Where Do We Begin?
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| (heirloom sweet corn seedlings) |
My wife and I decided that we were going to do this right. We had a portion of our last tax return saved and calculated as investment towards our garden. This wasn't much, but it was around $800. This was what we thought to be an obvious over-estimate, but we wanted to make sure we didn't run out of money and lose the entire investment by means of not being able to afford replacing tools, adding nutrition to the soil, etc. We figured this would be enough to get the ball rolling and buy whatever it is we would need to reach our first year's goal.
What Are Our Goals Again?
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| (ABOVE: Otters in our creek!; BELOW: Duckweed under cypress trees!) |
Before going out an buying a bunch of plants, seeds, and tools, we thought it a good idea to create a design plan first. My wife spent many times over the course of a couple of months going outside at different times of the day checking what parts of the yard received at least some form of shade. Meanwhile, I would spend the nights doing the same. In addition she would take note of wind directions and water flow when it rained hard enough to puddle up. This also makes me recall us learning about what parts of our yard puddled more than others. The concept of "learning the land" became an addiction very quickly for the both of us. We enjoyed observing the natural function of our own mini ecosystem. We started looking up birds in the area and thinking of birds we'd like to see come around, we noticed an abundance of squirrels that we didn't think much about, but we soon learned that they were cute pests. Not only were we paying attention to our own property, but soon we developed an interest in our neighbors' property, the city properties and local parks. We discovered where the water goes during heavy, flooding rains by utilizing
Google Maps and following the spillways clear across the city. We had no idea our little creak was directly responsible for draining millions if not billions of gallons of water off central Saint Petersburg streets! Cool! The wife and I spent (and still do) many hours enjoying the "hidden" beauty of our city that we seemed to have missed for our entire lives. There were vast mini and micro ecosystems working together you just have to stop an look around every once and a while. Other than "land-learning" we had a very big problem with our soil at home. It was a silty dust, barely drained and blew down the street if someone sneezed. We will talk more about our soil preparations in part three. For now, enjoy observing and researching your habitat!
Before going out an buying a bunch of plants, seeds, and tools, we thought it a good idea to create a design plan first. My wife spent many times over the course of a couple of months going outside at different times of the day checking what parts of the yard received at least some form of shade. Meanwhile, I would spend the nights doing the same. In addition she would take note of wind directions and water flow when it rained hard enough to puddle up. This also makes me recall us learning about what parts of our yard puddled more than others. The concept of "learning the land" became an addiction very quickly for the both of us. We enjoyed observing the natural function of our own mini ecosystem. We started looking up birds in the area and thinking of birds we'd like to see come around, we noticed an abundance of squirrels that we didn't think much about, but we soon learned that they were cute pests. Not only were we paying attention to our own property, but soon we developed an interest in our neighbors' property, the city properties and local parks. We discovered where the water goes during heavy, flooding rains by utilizing Google Maps and following the spillways clear across the city. We had no idea our little creak was directly responsible for draining millions if not billions of gallons of water off central Saint Petersburg streets! Cool! The wife and I spent (and still do) many hours enjoying the "hidden" beauty of our city that we seemed to have missed for our entire lives. There were vast mini and micro ecosystems working together you just have to stop an look around every once and a while. Other than "land-learning" we had a very big problem with our soil at home. It was a silty dust, barely drained and blew down the street if someone sneezed. We will talk more about our soil preparations in part three. For now, enjoy observing and researching your habitat!
