the east garden

I might also have called this post “yet another exercise in patience”. This is a recurring lesson for me, continually popping up in the interstices of my experiences. Those of you that know me are likely familiar with my impatience. Regardless of my perception of time, a garden cannot be rushed. Like so much else.

I do, of course, have reason to be impatient, if such reason exists. Gardening is so much more than merely my passion; alongside foraging and hunting, the gardens will eventually be our primary source of food here. We’re aiming for a measure of sufficiency. My goal is to create such abundance here that we have enough for ourselves, enough for sharing with anyone in need, enough to sell or trade surplus.

The gardens are also integral places to learn from, teach from, to build fertility in and to come to know this place through. They take up our waste, provide habitat and contribute to an ever expanding diversity here; this last point is of paramount importance to the whole project of our living well here. I can’t imagine any riches more valuable to me than my gardens. Cicero said “If you have a garden and books you have everything you need.” Hear, hear.

So, firstly, an introduction to the east garden.

The east garden was formerly home to Nanking cherries, raspberries and strawberries, all of which were dead by the time we arrived, choked out with at least two years worth of mammoth weeds. I had them tilled under to add organic matter to the soil. I had no idea when the soil had last been amended, if ever, nor what it might be deficient in. Since we got here so late I felt rushed to get planting, figuring I would have time later for soil tests and amendments.

I knew it would be a fall garden. I couldn’t start planting until late June, when the spinach and peas were already producing here. The fall garden has the benefits of fewer pests (usually…) and cooler temperatures during harvest to recommend it. Typically I succession plant for two harvests out of many garden spaces anyway, so I was familiar with the timing of a June start.

Despite consciously knowing that I would have to wait until late in the season for most of the harvest, I nevertheless longed anxiously for the bounty of produce that I saw in the gardens of those around me and at the market. I coveted their shelling peas, their early potatoes, their salads adorned with nasturtiums. I worried that I would be the only gardener for whom nothing would grow. I worried that the locals here were right, that I was simply too late to get a decent harvest this year. I fretted that I would fail in my role here of Steward of Garden Magnificence, Provider of Prodigious Harvest.

So, over the last few days of rain G and I stayed inside and chatted about projects we are excited about and how great next year would be, now that some of the infrastructure work here has come together. I accepted that this first garden would of course not be my most productive nor beautiful. I resolved to gratefully bring in what harvest there would be.

Then during a brief sunny spell yesterday I took a walk through the garden and (re)discovered again the value of trust and of patience. It is producing!

Lacinato kale, Broad Windsor fava beans, marigolds and lemon catnip.

Northern Pickling cucumbers climbing a bed frame we salvaged from the dump.

Triumph d’Farcy filet beans.

Petit Gris des Rennes melon. I am exceedingly happy to see these, as it is a rarer variety of seed I had planned to steward.

Druzba tomato, a Ukrainian heirloom.

The permanent beds I laboriously dug by hand will get better every year that compost is heaped on them and new mulch added. The perennials will show off their special vigor once they have a full season with developed root systems. The calendula, borage, nasturtiums, lupins, dill and fennel will self seed with abandon. Despite knowing the riches to come I am completely satisfied with the good work of this first year.