
It’s important to get out of the garden, too
Spending all my free time in the garden is a joy, for sure, but it’s still good to go off site and interact with people sometimes, too. Even if I’m not always sure what they need to grow, if they’re thirsty, what companions they need to thrive, or if their root structure is healthy.
Such was the case today as my wife and I went to Durham for vegan eats, cider, and new friends. But sleeping in and driving time meant I had just ten minutes in the garden today. What to do? Take out the kitchen scraps, of course!
I actually took the opportunity to rearrange some of the dirt I loaded into the barge a few days ago. That’s our enormous raised bed off the back deck that will serve as our primary kitchen garden this year. The soil needs to be filled in, nourished, and soon cover-cropped and inoculated with some good red wriggler worms!

Rather than just leaving the dirt I added as a nice flat layer of 3-4″ I decided to push it all to the sides leaving room in the center for me to mound composting veggies. A permaculture friend on Facebook overwintered a ton of veggie scraps (acquired from his grocer’s spoiled produce) in the ground and the next season, it produced some of the blackest, richest-looking soil I’ve seen. I want to try that same idea here, so today was a good day to take my ten minutes and get started on that experiment.
Sometimes, you only have a little bit of time, but every day is a good day if you’re moving your garden and homestead designs forward.
Gardening is Good!
~Ben
PS – Also, I checked and at least one of the garden snakes was out today grabbing some sun. It was in the low 50s here today.