Victory Garden 2.0
I expected 2020 would be way too interesting, anyway, but I didn’t see a pandemic on the menu, did you? Creeping dread in late winter gave way to a closing economy; that’s when I learned my job was essential and no, Jay, you don’t get to stay home. Face coverings became this year’s must-have fashion accessory, and now we all look like surgeons or outlaws when we’re in public. Empty roads on my drive to work, downtown Mount Vernon deserted...the stuff of a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, but with no cameras rolling and no plot, really, just that cameo appearance by Tom Hanks.
Sometimes work still scares me, but mostly I'm grateful: at least I have a job and OMG, it's at a grocery store so I can still bring home food, which helps my family stay alive and stuff as long as we don't get the 'rona. My anxiety peaked one Saturday in mid-March, though, when I was re-stocking seed potatoes. People saw a guy in an apron dumping tasty tubers into wooden crates... and I was swarmed. We weren't doing the 6 foot thing yet, almost no one was wearing a mask, myself included, and it took a lot to fight down that panic attack.
They were nice people, though. They just wanted to grow their own food this year, many for the first time. Some of the new kids had meant to start a garden for years and this seemed the right time for it, something useful and potentially fun to do during the coming months at home. I packed away my fear as I realized, not without some guilt, that my department was going to have a great year. I'd never seen such an opportunity to get more people hooked on gardening and enjoy its many benefits: a productive hobby that gets you out in the fresh air to get some vitamin D “on the hoof,” gets you off the couch to take a break from Netflix, and maybe stop a few more pounds from happening (what's MY excuse?), lifts your spirits, teaches you new skills, reconnects you to our good earth, and if all goes well, gives you tomatoes!
As predicted, it was our most frenzied spring ever. We sold a lot of pretty flowers because we also need beauty to lighten this lingering sadness but really, it was all about the food, baby. Late winter to mid-summer we offer a huge selection of beautiful, locally-grown organic vegetable starts, and it was a challenge to keep them in stock this year. Fortunately, our primary grower, Nick Guilford at Sunseed Farm, saw what was coming and planted extra, supplying us into mid-August with fall and winter vegetables instead of his usual mid-July shutdown. There were occasional interruptions in the supply chain – the Great Jalapeño Shortage of 2020, when the starts became as scarce as toilet paper, will live in infamy – but most of you were able to get most of what you wanted.
Now, we’re in a far less crazy planting season, one that also balances food and flowers. I've written here before about planting garlic in the fall and spring-flowering bulbs, too. Because it’s cold and wet now, and most sensible people don’t want to muck around in their gardens anymore this year, I have to work the fall planting sales pitch pretty hard. But if you've ever cut your own tulip or daffodil bouquets in the spring or harvested your own gourmet garlic as summer begins, you'll be glad you did the work now, and I think the odds are pretty good you'll do it again. We should be well-stocked with seed garlic, shallots, and flower bulbs by October, and if you can get your treasures buried by Halloween or thereabouts, you can pretty much go back indoors for the next few months. Your soil will appreciate the rest, too.
Soon we’ll be shouting, “Happy New Year!!”...and the first rule of 2021 is: we do not talk about 2020. Except maybe about how great your garden was? Will you do it again? Food, flowers, both? More or less than last year? Will lightning strike twice and you'll run me out of jalapeños? Are you stoked, hooked for life? Are you saying, “Never again!” but have a newfound respect bordering on reverence for farmers and how hard they work to put food on our tables and flowers in our vases?
Health permitting, experienced gardeners will get right back to it. If it was your first year, not very successful and/or you're working full-time again, it could go either way. Since it’s my job to persuade you to give it another go, I have a few suggestions that could make it easier next time.
SIMPLIFY. Maybe you were a kid in a candy store in front of our seed racks and bought more seeds then you would ever get around to sowing, or were overwhelmed by the insane quantities that sprouted then needed tending and probably thinning and of course weeding and protection from slugs and snails and deer and rabbits and squirrels and Swiss terrorists(?!) and gosh knows what else. Maybe the darn things didn’t sprout at all. Maybe try fewer seeds next year, except for root crops and other things that don’t transplant well? Try starts for most of the rest. The average family does not need 70+ heads of lettuce or 25+ tomato plants as you might get from a whole seed pack, right?
Use less space, better. Newbie zeal leads to overambitious land clearing which invites the weeds in, which you’ll presumably have even less time and energy to deal with next year. In a smaller space, plant what you really want that may not be common or cheap in your Co-op’s produce section. Browse the Google to see how big your plants will get and space them as close as you can without crowding. Leave as little room for weeds as possible.
Explore the joys of no-till or no-dig gardening, which I tried this year for the first time. For years I thought it was lazy neo-hippie nonsense, but it’s the real thing, folks. Pictured, from August, is my first beautiful and crazy-abundant “lasagna garden”; behind it, one waiting to happen that I’ve probably planted with garlic by now. I plan to write a full article about no-dig gardening in an upcoming issue, but here are the basics: leave your soil undisturbed, don’t even weed it, but put a layer of cardboard on the space you want to plant, right on top of the weeds. Follow with layers of organic matter: wood chips, tree and shrub branches, leaves, straw, grass clippings, composted manure, regular compost, etc. Coarse layers (woody stuff) on the bottom. You’re basically laying down a thick, weed smothering natural mulch that breaks down and, months later, you can plant in it. Don’t wait for my article, Google/YouTube the livin’ heck out of it NOW if you’re at all intrigued because if you construct the beds now you can plant them in the spring. It’s less back pain, you get beautiful soil (no more complaining about clay soils!), new weeds are easy to pull and the plants love it. It might even convince you to give this gardening thing another go.
Elbow bumps to you all for your support this year. Be well and keep planting stuff! Article and photo by Jay Williams