Good Garden Advice

and why I'm ignoring it

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. As always, links are in bold, and there’s an audio of this pocket if that works better for your life. This week I found out that I was number 41 in Substack’s Rising and Bestseller Home and Garden Category. My first thought was that I wanted to be 42 because well, “it’s the answer to life, the universe and everything.” Regardless of those stats, I’m so glad you’re here. There is indeed tea on this spaceship, and I’d love to share it with you.

Without further ado, today’s pocket.

Recently, I read Ellen Ecker Ogden’s post on an essential garden lesson she learned from her mom. Ellen tells a beautiful story of spending Mother’s Day with her mom in Cape Cod, caring for her mother’s garden. Ellen would tackle the weeds, but “even at age 94, Mom would start by sifting the compost…With a small shovel, she lifted the mostly decomposed food scraps and grass clippings in the wire sieve and pushed the small chunks through to make a light , airy compost.”

My thoughts while reading Ellen’s words were

1- how beautiful

2- how is it that after gardening for so many years I still suck at compost

3- maybe if I get a compost sifter, this will solve my problem

First, that meant that I had to figure out what a compost sifter was. A compost sifter, or soil sieve, if you’re a fan of alliteration, is basically what is sounds like. It’s like a spaghetti strainer for compost that separates fine material from course material. My next step once I knew what a soil sieve was, was to figure out how to make one or get one. According to Joe Gardener, I could make one easily. All I would need are 2X4s, wood screws, hardware cloth, wire cutters, a staple gun and staples. No problem, except I had none of those materials.

I have learned to take it with a grain of salt when someone says you can do something easily. I wasn’t sure this was the DIY project of my dreams, so I started looking around to see if I could purchase a compost sifter. I looked on Etsy, the place where people who actually do find it easy to make such things, sell the fruits of their labor. The compost sifters were gorgeous, but they were also pricey.

I then turned to the place I turn when things get dark, Amazon, and I found not one but three stainless steel sifters in varying sizes. I could use the sifter for my yard compost and my worm compost, and I’d have one left over to, I don’t know, wear on crazy hat day.

For $25 and a small portion of my conscience, they could be mine. I ordered them.

Then, I remembered how I thought that purchasing magazine subscriptions would encourage me to be better about sorting and opening the mail. Truly, I thought I would do the task that I despise more frequently because I would want to read the new exciting mail I would now be receiving on a regular basis. I would solve my mail problems by intentionally sending more mail to my house on purpose. A flaw proof plan if there ever was one.

You can probably tell where this story is going.

When my first New Yorker Magazine finally arrived, after I had to reorder it because the first time, I accidentally purchased a subscription to the Atlantic, which means I know receive both magazines, I was elated. I was feeling optimistic about my life choices because I read that New Yorker cover to cover, cartoons, political exposes and all. I felt so cool, so well read. And then the next one came, like six days later. And then the next one a week after that. Did you know the New Yorker was a weekly magazine? I certainly did not.

The mail piled up along with my guilt, and when the IRS wrote to tell us our electronic payment didn’t get processed and they like wanted us to do something about it, I missed that communication because it was buried underneath a half dozen New Yorkers and my beautiful aspirations of becoming someone who could manage mail.

So, I started to have second thoughts about the sifter.

It occurred to me that in order to sift compost, you need compost to sift, and my problem was that I still didn’t have that. I had a well-intentioned pile of yard waste, eggshells and kitchen scraps. There was no money or thing that I could throw at this pile that would transform it, just time, attention and a shifting of ingredients. Just as the mail is a mix of junk to things you really need to attend to, a staggeringly high ratio I find unfair, compost is a mix of green to brown. The green consists of food scraps, mostly fruit and veggies, which we have in plenty. The brown is dry leaves and paper, which we also have loads of, but to work, both of those things really need to be shredded. Further, the ration of brown to green should be 3 to 1. For years, I think I was working with the wrong ratio. Compost also needs to be wet, which might not be a problem for most, but our summers can get pretty dry, so making sure the pile gets watered is important. Finally, compost needs to be turned, according to my research, only one or two times a month. That’s not so bad.

Truth be told, I am paying slightly more attention to my compost pile this year, just a tad more attention than I’m paying to my mail pile, and it’s already responding.

This week, I will shred some leaves to add into the bin, and then I’ll give it a good tumble.

I can’t wait to use the compost I create it because as Ellen says, “Gardening is all about compost, and making it yourself is the best way to absorb all the benefits of this life-giving force. Buying compost in bags is like fast food and cheating a bit. You don’t really know where it is coming from or what it is made of, yet you put your trust that it is a good thing. Mom knew better and taught me that making compost is feeding not just the garden, but our connection to the garden. It is a part of us that naturally returns to the soil.”

When I do get some compost, though, I won’t be sifting it, because in a rare moment of self-awareness, I cancelled my order for a soil sieve. It’s not for me, at least not right now. I don’t need one more thing coming for me in the mail.

This week in the garden.

The peonies started blooming this week, though it looks like I’ll have to wait another year for the yellow peony that I planted in Cato’s honor to bloom. The oriental and California poppies are also in full swing. My garden looks like a sea of orange because I let the California poppies do their thing. I think it adds a charming, whimsical look to the garden which I love. I think next year, though, I might try planting a few different kinds of poppies and seeing if I can cultivate a few more colors. Red would be nice.

I started off the week with some manic garden energy. Everything shoots up in May, including the weeds. There’s a difference between cultivating a wild garden and letting your garden run wild. I had an extreme urge to tidy the garden this week, which I did. I pulled weeds, supported my blackberry trellis, and put in some small stakes to support the raspberries. I also scattered some wildflower seeds in the area where I am trying to create a natural fence line. They have already started sprouting.

My rain barrel ran out of water this week, so I was really happy when we got rain on Wednesday, and it filled up again. I’m using the water for my hanging baskets, planters and the few places in the garden where the drip doesn’t quite reach.

One of my goals this year was to harvest more, and I’m happy to report I’m keeping up with that goal. This week I harvested rhubarb and made three jars of jam, two of which I’ll pop in the freezer. I can’t fit canning into my life right now, so this method works for me. I also made a rhubarb crumble, which is one of Seabass’ favorites.

It’s funny, I was reading a gardening book the other day that says that rhubarb can be fertilized, but mine is mammoth, and I’ve never had to fertilize it. I’m so grateful for the goodness it provides.

I also harvested broccoli rabe from the garden this week, which Dan cooked up over spaghetti. It was divine. This is the earliest I’ve ever been able to harvest broccoli rabe, and it is the result of the direct seeding I did early in the Spring. I will definitely continue this practice next year.

All of these things remind me that sometimes the best lessons are the ones we learn from our past selves, so I’m so glad to be keeping track of things here for you and for me.

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. Do you have your own soil sieve story, or a magazine subscription problem of your own? What’s growing in your garden? What recipes from the garden are your favorites?