Gardening 101

We planted the garden this week, and it feels like starting off a new school year. Everyone is sitting politely in neat little rows, and the surroundings are freshly mulched and weed-free, just like the waxed floors and graffiti-less bathroom walls of September. Hope and optimism abound.

Two months in, just like school, chaos will ensue. The aggressive zucchini will send out creeping tendrils into everyone else’s personal space, and what had been a lovely little squash will, seemingly overnight, morph into a baseball bat that could knock over a small child. The tomatoes, whose sucker branches were not removed because the teacher wasn’t exactly sure how to do that, are bored, slouching against their cages, bogged down in too much greenery to produce fruit. One of last year’s most annoying students, the mint, which the teacher thought had been transferred to an alternative school for herbs, will once again be back in the classroom because its roots will never completely die. But then the goody two-shoes green beans will dutifully climb their trellis to produce gorgeous handfuls of  food-blog-worthy vegetables, giving the teacher a reason to keep coming back every day.

Gardening has been a self- taught retirement project. Every year, I start with good intentions, watching YouTube videos and swearing that this season will be different. After several rounds of shrunken beets and scoliotic carrots, I no longer plant anything I cannot see. I have learned not to throw seeds into furrows willy-nilly which once resulted in a jungle of boisterous and out of control zucchini. I hoped I’d inherit my grandfather’s gardening gene, but the results indicate otherwise.

My grandfather tended a huge backyard garden, located within a stone’s throw of the Susquehanna River, which may have influenced the richness of the soil. I remember harvesting asparagus from its forest of feathery leaves and walking down the rows of corn as he showed me how to find perfectly ripe ears. We’d pick tomatoes which my grandmother would fry up in some kind of sugary batter that made them taste like dessert. Strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry patches produced wonderful fruit in seasonal succession and when fall rolled around, we’d pull bunches of grapes from the arbor and pick up black walnuts fallen from the massive tree at the foot of the yard. I learned to love fresh food (except lima beans) because I adored spending time with my grandparents.  

I persevere with my plot of unruly students, because we do make occasional progress.  I cut lettuce for salad that’s way better than the plastic encased grocery store stuff. I make tons of basil pesto and Ina Garten’s fresh tomato sauce. I fry up zucchini fritters laced with feta cheese and fresh dill and bake zucchini chocolate bread that tastes like cake. Several neighbors have gardens, and we share our successes and failures and exchange our surplus produce.

So it’s May, and like a teacher fresh off summer vacation, I’m excited to see what this year’s class will do.  Every morning, I unhook the opening in the chicken wire fence and check on our progress. So far, everyone looks healthy, no one is wilting or sad, and the weeds are still buried under the mulch, plotting their escape for later in the season. Insects are just waking up from their winter stupor and haven’t yet descended to leave ugly bites or nasty residue on fragile leaves. I am determined to correctly prune tomatoes. Support for students who need it is in place, and I've allowed plenty of room for everyone to grow.

I think it’s going to be a good year.