Yes I Can Garden

We have what you might call some rough raw material to work with. At the moment, there is an extensive deck the previous owners built last summer. It is quite beautiful, and functional, although it takes up almost half of the backyard. Until we take part of it down and rescue or repurpose what we can of it, we will have about three feet by six feet, or so, to work with, for a vegetable plot this year. The earth is compacted and uncared for—it hasn’t been aerated or fertilized, I bet, in the seven years or so since the transformation from forested area to turfed suburban yard took place.

My husband suggested we put the garden by the side of the above-ground pool, sandwiched between the pool (and drenched in its shadow half the day) and the neighbour’s cedar hedge. I prefer going for as much light as possible, through the day, instead, and hope to convince him we should use a spot near the back of the yard—not totally out of the way, but somewhere that can hopefully be integrated into our use of the limited space we have. We’ve been spoiled—our last place had almost 10,000 square feet of land, and now we are down to almost half of that, with a good amount taken up by pool, and another area taken up by the massive deck the previous owner spent all of last summer putting up--that we can't wait to start taking down.

For this year, I will try to integrate the vegetable patch into the back half of our yard by placing stepping stones throughout, so that feet (both big and small) can pass through the garden without trampling it. Although the advice is usually to start small, and take on a manageable task, I can’t help but plan for abundance—an abundant harvest, and a beautiful vegetable garden that will provide us with variety and lots of great colours and flavours throughout the summer months, and on into the early fall. I plan on making this back corner of the yard unrecognizable by the end of the summer. If we make a raised bed, or a series of smaller beds, we can always transform these into flower beds or lightly landscaped areas (adding a bench or adding interlocking paving stones for a fire pit or child-friendly play area) if we decide to move the vegetable garden somewhere else, next year when we will have a great deal more space to work with.