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gardening demands
Saturday, May 16 2009
Gardening tasks sneak up on me at this time of the year. Now that I have a greenhouse, such tasks can theoretically sneak up on me at any time of the year, and I've missed all the task deadlines the greenhouse has enabled for this season. At this point my greenhouse is still just a masonry and carpentry project, but I've crossed the first hurdle and now there's a real garden with real gardening demands, and a garden of any quality will demand all the attention it needs. Today I planted a "grape" tomato plant (which differs from a cherry tomato, though I'm not exactly sure how). I haven't done much soil conditioning this year, so to be sure this new plant had sufficient nitrogen, I dug a hole to bedrock (only about 16 inches down) and filled it with the contents of one of my infamous urine buckets (leaves mixed with urine; I can generate a five gallon bucket every ten days). I threw some dirt on top of this, followed by some potting soil, and then planted the tomato plant. I hope it doesn't choke on all that delicious ammonia gas rising up through its roots.
I also made a second stab for the season at mowing the lawn with the spool mower, though the grass was longer and tougher and the going was very hard. I tried cutting at the most aggressive tufts with a small handheld sickle, but this required far too much bending over. I need a proper scythe. My father had one when I was a kid, and he used to mow lots of hay with it, though I don't know where he got it. It's difficult to find traditional human-powered farm equipment in the peak oil economy, so I found myself musing about perhaps making my own scythe from scrap iron and a wooden pole. (Ideally my parents would just give me theirs, but they're far too inflexibly materialistic to give me anything.)
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