The New Veggie Bed

This year, for reasons I still can’t quite discern, I’m trying my hand at vegetables. For the first time. Ever.

Folks say, “Oh yeah, veggies are easy.” But then I start reading about companion plants, the many pests, vine borers, cabbage beetles, hail, fire and brimstone–and I think to myself, “Geeze, 1,500 feet of prairie plants are WAAAAY easier than this. I don’t have to touch them but once a year.”

Still, making a new bed got me some exercise. An early tan. Bruises, cuts, gangrene, a nervous tic that makes me point at the ground in order to stretch my dirt-caked and contorted fingers. If this doesn’t work out, I have 80 new square feet for either a trial bed or transplant bed for indoor seedlings (which are going tolerably well, about 75% germination).

Way too tiny original bed about 2′ deep.

Moved aluminum edging for new 4′ bed.

Turned over 80′ of wet clay fescue.

Added 1-1.5 yards of city soil.

I was planning on making 5 trips with plastic tubs in my hatchback to the city dump, where there’s free compost (this stuff has been magic in my garden). On the first trip I met a guy who flagged me down, offered to help me load my car, then offered to deliver all the compost I’d need for a modest fee. Local landscaping companies would’ve charged five times as much. I was a happy camper who doesn’t like camping.

Since this is my first year flirting with vegetables, I just ordered seeds I could get with a coupon–no heirlooms, nothing too fussy I hope. Broccoli, spinach, eggplant, bush beans, pole beans, summer squash, watermelon, pumpkin. The pumpkin and pole beans I’ll sow elsewhere in my main garden once the tulips die back (and since they’re blooming 4 weeks early, this should be well before the “normal” last frost date in early May).

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