Gardening 201 (In Momma’s Arms) - Creating a Herb Garden
- High beds, or the challenge of going pro
Gardening is fun, gardening is soothing, gardening is balm for the soul. If you’re buying that without immediately thinking about blisters and back pain, you may be growing herbs, but you ‘ain’t a gardener’.
Everybody needs to be able to stick the hands into the deep soft soil, black and moist, roll in the grass, smell the delicious spring petals, and harvest loads and loads of tasty goodies. No argument there. Nobody, however, happens to warn one about what it takes to build a garden from scratch! Not any garden, mind you, a witchy one. Organic. High beds. The right kind, I mean. Nobody reminds one that wood comes from trees, and usually needs to be lumbered, cut, leveled, and dug IN before one has a garden bed. And nobody bothers to remark upon the fact that store bought growing dirt immediately shrinks to 1/4th of its volume as soon as the bag is opened and said dirt touches the ground. I found out this spring just what it takes to go professional herbalist, and I’m still recovering from it. Or not, depending on how you look at it…..
When I moved in a few years ago I had a nice patch of protected land all around the house, fenced in with walls from sheds or the giant Thuja hedges from neighboring houses. Perfect to just scatter seeds and dig a few holes, letting nature take its course. Finally, a garden to play with. Just, you know, strictly pleasure wise, no weeding and stuff like that. No mowing the lawn, for example… it’s SO nice (and pagany) to have a wildflower (emphasis on wild. The flower part is for show) garden.
Roaming tomcats used to having the run of the property taught me quickly that nothing was sacred, and no trick worked to keep them out of whichever was most precious at the time. THIS year, I decided to build high beds and ‘show them’. I mean, how hard can it be, I’ll just hammer a few poles into the ground and fill them with dirt, right? Let’s just say the hammering part was a looong way off.
Four weeks of annual leave should have been more then enough to complete the carefully laid out and slaved over plan of beds all around the perimeters of each and every available wall (that saves on material, since you only need to build three sides. That the wet dirt makes the walls grow fungus and your rooms musty is something the landlord will point out after you’re done, requesting to have the beds moved away from the wall about 20 inches for ventilation. Of course, if you do that, the manure you shoveled in the bottom for aging will be scattered all throughout hilter kilter, leaving the earth too sour for seeds, and creating the delightful aroma of ‘living on the farm’, trillions of blackbottles included) .
The four weeks are over, I have just returned to work, stared at piles of backed up email, my generally scratched up and sore hands, back at the email, shifting my achy spine, and thought my duty lays firstly into warning my fellow herbalists that a nicely build garden is NOT a walk in the sunshine. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my new garden, and even build/planted a healer’s pentacle (lets just not discuss the stray cats gleefully digging up the corner plants once a week. I’m sure I’ll think of something eventually) . Its just that it was a lot more physical labor than I expected. The image of Private Benjamin cleaning the bathroom floor with a toothbrush comes to mind. Before I turned gardener, I was the perfect image of Barbie. Where on earth are MEN when you need them???
WEEK ONE:
Step 1: Sharpen the garden spade (with what? How? HUH????) and begin cutting a straight line (no comment… I ended up using a plank as a ruler-helped a little bit. I call it creative artistry and insist I meant to do it this way) into the lawn by stepping onto the left side of the spade with your left foot, then hopping onto the right side with your right foot, humping down - think heavy.
Pick yourself up and try again until you can manage to balance gracefully on a piece of metal as thin as a knife while making pogo stick motions. I’ll never again wonder where the expression ‘balance on a knife’s edge’ originated. Definitely a herbal term. Oh, yeah, wear shoes with thick, solid soles. Tennies cut straight through, ask me how I know.
Line out the entire square of the future bed. Lawn, by the way, happens to be the toughest growth on the planet if you ask me. Roots are intertwined and as deep as the spade, and lifting them out of the ground is impossible if you don’t cut little squares off. So your objective is to make the rectangle into a chessboard. THEN try to bully the chunks up and out. I hope you thought to buy a pickax last time you were at the garden center. Upon closer inspection most of my soil rendered near solid rocks of all sizes at about a hand depth. They have to come out. Offer the county to fill in the backwater rubble roads with them.
Note: It might be a good idea to have a plan where to deposit the piles of grass squares. They are bigger than you think. No, trash bags aren’t an option, this is the 21st century, they don’t TAKE plant matter. At least, not 75 giant bags of it. DON’T ask me how I know, please.
WEEK TWO:
Step 2: Drive to the nearest lumber mill (ask directions – contrary to common believe ‘just drive into that forest road for 10 minutes and it’ll be right there you can’t miss it’ is NOT sufficient!) and inquire about the cut off outside layers of the trees as they are worked into shelves. The bark is still attached, and the resin and all not only looks gorgeous, it’ll act as preservative. They are considered leftover and sold for bottom dollar. The process of sawing them into the size you covet, however, will cost you a bundle (if you plan on having more then 6 huge beds buy a chain saw and pray you know a male who can use it).
You will be pointed into the direction of a heap of wood the approximate size of Mt. Everest with the instruction ‘to take out whatever you like’. Go back home and change into heavy duty jeans, boots, long sleeved sweater, and buy handyman gloves. Then practice looking innocent before returning to the mill (you’ll need that look later when some of the pile tumbles because you wanted the perfect piece stuck 4 rows deep). Pick a few dozen huge planks and drag them over to the opposite side of the mill where the saw is located. Explain to the man in charge that yes, indeed, you really, really DO want that pile sawed into little pieces 20 inches long. When he is convince and notes down your order, drive home and come back the next day. It is too close to quitting time for them to start today.
Unless you have friends with a pickup, plan on making three trips and terminally ruined upholstery. Splinters do NOT vacuum out of car seats. Repeat step 2 twice more throughout the week as you run out of planks, no matter how carefully you’ve measured.
Plan another day to carry all the boards into the garden. Sit back and enjoy the sight and smell of freshly cut wood. ALL OVER the yard. Don’t worry about the resin on your fingers and securely lodged under you fingernails, they’ll pretty much fall off within the next week anyway (the fingers, that is, the resin will still be there).
WEEK THREE:
Step 3: Drive to the nearest garden center and load up the car with bags of organic (mine came from deep forest and smells wonderful) dirt and mulch. Cover the raw, deep holes with 2 inches of mulch on top of a layer of newspaper, that prevents unwanted weeds (meaning, keep each weed in their own beds where they bloody belong) from coming through the ground. Top that layer with a few inches manure. Remember that if it is not at least 2 years old, you can’t work it into the dirt yet, but it’s a good place to store it for next year and make the plants want to grow strong roots to GET there.
Step 4: Buy the biggest rubber hammer available. Use the spade to make a deeper cut at the outlined bed where the planks will be inserted. Remember, fresh mulch is more yielding than grass was and offers no resistance when you forcefully step on the spade out of the habit formed last week. To get your bodily imprint out of the bed fluff up the earth with a rake (upon reflection I say you should curb your eagerness to insert the plants before you are completely done with ALL these steps). You don’t need force, just wiggling it back and forth will make a sufficient split. Stick the planks into the trench one by one, hammering them about 5 inches deep (gently, dangit, you just made firewood out of another one), and secure with dirt pressed close to it from both sides. Don’t get trigger happy, stand back every 2 or 4 pieces and adjust your line. It’s wavier than you think.
Step 5: Fill up with organic, good quality dirt. Take frequent breaks to return to the garden center (I KNOW it should have been enough, but……). Upon the third or fourth trip look sheepish, inquire about bulk discounts, multiply the 30 giant bags you needed for THIS bed with the 15 beds you’re planning on, and hire a truck. Remember, the holes are deeper than they looks.
Step 6: Never stop for the day before you have tacked wire mash over or around each completed bed, or by morning you won’t have fresh dirt but just another giant scale litter box. Fluffy earth is irresistible and will call in any roaming tomcat in the vicinity of the county.
Note: Now matter how loud your seed packets are screaming, allow the dirt to settle for a day or two, after your thoroughly watered. If you plant or seed now the first heavy shower will reduce it to half its volume leaving you with more or less empty beds. Order more dirt and refill the beds to the desired height. Then get more seeds (if you weren’t listening)
WEEK FOUR:
Step 7: Carefully remove the wire mash. Try to save most of the clamps. Each one lost in the soil will nick you when weeding. Plant dormant roots or scatter seeds. In circles, in lines, carefully or haphazard. Just fill the beds. This is your one day of glory. Make the most of it, take pictures. Re-cover with wire. When all beds are full, stare at the leftover pile of seed packets and look for more walls (or more land) to build beds onto. When all are taken, make another, second row of beds, slowly minimizing the wildflower lawn to a measly square in the middle, repeating steps 2 and 3 while doing so.
STEP 8: Mulch deeply around each bed to prevent weeds (or rather, make sure they stay where you want them – INSIDE. You DID know many of the most fabulous medicinal herbs are weeds, right? Ignore the neighbors inquiring why on earth you’re PLANTING them) and slugs from sneaking in. You might want to hire another truck for additional delivery. By now, rows are longer than you thought.
Step 9: Set aside one hour per day for watering duty, seeds need to remain moist (but not soggy) at all times no matter what the sun is doing. Set the alarm for 3am to check during hot summer nights. Buy another hose, the one you have won’t reach the beds you made “way out there” to accommodate the leftover seeds. Be sure to have at least one planter of cilantro (Chinese parsley), they germinate within a few days and give you a sense of success before you have to go back to work. At least you saw a teensy bit of green. YEAH! Besides, we can all use the mercury detoxing properties of this blessed herb.
Step 10: LAST DAY OF LEAVE: Sit in the middle of your new beds, not doing ANYTHING. Just enjoy the accomplishment with pride. Do, however, make a phone call to the chiro-practitioner to schedule massage sessions.
Take pictures and send to all your internet friends. Look smug, saying ‘twas nothing’ when they compliment you.
Then prepare to be terrified at each storm warning, flood like rain shower, scorching sun, hordes of invasive insects and such, acid rain, and roaming children (look maw, I picked you Echinacea flowers….). A g(u)ardener’s work is never done, and there is no piece of mind. Same (the mind, not the garden) is always one season ahead compiling a ‘things to do’ list. I THINK I can learn to look at winter as a time of vacation.