Saturday, August 2, 2008

Wet Feet

We have a big case of hurry up and wait with the garden. We are now one day past our planned planting day and over a month since we began this project. But, as you know by now, we have waterlogged soil (see photo of our garden trowel in the dirt). I read online that waterlogged soil causes plants to suffocate and die because they cannot extract the necessary oxygen from the soil. Plants that die a slow death through suffocation will not help my seed guilt issues and will surely send me into some sort of eco-therapy-induced downward spiral. I have learned that vegetables don't like wet feet, so unless I plan on having a garden full of watercress I have to figure out what to do. Oh and the icing on the cake? There are a ton of mosquitoes and other small biting no-see-um's the garden now. Apparently they are breeding in the standing water.

We are left with few options:

1) Build up the soil more and build raised beds - Buying more soil and railroad ties sounds great, but it's more work and more money and I'm not up for that.
2) Learn about hydroponics - Hydroponics is actually sounding feasible at this point since we have a big pit o' fertilized black soup.
3) Turn our garden into a cranberry bog - One of my dad's fantasies was to wade through a cranberry bog - we have the bog, so we just need the berries at this point.
4) Wait - This last option requires no money, no work, but an extra sprinkling of patience… and mine is running thin. Very thin.

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