Garden Fever

If you were a fly in the barnyard this is a sight you’d see more and more often in the next month or two – me gazing longingly at my garden. There is just something so satisfying about digging in the dirt, helping things grow, and eating the fruits (and vegetables) of your labor.

Now show me a houseplant and I’ll show you a dead-plant-to-be. When it comes to houseplants my thumbs are black. Matt got me a beautiful ivy for Valentines Day. Gee, thanks, another plant to kill. “I thought since we’ll finally have a real front porch again this summer, you could hang this out there.” He’s so optimistic. I gently forewarned him that it would probably be dead long before we get the porch put on. But, for the moment, it’s alive and well and only missing perhaps a third of the leaves it came with.

But for whatever reason vegetables are an entirely ‘nuther matter. I love to grow vegetables. Last year was the first year we’d had a garden in 6 years (long story, involving rats). I got a little crazy and started 300 tomato plants in our basement. I guess I just got a little over-excited by the Seed Savers catalog, with the sheer number of wonderful sounding tomatoes and their equally wonderful descriptions. Soldacki, Amish Paste, Black from Tula, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Cherokee Purple, Druzba. I don’t even like to eat fresh tomatoes, unless it’s on a sandwich or in a salad. But all of these interesting sounding tomatoes intrigued me.

We had a very wet spring last year and everything was late going into the garden. I was (and still am) working full-time at my day job, and by August the garden was literally a jungle with weeds reaching over my head. Regardless, we got quite the harvest .

Ah, but the tomatoes. I managed to get a few canned and then Matt and I had a trip to San Diego at the end of September. It’s a trip I’ve made a couple of times to the beautiful Hotel del Coronado as part of my day job. But driving home from the Minneapolis airport when we returned I started noticing frost on parked cars we passed. Frost! All of those tomatoes getting frostbite. I almost cried the whole way home.

But don’t you just love the internet? With a quick google I found out that while you can’t can frostbitten tomatoes, you can freeze them. So we ended up with a freezer full of tomatoes in baggies instead of shelves full of tomatoes in jars. I even made freezer salsa.

So a garden is another thing I would still have, if I ever have to sell the farm and move to town. Ideally I’d like to start saving my own seeds, make this a “closed system” where most inputs come right from our own farm. That means manure composting is another thing on my To Learn list.

One of my best friends, who also grew up on a farm, has lived in big cities ever since high school. When she comes home to visit she says one thing she misses most is the feeling of having your feet directly touching the earth without a concrete barrier. It quite literally and figuratively makes her feel more grounded. I’d never even thought of it until she made that remark. Now I think of her when I’m out in my garden, I’m more aware of my blessings, and I am thankful.