The Victorious Garden

  |  June 13, 2014

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I’ve always been a garden dabbler. For the past several years at my apartment in the village of Saugerties, I’ve tried to make things grow in any way I could with what little space I had in the .16 acre size lot I don’t own. We’re overrun with house plants, but every spring, I’d always long to grow my own food, even if it was just a little bit, even if it was just herbs. So three years ago, I filled a big plastic storage container with dirt and planted tomatoes in it. I had no clue what I was doing, so I just shoved some tiny tomato plants that I’d started from seed into the soil, sat back, and hoped something would happen. And much to my surprise, I got some tomatoes. They were small, and about half of my plants succumbed to blight, but at the end of the season, I filled up a huge bowl with homegrown tomatoes and made a big batch of homemade tomato sauce. It was an immensely gratifying experience.

The next year, I expanded to three containers that consisted of tomatoes, basil, oregano, cauliflower, lettuce, and peppers. It was overcrowded. Drainage was non-existent. The tomatoes died instantly. It was a miserable failure (except for the oregano, which seems to crave abuse and neglect). I didn’t even empty the containers into our apartment’s compost pile at the end of the season. I just left it there to be buried under a blanket of snow during the winter, my own little graveyard of gardening shame. Every once and awhile I would walk by the containers and toss in some old food, at one point even emptying into the containers an entire jar of mung beans I started to sprout and then promptly forgot completely about, only to discover them later floating amongst a flotsam of pink mold. “I wonder if they’ll grow,” I thought, as I tossed the stinking pile of mung into the dirt. Alas, and not surprisingly, they did not.

Anyway, we acquired new landlords this year, so I immediately implored them to let us build a bed in the yard, off to the side, all unobtrusive-like. They agreed that having one less space to mow seemed like a pretty great idea, so my husband and I set about researching garden bed construction. We are re-users in this house. Nothing gets thrown away until it’s had a complete going-over with a flashlight to ensure it cannot be fixed. And 9 out of 10 times, it can. Most of our furniture came from the sides of various roads, every item repaired, painted, and given a second chance and a place of dignity among our collection of revamped cast-offs. Our garden bed would be no different. Our neighbors were kind enough to let us pillage their garage where we found four slats of untreated wood, sort of the same size (measuring’s for tourists). My husband staked them up and tacked the corners for extra support. Then, I grabbed those three containers of dirt with old food and mung mixed in and filled up the bed. We mixed in a little top soil and fertilizer for good measure. Suddenly, our bed was born. Total cost: $30 (the cost of the topsoil and fertilizer).

This year, I planted lettuce, collard greens, kale, basil, cucumbers, bell peppers, broccoli, one tomato plant, and one delicious-smelling verbena plant in my improvised garden bed. I even threw in some green onions I had regrown on my window sill from scraps (see? I told you we recycle everything). One thing concerns me, though: It seems to be on steroids. I can practically stand by the bed and watch the leaves of my lettuce get bigger. In fact, I’ve already harvested some for sandwiches.

So, is it a success? We shall see. It certainly feels like one, and I hope it will taste like one. On a hot day, a stiff breeze will occasionally kick up a faint hint of mung, but to me, that’s the smell of victory.

garden 1

May 27

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June 13

garden 2

June 8

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June 13

garden 3

June 8

garden 4

June 8

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June 13

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garden 5

Spilanthes: A medicinal plant that causes numbing when the flowers are chewed. Great for a toothache. I chose it because of its alien eyeballs.

About Kandy Harris

Kandy is a writer and musician/music teacher living in Saugerties, NY.

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