Spring things

Over the past week, my garden has sprung into action. I have a sizable plot mixed with perennial flowers, herbs, shrubs, rocks and empty spaces for annuals and edibles. My garden is a consistent source of joy and woe, as are most creations, although after seven summers toiling in the soil, I am confident I have worked out many of the problems.

Truth be told, I’m not much of a gardener. I have soaring bucolic fantasies, including an impulse every few years to move to the country and live off the fat of the land. In practice, however, I avoid working in the garden like I avoid vacuuming or washing the shower curtain. Weeding, as any gardener knows, is a never ending almost Sisyphean task requiring constant vigilance and commitment. I also have an irrational fear of worms. Much to my dismay, in any outdoor garden, worms are unavoidable: toothless, sightless and prehistoric, lurking in the darkness, waiting to pounce.

I am looking forward to this year’s garden, the maintenance of which I have now entirely subcontracted to my landscaper. He is a proper artist whose loving attention to garden beauty and bounty makes up for his bureaucratic failings. We have devised a system we will test out this year I'm hoping will satisfy both my need for financial order and his desire to create at will. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Through the years, we have grown a sampling of edibles with varying degrees of success. In the beginning, I imagined growing enough vegetables to preserve and consume all year long, keeping step with my prairie ancestors. In reality, the abundance of tall Norway maples in our neighbourhood prevent the maximum sun exposure such a venture requires. That's a good technical reason for my failure. I would be remiss not to mention, however, that my ancestors were farmers, a seven days a week, sun up to sun down job, whereas I have many other things I want to spend my time doing. Such is the distraction of the city.

Of all the vegetables we’ve planted, only a few are worth repeating. Many were more trouble than they were worth. Lettuce, for instance, tastes wonderful when freshly picked, but comes in quickly. Unless you are skilled at timing your crop, planting seeds every two weeks throughout May and June as the package demands, you will have all of your lettuce available at once. Then, after a week or so, it will bolt, become tough or bitter, and unwieldy. Radishes require lots of sun and resowing to leave space for the roots to form, as do carrots. The chore does not yield produce any better than can be purchased at the green grocer.

Two items in particular warrant the fuss of home growing. One, swiss chard, is hardly a fuss at all if you don’t mind earwigs and sprinkling the slug bait once a week or so. I have been growing a bed of swiss chard for several years, enjoying the tender fresh leaves once or twice a day from July through the end of October. Their flavour is unmatched by the leaves you buy in the store, and as such to my mind worth the effort.

The other item we grow is cherry tomatoes. Truth be told, all tomatoes grown in the garden are unparalleled by ones bought in the store. Cherry tomatoes, however, are far less effort and frustration than their larger bretheren. Squirrels, for some reason, bite into tomatoes when they're green, then leave them to rot on the ground, uneaten. They don't do this with cherry toms. So unless you’re into building cages for your plants, cherry tomatoes is the way to go: the squirrels seem to ignore them. Remember to prune your tomato plants every few days, removing the dud sucker shoots that only serve to drain the plant of its resources. They are easily snapped off with your fingers, resulting in exponentially more fruit.

Of course, growing fresh herbs is a no-brainer, such as the lemon thyme I have pictured above, already available for use this early in the season. Whatever you choose to grow, you will be pleased I'm sure with the feeling of independence and power that comes with providing for yourself.