Sometimes we pass our garden knowledge on to others
How do you know when a carrot is ready to harvest? When should you pick your cucumbers?
Those were among the questions I fielded on Saturday from a group of new gardeners who started plots this year with something called the Neighborhood Farm Initiative. It’s the brainchild of two passionate and engaged gardeners–Bea Trickett and Joshua Wenz–who paid the going rate for a nearly half-acre portion of a community garden here in the District of Columbia and devoted half of it to teaching people how to grow food. Students pay a fee for use of a plot and instruction. The other half of the parcel grows food for an urban CSA program to help fund the initiative.
I was invited to teach a class with a rather vague mission: “how to harvest.” My only tool was the pair of kitchen scissors I use in my own garden. I and a dozen students roamed through the plots looking for conversation starters. I couldn’t help noticing the okra. The pods had been left to grow to enormous size–too big for eating. That perfectly illustrates one of the issues of growing food in a community garden that may be some distance from your home: some vegetables need to be monitored all the time. Okra, for instance, can easily require daily harvest, depending on how many plants you have.
After describing some of the ways I cook and pickle okra, I searched for some smaller pods and snipped those. We passed them around so students could sample them raw. For many it’s a revelation how good okra tastes, and how much better the flavor of fresh okra compared to the tired old stuff you typically see in the supermarket.
Pickling cucumbers also were allowed to vine on the ground, the fruit swollen way past canning size and beginning to fully ripen into a golden yellow. Cucumbers are much more managable–and don’t require nearly the space–if trained on a trellis. But they are wily personalities. You really have to inspect them closely or they will find a way to hide their fruit from you. Pick them when they reach the size you normally see in store-bought pickle jars.
Carrots? Look closely at soil level. You may even need to brush some of the topmost soil away. But you should be able to see the top of the carrot and that will give you an idea whether it’s ready to be pulled. Green beans are a bit more problematic, especially the ones that get stringy as they age. You really have to know your beans and I’m no expert. In fact, my wife totally rejected the pole beans I prepared over the weekend. I’d left them on the vine too long, and failed to remove all the strings (though not for trying mightily).
But here’s the lesson I wanted to leave most of all: never let yourself be overwhelmed by what is happening in your garden. Gardeners may grouse about bugs and diseases. But really their most frequent complaint is they have more produce than they know what to do with. How can I possibly eat all this stuff? Take a deep breath and know that you are the sentient being in your garden. As the human, you are in control. And you have options. Find a few good recipes for the vegetables you love most. And don’t worry if you find yourself repeating them.
Most Americans have this ass-backwards. They clip a recipe out of a food magazine and rush off to the store to find the ingredients, even when half of them aren’t really in season. When you are growing your own food, you must be prepared to eat what the garden gives you. And continue eating it until your plants are exhausted. But you can also save your produce for another time. Whether canning, pickling, drying, freezing–there’s always a method–a Plan B–for dealing with the excess. Learn some of these food preservation skills and you’ll never feel like your produce is going to waste.
I was impressed by the enthusiasm and curiosity of these young gardeners. When the class ended, they actually broke into applause. Obviously they are eager to learn. And what a brilliant idea of Bea Trickett and Joshua Wenz to create a Neighborhood Farm Initiative where new urban gardeners can learn to grow their own food. Apparently there are fresh federal funds in the form of grants being channeled through the local extension service to help programs like this grow and thrive. There’s definitely a movement afoot here in the District of Columbia.
And on that score, if you happen to live in the area, put August 27 on your calendar. At 6:30 pm, the Letelier Theater in Georgetown will be showing a screening of Cintia Cabib’s in-development documentary “A Community of Gardens,” about community gardens and the people who grow them here in the District. Tickets are $15 and benefit the Neighborhood Farm Initiative.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
Kiss these teachers! can’t tell how many times my French neighbors have had to tell me what to do when: harvest those haricots verts, plant the tomatoes later, save the seeds for next year. This has been an endless Gascon life school. it’s a way of continuing the thread from generation to generation…
Thank you for coming on Saturday Ed. It was an informative session! I’m sharing this post with friends and family members who also have started gardens.
Christine, I’m glad we could all have that time together. Gardeners love talking about their vegetables. You’re involved in a great project and I do like to come by ocassionally and admire it.