In the back yard of our new house is a flower garden. It's not very big: maybe 8' square. When we moved here in April the garden bed was the kind of mess you'd expect after a hard winter. I spent a day cleaning it up and -- before it bloomed, before I knew what I'd miss -- I cordoned off a section for my vegetable garden. I turned that soil over and amended it a bit. In May my daughter and I planted radishes, carrots, peas.
The flower garden bloomed wonderfully. It's still blooming now. The vegetables, however, were a disaster. The carrots and radishes never set, the pea vines grew about a foot tall. I thought that the area didn't get enough sun (it's shaded by the linden part of the day), but my mom said no; my mom said I just needed to fertilize like crazy.
So this afternoon I got out my compost and shovel and turned over the vegetable remains and ... clank.
Clank?
There's a cement slab under my vegetable garden. The previous owners laid a foot of dirt on top of a cement slab, and I tried to grow carrots in it.
I want to make a joke of this, but in fact it made me feel so sorry for myself. We bought this house because it has a large, private yard, a third of an acre! and yet there's no place for me to plant vegetables. The back yard is too shady (and underlain in places by cement) and the front yard is a slope frequented by deer and quail.
I know there's a solution to this but I am TOO SAD to think of one right now.
Ptttth.
6 comments:
I'm sad for you too!
Try building some raised beds, and look into square foot gardening, maybe?
Jen F beat me too it. Raised bed gardening. And/or container gardening. We go with container as I can move the veggies to follow the sun as we have a shady backyard, and where the sun hits varies by week based on tree growth and sun position...
But very sad for you :-(
Oh that sucks!
Oh! oh! oh, no! What a disappointment!! Jen! Your dreams of dirt covered vegetables, freshly picked in your basket!! oh!!
What the heck? What's the slab for? Bust it up, baby! Is Artist sister's son still near by? I see pizza and beer in his future for a few hours of hard labor!
What a discovery.
Do you have a flat roof? It's a big investment and maybe more of a long-range plan but maybe you could move from container gardening to a green roof in five or ten years.
Thanks, everyone.
I think raised beds are the way to go. Raised beds and a hundred more containers. (My tomatoes & the successful peas grew in containers this year.) Now I'm off to Pakit Liquidators to look for some...
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