I took the dogs out just before dawn and noticed that the squashes and cukes I seeded in the driveway garden were just starting to push through the surface of the soil. So cool to witness that.
Cucumber seedlings
Two of the winter squash varieties have also sprouted, and after a full day of soaking in the sun, all of them are a healthy green and appear to be off to a good start.
Of course now the cukes in the back garden have upped their productivity, so I may live to regret this little cucumber experiment.
My house was built in 1951 and my neighborhood followed along a few years later. It’s pretty woodsy over here, one of the characteristics I love most about Atlanta, but the tree canopy is a constant irritant for me the gardener.
In the spring I was still adjusting to my job and wasn’t devoting the time I could have been to the garden. I started close to fifty tomato seeds in February, but only a handful survived the hardening process as I raced off to the office and was often stuck there late.
I’m lucky to live in Georgia, where the climate allows summer crops to produce into October and sometimes November. Last night and today I’ve been setting out a few more things in containers (a new experience for me), and now have a couple of zucchini in a large pot, a watermelon plant (say what? Well, I’ve never!), a styrofoam cooler adapted to try another batch of Armenian cukes (my cukes aren’t thriving out back this year, even with fertilizer, even with a compost mulch), and I’ve got three buckets to which I added three different types of winter squash (one variety per bucket).
Behold: The driveway garden!
The Driveway Garden
No, it’s not much. I expect to collect more containers though. I can really see converting about half the length of my driveway to food production. I was hitting the yard sales bright and early today, but ended up buying the three buckets at Lowe’s (and branded, no less, so I can advertise their stores as I grow my winter squash!) since I guess this isn’t an ideal time of year for people to be downsizing their gardening equipment.
Years ago I blogged about politics and ultimately found it ruinous to my mental health. These days, I’m trying to avoid focusing too much on the day to day of politics and the economy, but here in the middle of 2010 it seems an inescapable conclusion that with Europe pursuing austerity measures and the American right freaking out about deficits, we’re about to slip into economic straits at least as bad as the winter of 2008/2009.
I’m a contract worker at a well established technology and media company in Atlanta, and at present my contract expires in September. It may be extended to as long as mid-December, which would land me at the one-year hard cut off that the company has for contract employees. I am not looking forward to the loss of steady income and the (minor) security of contracts that are extended in several-month blocs, especially since I’ll be walking out into an economy that I believe will be contracting again. I don’t expect there to be a lot of jobs to be had. I expect a rough time.
I’ve been wracked with the impulse lately to plant more food, to expand my garden (which receives inadequate sunlight despite my constant trimming of tree limbs) through the use of five-gallon buckets on my driveway. It’s the best-lit spot on my property, running roughly east-west and with only shrubs and short trees growing on the narrow, terraced strip of earth between it and my neighbor’s driveway.
Sunday is Independence Day and I have Monday off. I think I may take the long weekend to invest in eight or ten five gallon buckets, eight or ten bags of soil, four or five bags of organic amendments, and seeds (or seedlings) for things like winter squashes. I’ll probably start this evening, because even if I’m tossed out into something indistinguishable from an economic depression, I intend to eat. And even if the worst comes and there are no jobs for years and I lose my beloved house to the sharks at CitiGroup, a container garden is certainly more mobile than my backyard struggle to hold back the canopy.
These are such tough times. But whatever happens, by God I’m going to eat.
