When we moved to Ithaca from Brooklyn, I had grand visions of our family homestead.   There would be a big backyard for dog and kid.  We would have a pond for winter hockey and summer fishing.  There would be a bonfire for s’mores and a hill for sledding.  And most important, there would be a garden.  A garden filled with summer squash, sweet corn, green beans, sugar snap peas, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers for picking, and tomatoes for canning.  Rachel and I would be living off the land.  We would watch our seedlings grow into towering vegetables, harvesting to share with our friends and family.

Oh, did I have a lot to learn.  Thoughts and lessons from year one of gardening:

  1. Gardening takes time.  You can’t just pop your seeds in the earth, hook up the sprinkler and expect mother nature to work her magic.  Nope, you need to be ready to commit to that garden day in and day out.
  2. Taking on gardening with a full time job, work travel, a new house, and a new baby, was a little ambitious.
  3. Don’t buy 30 packets of vegetable seeds in your first year.  Try five, see if you can get those right first.
  4. A 12 ft. by 3 ft. space is not enough room for 30 packets of seeds.
  5. Check for holes in your garden fence.  If you don’t look for them, the groundhogs and rabbits will.
  6. Gardening is war.  A war against weeds, varments, pests, fungus and weather.
  7. It’s hard to make weeding fun….although Rachel did spend 2 hours hacking and yanking at them one night.  So, maybe you can take some pent up aggression out on them.
  8. The book “Second Nature” by Michael Pollan is a great essay on the challenges of  amateur gardening.
  9. The most important crop I planted all year was the grape vines.  When they are ripe enough for producing wine in 3 years, I will really need the drink after a summer of battle against weeds.

And a few highlights:

  • Seeing the first stem sprout up through dirt in our kitchen window in April.  This is especially welcome after a long Ithaca winter.
  • Watching the different plants take shape.  It’s wild to see the range of plants take form from these little packets of seeds.
  • Harvesting my first vegetable: A single green bean.  It was the only one the rabbit left me after shearing the rest of my plants in early June.  (see comment about war above).
  • Sharing that single green bean with my family of four (dog included).
  • Building a compost and dumping our first bin of waste outside instead of in our garbage can.
  • The first pluck and taste of a sun gold tomato.  The most rewarding crop in our garden.
  • I’m hooked.  It’s like golf.  You can spend a whole year sucking, but then you hit one great shot….or in gardening, you eat one sweet tomato, and you know you’ll be back next year.

Below are a few pictures from the first year of gardening.  (The massive harvest from August, the homemade compost, the young vineyard, and the skinny amateur garden plot.)

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