Aileen Jeffries

In my, shall I say, unusual childhood, we had a huge garden that was the source of most of our food. Row upon row of peas, sugar beets, carrots and squash.

Farming on the Canadian Shield is never easy – the soil is poor and shallow and in no month is it guaranteed not to snow. But while I spent hours and hours of my youth weeding and taking out rocks and digging up potatoes, the worry and responsibility of growing enough food to make it through the winter rested on the squarely shoulders of my parents, not mine. Which is how it should be when you’re six.

Now that I finally have the space and time (this is debatable) to grow my own garden, the stakes are considerably lower. I live just a few blocks from a weekly farmers market. I’m married to someone who distrusts food that doesn’t come wrapped tightly in cellophane and considers iceberg lettuce to be a vegetable (it isn’t, of course, it’s crunchy, pale-green water). We’re so far off from being successful survivalists, we don’t even have a root cellar.

This affords me the luxury of being able to choose which fruits or vegetables to grow based on frivolous criteria. I have two pear trees because I think the blossoms are cheerful and the fruit makes for attractive still-life arrangements. Lavender features prominently in my fantasies of living in Provençal France. I have a pair of kiwis vines so I can make jokes about the nearly useless male, which does not bear fruit and exists only to pollinate the female.

This summer, I tried out a variety of vegetables, some more successfully than others.

Winners

• Tomatoes. Like basil, tomatoes are needy divas. They like it hot and sunny but require frequent watering. These conditions do not exist in nature! They drain the soil of nutrients. I put up with them because an early-season Greek salad made with home-grown tomatoes can be so sublime as to confirm the existence of a benevolent higher power.
• Green Beans. In Oregon we have slugs, to understate the problem. All but one of my green bean seedlings were mowed down by these voracious, spotted, slimy yaks. The stalk that survived, however, flourished and grew to a size that would ably support Jack’s giant. I’m still harvesting the pods. Definitely one of the greatest values of the summer.
• Carrots. Sweet and small, an altogether different food than the grocery store options, where even the ‘baby’ carrots are really sequoia-sized tubers whittled down to a deceptively small size, but no less woody and bland.
• Peas. Kudzu-like in growth pattern, the peas rapidly enveloped their trellis then dangled their tendrils out into the air, feeling for a tree or small building to cover. Few activities are more satisfying than grazing sugar snaps.

Failures

• Cauliflower. I was never able to grow good heads, instead they were bitter and irregularly formed, like sea creatures.
• Blueberries. They never produced. I’ll try again, perhaps in a sunnier spot. Domestic blueberries really just take the challenge out of it. If I don’t have to climb through the charred remains of a forest to pick them, it’s just too easy.
• Fall Lettuce, from seed. My spinach came up, but no sign of the lettuce. Perhaps my lax watering habits are to blame. I will plant seedlings to hide this moral shortfall.
• Cucumbers. So bland, round and pale-skinned as to be practically Midwestern.

Next year, I’m going to try a few new ones: fava beans – the Italians call them the “poor man’s meat,” beets and maybe a pumpkin for Kea.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Food and Drink, Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.