Double Digging

This morning we helped our neighbor prepare for his winter garden. John has a 1/2 acre, which is a huge yard by Laguna Beach standards. His house is situated on the edge of the property, instead of in the middle, so the 1/2 acre looks and feels a lot larger. This summer we benefited from his surplus of swiss chard, heirloom tomatoes, Italian peppers, and pumpkins. He put the summer garden to bed in August--it's just too hot and dry in August and September to grow much.

Today we helped double-dig one of his five beds in anticipation of the beets, sweet peas, and winter salad greens that he'll plant in two weeks. Unlike the rich black dirt laced with fat earthworms (the presence of which indicate that the soil is very healthy) that is abundant in my home state of Minnesota, the soil here is hard clay. Over the past 10+ years, John has worked hard to soften and enrich his garden's soil. It is now a dry but nutrient-rich dirt. We dug rows and rows of six-inch trenches. With a pitchfork, we worked in bone meal (for calcium), chicken manure, steer manure, and compost. We covered the trenches with dirt and another layer of manure and compost. The earth was dry; had we waited until the rainy season in January to dig the trenches, we probably could have dug six inches deeper.

The Wrangler and I don't know much about gardening. I don't like working in the heat and sun, but there is nothing like a homegrown tomato. I'd also like to have pumpkins at some point. Pumpkins need a lot of room to run, but I've heard of city-folk who grow them in plastic kiddie pools. It's good to know it's possible, I suppose, but the kiddie pool pumpkin patch somehow lacks the charm of the country pumpkin patch that I'm envisioning.

I've never tended so much as a houseplant before, with the exception of an aloe plant that spiraled out of control and threatened to take over the living room. But lack of experience is no excuse. I'm going to have to know how to grow things on the ranch.