Gardening Progress

I am not nearly as good a gardener as I was four years ago. Weeding is a haphazard affair. I am less vigilant about watering. And yet, I still persist. And I am excited to see growth. 

I find that gardening, like relationships, require faith. Faith that my efforts are not wasted, that eventually there will be a harvest. My young tomato plants look a little silly, currently dwarfed by their tomato cages. I have faith that those cages will eventually keep the plants from toppling over when they are huge, covered in ripening tomatoes, and wanting to sprawl.

I have six Brussels sprout plants. Honestly right now, without the tags, I'd be hard pressed to differentiate between the Brussels, the collards, and the broccoli. I am excited for when they grow enough that I have no doubts. I've never grown Brussels before and while they're not my favorite vegetable, they're Booba's. There is something very powerful about growing them for him.

Also in the garden, we have lettuces. Which is a little odd since I typically only make salads using spinach, but lettuce is soooo easy to grow. Still, with what I spend on spinach, I should definitely be making yet another attempt to grow it and not be so deterred by the creatures who insists on munching it before I get the chance to.

The Potato Harvest

When I planted my seed potatoes, I really had no idea what I was doing. I cut the around the potato eyes and had little one inch chunks that I let dry and form a "callous" to avoid rot. Then I planted them. I had little hope for them. I placed sticks in the ground to mark where I planted them, convinced that nothing would come up and knowing I wouldn't recognize them if they did.

Then I stopped paying attention. Notice the weeds in that picture. Maybe I watered them once. They were off the side of the garden, planted near the air conditioner and I rarely thought about them. Weeks after planting them, I started to notice them and thought I might actually enjoy some home grown potatoes after all.

I think I would have been able to make quite a few potato dishes this fall. Except for the watermelon jungle I've already described (btw, I have at least three on the vines--the largest is now bigger than my hand! That's a lot of growth in one week so I have hope it might ripen after all). The jungle choked the life out of the potato plants and ended the growth of the potatoes. It has also overtaken one of the giant marigolds and I have to pull it back away from my tomatoes nearly every other day now.

Confronted with dead plants, there was nothing to do but harvest what I could. After moving enough of the jungle to see soil, I used a spade to gently loosen and remove dirt and look for potatoes. It was funny--the red potatoes were like Easter eggs someone had hidden for me to find. They were no longer attached to the plant. The white potatoes still looked like they belonged to the plant. I read that I should let them dry out outside first, but given the rain, that's not really working. I'll probably bring them in to cook either tomorrow or Friday. I'm thinking a nice potato-kale stir-fry. Mmmm...

Alas, My Garden!

My kohlrabi: a gardening casualty.

Well, this has been my first year with the garden. I worked hard: removing sod--that is, digging up the grass from an area that's at least 12x15 feet and then constantly weeding for the first two months. Then I just kinda stopped. I mean, I still water and weed on a weekly basis, but there's no pampering going on. After I harvested the kale and collards I planted early in the season, I started taking it a little easy. Which is good, because otherwise I'd be heartbroken right now. Some rodents (I'm not sure if the culprits are squirrels or rabbits) have found a new diner: my garden.


Every single time my kohlrabi starts looking good--all leafed out and strong, they come and eat every single leaf on the plants. Every one. Consistently. Last night was the their third run in this little game they play. Soon after I brought the kohlrabi home from the Garden Resource Program and planted them, the creatures ate all the leaves. It was sad, but I really hadn't formed any attachment to my first crop of kohlrabi so it was okay. I mean, I was looking forward to the yummy stems that taste something like broccoli, but I had no emotional investment. So when the sturdy little plants grew new leaves, it was a great surprise and like a gift I hadn't done anything to earn. A few days after I started looking forward to a fall harvest of the kohlrabi, the ravenous little monsters came back. That time, I think, they maybe left one leaf on one of the four plants. And yet hope springs eternal so when the determined little plants grew their third set of leaves, I again began dreaming of sauteing my kohlrabi. Ha! After this third strike, I refuse to believe the poor dears will be unmolested long enough grow stems large enough to bother cooking.

Sigh.

So it's really good other things are growing well enough to keep me distracted. The tomatoes are doing well--I've got roma and heirloom. This morning I had a lovely breakfast of fresh picked heirloom tomatoes sliced on olive bread from Avalon (purchased for practically nothing at the end of the Farmers Market yesterday). And the surprise of garden: my watermelon plants. I never really expected anything of them, but I planted them because I got them. I now have a watermelon vine jungle that has hidden my potato plants (hmmm...I suppose I should go dig those up this week). It's also threatening to overtake some marigolds I have planted out there.

Take a peek:


And I even have at least one fruit on the vine:

It's palm-sized and absolutely beautiful:

Broccoli flower followup

I almost forgot...the broccoli flowers are pretty good. They gave the broccoli a lemony taste. I'd advise that if you let the flowers bloom that you not also try to eat the largest part of the stalk; that was a bit tough and cooking didn't really make it more edible. This is a picture of them in the colander in the sink:

Lesson of the Day

I learn something new every day. Most of these lessons, I don't seek out. They just come to me on their own. Today I learned that broccoli is a flower, that those little green knobs atop the crown are flower buds. I didn't learn this in a gardening catalog, in an encyclopedia, or even from Wikipedia. I learned this as I went out into the garden this morning. My little florets are giving way to little yellow flowers. Oh, well. Supposedly those are edible too. Hopefully they're good.

Tulips and Time

I probably had the deepest thought I'll ever have when I was four. I was waiting for my mom to pick me up from school; she was late and all my little classmates were gone. I began pondering time. I was particularly struck by its transitory nature and the elusiveness of "now." I was amazed by the fact that I couldn't hold a thought in that now...that that moment was gone as soon as I registered it.

What my four-year self didn't grasp was the beauty of the now. I planted tulips this past fall and they bloomed recently. The flowers lasted no more than two weeks before wilting and leaving spent, desolate stalks--but, oh, what a beautiful two weeks they were!

Grandfather and Gardening

My grandfather was a farmer (in miniature), with a half a city lot dedicated to his garden. He had his own tiller and at least twenty tomato cages. I remember the deep freezer in the basement, full of gallon-sized freezer bags of tomatoes. Once I dug a hole that was about five feet deep and began a compost pile. He preferred chemical fertilizers, but he let me tilt my windmill. One year we built a very solid, very sturdy trellis that stretched at least 15 feet. It supported the most wondrous pole beans. The next door neighbor complained about it; I thought it was genius. We talked other designs and blueprints that rattled through his head. He told me about his idea for a mechanism to lower the top of a convertible. That was the year I began to picture him as an engineer and wonder if he would have been if he had the opportunity.

After high school, I didn't help in the garden anymore. Summer classes, summer jobs, and finally moving out of state kept me away. He teased me about being too much into email to do any real work anymore. So it's been a very long time since I've coaxed food from dirt.

This year I started my garden. I spent hours upon hours removing sod (basically I pulled up lots and lots of grass with a spade). I joined the Garden Resource Program and have been hooked up with seeds, plants and all kinds of organic dreams. No pesticides for me. It's a small garden, half of my postage stamp backyard. And yet I feel like my Grandfather's child: I am a farmer. Today I cooked with basil that I harvested; my lettuce and spinach have been making appearances at my table; I know now what a potato plant looks like; and I do believe that this is the week that I cook home-grown kale.