Rebirth

Not planting Big Garden this year wasn’t a hard decision:  I was not home at the best time to start seeds. Then I soon realized my summer would be unpredictable and announced my decision to D.

I mentioned this to new friends this evening and was met with an incredulous “Seeds? Don’t plants come from Lowe’s?”

I admit to spending a small fortune on seeds each winter (and already own 2023’s planned assortment,) but I think in terms of ROI of what the harvested produce would cost to purchase.

The truest reason to start from seed, for me, is to control what I grow, and to experiment and learn. I DO NOT grow vegetables that can easily be purchased at Kroger’s.

But that was not so the first few years:  my original goal was to grow the green peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers that are the backbones of my Gazpacho <hyperlink to recipe.>

Before Big Garden was Big Garden (a term I added when my boys were little and I would announce that that was where either I or we were headed,) there was just a garden:

1994:  after clearing two brush piles left by the previous owner (and large enough to have hidden small cars, <hyperlink to pile burning story>), D and I started a garden. His parents had been gardeners and mine had not. I had grown up with a few tomato plants and had had a small, triangular-shaped garden for a few early teenage years, before boys – probably my equivalent to girls who love horses.

So, I knew absolutely nothing (other than radishes grow fast) and D knew some:  plant in rows. We tried sunflowers, carrots, tomatoes plus the needed green peppers and cucumbers. We tacked down landscape fabric to reduce the need to weed and it was ugly.

We live on reclaimed farmland and our soil was generally better than Cincinnati clay and, things grew like wildfire. I swore the soil was radioactive. The garden was soon a hot mess, and I was discouraged.

We tried this one more season with better results but then several things happened:

Martha Stewart:  I borrowed her gardening book from the library and became obsessed. This led me to annual trips to the library each January where I brought home 20 books on gardening and read them all. Soon the library had no new books for me.

‘Kitchen Gardener’:  a lovely, and now defunct magazine, that I subscribed to and read cover to cover. Think ‘Cook’s Illustrated,’ for gardening but in color.

HGTV actually had gardening shows at one time, and I watched them every weekend, much the way I still watch Food Network.

Finally, we went to Italy skiing and I saw the terraced gardens on the hillsides and came home wanting a planned garden, a European garden. Enter the final catalyst: “The Art of French Vegetable Gardening.” A book that became my winter tome.

Big Garden, though not yet named as such, was born the spring of 1996 and was classically, symmetrically, shaped in mostly 4’ x 4’ raised beds with some 4’ x 8’ beds with a center of four triangular beds surrounding a diamond. I was in heaven.

I will miss it this summer but will have time to think about it and plan its future as it has changed over the years, not always to my liking. This will be its rebirth.