Good Soil and Access to Water: A Reflection

We are approaching a year of living in a country home in the Girona province about an hour north of Barcelona. Last year at this time we lived a bit south in what is considered some of the best, richest farm land in Catalunya. As it happens, though, that was not our experience.

The only other time in our lives that we had attempted a garden was a small section at our house in California. We cleared a small area and worked it and planted tomatoes and chives and maybe a handful of other things. We did nothing to treat the land, because we honestly thought that dirt was dirt and was fertile in its mere existence. We watered infrequently and inconsistently. In the end, the few tomatoes we got were eaten by our precious dog on the exact day they were ripe to pick. Everything but the chives died without doing much, and lived until the day we left. All of this to say, we did no research nor had any experience.

Last year, we moved into a small garden plot that we rented from a private owner along the riverbed in Caldes de Montbui. After getting it all cleaned up (read more about that here). We had spent the better part of a year working alongside a farmer friend and now it was our turn to get started. It appeared to have everything we needed so we got started planting. We quickly discovered that the water tanks didn't retain water nor could we get enough pressure to water by flooding the canals. The dirt appeared to be ok, but we really did nothing special to prepare beyond some tilling and weeding. So, once the summer hit at 90+ degrees, the combination of spent soil and lack of water, we had an atrocious crop. The 60 tomato plants barely produced 5 kilos combined and died in July. When we moved out to our current location, the non-producing pepper plants were still alive, so we uprooted them and they actually began to grow peppers for the remainder of the season in flower planters next to the house.

This year, I have been pleasantly surprised by how well the garden is going. I honestly expected that our plants would just die like they always had because I was bad at tending the garden. The neighbor, Josep, keeps complaining about things not growing well, but looking outside of the window and seeing our plants green and growing bigger brings joy to my heart. And, I know they will produce in time, the signs and the flowers are there. All this wasn't magical, though. We worked hard. Josep isn't wrong, though, he has been here for 70 years and the growing season is changing and some crops just don't grow like they used to. All of his fruit either has has disease or gets eaten by bugs and birds before he can use any of it.

In the lower garden, we began clearing the weeds by hand in September and turned the soil with hoes in the hot summer sun, adding soil that had been left by the previous tenant for marijuana plants and a bit of sheep manure. When it came time to expand the lower garden, we started throwing our wood ash from the fireplace and let the chickens have free reign over the area for about a month prior to running the rototiller and fencing it in.

The upper garden was always planned to be our summer garden. It is tucked in right next to the house and only has sun in the summer months. it had been the owner's summer garden 30 years ago but had been left to become a grassy patch in recent years. Josep came by and did a rough till of it in February and we left if for the chickens until late April, adding wood ash every time we emptied the fireplace. The chickens spent hours picking over the land, pooping and scratching. Now, it holds our tomatoes, corn, peppers, green beans and pumpkins. Even the starts that seemed too small to transplant are out there and thriving.

We are still using public water as there is no supply free water available. The next project is installing some rain gathering solutions to drop the water bill for the coming year. Hopefully for the fall we will be able to take advantage of the compost we have been creating over the last year as well!

So, with good soil, and plenty of water to survive the hot summer days, we are seeing and eating the fruits of our labors!