Photo by Ed Cullen.
Greens grown in the midst of a chilly November.
One morning during the extreme cold of late January, I approached the coverings I’d placed over a long line of large, black plastic pots that nurseries use to grow trees and shrubs. Inside were my winter gold: arugula, romaine lettuce, and Swiss chard planted as seed in late September.
I had placed forty percent shade cloth over the maturing salad greens to slow bolting. With news of the freeze, I’d added bed sheets over the shade cloth, watering them daily using a two-gallon watering can with a sprinkler head. Those sheets had frozen solid when the overnight temperature dropped into the upper teens. When I tapped them, the sound was that of fingers drumming on the fiberglass deck of a ski boat.
The idea was to create a cover that would protect against hard freeze while letting in just enough sunlight until warmer weather returned. I pulled back the cover, before walking stiff-legged back into my warm house.
When I ventured out later, coffee cup in one fist, tall, unfurled romaine lettuce leaves stood in creamy sunlight like blades of green glass. I’d beaten the odds. Yes, “turn, turn, turn, there is a season and a time to every purpose.” But that was before climate change.
Last year, as the summer garden wound down, I said this was perhaps it for my gardening hobby in this ever-warming world.
But what would I have to wake to without a garden? Would the first cup of coffee taste as good in the house as it does outside in early morning?
So, winter found me making the rounds of my small plots, crammed with salad greens, red mustard, red bulb onions, long lines of stately green onions, chives, thyme, rosemary (grown from the cutting of a plant in a favorite restaurant’s streetside herb bed), marjoram (southern oregano), mint marigold (southern tarragon), parsley, and dill. For color, I planted foxglove, snapdragon, neon purple Swiss chard and Queen of Hearts petunia of red and yellow, Louisiana wild petunia with purple flowers and Turk’s cap with its drooping scarlet flags.
“Since the seasons began warming earlier and lasting longer, I’ve often said aloud, 'That’s it. I’m not planting a garden this year.' The last time I said that, I harvested 200 tomatoes, half that number of bell peppers and more eggplants than my wife could work into meals.”
In a warming world, fall gardeners plant and pray in September, hoping the hot days will germinate seed, and cooling weather will come soon enough to help the lettuce seedlings thrive. Some of us hedge our bets with shade cloth—which helps reduce heat in the garden while letting through enough light to make plants grow.
More gardeners are starting spring seeds indoors, so to have plants when they want them. This approach is perhaps less robust than using the plants provided by nurseries, but plants grown from seed make the gardener less dependent on supply and whimsical weather.
For the third fall season, I got green onion sets from the grocery store instead of the nursery I’ve patronized for years. A nurseryman told me the number of green onion suppliers had dwindled. The green onions from the grocery store work fine, so long as there are roots on the long, white bulbs.
You may still be able to score Louisiana Evergreen Onions, but they failed to get wide acceptance when introduced years ago. If you can find them, they are a treasure. They reproduce by division and go season to season with little assistance other than dividing the clumps and replanting them. Other green onions require drying the bulbs before replanting.
Most of us are adapting to new growing conditions because we mark the seasons of the year with our gardens. A fall without a garden is watching the Kentucky Derby without a betting slip in your wallet. Games—and gardening is a game—mean more with something of yourself in the contest.
Since the seasons began warming earlier and lasting longer, I’ve often said aloud, “That’s it. I’m not planting a garden this year.” The last time I said that, I harvested 200 tomatoes, half that number of bell peppers and more eggplants than my wife could work into meals. With the spring garden, the trick is to start earlier than we once did and plan for the garden to stop producing about a month sooner than gardens a decade ago. The reliable seasons and more predictable freezes of our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ time are no more.
Still, some things remain the same. I still garden with friends who are no longer on this earth. Here is a trowel or a shovel, hoe or metal rake bequeathed to me by gardening friends who did, finally, have to quit. My mentors pointed out that row planting wasn’t necessary if you didn’t have the space and drainage was good. A Japanese gardener suggested that I start new crops close to ones that were playing out.
Years ago, I started compost pits, using the rich result to add to potting soil. I stopped using pesticides the first time I saw one of the children snatch lettuce and eat it as he ran to play.
My gardens get sun from just one direction and, then, the bare number of hours to make vegetables—six. No problem, an old gardener said. Plant the tall things in the back.
Stop growing the plants you’ve tried for a couple of seasons without success. Gardening should put food in the kitchen, but it should be interesting, too. In my small plots, I’ve grown sugar cane, corn, and soybeans. I was no threat to the agricultural commodities market.
One of my neighbors tilled her front yard to plant wheat. Years later, another gardener in the same house, who didn’t know about the wheat venture, planted the yard in beans. There may be something in the dirt at that house that makes people defy convention.
A contemporary gardener in my neighborhood grows successful gardens of big vegetables by sparing no expense on store-bought soil, mulch, automatic irrigation, and raised beds. He jokes that his tomatoes cost $5 each. He gardens for pleasure and to watch plants grow. Few of us save money with our gardens, but the produce tastes better than anything from the grocery store. When the annual, national E. coli alert is issued, I stab a fork into my lettuce salad, knowing that what I’m eating came from my garden a few feet from the front door.
These sweltering summer days and unseasonably warm (whatever that means) falls and winters have made me wonder if I should continue to ride a bicycle, garden, and cut the grass. I’m stubborn. I will keep doing what gives me joy and keeps me agile for as long as I can.
World War II’s “greatest generation” is taking its leave. That doesn’t mean there’ll be no greatness among us. Future greatest generations will be those people who take what comes and, if possible, make the world better for those who come after them.
