And the decision became clear: fuck the lasagna for now, dig a new trench for all the tomatoes, make room for neighbor friends to plant as they wish, and enjoy this thing. It felt good. I got out the shovel and just started turning earth. It’s not the kind of sustainability-minded practice the lasagna is, but it’s practical and realistic and I want space for tomatoes!
I’m taking courage from Natalie’s advice to just let the lasagna be what it is for now and move on. The kids helped me. Idris wanted to jump on the spade as I was digging. “Todos juntos!” he said. Io and a friend got down and “helped.” (You’ll see the line gets a little wiggly there. I’m sure it was my fault.)
I didn’t want to stop working but nightfall came. Then this morning I was able to go get my
tomato seedlings. After a few years of
this I now know how much I love the Sweet 100s, and how poorly most of the big
tomatoes do. I figured in my new trench
I’d be able to plant about 16 (although I always space too closely). The store (Fragers, not Gingko Gardens) had
exactly what I wanted. Ridiculous
prices, but oh well.
Ken took the kids to a neighbor’s field day party, leaving
me with four hours (!) to do as I pleased.
Because there has been some talk of a fence on the north side of the
garden, I figured I better actually measure the trench against something rather
than eyeballing it next to the already eyeballed lasagna. While I got out the measuring tape and dug
the outer edge 135” away from the fence, two dads and their kids played in the
most charming way in the park to the west.
The digging went fast and was quite fun.
Since I come from North Dakota, I am full of shame as I admit
that I had to buy dirt for this phase of the project. I’ve been adding compost for years, but
because I’m doing this trench late in the spring season and the lasagna is such
a handful, I just broke down and bought dirt.
The ground is VERY rocky, so I spent quite a bit of time digging rocks
out. Then I added the compost, stirred
in the top soil, and voila: a pretty
place for my tomatoes.
I also decided to do a couple other things. First, I dumped the trench soil—grass and all—on
the lasagna. I’ll deal with the fallout
from the grass later. It just felt good
to get some dirt on that sucker. I
covered the area down on the west side where the sad, sad little greens are (I
feel like a bad steward having let them get so sad). We’ll see if that brings them back. And then I dumped the rest over on the east
side no-grow-land. I have no idea what I’ll
do with that space.
The other thing it that I made the east and west side edges
parallel to the things closest to them:
the building on the east side and the park fence on the west. I measured, again, and cut the dirt to
reflect the new angles.
And then I planted!
(The thing still doesn’t look very straight, does it?)
Two Beefs.
Six Sweet 100s.
And two San Marino somethings.
Stay tuned to see how they do. I mostly didn’t follow any best practices,
which is really dumb. I planted them in
the middle of the day in full sunlight.
I dug up the soil the same day and conditioned it with compost and top
soil the same day. I didn’t add bananas
or egg shells. I didn’t modify the soil
in any other way, despite the fact I know it’s short on nitrogen. So they probably won’t make it! But it’ll be fun to see what happens.
I’m also very happy to report that the Zambian Green stalks
I chopped off are sprouting just like I hoped they would!
And the peas are doing wonderfully, getting bigger and
staying hearty each day!
Happy Mother’s Day to me.
