The Making of a Habesha Garden. Part III- If You Build it They Will Come, and a Critique from Pip and Squeak!

Our Habesha garden is just about finished!

Ingredients: strawberries, pumpkins, peas, carrots, lettuce, wine grapes, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon, asparagus, honeydew melon, beer hops, New Mexico green chilies, chamomile, teff (on its way from Phoenix), broccoli, basil, cilantro, fava beans, eggplant, Buna (coffee, actually still potted inside), squash, and cucumber.


Pip thought the sweet peas were quite tasty and requested more. Squeak, although satisfied with the number of slugs and rolly pollies, found the lack of ladybugs quite distressing.



Steven has been working on this project for months. It was much more difficult than he imagined. The concrete was about twelve inches thick. It was all meshed together by rusty wire underneath. The cement saw didn't work. At one point he announced that instead of Habesha Garden, the project's new name would be "Steven's Folly." When he finally made it through the concrete to the dirt he found that the dirt was made up of, you guessed it, more concrete. He sifted every inch of dirt through a giant contraption that he made himself. He then treated all of the dirt with gypsum. Save for these thirty seconds,





and twenty more minutes of the fun planting part, Steven did ALL OF THE WORK.


Steven knows that this will be a wonderful place for our kids. He made it with love, sweat and tears (well at least cursing).

I hope that they will like it.







Farmer Steven, enjoying the fruits of his labor.