A guest post from a new Toronto gar­dener, David Kruger tells us how he built a gar­den from scratch. In late July.

Before

I wanted a garden.

We moved into our house June 2nd. I planted my gar­den July 21st.

JEEPERS!!!

That’s late in the season.

Well, it’s amaz­ing what hap­pens when you move.

When you move from a one-bedroom condo into a three-bedroom house.

When you move with a preg­nant wife.

When you move and you’re also help­ing your par­ents to declut­ter their house in order to sell it.

When you move and you’re not the most moti­vated per­son, because you took a year off work and trav­eled in the UK, Europe and Israel, and drank, ate and pho­tographed your way through the five months.

So, here I am in the house, want­ing a gar­den and FINALLY decid­ing that I was going to plant the July long week­end. My wife reminded me that I had to call before I dig.  Dug?  Dog?

I did it online, which was easy enough.  And then waited for the req­ui­site time to pass before I could dig. I heard back from one of the areas of con­cern.  Phone, cable, hydro, water? I don’t remember.

Farmer Dave

I put out a call for a tiller on Facebook. Why the tiller? The gar­den space is only 14′ by 17′, so what’s the big deal?

Did I men­tion that it’s really fer­tile soil?  That the pre­vi­ous own­ers had tended a thriv­ing gar­den for years?  That the weeds had been grow­ing all year, and it was now July. July 2010.  The year that EVERYTHING is early.  Corn is a few weeks early. Strawberries are early. Pickling cucum­bers are early.

The weeds were four feet tall.  At the very least.

I was on the phone with my brother, and he men­tioned that he had inher­ited a tiller from his father-in-law. Gas. Too sexy.

We met up, look­ing like a drug deal was going down. Two guys with shaved heads, in the York Central Hospital park­ing lot.

I headed home to till. Noam came over, good ole Cousin Noam.  He knew I was plan­ning on tak­ing down the weeds, and sug­gested I use the lawn mower to cut down the weeds and then till. He obvi­ously wanted to get in on doing some fun stuff, so he headed out to the back­yard, plugged in the lawn mower and began to mow the over­grown weeds.

Then we put together the nuts and bolts on the tiller, and were off to the races.  Well not quite. It was some tough going for a bit while we fig­ured out which set­ting was on/off, and what needed to hap­pen with the choke.

That baby revved up like a charm and we were in business.

the Tiller with a lit­tle some­thing stuck in its teeth

The mow­ing went much faster than the till­ing. I wrongly assumed that the tiller just eats up every­thing in its path.  Minus the rocks that it spit out from time to time. I tried sev­eral dif­fer­ent devices to cut off the long weeds that were stuck and plug­ging up the tines/forks/fingers/teeth of the tiller. Finally, the weeds were mowed and the gar­den was tilled.

I knew all along I was going to go to Fiesta Farms/Gardens. Why? Because a for­mer co-worker who has a thriv­ing long-time gar­den goes there.

Also because the peo­ple I know that go there are peo­ple whose opin­ions I like to hear, whose taste I trust (minus the fact that Ivy Knight drinks Bud Light), and who tend to lead pretty eth­i­cal and sus­tain­able lives.

I went to Fiesta Gardens and was BLOWN AWAY!!!

Free veg­gie plants.

Mind you, it was July 20th.

I got cel­ery, and dif­fer­ent kinds of hot and sweet peppers. Those were the only veg­gies that seemed to have a short enough grow­ing sea­son, and I didn’t feel like plant­ing beans.

I bought Thai Basil, Basil, Oregano, French Tarragon, Dill, Cilantro, Lemongrass, Parsley and Mint.  I also bought four bags of com­post, and walked out with my gar­den for $70.

I got home and spread out the com­post, along with some of Cousin Noam’s back­yard compost. I had a dilemma around till­ing, since I’ve been told that till­ing too often can really dam­age the dif­fer­ent things occur­ring in your soil.

I risked it, and saved my back, and tilled.

Lightly.

fer­tile soil

I than planted sev­eral cel­ery plants and as many pep­pers as I could.

I decided to plant an “Asian” herb patch and a “European” herb patch.

I got up almost every day to water the garden. First thing in the morn­ing, I’d ask my wife if it had rained the pre­vi­ous night. Being preg­nant, she doesn’t sleep as well as I do.

Remember the good soil? Well, it’s really good. All the weeds seeded when they were grow­ing up to the skies. So, there were a bunch of lit­tle weedlings.  In fact, they cov­ered the soil so much, it looked like a for­est floor. Green and brown.

it’s alive!

So, I watered again this morn­ing and started to weed. With a screw­driver, because I couldn’t find a wee lit­tle weed remover. Eventually I ditched the screw­driver and grabbed a hoe. A long-handled one. I pseudo-weeded. I hoed the soil around the plants which should end up killing a bunch of the weeds, and make it eas­ier to remove them.

In any event, it looks more like a gar­den again, and I’ll get back to weeding.

One day…

The herbs are doing well.  Except the tar­ragon, which prefers some dryness.

I’ve got lit­tle hot pep­pers grow­ing. It’s mid-August and I’m hop­ing to har­vest pep­pers and many herbs.

I’m not hold­ing my breath on the celery.

gar­den­ing is thirsty work