The 7-year gardening itch
It happens, even in the best of gardens.
Beautiful witch hazel is our first spring bloom of the season here in Missouri, filling the air with its clove-like scent. Those sunny petals, like the tendrils in a starburst firework, the tiny, beating hearts of the red centers—a vivid reminder that nature is still alive, still coursing through the veins of the world beneath the rustling, dead husks of leaves.
I like to go out and see them as early as February, sometimes playing a stark contrast to tufts of snow tucked into the branches of this bush.
It’s 4 am, and I’m awake. A warm-blooded creature squeals for mercy in the night, the sounds coming from deep in the brush around the train tracks nearby. A reminder that nature is not always pretty.
I’m feeling the itch these days, like I’m coming out of my own skin.
This is our seventh year here, and I have been feeling ambivalent about the garden. Usually by now, just a week before spring’s official start date, I’ve got stacks of seed packets labeled for “spring cool” or “warm” season or “fall cool.” My garden-planning spreadsheet is normally up-to-date, the garden itself tidily waiting. The chicks had been ordered by this time last year, the garden tour dates set.
But not so here in 2024. There have been delays, hemming and hawing, a call to a landscaper about putting in paths… possibly. A subtle question whether we should keep doing this at all.
We will, though. We will. Despite age advancing in the form of greater aches and pains, an increased sensitivity to things we once met with ease, like the clock change for Daylight Savings. The insomnia struggle is real.
But why grow our own food? Because of the seeming magic of poking a tiny seed into the soil and watching it transform into a sprout, a tall, green stalk of something living, and then a plant that bears fruit. To feel that connection with the earth and its rhythms, to imbibe the very essence of sunlight fused into a stalk of asparagus.
You can plant asparagus in most gardening zones now. It’s a giving and forgiving perennial that will put you in spears for as many as 30 years from one set of crowns. The below link says fall, which is another good time to plant them, but spring works just as well.
People often forget the bookend seasons, concentrating on the sexy summer tomatoes, the suggestive zucchini, the gorgeous gourd. But the early-spring cool season is often our best. Lettuce only grows in spring and fall here in our humid subtropics, tender greens won’t bolt, kale succumbs to Japanese beetles in the crushing heat of July, and if you wait too late to plant carrots, they won’t germinate in the swelter. But spring rains water them beautifully.
About those tender greens. I have recommendations.
By the time you read this, we will have direct-sown seeds for radishes, peas, kale, Swiss chard, and yes, carrots. Or maybe just radishes and carrots, as I am learning hard lessons about pacing, and anyway this biodynamic calendar says to focus on roots now. Maybe my garden-planning spreadsheet will have been updated as well. I give you access to this, as a paid subscriber.
I hope it’s helpful. If it is, if you’re using it, I’d love to hear about that in the comments.
Spring radishes will be a first for us, though we had great success one year with fall radishes, the black Spanish kind that grow to enormous size. I’m hoping these smaller, purplish versions give us variety in our spring salads, which we eat every day when the lettuce is coming in like it does until the heat makes it grow bitter and bolt. If we’re successful and have enough, I might try to ferment them. The black ones in fall fermented beautifully.
Speaking of fermenting, next month
—author of the bestselling book Fermented Vegetables1—will be our guest for a recipe share and interview. We’re also giving away a print copy of the new edition, just out for its tenth anniversary, to one of you paid subscribers.Will we raise chickens this year? It’s a good question to ask, even as we repair the
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