A Poet's Seed Catalogue
food and the dirt it springs from
In some ways writing about a garden now seems a tremendous cop-out. But I have little energy and even less insight into the kinds of tragic and thunderously absurd goings-on in the country and world. It gets harder and harder to put together a rational and nuanced response to the enduring evolution of paralyzing events that continue to unfold every day. Besides, there is so much speechifying and outrage surrounding us already. I’m not sure what I might have to contribute could actually be considered a contribution. I understand that a feeling of mass impotence is one of the desired impacts of the constant and outrageous inhumanity being unleashed day after day after day by some of the cruelest global media hogs posing as leaders. Even the increasing weight of the rhetoric against these outrages seems to become a part of the fatigue. In that way it is possible, or at least I hope it is possible, that some writing about my garden will feed me and any readers who find interest in such matters and help assuage the threat of impending helplessness and hopelessness. Of course, the doe that has once again found a way into my yard, as pretty as she is, is no help. As the battle of human wits against animal wits goes on one may be, from time to time, convinced they may have conquered such an interloper, even without causing any injury to it, and that the damage to beans and phlox (oh how she loves my phlox!) and hosta and now beets is finished. It is easy enough to stride through the garden self-satisfied with one’s efforts and the ability to overcome the most persistent and niggling adversaries, but alas… almost as if it were in league with the unrelenting toxicity in the halls of power and society, not to mention weather… one or another of them resurfaces only to inject more frustration and grief into the project of cultivating one’s own personal Eden. Eden indeed. But I proceed, not merely for the diversion any gardening or writing about gardening might provide me or my faithful readers. It seems to me the skills and endgame of a garden can be much more than a mere salve to the ache and pull of a hugely disappointing societal lean. For one thing: I make my own food. I know… it may not amount to that much, and it may not even save me much money, but the fact that I know how to grow food and preserve it counts for something beyond the mere diversionary aspect of puttering around in a garden or kitchen, or even the sometimes backbreaking work (at my age anyway) of cultivating and preparing the garden and battling against the aforementioned competing forces in nature, in the dirt and critters and bugs and often enough in the tiniest microorganisms that can bloom and laugh in the face of the best efforts toward a worthwhile harvest. I thought, with that in mind, with ALL that in mind, I would put forward a kind of seed catalogue… a poet’s seed catalogue, if you will… of a few of the different edibles and even some of the flowers that I have in my garden. I can’t promise any great tips or advice about gardening. I am, when all is said and done, something of a clumsy gardener who learns slowly and stubbornly. But I do still have successes, hard won ones as well as ones that seem to come through the ether of the gardening process as unexpected, even spectral, gifts. I am one of those gardeners who, while preparing the soil, or weeding, or planting, puts a tool down somewhere and five minutes later becomes completely unhinged when I cannot locate it. Twenty minutes later it will appear almost magically in a rather obvious place. Where I put it. Of course. Jesus. And no, this is no indication of the onset of some kind of dementia or another. I have been beset by that pattern (if not garden tools, then, even more frequently, keys, wallet, glasses, etc.) for as long as I can remember. So… no, I’m not sure I would recommend anyone taking much gardening advice from me. Though I have to say, I’ve yet to meet another gardener whose methods (and madness) fail to take on almost entirely individuated terms of engagement with the dirt and the plants they wish to cultivate. This activity is almost certainly made up of a kind of mix and match in terms of methods and skills… and while it is helpful and even entertaining to listen to other gardeners hold forth about their approaches…well… you gardeners out there are familiar with that distant look, that hard to hide appraising glance, when the animated exchange between two or more gardeners dives into the descriptions of their favorite ways to tie up, prune, or cage tomatoes, or how to dissuade slugs, or when and how to pull root plants or garlic. We are a tolerant lot, but not an altogether nonjudgemental one. At least in private.
Mustard Greens I start with mustard greens simply because they continue to give me great culinary gifts and because there are very few if any things that can clear my head of its sometimes early morning bleariness better than a trip out to the garden to snip a few varieties of mustard greens to put in the morning omelet. Generally, one only has to clean and rough chop the greens and fold the omelet over them (Swiss cheese is recommended as a fine addition… letting it melt a bit before adding the greens and folding the egg over). There are so many varieties of mustard greens, and the flavor and taste pallet is surprisingly wide, from mild and succulent to spicy and sharp. Leaf shape and color varies too. And a few plants allowed to flower and go to seed will readily self-seed. Red Giant, a deep purple and green variety with huge spicy leaves, comes up every year in various places in and around my lettuce beds, several other varieties are likewise ready self-seeders. I maintain that it is unwise to become too obsessive compulsive about the garden, as far as making each bed or area a complete monoculture and disallowing the emergence of plants that might self-propagate. It is much easier to manage a green that readily self-sows every year, pulling it out selectively and leaving it in key places, than it is to buy new seed every year. Mustard greens are not unattractive when allowed to flower and many varieties self-seed easily and faithfully to the parent variety. Keep in mind that many if not most varieties are sensitive to heat and will bolt to flower when not given enough space or when temps rise into the seventies with corresponding warmer evening temperatures. Rustic Arugula Another green, a favorite in salads, that self-propagates easily, is rustic arugula, or Italian arugula. It seeds more selectively, sparsely, than mustards, so one must be vigilant and on the lookout for it in the late spring when it usually shows itself in its self-selected spot. It seeds sparsely enough, non-invasively. I usually do not pull any of the plants I find. The leaves are much thinner and more sharply lobed than the more familiar kind of arugula (which grows easily and bolts easily… Italian arugula is less heat sensitive). The leaves of rustic arugula are deep green and succulent, with a more satisfying taste than its commonly grown and used cousin.
Amaranth I’ve been growing the long, raceme-tasseled flower of the old garden favorite, Love-lies-bleeding, for many years. There’s a place along the south side of the house, in a bed between the house and the driveway, where it tends to thrive. It is not particularly needy of great soil or moisture and that length of border fits the bill, staying dry and hot much of the summer. Apparently amaranth, in many parts of the world, is a subsistence grain and I became more interested in it some years after I started using Love-lies-bleeding, a variety of amaranth, in that one bed. One year I planted some common purple amaranth not knowing what to expect… but some of the plants grew tall, taller than me, and finished off with plumes of deep burgundy tassels that were similar in their silky texture to the draping Love-lies-bleeding flowers, though they didn’t “weep” and were held like a spire on top of the tall plants. Very attractive, I think. I allowed these plants to stay after frost and they broke and fell with the snows. The next year, after I had cultivated and planted my garden, it became apparent that the amaranth had readily seeded itself, with many little purplish plants rising up in the spot where last year’s plume had fallen. They grew true to their parent variety, tall and rather stately. My job was to remove more than I let stay… and I have had these dramatic plants every year ever since. I’ve done some reading about how the flowers and subsequent seeds are turned into edible grain and other foodstuff. I have yet to try to make food from them, though I have tested the nature of how the seeds are held in the flower plumes and are let go by shaking over a bowl or other container… which is how they are harvested when transformed into grain flour and… get this… a kind of amaranth popcorn. The seeds pop when put in a pan over a flame. Not as large as popcorn but allegedly just as tasty. I am anxious to try it sometime. Apparently, the leaves can be eaten as well. I wonder what a field of this kind of amaranth must look like… acres of those tall burgundy-topped stalks swaying in the wind. In later years I found a golden variety that is not as tall as the purple amaranth, but satisfying in the back of a flower bed, though it does not self-seed. Other Greens In the past twenty years or so I’ve developed a great fondness for turnip and collard greens. I think turnip greens are my favorite of the two. I’ve taken to growing them in the corners of one of my community garden beds. I’ll harvest occasionally during the summer but cut the greatest amount in the fall when I cook up a big pot of greens (I’ve used a slow cooker for this) with a smoked turkey leg or a ham hock or two (or both!), some onion and hot chilies from the garden. Of course, I’ll eat some immediately and over the week ahead, but I am most interested in bagging up and freezing several servings of the greens for the coming cold season. I make each bag of greens large enough to last a week or so… they get better with every cooking and, like mustard greens, are great in omelets. The turnip greens I inadvertently leave in the community lot over the winter sprout more leaves in the spring and will flower… I’ll harvest some and leave the rest to become a lovely mass of yellow flowers early in the season when there isn’t much color. Radishes I have this thing for French breakfast radishes, the long red radishes with white tips. I am almost ashamed to say that I have had some difficulty growing radishes. Other gardeners look at me with something akin to disbelief when I admit this. Much of the problem stems from my inability to leave the damn things alone and let them grow. So, over the past few years I have become more patient. Some of my difficulty lies, I believe, in the fact that I generally co-plant radishes with other vegetables. This is recommended by many gardening experts, but it hasn’t worked so well for me. This year I co-planted with peas, and that has seemed to work quite well. But mostly because, I think, I’ve been able to leave them alone… Peas Speaking of…. Like many vegetables that prefer cooler temperatures, peas are sometimes a problem here. Our winters fight to stay well into April and night temperatures still dip well below freezing into May. When the switch to summer temperatures comes, it often comes hard and fast. Heat can wither peas or cause them to fail to blossom and fruit. I have found a variety, an older variety, that performs consistently well here though. Wando. We love peas. Susan has found a great way to freeze them so that they stay lovely and sweet for much of the Fall and winter.
Tomatoes I could write pages and pages about tomatoes, but I’ll try to keep it short. Like many of my bedding plants, annual flowers, and vegetables, I start tomatoes from seed. I have a small greenhouse where I transfer the plants I start under grow light trays in the mud room after the coldest part of the season seems done. I’ve a small space heater that I use as needed, and also followed some advice recommending placement of a bag or container of sand or a bucket of water in one’s greenhouse. Both will accumulate heat during the day and keep the greenhouse warmer at night. It seems to work, Every year I promise myself I will grow fewer tomato plants so I do not have to struggle as much to get the ones I simply cannot find places for to people who want them. Every year, so far, I fail. I grow up to a dozen different varieties, almost all are heirloom varieties evenly split between slicing tomatoes and paste tomatoes. I’m not partial to cherry tomatoes, but have found a tiny current tomato that produces prolifically and the fruits, though tiny, pop with tomato taste. I’ve a great fondness for what are called the “black” varieties due to their rich taste and fullness of flavor. The black paste tomatoes (Black Pear and Black plum) are very fine additions to my annual pots of tomato sauce, juice, and other canned tomato specialties that occupy the shelves of our pantry: stewed tomatoes, Peruvian sauce (an excellent sweet red sauce) and pickled green tomatoes, among others. The Robeson tomato, a Russian variety named after Paul Robeson, is my favorite full-sized slicer. What can be said that has not been said about a fine, vine ripened, in season, tomato? Sliced with salt and pepper? Or thickly sliced, laid on toast all by itself or with bacon, lettuce and mayo? Here, raising ‘maters has its drawbacks as it probably does anywhere; the shortness of the season here can be the most daunting. Though, as the climate changes, one wonders if that will continue to be an issue… even if dramatic inconsistency and catastrophic weather events, even more problematic to growing food, seem to be the hallmark of any change in weather that this climate shift is creating. Beans More and more, beans have become a mainstay of my garden. I hesitated for many years to put much energy or space into growing beans. I think this came from the numerous rows of beans in my backyard garden when I was a kid. The work of picking and snapping beans felt like sheer drudgery. My mother would gather the four of us on a summer afternoon, or at least the three eldest until my youngest sibling was able to participate, give us each a newspaper to sit and scoot down the row on, and a brown paper grocery bag, and assign us a row or rows to pick. It was hot and tedious… as was snapping those beans in the screened porch after we’d picked them. It might have been when, as an adult, I discovered we much prefer canned green beans over frozen ones that I became more interested in growing and preserving beans. Especially when I started to grow filet beans… the thinner sweet beans that required minimal snapping (a whole bean often fits snugly in a pint Ball jar) and came in delicious buttery yellow varieties as well as green. Later I found a pole bean variety, Fortex, that made superb French cut beans I could also can. I found a tool specific to the job of French cutting the beans. The fortex variety are fat and sweet and do not get stringy even when they are large, perfect for French cutting. This year I am trying another pole bean variety that alleges to be a French filet type…. Emerite. I started experimenting with dried beans some years ago. I hesitate to talk about this only because the damn deer that finds its way into my yard was able to get in again in the past few days and had a field day in my bean patch… and I am pissed! I think they are salvageable…. hopefully more than last year when she ate them later in the season, right as they were flowering and they never truly recovered. There is something magical about growing and shelling dried beans, even beyond the great soups and baked beans they make. Pulling and tying up the plants, hanging them in the green house, and then, on some cool September day, sitting on the back deck and breaking open the dusty dried pods to release the bright shiny beans is oddly and deeply satisfying. One variety, Yin Yang, is more than aptly named. A large bean that makes a creamy and tasty soup, it looks like something out of a fairy tale. Both this year and last, I’ve been trying to grow cannellini beans… but that doe has had it in for me as far as these beans go. We’ll hope they still produce. Plants are tough, over all, and most of the leaves are still uneaten.
Flowers I have taken to planting a square space of zinnia in the middle of my vegetable garden, and this year I added a few left-over cosmos plants. One year there was a remarkable flood of monarch butterflies as summer eclipsed and in September they hung around my zinnias by the dozen. I like to try my hand with a variety of flowers. I keep a strip of French marigolds along one side of my vegetable garden. I’ve spoken before of the variety of nicotiana that I have become quite enamored of. Nicotiana Sylvestris, Only the Lonely Nicotiana. Tiny, sand granule sized seeds eventually grow to tall spires of tubular clutches of white flower tumbrels. Very aromatic at dusk and in the evening. The spires can be taller than me. Last year’s failed due to some still completely un-understood failure in my seed starting mix. So I missed them. This year I have three beds of them, and they all seem to be doing well. They like a little shade and enough moisture. Very dramatic. The leaves are supposed to be mildly toxic… maybe why the damn doe hasn’t bothered them! This year I started a half a flat of statice after years of their absence from the garden. The seeds performed well and now I have one proportionally large bed of statice just starting to flower and a few smaller groupings. I am excited about them. They dry very well and hold color for years after drying. Plus, the deer doesn’t seem to like them. Unlike my poor phlox. Jesus, she’s made them into a main course. I’ve many perennials in the flower beds. My Asiatic lilies are just blooming, and the Shasta daisies have flower heads on them. I am always working on establishing a permanent bed of digitalis or Foxglove, but they are temperamental and very specific about where they will re-seed and thrive. I’ve had some short lived, multi-year successes. They are more than worth the trouble. I transplanted a few rose of sharon bushes that surrounded the little carriage house we lived in before we moved north, and they have thrived. I’ve a lovely red peony that has refused to bloom over the past two years. Hm. I wonder why? I’m not finding any good advice about this. The roses I planted in a sunny spot years ago gradually had to put up with increasing shade from the willows I planted near my little pond. Well… this spring’s ice storm took out the willows so now the roses are quite a bit happier. As are the pond lilies and reeds in the pond! Unfortunately, the three kinds of ligularia I planted under the willows are not so happy, being best suited in shade or dappled light. And they are so exceptional. I need to move them… they droop so sadly in the afternoon sun. Peppers Like tomatoes, I tend to overplant peppers in the spring and end up with quite a few more than I need. Also, like the tomatoes, I primarily grow heirloom varieties or old and established hybrids. Peppers are becoming less a challenge in this short season area, though the variaton each year in their productivity is often puzzling. Too much rain? Not enough? Too cool? Not enough sun or too much? It’s hard to tell. I generally get a fine harvest, but can never really predict what the season will produce. But the varieties of food I can make and preserve from the peppers is exceptional. I’m told my salsa is the best, though not for those sensitive to heat. One pepper, the Bulgarian Carrot, a bright orange jalapeno-shaped pepper, is extremely hot but also extremely fruity. A good choice, if somewhat temperamental in my garden from year to year, if one hopes to can spicy fruity condiments and relishes. I think my favorite sweet green pepper is the Giant Marconi… a very large, long sweet pepper that, given time (which we often do not have up here) turns a gorgeous red. A hybrid I grow, Bounty, is a sweet banana pepper that turns a range of color from yellow to orange to deep red.
Lettuce Not much makes me happier than a bowl of lettuce freshly picked and washed for a salad. The varieties, colors, textures, and subtle taste differences in lettuce go on forever it seems. Most varieties, though sensitive to heat, do well here and resist bolting of they are sprayed down daily. And I keep my lettuce beds in a part of the garden that does not get intense sun for as long as other produce might require. The overall coolness here in the summer generally results in lettuce through much of August. I try new varieties every year, though there are a number that I grow every year too. My long-time favorites are Deer Tongue, Susan’s Red Bibb, and a variety I tried a few years ago, Loma. I also routinely grow a very old variety, Tom Thumb, which produces a small loose head of succulent leaves… each head a great size for a single salad. This year I may have found another variety that will be a keeper: Quan Yin. Slow to bolt, it stands up well to other salad ingredients and dressings. Yum. A salad a day keeps the gastroenterologist away.
Potatoes and other root crops I’ll start to wrap this up by talking a bit about root crops. I have to say I’m a little hesitant to speak of beets. I’ve finally gotten the hang of a productive few rows of beets each year and as it turns out, the damn doe likes the greens almost as much as I like to can the friggin roots. Susan makes a swell pickled beet and I’ve been known to can up a mess of Borsch in good years. No store-bought potato can compare to a potato fresh out from the ground, washed, scrubbed and baked or boiled or fried. When I first grew them, I had trouble with potato bugs, but since I began growing them again in recent years the bugs haven’t found them. Cross fingers and knock wood. I remember at first I was completely bowled-over by the difference in taste and texture between a freshly dug potato and those available in stores. And they are easy to grow… even in barrels in a small space. Try it! Parsnips are sometimes a challenge to get to germinate well, but I seem to have the hang of it (this from someone who has had issues with friggin’ radishes!) and can grow a short row every year, enough for some spring soup or lamb stew. An essential ingredient for such fare, in my estimation, but best if allowed to winter over and pulled before new greens emerge too vigorously from the root. Carrots too are best dug in the spring or late winter. The cold sweetens them. (I also usually wait until after the first frosts hit to pull beets… the frost sweetens them dramatically.) What’s Left I’ve missed a good share of what I keep in my little deer-raided garden: patches of basil, a good row of nasturtium along a border and in a large planter on my deck, blossoms for display and for eating. Nasturtium blossoms have varying degrees of peppery-ness, great in salads. Huge onions up in the community garden along with garlic and shallots, cukes, and more recently I have had success growing cantaloupe there (ice cream on a vine). Broccoli too, that I start from seed. In the past I have bought a packet that has a variety of types of seed that head at varying times over the season, though this year it was unavailable. I’m hoping that lack of availability isn’t permanent. The initial larger heads of broccoli are great, but I have to admit I most enjoy the smaller heads that keep coming on after those first heads are cut, even past frosts.
Gardening has a connection to some deep past. I feel sorry in a way for those who have no interest or feel they do not have the skills or know-how. Or the time. The current demands on a working person's time made by our economic slurry can make it hard to find enough to plant even a small garden. But there are ways. Tomato plants do quite well in large crates, boxes, or pots placed in a sunny spot. Pepper plants too. I’ve already mentioned that potatoes are easy to grow in small spaces, barrels and large crates. And pole beans, a good harvest of them, can be planted to climb up the most rudimentary trellis from a planter or window box. And it’s never too late, even up here, north of the forty-fifth parallel. The greens I mentioned can be started as the weather cools at the end of August. Lettuce too. In other parts of the country the growing seasons support gardens started in a wide time frame. Besides, it’s good to get one’s hands in some dirt. Good to smell it up close and personal. There's tons of research that shows that gardening and working in soil can be healing, can introduce beneficial microbes into your system. Plus there’s food involved. Making your own food. Even getting a small taste of how you can grow the ingredients to provide a meal for yourself introduces a fine awareness of the potential for self-sufficiency. Probably none of the gardening and preserving of food I do will keep me alive for long if the shit really does hit the fan (and it seems a natural response to be concerned about survival while witnessing the kinds of catastrophic changes in nature and in the expression of human socio-economic disorder and cruelty) but the skill and confidence one can develop through even a small effort at making their own food may very well be key to the kinds of talents that will be needed to be brought together in community as the future unfolds.
*** Addendum: Here’s a side thought that’s been poking at me for some time that has little to do with gardening. This obtuse and unconstitutional predilection our current ruling junta has for sending a show of military troops with lethal capability into major urban areas (urban areas that are significantly non-republican) seems like a purposeful effort to induce the extreme stress of a major psychological double bind among those it is meant to frighten and intimidate. Double binds, I might remind you, are among the primary key phenomena capable of breaking an individual or collective brain. In this case it seems clearer every day the wish is to either intimidate the populations of those urban areas into silence or provoke a more dramatic response that could be used as a rationale to allow the military to respond violently. I cannot believe that others have not had this thought. It will take some brilliant organizing and a nuanced response plan to avoid triggering what could become a major and tragic incident or incidents with no real positive outcome. At any rate, one can literally feel the energy of the slovenly desire among these autocrats to put down any sign of resistance through the use of disproportionate force.
