Black Thumb!

Helpful Hints for the Cultivationally Challenged

by Sheri Dixon

  Stoke up the fire, grab a mug of cocoa, your seed catalogs and your loved ones, for as sure as Christmas brings visions of Sugarplums, late winter brings visions of the Perfect Garden.

   Over the course of the last 25 years, I have gardened both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and  I have compiled a Gardener's List of Untruths, for those of us who have followed, to the letter, the advice of the "Master Gardeners", come up with nothing to serve our families but dust and weevils, and had our neighbors turn us in for suspected toxic waste storage (HEY, that's my garden!).  Keep in mind that I have personally tested every Untruth, and while I will never claim to be a Good Gardener, I am comfortable in my role as Blackthumb, Defender of Inept Gardeners, Protector of Those Who Keep Trying.

   Untruth #1: Rent the Rototiller and simply push it along, smiling and humming a settlers' tune as it turns your land into premium, glorious, farmland.

    Truth: Pay someone with a real tractor to till up your garden plot.  If you want to experience the effects of Rototilling on your body, have someone work you over with a sack of wet sand, then jump off of your garage roof.  Naked.  Into brambles.

   Untruth #2: Your veggies will look just like the picture in the catalog.

   Truth: Actually, they WILL look just like the pictures, they just don't tell you that the pictures are life-size.

   Untruth #3: Newspaper makes excellent mulch.

    Truth: Newspaper looks like litter in your garden, because it IS litter in your garden.  The best mulch I ever used was stall innards from the goat pen, wheel-barrowed directly from pen to garden and dumped between rows.  If you have no goats (I can help you with that), the thick black plastic the garden store sells is a good alternative that keeps out weeds and doesn't look awful, although some folks, like our Editor, are opposed to putting anything in the garden that won't break down rapidly.  Last year's hay works well too, the flakes are about the right size to fit between rows.

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American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987by eliminating one olive from each salad in first class.