Living in the Countryside

In the beginning of August, we moved out of our rental apartment near city center and moved 17 km out of town to a house located in the middle of a crop field. The house itself is surrounded by really big trees. We went from having no grass to having so much grass that it takes hours to mow and also countless amount of trees and bushes.

Countless indeed. I can not count everything that we are growing. I am generally quite systemic in my methods but the amount is so large that counting makes little sense. To give you an idea of the scope, here's a list: ~10 berry bushes (red and black currants), 30-40 strawberry plants, 3 places where wild strawberries grow, 1 place where wild raspberry grows, 7 apple trees, 8 cherry trees, 4 plum trees, many grape plants, greenhouse for tomatoes and cucumbers, 2 pear trees in the garden and a 200-tree pear orchard. You might be thinking: "you're insane". You're probably right, because a couple of months after moving, we added 8 blueberries, 10 plants of good raspberry varieties, gooseberries and rhubard among other things.

Usually when I list what we are growing, I see both horror and amusement in other people's eyes even before I get to the pear orchard. "Uhm, those apple, pear, cherry and plum trees need to be pruned in the winter." they tell and and I respond, "yes, I read about it online. I know the theory. And I have my pruning tools. " and then they're like, "uhuh. ". To them it's obvious that I'm in way over my head but I still think gardening is amazing. Before the winter, I got my never-pruned-before jungle of grapes pruned, I got my wildly overgrown strawberries ready for the winter and I got all the trees protected from rabbits, who are otherwise sooo cute and adorable but in the winter they're nasty hungry destroyers who gladly eat fruit tree bark and kill the trees for an afternoon meal. Kind of reminds me of Monty Python.

Now I'm planning for the spring and I have no more illusions of being a rational person. Let me illustrate:

What you see there are 70 packs of seeds. None of them feel excessive to me. Actually I am still missing many that I just HAVE TO have in my garden! Like corn. It's not really a staple food in Estonia and I've barely ever eaten corn that didn't come out of a can. But imagine I could just pick some out of the garden and just bake it and eat it. Perfect! Some of the seeds were bought over the years of dreaming of gardening while living in an apartment but I was never really good at window-sill gardening. Some of the seeds were given as gifts. I am also really fascinated with different varieties. Like why plant 10 x regular red tomato when I can plant cherry tomatoes and yellow tomatoes as well. And I spent a good evening or two picking out the perfect variety of cucumber to grow in the greenhouse. It's almost embarrassing to say, but the sweet paprika is just something that the store clerk gave me and I said, that looks good, and then I put it in the pile.

We have A LOT of space. Like really much more than I imagined I would ever need. Pear orchard, which is over 4000 square meters, takes a lot of space, but the inner garden is even bigger: 5000 square meters and there is also an area that is currently completely unused and perfect for vegetables, and this area is approximately 2200sq m. Only that last area is 25x85 meters (82ft x ~280ft)! There are also areas that I didn't count here that could benefit from some shade-tolerant forest flowers. The flower seeds that I have are mostly meant for the inner garden, so you can imagine that I will have no trouble finding room for any vegetable that I might ever want to grow.

But that's one difficult topic on its own. If you could grow anything at all (except tropical plants), what would you grow? If you had room to design any kind of a garden, what would you design? The previous owners lived here for several years and they had a greenhouse, berries, and fruit trees but not one flower. It might be possible that I will discover flowers in the spring but there aren't even any flower beds. Although I have previously remarked that flowers are only for gardeners that have nothing better to do, I have realized that so many flowers are pretty damn awesome. You plant them, mulch them and wait for pretty flowers. Even roses seem pretty okay now that I have read about them. Everyone warns that roses take SOOO much time to maintain, especially before the winter when you have to protect them from frost. Well, I watched a tutorial video how roses are protected from the cold: the 5-minute video had not been cut and ended with something like, "and now you're done.".

I'm trying to excite the kids as well. They do like the theory. I tell them, "And then we can pick CARROTS!" and they respond in unison, "YAY! Carrots! We love carrots!" and then I say, "And strawberries!" and they say, "YAY! Strawberries! We love strawberries!". It is of course possible that after a kilo (~2 pounds) of peas, a kilo of strawberries and a couple of rhubarb pies the kids will get bored with all that and we'll be up to our knees in fresh produce that no one wants to eat. But then we can a) make the birds very happy, b) tell relatives who live in apartments with children, to come and gorge on fresh organic home-grown produce, and c) throw it in compost. So next year we'll have more compost and we'll know to grow less food.

If there is a next year. Buying a house and living in the countryside has not made me completely forget about plans to go to postdoc. I am writing my thesis and then I will apply for funding to learn how to create healthy pest-resistant GMO varieties that don't need so much pesticides to be sprayed on them. In a way my gardening could also end up being career-oriented practice for the future. Anyway living in the countryside is totally fun and I'm really looking forward to spring.