Garden of Iniquity

When we moved into our house last fall, we identified the spot for our veggie garden - an approximately 20X25 plot behind the garage, out of the way but with plenty of sun. I spent quite a bit of time this winter daydreaming about the garden I could plant out there. However, we knew when we bought the house that we would have to rebuild the garage at some point, since the inspector declared it structurally unsound. (Hasn’t fallen down…yet). So I didn’t want to devise an elaborate raised-bed system just yet, in case the new garage changed the light exposure significantly. Thus, B and I agreed to do a small, in-ground garden this year, to be followed by my dream garden at some future point.

Yesterday, armed with our brand new garden tools, we trundled out to turn over the soil. Ten minutes later, B had already bent a tine on our new Fiskars garden fork (lifetime warranty!). He switched to raking while I used a spade to cut through the sod. Another 15-20 minutes go by, and the rake handle shatters in his hands.

The culprit, aided by B’s over-enthusiastic ground assault, was the root system from a long-gone tree. The stump had been ground down to soil level, but the roots wound their way throughout my precious land. While I would have been content to carve out small plots among the roots, B seemed to be suffering from an overdose of testosterone and declared war on the fibrous beast.

A visit to Menards resulted in two things: First, laughter from the ladies at the return desk, who refunded our money for the broken tools but were greatly amused by B’s brute strength. Second, we purchased a maddock, which sort of looks like a pickaxe. B was confident that this manly tool would do the trick.

Today, Thom and Rebecca came over to lend a hand. Through much sweating, swearing, and grunting, the boys were able to extract most of the roots from a 10X15 patch. It was tough work.

Rebecca came to rescue by running off and borrowing her brother’s rototiller, which finished the ground prep nicely. The same day, I got my onion plants from Dixondale Farms ito the ground. Yay for friends! And dirt!