My Fifth Garden - Part 1

Starting all over again.

The next foray into gardening came a few years later; three moves in 2013-2014 into different rentals prevented doing one in that time frame. Not to mention, the yards for those first two moves just didn’t have room for gardens.

But by 2016, we had settled into a house in the village of Kisbey, SK for a couple of years. Still renting, but it was more of a mutual we needed a place and the owners out in Alberta were hoping we could qualify for a mortgage (that didn’t happen, other things put up a huge financial barrier). But they didn’t care if we put in a garden, so away we went.

The yard was really quite nice, and about 3/4 of an acre. Kisbey and it’s immediate area are on top of quite literally what qualifies as beach sand. You need only dig down a few inches and that’s what you’ll find. The aquifer that supplies every house in town and nearby farm houses is only 12 feet below ground level; when the steam locomotives were still in operation, it was Kisbey water they liked to fill the boilers with because it was so clean it didn’t build much scale over time. And it was unlimited in quantity.

When I started researching the seeds I wanted, knowing I wanted to be able to save seed for future years, I kind of went to town. I found so many interesting things! Well, I had to decide…but the budget still ballooned to about $200. All well and good, I did buy bulk packets where it was warranted so I would have more than one year’s worth of some things.

We got the neighbors to till up a 12x100 section in the northwest corner of the yard, just slightly under the ash trees along the west side. This was my first introduction to soil that was easy to work with! Just enough topsoil in the first few inches to make it decent for a garden. Not stellar, mind you, but no garden starts perfect, I think. We did our best to clean out the clumps of grass and roots so it didn’t try to re-establish itself. Let the planting begin!

Greens, herbs, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, peas, beans…you get the idea, a little of everything. I had started several things indoors in our library (it was the former parlor of a century-old house), so it was nearly time to get those out.

The end of May came along and we got that garden all planted and watered in. Then of course came our typical summer heat, and I found out how difficult it can be to keep very sandy soil at a reasonable moisture level. But it still beat the hard clay or the rough rocky gravel of my previous gardens. It grew so easily, and weeding was a breeze.

As the days went by, it all took off and really started to look like something. This would be my first really good garden for both maintenance and harvest, and I was hooked. We all enjoyed having that fresh food as well as a few preserves like pickles and a few jars of tomatoes. Our sweet corn was fantastic! The potatoes grew very well so we enjoyed those all winter and had enough left the next spring to plant the next garden.

Needless to say, this garden really got me, Tom and my daughter fired up about gardening and prepping a pantry. That part would expand in subsequent years, as would the garden.

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