Ruby&Ruch

What is the lesson or insight …

Well, just a little over a year since we put a spade ‘ reluctantly’ into the field and felt the vibration of the baked hard soil shiver its way up my arm.

Number 1. Nothing that’s worth doing or perhaps you dream of, is going to be accomplished in an afternoon on your first day. Or even your second. In fact it’s been a year and there have been some false starts and failures.
Number 2. The false starts. We looked long and hard at poly tunnels and greenhouses and after looking at the priorities and all points west we bought a poly tunnel – hurrah. It was a terrible decision and its’ remains are now waiting for me to unscrew them – boo. It seems that while we were looking at all points west we should have been looking the other way and our research was to be brutal – crap.
Number 3. The Failures. This years Onions will not be a failure but it’s not looking good on the garlic front. Perhaps reading some of the extensive range of information available on growing these staples might have been better done earlier, ho hum.
Number 4. Not all that appears dead actually is. I’m also lumping into this one ‘ not everything that looks like a potato is a potato especially when you planted lots of different tomatoes’. It’s true that a lot of our plants look like dead sticks in the middle of winter even if you’re in the Gironde region. Spring and summer take time to work their magic and as we sit here now nearly all those sticks are doing nicely thankyou, and those that aren’t have been replaced, but wait for the fruits if you’re unsure about wether it really is a tomato in the tomato bead – dur!
Number 5. Do it right the first time. I and we and everybody should know this one by now. There is no point doing it badly. Last year we thought that a yew circle would be the very thing in the back of the garden and bought the plants – an excellent purchase that Deb found. Hoewever by the time we got round to planting it was blazing hot and the preparation was, how shall we say it – not perfect. Planting the once nearly killed me, planting them twice nearly killed us both.

Sometimes it’s easy to be negative about your achievements and it has to be said that I can be the glass half empty sort of chap, but it takes time to build a vegetable garden and even longer to do that and build another garden in which that will sit.
It takes a long time and life can come along and get in the way as well. Yes you can have a plan but perhaps you also have to listen to what the land is telling you and by doing that plans and ideas change for the better. Leaving room for those serendipitous occasions is always a good but remembering that plans can change rather than sticking to something that’s obviously wrong is the best policy for everyone.