My Dad knew everybody in the middle of Rockland County it seemed. He knew someone who had a tractor and asked him to come down and turn over a good portion of the backfield. I remember him turning the field and leaving these big clumps of dirt and grass. They were big and solid, not easy to break apart. Being a child, I made an attempt to break some up, but gave up rather quickly when I got tired. My Dad, when he got home that night, cleaned up a large section of the garden. It accounted for maybe 15% of the turned ground.
I was given seeds to plant and the really small seeds that should of covered a long row were planted in about a foot of space. Beans had it better, their seeds were larger and easier to plant.
A week or so later the plants began to sprout. A few weeks after that the weeds had taken over.
I don't remember exactly what was planted that year, or if anything was harvested, but I got an interest in gardens.
Ten or so years down the road in the 1970's the garden was a fixture inside the fence, about twenty feet or so from Eric's front door towards my mom's house. It was to the right of a maple tree and was maybe twenty by thirty feet. One Year, my Mom or Dad bought Asparagus roots and asked me to plant them. I tried to follow the directions, but figured out that if I did what they called for the entire garden would be filled up. So I cheated and planted the roots closer together, hoping for the best. I was amazed when they came up. I wasn't too pleased when I was told it would be three years before we could eat them. To me, three years was forever. Three years passed, the Asparagus grew and thrived. Eventually they would go to seed and the original dozen or so plants would start to grow up along the fence. That was when the garden started to move outside the fence. By the 1980's the garden was completely outside the fence and measured fifty by fifty. The Picture above taken in 2018, would have been from the south eastern corner of the Garden. On the left is the Maple tree that I'd tried to cut down for years and on the right are the fence posts that would have contained the gate for the backyard. Out of the picture to the right and back was where I first planted three blueberry plants and where we planted three grape vines that would grow wild and cover the chain link fence between my Dad's and Uncle's property.In the later years of the garden, I had also started to plant fruit and nut trees, not knowing that you can't mix them. This is a theme of my life. I go ahead and do something and find out my mistakes afterwards. Or just not do it at all fearing failure.
The last few years of the garden I had gotten into peppers. The hotter the better. I had gotten rid of the black plastic used to stop weeds, something we started using years ago, and weeded the garden by hand.
The soil was beautiful and the builder of Eric's house were asked to save it. It's under the house. So if you want to start a great garden plant under Eric's house, the soil it great.
Eric bought the back property shortly after a settlement for the car accident he,Lynn and Billy were in. I was losing my garden. I had blueberries, fruit trees, nut trees, and a fifty by fifty size garden that would grow anything. I protested when there was talk of breaking ground before the first frost in October. I managed to hang on into late September, early October. I got a good harvest, but the last harvest, a compromise.
I was living in Nyack when I lost my garden, in a house that had no place for a garden. We moved to Congers in 2004 and I didn't start a true garden again until 2012.
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| Conger's Blue berries |
My vegetable garden in Congers started in 2012, has had some ups and downs. I dealt with bad soil purchased from a garden center that sold topsoil for lawns, not to good for vegetable gardens. My so-so location,under some trees gets morning sun and little afternoon sun. Everything tends to lean east, but it's my garden.
In 2017 and 2018 I mixed compost I made and have improved the soil greatly. I have planted Asparagus seeds for three years, I think this year I might succeed.
2019 Update: It is early spring 2019. Late Year I completely turned over the garden to get rid of all the roots that grow into the soil and make any plants I plant grow very slowly. I planted tomatoes from seed and would have had a bumper crop if some animal hadn't gotten into it. I planted seeds for Asparagus, shown above last year and have yet to see if any survived. I have a flower pot garden inside the fence near the back door. It thrives better then the garden on the northside. I always get a big kick when Teri wants to harvest something from it. I tell her each year that she can take from it what she wants when she wants. But She will always ask. It is never a big deal.
One Time a few years ago, I grew pot or as the kids call it weed. As of this writing it is still illegal. So I was taking a small chance doing it. I started the seeds in the basement and when the six plants were of a reasonable size and the weather warm, I moved them outside. They seemed to thrive at first. Every so often I could go by and smell them. One Day, Teri, my wife comes out the door and must have caught a whiff of them. She sees them mixed in with the other plants and tells me to get rid of them. So I move them to the garden on the north. I hid them in with the tomatoes that are growing like weeds (no pun intended, but still a little funny). One Day Nastia walks by the garden and asks if someone killed a skunk. I knew things were going well then. Around early August, the plants stop growing and the leaves on the bottom start to die. The Tomatoes are starting to shade the plants too much. I work to make things better, no luck. Things don't get better. They may call it weed, but sometimes it just doesn't grow like one. At the end of the season, what I had hoped would be a cash crop had been pulled up in September and been drying. Sometime in December not having tried it I gave it as a gift to someone who likes to smoke it. But the story doesn't end there.
I guess this story is a prequel. Back in the 90's I was living with a friend named Fred. One Year I get the idea to grow weed. I don't remember where I grew the seedlings, but come June him and I spend a day planting seedlings upstate around the property. I came up a few months later and nothing had grown. The next year I bought buckets up and planted seedlings in them behind the dam of the pond and in it's run off area knowing plenty of water flowed around the bucket. I think I planted three or four buckets. I go up in August to find this big beautiful plant with huge purple flowers on it. August is too early to harvest, so I wait. But I didn't get back up until after the first frost and the plants are ruined. I guess I real didn't want to harvest it. Well there is this year.
c
