katealaurel

So this summer was one of the first times I was in the right place at the right time with sufficient time (sort of) to have a vegetable garden, and it was exciting, especially at the beginning.

Heirloom tomatoes, picked this evening

Now that it’s September, how do I feel? Mixed. I mean, to give you some context:

1. Summer after my freshman year, I had four herbs in pots on the back stoop. (Basil, thyme, rosemary, and mint, I think.) They all died within a week, presumably from lack of water and sunlight.
2. Summer after my sophomore year, I dug a bed in our clay-soiled back yard and planted some cherry tomatoes in it. We got enough that I could occasionally pick a handful on my way to work, but then they started rotting on the vine from some blight. I planted some other vegetables (zucchini, other tomatoes, rosemary). They all died.

So it’s not like I’m a master-gardener going into this. I have an okay intuitive sense of how to take care of plants, presumably from watching my mother’s enormous vegetable and flower gardens as a kid– I’m just terrible on the follow-through, especially with watering, and for some reason it’s only this year that it occurred to me to look on the internet for advice with plant problems.¹

A Brandywine tomato portrait.

In the end, I actually had a decently successful garden this year by my standards. There’s a large mixing bowl full of heirloom tomatoes sitting on my kitchen counter, with many more still green and on the vine. The basil and thyme survived (more the thyme than the basil, alas) to be transplanted indoors this week. The Mystery Volunteer Squash produced six or seven immature but tasty squash/pumpkin/gourd/whatnots before succumbing to blight. The green and yellow beans reliably produced handfuls of produce through much of the summer, though mostly in snacking quantities. Leafy greens and peppers were more-or-less failures, but I did get a little bit of chard and two ancho hot peppers.

So, what did I learn?

In my case, the obstacle standing in the way of garden success is pretty much solely my own laziness or distraction.

Whoops.

I really did try. But it was a rough summer, in some ways– I’ll write those blog posts eventually– and wrangling the complicated, messy hose system on my way to the bus in the morning in work clothes didn’t work out well. Neither did stopping by the garden on the way into the house after the 40-minute bus commute home. In retrospect, I should have made an earlier effort to set up an alternate system– if I’d spent part of a Saturday setting up a simple irrigation hose, ninety percent of the problems probably would have been solved– but alas. It was not to be.

The fact that I didn’t really weed doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect, however. My tomatoes and peppers and beans are still happy and enthusiastic, even though there’s sparse grass and little vines interrupting them. It offends my aesthetic sensibilities more than their photosynthetic ones.

The fact that I was at least marginally successful this summer, though, makes me want to make it work next time around.² There’s something so terribly satisfying about filling a bowl with striped, strangely shaped heirloom tomatoes, or gathering a handful of green beans to snack on. The mere act of planting, of digging out a space and making it hold living things, was also far more lovely than I remembered. I’m looking forward to having garden space again sometime, when I’m settled somewhere to live more permanently.

It’s also become clear to me that I very much value getting certain things from the garden (read: tomatoes), am pleased by others (read: herbs, beans), and could take or leave the rest. It’d be great to have a successful zucchini plant³, or sweet bell peppers, or green onions, or chard– but it’s apparently not where my hungry mind gravitates. This’ll no doubt be reflected in whatever I plant next time around.

In the meantime, there are more than enough green tomatoes on the vine that I’ll have them until I go. Rich pink-rose Brandywines, striped and twisted and curved Pineapples, cascades of Yellow Pears and Sweet 100s. Good enough to call this a successful third try.

1: I know, right? I mean, I consult the internet for everything on the face of the planet. Why was this one so unexpected?
2: Maybe I’ll try for interesting Turkish spices in pots in Gaziantep…
3: What is it with zucchini? Everyone else has baskets of them to give away, and I can’t get the darn things to grow at all.