Looking up the hill towards the house

Maine Garden: 2017

Looking up the hill towards the house
The garden with the greenhouse in the background

Timing Is Everything

After fourteen years in Alabama we’re having to reacclimate ourselves to growing a garden in Maine. By now, in Alabama, our garden would be in and we’d probably be harvesting early crops such as lettuce and spinach.

Here in Maine we only have seeds started in the house – all in trays in the south-facing windows of the main part of the house. Just yesterday we set foot in our garden for the first time. The garden here is on the west side of the greenhouse just down the hill from The Dome.

It’s a large squareish area made up of seven raised beds. There are triangular beds in each corner, a large bed in the center, and two rectangular beds on either side of the main bed. The soil level of the triangular beds, in particular, is quite low so we’ll be having to add soil to all four of them.  The three larger beds appear to have been “put to bed” properly last year so they won’t require too much work.

A triangular bed with soil ready to receive plants
One of the triangular beds

Preparation – Part 1

Most of yesterday afternoon we pulled out old, dead vegetation and added soil to one of the triangular beds. We still need to get a small rototiller and some other tools for working the soil but we’ve made a start. It was marvelous to have dirty hands again and soil streaked across my face from pushing my hair out of my eyes!

Not Until Memorial Day

We’ll continue to nurture the seedlings in the house so they’re able to go into the ground sometime towards the end of next month. Our current dilemma is this: How are we going to keep wild animals from eating the vegetables or even wandering around in the raised beds? It’s a question to which we do not yet have an answer. Jim’s asked me to begin saving dog hair when I groom Quan and that, scattered around the garden might serve as a deterrent to animals such as deer – animals which, themselves, are prey.

Now, what to do about lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my? Okay, so we only have one of those kinds of critters, but still…

Mister Quan-man protecting the garden from marauding bears
Quan “guards” the garden

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