New Home Gardening Learning the Land

Being a native of Wisconsin, and raised on a Wisconsin Dairy farm. I am very familiar with the process of gardening. It was a way of life that instilled culinary expectation, and joy, as well as providing healthy food, enhanced by the satisfaction of enjoying the fruits of our labor, so to speak.

Now I will admit that the farm way of plowing, disking and then dragging was a lot less work intensive than the city practice of roto-tilling. Still having married a city girl in a huge north of Hwy 8 town of 1500. (Population I think including cats and dogs) I had gotten used to my grandfathers idea of gardening, using a roto-tiller and hoe, long before I was transferred to Cincinnati Ohio. Grandpa had a half acre garden that produced not only the wonderful foods that grandma cooked, and canned so well. But also flower schemes that changed the beauty of his home monthly, with different color flowers blooming by his designed schedule.

As grandpa was my favorite teacher, I learned with anticipation that school could never instill in me. Wanting to be as professional, and extraordinarily handy at this basic land skill as possible. I felt after many years of practice with him as my mentor, that I was ready to tackle gardening anywhere.

As a farm boy who had traveled extensively through out America, I had practiced and become familiar with the different idiosyncrasies of mother earth in different parts of the Great United States. The mud in Wyoming that after a couple of days of rain, becomes an unusual pit of enmity, having the propensity to grab your boots and helpfully pull them off your feet, weather you want them off or not.

The hard pan concrete of Chino Hills, California where I had to soak the ground for 3 days before hitting a lick with the roto-tiller. The soft moist earth of Upper New York State. All impressed me with the idea that all earth was not created equal. Still it gave me no Idea of what they were brewing up for my masters test in the Ohio Valley.

My wife of course insisted that part of the moving in, home settling process always included the ground breaking ritual of gardening. As I had walked the .9 acre of back yard in the early spring, and was met with very soft spongy earth, I anticipated that this would be a great place to have a garden. It was wet so I knew from experience that I needed to allow the ground to dry up enough to avoid the mud clomping of early season gardening.

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