veggies

In our backyard, the neighbors and I started a vegetable garden two springs ago. This weekend, one of my neighbors brought a tiller over and tilled in leaf mold and broke up the soil. Each summer we have expanded the size of the vegetable garden.

Looking at it last night, I figured my late depression-era grandparents would all be proud. Both sets had double lots, with one of them dedicated to vegetable gardening. They all worked these gardens until they were no longer able to do the work.

One reason I've resisted much vegetable gardening, outside of tomatoes, is because gardening for them was never about pleasure or beauty. It was all about the product, which then set off a whole new round of indoor work for canning and freezing.

I like the fact that gardening is an end to itself. I work hard in my garden, but it is for something that is ephemeral, changing, and the pleasure I get is from the process, sometimes from the result, but always from finding myself amid the plants and dirt working out little problems, and imagining solutions to new ones.

The other reason is that I am adverse to heavy poisons and vegetable gardening requires some knowledge of pests and most ways to remove them are chemical.

I opt for fungus spray on my roses, but other than that, I like to use organic methods because in the longterm that is best for the soil and for the life that builds up around the soil and garden. I like a garden full of bees and butterflies. Even the hated Japanese beetles don't get blasted off of my old rugosas with poison. I make some attempt to pull them off and crush them by hand. My heart is not in that battle.

This is probably another reason I hate putting down fertilizer and poison on the grass. It cannot be good for anything living, including my dog Franklin.

And when I look at the hard clay soils under the grass, I find that I would be much more excited about working in amendments and building that soil up and re-sodding than I am about putting down something that is harsh and that does not contribute to the improvement of the dirt.

Back to veggies. But as a community project with three other families, veggie gardening is much easier. In the first place, that's less grass for me to mow. We get lots of fresh tomatoes, and despite any horror stories told you by parsimonious gardeners, one can never have too many tomatoes. I provide land and water and it seems to be a good deal all around.