November 4, 2010
Manny never did arrive Monday. I am not surprised; he usually has to take his wife and/or his mother-in-law to the doctor on Monday. I’m writing this on Tuesday for publication on Wednesday, so I do not yet know whether he’ll get here today or not. I hope so, because I have things for him to do indoors as well as out. (Later: He called to say he is taking his wife for some medical tests. He hopes to get here tomorrow.)
The garden looks much the same as yesterday, except that more leaves have fallen from the apricot tree. I’ll use them to mulch the strawberries. There are two strawberry beds: one of the rectangular beds, and a strawberry pyramid. Papa–my father’s father–had a strawberry pyramid, and I loved it, so I was glad to finally get one of my own.
I just picked the first two tomatoes from an Aerogarden in the barn! Delicious–I ate them straight from the vine, as they couldn’t possibly have been contaminated by dirt or anything else. They didn’t even need salt, much less salad dressing or mayo. And I still haven’t finished the last ripe tomatoes from the yard, and have two buckets of green tomatoes, most of which will ripen over the next month.
The composter is full now, and Manny intends to do one or the other (or both) of two things: (1) Shred the contents with his lawnmower; and/or (2) Use the chicken wire that came off the barn when Manny was repairing it to create compost bins and put it in the second bin, so the stuff that piles up over the winter can go into the first bin. The third bin will be where the finished compost goes until it’s time to use it.
When he was pulling down the old grapevines, he had a humongous pile of branches. First he cut out all the wood, because he heats his house with wood and when he runs out he has to burn cardboard. So, of course, we save all our cardboard for him. But he managed to get three wheelbarrows full of wood out of the grapevines. I thought about asking him to save me enough of the smaller branches for me to make a wreath with, but I decided he needed the firewood a heck of a lot more than I needed a grapevine wreath. Besides that, we haven’t put up Christmas decorations in years. We don’t have room. Trying to run three businesses out of a 900-square-foot home is a pain and a displeasure. I’ve got to remeasure now, though, since we turned the screen room, which I had not been counting as part of the house, into a real room that is part of the house. I expect we’re up to about 1200 square feet. That’s still small for two large people and three businesses, one of them an international charity. Yes, we’re the business office of Project Gutenberg. I’m assistant to the CEO, who is in Alaska. People who call here wanting to talk to the CEO are informed that they have to talk to his assistant or to the CFO, who doesn’t really want to talk to anybody.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . I just got through faxing a statement to Amazon Legal’s copyright agent. Some idiot stole my copyrighted edition of Swiss Family Robinson, which I spent two years creating. Here’s what I told the agent: “I spent two years creating [it[ from five out-of-copyright abridgements. I carefully cleared out all contradictions, errands that people had gone on but not returned from, errands that people had returned from but not gone on, and all other problems. I wrote some continuity. . . . The idiots even included my introduction, with my signature.” I’m asking for all profits plus $500 punitive damage. I figure they will find it difficult, but possible, to dig up $500, but if they complain too much I will raise it to $5000. I disapprove of blatant theft.
Today I want to talk about All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! by Mel Bartholomew. It tells you how to reduce your gardening work to a minimum while getting a maximum amount of food and flowers from a small space. You begin by dividing each planting bed into one-square-foot areas, or just laying out one-square-foot areas on the ground. Then, instead of digging or tilling everything including the places where you will walk, you dig or till only the areas where you will plant. If you combine that with Lasagna Gardening ¸which I told you about yesterday, you should have very few weed problems.
One of the important tricks is to start at the same time several small plants, some of which will stay small and be harvested early, and others that will grow much larger and be in the garden most of the season. Companion gardening is very important in square foot gardening, because you can’t put plants that dislike each other in the same area, nor can you put plants that call for little water in with plants that want a lot of water.
The author shows you several garden plans that will maximize your results while minimizing your work. For example, instead of planting a whole row of lettuce which you will then have to thin, you take one square and plant a lettuce in each corner and a tomato or pepper plant in the middle. After all, how many lettuce plants can you eat at once? It makes far more sense to plant several a week than to plant a whole row at once.
Another of his tricks is to study the directions carefully. If you’re told to put the plants six inches apart in the row and put the rows twelve inches apart, why do you have rows at all? Why not put the plants six inches apart in each direction? That’s what I did this year with my corn, and I had a bumper crop. Next year I’m going to try the Three Sisters planting style. That is to plant the corn, and then about two weeks later plant beans so they can climb the corn stalk, and another couple of weeks later plant pumpkins, which will grow between the corn stalks and shade the ground so the roots of the corn, beans, and pumpkins will stay cool and the nitrogen fixing quality of the beans will help feed the corn, which likes a lot of nitrogen. Tribes all across North and Central America used this technique for thousands of years, so it cannot be considered untried.
There’s really no way to write a spoiler for this book, because you have to read it to make complete sense out of Bartholomew’s philosophy, which has thoroughly proved itself. So get the book from the library first, and I will be very surprised if you don’t then decide that you need a copy for your personal library. This is one of those books that I keep buying and then giving away, but I think I’ll keep the current copy.
Please send questions and comments to gardenwindow@aol.com and I’ll answer if I can. I don’t know all about gardening, but I do know how to do research.
