I was just thinking about an idea and thought I would run it by you. Some of you probably could do the same thing if you have as little spare time as I do…
We just bought our first house, and we pay a gardener to mow the lawn. We clean up a little, but let them take care of it once a week because we are so busy, and I have not gotten a mower and tried to get in the habit of taking care of it myself. What we would really like is to have our own vegetable garden.
My wife really wants to plant the vegetable garden with me, and I think that is a great idea. We should plant a vegetable garden. The thing is, we are new to the area and not familiar with the local growing issues, and also don’t have time to do much research or even to do much digging. I knew how to plant back home but this new area would require some adjustment. I also suspect that protecting our garden from the local animals will be harder here. I did not have rabbits and deer in the backyard back home, and raccoons were not common. My parents are starting to have to deal with squirrels a lot now, but they were not in the backyard either when I was growing things as a youth.
My grandmother had the philosophy about gardening that you can have a great garden and not have a green thumb. She said her only trick is that when something dies you pull it out and replace it. When I told my dentist that, he said that he also had a great method… he pays to have someone else do it.
We are not as well off as most dentists, but we are almost as busy. I think if I approach the guy that mows our lawn that I will find that he has a garden of his own, and would be happy to build a bed for our first garden in this new house. Then we can try to keep it up, and duplicate his results next year.
Some of you might be shocked at the thought of paying someone a few hundred dollars when you could do the work yourself. And when it would be such a good thing for us to do together. I am thinking that this might be cost effective for us though, and if we don’t have the gardener do it, then we won’t get anything planted this year.
Feel free to fill the comments with your advice on doing this ourselves, or with your own garden successes. My sister has a service that she pays to bring her vegetables every week. I have not heard of anyone paying to have their own vegetable garden planted for them, though. I have never been too proud to do something like that though. It takes a certain amount of humility to admit that you could use some help.
I will probably show this diary to my wife and then next weekend she will make me take her out and get all the things for the garden. It may not be the best idea to pay someone, but suggesting that as an alternative might be just the motivation my wife needs to get us started on doing it ourselves. I am sick this weekend, so not picking up any rocks and dirt today.
1:12 PM PT: We have talked about it and a few pots will be the garden this year. There was some concern about the potential for frost before May 1st, but I think that is a non issue this year. She thinks it will be easy to build a raised bed next year. I would still be fine with a landscaper.