turnip will be the best - tasting in Baldwin County – and who am I to disagree with Steve Solomon , the original “ sound gardener ? ”
Here ’s the backyard right now :
We ’re proceed to crowd that brushwood pile over the gage and cut it , then turn it under . The arrangement of trees are a scrap weird and do n’t allow a giant well-defined area to work , so we ’ll be moving the bed around them as pauperism be so we can avoid cutting down shade . In an Alabama summer , we ’re gon na want that tincture .
To the left field of the image above is another boastful clear region of weed . We ’re going to till that too , for a combined garden space of about 12,000ft2 – over a quartern Akko . This will be the big garden yet .
Soon we ’ll head out and get some stakes and strings to arrange bed , along with a big warhead of cottonseed repast from a local cotton plant snare . The stakes and strings will help me space out my seam and the cottonseed repast will leave nitrogen and some organic matter to the grunge .
I ’m sure the flaxen soil is acid here , since blueberry bush and pines bristle . Yet I do n’t reckon it ’s really horrendous nutritionally , as the George Sand is dark and loamy :
It ’s prison term to do the onetime “ jarful test ” and figure out what ’s in the undercoat . I ’ll also send a soil sampling toLogan Labsand bump out the exact mineral authorship of the garden arena .
But even without that , with some lime and cottonseed meal , plus Steve ’s witch ’s brew of uncanny elements , this acid moxie should grow good veg . I ’ve already get an order for turnips and mustard from the neighbour down the route . The insistency is on . Here I am in a new mood with new dirt and I ’m already ready commitments and lash out a huge garden quad in a rental property .
And I make love every moment of it . It ’s honest to garden in gumption again and wreak the game of “ beat up the frost . ” It ’s great to be back in a spot surrounded by citizenry that understand and encourage what I do . It ’s awesome to have a landlord with a tractor who call me up and say “ hey , can I come over tomorrow and till you up a big garden ? ”
All the moving , the worry , the fomite - hunt , the unbalanced search for plane ticket , the search for a household … it ’s over . It ’s horticulture time again , and I experience happy than I ’ve mat up since I first pay off back to the states and drove to Taco Bell for some good former - fashioned 7 - layer burrito and a Mountain Dew .
We ’re gon na plant a huge fall garden . And do n’t interest – I ’ll have my photographic camera out there and we ’ll make certain the process ends up on YouTube and Unauthorized . Finally , at long last , I ’ll be institute come again . And it ’s in a good place , hem in by my own the great unwashed .
But enough about all that . It ’s fourth dimension to git ! The garden is calling .
