The other day I came home from work and I went to bed straight away. Just a nap. Just a little nap. The sun was shining. It was a beautiful California spring day, ideal for an afternoon in the garden. I knew it, but I closed my eyes tighter and pulled the covers over my head. I couldn’t sleep, however. My conscience wouldn’t let me. An inner battle was raging: “Go plant some seeds”. “Not yet”. “Go out there and sow!” "I’m not sure I’ve read enough about it yet”. “Just put some seeds in the soil and let them do what they do!” “But, I’m SCARED!”
I realized in that moment what was keeping me from planting my seeds. It was the fear that they wouldn’t grow. It was the fear that after spending $80 on soil amendments, $30 on seeds and hours of manpower and mompower on digging the soil and building the raised bed, that I would have no prize produce to show for the equivalent of what I would have spent in a month at the farmer’s market.
At a volunteer event last night, I met a girl who worked at a farm in Malibu under an “insane, gasoline huffing gardener” with some pretty interesting, non-traditional methods. She said, with an obvious air of exaggeration that in order to ensure a good harvest he would do something like “bury a cow’s skull, an organic cow’s skull, in the northeast corner of the field under a full moon” and that was about it. pH testing and proper seed spacing be damned. She said her mother, also a professional gardener, would throw newspaper down over the lawn, pile a mound of dirt on it and plant seeds right there. Raised beds be damned. She then relayed her own experiments with greenhouse planting. She spent an entire season employing advanced techniques to raise a vegetable crop inside her greenhouse and threw the leftover seeds in containers around her yard using only cactus soil. Which ones do you think ended up thriving? Technique be damned, it was the veggies grown in cactus soil, while the greenhouse seedlings rotted.
All these variables are what freak me out. All these soil and light requirements that real-life growing stories throw to the wind. And the more I read, the more uncertain I become that I am capable of maintaining the ideal conditions for turning these little pebble-like seeds into flowering, green-leaved, plump fruits and veggies. But, at last, I jumped out of bed and went down to the garden. I planted eggplant, tomatoes, summer squash, arugula, lettuce, spinach, beets, and beans. I spaced them correctly, covered them in compost and watered them deeply. It’s been nearly a week and all that has sprouted is the arugula, which in my minimal gardening history, I have learned will grow like a bush pretty much anywhere. I’m still nervous. I’m still waiting. I wish I could communicate with the seeds and ask them what they need.
I asked the lovely gardener girl, “If seeds do, in fact, want to grow, then why aren’t mine growing?” She said, “Probably because of… you.” So, she’s offered to come over and see what I’m doing to squelch the life power out of my potential garden. Maybe we’ll just let my dog dig up the yard and scatter the seeds willy-nilly while chanting about Gaia and fertility. For all I know, I’ll end up with the finest harvest ever seen, while my $80 block of soil sits fallow
