Read by Michael Flamel

Way back when, I decided to stop buying cheap (not ‘inexpensive’; I mean cheap!) gas grills that lasted about as long as a Bic lighter (I would have said Bic pen, but they lasted longer than the lighters; buying a four pack was a necessity, not an option—and I don’t even smoke! [NEVER have, which is why I’m not in worse shape than I am, which is about a seven most days (unless its raining or a weather change is moving in (what’s the forecast? Let me ask my hip or…)])

(What’s up with this guy? He seems to be writing in some kind of morse code…)

So I decided to go half-way upscale and bought the lowest-priced Weber grill (NEVER discounted!) on the market, which despite being the least expensive, was neither cheap nor inexpensive. In fact, it cost three or four times as much as the most expensive grill I had ever previously bought.

But now I had moved a couple points up on the ‘where are you in the middle class’ scale! McMansion here I come!! But when the icy cold water of reality soaked me down, I realized that I would not get a McMansion, but could maybe afford a McChicken sandwich. (Hey—if you’re hungry and on a long trip, they’re pretty good—and you get a clean bathroom to use [twice; once on your way in, and again after you finish your ‘meal’]; as Winston Churchill famously said “never pass a toilet without using it—you don’t know when you’ll get the next chance”.)

Geezz—that’s two toilet references already and we’re not even 300 words in; what IS wrong with this guy?!

But I now had a really reliable new grill, whose guarantee back then seemed to last into infinity (or at least somebody’s lifetime; not sure if it referred to mine or the grill’s). Then a part rusted out because I was too lazy to use the grill cover for a couple of months (okay—maybe longer; picky, picky, picky).

I called Weber and they sent a free replacement part sent out right away. They even asked if any other parts looked like they would need replacing soon so they could send them to me as well; a very different experience than being forced to read tiny little lettering on your machine to claim a warranty and being assassinated by “is this the letter 0? Or a zero? An L or a 1? You’d think they were trying to make things difficult, but that couldn’t be, could it?

Ahem.

Now, you’re probably asking what the devil this has to do with gardening (except for maybe grilled vegetables). Stay with me; we’re getting closer—and you’re about to get a truly great gardening idea. As William Shatner once said, “Promise”.

Eventually after at least a decade and many free parts shipments (and my continued bad covering habits) there wasn’t enough of the grill left to put any new parts onto (it had become like a ’57 Chevy in Cuba). We held a brief funeral ceremony and then lovingly took it to the metal recycling bin at Allentown’s magnificent recycling facility to join all the other old grills.

Bought a 99-dollar special at Home Depot, that, surprisingly lasted four or five years until it died a slow, torturous death. At that time I had no vehicle that could get it to the recycling center, so I put it behind the house and bought a new mid-priced grill I’ve been very happy with so far. That was this year and I knew not to leave the old grill back there for long or I would have built the foundation for the kind of backyard the neighbors leave notes on your front door about.

My trash hauler wanted $25 bucks to recycle it for me, which brought out the inner cheapskate that all gardeners possess; it spoke up. “Why not make a planter out of it? It’ll be much classier than the traditional old toilet with flowers growing out of it—and you’ll be ahead twenty-five bucks!”

But there was no sun in the backyard and it would be out of sight, which meant that I would forget to harvest it until after a hard freeze—so my helper and I scraped all the debris out of the bottom, recycled the metal triangles that sit on top of the Venturi tubes and hauled it out to the garden proper, which, unfortunately, is close to the road. (Self-defense: This was not a bad choice on my part; it’s the only place on my wooded property that gets decent sun—and it really is much classier than the aforementioned old toilet, which is admittedly not much of a contest.)

The lid and legs were still in very good shape, and it was exactly the right height for picking low growing crops without bending (Everybody repeat: Bending is for chumps!) or using a stepladder (so no planting of tomatoes). And it was essentially a giant container, meaning it shouldn’t hold anything that needed to overwinter outside like my beloved garlic.

We had to place it (unfortunately) near the front of the garden, which was the only open place, but this also put it in plain sight. My helper suggested, “we could spray paint it bright colors—maybe even a tie-dye design to make it look classier!” Great; graffiti in the front yard; just what the neighbors have been looking forward to. A glare sufficed as a no, and we started brainstorming about the right plants.

“It’s a shame that we couldn’t get the lid off”, he said (it was not attached by the standard cotter pins; instead, there were tiny bank vault doors holding it in place). He added “because the lid is going to block the afternoon sun. Otherwise, it would be a great place for two or three hot pepper plants”.

So we went back to the back to try again to get the lid off. As we played around, we put the lid down and up (not up and down, as it was already up) repeatedly, and finally, I had an epiphany: “the lid would make a great frost preventer! Eureka! (The thought name, not the (very nice) area in the Pacific Northwest.)

Now we were cooking! (Although on a dead grill.) I immediately thought of lettuce; it would grow at a perfect height for picking and I could just pull the lid down when frosty nights were predicted! There’s never too much lettuce in this house; and I had a good supply of seed packets that had gone unused in the Spring.

The only issue was the same one we gardeners all face: How to fill a pretty deep space without using garden soil (which you should never risk in containers). In the past, some sources have suggested filling the bottom half of containers with packing peanuts (which are thankfully now hard to come by) or rocks (which are abundant). But they both have a similar problem: when the roots of the containerized plants get good and deep, they suddenly hit the toxic, useless ‘peanuts’ or inert rocks, not the kind of organic matter they were hoping for.

Enter my new fascination: Hügelkultur, a subtext of Permaculture. In its basic concept, you pile up old wood, cover the pile with regular soil and plant perennials in the created mound, thus filling the bulk of the planting area with (preferably) old soft wood, which will break down into soil, thus using the wood to its ultimate possibility and having an interesting new garden feature.

But I’ve never done that (it sounds like work, which I try to avoid), Instead I practice a miniature version, saving dead branches, breaking them into chunks and using them as the bottom layer of large containers, so that when the plants’ roots get deep enough, they can feast on organic matter, helping to break the wood down faster and saving me $$ on potting mixes.

So that’s what we did. We chose the softest (even rotting) wood and filled our containers about halfway with Hugel, shook it well and then added my mixture of around 40 percent potting mix, forty percent finished compost and 20 percent perlite (the miracle mineral!)

We soaked it thoroughly, planted the lettuce seeds, covered them with a bit more mix and left it open for the so-far-that-season reliable rainstorms to take over. It didn’t rain for three weeks after that.

No problem. I set my impact sprinkler to go on around five am and off around eight. The first week things were okay, and then an ‘invisible drought’ (you only notice it when your plants start to lie down) creeped in. No problem. I doubled down and watered twice a week for an hour longer each time. No problem.

Except that the grill lid was blocking the water. Big problem.

We apologized and hand watered every day. Seven sprouts came up. So I bit the bullet and sowed a replacement run. The next day, the rains mockingly returned. Thankfully the result was a healthy batch of sprouts, which have now filled in to cover their entire area.

And today—a month later? “The Butterhead is as high as an elephant’s…eh… toenail.”