Cake and Commerce

Adventures in Community Gardening: Terrifying the fauna in June

The noble beast: Lula is 3.5 years old

I've been logging in to my email with just a little more than the usual measure of trepidation these days.

Will today be the day I receive the missive? Will it be a general note to the whole group or something written directly to me? Will I be named, described? No one really knows me at the community garden, but if they said "girl with off-leash black dog who got into the barnyard" it would be pretty clear they were talking about me.

So far, nothing. But I'm not about to bring my dog back to the garden anytime soon. Though dogs are allowed, unruly dogs are not. And 'unruly' would have been an understatement in describing my dog's behavior.

I had the best intentions. I headed down to the garden at 7 pm to plant a few more tomatoes, acquired for half-price at my local farm. Lula, my dog, insisted (as she usually does) on riding shotgun. She's an unusually well-behaved dog . I can leave her in my car, windows completely rolled down, and not be concerned that she'll jump out. I usually find her, upon return, hiding just below the steering wheel. Considering she's a 50 lb dog, this is a feat of remarkable pretzeling. 

I left her, windows open, and made my way down to my plot. I smiled at the other gardeners as I walked my plants and trowel down the hill, my bag slung across my chest. And then I felt a sudden wind approaching and watched with horror as that wind, created by the blazing figure of my animal-chasing labradoodle, blew past me and headed for the rabbit hutch. "She doesn't usually do that!" I called out to no one in particular as I dropped my plants, trowel and bag and ran toward her, screaming her name.

She's not difficult to subdue; I merely need to get within 10 feet of her and call in name in deep, rumbling baritone. It makes me sound like a death metal vocalist and has an almost magical effect. She drops to the ground, head down, and, as quickly as she flew out of control, is again obedient and deferential. I'm able to lead her without a leash exactly where I need her to go. But usually, when she bolts, I'm more than 10 feet from her, and my voice becomes too distant to have any effect.

In about 10 seconds I was next to her and she was down. I pointed at her insistently (I do this instead of making any physical contact - it seems to upset her as much) and directed her toward my plot. She came along without looking back toward the barn.

My plot is completely fenced in by plastic green mesh and has the appearance of a pen. Lula wouldn't go in first so I stepped through and beckoned her in. I closed the mesh 'door' after her, which provided the illusion of closure without actually securing her in with me. She wandered the plot and, to my horror, stepped on - or stepped perilously close to - my baby cucumber plants. After pacing each row in the plot, she finally settled into eating the weeds.

I found locations for my new tomatoes. I think I have about 30 plants now, though they look rather pathetic at this point in the season. I dug them in and then watered all the plants. It has been dry in Eastern Mass for the last few weeks, so I've been obliged to water a bit more than I'd like, though I try to avoid using more water than I need. Lula started lapping up the water that pooled in the rows (one of the major problems with my plot is that it sits on the part of the field that floods in the spring and doesn't drain well) and then, once it drained a bit more, she took a seat on the still-wet ground.

After I had finished the watering and weeding, I inspected my neighbors sprouted sunflower bed. It was doing better than I hoped. So I did the unthinkable. Or perhaps, a favor. I thinned the row to just a few plants. It was audacious, but so was the locating of their sunflower row so close to my bed, a practice expressly forbidden by the garden committee.

Satisfied with my act of sabotage, I headed back to the car with the dog. I pulled out my camera to take pictures of the gardens - everyone there approaches things so differently, I thought it would make an interesting blog post. As I focused on the photos, I became aware of a movement in my peripheral vision. I saw, as if in slow motion, my dog suddenly turn and dart back down the hill toward a pack of piglets that had emerged from the barnyard and were making their way toward the gardens. 

It was one of those moments. I dropped everything, again and ran screaming down the hill. I could hear the piglets, shrieking. The gardeners dropped their tools to watch the spectacle. My dog made her way around the first barn and I saw her approach the pig pen. The mother pigs are huge - easily over 500 lbs. The last thing I wanted to see was a face-off between an angry mother pig and my 50 lb dog with more bark than bite.

The piglets, shrieking bloody murder, ran into their pen as their mothers and aunts dashed toward the fence, ready to take on whatever was threatening their progeny. From the farm house, where the Red Sox game was blaring, two young farmers materialized, running and screaming at the dog, who, I presumed they presumed, already had her incisors tearing into one of those spoiled, crop-stomping piglets.

I knew the farmers wouldn't catch my dog. My dog has successfully eluded baggage handlers at Logan Airport, causing me to miss my flight. She doesn't particularly like men, either, so I knew the farmers would struggle to contain her but would be successful in driving her away from the pig pen.

When she came back into my view, she was followed closely by the farmers. "Do you need help grabbing her?" they yelled.

"No, no, that's okay." I stuck a finger out and contorted my face into a mask of anger. I was more embarrassed than angry, but I had to give the appearance of anger. "LULA! SIT! NO!"

She immediated crouched down. She turned, fearfully, to look at the farmers. I couldn't even make eye contact with them.

We turned and made the walk of shame up the hill. I could hear the gardeners talking to each other about it. Instead of consternation, they were actually pleased. "She did us a favor," I heard. "Who left the door open to the pig pen? They were coming out to the garden and they shouldn't be out here."

I avoided making eye contact with anyone as I left.

Adventures in Community Gardening: Last day in May, first week in June

More than three weeks after I had seeded two of my beds, I decided to remove the floating row cover that had been protectively shielding the seedlings from the threats of the flying world.

A chaotic mess awaited me.  Yes, some of my seeds had sprouted, but only the beans had advanced beyond the two-leaf stage. The weeds, however, were making inroads into both beds. Looking at both weed-covered beds, I felt defeated and blue. Why hadn't they made more progress? Sure, it had been cold. Sure they only had three weeks. But I expect more from my garden. And I was disappointed.

While I fussed and moaned, my mom, who reluctantly agreed to watch me weed, eavesdropped on my neighbors, including the one who said she'd have a job if only she could focus for more than a few hours a day. She wasn't focusing, as I would have expected. She was chatting, hands on hips, talking about astrology, to another neighbor whose hose I have borrowed when he wasn't around.

"She doesn't get much done, done she?" said mom.
"Nope. That's why she doesn't work."

I could hear their conversation continue.

"I'm trying to figure out which way is West" she said, ignoring the sun setting on...the west. "I have this compass, but it says north is this way (she points north) but that doesn't seem right. I have seem to have some kind of weird magnetic force in my hands."

"Yes," our other neighbor acknowledged. "Having a compass doesn't always work."

In the middle of my somewhat elusive seedling bed, I started digging holes. For tomatoes. For more tomatoes. For the most healthy, robust tomatoes. I think I have at least 15 varieties right now. And though the plants look somewhat bizarre poking out of the trenches of two mostly plantl-free beds, they will, in two months time, be somewhat more impressive. I hope.

Two days later I was back in the garden. It was 7 pm and there were only a few cars in the lot. I imagined quietly working my patch while the sun set behind me. I brought my dog with me and closed the garden 'door' behind us so she wouldn't wander or chase the garden pests. The last thing I wanted was a tersely worded note of reprobation from the garden committee. I kneeled down to pull weeds out of the beds and Lula, my dog, began barking wildly. I looked up. It was my next (garden) door neighbor.

I haven't told you about my next door neighbor. She's done the unthinkable. She's planted sunflowers next to my patch, a practice expressly forbidden by the garden elders. Planting sunflowers, which routinely grow over 5 feet tall, is allowed only in the center of gardens, where the only sun they'll block is your own. At the sides, they have the unfortunate effect of blotting out your neighbor's sun.

I first noticed this last week a few days after the offenders were planted. I read the seed packets - I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt that perhaps she had planted dwarf plants. Nope. They were full sized. I fumed and plotted. What would I do? Her plants were planted, so I thought, directly west of my garden in a spot ideally suited to stunting the growth of my tomatoes.

I'd talk to her. Yes, that's what I'd do.

So there she was, my next door neighbor. But she didn't say hi. She said something to my dog and walked on. And then her kids and her wife appeared. And then the yelling began. "BRANDON, GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF THE DIRT! IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF THE DIRT, I'M GONNA LOSE IT!" Followed by, "IF YOU GET YOUR CLOTHES WET YOU ARE GONNA HAVE TO WEAR THEM THE REST OF THE NIGHT."

Her kid was doing as kids will do: he was making mud pies and putting his hands in the sprinkler. In the garden. And she was screaming at him. And didn't care that now, at 7:15 pm, she was surrounded by gardeners, cringing at every irrational word out of her mouth. A kid in dirt in a garden? Really?

I decided maybe it wasn't so smart to try and talk with her. Sabotage would be my path of least resistance.

We are eating your crops. And we don't care. Rogue's Gallery of Fowl at the Community Garden.

These guys are more interested in pursuing bugs. But they'll walk on your tender plants and cluck. For kicks.

More about chaos than destruction. They'll chase each other around your garden whether or not it is fenced in.

Taking a moment out of her scratching, she pauses to gaze at herself in a puddle. But don't be fooled by appearances - she has no respect for you.

Future offenders. Or dinner. Not sure which.

Adventures in Community Gardening: Week 3 - Planting Tomatoes

I have been scared to plant tomatoes in New England. Perhaps it is because of the warning note my local plant and garden shop attaches to every purchase of tender annuals: DO NOT PLANT UNTIL DANGER OF FROST HAS PAST; there's hardly a date mentioned or a suggestion of a safe time. I keep wondering when they'll start giving me the 'all clear' notes. July? I suppose they want to hedge their bets to avoid returns of these costly tender annuals.

In Chicago, things were more simple. At least in some ways. We were in the city. Our yards were warmed by asphalt and CO2. And late Spring frosts were hardly a whisper amongst those I knew also gardening in the city.

I've been watching the weather carefully. What does the (mostly inaccurate) ten day forecast look like? Monday night temps will hit 39? OK, no planting the tomatoes until after Monday. That gave me an excuse to take 4 days off from the garden. I probably should have checked in on Sunday to water the seeds I had planted, but I didn't have much energy after my 4 hour drive back to Boston from NYC, where I celebrated a friend's birthday by taking him on a three mile walk to dinner despite his protests.

Tuesday came with preparation and dread. I had my plants ready, but I wasn't  completely prepared to put them in the ground, get dirt under my nails (I've never been one for gloves), and cake mud on my jeans and shoes. But I could no longer put off the necessary, and after a two-hour delay at the cafe where I complained about the turn my life has taken, pulled into the parking lot at the farm and was ready to go.

When I arrived none of the usual suspects were there. I felt a sense of relief as I carried the plants in shifts from the car to my plot at the bottom of the hill. Four trips of back-and-forth and I was ready to go. All of the plants were intact save for a beheaded chili plant found itself guillotined when I stacked two trays to make the carting a little faster. I still planted the poor guy, hoping that maybe its got a bit more fight left in him, though I planted a healthy plant next to him, just in case he failed to thrive.

Someone had left a stack of cardboard next to my plot that I assumed to be dissembled carriers for plants. I moved the stack to a wall with the hope that no one would think I would do such an unthinkable thing as leave waste at the garden (I guess I could have taken it home for recycling...but I was running on all cylinders at the time).  And I didn't want a stern disapprobation from the garden committee or the self-appointed busy-bodies who noted my every move with keen interest. I placed it next to the abandoned chicken wire and the broken shovel handle, which I subsequently borrowed to stand in as a tomato stake.

A few neighbors along my row had finally started working on their plots and I was, frankly, jealous. Especially of the woman with the perennial bed next to me who had a beautiful collection of raspberry bushes and strawberry plants. Neighbors had planted their tomatoes, and I silently commended myself for having more robust and healthy looking plants, though I cursed myself for using paper mulch instead of the shiny, black and earth-warming plastic mulch. A favorite hobby of some of the old timer gardeners is to talk about the neighbors and their dramas. Pumpkin John, who I now seem to chat with every time I'm in the garden, likes to fill me in: "The woman with the perennials, she's like you, working all by herself. Her husband has a heart condition. He wants her to have fun in the garden. But she said she found some footprints in her garden, like someone was walking around. Looks like she got permission to plant all the way to the stone wall. But her neighbor isn't allowed to plant something. I can't quite remember what it is."

While he talked, I set to work digging holes, throwing in a handful of composted manure, soaking the plants, placing the plants in the hole, dressing with more composted manure, and finishing with more soil. First tomatoes. Then the rest of the plants, mostly herbs with a few squashes thrown in for fun. I had never successfully grown squashes thanks to a moth borer that destroyed my plants just above the roots. I fully expect the three plants I put in to fail, though there is a possibility my plants will be passed over by the angel of death. Fingers crossed. Eventually Pumkin John wandered back to his garden to get his day's work done. "You just tire me out with your motivation", he remarked.

As I finished up the planting by scattering marigolds all around the garden, for no other purpose than decoration and superstition, I noticed something I had never seen in Chicago. A beetle with bright red markings! Figuring it had crime on its mind, I picked it up and threw it into a neighboring patch of weeds. Perhaps the beetle, which I identified as either a dung beetle or a darkling beetle,  would find something more suitable to its taste there.

I headed back to my car, my shoes sloshing with water and mud. The trenches in my garden don't drain so well and though I rinsed my shoes, they were still very mucky and wet. I threw my shoes into the trunk.  As I was about to put my hand on the doorhandle, get in and drive back home (I've got to get a bike...) one of the garden's old timers, Paul, stopped me.

"How does your garden grow?" he asked.

"Uh, I dunno. I hope well, fingers crossed!" I'm not too quick with snappy comebacks.

"I was expecting you to say, 'With silver bells and cockle shells and handsome boys all in a row!'

Oh yeah, nursery rhymes! "Is that what you've planted?" I asked.

"Oh no, I have a jungle garden. Thirty nicotiana plants, four giant sunflowers in the middle of the patch so I don't block sun for my neighbors. And I have a cork tree."

"A cork tree?" I looked at him quizzically. Cork grows in Spain, Portugal and in other countries in the Mediterranean. Not in the cool, wet suburbs of Boston.

"Basically its a pole with strings hanging off. And champagne corks hanging off the strings!"

"Wow."

"Yeah, I've been gardening here since the 70s. And the problem with having a big plot is that you have all this space, so you grow all these vegetables. And all us single guys just end up giving our vegetables away. So I've turned mine into a jungle. I have a great view from my garden and we bbq. I just come down during the summer almost every night and we sit out until about 9:30. Where's your plot?"

I pointed to the bottom of the hill.

"Oh, you're lucky!" I didn't detect his sarcasm at first. "Sometimes, when it rains, all the rain will pool at the bottom where you've got your plot, and you'll be eight to nine inches underwater."

"I've kinda dug my beds so that if it happens, I'll be okay. I dug down past the topsoil and raised the beds. Plus I'm right next to the water spigot."

"Still," he said, "you'll want to get another plot next year. Sometimes in the spring it rains so hard people at the bottom of the hill can't start gardening for a month after we've started."

"Hm. I dunno. I kinda like it." I had already sunk a lot of money into my bed, augmenting the soil with compost and composted manure and bone meal. I hated the idea of doing it all over again next year in a new garden. It was expensive and slow and exhausting.

"Well, you're lucky, you know. In the past we had some real despots running the farm, but they didn't get their contract renewed, and the current managers are great."

I was curious. Despots?

"What did they do?" I asked.

"Oh, they were a married couple. Patty and Don. Patty would get in everyone's business. She told everyone what they should do and not do. If you were at the garden and it was 8:30 at night, you'd get a letter. They were real enforcers. Another old timer and I were enjoying the garden one night and we realized it was 8:30. I started running home. But my buddy got in his car. And as he's pulling out, he sees Patty and Don chasing him down. Patty reaches into his car and grabs his arm and tells him he's violating the code. So he goes down to the police station and reports her for assault. But all he wanted was the police to warn her. He didn't press charges."

"Wow. Sounds bad."

"Yeah. Another time, she came round to my garden and told me that I couldn't have a bbq, that it was against code. Well I just kept my mouth shut then went down to the fire station and asked them if it was against any code, having a bbq in a garden. They just laughed. Told me to put a board underneath. So I put a board underneath. A few days later I notice the board is gone. She's taken it! And I get a letter in the mail, signed by Don, who was a real nice guy, saying I'd violated the code. When I asked him about it later, he just shrugged and said that he just signs the letters. She writes 'em."

"So their contract wasn't renewed?"

"Nope. The board didn't rehire them. But Patty said something about getting an inheritance from her grandmother or something, like she was the one who was quitting. Anyway, you're lucky."

"I guess I am." So far the only reprimand I've received was from one of the garden committee members to slow down when I entered the parking lot so I don't inadventently run over any children or cats.

Tomorrow I'll go back to the garden and give it a good watering before the heat of the end of the week. It promises to be a real boiler.

This goat does not eat gardens.

Adventures in Community Gardening: second week in May

(This is the second installment in my community gardening tale. The first installment is here.)

My garden is now completely fenced in. And ready for planting. I wasn't sure exactly why I needed to fence the garden in, but after seeing a number of other plots already protected by a perimeter of plastic green garden mesh, it seemed like something I should do. I figured it was to protect from pilferage.

Nope.

C Farm, where I have my plot, is a working farm. There are pigs, rabbits, chickens, goats, sheep, cows, and assorted fowl. The animals are fenced in - loosely. Which means at any given time the pigs, rabbits, and chickens may be wandering the grounds. Or, in the case of the piglet parade I witnessed the other day when digging some trenches, stampeding the grounds. The only deterrent is fencing. So I've hammered mine into the ground with tree spikes, hoping the local fauna is too distracted by unfenced plots to dig under or chew through the fencing.

The other day, as I was digging trenches in my plot, one of my gardening compatriots started talking to me.  She began telling me about some of the other gardeners, how some of them were 'expansionist' and hoped to take over her plot by having her banned from the garden. Threatening, unwelcoming emails were sent to her, she said. Yes, there were conspiracies at the garden, and I should watch out.

Okay. Community garden strife. Not really what I signed up for. I've learned enough from working in large offices to avoid making allegiances before understanding the political structure of the organization. This compatriot would not be joined in an allegiance.

(A few days later, the same gardener complimented me on my efficiency. "Wish I were efficient," she said. "Because maybe then I'd get something done. But by the time I get home from here, all I want to do is sit in front of the computer and smoke cigarettes. I get energized and I can't sleep. If I could use my time better, maybe I could hold down a job! But the Feng Shui in my place is terrible, and there's nothing I can do about it. So I'm stuck.")

As I continued digging trenches another gardener called out to me.

"Young lady! Young lady!"

I looked up.

"Young lady, are you on steroids?" An older man with silver hair stopped by my plot to take in the work I had done.

"Young lady, I've never seen anyone dig as much or as quickly as you. You've been digging for three hours without stopping (though I did see you collapse a few minutes ago). I kept wondering what you were on."

On steroids? If I were, wouldn't I have a little more facial hair?

"Uh, I'm not on steroids. I have a lot to get done and I don't have much time to come to the garden because I've got to do some catering this weekend."

"Don't you have anyone to help you?" he asked.

"No. But that's okay. I'm used to gardening alone."

"Well, they call me Pumpkin John, because I grow pumpkins! Last year I grew a 300 lb pumpkin."

"Do you win any prizes?"

"No, because there are no contests around here."

I went back to digging, and Pumpkin John brought me a cold water. I gulped it down and finished up digging. At least he now knows I'm not on steroids.

(Like community gardening, eating real food, and fighting the Big Ag and Big Food system? You'll love Fight Back Fridays, of which this post was a part).

Adventures in Community Gardening - Early May at the Farm

When I moved back to the suburbs of Boston from Chicago, I imagined digging up my mother's spacious (nearly an acre!) yard and planting all manner of edibles, just as my parents had done when they built the house in the early 1970s.

What I didn't consider was that in the nearly 40 years since that garden was planted, the wilds of the backyard had encroached and taken back the field, birch by maple by oak by poplar. It was now a storybook jungle of green ground cover, bitter weeds, and adolescent trees.

Deer were an even greater enemy. Once unknown in our neighborhood, deer had settled in in great number, bringing ticks and a voracious appetite for domestic trees and plants. My mother had fought the deer with supposedly deer-unfriendly trees and plants but all, to a bush, had been chewed down in defeat.

Even if I could find a patch of land suitable for a garden, I'd have to fence it aggressively, even higher than the six foot fence that enclosed a small portion of the backyard where the dogs were allowed to roam. In years past, my mother had witnessed deer inside the enclosure. Even a yearling could leap the 6 feet with ease.

I considered other options. The deck? No, the sun was limited to early morning. The roof? Better sun, and flat, too, but my mother quickly vetoed that proposal.

So I resigned myself to not gardening this year. I was crushed.

I've been gardening off and on since 1995, when I planted a few chili plants in my backyard in Pasadena, California on a lark. I really began to explore gardening in 1996, when my friend Sarah and I took over her mother's backyard in Cambridge, MA and started an organic garden. I was cooking in two restaurants then, and would bring extra produce to my morning job and the owner would use it in specials. Back at culinary school in 1997, my friend Rick and I secured permission from the school to dig up part of a lawn next to our dorm to grow a garden from plants we were given at The Cook's Garden, where we volunteered.

For the next few years I was without a gardening outlet, much less time or space to garden. I worked, lived in the city, went to grad school, worked some more.

And then in 2004 I moved into an apartment in Chicago that shared a yard with two other homes. We had a quadruple backyard, part shade (great for columbine!) and part sun (so much potential for a garden). Planting food crops directly in contaminated Chicago soil (most of it is - years of backyard dumping, exhaust, and pollution has taken a toll inside the city). I asked my neighbors if I could build some raised beds next to a mostly abandoned raised bed they had put in the summer before. In my garage I built four beds, and on a cold, sunny April day a dump truck deposited three cubic yards of heavy soil from Wisconsin on my driveway. For six I hours I shoveled and carted dirt, clearing the driveway as neighbors, looking on from their decks, smoked cigarettes and drank beer.

Because there's a lot of clay in Midwestern soil, I then made several trips to Home Depot for organic mushroom compost, which broke up the clay soil and enriched it. I made several runs, adding about 20 cubic feet of compost to the garden. It was a good summer. Huge tomato harvest, a little wild. At one point, irate about the jungle that was my tomato bed, my neighbor dead headed all of my plants without asking. I fumed silently.

The next year, 2006, I built a grow shelf - to start all my plants from seed. Most succeeded, a few failed. I wrote about it here (links to a number of seed companies there, too).

Skip ahead to this spring. I was despondent. It didn't seem like much was going to happen. I resigned myself to trolling farmers markets and pretending that the local "pick-your-own" plots were actually mine. I read friends' Twitter and Facebook gardening updates with jealousy (curse you Peter Barrett!).

And then, two weeks ago, I received an email with the following subject: "WELCOME TO C COMMUNITY GARDENS!"

In a moment of optimism and pessimism (optimism: I'd grow a beautiful garden. pessimism: I wouldn't find a job so I'd be stuck in the 'burbs) I had applied for a plot in a community garden located on a beautiful working farm in Lincoln, MA. I'd read that community garden waitlists were years long, so I didn't make any provisions for it. No seeds. No plan. 

So when the email arrived mid-April I was, momentarily, in shock. Did I really get a plot? I checked the email for evidence. None. I'd have to go down to the farm and check the map to see if I could find my name. Perhaps they had made a mistake? I was new to the farm, how could I actually get a plot?

Did I mention I didn't actually know where C Community Gardens was?

I consulted Google Maps and realized it wasn't too far from my local free range chicken farm, produce farm, and favorite local hiking spot. Perfect.

I drove to the farm and found the garden map. And there was my name. No mistake, I had a plot in the community garden. And I had already missed the cold crops.

I walked down to the fields and looked for my plot. And what I found surprised me: a 25 x 15 plot at the corner of row, next to the water. It was more space than I'd ever gardened on my own.

Though it was next to the trees (and, apparently, a nest? den? of woodchucks), it was on the east side of the field, so it would have good sun all day. The soil was quite sandy (the opposite problem to the one I had in Chicago) and had been used for corn the year before (I found the stalks next to my bed and remnants still rooted in the dirt) - I had a lot of composting to do. And fencing.

A bit panicked, I contacted Farmer Phoebe (www.twitter.com/farmerphoebe) a very helpful Wisconsin gardener who dispenses great advice via Twitter. She gave me composting and planting tips that I found both alarming (so much work!) and reassuring (I would manage to have a decent garden this year).

And so the spending started. Garden mesh. Poles. Ties. Compost. Composted manure. Hay. More compost.

I spent hours in the garden. Hammering poles into the soil - the rocky soil - was harder than I thought it would be. Without a pole driver, I was left to hammer the poles with an ancient hammer-like tool that was only partly effective. And then I spent more hours securing the mesh. And carting the compost. And turning soil.

As of yesterday I have finally fenced in my plot. This week I'll build some mounded beds (since I don't have the desire to built wood structures) and start planting.

What I keep remind myself is that gardening is about hope. Though I'm a little down about my prospects these days (a combination of unemployment, dashed expectations, and frustration over unemployment and dashed expectations), planting the garden represents a belief in the future. There will be sun. There will be good weather. The summer will come and my plants will grow.

Whenever I feel hopeless, I remember this. And things don't seem as bleak.

Nasturtiums - grow your own, make peppery salads

Because if you buy them at the farmers market, it'll set you back $1 for three. And that's a pretty penny.

Yeah, that's a pretty pepper

More pepper portraits - the fish pepper. It is an old African-American heirloom variety from the Baltimore/Philadelphia area, dating back to sometime before the civil war (exact provenance not known). And now is included in Slow Food's Ark of Taste.

An unusual chili pepper

The Fish pepper!

Portrait of the Fish Pepper, by The Grocer:

 

Here's what it looks like on the stem:

and here are some seed beans that I dried out on the vine -- mostly Papa di Rola, an Italian heirloom variety of pole bean:

Here's what's inside:

In Da Gada d'Eatin', baby

In March I planted the first seeds. In April I harvested the first greens. And every week since then, the garden gives up something new: first an early beet, then a pea, herbs like oregano, thyme, cilantro, lemon balm, lavendar, chamomile, basil and sage, a flurry of spinach, arugula, lettuce, collards and swiss chard and finally root vegetables like beets and carrots, miraculously untouched by garden pests. Tomatoes weigh down bushy vines, awaiting an August debut. There are peas, fava beans, and cayenne peppers. Shallots, still green, push up from the ground.

So far dining in the garden has been about garden garnishes -- herb butter, a salad flecked with fresh herbs and edible mums, a pasta made with peas, sauteed collards with caramelized onions and sweet smoked spanish paprika, salmon marinated in citrus, fresh green cayenne, oregano and cilantro.

Just this week the garden has turned a corner. We are finally creating salads entirely from the garden. Leafy greens, herb vinaigrette, chioggia beets, fresh carrots, nasturtiums, cornflowers and mums...with just a sprinkling of goat cheese. A tomato sauce made from last year's harvest, plus carrots and fresh peas. Summer rolls made from lemon mint, carrots and lettuce.

To do the math, you would be hard pressed to see the dollar value in growing your own backyard vegetables and herbs. How much did I spend this year on seeds, supplies, organic compost and soil? $1000? More? And how much would buying vegetables for the summer cost? At least half that, purchased fresh at farmer's market. But there is no dollar value I can place on the satisfaction I get from treating neighbors and friends to fresh-from-the-city-garden produce that I have grown and picked just hours, sometimes minutes before. There is no transportation cost, no questions about quality or taste. And there is something miraculous about coaxing a patch of city yard into yielding fresh, flavorful produce.

My Garden: End of May Update

Things are coming along. Have harvested beets, arugula, rucola (Italian 'wild' arugula), spinach, swiss chard, snow peas (which I hate), radish, turnips (which I gave away), lettuces of all sorts, sage, rosemary, oregano, cilantro and a couple strawberries. Much more to come. Keeping things organic, picking bugs off by hand, weeding like crazy, and hoping I can find a spot for my leeks and melons soon, before the seedlings die.