When it comes to vegetable gardening, I thought I was a committed bachelorette. A dabbler. Playing the (planted) field so to speak. Not serious.
Forgive me if you are a deeply knowledgeable and passionate gardener but my approach has been more casual affection than passion, like a fun date I knew would never turn into a long-term relationship. I enjoy gardening. I’d even go on a second date with it since it brought me flowers (beware, bad garden humor ahead). I thought this “friends with benefits” approach would be enough. Until I got religion. Gardening religion that is.
How did I get here? First, I’m a COVID-era gardening novice. I stopped commuting to New York in 2020 and started kneeling in the dirt in a small backyard raised bed between Zoom calls in 2021. My garden is approximately 12 feet by 5 feet and about 14″ deep, made for me by my friend Kate, who some say put the word “mother” into Mother Earth. Okay, I’m the one who says that, but she is a serious gardener and she’s the closest I have to a gardening (read: guardian) angel, whether she knew she was signing up for that or not (more on that in a moment.)
The first couple of years worked well with little effort — plants bearing broccoli and tomatoes, zucchini — easy peasy, as in plentiful sugar snap peas, too. I put the minimum of effort in, enough to have some good Instagram pictures of my “harvest.” When Kate suggested weeding, I asked why and she might have given me a side eye while explaining “that way you know what’s a plant versus a weed.”
Like in any relationship, you get out of it what you put in to it and by last summer my effort showed. The tomatoes were a bust. My green pepper, as in one, was so tiny it wouldn’t have fed Thumbelina. Eggplant? Barely recognizable, all two of them. The only things that grew well were the cucumbers and the zucchini — the cukes because Kate gave me seeds she special ordered, and the zucchini because, well, it’s zucchini.
This season I was determined to try harder. I composted last fall and raked and fertilized this spring. I borrowed Kate’s staple gun to attach netting to some posts for the peas to climb (meaning I brought the netting and poles to her house so she could attach them with the staple gun).
Then I spent one glorious sunny morning putting in plants. Each trowel-full of soil contained unexpected — to the gardening uninitiated — visitors. Worms. Was this good or bad? I had a feeling that if I texted Kate that question I may get a staple where it was not wanted in return. And I think I knew worms were good, but why?
I went where all good gardeners go for “The Word.” The bible. No, not that bible. The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward Smith. He uses a “W-O-R-D” system to increase garden yields, standing for Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds and Deep soil.
I knew of this gardening bible because Kate keeps it in her reading pile all year long and hers is dog-eared and filled with sticky notes marking important pages, and jotted information. If you’ve been to Monticello to see Jefferson’s gardening journal, you can picture what I mean.
And I actually own one of these bibles. It’s sat on my bookshelf since my gardening “career” began in 2021. Its pages are pristine. Not a mark, not a crease, not a sticky note anywhere. It was given to me (yes, by you know who), but I confess I never opened it. Until now.
In the appendix, under W, I see there’s an entire worm section. Turning to it, I learn worms are good for “soil structure.” Smith writes that worms are so important, in fact, that you ought to conduct a “worm census” to make sure you have enough. He employs bad garden humor too — you can “[worm] your way to better soil,” he writes, and healthy soil is a “friendly place to live and raise little worms.”
I am also already noticing a few holes munched into the leaves of my just planted vegetables. What does Smith have to say about that? There’s a whole chapter called “Bugs, Slugs and Things that Go Chomp in the Night.” I may never sleep again after reading it, but I will nip my pest problem in the bud as long as I, as Smith advises, solve the problem “gently.” No war on pests is a commandment in this bible unless the weapon is garlic spray.
I wonder what Kate thinks of that? I’ll ask her when I stop by to see if she has any extra cucumber seeds.
President of the Marblehead Current’s board of directors, Virginia Buckingham is the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”
Virginia Buckingham
A member of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, Virginia Buckingham is the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”