Yesterday I took a few positive steps. I e-mailed a headhunter who had been recommended to me by a friend. This is a person who will go out and look for a job for you, and his specialization is Engineering and Technology fields in Eastern Pennsylvania. I also transplanted three Forsythia "babies" to my new house. (I had been planning to transplant only two, but I managed to uproot three. There are still a few left attached to the main plant - I think I'll leave these as they are in case the ones I've already transplanted don't take.) And I started a strawberry garden.
I had been planning to start this strawberry garden sometime later in the season, but yesterday seemed like a good time for it. It gave me an opportunity to use some leftover stuff I had after all of my planting and construction projects. I had picked out the location of the strawberry garden early in the process of laying out the gardens and plantings in my back yard. It's just off the back porch, a longish stretch of grassy area along the border of my property to one side of a slate walkway, about two feet wide by ten feet long, ending a few feet from where I planted my closest blueberry bush. It will make for convenient early-morning strawberry harvests. If they so desire, my neighbors could easily lay out an empty garden on the other side of the fence and let the strawberries expand into their yard.
I started with a roll of contractor's paper - also known as butcher block paper or craft paper (or maybe it's Kraft Paper, I don't know.) This is the brown, thick stuff that shopping bags used to be made of before they were made of polyethylene. With the assistance of a neighbor and a few chunks of concrete that had once been part of the grapevine sidewalk, I pulled a length twice as long as the garden I had in mind. We folded it in half lengthwise, fighting the wind that had suddenly sprung up, and then folded it again widthwise to properly fit the space. I then placed the paper on the site of the future garden and held it in place with the chunks of broken concrete. Then it was time to begin adding things.
I gathered together the remnants of the last few weeks of work: half a bag of sand that had been used to fill in the cracks in the grapevine sidewalk, about a quarter of a bag of peat moss, a few pounds of topsoil, and two mostly-empty bags of "organic" potting soil by Miracle-Gro. I started with the sand, sprinkling a few dozen handfuls across the paper. Then the peat moss, sprinkling again, going for total coverage of the paper. Then some topsoil, to hold it all down. Then I took a sprinkling can and wet everything down until any visible paper was soaked. Then more sand, more peat moss, more topsoil (finishing the bag), more water, more sand, more peat moss, more water.
And then all the bags were empty. Now nothing left to do but wait.
The thick paper will smother the grass below, causing it to die and begin to decompose. Soil microorganisms will begin to dissolve the paper after a while. Earthworms, those invaders from Europe most likely introduced to the North American continent some 400 years ago as the first European settlements were being stocked with live plants and animals from across the ocean, will burrow to the surface in search of the tasty organic morsels. They will churn the sand and topsoil, the peat moss and the decomposing grass and paper, mixing it with the top few inches of soil. By next Spring, everything will have been thoroughly mixed. No further effort necessary.
Then I will plant my strawberries, refugees from the strawberry patch that I started here several years ago which will need to be thinned before next year. Rather than simply composting the thinnings, I will transplant them to this new garden, and to anyone else's garden who would like them. I may also relocate a few strawberries of amother variety that have continued to thrive in the soil just outside my garage. Perhaps next year I will have a garden full of strawberries conveniently located just outside my back door.
I had been planning to start this strawberry garden sometime later in the season, but yesterday seemed like a good time for it. It gave me an opportunity to use some leftover stuff I had after all of my planting and construction projects. I had picked out the location of the strawberry garden early in the process of laying out the gardens and plantings in my back yard. It's just off the back porch, a longish stretch of grassy area along the border of my property to one side of a slate walkway, about two feet wide by ten feet long, ending a few feet from where I planted my closest blueberry bush. It will make for convenient early-morning strawberry harvests. If they so desire, my neighbors could easily lay out an empty garden on the other side of the fence and let the strawberries expand into their yard.
I started with a roll of contractor's paper - also known as butcher block paper or craft paper (or maybe it's Kraft Paper, I don't know.) This is the brown, thick stuff that shopping bags used to be made of before they were made of polyethylene. With the assistance of a neighbor and a few chunks of concrete that had once been part of the grapevine sidewalk, I pulled a length twice as long as the garden I had in mind. We folded it in half lengthwise, fighting the wind that had suddenly sprung up, and then folded it again widthwise to properly fit the space. I then placed the paper on the site of the future garden and held it in place with the chunks of broken concrete. Then it was time to begin adding things.
I gathered together the remnants of the last few weeks of work: half a bag of sand that had been used to fill in the cracks in the grapevine sidewalk, about a quarter of a bag of peat moss, a few pounds of topsoil, and two mostly-empty bags of "organic" potting soil by Miracle-Gro. I started with the sand, sprinkling a few dozen handfuls across the paper. Then the peat moss, sprinkling again, going for total coverage of the paper. Then some topsoil, to hold it all down. Then I took a sprinkling can and wet everything down until any visible paper was soaked. Then more sand, more peat moss, more topsoil (finishing the bag), more water, more sand, more peat moss, more water.
And then all the bags were empty. Now nothing left to do but wait.
The thick paper will smother the grass below, causing it to die and begin to decompose. Soil microorganisms will begin to dissolve the paper after a while. Earthworms, those invaders from Europe most likely introduced to the North American continent some 400 years ago as the first European settlements were being stocked with live plants and animals from across the ocean, will burrow to the surface in search of the tasty organic morsels. They will churn the sand and topsoil, the peat moss and the decomposing grass and paper, mixing it with the top few inches of soil. By next Spring, everything will have been thoroughly mixed. No further effort necessary.
Then I will plant my strawberries, refugees from the strawberry patch that I started here several years ago which will need to be thinned before next year. Rather than simply composting the thinnings, I will transplant them to this new garden, and to anyone else's garden who would like them. I may also relocate a few strawberries of amother variety that have continued to thrive in the soil just outside my garage. Perhaps next year I will have a garden full of strawberries conveniently located just outside my back door.
I hope the strawberries do well. My parents had a strawberry garden when I was a kid and there was nothing like have fresh breeies on your cereal in the morning.
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