Kat Powers's Not God's Green Acre garden

I really tried with this bed, and I can’t make it work.

When we first moved in, the landlady had planted marigolds that didn’t take very well. I ignored the bed the next year and then I tried really hard to make it work this year. It was wet, it was clay, and it was suitable only, perhaps, for spiders.

First I dug down through clay about 2 feet, filled the base with three quarter stone I talked my husband into letting me test the suspension of his van with (two trash cans of stone are heavy, but not enough for delivery). Then the kids took their toy dump trucks and ran the stone from the driveway to the bed at the back of the house.

I covered the stone with landscaping fabric and dumped in about 200 pounds of topsoil.

And then I put the cantaloupe from the window in the bed. They didn’t seem to take, but perhaps that was because it was too cold. Then I purchased eggplants that never got more than three leaves. I figured it was still too cold. I dug up the eggplants and put them in other places to see if it was just me — and a rabbit promptly dug one up. Why leave the bed closer to the rabbit hole alone? Perhaps being so close to a window with odd-looking children’s toys scare them away.

So now I am going to plant marigolds. I’ve always been a bit wary of them, perhaps because I have a very strange fear of Danny Kaye and he sings to them in Hans Christen Anderson. . But I hear they’re good at discouraging pests, so hopefully they won’t attract Danny Kaye.

If a week goes by and the marigolds haven’t died or attracted Danny Kaye, I’ll put Swiss chard in behind them.