by Dawn Stevens

Created on: August 24, 2009   Last Updated: October 23, 2009

My first garden. How giddy I was that early spring the first year in my new house. I had waited all winter for this! A garden of my own, one that would turn me into an instant housewife who cooked and canned, feeding my family with food I personally had created. We'd have delicious meals all year, and wouldn't ever touch processed food again. It would be perfect.

Yeah, right.

As that spring and summer wore on, my dreams became a little warped. The first few weeks were fueled by that burning desire to have my own perfect plot. Tilling by hand, planting, watering, watching, waiting. No problem for the beginning of this adventure. However, reality began to sink in. Weeding daily? Really? What a chore! How long until these plants produce something worth picking? Ugh, too long!

All this time my dad sat back with a smile. He knew all to well I was getting in over my head. He understood that no matter how good a job I had done with digging up the dirt myself, a tiller would be so much better. He saw that my precious seeds I had planted directly into the ground wouldn't amount to much without a head start in a plot. So just before the new gardener blues set in, he swooped in to save me.

A quick phone call to an old friend and a new piece of ground away from my hand-dug garden. Tomato plants from the local greenhouse found their way to my house, along with a few different pepper plants. Had it not been for these two simple actions, I would have had a very sad garden . . . and even more depressing summer and fall.

That first year I did get my wish. With freshly dug up earth and properly started plants, we had more tomatoes and peppers than I've seen in any grocery store. They were turned into salsa, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, tomato paste, canned tomatoes, and more. It seemed our stock of tomatoes especially would never end. Apparently we were sitting on richer soil that I had originally thought, and the tilling really made all the difference.

As for the small garden I had originally started by hand, well, it wasn't as grand. What seemed to be large at the time (and what doesn't seem large when your raking and digging?), was nothing more than a few little rows of beans and zucchini. Tasty yes, but nowhere near what I had originally imagined it would be. It did, however, teach me a whole lot about gardening, and I'm glad I did it. However, the tomatoes will always be a permanent fixture in our annually tilled garden.

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