It's
Winter: Time to Start
While tiny plants are napping beneath the snow, and staunch
roots are threatening to wither in the frozen earth, the gardener
with imagination is having the time of his/her gardening life.
Winter, after all, is when we're besieged by vivid, captivating
vegetable and flower seed catalogues, with full color pictures
that make the dream of a perfect garden sizzle on the brain.
It's long enough from last summer's dastardly fungus on the
tomatoes, and beetles on the beans, the drought of one month
and the downpours of another, that the pain has healed, or at
least scabbed over and, not to beat an old cliché down
too much, hope springs eternal everywhere, everywhere there
is a garden.
I
myself can't resist the perfection in those catalogue pages.
Look at those large, unblemished globes-why didn't I ever
grow that particular variety of tomato? That crinkly
variegated lettuce combo-where has it been all my
life? As for the corn, so real and tempting I'm ready
to take out the butter and put on the pot.
If you yearn for anything in the pages of a spring garden
catalogue, you know what I mean. The possibilities are endless,
and despite the hard work, weather problems, and past hardships
out there, you'll try again-or maybe launch it this year.
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The Good News and the Bad
"All gardens are a form of autobiography," writes
Robert Dash. And a definite sign of optimism, I'd add. When
we began our community garden over 30 years ago, with a minimum
of six adults providing the majority of the labor, we were younger,
braver, and we thought big. We started out hoping to grow just
about all our food except coffee, tea and orange juice.
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But before spring ever
fully arrived, living in New England, we had to haul away
hundreds of rocks, and have an acre of hayfield turned over,
and over, and over. Then came a fence, to keep out the extended
and extensive family pf local deer, seed ordering and plant
starting (cabbage, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes,
peppers, eggplant and more). We remained upbeat, though,
and eager for the first planting-on St. Joseph's Day, of
English peas. Then came lettuce and spinach, and dreams
of the future tables in our houses. We were on a roll. |
We tried wheat (too labor intensive), artichokes (a surprising
success in New England's climate), chicory (planning to roast
it as a coffee substitute but never getting around to it), luffa
sponges (not as cool as they sound), gourds (fun), and apple,
peach, pear, plum and apricot trees. The neighbor's herbicides
blew over the hill and damaged the apples and pears every year
at blossoming time; the apricot, doing beautifully in the middle
of the garden, cracked in a storm, and we shared the peaches
and cherries unwillingly with the birds. Still waiting for the
plums to do other than look pretty when the white flowers bloom.
We still grow corn, many squashes and beans, carrots, beets,
chard, gooseberries, five kinds of tomatoes, and as many of
peppers, three kinds of basil, two of parsley, dill, cilantro,
lavender, chives, sage and thyme. In general, though, that first
year or two or three, we overestimated how much of everything
we'd need, and planted, for example, 80 hills of cucumbers-following
the literature's advice.
Help! We're Buried in Basketsful
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No problem. We put
a sign out front saying "Cukes for Sale," and
got to meet Picklepuss, a guy hunting for a source of
cucumbers he could preserve into spicy, garlicky dill
pickles that he sold to co-workers. Although overwhelmed
with literally tons of produce, we were giddy with the
success of our garden, happy that our hills were a bounty
for Picklepuss, and I guess for the consumers of those
tangy fresh pickles.
We learned to freeze, can, pickle, relish, dehydrate,
string up and otherwise preserve dozens of crops.
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| Still
loaded down with too much squash, beans and greens,
we found the local soup kitchen ready and willing to take
the excess harvest off our hands. We even planted mustard
greens at their request one year and sent them on. |
History
the Teacher
We've met so many nice people, and had such a ball filling those
baskets to share with others, and at our own tables, that the
memories of the hard work of picking an acre of vegetables has
faded. We adjusted our sights, got smarter, and on we went,
eventually cutting off over a third of that first garden and
sending it back to hay field, eliminating the crops that were
too energy intensive, such as peas, peanuts, popcorn and eventually
strawberries. I know, sad.
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But we added things,
too, like a vineyard for the couple who make wine
We happily and easily keep up the asparagus and rhubarb
beds and certain herbs, which come up every year without
much effort on our part. We've also added cutting flowers,
long rows of them, blueberry bushes and just about
every type of lettuce that will grow in our area.
Still we discover, sometimes, that one person's delight
in the garden is the unwanted travail of another. Not
everyone has the time or energy to work every weekend
and some evenings, too, because when nature calls us to
pick, weed or plow, we must, or lose it.
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So as we plan
in winter for the next garden, we try to communicate, find consensus,
learn to be better partners of the earth and each other. With
almost a 15,000 square-foot garden, I'll vouch that it's not
always easy to garden with others, but trust me, it's even harder
alone. If you don't already have a vegetable garden, see if
you can cajole, invite or seduce someone into making one with
you. And plan small at first. Say, a 20' by 20' plot in the
sunshine of your yard. Next year add another hundred square
feet. Better to expand as you go, and love it, than to be overwhelmed
and disappointed in yourself.
Let's
Make It Organic
If you already garden, you know of the widespread needs
of plants to make them grow. Sometimes the vagaries of nature
determine the limits of your produce, and sometimes the
amount of sun and heat and rain work out just right, to
give you loads of vegetables and fruit on the table until
Halloween or beyond. New gardeners need a reminder that
our job as gardeners is to make sure the soil is right (consistency-wise
and chemically), water is minimally available when the clouds
just won't provide it, and the plants are fed, thinned,
kept reasonably weed free so they can breathe, and, depending
on what they are, trimmed, staked, or mulched, and harvested-on
their schedule, not ours. And free of predators like bean
beetles, tomato hornworm and raccoons in the corn. |
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Sometimes that means you'll need sprays, powders, liquids and
contraptions to get the job done. But what kind of sprays, powders,
etc.? In this day and age, hopefully your first inkling is to
go green and make them organic, to keep from poisoning the earth
even more than it is now, and to keep the food coming to your
table pure, healthy and delicious.
You can learn all about the basics of gardening from some pretty
basic books and websites out there, if you're a newcomer to
gardening (though some figures say 85 per cent of all Americans
garden at least in some way). What our gang would encourage
you to do, however, is to definitely go organic. There are more
and more products on the market nowadays that are safe for the
environment and for you. For example, organic fertilizers, such
as fish emulsion and liquid seaweed, or just plain basic farm
manure that can be bought composted and dried and pleasant enough
to use.
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Certain brands are
favorites of the organic gardening crowd, such as Espoma
fertilizers and pest control products, and anything
available from GardensAlive.com. Find a good local nursery
person who will give you tips and help keep you on the
green side. And never be shy about asking questions-organic
gardeners love to talk about the latest way to keep
raccoons out of the corn (bars of ultra-sweet-smelling
soap hung among the stalks) and slugs out of the lettuce
(a shallow pan of beer under the leaves).
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Petunias
in the Onion Patch
Like people, plants have affinities and aversions to other garden
mates. The qualities of certain plants are beneficial to others,
for example, beans and peas fix the nitrogen in the soil, increasing
production of next year's nitrogen loving plants, like corn
or greens. Aversions are specific, too; for instance, it's never
wise to plant two vegetables side by side which attract the
same pests, such as potatoes and eggplant, as the resulting
double onslaught to both can be devastating. Especially if you
want to grow organic, take advantage of natural plant alliances
and aversions to help your garden thrive, thus requiring fewer
chemical treatments.
Some reputed plant attractions are vague, but anecdotal evidence
proves them out. Tomatoes, for example, like to be grown near
basil and parsley plants, although I've always suspected the
convenience was for the grower, who often needs to grab a fistful
of basil or parsley for a tomato dish when picking a few Big
Boys.
| Separating
rows of cabbages, broccoli or other brassicas with rows
of onions has always worked well for us. Perhaps the onion's
strong scent deters cabbage worms. Tomato plants near
cabbages deter loopers, flea beetles and whiteflies. Beets,
beans and dill also grow well near cabbages, although
no reason has ever been given in the literature. |
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Native American growers were
probably the first to discover that corn and squash. or other
viney plants such as melon and pumpkin grow well close to each
other, along with beans. Companionship in the garden could be
why the Indians' traditional food trio was an assortment of
beans, corn and squash cooked in combination.
[read more
about Companion Planting here]
Our newest favorite crop
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That's easy. We've
always grown onions, yellow ones for storage, red for
color in salads, and white for scallions and summer
consumption. Last year our best onion crop unexpectedly
was shallots. These milder onion-type globes are sweet
and fantastic to cook with, and store well in net bags
on the cellar stairway, for instance. Everyone raved
about our shallots last year, and we recommend them,
since they are pretty expensive to buy in the supermarket,
and taste the best homegrown. Well worth the expense
of a pint of shallot sets.
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In truth, we know our garden isn't perfect, and never will be.
Sometimes we let the weeds get out of hand. It's okay, we're
not signing up anytime soon for Better Homes and Garden's pictures.
We've had our down days. Once we stood in a dramatic rainfall,
watching the entire corn crop tilt and fall into the mud. (Yes,
covered with mud we stood it back up as it dried, and we did
eat corn that year). We've seen our beet tops and chard nibbled
away relentlessly by high hopping deer too hungry to wait to
be invited. We've been invaded by fungi and beetles and marauding
birds.
But we're still young at heart, and partly because we garden.
The garden remains a vivid palette for the colors of our hopes
and dreams, our idea of the possibilities. It's still fun to
sit at a big Sunday dinner and count the items around the table
to see what came from the garden, the salad, the butternut squash
soup, the bread-and-butter pickles, the blueberry pie, the zinnias
in the bowl. Sometimes it's everything but the paper napkins.
Sometimes just a luscious tomato salad, or a big bowl of fresh
corn on the cob.
Will somebody please pass the butter?
Need convincing, or Recharging?
Try some of the following books for greats reads and wise and
humorous, thoughtful takes on gardening.
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The
$64 tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent
a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the
Quest for the Perfect Garden
by William Alexander
The tongue-in-cheek title tells it all! A hoot and
a virtual lesson in starting-and daring to continue-to
garden. |
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The
Year I Ate My Yard
by Tony Keinitz
The author emphasizes that edible landscaping is smart,
and that our gardens don't need to be perfect or huge.
They can still feed us, physically and spiritually.
His gardening tips and human insights are warm, intelligent
and humorous. |
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Tools
of the Earth: The Practice and Pleasure of Gardening
by Jeff Taylor
Hilarious and moving, this one is a wise and practical
discourse on the trials and joys of gardening I go
back to over and over. Great pictures. |
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A
Gardener's Bouquet of Quotations
by Maria Polushkin Robbins
My favorite gardening book of all time, this tiny
book is made up of pithy but powerful quotations on
aspects of the garden and gardening that can be mulled
over one at a time, or in one big gulp. Quoted are
a host of wise and witty gardeners of the past and
present, from Lewis Carrroll to Thoreau to Vita Sackville
West. |
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