An Overview of our First Attempt at a Winter Garden

I’m going to switch focus this week from cooking to gardening, mostly because I haven’t cooked anything spectacular this week.  I was going to focus on cookies, but my cookie jar has remained empty for an unprecendented four days, as new baby Lily B has demanded much of my time.  (I believe it is three week growth spurt time.)  So, I’m putting a hold on the joys of brown sugar and butter as they combine sweetly in a mixer, and moving on to the possibly equal joys of watching something green come up in dirt.  Now, here you might disagree with me.  Dirt over butter!?  But, essentially both cooking and gardening involve creating something out of nothing.  While cooking gives you more immediate gratification (10 minutes to convert gooey dough to perfect melty chocolate chip cookies,) gardening does require a little more patience.  Both involve making messes, which is one of my specialties.  And both give you that unparalleled satisfaction of seeing your hard work turn into something useful and (most times) delicious.

Before this winter, I had never tried growing food from the ground.  I have, on several occasions, attempted an herb garden.  My first attempt involved a neat row of baby food jars on the window sill of our brick apartment building in Korea.  They died before they reached more than two inches tall (I partly blame my husband who forgot to water them while I was in Savannah for the summer.)  My second attempt involved digging up part of the backyard at our Fayetteville rental house, which resulted in mostly dirt and weeds and a few struggling basil plants.  Undeterred, I had a plan for our official “First Winter Garden.”  After much research about companion planting and soil conditions and planting times, I ordered fifteen packets of seeds from the Burpee Seed Company: broccoli, cabbage, mustard greens, collard greens, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, beets, carrots, green onion, parsnips, spinach, bib lettuce, romaine lettuce, and brussel sprouts.  I was also enticed by the collards, broccoli and cabbage seedlings at the corner nursery (they also specialize in used furniture, interestingly enough.)  So, I picked up a flat of those as well.  So, the time had come!  My loving husband took his shovel to the sod in a sunny spot in the backyard, and put in four back-breaking days of digging a 24′ x 16′  plot for our garden.

Tony digging up the garden

I then poked the holes for the seeds and planted them (2 seeds in each hole, thinned to 1 when they came up,) and I lovingly put in all the seedlings of broccoli, cabbage and collards.  I spaced them apart according to the package, watered them well, and stood back to watch them grow.

Heidi showing off the seeds

Regrettably, my husband and I are terrible slackers.  Between school and crazy boys and getting ready for our new arrival, I am ashamed to say we didn’t care for our little garden very well.  We started up a compost pile in the summer, but there wasn’t enough to really use for the garden.  We kept saying, “we need to get some compost from the hardware store,”  but we didn’t.  After thinning the young little plants, I didn’t weed them.  The soil was not amended in anyway, and the oak leaves and pecans fell all over the garden through the fall and winter.  Occasionally, every few days, I would waddle out to the garden and check on things.  We had an unusually wet November, December and January, so I didn’t water the garden more than once or twice.

BUT… AMAZINGLY… STUFF GREW!!

Radishes and Candy Canes

Ok, we didn’t really plant Candy Canes….

But, we did get a lot of green stuff:

Our garden growing

I really couldn’t believe it!  Two incompetent, neglectful, out-of-town-half-the-time, brown-thumb individuals made something grow.  As Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, “life found a way.”

So, now I can say to you – if we could do it, you can do it!  And, you probably will have better luck growing bigger, better veggies if you are attentive and loving to your garden.

As it is, we are having rutabagas and collards tonight, and I have the privilege of walking out and pulling them out of the dirt.  Here you must agree, the joy of dirt can be equal to the joy of butter!  Both wonderful means to a tasty end.  And I might mention that my rutabagas, after being cleaned of their dirt, will be sauteed generously with butter for our dinner.  As Olga Dontsova, my wonderful Russian friend would say, butter is divinity!