Markus Anecdotes - Growing Veggie

Photos by Markus

Written by Markus

September 2020

I had this romantic idea to keep my own veggie garden, growing salads, carrots and so on.

The picture in my mind was 4 slabs of black dirt, some bamboo sticks to hold up the plants and my lovely veggies growing nicely in rows.

So there I went, to the garden store, to buy the seeds and the dirt. I started removing some grass in my garden, turned the soil and planted the seeds, giving them plenty of water.

And behold, one week later the first sprouts came out of the ground, bravely penetrating the soil, reaching for the sun. The next few weeks I carefully removed any remaining unwanted plants such as grass and made sure my little babies had enough to drink. Quickly they developed into nice green veggies.

But then my little garden was discovered by the local wildlife. First the carrots, then the salad.

The new leaves were constantly eaten by birds. Every time a new leave would come out, birds would descend and munch on my growing baby veggie. I knew about worms and decided they are part of life, but birds? That I did not see coming.

So I started protecting my veggie garden. First with some sticks I took from the forest. Then with some items from around the house that are white, as I read somewhere that birds do not like white things. This also did not help as my veggies were still being eaten, so next was some chicken wire at the sides, followed by complete covering each slab with wire. Even this was not enough and I ended up having to completely put my veggies in a chicken wire prison.

So my idyllic idea of a few peaceful rows of green veggies between the grass, trees and flowers, has changed into a construction of metal chicken wire dominating the view of my garden. I’m ended up not keeping a small garden to relax, but being a prison warden, patrolling my captive veggie. And somehow, the birds are still eating from it.

I just accepted that birds also need to eat and hope they enjoy my veggie.