Well, I guess it’s finally
happening: mainstream America is waking up to smell the coffee.Last night on NBC Nightly News, I listened to a story
about the rapidly sinking American economy and the rapidly escalating cost
of food. Worrying about actually being able to put food on the table was
something of a new concept for Americans, I was told, but apparently many
of us are being brought face-to-face with the idea every day as food
prices are skyrocketing all over the world - even here.
As the piece concluded, the reporter said that some
people were even starting to “grow their own” and she gave a nervous
laugh.
I just LOVED that nervous laugh, because I imagined
that the correspondent was envisioning herself down on her hands and knees
pulling weeds out of hard-baked soil just to score the evening's meal.
The truth is however, that anyone, even a television
personality can produce an economical and productive garden in a hurry
more easily than may have been thought possible. You could have one tomorrow
if you really tried.
I’ll show you how.
My conversion to this new technique that I'm going to tell you about
began last fall, when I decided to move my garden.
I should have known better than to have put it where it was in the
first place: up the valley a bit and just beyond sight of the house. I
guess I picked that spot because I thought the soil and exposure looked
good, but I was being an idiot by ignoring the First Rule of Gardening,
which is: the closer your garden is to the house, the better your garden
will be in all respects.
I had several raised beds at the old site and I wanted to keep both the
soil I'd built up inside each one, as well as the timbers they were framed
with. I was able to accomplished the move using our skidsteer loader.
Well, while I was doing that, I naturally started thinking about the
concept of a mobile garden. Hmmmm.
Just the previous month, I'd dug several large holes for fruit trees,
only to have those holes fill up with water for the next few weeks. No
way I was going to plant expensive fruit trees in there. Now I had
to fill up all the holes and dig them somewhere else, which would, in all
likelihood be higher, poorer ground than this. Hmmmm.
Too bad I couldn't just scoop up a whole bed, or a planted tree, or
bush into the bucket of the skid-steer, take it where I wanted it and drop
it off there.
One thing for sure, If a guy could do that, it would certainly save a
lot of heartache, especially for beginning gardeners.
