Growing soil - Viki Mather

Some of you who read this column have asked time and again for me to write about gardening.

I only wish I could write a gardening column.

Even though I have been popping seeds into the ground for more than two decades, I have to admit that I know very little about gardening.

Ask me about the weeds that come up between the seedlings and I could talk for hours about the dining possibilities, but I am still in the kindergarten days of learning how to grow tomatoes and cucumbers.

I might have been further along in my home school of gardening had I started with a fertile bed.

Living in the wilds of northern Ontario has many benefits and pleasures, but these do not include sandy loam fields.

Our few acres here in the midst of forest and lakes have more bedrock to show than soil.

And what few packets of dirt we have are mostly rocks and clay, with a pH of 5.3.

No exactly prime carrot territory.

I have a huge library of gardening books.

I have read about everything from raised beds to companion planting.

They talk a lot about nutrients and humus, compost and other natural fertilizers.

But no one talks about how to grow soil, starting from bedrock.

Maybe this is where my expertise lies?

Over the past many years we have worked in piles of manure, our homemade compost, sand from down the road and peat from our very own backyard swamp.

Is this a balanced mix of nutrients?

Will the pumpkin be happy this year?

And the beans and corn? (not that I have ever been successful at corn...).

For 25 years now we have been working away, a little at a time, from the bedrock up.

We gather what materials are close at hand, mix them together and call it The Garden.

Considering what we have to work with, I think we are doing quite well.

But I still wondered as I finished building one more new bed in the garden last week, what do real gardeners do in May?

As we enter these first days in June, I have no question of how to keep busy in the garden.

Three dozen tomato plants started on my windowsill in late March are just now finding their way into one of the first beds we laid out years ago.

I love tomatoes! They always get the best spot in the garden.

Now if I can just keep up with the ‘harvest’ of wonderful edible weeds, maybe the tomatoes will have a chance this year.

Viki Mather has been writing for Northern Life since the spring of 1984. During 2011, she takes us back to some of those older writings as she prepares to publish a book of ‘In the Bush’. This one was originally published in May 1993.

Posted by Vivian Scinto.