Growing at the Speed of Life - A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden

I was left wondering how anything that wet gets to be dry enough to even

look like plantable soil.

“Cover it with plastic sheeting. The sun will warm the earth and evaporate
the moisture,” suggested Scott. And so I draped the whole thing and dumped

stray timbers on it to hold the plastic down. The sun disappeared—it does that

for months on end in the Pacific Northwest—and it rained hard, which it also

does, and then it blew a gale. The plastic blew off, and the rain saturated the

ground. I eventually found and replaced the plastic and nailed it down with

wooden stakes.
It rained for days; a weak sun got the soil temperature just over 60ºF. At least

the runoff was redirected through the French drain.

I learned later on in the year that the drying out of such sogg y soil is hastened

by removing the plastic in the early afternoon to let the steam roll off and then

replacing it just before sunset.

3. Soil Improvement

We ordered 2 yards of steer manure and six bags of Coco-Coir; sprinkled it liber­

ally over the clay; rented a small, almost feminine rototiller; and proceeded to

mix it all up into what looked like a wild rice pilaf that had been left on the stove
way too long! We bounced the clumped clay up and down using a six-pronged

composting fork, removing stones and bits of green netting, gradually reducing

the clumps to a rough granular texture. Finally, we nailed the plastic sheeting

back in place with long wooden pegs and prayed for the sun.

In a real sense, this was an emergency action designed to move from sod to

kitchen-garden-ready in one fell swoop. There would be more to come, as dis­
cussed under “Feeding” on page 35.

MY NEED-TO-KNOW LIST • 23