Idea and Complications

The idea is to write a weekly diary about growing vegetables. The diary will include a short piece under each of the headings that follow, and this one. There will be one picture. The complications are things that arrive unbidden in my head, that threaten to undermine what I am doing. I will write about them here. Fear of failure is the most pressing complication today, or rather fear of success. I’m a good starter, but not a good finisher. There. The plan is to keep everything brief, and not to dwell, especially here. Make a start, that is all.

Action

This section will talk about what I have actually done this week. The plan is to grow my vegetables using a no-dig method. This is not out of idleness, but because not disturbing the soil allows the soil organisms to flourish. I have an allotment and it has been cultivated for many years. It contains perennial weeds and probably not much goodness.  My plan is to import large quantities of organic matter and spread it thickly over the entire plot, on top of cardboard. This week I have taken delivery of the first load of compost. I’ve made a start.

The plants

The picture is of a frosty leaf of a box hedge in my garden. I am cutting it into an elliptical shape, with one of the centres the trunk of the ceanothus tree that grows out of it. Other plant activity this week has been ordering seeds. I have a plan to grow a plant combination that I have heard about that has been used over many centuries by native Americans. The three plants are known as the Three Sisters, Corn, Squash and Beans. The squash covers the ground, the corn rises high and the beans clamber around the corn.

Other things

These other things include harvesting, preserving and cooking. Also research. They will turn out to be separate sections, but for the moment I will clump them together – there is nothing to harvest yet, thus nothing to preserve or cook. Research is going on all the time. One recent discovery is that plant based compost is better than animal based compost – manure. This is interesting. It makes sense, somehow. The idea is to allow the soil organisms to improve the mineral content and structure of the soil, and to disturb it as little as possible. Hence compost and cardboard. Go, worms!