06.17.09

Over the weekend, a friend came over to help weed the garden. While working, we met a man who has a plot down at the end of the garden. His plot is HEAVILY secured, with safety-orange construction netting stretched around it to prevent anyone accessing it with ease. He had some sort of refreshing beverage in a paper bag, and loudly went on and on about how someone had stolen seven brand new tomato cages from his plot. He proceeded to stand over us making inane chitchat while we worked, which I found rather irritating but eventually he moved on.



I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what the back story is, but the woman who's across the way from me later told us that she thinks that HE is the resident garden thief and his behavior, especially going on about his stolen tomato cages, is an attempt to divert attention from him. She told us about how one year she had a huge row of beautiful collard greens. One day she came in and realized that someone had taken care to cut off the growth from the back side of the row so that it looked great when you walked by on the sidwalk, but was completely shorn when you saw the row from the side and back. I am hoping that what's in the past is past, but we'll see.



Thanks to all of the weeding over the weekend, the plot is looking good. I think I can start harvesting my mesculin and I need to thin out the tomatoes and cucumbers soon. The sugar snap peas are growing well, as are the broccoli and the swiss chard. Jasper and I went over to water this afternoon and sampled som of the sugar snap pea shoots that broke off when I was arranging them - delicious! I can't wait to taste everything!





The backyard is also looking great - very green and lush. We are down to two decently-sized peaches, but that's okay. The tree has grown at least two feet from when we planted it, which is exciting. One of the lupines is blooming, as are the foxgloves. The hydrangea is looking great, as are the morning glories and one of the rose bushes. Once we get the back fence panel replaced (a goal for the summer, I hope!), I plan to take out the existing hosta and replace it with a lilac bush.

06.10.09

Back from a weekend out of town, where we stayed at a B&B that had magnificent grounds. Woods Hole Passage - I think they had about two or three acres of land that included lawn, flower beds, a vegetable garden, multiple bird feeders, along with a frog pond that had at least eight big ol' bullfrogs - wowza! I was envious of all of the space, but also got a few ideas about what I can bring back to our backyard as well as the community plot.

I figured out that I am shooting for a sort of cottage garden feel with the backyard. I love the dense, overgrown, cozy look of them, and while I'm not sure exactly how it will play out in our teeny, 13-foot wide rowhouse backyard, that's the direction I'm heading in. To that end, I would really like to replace the big barn doors at the back with a solid wall that has a lockable gate and trellis so we can more easily get in and out. Sigh..one day.

The backyard beds are looking nice and we're getting a few baby raspberries in addition to the two remaining peaches on the tree (I have no idea what happened to the other two). We set up a low-flow soaker hose system on a timer for when we aren't around. It worked great while we were out of town, so now I just need to figure something out for the plants in pots. The community plot is in need of some serious weeding and I think I will get my chance if the weather clears up this weekend, while the boys are a the TMBG kids show - can't wait!

05.27.09

Urban gardening has been a bit of an underground trend for a good while now, but it's gaining momentum in the mainstream press too, as exampled by the following article I read in today's online edition of The Boston Globe.

Regarding keeping chickens for eggs, according to one of the commentors on the article, it IS legal to have three laying hens within the city limits...hrm...I wonder.....

Back to the land
There are reasons aplenty for the sudden growth of new gardens

By Devra First, Globe Staff May 27, 2009

Flavia Graf Reardon is growing things. Lots of things. In the garden she shares with her husband, Tim, there are onions, leeks, carrots, peas, rhubarb, kale, collards, spinach, broccoli rabe, salad greens, raspberries, two kinds of cherries, currants, gooseberries, and many varieties of herbs. Far from rural, this homestead is a few blocks from Egleston Square on the Jamaica Plain/Roxbury line, where you're as likely to hear bass thumping from the cars on nearby Washington Street as crickets.

"It is incredibly satisfying," she says. "There's the whole mystery and magic of planting the seed. Then there's the taste of things you've just picked and grown."

This year brings a set of circumstances - a recession, health scares stemming from the food supply, interest in eating locally, a garden on the White House lawn - that has an increasing number of people thinking about producing their own food. City dwellers are no exception. Reardon, a mother of two who teaches literacy at the Boston Renaissance charter school, has room to garden in her yard, and the family is in the process of purchasing the property next door. They have the soil tested for contamination before planting and raised beds are another way to ensure safety. Much urban production is catch-as-catch-can: on fire escapes and decks, in containers in tiny yards, wherever there's light to coax a seed to sprout. Community garden plots, too, offer a fertile patch in the midst of concrete.

"This year almost every garden has a waiting list," says Valerie Burns, president of Boston Natural Areas Network, which acts as a clearinghouse for the 3,000 community garden plots in the city. "People have the gardening craze, absolutely. We knew it when we started to get calls about plots in January. We usually start to hear in March."

Gardening is on the rise across the board. A National Gardening Association study (sponsored by the Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.) found that 43 million US households plan to grow their own food this year, up 19 percent from 2008. At the seed company Burpee, says spokeswoman Kristin Grilli, "We are noticing a huge increase. We started noticing it last summer when food prices went up, but this year as of March, sales for vegetables are up 30 percent over last year's growth." The normal growth rate is 10 to 15 percent a year, she says.

People are also raising chickens for their eggs. At Ferestien Feed & Farm Supply in Foxborough, orders for baby chicks have increased from last year, says Robert Ferestien. This month Codman Community Farms in Lincoln offered classes on keeping laying hens in a backyard. Raising poultry is prohibited in Boston proper, as it is in many cities; efforts to change these laws are cropping up everywhere from Arlington to Philadelphia to Provo, Utah.

It should come as no surprise that interest stems in part from the economy: For mere chicken feed, one can have a steady supply of fresh eggs and vegetables. Indeed, the National Gardening Association survey found that 54 percent of people cite saving money on food bills as a reason for growing their own. Yet it isn't the main motivating factor. Survey respondents also said they were doing it to have better-tasting food (58 percent), better-quality food (51 percent), and food they know is safe (48 percent). Some wanted to get back to basics (25 percent) or live more locally (22 percent).

This is more than a trend, says Cornelia Hoskin, who helps run Homegrown.org, an online community founded by Farm Aid. "I would absolutely call this a movement, a cultural shift, even. It's the desire to have a real, authentic connection to what is in your life, be it your food or your clothing or things you make a home with. The popularity of crafting and canning and all these things - we're going back to these rural arts. It's what your grandmother did, and we've lost that connection to slowing down and taking care in what we do in our lives."

There's historical precedent for this activity. Victory gardens were considered morale boosters as well as civic duties during World War I and II. In the '60s and '70s, people sought refuge in the back-to-the-land movement. Today, there's a new element in the mix: the Internet. People who want to learn how to keep bees or start composting only have to log on. They will find sites about raising chickens in the city, groups discussing heirloom seeds and home canning, and instructional videos such as those at GardenGirlTV.com, hosted by Patti Moreno, who has turned her Roxbury property into a mini-farm.

"Back in the '70s, when people went back to the land, they went off and built cabins and started gardens, and it was very isolating," says Carleen Madigan, editor of the new book "The Backyard Homestead." "I've been reading a lot of blogs that people keep, just telling about the kinds of experiments they're doing, what they're trying in their own little yards. It creates this virtual community."

Mark Cutler, a manager at Mahoney's Garden Center in Brighton, says he is seeing an uptick in questions from gardening novices. "More and more people are freely admitting they don't know anything about gardens and this is their first time trying," he says. "It's all linked into the organic movement and the green movement."

In some parts of the country, generally those with longer growing seasons, people are trying to produce the bulk of their own food, often chronicling their journeys online. In New England, our goals tend to be more modest.

"Homesteading is out of reach for most people," Hoskin says. "We'd love to have 50 acres in Vermont, but how are we going to make a living and when are we going to see our friends? So I can't build a stone wall, but I can make preserves from strawberries I get at the farmers' market. It's a piece of a lifestyle that connects back to the earth."

That can be reward enough. "There's a picture we have of Martina, who is 3 years old, holding a 3-quart bowl completely full of raspberries," Reardon says of her daughter. "You could never buy that many. It would cost like $100. It just gives you a feeling of real wealth having an excess of delicious things that take time and care to grow."

Devra First can be reached at dfirst@globe.com.

05.25.09

Spent the day at the Arnold Arboretum with my boys (including Bodhi) - I can never get over what a wonderful place it is!  Some of the lilacs were still in bloom and it makes me want to put a lilac bush where the Hosta currently is in the backyard.  Not sure if that will happen this year, but man, it would be awesome!  Lilac bushes always remind me of the book Socks by Beverly Cleary.  I love that book and am pretty sure I remember Socks' passion for lounging under the lilac bush by the front door of their house, among other things.

The backyard garden is looking great, if I do say so myself.  I am loving the addition of the raspberries, foxgloves, lupines, and peonies (last weekend.)  As mentioned earlier, I am a little obsessed with putting in a lilac bush, but will hold off for now.  I did go ahead and mulch everything today, along with throwing down some wildflower seeds just to see what happens.  My dream is to have a beautiful, overgrown garden, inspired by the ones I love in England - maybe we can figure out a small water feature at some point even!  But...I'm trying not to get ahead of myself.  

How cool is this?  One of the other gardeners at Bessie Barnes, Leon (I think), gave me a couple of broccoli and Swiss chard transplants today - he was thinning his rows!  So now, in addition to the cucumbers, tomatoes, mesculin, sugar snap peas, and scallions, we have some chard and broccoli.  I also went ahead and planted some cantaloupe and a watermelon!  I am psyched for the melons, but since we do not have very sandy soil, I'm not sure how well they will fair.  I still have some acorn squash seeds to try, along with green beans, but I worry that my eyes are bigger than my plot, so I'm not sure how everything will come together.  We shall see - I figure in the worst case scenario, all of the overflow will just have to go into pots and then our friends will be given green "gifts."  Or something.

Earlier tonight, my darling husband picked up some bamboo sticks so I can "build" a cage for the sugar snap peas, and I think it will also help with the tomatoes when they grow a bit bigger.  He also picked up some more basil and parsley along with some lavender to grow in pots because our first attempt at herbs in the quarter barrel has only resulted in cilantro and clover/weeds.  The plan for this week is to get the cage for the sugar snap peas built, and then fill out the rest of the plot with my remaining seeds.  After that, I'm sure it'll be time to thin the existing plants, and hopefully things will continue to flourish.  I look forward to getting all of my pots filled and thriving too.  I'm really digging the gardening...pun intended.  :-)

05.18.09

This weekend was great for the gardens! Got up early on Saturday in order to work in the plot and managed to transplant the mesculin, cucumbers, and tomatoes as well as plant seeds for the scallions and sugar snap peas. I have more room and more seeds, so the project is ongoing. I have to say I am really enjoying this whole process. Having never had more than a few potted plants and maybe an herb garden on the fire escape, having an actual bit of land is quite fun.

In addition to getting the veggies in the ground, on Sunday we filled in the "holes" in the backyard beds with some foxgloves and raspberry bushes. The raspberries and foxgloves, along with an existing hosta, are in the left hand bed (looking out from the house). I confess I got tired waiting for the original peonies I planted (from a root ball), so I picked up a couple that are older and have leaves and a few small bulbs to put on the right hand side, along with a couple of lupines to fill in the space on either side of the peach tree. Fret not though - I did not disgard the non-productive peony root ball, I just transferred it into a large pot in hopes it will start sending up shoots soon. Once that happens, I think I can get it back into the ground. In any case, the backyard is finally beginning to look more finished - YAY!

W sent me this article warning of a frost tonight, which is a bit of a bummer. I guess Jasper and I are going to have fun trying to wrap our babies up when we get home this evening!

05.13.09

As promised, below is a shot of the baby peaches (not taken with the iPhone):

It's very exciting to think that our little Esther (Elberta Dwarf) is bearing fruit already!  I think this means she's a bit older than I originally thought - maybe four years instead of two.  The fruit is supposed to be ripe by late July, so we'll just keep doing what we're doing and hope for an abundant crop. I'm eager to try my hand at peach preserves, and of course cobbler and pie, so fingers crossed!

05.12.09

I'm not sure I believe it, but tonight I noticed a few small, fuzzy buds on the peach tree!  I honestly thought it would take a year or two before we saw any fruit, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we might actually have a small harvest this summer - how crazy!  I will take photos tomorrow morning.

This past Sunday (Mother's Day), a friend who just moved to town joined us for lunch and graciously helped me clean up the plot that I'm sharing with lovely neighbor.  It went surprisingly fast; the amount of weeds and debris we pulled out barely filled a single trash bag.  I have not taken any after photos, but following are a few befores of the weeds, old pumpkin(?) vines, and rogue onions at the back.