Solstice Thoughts On Gardening

I've been sitting here watching the doppler radar as they've been saying we're about to get walloped by a nor'easter. These are always fun storms... If you look at a map, most of Maine sort of hangs out over the rest of the east coast and occasionally the weather runs up along the coast from south to north, picking up moisture from the ocean as it moves along. Then, it runs into Maine. If it's winter, we get a bunch of snow and gusty winds. If it's warmer, we get a deluge and gusty winds. So, I've got this cool widget called Radar in Motion (don't know if there's a PC version) which lets me watch progressive doppler radar images. I'm a watchin' it come our way.....

On this, the 21st day of December, the shortest day of the year and the Winter Solstice, my thoughts turn towards spring and, with spring, the annual summer-long ritual I call garden. I don't mind winter; I actually love having four distinct seasons, each with it's own natural paint scheme, emotional state and sense of being. However today it seems fitting that I hunker down, play card games with the kids and peruse my seed catalog(s) for ideas on what to plant in our small garden this year.

I'd heard that last year was an unusually robust season for seed companies marked by a large increase in sales of plant seeds. I personally hope this is a benchmark change in consciousness towards a more sustainable future. In my eyes, nothing is more rewarding that reaping the fruits of your own labor.

I'm lucky that gardening is in my blood. When we were kids, my parents had a wonderful garden that produced vegetables all summer long. To this day, my mom still tends a small garden. Either mom and/or dad would go out before dinner and pick fresh veggies to have with our meal. They worked together in the kitchen to both freeze and can the excess and we enjoyed our own home-grown veggies most of the winter. Dad built a small, plastic-enclosed "greenhouse" in the basement where mom could start plants in the dead of winter. I can still remember the earthy smell of damp potting soil and the un-natural fluorescent bulbs providing artifical light for the seedlings.

Both sets of grandparents also gardened. My mom's mom was a master landscape gardener in the Boston area. My dad's father and step-grandmother had a wonderfully landscaped home in Connecticut built on a ledge-y area with pockets of plants everywhere and a beautiful rose garden for a yard. It's no surprise then that I find immense pleasure in both landscaping and in planting an annual food garden.

To the uninitiated, planting a garden may seem like a daunting task. I will tell you that once you enjoy something you have grown yourself, your view of food, especially the supermarket vegetable section, will change. There are a few choices to be made; organic or not; to start your own from seed or buy plants; to till the soil or plant in pots on your deck. Wherever you are, whatever you decide to try; the bottom line is the same. Growing your own food is a metaphor for life. A wise gardener will realize that you will always get out more than what you put in. What matters most is that you try.

Seeds contain little plants all scrunched up in the fetal position and encapsulated in a container. Yes, a seed is very similar to the womb of a mammal. While a mammal infant lives comfortably and grows inside it's maternal parent and is fed by the same, a seed lives but lies dormant until it's stimulated to grow by water. Once stimulated, it relies on a food source within the seed to provided it nourishment until it can get it's own naturally. So, perhaps a seed is more like animals that hatch from eggs. Yeah, I'm hinting at a whole bunch of cool, evolutionary biological similarities but I'm gonna stop here. Take a biology course if your intrigued. I'll stick to the metaphorical implications because I feel they are more powerful personally. When you garden, you are more of a part of life than you realize. And, if you garden each year, you get to experience and be a part of this miracle of rebirth each and every year of your life. It's no wonder gardening has such mass appeal!

Treat yourself to the classic, basic biology experiment. Go to your local hardware store and find an inexpensive package of bean or pea seeds. Get a clear plastic cup or similar container. Carefully poke a few holes for drainage into the bottom of the cup with a hot paper clip. Grab a handful of dirt (or potting soil), throw it into a clear plastic cup. Saturate the soil. Push a few seeds into the soil about an inch next to the side of the cup (so you can watch your plant grow) and cover the seeds. Place the cup onto a plastic can lid to catch excess water and put in the window sill over your kitchen sink. Water to keep your seed damp, maybe every third to fifth day or so depending on the soil you used. Watch your seeds eventually sprout and the roots and plant grow. If you have success here, you too can plant a real garden.

Where do you start? My advice is to start with just a little garden. Cherry tomato's are one of the perfect plants to start with. You can grow them in the ground; you can grow them in a pot on your deck. You can easily start them from seed or you can find plant starts easily once the weather warms. Try the seeds and if those don't work for you, buy plant starts. They grow up, so they need little in the way of horizontal growing space. Plan on some kind of support; metal tomato cages are cheap and work well enough.

Plants from seeds. I'd suggest strongly supporting your local mom & pop hardware store. Folks that work there usually have an abundance of real knowledge. Ask them, again and again if need be. They are biased, as are we all, and if you don't like what you hear, seek out a second or even a third information source. There is a difference in bagged soil types; look for a seed starting mix if you are starting seeds. This mix is mostly peat moss and many contain fertilizer. If you are motivated to be a purist (I am), there are mixes out there for those wishing to start plants organically. These may be harder to find and may still contain fertilizer from organic sources. Non-organic fertilizer comes mostly from the petroleum industry. Potting soil per se, contains more soil-like amendments but still has peat moss in it. Most all of these mixes have vermiculite, perlite or some substance that absorbs and retains moisture as container grown seeds/plants tend to dry out quickly. My favorite type of organic or natural fertilizer comes from the sea. It's liquid and may be fish emulsion or seaweed based. Caution: this stuff usually stinks. When you are using fertilizer, more is not better. Read the directions.

Contrary to what's in the seed starting mixes, seeds don't really need fertilizer till they are up and growing (a few weeks or so) and then they don't need much. Most folks I know start twice as many seeds as they need plants, then transplant the best looking seedlings to larger pots prior to planting them into the garden. This is when plants will need a boost from fertilizer, to help them through transplant shock. This is a natural lag that occurs when a seedling is ripped out of it's old environment and placed in a new one. If you've ever switched jobs or moved a residence, you know what I mean.

Plants from starts. You can avoid all of this by buying plants someone else has started. Yup, these are called "starts". You don't really have much of a choice in what you get (as compared to ordering from a seed catalog) but then if you are just starting out, this resolves a whole host of issues. You can completely ignore the previous two paragraphs and just prepare a place to put your plants.

Container gardening. If you are gardening on a patio or deck, you will want to get some containers. You can spend money on pots or be resourceful and find someone with a cat who buys litter in plastic buckets. If you choose to do the latter, make sure you drill or otherwise get holes in the bottom of your bucket for water to drain. Plants can drown if they stay too wet. Fill the containers with potting soil, if you can find soil mix made with composted manure, your plants will thank you. (PS. avoid bagged chicken manure, it's really high in nitrogen and will kill your plants). If you are not a purist, they sell potting soil with time release fertilizer. (I'm still a fan of using dilute dissolved fish or seaweed based fertilizers when you water.) Fill the container with potting soil which should come out of the bag damp. Using your hands, gently pat down the soil. Open up a hole to set the plant start in.

Garden in your yard. If you are planting in a new space in your yard, your soil probably needs some preparation. Make sure you will be planting in a space that gets at least half a day of sun; the more morning sun , the better your garden will grow. If it's a new garden and you are removing grass, it's a good idea to remove the sod completely. I've used sod chunks to fill holes in my lawn elsewhere. Turn the soil left from under the sod using a shovel and remove any larger rocks and roots. You may want to add some peat moss and some composted manure and a handful of lime as you turn and mix the top 10" of soil. This will usually be enough to get a nice mix of garden soil for your plant starts. If you find you like gardening, you will want to research composting your kitchen and yard waste. It's really the best way to "complete the circle", recycle and feed your plants (which feed you). Once you have your garden bed prepared, planting your starts is the same as planting in pots.

Transplanting. Take the pack containing the plant start, squeeze the sides to loosen the root ball. Gently invert the pack and the start should slide out of the pack. It's ok to gently pull the stem. Once the start comes out of the pack, look at the root ball. If the root ball is thick (you can see a white, thick tangle of roots) and the start is "rootbound" then take a knife and vertically score the root mass on all four sides. Pull the roots out of the ball a bit before setting your plant in the hole you made. Gently scoring the roots and pulling them gently apart will stumulate root growth. Tomatoes are different from all other veggies in that you can plant them deeply; up to their first leaves. The planted stem will grow new roots. There aren't any other veggies I know of that you can do this to, jut tomatoes. Other transplants need to be set no deeper than where their stem contacts the soil.

Gently and firmly, pack soil around your transplants roots and give each a drink of fertilizer water to saturate the root ball. If you make a circular dam around your plant start out of dirt, this will retain water and direct it right to where you want it to go. Give them at least three glugs, allowing the water to sink into the soil between glugs. Reusing a quart or one gallon milk jug is a great way to add fertilizer water to your plants. Space your plant starts at least 10-12" apart. The roots of your starts are set deep in the soil. Even though the ground may look dry, the roots of your starts are plenty damp. You shouldn't have to water more than twice a week, much less if it rains.

Directly sowing seeds. Lots of veggie seeds can go right into the ground once the gound is warm enough. Directions on the package will usually tell you when to plant. Green beans are an easy plant to grow from seed. Once you prepare your soil, take a stick, scratch a line and plant bean seeds according to the directions on the package. Note that bean seeds can be either bush beans or pole beans. The bush variety grows (obviously) as a bush while the pole variety will need something vertical to grow up (at least 8' tall). When I lived in the city, I put a hook into the side of my house and ran twine from the hook to stakes in the ground around which I planted pole beans. I was amazed at how tall they grew!

Weeds. If you have a garden in your yard and water the soil around your plants, weeds will grow. As it will inevitably rain, you will be faced with this issue anyway. My favorite deterrent to weed growth is mulch. Mulch is a layer of material over the soil which helps retain moisture and keep light from reaching the ground where seeds sprout. My favorite mulch is lawn clippings (as long as there is no chemical fertilizer or weed killer or pesticide on them). An inch thick layer of green grass clippings, spread on the ground between plants, keeps most weeds from sprouting. It's also a nice way to add organic material to your garden as it will decay during the garden season. So, whenever you mow, rake the clippings up and add them your garden. Otherwise, plan on getting out once a week to pull your weeds lest they take over your garden.

Plants that die. There's lots to learn about gardening and it takes time. You will have plants that die. Damping off is a disease where seedlings wilt and die for no apparent reason. If it happens, read up on it then and figure out what conditions you need to change. You can always replant! Overwatering is another common mistake. Count your successes rather than focusing on what doesn't make it. Tend your garden at least once a week.

Garden pests. There are an abundance of these. From cats that like to use your nicely tilled soil as a litter box to little red ants, earwigs, japanese beetles and slugs, your garden is a war zone! There are also as many beneficial insects that populate your garden zone (like bees). No matter how bad it gets, don't use pesticides! As a biochemist by training, I could tell you that these toxics are derivitives of things like mustard gas and nerve poisons used in early wars and that, if used in your garden, will get absorbed by the very plants you want to consume. Um, okay. Enough said. Wait to see what pests find your plants, then find a nice way to deal with them. There are lots of non-nasty ways of dealing with the critters that want to share your food. If I was a bug and saw a nicely cultivated garden with lots of my favorite foods together in one place, I'd want to tie on the old feed bag too.

Last thoughts. Obviously, I could go on for days or perhaps even write a book about gardening and there is still so much I personally have to learn and want to try. Once upon a time, folks planted food gardens called Victory Gardens. The sentiment captured in these words still rings true today in so many different ways. Start small, don't be disappointed, learn, have fun, eat and enjoy.