Tying My Luck with Green Growing Things

I wrote this article a month ago, with the intention of including it in a zine project I'm working on (subtitled suburban-kid-seeks-radical-rural-homesteading-dream, to give you an idea of the theme). But once I realized my goal was to have that zine completed and released in late Fall, this very Springtime piece no longer seemed to fit quite right. So instead, I'm sharing it here! All photos in this post were taken in the garden this very day...

I grew up around plants, to some extent. My other always kept a few tomato plants, black raspberries sprawled between our house and the neighbors, and sometimes she would plant a few potatoes, or other veggies... But when it came to more serious gardening than a few pots and fruit brambles, what I remember is my great-grandmother’s house in Gaspe, where, along with my mother and little sister, we’d visit for a few weeks at the end up each summer up until I was 10 or so.

I vividly remember digging up potatoes, patiently sorting through the dirt to pick out even the smallest potatoes, which I liked the best, and which I’d happily eat covered in butter and salt.

Good memories, yes, but for a while my gardening experience was limited just to those memories. those, and a pepper plant or two, bought as seedlings, in pots amongst my mother’s tomatoes. It’s only two years ago that I planted some seeds and cared for my own green growing things from seed through the end of production. I planted some peas, sugarsnap, and waited with much excitement and impatience for the small sprouts to break ground, twine slowly upwards along my homemade old-sticks-and-string trellis, put out delicate flowers, and then, finally, form plump and delicious pods.

Baby green bell pepper.

The harvest wasn’t huge, but it was exciting. So the next year, fueled by eagerness and a desire to grow ALL THE THINGS, my mother and I maybe went a little bit overboard on the seed ordering (from The Cottage Gardener, a great heirloom seed source). I planted mixed mustard greens, mixed lettuce, purslane, broccoli, peas, kale, bunching onions, bush beans, multi-coloured carrots, multiple different herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers... Those last four were bought as seedlings, the rest started from seeds. And, well, the summer was a very hot and dry one, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, and things didn’t turn out as well as they could have. The broccoli became leggy plants that never produced broccoli, the the bunching onions never came up, I left the purslane too crowded so that they never grew more than an inch or two, the mustard greens went to seed very quickly, the carrots were small and bitter, the tomatoes were diseased, and I let the lettuce get too big before eating it. It was a let down in some ways, but I learned a great deal, and developed quite a bit of respect for the fragility of agriculture. Because while some of the not-success was thanks to my own ineptitude, some was simply the weather. It was damn hot. And no one can do much about that.

Yellow zucchini plant flowering.

This year, it stayed cold unreasonably long, and when I should have been planting things, I didn’t, then went away for a week, then had visitors here for a week... And I was feeling pretty sad, pretty hopeless about the whole growing-green-things thing, like I’d frittered the time away and it was too late for anything.

But then, I was wandering around in the yard, and I spotted some sunflowers (the ornamental rather than edible kind) that had self-seeded outside of their little patch of cleared earth. I love sunflowers. And close by, I noticed a Southern Giant Curled mustard green plant growing in the lawn. And once I knew to look, I found dozens of little mustard greens sprouts growing. Both the aforementioned, and Red Giant. And from some local organic farms, I got four cucumber plants, a yellow zucchini, a few different types of sweet and hot peppers... And a friend offered some heirloom paste tomato plants, today.

Today, on June 10th, was the first day of real gardening for me this year. I transplanted some of my sunflowers and mustard greens so they won’t get mowed along with the lawn, and planted my cucumbers and zucchini. And with my hands and feet muddy, skin sweaty, I felt peaceful. It might not be as big a garden as I wanted, I might not have done as much work as I’d hope to do earlier in the season, but I have plants. I’ll be tending them, eagerly watching them grow, training my cucumbers up their trellis, watering and watching and eating the fruits of my labour of love.

Baby Tasty Jade cucumber.

Gardening might not be a deep-felt passion, but I think it’s fair to say that plants, and food, are. I need a reminder of that sometimes, as well as a reminder that it’s almost never “too late.” My garden will grow as it will this year, and no matter what, I know I’ll spend lots of good time with my green growing things.