This past weekend I went to the house to do the last few to-do items to place it on the market. We spent 4 years in that house, and the garden there has been such a valuable classroom for me.
Four years ago the soil was sandy dirt that couldn’t hold moisture. There was no evidence of a thriving microbiome. With that in mind, we got started on the arduous process of healing the soil.
After tilling up the grass, we covered the space with cardboard and straw. Thankfully I had a lot of boxes from having just moved. I poked holes in the cardboard, planted my starts and seeds, and faithfully watered that sandy ground.
I learned pretty quickly that the longer growing season I’d been so excited about didn’t necessarily mean I’d be able to grow more food. Spring and Fall are pretty short here making brassicas tricky to grow. Mid-summer gets way too hot for things like tomatoes and winter squash. The bug situation is wild. Early blight became my new enemy.
One of my values as a gardener is to not use any toxic sprays in my yard. So while all these issues can be managed with various simple sprays, that was not going to be an option for me. Thus started my education of trial and error (so much error) into finding more holistic approaches to common garden problems.
I learned that slugs and pillbugs love beer and will choose to drown in a cup of it instead of going for my green beans and strawberries. I decided it was worth my time to handpick and squish squash bugs in the mornings. It was worth my time to scrape their eggs off my squash plants as well. I also learned that my squash plants can survive having borers sliced out of the bottoms of the stems and how to find them. Last, regarding squash, I learned that when we were tired of eating it, it was okay to finally let the bugs have their feast.
When it came to my tomatoes, early blight was my biggest hurdle. I made natural sprays, was super careful with cleaning my pruners and pulling the sick plants and burning them. All of those things were good but what ultimately saved me was the gradual improvement of our soil each year. The healthier our soil was, the less plants we had that succumbed to early blight.
There is so much I could say but the last thing I’ll add is that I learned to be okay with critters that make me uncomfortable. I handpicked the squash bugs so that I didn’t have to put anything in my garden that would hinder the good bugs. I did move the giant spider living amongst my okra that one year. Lady bugs feasted on aphids. Spiders feasted on all kinds of pests. Wasps, surprisingly, pollinated my garden in the hottest part of the day. I just learned to stay out of their way. When the garter snake aka Snek as we affectionately called him, moved in, we stopped having rabbit problems. Full disclosure, he scared the daylights out of me every single time I saw him. But also, I was happy he was there.
Gardening is a constant learning process. It forces you to slow down and tune into the seasons, the ground, the weather, and be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I have learned to love each step, even the August garden. That North Carolina August garden is no joke. I will miss this place we’ve called home the last 4 years. Thankfully, I will get to take the best parts of this season (the friendships, the knowledge, the personal growth and experiences) with me.