“Many of us who aren't farmers or gardeners still have some element of farm nostalgia in our family past, real or imagined: a secret longing for some connection to a life where a rooster crows in the yard.” Barbara Kingsolver,
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
When I began my first garden back in 1993, I was a novice to gardening on my own. I had grown up with a family garden in the backyard and a family who composted grass and yard waste, but not much else that I could determine. I enjoyed the fresh vegetables and soft fruits that were readily abundant in a backyard garden, and was driven to reproduce that for myself.
A couple of barriers presented themselves, however. First of all, I was living in a vastly different climate than that of my childhood. I grew up in the Seattle area, in the midst of rain and temperate weather, in a yard with reasonably good topsoil. As an adult, I was living in the Okanagan region of British Columbia -- an area known for its ability to grow tree fruits and grapes, but one which featured the challenging climate of long, cold winters; short, temperate springs; and hot, dry summers. The growing season was noticeably shorter than that of my native Seattle. The availability of water was often questionable. The soil conditions were highly variable depending on the area of town where I lived. I kept striving -- one year managing to grow decent raspberries, but failing in the vegetable area; another year managing to get a bumper crop of peas and beans, but losing everything else to heat and drought before the real fruits of my labors could be harvested. The year that I was marginally successful overall, with bumper crops of beans and tomatoes, also was the year that the neighborhood deer discovered the superior taste of my heirloom tomatoes and harvested the top three inches of my bean plants; then the frost hit early, and I had a bumper crop of green tomatoes with which to cope!
After these experiences, I became discouraged about gardening for myself. It wasn't until a year or two later, when I became a member of a wonderful CSA run by Pilgrim's Produce of Armstrong, BC, that my interest in gardening and organic foods really took off. I credit Rob Hettler from Pilgrim's with my grounding in organic practices; after my first year or so of buying vegetables from his CSA, I switched to a working share, and began to work for my vegetables on a regular basis. Not only did this get me out of the house and into the fresh air onon the farm, it also gave me experience in what it really meant to grow an organic garden. Labor intensive, yes! but so worth the returns in the form of vegetable quality and vigor. Partipating in a CSA also allowed me the opportunity to expose finicky children to a wide variety of vegetables. How else could I have discovered that my oldest son -- not the most avid of vegetable consumers -- LOVES greens?
Upon my return to Seattle, I was inspired to begin my own backyard garden again, having been gifted with a rental house that had a substantial, southern-facing side yard perfect for growing vegetables. My first year I went barebones -- we dug beds and simply planted whatever and wherever we could. I achieved a bumper crop of tomatoes, raking in an excess of 50 lbs of tomatoes during a summer when everyone else's tomato crops were lackluster at best. We had squashes galore -- both winter and summer -- along with beets, broccoli, and black kale. Our crop failures? Carrots. Too frustrating. Radishes get wormy and are shortlived. In our garden, lettuce bolts fast, and we're often faced with a crop that has to be harvested NOW . . . with the challenge being "What in the world do we do with 15 heads of lettuce?!!" Bok choy loves our garden; the first year I overplanted, and then had to figure out what to do with 5 heads that all needed to be picked immediately. I scaled back on bok choy after that, since being greeted with groans of "Bok choy AGAIN?!" got old fast. I also discovered -- whether to joy or chagrin is still to be determined -- that arugula, once planted, is a determined self-propagator that quickly can become a danger to everything else.
And we learned. I moved crops around last year and built raised beds. Squashes were thoroughly unsuccessful the second year, because the bed they were in was too dry and not very fertile. Tomatoes didn't do as well either . . . who knew they didn't like beans and potatoes? So this year I've paid careful attention to companion plantings; as well, we brought in a load of compost (anyone else discovered that cubic yardage calculators are somewhat inaccurate?) and worked that into the beds. I decided after potatoes continued to sprout in their former location that I would subsequently dedicate a bed solely to potatoes. I diligently dug up all the volunteers and replanted them; the bonus was that I planted 80 tomatoes, most of which were volunteers from last year!
So far, the harvest is as follows: 5 gallon bags of lettuce leaves picked; 2 gallon bags of mustard greens; a handful of peas. The first strawberries were ripe on Memorial Day; my husband commented that they look kind of odd, as they are not the uniform cone-shaped beauties you see from California; rather, these are the flavorful, odd-sized garden strawberries that make those grocery store beauties seem tasteless and bland. My artichokes are on their second year, and look to be close to producing their initial crop; in total (at last count) we had 14 artichokes at various stages of growth. I have enough arugula to run a market garden. Last year's 50+ pounds of fingerling potatoes will most definitely be surpassed. I have 32 heads of a variety of lettuces; my 8 tomato plants are already blooming, and the first tomatoes are set on the cherry tomatoes. My herb garden is well-established, with cilantro volunteering for the first time! My perennial herbs are looking healthy and vigorous, and I'm hoping that this year the annual herbs -- basil, cilantro, dill -- will reseed themselves with as much determination as the parsley has over the past three years.
