First Gardens

Do you remember your very first garden?  We’ve had a few first gardens. Our first garden after we were married was in South Dakota. Similar growing season to NY, which we were used to. RJ rototilled the area and we planted and tended it. This garden did alright, but this is not the first garden I’m going to talk about.

The first garden we had at our present home was a mess. RJ was in Mississippi for schooling, so it was just the boys, ages 11 and 14, and I to start this garden. We chose a chunk of lawn we thought would be a good area for a garden; somewhat flat but not the prime football area of our lawn.  We had no tiller and couldn’t find any one with one to borrow. Our neighbor brought his farm tractor over to plow the space, but because of the guide wire on the electric pole, he couldn’t get his drags in to smooth it out. So, picture a plot of torn up sod, yup that was the beginning of our garden.

Every nice day we had, the boys and I were out there with shovels, picks and forks to turn and smooth the ground. Rocks upon rocks were removed to the sides; so many that I thought we may end up with a sunken garden! Finally it was time to plant, but the garden was not. I decided to do plot gardening- wherever the ground was close to being plantable- I worked it more and planted something. We had round plots, oval plots and somewhat square-ish plots. For the plants, tomatoes and cucumbers, I just dug holes, planted the plants and mulched around them to keep the grass from overtaking.

Amazingly we did get a fairly good crop of veggies that year and had a place to start the next year. Over the years this garden has been worked enough so that we have a good base to plant in. Now we just have to care for it and it will last us years. Hope never to hae another first garden, especially one like this one, but it certainly gave us some good memories!