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By GERALD S. HAWKINS
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Our vegetable garden is a joint effort.
My wife, Julia, runs it as a minimum-work project by spreading thick hay over the area in the fall and letting Mother Nature do the rest. The hay beds down into a fertile mulch, and the weeds are smothered.
The digging underneath is done by worm-power. Earthworms thrive under the mulch and turn the soil over.
The only thing one has to do in the spring is pull the hay apart and drop in a seed. Some weeds do grow in the hay, but these are easy to pull. The hard part of the work for Julia is reading all the catalogues to get just the right variety of seed.
My part comes in putting the soil under the hay in the first place. I dig out from under the house to make the gardening terraces. Since this is the Blue Ridge, what I am digging into is Precambrian rock, dating back some 800 million years. Once upon a time, two granite sheets rubbed together during earthquake upheavals, and what was left over was a slate-like, crumbly rock. ■ No one believes me when I tell them, but this soft rock comes out gpeen when you hit it with the pickax, and then, after being in the fresh air and rain for a few weeks, it turns into a fine red soil. Whatever seed Julia plants in it makes the first roots this soil has ever seen.
When I go under the house, she says 1 am working in my “soil mine.”
One year, Julia selected a certain type of watermelon, and planted three seeds in May. I had never tasted watermelon until I came to America. They don't grow too well
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