Just do it! Get dirty!

geekpowered (69)in #gardening • 5 years ago

Today, and yesterday, and a bit before that, I was working in the yard. First I had to move a tree maybe twice my size. Probably gonna end up dying because I ended up having to cut the roots way too close after working on it way too long. I had been meaning to move it for a while, but I couldn't figure out where it put it, and it ended up growing on me. Now it's moved, and surprisingly holding on so far, despite us already getting a bit of heat here.

The main thing that I was excited about was digging a bit of grass up to plant a bit of garden again though. It's been quite a while since I last had a vegetable garden. Guess it takes a pandemic.

It's just hard to garden without help. I try to get some people to help me sometimes, but they're either very limited help the majority of the time, or actually make things worse.

One year I had someone decide to "help" with my garden, with weeding, and pulled up all the plants that had been growing for three weeks. By that time it was too late to replant them. I think that year I ended up having almost nothing that worked out. Sometimes you just have a string of bad luck. No idea how they couldn't realize that a long row of the same plant might actually be supposed to be there.

Now I'm all worn out from the day of work, and I don't even have anything planted yet. But I do have almost all the grass out of the way. Well, it's mostly dug up anyway. I actually haven't brought the wheel barrow around to move it over to the compost.

And yes, you can compost grass. It's a bit of a PITA to turn in a standard compost pile, but the grass seeds aren't really that big of a deal. I've had squash pop up a lot more than grass out of my pile.

Squash is a resilient fucker! I've actually had seeds THAT I BAKED IN THE OVEN then later germinate in my compost pile, when the pile got pretty damn hot. Now that's damn impressive.

That's actually something I hope to grow this year. I've grown squash quite a few years in the past, and I've had good luck and bad with it. I've had piles of massive squash that kept for months, and I've had entire crops decimated by bugs. I've had to deal with aphids, caterpillars, and cockroaches. Yes, cockroaches. Fucking German cockroaches ate my entire crop and all the leaves one year.

But I don't fucking care what it takes. I'm growing something this year, and I'm eating it. I'm gonna grow more than I can eat.

And I'm gonna try to use some of my old seeds and see if any of them are still good!

Did I mention that I've also gotten quite a bit of sun? Gardening will do that. It's a workout and a half, and gets you a lot of sun. Would highly suggest occasionally taking off the shirt or working in a sleeveless shirt so you don't end up with a farmer's tan.

Despite gardening being a lot of work, and not being very forgiving sometimes when you forget to water or don't deal properly with pests, it's also highly rewarding. The exercise alone is pretty good for you, but you also get food out of it. Unless you grow only flowers. But even then, you at least get a pretty yard out of it. And it looks a hell of a lot better to have a garden than just some grass.

I had been putting off doing a garden because I knew I probably couldn't get help with it, and was afraid that it might be too much work. And you know what, it might be. And you know what, people probably won't help me, but will be all too willing to help themselves to my crop, or give it away on my behalf. But you know what? Fuck it! You can't just not do shit because it didn't work out before. Success only happens with hardship. Things don't always work out. You just gotta try, and annoy the fuckers that you know will want veggies later to actually help you occasionally.

Now I just gotta figure out how to get more seeds and other things to plant. Fuck...