What’s in your garden?
Mon Apr 21, 2008 at 09:10:24 AM PDT
This is not a metaphorical question. Or, maybe it is, but it’s mostly a literal question. I’ve mentioned before, repeatedly, that I garden. Given that I can’t judge my skills, maybe I should say that I mess around in the dirt and nice vegetables are often the result. Much to my ... shall we say bemusement, I find that I’m not alone – and, in fact, I even be, say it softly, trendy. At least the New York Times tells me so, and as a child of the east coast, there is always something to that.
Kitchen gardens are as old as the first hunter-gatherers who decided to settle down and watch the seeds grow. Walled medieval gardens protected carefully tended herbs, greens and fruit trees from marauders, both human and animal. The American colonists planted gardens as soon as they could, sowing seeds brought from Europe.
Call them survivor gardens.
Now, they are being discovered by a new generation of people who worry about just what is in that bag of spinach and how much fuel was consumed to grow it and to fly it a thousand miles.
Gardening is something I’ve almost always done; my mother maintained what we called the “victory garden” – a large rectangle picked out of a jungle-y overgrowth in the second half of our backyard. We grew a regular selection of summer veg over the years, a project that only died out when I hit, say, 8 or so and my mom’s work hours stepped up. With that experience in my background, it was inevitable that I’d start a garden whenever I ended up with a house with some kind of backyard. Plus, having an active child like Jess means that anything I can do that gets us outside and working is probably going to work very well. The challenge for me here in Melbourne is a.) we live in a townhouse with a 5x7 square metre (16x22 square foot) backyard, most of it paved with garden beds around the edge, giving me probably around 16 square feet of total arable land; b.)we’re in the midst of a multi-year drought with tough water restrictions.
This year was the first year I really got into the planting, and I think it went alright. I sourced most of my seeds from The Diggers, a non-profit, organic, heritage produce group. Golly, I feel pretentious saying that I planted heritage tomatoes, but they were really tasty!
We also had a decent strawberry harvest, given that I only have two plants. Herbs a go-go, particularly enough basil to make my own pesto from scratch. For the long term, I’ve put in a dwarf apple and pear tree (I must learn how to graft now), and a lemon tree, too. Naturally, they didn’t do much this summer, but they’re still living, so I take hope. I’ll never be able to grow 100% of our consumed produce, but I figure maybe a quarter to a half can come from our little space, if I’m careful, which is pretty cool.
As for our second restriction – water- I’ve bragged on the fact that DH installed water tanks earlier in April. They’re full to bulging, thanks to a few rainstorms, and for the first time in about 19 months, I’ve used our hose to water the beds. It feels delicious!
One of the biggest benefits to living in Melbourne is the fact that we have very mild winters with only a few incidents of hard frost, meaning that I’ve got two more seasons of harvest to go. The past few weekends, I’ve been putting all the autumn/winter seed(lings) into the ground – in the seedlings category, I put out five-coloured rainbow chard, mini cauliflower and broccoli (heads about ¼ the size of normal ones, i.e., exactly one family serving size!), a pumpkin vine, and kohl rabi, which I call the great experiment because I’ve never eaten it or seen what it looks like when grown.
I’m waiting on my pak choi to grow bigger; I fear they’re stunted because we had a king-hell awful week of 100+ degree weather just as they were first sprouting. I’ll see – I still have a bunch of seeds, and they’re considered year-rounders in our climate. I also planted 10 flat bean seeds (two types) and will plant another five or six as space becomes available That should help nourish the soil in some places where it’s still a bit thin and clay-like. I’ve also got sugar snap peas going for Jess; she loves having her own pot to grow. I’ve also planted carrot and golden beet seeds and will plant parsnips when space becomes available. Plus winter squash and celery in seedling pots. And I have Provencal mesclun and a pick-and-pull lettuce variety in seedling. Plus, yesterday, I went to the environmental park around the corner and bought lemongrass and Vietnamese mint (so tasty!!). I’m getting a yen to do Vietnamese and Thai curries; with all the fish we get here in Australia, it’d be a crime not to experiment with our neighbours’ tastes and spices! I also bought a blueberry seedling a few weeks ago, because blueberries are winter berries here (nuts!). That’s all I’ve foreseen planting for the winter, but I know I’ll always be tempted by something or other.
Mostly I garden for wholly practical reasons: it’s a great way to keep myself and Jessica occupied – I’ve given her several planters of her own, so she has her “own” garden. It’s a good trick – she pulls up her seedlings, digs all the soil around, and leaves my stuff alone. Plus, she’s always bragging about “her” peas and I’m delighted for it. I’m frugal, so I love knowing that I have organic produce for absolute pennies. (I compost our produce scraps in a Bokashi bucket, which I heartily recommend to any and everyone). But it’s also a fist in the face of Big Agriculture and it definitely feels counter-culture to grow my own stuff.
So, MTs, what’s in your garden? I know there are a few of you out there. Produce? Flowers? Tumbleweeds? Happy spring to you northern hemispheroids and let’s compare notes!
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