our garden

During World War II, Americans planted vegetable gardens to feed their families as supplies were scarce. These were called "Victory Gardens" and were considered to be a part of the war effort. Once the soldiers came home, many vegetable gardens were discontinued. The baby boomers came along and needed to be taken care of. Gardens became "borders" filled with peonies, sweet woodruff, candy tuft, bleeding hearts. Children grew up running on perfectly cut lawns. Dads made sure not a dandelion sprouted. Rachel Carson wrote a book about that. Chemicals abounded in the 1950's. But that is another story.

The 1960's saw a resurgence in vegetable gardens. The Whole Earth Catalog was the Baby Boomer's Bible. "Back to the Land" was the rallying cry. I thought it was cool that my own mother had a vegetable garden. It was very "in."

Vegetable gardens are having a come back. The down turn in the economy (okay let's call it what it is, The Great Recession) has inspired many of us to find ways to live more frugally. There's also a desire to be independent. More and more land is being cultivated for growing vegetables here in Lincoln and surrounding towns. Local farms have become "CSA's." Community Supported Agriculture means that the customer pays a fee for a summer membership and accepts whatever produce does well and takes losses along with the farmer. We are members of the Lindentree Farm CSA here in Lincoln. I have taken many photographs over there and we decided this year to reinstate our membership.

But sometimes you just want to walk out the door and pick your own parsley, basil or tomato. Enter the 2010 O'Neil front yard vegetable garden. This is not our first veggie garden but it is the first one in this location and the first since some major trees have been taken down. We have sun!

Raised beds are the method of the day. Now for the soil. Good soil is hard to find, since it's hard to know it's provenance. Soil stripped off farmland can be full of chemicals. We rediscovered a pile of dirt and rocks in our "back forty" left over from our most recent construction project. Using a screened door left over from our chicken coop of a decade ago, David and I screened the dirt and out came soft soil. Added to that was the soil created in the bottom of our ancient leaf pile and we have some pretty good organic material.

Everyone says that Memorial Day is the time to plant tomatoes. That is next weekend. I'm pretty sure we'll make it. Stay tuned.