It's Memorial Day, and all across the norther tier of North America (except where still under snow, floodwaters, or tornado debris), gardeners are heading outside to till up a plot and plant the tomato, pepper and eggplant flats they brought home from the local garden center. Overnight, vegetable gardens will appear as if my magic, transforming a rectangle of lawn or weeds into a plot of cultivated earth with good-sized plants in it.
I applaud anyone who grows any portion of their own food themselves, even just a single tomato plant. There are psychological, philosophical, and even political benefits from seeing where something comes from, from watching a plant from seed or small seedling to a nurturing, nutritional product on your family's dinner plates. Just knowing that you could manage to grow your own food if the the world as we know it crashed tomorrow is comforting and practical. I like living here in Vermont, in a land of gardeners, market farmers and food preservation fanatics--no matter what happens, no matter how big the storm or the floods or the stock market crash, we all know that no one here is going to starve. That's not necessarily a given in other parts of the world.
I was slow getting into the garden this spring, as even my raised beds were saturated. But we've still been eating salads and braised greens for several weeks now, partly from early plantings or spinach, arugula, Italian dandelion, mizuna and other cold-hardy salad fixings, and partly due to my own sloppiness--thanks to the fact that I never cleaned out the kale, radicchio and chard at the end of last year, they all sprouted again, adding to the early spring bounty.
While the Memorial Day weekend still marks a big apex in my planting schedule, gardening for me has evolved into a year-round part of my life. There is just about always something you can plant, indoors or out, any week of the year. There's also likely something you can harvest, indoors or out, every week o the year.
If you are a new gardener and you missed the Memorial Day planting date because you were out at the parades and barbecues, fishing or visiting relatives, don't worry, you can always plant next weekend, or the weekend after. Just start small--I can't count how many folks I've know who decided one year (usually associated with moving to the country) that they'd have a huge vegetable garden, worked themselves to utter exhaustion on Memorial Day weekend, then stared in bafflement at the patch of dead stalks and weeds in mid-July.
So plant a few things this Memorial Day if you possibly can -- and if you don't have ground, plant a cherry tomato plant in a container or hanging basket, or check around for community garden plots available in your neighborhood. Planting a single veggie plant this weekend will make you part of a huge, borderless community of gardeners, all keeping the skills of food security and self-sufficiency alive.
If you can't plant this summer--order up a copy of Barbara Damrosch's Garden Primer for your summer beach read, and patiently plan next year's garden. However you do it, enjoy your holiday!
I was slow getting into the garden this spring, as even my raised beds were saturated. But we've still been eating salads and braised greens for several weeks now, partly from early plantings or spinach, arugula, Italian dandelion, mizuna and other cold-hardy salad fixings, and partly due to my own sloppiness--thanks to the fact that I never cleaned out the kale, radicchio and chard at the end of last year, they all sprouted again, adding to the early spring bounty.
While the Memorial Day weekend still marks a big apex in my planting schedule, gardening for me has evolved into a year-round part of my life. There is just about always something you can plant, indoors or out, any week of the year. There's also likely something you can harvest, indoors or out, every week o the year.
If you are a new gardener and you missed the Memorial Day planting date because you were out at the parades and barbecues, fishing or visiting relatives, don't worry, you can always plant next weekend, or the weekend after. Just start small--I can't count how many folks I've know who decided one year (usually associated with moving to the country) that they'd have a huge vegetable garden, worked themselves to utter exhaustion on Memorial Day weekend, then stared in bafflement at the patch of dead stalks and weeds in mid-July.
So plant a few things this Memorial Day if you possibly can -- and if you don't have ground, plant a cherry tomato plant in a container or hanging basket, or check around for community garden plots available in your neighborhood. Planting a single veggie plant this weekend will make you part of a huge, borderless community of gardeners, all keeping the skills of food security and self-sufficiency alive.
If you can't plant this summer--order up a copy of Barbara Damrosch's Garden Primer for your summer beach read, and patiently plan next year's garden. However you do it, enjoy your holiday!
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