My husband and I have always been interested in gardening. I joke that the real reason I wanted to buy our house was a hydrangea and a gardenia in full bloom on opposite sides of the house when we were looking at it. "No kitchen? No problem! Just smell that gardenia! No closets? Oh well. We'll just keep our stuff in boxes. Is that a rose?"
Our yard started off as a flat rectangle of grass marred in one corner by a fallen tree. The first year we were here, we laid out beds in flowing, curving shapes all around the yard. We started a hedge along the chain-link fence bordering our yard. And we piled dirt around the dead tree to create a berm. We claim that the top of our berm is the highest point in our county.
We began with shrubs, flowers, flowering trees and bulbs. But soon enough we added a raised bed for vegetables. That first vegetable garden was never much of a success. My vegetable gardens never were. I am a winter gardener. I like to look at seed catalogs, and sketch out scale drawings of flower beds and vegetable patches, and even help create the beds in the fall and early winter. I love to start seeds in seed trays. And I am deeply satisfied by the sight of tiny little seedlings transplanted into the cool, black, damp earth of early spring, standing in neat little rows full of promise. But, as the weather warms up, I grow disenchanted. The seedlings begin to fall prey to various ills -- insects, slugs, viruses, mildew. Or they die from simple neglect, unwatered and choked by weeds. If a particularly hardy specimen manages to survive my 'care' and produce something, I may or may not remember to pick it before it shrivels on the vine.
My husband is much better about caring for plants than I am, but the vegetable beds were always 'my' projects, and he let me care for them (or not) mostly on my own. And so, for years now, I have started seeds, transplanted them into my raised beds, and systematically killed them.
But a change has been slowly happening in the way I feel about my vegetable gardening. Over the past several years, my husband and I have begun to dream of living a different kind of life. We began to yearn to feel more connected to the land we live on, to the food we eat. I began to wonder, as our economic outlook grew bleaker and our little community (which boasts one of the highest unemployment rates in the whole nation) grew poorer, how people would survive if they couldn't buy food. That may seem like a big leap, and I know that there are social programs in place to help people get food. But our state is struggling financially. If the cards stopped working, or, in my case, if the paychecks stopped coming, how many of us could supplement our family's diet with food we grew ourselves? How many of us remember how? I love to garden, and I couldn't make my garden produce food. What about all the people who didn't garden at all?
I feel like important skills are being lost because, at some point, we all decided that we didn't need to feed ourselves. We could just get food 'from the store'. But we're learning more and more about the inherent problems with that system. Many of us are upset by the pesticides and chemical fertilizers that are used to make large scale farming efficient. And shipping food all over the country is expensive and wasteful. As food prices go up, more people are finding it difficult to pay for groceries. And, I think, we are losing something by giving over the responsibility of providing for ourselves to 'the store'.
I've been to local grocery stores and watched people fill up their carts. And what I've noticed is that many of those people aren't buying food. Oh, it's all edible stuff, but it's not food. They're buying products. And it's hard to blame them -- the processed food is cheaper.
I pondered all this as I began my perusal of the seed catalogs this year, and I made a decision. I was going to garden this year like it mattered. I had realized that the reason my vegetable beds didn't prosper like my perennial borders, hedges and flower beds tend to do is that I wasn't really invested in them. See, I really want those flowers. I am serious about producing flowers because I love them, they satisfy a need in me, and it seems dumb to buy them when I can grow them myself. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I had come to feel that way about my vegetable garden, too. It is NOT okay if my tomatoes all die this year. I want tomatoes, I need tomatoes, and I don't want to have to buy tomatoes.
Usually, I decide what to grow based on what will look pretty in the garden, what I've grown before, what's easy to grow, or some sort of 'tradition'. For instance, every vegetable garden I've ever grown had included cucumbers. My husband doesn't like them, my kids don't like them much, and I could live without them. But, they look great on a trellis, and, for some reason, I had it stuck in my head that I should grow cucumbers. This year, instead of mindlessly jotting down the same old things in my garden planner, I asked myself, what does my family like to eat? That may seem obvious, but, for some reason, it wasn't obvious to me.
So, my goal this year is to grow enough vegetables to feed my family one meal each day for the summer, and freeze anything I can for next winter. I got out my old copy of Square Foot Gardening, which is a great resource for anyone trying to garden on a small scale. And I looked up a method I learned about from Mother Earth News to make self-watering planters from 5 gallon buckets, since the soil in my yard is infected with a virus that kills tomatoes. I'll supplement by going to local farmers' markets and buying local produce in bulk to freeze for this winter. I am deeply satisfied by the notion that the food on my table will be grown here in my yard (or at least here in my county).
My garden may still suck. And if it sucks, I can probably still swing a package of tomatoes at the local grocery store. But I'm pretty sure that my garden won't die from lack of water, or weeding, or love. And somehow it seems like it will be easier to get the kids to eat a greenbean if they helped to grow it.
Our yard started off as a flat rectangle of grass marred in one corner by a fallen tree. The first year we were here, we laid out beds in flowing, curving shapes all around the yard. We started a hedge along the chain-link fence bordering our yard. And we piled dirt around the dead tree to create a berm. We claim that the top of our berm is the highest point in our county.
We began with shrubs, flowers, flowering trees and bulbs. But soon enough we added a raised bed for vegetables. That first vegetable garden was never much of a success. My vegetable gardens never were. I am a winter gardener. I like to look at seed catalogs, and sketch out scale drawings of flower beds and vegetable patches, and even help create the beds in the fall and early winter. I love to start seeds in seed trays. And I am deeply satisfied by the sight of tiny little seedlings transplanted into the cool, black, damp earth of early spring, standing in neat little rows full of promise. But, as the weather warms up, I grow disenchanted. The seedlings begin to fall prey to various ills -- insects, slugs, viruses, mildew. Or they die from simple neglect, unwatered and choked by weeds. If a particularly hardy specimen manages to survive my 'care' and produce something, I may or may not remember to pick it before it shrivels on the vine.
My husband is much better about caring for plants than I am, but the vegetable beds were always 'my' projects, and he let me care for them (or not) mostly on my own. And so, for years now, I have started seeds, transplanted them into my raised beds, and systematically killed them.
But a change has been slowly happening in the way I feel about my vegetable gardening. Over the past several years, my husband and I have begun to dream of living a different kind of life. We began to yearn to feel more connected to the land we live on, to the food we eat. I began to wonder, as our economic outlook grew bleaker and our little community (which boasts one of the highest unemployment rates in the whole nation) grew poorer, how people would survive if they couldn't buy food. That may seem like a big leap, and I know that there are social programs in place to help people get food. But our state is struggling financially. If the cards stopped working, or, in my case, if the paychecks stopped coming, how many of us could supplement our family's diet with food we grew ourselves? How many of us remember how? I love to garden, and I couldn't make my garden produce food. What about all the people who didn't garden at all?
I feel like important skills are being lost because, at some point, we all decided that we didn't need to feed ourselves. We could just get food 'from the store'. But we're learning more and more about the inherent problems with that system. Many of us are upset by the pesticides and chemical fertilizers that are used to make large scale farming efficient. And shipping food all over the country is expensive and wasteful. As food prices go up, more people are finding it difficult to pay for groceries. And, I think, we are losing something by giving over the responsibility of providing for ourselves to 'the store'.
I've been to local grocery stores and watched people fill up their carts. And what I've noticed is that many of those people aren't buying food. Oh, it's all edible stuff, but it's not food. They're buying products. And it's hard to blame them -- the processed food is cheaper.
I pondered all this as I began my perusal of the seed catalogs this year, and I made a decision. I was going to garden this year like it mattered. I had realized that the reason my vegetable beds didn't prosper like my perennial borders, hedges and flower beds tend to do is that I wasn't really invested in them. See, I really want those flowers. I am serious about producing flowers because I love them, they satisfy a need in me, and it seems dumb to buy them when I can grow them myself. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I had come to feel that way about my vegetable garden, too. It is NOT okay if my tomatoes all die this year. I want tomatoes, I need tomatoes, and I don't want to have to buy tomatoes.
Usually, I decide what to grow based on what will look pretty in the garden, what I've grown before, what's easy to grow, or some sort of 'tradition'. For instance, every vegetable garden I've ever grown had included cucumbers. My husband doesn't like them, my kids don't like them much, and I could live without them. But, they look great on a trellis, and, for some reason, I had it stuck in my head that I should grow cucumbers. This year, instead of mindlessly jotting down the same old things in my garden planner, I asked myself, what does my family like to eat? That may seem obvious, but, for some reason, it wasn't obvious to me.
So, my goal this year is to grow enough vegetables to feed my family one meal each day for the summer, and freeze anything I can for next winter. I got out my old copy of Square Foot Gardening, which is a great resource for anyone trying to garden on a small scale. And I looked up a method I learned about from Mother Earth News to make self-watering planters from 5 gallon buckets, since the soil in my yard is infected with a virus that kills tomatoes. I'll supplement by going to local farmers' markets and buying local produce in bulk to freeze for this winter. I am deeply satisfied by the notion that the food on my table will be grown here in my yard (or at least here in my county).
My garden may still suck. And if it sucks, I can probably still swing a package of tomatoes at the local grocery store. But I'm pretty sure that my garden won't die from lack of water, or weeding, or love. And somehow it seems like it will be easier to get the kids to eat a greenbean if they helped to grow it.
Okay, maybe not.
