Before i bought the property i live on now i spent about a decade living in apartments. I had balcony gardens. I had courtyard gardens. I had hanging gardens…but i always had a garden of some sort. I did fairly well for having everything in containers. I grew roses and double blossom hibiscus, herbs and vegetables…in an apartment i successfully grew brussels sprouts and rhubarb. So when i moved to a 2 acre plot of land i thought for sure my gardening era had arrived. For sure, whatever i had done in those little balcony gardens and hanging pots…was about to blossom ten fold into some kind of impressive operation. This was not the reality that presented itself.
Roadblocks to gardening on my current piece of land:
- Deer
- Cotton Tails
- Wild Hogs
- Armadillos
- Agricultural Termites
- Pill-bugs
- June-bug Larvae/Grub worms
- Caterpillars
- Katydids
- Aphids (and Ants farming the aphids)
- Biblical amounts of Grasshoppers
There were some clues that i missed in the beginning. Namely, there were greenhouses present in some yards but not one person in town had an open yard garden. Now i know there are reasons for that. Over the years i made many attempts at overcoming these roadblocks to gardening. I erected a greenhouse and three days later a storm with 80 mph winds tore it down. I staked an open bottomed mosquito net tent into the ground. As soon as the cotton tails found it they tunneled under the mulch walls i had built around it and when i pulled up the remaining items the reason for their stunted growth and dwarfed size became apparent. The grub worms, termites, and pill bugs were noted clinging to the roots of the plants. They were very short roots as the insects had eaten nearly all of them. I then dropped $11,000 on a custom tough shed thinking this will be an indestructible greenhouse that cant be blown down. I had them put windows all the way around but their policy was that the largest could only be two feet tall and the middle windows could only be a one foot by one foot square. It wasn’t what i had wanted. I had wanted floor to ceiling windows but they said they couldnt do it. I believed the sky lights would be the saving grace but they said they couldnt do those in plastic; only glass. With the history of large hail and volatile weather in the area i decided glass sky-lights would be an ill-fated idea. I crossed out the sky lights from the design. Ultimately, everything i planted molded and died. Eventually the idea to add electricity and grow lights to the greenhouse tough-shed was hatched, but my electrician’s health took a turn for the worse and he was no longer accepting new jobs. I didnt trust just anybody to do electric work. Shotty electric work is how you get a fire. So, the project stalled for several years.
Unfettered gardening was out of reach for me for about 6 years. I grew fruit trees and wild grapes but anything else i attempted really just resulted in disaster and disappointment. I gave up on gardening outside of fruit and nut trees. It was then that my neighbor and best friend introduced me to my other neighbor about a mile down the road. My new electrician had lived down the road from me since before i even moved in. I was living just 3 properties down from an electrician and i never knew it.
My neighbor wired electricity from the utility pole to my greenhouse and helped me hang and install 7 grow lamps to simulate the sunlight that was not getting in due to shed placement, walls, roof, and trees. When it was all said and done he told me to flip on the light switch. I did and lights turned on.
I was ecstatic! This final form of garden had to be the one that was going to work!
The next day i went to the nursery and bought up anything they had left that didnt require bees to pollinate or might do well with shaking or a paint brush.
I was beyond thrilled! I finally had a decent chance at gardening. Within two days of planting i could see that the plants had gotten slightly bigger under the grow lights.
Eventually it became apparent to me that this gardening version was going to work. That’s when my deep gratitude towards my neighbor and new friend began. To this day he has still not let me pay him for the job. But he sure did bring hours and hours of plant related joy to my life. I really missed gardening.
Progress:
Eventually i added a couple roses just for the beauty of them. Outside the grasshoppers would have eaten them down to nubs but inside they were protected and allowed to bloom.
I never grew enough veg to make the grocery seem unnecessary but that wasnt what it was about for me. It was an anti-depressant. It was a dimension of life that was missing. Playing in the dirt and growing gems and treasures to look forward to harvesting on green plants.
I shook the tomato plants daily to simulate wind pollination and i left the windows open with the screens on for temperature control and a good cross breeze.
I bought a honeysuckle bush and planted it outside. I had seven potted trees to plant as well but with all my projects and a lawn that desperately needed mowed, i didnt fancy digging holes as each one would have taken about 3 hours to carve out by hand in the straight rock. I kept saying, “i’ll put that off until later. They can live in the pots for now.”
The grasshoppers were harassing the blackberry bushes something awful so i moved them inside the greenhouse for sanctuary once i made sure i had picked all the terrible buggers off of them.
Then a new problem arose. I still had to be very careful about dosing water to the plants. With limited sunlight and grow lights hung from the ceiling, i had to make sure not to over water the plants because they’d drown and it would take too long for them to dry out. it was now way too hot to leave the windows closed during rain storms. I needed them open for airflow. So i hatched an idea that involved weighting clear shower liners with fridge magnets so the wind wouldnt lift them. Everyone i told the idea to thought i was crazy and couldnt understand how it would work but i paid no mind. All of my ideas were crazy to others until they came to fruition. Until the ideas were put into practice and working nobody dared to back them. This was my pattern in life and i was well used to it. If you are going to do things other than the mainstream way people are used to you have to be willing to bet on yourself and be prepared to weather it if your gamble doesnt pay off. I mean, look at all my failed attempts at greenhouses. Obviously they didnt work. But i had to give each one my best college try to get to where i am now with this one. You have to deploy ideas and watch them fail or succeed regardless of what people say. You cant let them stop you because your methods are unusual. All ideas had to be strange once because they had to be invented before they could be considered mainstream.
The shower liners and magnets worked brilliantly. This is about the time we began experiencing triple digits and i switched to a schedule of turning the lights on at night and turning them off during the day so i could keep it as cool as possible in there. It seemed to work well.
My neighbor gifted me a big pile of his compost with hay and cow dung in it. It was beautiful good-quality stuff and i used it to add nutrients to the dirt in the toy-box beds.
The garden continued to grow. About 6 grasshoppers a day would make their way inside to eat everything and id spend about 45 minutes chasing them about trying to kill them all before they could do a real amount of damage.
Tomatoes
The Japanese Sweet Potato
Blackberries
The Japanese sweet potato did so well i decided to order some korean gold sweet potato and some seon mi sweet potato plants. They arrived in a sealed bag with no water or air. I remain unsure whether the clearly in shock plants will survive but im trying to nurse them back to health.
My neighbor the electrician decided i was spending too much time alone with bugs and maybe we needed to do something to preserve my sanity in the war against the grasshoppers. He helped me weather strip the door and we’ve made plans to cover the air vent near the ceiling with mesh to keep them from entering in from there as well while they just hang out on the outer walls of the greenhouse; the dratted bastards.
Progress:
The korean sweet potato plants seem like they might survive after all.
Awesome!!!!!