Gardening Takes Work

By the first week of June, the sprouts were big enough to be identifiable from the weeds. We had waited, to weed our garden since we were not sure which of the sprouts were from the seeds we had planted and which were weeds. Also when the sprouts were too small, uprooting the weeds may cause the sprouts roots to also be disturbed. So after having waited despite having a big growth of weeds, we started weeding our garden, in the first week of June. Interestingly, as a side note, around that time in my morning devotion I had read this (Matt 13:24-29). I could identify very well with what was being said in that passage. It took quite a few hours to get our garden weed-free. Our method of weeding is simple and old-style. The picture here is our strawberry patch, just weeded.

We decided to have the most natural garden we could possibly have. So we chose to stay away from chemical watersides, which would have made our job much easier. But we would love to do it the natural way for two reasons. One, we love to work in the garden; there is something very relaxing about working with plants and nature, it a great stress-reliever (not that we have very stressful lives, but just reliving whatever stress we do have). The other reason is the unknown (or un researched) side-effects. Scientific research ( or any research for that matter) tends to be uni-dimensional, whereas life is always multi-dimensional. Anyway, that is another topic, I wont go too much into here. We don't intend to use any chemical fertilizers. We have decided to experiment with only our kitchen waste composted and added as fertilizer.

So natural gardening takes a lot of work. We spend about 20 man hours per week keeping up with the de-weeding and re-seeding to keep continuous produce. The way this works reminds me of the quote "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food" from Genesis. But life I said before we enjoy doing it, so we never notice the time fly by.