The X-Garden

A friend of mine who gardens says he spends half his time trying to kill plants and the other half trying to get plants to grow.

On Thursday night Melinda and I cleared the Bermuda from 350 sq. ft. of ground in anticipation of the next stage in the experimental garden – fencing it in and laying down a drip irrigation system. I conferred with Mr. Cooper of Cooper’s Garden Place on Thursday and he showed me how to set up the system. He was out of sufficient materials, but picked them up on Friday and called me to come by and get them. I also made a trip by Tractor Supply Store to procure eight 4’x16’ cattle panels and sixteen T-posts for the fence. All we needed now was cheap labor, which arrived late on Friday night.

Saturday morning we shared some amazing breakfast tacos and then went to work. If we were to build another such fence, it would go much faster and would be a bit more elegant. But we learned as we went. We spent much time conferring, huddling, arguing, and fussing about how to get the fence good and square.

Melinda mastered the art of attaching the cattle panels to the T-posts using a nifty tool some bright (and probably rich) guy had invented. We sawed the end off one panel to form a gate and David and Jimmy attached it.

Meanwhile, Mike, who had already repaired baseboard in the house while we were fussing outside, was laying out the irrigation system, assisted by Debbie and Chris. When we connected it to the hose and tested it, it worked perfectly. We attached a timer to it, which I had to get up and turn on at 5:00 AM on Monday in order to set the cycle correctly. By Saturday afternoon the garden was set up. Mike, David, and I drove across the road to purchase some bales of hay from Herb to use for mulch around the plants as they came up. Hopefully this will conserve moisture and smother out some of the weeds.

I left Saturday night to fly to Dallas and to preach at FBC, McKinney (where I’m currently serving as Interim Pastor). The group, I was later told, was so wasted by the work, that they fell asleep early. On Sunday morning the guys watched while the ladies planted all manner of seeds in the rich soil: four kinds of watermelons, cantaloupes, a variety of squashes, carrots, peas, beans, and other good things. When we return in a couple of weeks, we hope to weed the plots and place the hay mulch around them.

We have no idea whether all this effort will pay off with actual produce, but that’s the experimental dimension of the X-Garden.