Cultivating the Past

Story by Steve Silk | Illustration by Iris Van Rynbach

Back in the day, in this part of the world, you wouldn’t call a house a home unless there were a few herbs and vegetables growing nearby. A yard wasn’t just something to look at, it was a source of sustenance, and home vegetable gardens provided not only food for the table, but herbs to season the daily fare. A home vegetable garden was a good idea then and it’s a good idea now.

All it takes is a patch of land and a bit of effort, and you can feast this very summer on what may be some of the tastiest produce you’ve ever eaten. And for those who’ve never etched a furrow into the earth, sown a few seeds, and reaped the reward, well, you don’t know what you’re missing. There’s an almost primal pleasure in growing your own food, a satisfaction that echoes all the way back to the dawn of history. Agriculture, after all, was the first triumphant act of civilization.

Now there are more reasons than ever to plant a garden. The economy’s down, food prices are up. Industrial farming degrades the land, and the food it produces is shipped hundreds or even thousands of miles to reach the grocery shelf. What a waste. Plus a home garden is a good investment. A $100 worth of seeds planted in an established garden can yield $2,500 worth of food. That’s a pretty good return. Certainly beats the stock market. Oh, and did I mention how luscious homegrown tastes?

Here’s how to start. Find a reasonably level, sunny spot that’s fairly close to the house, so you won’t have to drag a hose all over creation. The ideal location gets at least six hours of direct sun a day. Solar energy is what powers garden plants, though some veggies will grow in less sun. Keep in mind this little ditty, which lists edible plant parts to grow along a continuum from less to more sunlight: leaves, roots, flowers, fruits. So you can grow leaves — lettuce, for example – in less sunlight than fruits – say, tomatoes (which, botanically speaking, are a fruit).

With a site selected, the next step is creating a planting bed. Start small, but consider how to enlarge the garden in years to come, and plan accordingly. You can get growing in a single season, but developing a truly bountiful and handsome-looking plot may take years. The easiest and best way to get a veggie garden started is to make a raised bed. Though it requires a bit of work and expense to prepare, an established raised bed lasts for years and requires almost no maintenance. They also sidestep soil problems – poor drainage, too much clay, too much sand, or whatever, since you make your own. Use three, 8-foot-long, 2x6 or 2x8 boards (hemlock, white oak or black locust is best, just be sure not to use pressure-treated lumber, which can leach toxins into the surrounding soil) to build a 4-foot by 8-foot frame, position it, remove any grass growing inside the frame, then use a pitchfork or shovel to loosen the existing soil as deeply as reasonably possible. Then dig in an additional 4- to 6-inch layer of well-rotted manure or compost and topsoil (you can buy this stuff by the bag), level the frame, add enough topsoil and compost to fill it to the top. Then leave the whole thing alone for a week. Let it settle. Once the bed is prepared, don’t walk on it (that compresses the soil too much). A 4-foot by 8-foot bed is sized so you can reach any spot from the outside, though wider, longer or narrower beds may better suit your needs or your site. If possible, orient the beds so the long dimension runs east to west, and put any tall plants on the north side, so they won’t shade shorter ones. In years to come, the frame will keep the bed looking nice and tidy, and corral all the good soil you’ve worked to make.

For a garden our Colonial forebears might recognize, make four or more of those beds, arrange them in a grid and separate each by 3 or 4 feet to allow room for walking, wheelbarrows and whatever. Cover the paths with an eight-or-more page-thick layer of newspaper or some corrugated cardboard to smother any grass or weeds underneath, and top that off with some wood chip mulch or gravel. Add a birdbath or something in the center, surround the whole plot with a picket fence or mixed hedge – include some blueberries – and you’ve got a symmetrical design that will look good even in winter. And the layout, which is practical as well as pretty, makes future crop rotation easy – just move everything one bed clockwise each year so, say, tomatoes (which attract pests if grown in the same spot year after year) are only planted in the same bed once every four years.

Once you’ve got the garden in place, it’s time to grow. But what? The beauty of veggie gardening is that you can plant what you like to eat, and be sure it will taste better than store-bought. Most commercial vegetables are grown not for their flavor, but for consistency, yield, and ease of mechanical picking and shipping. Home growers, free of the constraints of mass plantings, can opt for tastier varieties by planting heirloom seeds. Heirloom seeds are just that – locally bred varieties treasured for their flavor whose seeds have been passed along from generation to generation. Tomato is just a generic term, like dog. And just as there are dachshunds and Great Danes, there are actually hundreds of varieties of tomatoes, with different attributes. And most of the best tasting are heirloom varieties: “Mortgage Lifter,” “Black from Tula,” “Mr. Stripey,” “Cherokee Purple,” and a host of others. The sweet, slightly acidic “Brandywine” tomato may be unlikely to win any beauty prizes, but it often trumps all comers in taste tests. So, plant heirloom seeds. Many are now available commercially.

There’s also lots of talk about native plants, and the importance of using them in our gardens. This doesn’t apply as much to vegetable gardening as it does to ornamental gardening, because most of what we eat has been introduced from somewhere else anyway. Plus we don’t really want to recreate a Colonial-era garden. Tastes have changed. Tomatoes, for example, were regarded as poisonous and weren’t common in American gardens until the mid-1800s. You could, of course, reconnect to earlier times and grow the three sisters, as Native Americans called their traditional triumvirate of corn, beans and squash. But, sorry to say, that would be a challenge in a very small garden. Winter squash takes up lots of room. And corn, because it is pollinated by wind rather than bees or other insects, does best if you plant lots, so plenty of pollen rides the breeze.

Corn’s pollination issues aside, it is a native plant, native at least to the Americas. Amerindian groups in Mexico bred it, beginning with an unpromising little grass called teosinte, which they developed into the nutritious kerneled cobs we’d recognize today. It was a feat so remarkable that scientists aren’t quite sure how it was achieved. Tomatoes, too, are native to the Americas; their genes have been traced back to Peru. Ditto for potatoes; there are literally hundreds of varieties in Peru, the spud’s motherland. Peppers – the vegetable, not the spice – are also native Americans. And blueberries. Did I mention blueberries? Plant some.

Instead of planting a random grab-bag of your favorite foods, select a garden theme. Make a Mexican salsa garden by planting cilantro, tomatillos, tomatoes, a few hot peppers, and some onions. Try a salad garden with a sweep of greens from lettuce to mustard and arugula, cucumbers, some cherry tomatoes, and whatever else sounds good. Basil maybe, or some cilantro.

As for when to plant, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and heat-lovers of that ilk don’t go in the ground until all danger of frost is past, in late May hereabouts. It’s already too late to start them from seed, so buy transplant-ready plants at a farmers market, or at a home or garden center. Otherwise, think seeds. You can plant peas as soon as early April. Lettuces, chard, kale and such can be planted early too – seeds are cheap, if you lose seedlings to a freeze, plant more. Mid to late May, most other garden seeds can go in the ground. Some beginner-worthy, easy- to-grow-from-seed veggies include bush beans, lettuce, summer squash (so productive you’ll be giving it away), and Swiss chard. To sow, follow the directions on the seed pack — they’re there for a reason. And if you plant in rows, in tiny furrows, it’s easier to distinguish desirable seedlings from sprouting weeds. If kids are helping, let them plant some radishes, which are ready to eat in a month or so – that’s as close as it gets to instant gratification in the garden world. Or, forget the seeds. Select some vegetable seedlings at a garden center and put them in the ground. Once the plants are up and growing, make sure the garden gets at least 1 inch of water a week. If nature doesn’t provide, use a hose. Mornings are the best time to water, and one or two deep soakings a week are far better than seven shallow ones.

For a decorative touch, add a few flowers. They’re practical, too. Marigolds help discourage some of the pests that prey on tomatoes, so planting a skirt of the gaily colored blooms at the foot of a tomato is always a good idea. There are lots of edible flowers, too. Nasturtiums – whose leaves and flowers contribute a perky, peppery punch to salads – are easy to grow. If you can surrender a bloom or two, daylily buds, picked a day before they bloom, add a nice crunch to salads, too. Or, use the petals as a tasty, decorative element on desserts or salads. The flowers of garlic or chives are delicious crumbled into potato salad. Borage, with its beautiful blue flowers, has a cucumbery taste that perks up lemonade, which you might sip in the shade while admiring your backyard bounty.

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Steve Silk is a Farmington-based garden designer and writer. Visit his blog at www.clattervalleygardens.blogspot.com.

How Does Your Kitchen Garden Grow?

Some kitchen (including herb) gardens in Connecticut Open to the public:
Compiled by Colleen Fitzpatrick and Deborah Hornblow

Welles-Shipman-Ward House

972 Main St., South Glastonbury, CT 06073
860-633-6890 / visit www.hsgct.org

Hours: Garden and grounds open daily during daylight hours; house open one Sunday per month April to November, and Tuesdays 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. May through September

Description: On the grounds of the 1755 house, the Glastonbury Garden Club maintains a historic herb garden designed by UConn’s Rudy Favretti. This year, the garden is to be refurbished to increase the variety of cooking herbs, which will be used in demonstrations at the house.

Phelps Tavern Museum

(Home of the Simsbury Historical Society)
800 Hopmeadow St., Simsbury, CT 06070
860-658-2500 / visit www.simsburyhistory.org/phelps-tav.-mus.html

Hours: Gardens viewable daily, year-round, in daylight hours; museum/visitor’s center hours: Tues-Sat, noon to 4 p.m.

Description: Plants used for medicinal and culinary purposes from 1779 to 1850 are featured in the award-winning herb garden, one of several specialty gardens on the 2-acre site. Maintained by volunteers, the herb garden features over 40 varieties of annual and perennial herbs including basil, bee balm, calendula, catnip, chamomile, chives, costmary, dianthus, geranium, lady’s mantle, and lamb’s ears.

Elizabeth Park

Corner Prospect and Asylum avenues
Hartford/West Hartford line
860-231-9443 / visit www.elizabethpark.org

Hours: Daily, dawn to dusk

Description: Although best known for its extraordinary rose gardens, the 102-acre park features several other gardens including one devoted to herbs. The latter, a cooperative effort between the park’s garden staff and the Connecticut Chapter of the American Herb Society, is modeled on a classic that is designed to showcase the range and variety of herb plants.

Noah Webster House

227 South Main St., West Hartford, CT 06107
860-521-5362 / visit www.noahwebsterhouse.org

Hours: Daily, dawn to dusk

Description: The variously talented Noah Webster included among his hobbies a bit of gardening. On the grounds of his West Hartford homestead, the parlor garden contains herbs, flowers and vegetables that might have been available to Webster and his family in the mid-18th century. The plantings were relied upon for food, medicine, dyes, herbicides and disinfectants.

Stanley-Whitman House

37 High St., Farmington, CT 06032
860-677-9222 / visit www.stanleywhitman.org

Hours: Tues.-Fri. 9-4; Sat. & Sun. noon-4

Description: The Dooryard Garden provided the family living in this Colonial farmstead with many of the foods, herbs and dyes needed for self-sufficiency, and supplemented yields from cultivated fields along the Farmington River. Restored three years ago, the raised beds are planted with rhubarb, lettuces, turnips, carrots, peas, beans, squashes, berries and more. Even the flowers have a culinary or medicinal purpose; the roses, for example, would have been used in cooking or making potpourri. The gardens are maintained by the volunteer Dooryard Garden Society.

The Bush-Holley House

(operated by the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich)
39 Strickland Road, Cos Cob, CT 06807
203-869-6899 / visit www.hstg.org

Garden Hours: Daylight hours during the planting and growing seasons

Description: The grounds and gardens surrounding this house, circa 1730, resemble their appearance during the era of the Cos Cob Impressionist art colony that thrived from 1890 to 1920. The garden is planted with heirloom vegetables. The majority are of a type mentioned in diaries by Elmer McRae, who ran the artists’ boarding house with his wife Emma Holley. They include lettuce, cabbage, beets, chard, brussels sprouts, onions, beans, peppers, eggplant, squashes and pumpkins. The garden is maintained by the Green Team, a group of local volunteers.

Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum

211 Main St. Wethersfield, CT 06109
860-529-0612 / visit www.Webb-Deane-Stevens.org

Hours: April, Sat. & Sun. 10-4; May-Oct., open 10-4 all days except Tuesdays

Description: A small garden filled with household herbs – rosemary, thyme, sage, tarragon, comfrey, mint and others – runs the back length of the Isaac Stevens House, built in 1789 and occupied at the time by a middle-class family. The museum uses the herbs in its health and medicine programs and for cooking and scents.

Community Garden Plots

In Avon, Alsop Meadows, 860-409-4332
In Canton, Dyer Avenue, 860-693-5808
In Farmington, Meadow Road, 860-675-2350
In Simsbury, Sand Hill Road, 860-658-3255
In West Hartford, Flagg Road, Buena Vista Road, and Wolcott Road, 860-561-8260

Months of operation: Late April through mid-October

Description: These gardens on town-owned land, with their mix of vegetables, herbs and flowers, may be the best modern example of kitchen gardens, though of course they are in a central location rather than being just out the back door of a house. They are planted and maintained by individuals who lease the plots, and gardening styles range from practical and farmer-like to aesthetic and whimsical. Be sure to stick to the main paths and do not enter a garden uninvited.