As we headed back to Farmington, one of the things I really wanted to do was to grow a garden out at my parents' "farm" in west Farmington. We moved back to Utah in early spring, the perfect time for planning a garden and starting to plant a garden.
Since I had been out of school for a couple of years, I had had more time for reading and studying about new gardening techniques and approaches. I had spent time at the Vancouver library, looking at magazines, checking out books, and learning. I had pulled my few old books out of storage and re-read about techniques for efficient and effective gardening. I had a few things I wanted to try. I wanted to try cover crops. I wanted to add organic matter to the alkaline, clay soils of west Farmington to improve the tilth and productivity of the soil. I wanted to mulch under the tomato plants to minimize the growth of weeds, and also to keep the tomatoes off the ground. I also had a few ideas for companion planting I wanted to try. It was time to put some of my theoretical learnings to practical use.
One of the techniques I had learned about was a companion planting of corn and pumpkins. This is somewhat akin to the historical "Three Sisters" planting technique used by Native Americans, but different and more limited. Working for Rawl, and also growing sweet corn in a garden before, I was aware of the destructive neighbor, the racoon. You see, racoons love sweet corn, especially the day before you planned on picking it. Racoons will walk through a patch of sweet corn, pull down the ears of corn, strip the husks back, and have a sample of the sweet, tender kernels. I have seen dozens of ears stripped down in a single corn patch. I had read that racoons really do not like to walk through corn where pumpkin vines criss crossed the rows of pumpkins. It was difficult for them to navigate, and the small prickly spines on the pumpkin vines hurt their legs. Supposedly, planting pumpkins in with the sweet corn would greatly deter the racoons from eating the precious sweet corn. I wanted to give it a try. So I did.
The pumpkins in the corn was a great success. The pumpkins got a great start and the vines did not spill over into the space between the rows until the corn was waist high. I was able to easily cultivate the corn until the corn shaded the ground and prevented any further weed growth. The pumpkin vines continued to spread as the corn canopy closed. Down the rows, the pumpkin vines spread. The vines set fruit that began to grow and to mature. As the corn tassled and the silks came out on the corn, I wondered if these criss-crossed pumpkin vines would really prevent the racoons from chowing down on the longed-for sweet corn. Whether it was the pumpkins or some other fluke of nature, I do not know, but we had hardly any racoon damage that summer. The technique appeared to work. I became convinced that it was a technique worth trying again, and perhaps adopting for the long-term.
In addition to the sweet corn, we harvested tons of pumpkins. We picked many of the best Jack-o-Lantern specimens, kept them in our garage, and gave them away to friends and family. Halloween came and went, and we still have a few dozen pumpkins in the garage. With the cold weather, they started to freeze and to rot. The extra pumpkins had to go to the garbage. If only we had had a couple of pigs to eat the extras....
Other aspects of the garden were a success as well. We grew a great crop of tomatoes, beans, onions, etc. We had more than we could use. We gave some away and composted the rest.
One of the things that became very clear to me related to the importance of proximity of the garden to the kitchen. The garden in West Farmington was probably about 2 1/2 miles from our house. While that is not an extraordinarly long distance away from the house, it made it inconvenient to go grab a few things for dinner. The idea of a "kitchen garden," just outside of the door started to germinate in my mind. I wondered if it made sense to have a small garden that was very close to the kitchen for a few things for fresh eating, in season. That might include things like one tomato plant, ten feet of pole beans, salad greens, green onions, one zuchinni plant, culinary herbs, a few feet of radishes, maybe a slicing cucumber plant, and a few feet of onions. To me it made sense to incorporate convenience. If it took more than 30 seconds to pop out to the garden, I was likely to just not pop out to the garden to get something for dinner. It seemed to make sense to have a small kitchen garden, and a larger "production" garden for freezing, canning, and other storage techniques. My thoughts about this garden provided foreshadowing of a series of ideas and concepts relating to gardening efficiency and ease of use.
The time in Farmington, was only one year. We only had one season with this garden, but it was an impactful and memorable year.
