Gardening 6 (Last Installment in This Series)

“Lettuce is like a conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it.”

“I began digging my potatoes, by the way, about the 4th of July; and I fancy I have discovered the right way to do it. … I do not pull them up, and shake them out, and destroy them; but I dig carefully at the side of the hill, remove the fruit which is grown, leaving the vine undisturbed: and my theory is, that it will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions, until the frost cuts it down.”

—My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner

Well, I planted too much lettuce, or it grew too vigorously. Next year, one row will more than suffice. This year, I devoted two rows to “fresh,” “crisp,” “sparkling” lettuce. I understand Charles Dudley Warner’s adjectives and find them appropriate, but I might have resorted to “velvety” and “delightful” to describe the texture and the flavor of the lettuce that grew from the seeds I purchased at Divers in Middletown. Is there bitterness in lettuce? Perhaps in some, but mine is sweet and mildly spicy! I apply no laboratory chemicals (fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides) to my garden; consequently, a leaf of lettuce that I have grown is as perfect and unspoiled as it can be. As I trust the decaying vegetation of autumn to produce ample fertilizer for the seasons ahead, I need no commercial fertilizers; besides, I improved the soil with horse manure not that many years ago. As for bugs, I permit the garden to groom itself, and I have had no substantial losses from insects or slugs. I keep the garden weeded with meticulous care. Having done so many things right, I still was wrong in my estimate of how much lettuce to plant. My excuse is that the relatively weak production of lettuce in the previous two years prompted me to thickly sow two rows this year. Too much! Stand back!

My Garden Growing Nicely on June 19, 2016

Then there are my plump potatoes. I have dug them gently from the side, as Warner recommends, and I have found that he is right: the plants continue to produce for a much longer season than I would have guessed! Even though I have managed to extend the potato harvest, the life of my garden is a spring and early summer life. By the end of July, baked earth is no longer patiently watered from buckets pumped by hand from the icy depth of my spring-fed well, and weeds—especially grasses—have defeated my sustained effort to keep the garden focused on the plants that I grew. Nature always wins. In those impossibly hot afternoons, flowers riot in the border, but no more vegetables remain to be collected.

Sunflowers Guarding Replanted Beans on June 19, 2016

I have thought about developing a planting schedule that might keep my garden active through the fall and even into the early winter, but, somehow, I always lose interest around June. Maybe I am too tired from pulling weeds. Perhaps the deer flies discourage me. Whatever the reason, I give up and let the garden go wherever it wants to go without my guidance. Only in the dark winter months does my enthusiasm for gardening become rekindled, so that I begin to anticipate the coming of spring and the opportunity to plant anew.

... but this year may be different. As is said, watch this space!

Garden Looking Lovely on June 29, 2016

Produce Beginning to Roll in on June 29, 2016

Sunflowers Surrounding the Garden on July 6, 2016

Sunflowers Bobbing in the Breeze