SFG Gardening


For the first time in my adult life I have a back yard -- and somehow, that motivates me much more than the balconies I had in almost all my Parisian apartments. So here I go, inspired by the vegetable gardens of new friends here in Vancouver, I

set out to read up on the "howto". Pretty soon, somebody mentioned square foot gardening, and the book really made it sound all so logical and methodical, very appealing to my engineering and planning side.
I really loved the process: deciding where to put the beds, how to build them, buying supplies, building them, filling them, putting the little grains in the earth, and since then waiting and moistening the top layer every day. So even though it took me forever (say three months?) from first thinking/talking to now seeing the first little green leaves poke through the soil, I love to do it this way, my way. So what, if this year's harvest is going to be smaller than had I started the easy way right away rather than building and planning everything from scratch. I even read up upon companion gardening to decide which crop would go into which little square next to which other crop. Interesting!

Somehow, how big the harvest is going to be is not even that important to me. Don't get me wrong, I am certainly looking forward to eating our very own organic crop, but maximizing the harvest was not what this was all about. It was, as with most everything I enjoy doing, about the learning experience.

Oh, and it's just lovely to run out into the garden in the morning and check for any new leaves poking through the earth, and for good measure we also run out when we get home in the evening to check again. Will it loose its new-ness and excitement next year? Weirdly enough, I don't remember being this excited about gardening when we had our own, big garden all around our bungalow when I grew up.

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