I've always kept a garden. Our family had a Memorial Day Weekend ritual of rototilling and planting a summer garden in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. One year, a new boy in the neighborhood passed by and asked my father, “Where did you get all that dirt?” I always knew there was good earth under my feet.
In October, 2006, less than one month after we moved to Papagayos, we set to work clearing sods from a three foot by twelve foot patch of ground. We hauled in sand and learned from our neighbor Hector how to collect tierra de la sierra or leaf litter from under the large oak trees in the hills that surround our village. We scratched these soil amendments into the wet native clay soil. Then we planted lettuce, beets, garlic, spinach, and peas which we harvested until April.
Since that first garden bed we have expanded to thirteen double-dug beds for a total of almost 500 square feet of planting surface. Growing a garden here keeps me learning, thinking, and talking with our neighbors.
An elderly friend who has lived here all her life visited that first garden bed. She was pleased to see the greens and root crops and was impressed by the peas. But she had to ask what the plants were with the knife-like leaves. When I told her they were garlic she clasped her hand to her mouth. “I didn't know you could grow garlic here!” I thought to myself, I didn't know you couldn't. We have a lot to share with each other.
Some of the issues that had to be puzzled through included how to work with this heavy clay soil, how to manage a growing season 362 days long, and how to recalibrate my four-season-gardening mindset to a wet season/dry season climate. There is still a lot to learn. I haven't yet found a source for statistics on seasonal high and low temperatures and average monthly rainfall, though there is a weather recording station about two miles from here. Neither have I found a regional seed catalog and the choices in Ciudad del Maíz are meager.
All the challenges are outweighed by the ease of growing greens year round, eating strawberries in January and February, and harvesting peas over a five month period from one planting.
I've heard it said that one should grow wherever one is transplanted – and I intend to keep doing so.
Hi Steve & Laurel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts in this format. I'm looking forward to "visiting" often! We miss you up here, but are glad that you have a granddaughter to bring you back this way often!
I gues that "inch by inch and row by row" has a new meaning in your new garden!
Love to you both,
Bekah & Fair Winds crew
Actually, Bekah, we use metric measurements here in Mexico , so it's really "centimeter by centimeter and row by row."
ReplyDeleteIn truth, we don't plant in rows, either. Most of the time we use an in-bed spacing that puts plants the same distance from all their neighboring plants, on a hexagonal pattern. This system uses the ground under cultivation much more intensely, requires less water, and creates a micro-climate that is better for the plants. It is beautiful, too.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we'll have to re-write the song "centimeter by centimeter in a hexagonal pattern. . ." But, it doesn't have the same meter.