Springing into action in the garden
and sharing some good news
This post is long overdue. It’s not that I have not been gardening or even preparing to garden. It’s just that so much has been happening since last November's post, and what I consider to be my spiritual gardening journal was set aside for a better day. That day is finally here.
First, an update: I am happy to report that the hydroponic gardening experiment was a success, partially. After months watching tomato and pepper seedlings grow into mature plants, I harvested several batches of delicious cherry tomatoes this Spring!
The first flowers began showing up in late January or early February, but then nothing happened. It took me a few weeks to figure out why fruit was not forming. I forgot that I was responsible for pollinating the flowers, either by hand or by using a fan to blow the pollen from one flower to another. I chose the fan, and by March 14 I had the first harvestable tomatoes! Alas, the peppers, overwhelmed by tomato vines, did not fare so well. I tried to rescue one that looked salvageable, but it did not survive transplanting in a covered raised bed where lettuces were flourishing outdoors.
Getting outdoors and cleaning up the garden beds couldn’t start soon enough this Spring, but the work was repeatedly interrupted by numerous storms, including tornadoes and historic amounts of rain that caused widespread flooding in many areas of Louisville and Kentucky. Fortunately, we do not live in a flood plain and did not suffer any damage from flooding or the high winds and tornadoes that assaulted nearby neighborhoods.
Once the weather permitted, checking on the native plants was the first thing on my agenda. It was unusually cold this year. Most plants survived the bitter temperatures. The red twig dogwoods, their stunning blood red stems a winter treat, were lush with young green leaves and delicate white flowers. Early blooming Jacob’s Ladders and dwarf irises, sharing a bed with crocuses and daffodils, were as lovely as we hoped. The Columbines that bloomed next are now dancing underneath the Sweet Bay. Their delicate coral blooms and thin stems are not as fragile as they appear. They have gracefully stood up to the drenching rains and strong winds that ransacked the irises and peonies.
Regrettably, the Indian Pinks planted last Fall did not survive as I hoped they would in the protective microclimate of the Secret Garden.1 But so far, the other natives did, including aromatic asters, rattlesnake master, sweet goldenrod, purple coneflowers and hairy beardtongue planted in the more exposed back and front borders. The two-year-old Serviceberry tree bloomed for the first time; the native coral berries and wild hydrangeas all appear heathy. In short, we have much to anticipate and appreciate in the coming weeks.
Sharing the good news in gardening
Growing vegetables and planning for another year of “good news gardening” (inspired by the Episcopal Church’s Good News Gardens ministry) have not been neglected this Spring either. As mentioned above, I began this Spring by planting lettuces along with a chive plant and a couple of Rosemary plants (favorites in our kitchen) in a covered raised bed at home. Then I turned my attention to the 10- by 17-foot garden plot in the community garden at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church.
This year’s vegetable garden has been streamlined in the hope that fewer types of vegetables will lead to better harvests. Except for a few onion sets and lettuces , I opted to not plant Brassicas or other cold-weather crops. By April, four rows of onions and six Red Romaine and Bibb lettuces were planted and growing (as I see it, you just can’t plant too much lettuce when you know it will be shared—primarily with rabbits). My husband and I planted the rest of the plot the first week of May: four cucumbers, two bell peppers, and eight tomatoes are flanked by three beneficial companions, dill, basil and marigold plants.
My garden plan, however, has not been followed perfectly. For starters, on a whim I tucked an extra cucumber plant by a trellis in the Secret Garden, where the best of our cucumbers grew last year. (Alas, this year a rabbit found it before I thought to protect the fledgling plant with a wire cloche, but I hope to replace it this week.)
Another, significant departure from plan came after I accidentally killed our first-year raspberry shrub. Although an off shoot is doing quite nicely, I replaced the original plant and then I decided, also on a whim, to expand my experiment in growing fruit in the four huge, unused pots at home. They now contain a blueberry bush, two Meyer Lemon trees and a Persian Lime tree.
A friend, Ed, who is a master gardener, is behind the biggest change to this summer’s gardening plan. He grows a wide variety of “indeterminate” tomatoes started from seeds. Thanks to his generosity, we planted 13 tomatoes at home and the St. Matthew’s plot, and gave four plants to our community garden neighbor Dave. Because “indeterminates” grow at least 8 feet tall, we replaced our tomato cages with extra tall plant supports, and are now growing a yellow tomato, three types of Romas (Wasabi, Amish and San Marzano) and several other varieties. They include some familiar tomatoes, like Rutgers, and others with enticing names, like Black Cherry, Black Krim, Ponderosa Red, Prudence Purple and Watermelon Beefsteak. Weather permitting, we will be sharing a lot of tomatoes and making a lot of paste and sauces this summer!
Preoccupied this winter with writing about a trip last Fall to visit the lands of the Ancient Puebloans in the American Southwest, I had little time for reading about gardening. Fortuitously, a friend recommended Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. We planted a Serviceberry tree the year before as our first step in introducing natives into our landscape, and, more immediately, we saw these trees growing in Colorado and learned about their importance to the Ancient Puebloans and their descendants. So my interest in the book was piqued, especially since it was written by an esteemed Native American naturalist. I was well rewarded for taking the time to read it.
The Serviceberry is a small book but it has a big message about the need and, importantly, the possibility of cultivating a “gift economy” as an alternative world view to “market capitalism” and its reckless, destructive exploitation of the planet’s resources, which in her book include humans and all “citizens” that inhabit this earth.
Telling the story of the Serviceberry, by also sharing her story of picking free berries at a local farm, Kimmerer shows as well as explains how a gift economy works through a “gift giving exchange by which everyone gets what they need.”
For her to pick a pail full of free serviceberries, she notes, “hundreds of gift exchanges” took place. The story begins with nearby Maples that gave their leaves to the soil, where the humus was built by the activity of innumerable microbes and invertebrates, who made it possible for serviceberry seeds, dropped by passing birds, to germinate. The sun, rain, early flies and even the farmer contributed to settling seedlings and encouraging their growth. The tree’s life literally depends upon a web of symbiotic relationships, as is true at all levels of life, according to the book.
The valued currency in circulation in gift economies is gratitude and connection, not goods and money, she says. Gift economies are not new, nor are they all that unusual. They come in all sizes and types: Food pantries, clothing exchanges, and myriad other ways we share our abundance for others’ benefit, like the gift of 17 tomato plants from Ed. Public libraries prove, as Kimmerer points out, that a gift economy can co-exist with market economies at an institutional level.
“In a Serviceberry economy,” she says, “I accept the gift from the tree and then spread that gift around, with a dish of berries to my neighbor, who makes a pie to share with his friend, who feels so wealthy in food and friendship that he volunteers at the local food pantry. ...
“In contrast if I were to buy a basket of berries in a market economy, the relationship ends with the exchange of money... There is no making of community, only a trading of commodities... To name the world as gift is to feel your membership in the web of reciprocity.”
Acknowledging it is unlikely that entrenched “market capitalism” will vanish, Kimmerer nonetheless believes it is not “pie in the sky thinking we can create incentives to nurture a gift economy that runs alongside the market economy.” She provides a convincing, urgent and eloquent argument for cultivating gift economies.
What a gift she has given her readers with this gem of a book. What a gift that my friend recommended it. It came to my attention at a time when I felt immobilized by daily news accounts matching the seemingly endless gray, stormy days. It did my heart and soul good to imagine living in a world of abundance and reciprocity where the needs of all are met and then to learn from a plant expert that all of this is natural and possible.
For those new to this blog, the Secret Garden was originally created to grow herbs and vegetables in raised beds set off from the rest of the yard by a boxwood hedge and backed by a row of towering arborvitae. As the hedge grew over the years, the garden evolved into its name, now serving as quiet, private space for nurturing its inhabitants and visitors.