{"id":475,"date":"2010-05-18T13:52:55","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T18:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=475"},"modified":"2010-05-18T13:52:55","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T18:52:55","slug":"seaweed-the-scarecrow-lessons-from-the-garden-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2010\/05\/seaweed-the-scarecrow-lessons-from-the-garden-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Seaweed & The Scarecrow: Lessons from the Garden So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s only mid-May, and already the vegetable garden is leading me by the hand, showing me things about myself and my world that I sometimes ignore, don\u2019t appreciate enough\u2014or might not choose to think about all the time. Like the fact that I have pale skin (#30 sun block, my new best friend), am not in great shape (achy back and knees), and HELLO, I can\u2019t do everything myself. Lately, I\u2019ve been feeling really, really grateful for my partner Roy, who, when I suggested the crazy \u201cproduction\u201d garden idea last fall, embraced the idea enthusiastically. I\u2019m quite sure I\u2019d be a complete nervous wreck by now if he weren’t on the case, what with my book just coming out, deadlines swirling, etc., etc.<\/p>\n

I bring this up only because I thought if anyone else is contemplating a big garden project like this, you might appreciate the suggestion to do it with a partner. The funny thing is, it\u2019s not so much the (physical) load-sharing I appreciate. (Though there\u2019s plenty of that, like the hour Roy spent fertilizing seedlings last night while I did some writing). It\u2019s the cerebral stuff\u2014the great ideas and the practical solutions that Roy brings to the garden because he thinks differently than I do (and often acts more quickly, too). Watching Roy work out the solution to some garden problem we\u2019re having often turns into an \u201ca ha!\u201d moment for me, stimulating some long-sleepy area of my brain. Better still, the solutions in action are almost always some of the most fun garden moments we have.<\/p>\n

Last week we needed to take the row cover fabric off of our baby pea plants and little bok choys, but we were still concerned the crows might get to them. \u201cWe need a scarecrow!\u201d Roy kept saying. Sure, that sounded like a good idea to me, but I know if it had been up to me, we\u2019d still not have a scarecrow. It was Roy who rustled through his old clothes to find a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, a tee-shirt for the face, and a hat, and then stuffed them full of hay. He tied Mr. \"\"<\/a>Scarecrow up with twine, took him to the garden and tied him to the deer fence, and all Libby (his daughter) and I had to do was come in at the last minute to draw a face on Mr. Scarecrow and take his (and Roy\u2019s) picture! So far Mr. Scarecrow is doing a great job, even fooling several human passers-by.<\/p>\n

This weekend it became clear that our newly planted beds of lettuce, chard, arugula, and spinach were in bad need of mulching. We\u2019ve had very little rain this spring, we don\u2019t yet have drip hoses in place, and the soil is so dry that it isn\u2019t holding the water from our morning douses very well. We\u2019re also trying to keep our expenses down, so buying mulch for all these beds isn\u2019t a great option. \u201cWe need seaweed,\u201d Roy said. At first, I couldn\u2019t quite wrap my head around this. I\u2019ve heard seaweed makes a great addition to compost, and I thought it was something you laid out (in its wet form) on your garden beds over the winter. It hadn\u2019t occurred to me what a great mulch dried<\/em> seaweed makes.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet in the car,\u201d Roy said Saturday morning, dragging me away from the computer. \u201cWe\u2019re going to the beach.\u201d He had stuffed a couple of tarps into the back of the car, and off we went. It was one of those big blue-sky days, warm and sunny, breeze gently blowing. We wore shorts and tee-shirts, dug our toes into the sand, and scooped up two tarp-loads of dried seaweed. I looked around at one of the most breathtaking vistas on Martha\u2019s Vineyard \u2013 Rugosa roses and beach plums already blooming along the sand dunes that spilled out across the shore\u2014and thought, what in the world could possibly be a more enchanting activity? \"\"<\/a>Back at the garden, it felt so satisfying to spread the seaweed around the seedlings (like this arugula, right), knowing the soil would now stay moister (and a little less weedy).<\/p>\n

There are lots more ways that Roy has made the practical solutions fun for us\u2014like the cold frame he made out of an old sliding door. At first we had it positioned outside the deer fence, but found that awkward. \u201cLet\u2019s move this inside,\u201d Roy said. Now it sits centered along one edge of the garden, surrounded by pansies that Libby and I planted. It doubles as a perch; at the end of a working day, we close it, sit on top it, and look out to admire our beds. \u00a0And then there\u2019s the bamboo pea trellis (another adventure to collect the bamboo) and the refurbished wooden wagon (from a church). \u00a0\"\"<\/a>But again, it\u2019s not the trellis or the wagon\u2014the material things\u2014that matter so much. It\u2019s what the garden offers as a true microcosm for everything in life: Without our friends, without help, without fresh ideas, we\u2014and the garden\u2014can\u2019t thrive. I know the garden has more lessons in store for me this summer, but I\u2019m glad I learned this one early on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s only mid-May, and already the vegetable garden is leading me by the hand, showing me things about myself and my world that I sometimes ignore, don\u2019t appreciate enough\u2014or might not choose to think about all the time. Like the fact that I have pale skin (#30 sun block, my new best friend), am not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[45],"tags":[46],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":503,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}