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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, despite my best efforts I was not able to get my hands on a NES Classic Edition over the weekend, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I talk about carrots, watermelon, lettuce, strawberries and other garden treats.
Today’s Fun Fact: Were you able to find one of the highly sought after NES Classic Editions that went on sale last Friday? If so, you must be a big Nintendo fan. Well here are some fun Nintendo facts that I think all of us can enjoy.
- Nintendo was originally founded as a card company in 1889. They made their first video game in 1978.
- Mario has a 27 foot leap.
- Tetris was the first video game played in space, on a Nintendo Game Boy.
- The company almost released a NES knitting machine.
- Nintendo means “Leave Luck to Heaven.”
What I Learned Yesterday
For the last couple of years my daughter has expressed an interest in planting a vegetable garden. We talked about doing something small like an herb garden and we talked about digging up a part of the backyard and planting some real veggies. However, nothing really came of it.
This last spring I decided I would talk about it with her again and see if she was still interested in planting a garden. She was.
We decided on an option that would allow us to grow some real veggies, but wouldn’t require digging up the back yard. We opted for a raised garden. I’m pretty handy with stuff and a raised garden is a simple box, so my original plan was to buy the lumber and make the boxes myself. However, after pricing the cost of the wood and estimating the time it would take me to build them, I opted for a kit instead.
I found a kit that made two 4 foot by 4 foot long gardens and ordered online. Assembling the beds was quick and I lined the bottom of the beds with cardboard and landscape fabric in order to keep out weeds and unwanted grass. Soon, Addi and I were off to the local garden center to load up on soil and seeds.
Addi and I talked about what veggies we each wanted to grow. We factored in things like the recipes Kari likes to make, the size of our garden, and the climate. We loaded up the car with as much soil as we could fit, drove home, and began the planting process.
As we put seeds into the ground, we read the packaging to see how far apart they should be planted. As it turned out, we did not have nearly enough room to plant what we wanted. So we picked out the seeds that we most wanted to plant, and made some compromise on how far apart each seed was placed. We did this so we could get as much of the seeds planted as possible.
In one of the gardens we planted bell peppers, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. In the other garden we planted watermelon and strawberries.
We then gave them a good water and the wait began. We worked out an agreement that I would water the garden in the morning and Addi would water in the evening.
Our system worked well. Each day the dirt got watered, and each day there were no signs of growth. Day after day, week after week. Water. Dirt. Nothing else.
And then it happened! One morning I went out to water and spotted a tiny green stem peeking out from the soil. It was exciting! I couldn’t wait for Addi to come home and see it. She loved it and was just as excited as I was. I could already taste those veggies!
We continued to water each day except for the days when it rained, of course. But the veggies were slow with their growth. It had now been a couple of months since we planted them and they were barely peeking up out of the dirt. I reexamined the packages and learned that I still had a couple of months at least before they would be ready. I also learned that we should have planted about a month earlier than we did.
Our excitement over the garden eventually wore off. There were days when I didn’t water and thought that Addi would take care of it. There were days when Addi didn’t water and thought I’d take care of it. Still, we watered the garden nearly every day. Kari had joined in to help make sure that task was done.
But the weed barriers I’d installed were not working as well as I hoped. Grass was making its way into the beds, most likely due to the wind or bugs. The grass was easily removed, but if we skipped a few days and allow the roots to make their way down, the grass quickly spread.
One day, Addi planted a sunflower seed in the garden. It grew fast! It was planted in the corner of the bed with the watermelon. By this time, the watermelon was also growing quickly. We had several buds on the vines an even had a few golf ball sized melons beginning to form. The sunflower continued to grow at breakneck speed. It was soon 3 feet tall, 4 feet tall, 5 feet tall! It finally topped out at nearly 7 feet tall!
But there were problems. The taller the sunflower got, the watermelon suffered. They were competing for the same resources and the sunflower was winning. The watermelon began to wither and the small melons stopped growing.
The other garden had problems too. The lettuce was a weird variety. I had no idea how to use it. I looked at other varieties on YouTube, but they didn’t help. Because we tried to cram as much into the beds as possible, we suddenly had a tomato problem. We had 3 tomato plants, but they were crowded. They soon got too top heavy and began to topple over. They got entangled with each other and became a mess.
The onions and strawberries were planted wrong and never sprouted.
Here’s What I Learned
Here we are at harvest season. Now to be honest, I still don’t know when all of these various veggies are supposed to be harvested. What I do know is that within the last two weeks we’ve finally pulled off a watermelon the size of cantaloupe, three tomatoes the size of golf balls, and a massive carrot. We still have a few more tomatoes that are growing, but I doubt they will ripen before the first frost.
We went into this project with expectations that were way off. I thought we’d have veggies in about 2 months. It turned out that it took over six months. As our expectations were shattered, our enthusiasm went with it. Mentally, I was prepared to water pull weeds each day for a couple of months. Then I expected to see a reward for my work that would motivate me to keep going. When there were no fruits (veggies) for my labor, I started getting frustrated. I stopped watering and weeding each day.
But this became a sort of self fulfilling prophecy, right? The veggies will grow healthy if I water and weed. But because they are not growing as I expected, I stopped caring for them, thus inhibiting their growth.
The sunflower turned out to be a big deal. It nearly destroyed the watermelon. Even though Addi loved the flower, we had to cut it down. It was robbing the watermelon of all the nutrients and there was not enough space for both of them.
As I think back on this season of veggies, I see a lot of lessons I can apply to my own life.
First, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Most of the things we do in life are not things that bring quick results. There comes a point where we have to make a decision to press on even though we don’t yet see results, or give in and let things go.
We also try to cram too much into the space we have. Addi and I wanted it all. We didn’t want to give up anything. But as those things eventually took root and began to grow, we suddenly had the problem of not being able to contain it. It got out of hand and eventually toppled.
Lastly, we only have so many nutrients. Sometimes we try to allow something to grow in our lives even though it is starving the life out of another area. It may look pretty, but underneath the soil a war is a waging. When we cut the sunflower off at the root, the fruit of the watermelon came back. Eventually we got to enjoy the sweet benefit of that decision. Had we not done that, the sunflower would have dropped its seeds and choked out both gardens.
So now we know. We’ll harvest what we can and enjoy the veggies of our labor. Next spring we’ll start all over again, except we’ll be equipped with a season of learning under our belt. And that’s the beauty of life. Seasons come and seasons go. Along the way they teach us things that will help us when the next season comes. That’s the beauty of life. We get to grow where we’re planted, learn more each day, and enjoy the fruits of our labor along the way.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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