Back in the fall I decided to be an ant as opposed to a grasshopper for once. I actually thought ahead. Real gardeners, the kind that don't talk about gardening because it is so seamlessly a part of their lives, were all around town doing things to their plots. Laying out plasticky this and mulchy looking that. Me, as a pretend gardener, decided to follow suit.
After consulting a few of the real gardeners in my life it seemed I should:
1) Pick a plot
2) Lay some kind of something down on the ground there to kill the grass
3) Learn to talk about it all very confidently so A wouldn't scoff at the idea
At the advice of my neighbor I chose the back of the back yard, which abuts a church parking lot, for its full sun and flatness. Water does not tend to collect nor run off that part of the yard, she informed me. Right right, I knew that.
The ambitious 10 x 10 plot shrunk to more of a 6 x 8 blob out of pure laziness and a lack of cardboard. On top of the cardboard went "layers" of grass clippings and peat moss. It looked nothing like the pretty lasagna mounds I'd found online. I covered the whole mess with black plastic, arranged some slate and concrete hunks on top to hold it down, and said a prayer it wouldn't be a moldy mucky pit come spring.
Today I went back there, pulled back the plastic, and wasn't disappointed. I don't think the peat moss and clippings were necessary, maybe the cardboard wasn't either. The tarp seemed to be the key. The soil is soft with lots of little red earth worms in it. I made the slate and concrete into a path into the u shaped plot. If nothing else I will have a tidy looking mud hole in the yard as opposed to a blobby, moldy mess.
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