The Perfect Time to Plan a Garden

Since I arrived at work on Monday morning, a good portion of my short hallway conversations have centered on the imminent "snowpocalypse" currently rushing towards the Midwest. The threat of twelve plus inches of snow, power outages, frozen (and burst) pipes, practically impossible travel, temperatures that make the mid-thirties look surprisingly pleasant... for me, this means it's time to plan a vegetable garden.

Summer of 2011 will be my husband, Josh (bound to be a recurring character), and my fourth year as members of Project Grow Community Gardens, a local non-profit that supports access to organic gardening by renting plots to people all over Ann Arbor. Each summer, we start start with 750 square feet of dirt. In go some seeds, a little bit of water, a lot of time, some worry (mostly by me), and out come vegetables. Lots of them.

You see, when we started this adventure in 2008, we thought it was that simple, the whole seeds + water + sun = vegetables idea. I suppose in many ways it is. But, then again, it's also not. At the risk of scaring away potential readers by sounding like a crazy hippie, like so many other things in life, the process means so much more than its product.

I struggle to explain exactly what happened when we started to put time, energy, and thought into how food came to be, but suffice to say that local, community, and healthy are now concepts at the very core of our ideals and value system. And it's not just about environmentalism. It's about political action. And the economy. And our neighbors. And healthcare. And living to be 102 years old. It's about all of these things at once and yet, at the end of the day, at the center of our interwoven and at times problematic localized, community-based, but self-sufficient ideological structure is...

... a garden.

And that's where we'll start.

When I began gardening, I didn't know anything and so I felt - needless to say - more than slightly overwhelmed by all the variables and varieties involved. With more experience (and some neurotic note-taking) I feel more confident and so I want to share my process, the successes and the failures, from the planning stages of this year's garden to starting its seeds (hopefully not giving them heat stroke like last year) to planting and harvesting. As always, I look forward to the process and new this year, I look forward to sharing it with the world (or just my mom who has to follow because, well, she's my mother).

Josh and a handful of green beans from our first garden (2008)