Introducing you to my garden

I often get emails and letters from people who've read The Seed Underground. Sometimes they want to come visit my garden. I almost never have time for that, unfortunately. Then last week a gardener contacted me through the form on this website. "I have to say that I am a little envious of the description of all these weed free gardens you describe in your book," she said.

​I thought that I should introduce you to my garden this spring, especially since it is definitely not "weed-free" and since I've spent time in it every day since the pandemic began.

First, I want to mention health. I try to have skin showing when I'm in the garden, in order to absorb as much Vit. D as possible. And I make an effort to get my body in direct contact with the earth, so I can "ground." Rubber boot-soles inhibit grounding, so at least part of the time I'm kneeling or sitting. Therefore, I'm also trying not to get bitten by fire ants, my nemesis.

We have 2 large gardens, the North Garden & the South Garden. We almost plowed the South Garden under this year because all of it is too much. But we're home more right now and we kept it for another year. I'm mostly working in the North Garden & Raven, my partner, is mostly in the South. Each garden is about 60 feet long and 30 feet wide.

Here is a photo from the NE corner of the North Garden, taken this afternoon:

All along the west fence, a long bed of last fall's mustard is going to seed. It was in full yellow flower a couple of weeks ago. I probably won't save these seeds because this is not an heirloom variety. There is also a bed of daikon radishes going to seed. Their flowers are pinkish turning to white -- I don't need all these seeds because that's enough seeds for hundreds of gardeners and also because this plant volunteers terrifically...but I will save some. In a third picture you'll see a few plants of lacinato kale flowering.

​I like to have plants in all stages of their life cycles -- for one thing, pollinators love flowering vegetable plants. 

I started the first squash seeds a few weeks ago -- zucchini, straight neck squash, black zucchini, and tromboncino. I had promised myself that I WOULD NOT buy seedlings again, because I am bringing in diseases with the purchased plants, but I bought anyway -- cabbage, bell peppers, jalapeños, and tomatoes. Raven bought Irish potatoes and planted a whole corner in them.  I did start 5 or 6 kinds of tomatoes that are coming along & can go in the ground in a week or 2. So here are some random pictures of new plants:

A friend from Atlanta (I think Janice Carter) gave me vintage Christmas Bell Pepper (named because they are shaped like bells, not because they're bell peppers) seeds years ago. They are really lovely & they often do something amazing, which is die back in winter & rejuvenate in spring. They are a whole story in themselves, but here I want to post a picture of the pepper returning.

Now, let's get into the weeds. The big challenge of this garden has been nutgrass. We've had an infestation for at least 5 years & I'm always traveling to give talks in the spring & my garden for years has suffered. One year a bunch of our friends came and dug it all out, but without maintenance weeding it came back. For years I haven't gotten on top of the nutgrass.

This year I'm weeding 30 minutes a day, and, in fact, setting a timer to do it. Sometimes I go longer. In the photos below, you'll see the patch of nutgrass still ahead of me, and also a close-up of it. In one other picture I show you some sweet potato slips coming up in a path where I'm weeding nutgrass. This is a heirloom variety I got from the Sweet Potato Queen, Yanna Fishman, and I grow it every year. I have slips coming along in the kitchen window, and I'll also dig this one up and put it in water as well. My neighbor Serena wants some slips, so there will be plenty.

I like to have at least 3 things to eat growing in the garden no matter the season. Right now, as you can see, there's chard. For lunch, in fact, we had Hot Chard Artichoke Dip with crackers, made from this crop. There are 2 parsley plants you can't see. There is enough kale to steam or put in soup or bake crispy in the oven or -- our favorite -- massage into kale salad. And one other thing -- we still have a few cabbages. They usually do great for us, but not this winter. Some of them seemed to mold and they didn't get very big. As you can see below, the cabbage bed is also full of nutgrass. It is the last bed I need to weed. I've made a big crock of kraut & bought 4 small cabbages inside tonight, but I will need to take out these last cabbages and get that nutgrass out of that bed. When the last bed & the patch in the center aisle is done, I can say the South Garden is weeded. However, even so, I'll have to dig up nutgrass daily for awhile, maybe years. 

Let me show you one more patch of vegetation in the garden. I haven't sorted this section out yet. Three kinds of volunteers are growing. One is magenta lamb's-quarters. This is a "weed" but we grow a lot on purpose. It's more nutritious than any other green & makes delicious omelets. Bright green plants in the foreground are zinnias. A smaller plant, also a crop, that is harder to see are small red-stemmed sprouts of Malabar spinach, back right. We use this after the lamb's-quarters is gone. The leaves are slimy like okra, but also like okra, the sliminess cooks out, and this can be used like regular spinach all summer. It loves heat and as we all know, every year there's more heat.

So that's it, my garden. Today I scoured my seed bucket and started some very interesting things, old friends I haven't grown in awhile -- hyacinth bean, Jack bean, Sadie's horse bean from Donnamarie Emmert and the Abingdon Seed Library, four kinds of sunflowers (including mammoth), running butterbean. I started the gold-striped cushaw, having been unable to get the gold-striped, which I lost.

Gardening is not work to me, the same as writing is not work. (Well, maybe a little.)

When I was sitting at the edge of the aisle full of nutgrass, I felt 25 again, working in my garden at Sycamore, listening to "The Prairie Home Companion" on a radio plugged into an extension cord. I felt more free than I've felt in years, and younger, and happier. I felt myself coming back.