My Summer 2009 Garden

My previous landlord owns a large piece of land in downtown Moncton. Unfortunately, he doesn't use it for anything but mowing the lawn. I thought it was quite a shame to waste all that space so I asked him if I could tear up corner, out of view, and plant a garden. He agreed. I was surprised.

Now digging a new garden is quite the endeavour. The method I used is called "deep digging". What this consists of is removing the layer of sod (the real hard part), digging 12 inches down, and mixing that 12 inches of dirt with good organic dirt mixed with compost. In a phrase, it sounds easy. But it's quite demanding work when the soil below the sod is mostly clay and someone in the past thought it was a good idea to throw a window frame, a few dozen bricks and other random garbage underneath the top layer of dirt.

In addition to being difficult to start, the garden had a large coniferous tree on the east side, a garage on the west side and a 4 foot high fence on the south side. Really not ideal growing conditions. Plus, since I'd dug down in an already low spot, water pooled in between my rows. All summer I stressed about the water overflowing and drowning my plants. The bugs loved it. My vegetables weren't as enthousiastic.

The picture below was taken a few weeks ago. It's what I would consider the "big harvest" which, believe me, I know is sad. Captured in the photo are Early Wonder Top beets, Danvers carrots, one Costata Romanesca zucchini, one Lemon Cucumber, a small handful of Black Valentine bush beans, Baie Verte Indian pole beans and a few tomatoes. The tomatoes I grew (relatively successfully in the grand scheme of things) were Sungold cherry tomatoes grown from seeds I'd saved from last year, as well as Russian, San Marzano, Mennonite Orange, Toma Verde Tomatillo, and Tribe's Tobique all grown from seedlings I bought from Amarosia Organic Garden in the spring. I got a few tomatoes from each but none from the tomatillo. Unfortunately, I'd marked each variety of tomatoe on a piece of wood with permanent marker. It would seem that permanent marker is not so permanent during a whole summer in the rain and sun. So I don't know which tomato is which.

One of the mystery tomato varieties. Mennonite Orange or Russian?

These are Baie Verte Indian pole beans which I grew in the "three sisters" model of corn on which the beans climb and at the foot of which are planted squash to provide shade. I planted Golden Bantam sweet corn and Lester's buttercup squash. I know I'm not going to get any squash (due to the persistent cucumber beetles which destroyed anything with a yellow flower) but I might get one or two ears of corn. Not the best turnout but all part of the learning curve. At the end of the day, it costs less than tuition fees at university. And the quality of the education is far superior.

This beautiful yellow flower belongs to the Costata Romanesca plant. As previously mentioned, the cucumber beetles seemed to find these flowers beautiful too. In the background you can see the round zuchinni. They are really tasty. Not like the bland cardboard stuff they sell at the supermarket.

These are Love Lies Bleeding amaranth flowers. Aren't they pretty? I think these perfectly illustrate how edible landscaping is much better than conventional landscaping. They are nice to look at and edible.

Behind the amaranth tower the Jerusalem Artichokes I got from Wingate Farm and which we planted a row of at the community garden since they are a perrenial and make an excellent border. I have yet to harvest either the amaranth of the JAs. But I will.

Not included in these photos are the sweet peas (planted by the fence and quickly died from lack of sun and slug attacks), the strawberries (same predicament as the peas), the pickling cucumbers (beetles again), the cantaloupe (only produced a rock hard excuse for a melon), the variety of leaf lettuce (I got 4 servings of these), and the Taisai Chinese cabbage (slugs quickly killing the young sprouts). Also not featured are the dill, the cauliflower, the watermelon and the thyme which never had a chance to experience life.

Next summer I won't be planting a garden since halfway through the summer I'll be moving back to Ontario. But in two summers my garden will be back with a vengeance. No more shaddy, flood proned patches for me.

NOTE: All seeds were sourced from Hope Seeds, a New Brunswick organic seed company. See www.hopeseeds.com

Mostly Market and Organic Dégustation

The return to New Brunswick spells two thing: the return to the farmer's market and my own kitchen. It's always a bitch to be in someone else's ill equiped kitchen, where you don't even know in what drawer the spatulas are. On est bien chez sois.

This dégustation featured fresh salami, Champignon brie with green peppercorns (absolutely delicious and creamy and mild), Oka (a Canadian cheese with a quite bitter taste), a stilton blue, and a garlic and chive English cheese whose name I forget...something about monks or mountains?

The olive loaf you see on the side there is from a wonderful German woman's bakery. It's soft, fun to tear as opposed to slice, and absolutely exquisite when dipped in olive oil (my girlfriend said that the olives in the bread put the olive back into the olive oil and that the olive oil put the oil back into the olives...if that makes any sense to you). I got the idea from my day at Amarosia Organic Garden where I was fed this wonderful bread. Exposure to great food through sharing. But more on that later.

The other part of our little finger food meal was comprised of vegetables and fruit from the previously mentioned farm. The whitish-yellowish thing you see right in front that looks like the quarter of an apple is actually a cucumber! Lemon cucumbers to be precise. They were fresh, crunchy and something I could see in a ploughman's lunch. Really cool vegetable. How many times have you seen the word cool used to describe vegetables, eh?

The little orange tomatoes were soft, burst in your mouth and had a really sweet taste almost reminiscent of cantaloupe. All organic so you don't get that unshakeable pesticide taste. At the far back we also had organic Galia melon. It looks like a cantaloupe but a tad smaller, with green flesh and not as sweet. Really nice.

The un-organic part was comprised of dull avocado and some ripe pears. Nothing exciting there.

I'd like to take a moment to advocate this sort of meal. Since it's all finger food placed in the middle of the table, it accomplishes three things: 1) It encourages us to take our time to eat. A bit of this. A bit of that. And here on the Western part of our blue planet we tend to have a problem with eating too quickly. So this makes it easy. And fun; 2) Having a bit of everything satisfies the picky people sharing your table since if they don't like such and such an item, they don't have to eat it. More for you; 3) Like a fondu, I find this is a very social way of eating. We're all sharing from the same plate, just ripping away at some bread, taking time to talk about the wonderful things we're eating and generally having a good time centralized on food. It's something a TV can't accomplish. Whoever heard of quality family time spent in front of a TV? Plus you don't have to take the time to cook it or make individual plates so it's really not labour intensive. Just slice and throw it on a plate.

Screw fondus! Have a dégustation with your family tonight!