Oh my goodness, springtime is beautiful! My son and I were out enjoying this fine Saturday morning and we planted some onions and radishes and carrots… Or at least I thought they were onions… Turns out, instead of the red Spanish onion seed, I had actually mistakenly planted Martha Washington asparagus along side my yellow sweet onions… Too late now. Woops. we’ll see how that goes.
Aside from all my blonde moment blunders lately, I was pleased to see that if nothing else, at least our back to Eden style garden is coming through as expected.
The soil previously orange Tennessee clay is now this rich workable soil, all because we covered it up! I guess Field of Dreams had something right in the line, “If you build it, they will come.” Except in this case, my field of dreams is a vegetable garden, and “they” are earthworms and not ghost baseball players.
I think the most interesting thing to see will be the contrast between our garden and our neighbor’s garden, which because of sunlight patterns and our fence line is parallel to ours. They do not use the back to Eden style garden. They grow green manure (grass) and till it in the soil along with fertilizer and store bought plants. I remember last August staring in awe at their beautiful vegetable plants and the size of their tomatoes. I’m told that back to Eden plants tend to have a higher yield than traditional tilled earth gardens. It will certainly be interesting to see if there is any significant difference and to learn what I can from their successes. Perhaps they’ll be inspired by the ease of our style of gardening? Who knows.
All I can say is, there are very few weeds in our garden, but the ones that are there come up with no effort, root and all! Not to mention the moisture that is being held in the soil. I haven’t had to water our garden at all! The seeds germinated and sprouted without anything other than the rain. The wood chips hold water when it’s dry, and they disperse it when it’s too wet! It’s a beautiful thing. I’m so excited to see where it goes from here.
Wholly Holy Living 