A bit of background on me (Joyce) –
Starting out in my young life when I had small kids, we bought a house that had a huge space that obviously was a garden in the past. I was so excited and bought a whole bunch of different kinds of seeds and planted the entire space. I didn’t mark where the rows went – I didn’t invest in the soil – I didn’t do much watering. I do remember trying to weed for hours at a time down on my knees in the hot weather. At the end of the summer, I had one football sized thing which I thought looked like a honey dew melon. I couldn’t remember what it was until I cut it in half and remembered that I planted spaghetti squash seeds! It didn’t look like the spaghetti squash in the grocery store and it was so delicious. But one squash and a few other edible items wasn’t enough to justify all the time – so my interest for gardening was short lived. What I wanted was “easy & productive & fun” but found out you get what you put into it.
Many years later in a different house – I tried gardening once again. I bought the book “The Square Foot Gardener” by Mel Bartholomew. I thought this sounded much better – to focus on a small space and get as much produce as possible from it. The concept is to divide your small garden into square foot pieces and to plant as many seeds as it will hold. This I actually such a great way to garden for the “easy & productive” type gardener like me, since it’s not so overwhelming to water and weed. The only problem is – I totally skipped over the first chapter about getting your soil ready. I just thought it sounded way too hard and boring. We built some small raised beds. I sectioned off the little square foot parcels, I bought the seeds and planted them. It wasn’t as demanding as the first huge garden but when my harvest was pretty small for the work I put in, I decided that gardening just wan’t for me at that time.
Eventually my raspberry plants took over this space. I love raspberries so I was excited to have just raspberries and thought that 2 raised beds full of them would be enough for me. I always dreamed of having enough berries to make jam and freeze and share with friends, but no – I just had a few to pick and eat each day during the short season. This became my only edible crop.
When our children were grown, my dear husband of 27 years passed away from cancer.
A new chapter – Liam & I –
Five years later, I fell in love & married a man who is way different and wonderful in other ways than my Brad. He introduced me to research. He grew up on a farm so he has a lot of knowledge for growing but not any small scale experience. He learned that I had wanted a garden, so one of the first things we did after we married was buy a greenhouse. Neither of us had experience with a greenhouse so we studied and learned. Then we needed raised beds so we built a bunch of them. Then we ran out of room in the raised beds and then started an in-ground garden. We added beds for raspberries and developed a trellis system for them. We added beds for blueberries and rhubarb. We developed a great trellis system for grapes that is similar to what is used in Napa. We installed 2 more of them in our backyard and have experimented with growing peas, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes and squash – UP instead of OUT. We’ve developed a great way to grow potato’s. We’ve come up with some very innovative ways to make growing edibles more productive, which makes it fun. Easy & Productive & Fun!
I think the most wonderful thing that Liam taught me is that growing “easy produce” can be done if you first invest in the soil. Once I learned about this, it totally made sense to me. To have success and a lot of produce, you need to feed the soil so that it can feed the plants. Sometimes I joke that our garden looks like Jurassic park. I have to be careful about over planting seeds because the plants now can take over. One year, I had to go into the back garden with a machete to find the carrots! The plants thrive in our garden so I have to keep pinching back and cutting back many of the plants so that others can get sunlight.
We now have 3 smaller raised beds for raspberries and because of the rich soil that we use, it’s become so rewarding – I can now say that I have enough raspberries. I have been able to eat as many as I want during the season – I have filled the freezer with enough raspberries to last us the rest of the year. A small garden never produces enough to justify getting out the canning supplies, but we’ve even had enough raspberries to can jam and even beyond that, we have enough left over to share. This is one example where having rich soil brought us from toil to treasure. We also researched the kind of plants to buy and found that the “ever bearing” raspberries have a much longer fruiting season and the pruning is much easier. We also have a wonderful trellis system that Liam designed for the raspberries that help hold them up so we don’t have to tie them and it looks nice and makes the berries easy to pick.
Our rich soil –
Liam started researching soil remediation and found that worms are the perfect answer to clean the soil. Worms aerate the soil and enrich it. He talked me into buying a large metal oval cattle watering trough to raise our own worms to make worm compost and worm tea. When we saw the value in having this rich worm compost to fertilize our soil, Liam talked me into driving to Oregon to look at a commercial “flow-thru” type worm bin – 8 feet by 5 feet. When I found out that you could attach 8 more feet for very little money, to double the size, I said “lets go for it!” We just happen to have a large shop building and have room for it. Since then, our worms are making large amounts of compost – we just get to feed them. Worm compost is living and so much more beneficial than the soil and fertilizer that is packaged in plastic at the store. It is very rich and a little goes a long way. It is “earth friendly”. We amend the soil with it, brew it to make worm tea and add it to seed starter and make our own potting mix.
God has provided us with living soil, rain, sun and miracle seeds. We have gratefully received these gifts and tried to use them wisely and thoughtfully.
We would like to share some of our ideas here @ Joyce’s Sweet Earth.