ENGL000: Pre-College English

I have been planting a garden since I was a young girl and helping my mother plant one in our tiny backyard. As a child, I remember being so thrilled to watch all sorts of yummy food start to poke through the ground where we had planted seeds. As an adult, I have continued this practice because working in my garden brings me great joy, and there is nothing more delicious than a meal made from food I grew with my own hands. Each year when the ground starts to soften, I get excited for the steps I will take that will result in a yard full of food by the end of summer. Preparing my garden each spring involves getting the soil ready, planning what to plant where, creating rows and walkways, and fixing the garden fence.

The first step I have to take is preparing the soil. This involves mixing and overturning the dirt and dead plants with my rototiller. I simply walk it back and forth until the dirt looks dark brown and has a slightly moist feeling to the touch. It's important that I go slowly because the machine will get clogged on last year's plants and weeds if I don't give it time to break them up. Once I complete the first rototilling, I grab my twenty-five pound bag of fertilizer and sprinkle it all over the freshly overturned dirt by handfuls. I then rototill one more time to mix the fertilizer evenly into the soil. Well prepared and nurtured soil is essential to a successful garden.

Once the soil is prepared, I decide where I want to plant each vegetable. I use colored popsicle sticks to mark off plots of ground, so I will know what should go where when it comes time to plant. First, I plan out where to plant my tall vegetables, such as corn and beans.  They always go toward the back of my garden, so they don't block the sunlight from my smaller plants.  Then, I plan where to plant my squash and zucchini.  I mark off space around the outer edge of the garden, so they will have the fence to support them as they crawl and grow. Finally, I plot all my other vegetables in alternating rows.

After I plot out what I plan to plant where, my next step is creating the rows and walkways. My partner and I just redid our roof, so we have a lot of extra roofing shingles which work fantastically in the garden. Before I can create the walkways, I measure the space between rows and create a stack of shingles for each row.  Then, I lay them down with one shingle slightly overlapping the next in the measured spaces between my plotted rows to create my walkways in the garden. These walkways will be important later in the summer because they keep down the weeds and make it easy to get to all parts of the garden without stepping on any of my yummy plants.

My final step is fixing the garden fence. The chicken wire fence takes a beating from the winter's heavy snow accumulation and needs to be repaired each spring before I plant. To do this, first I take a slow walk around the fence noting where the wooden pegs have come out and where the wire has torn or rusted. After I assess the damages, I place new wooden pegs where they are needed and cut several pieces of replacement chicken wire. Then I cut out the rusted or broken parts of the fence leaving a hole just smaller than my replacement piece. To attach the new chicken wire pieces, I twist the ends of the new wire around the old wire edges. Lastly, I tie the chicken wire to the new wooden pegs with string securing my fence and making it more sturdy.

Once I have prepared my soil, plotted out what will be planted where, created my walkways, and fixed my fence, my garden is ready for planting. There are a lot of steps I need to take, but once everything is planted and I can see all my beautiful and tasty vegetables growing, it is all worth it!