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Why Garden at Home?
by Jeanne Prevett Sable
Welcome to Garden on the Edge, a column
sharing the successes and challenges of
home gardening and the joys of living
in the woods. In case you're wondering
why I've decided to combine these topics
into a single column, let me explain. The
fact is, it’s nearly impossible to separate
the two. Where garden interfaces forest,
one invariably spills into the other.
Here on the 12 acres of New Hampshire
woodland my husband, Charlie, and I call home, that's fine with me. When
Mother Nature deals a blow to our best gardening efforts, we can take solace in
the natural world around us and celebrate the unique wildlife observation
opportunities that gardening "on the edge" (of the forest) provides.
This column will not offer step-by-step instructions on how to cultivate the
exotic, award-winning gardens you see in glossy magazines. Nor will it tell you
how to consistently produce bumper crops of perfect, marketable produce. This
will be a hands-on, low-cost approach to raising enough healthy vegetables and
tempting herbs and flowers for your own enjoyment using earth-friendly
methods, recycled materials, and a tad of Yankee ingenuity.
March is the month we sow our tomato, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, and
flowering annual seeds in flats before a large south facing-window. Though it
presently overlooks a carpet of snow, I know it’s only a matter of weeks before
the frost begins its annual retreat, loosening the soil in our raised bed boxes
enough that we can plant peas, spinach, lettuce, and other cool weather crops.
Why Grow Vegetables at Home?
People sometimes ask why grow vegetables at home when local produce in
season is so inexpensive at the market. True, if you dared tally the value of your
time spent planting, cultivating, watering, weeding, thinning, fertilizing, erecting
trellises and fences, patrolling for pests, and, if you're lucky—harvesting, you'd
discover you were paying a handsome ransom for those baskets of home grown
strawberries, shopping bags full of green beans and tomatoes, or that carload of
zucchini. But it's hard to put a price on the calm reassurance of knowing exactly
what goes on, and into, the food we eat, and where it comes from. And it's
impossible to measure some of the more abstract benefits we receive from
gardening.
Home gardeners can avoid a growing list of health concerns associated with
most commercially grown produce. They include potentially harmful sprays,
reduced nutritional value due to depleted soils or artificially extended shelf life,
and the uncertainties of genetic engineering so new it makes guinea pigs of us
all. Call me old fashioned, but I have a strong suspicion that flounder has no
proper place on the family tree of the tomato. So add "peace of mind" to the list
of obvious health benefits of growing your own.
Studies have linked gardening with improved cardiac health. It's easy to see how
healthier eating and the exercise involved in gardening might strengthen the
heart. But I think there's more to it than that. A garden is like a dog begging to be
walked every day. Even if you are pressed for time, tired, or just plain not
feeling up to going out on a particular day, those plants you tended from
infancy have a way of beckoning you outside. The "little peek" you'd intended
to check their progress often turns into a much-needed weeding session. Next
thing you know, you're thinning the beets, staking those tomato plants, or finally
mulching that bed of eggplant. You're operating in full gear, taking in the fresh
air, and feeling better for it. The life you've been nurturing is suddenly nurturing
right back. It nudges you into action, just like that puppy on the leash. You
return with a healthier heart, perhaps, and a lighter spirit to boot.
The Real Benefits of Home Grown Produce
That's because the real benefits of gardening are measured not so much in the
armloads of fruits, vegetables, and flowers you'll harvest as in the little
unexpected delights you'll encounter in the quiet moments spent outdoors
tending your garden. One year while watering the carrot bed during a
particularly dry spell, I was visited by a hummingbird who stopped to shower
at the edge of the spray just inches from my hand. It returned for a daily shower
for the remainder of the drought. That made my day. If nothing grew in the
garden that year, I'd still know what it's like to help a hummingbird take a
shower.
Another time, I was absent-mindedly chucking rotten tomatoes into the woods
when one accidentally hit a metal barrel at the edge of the garden. The resulting
loud BONG startled a flying squirrel living in the bird house overlooking the
garden. He evacuated the premises, giving me a rare daylight glimpse of this
common nocturnal mammal. I was astounded at how perfectly its loose folds of
skin rippled to match the patterns on the beech bark to which it clung. It was a
master of camouflage except for those telltale, bulging eyes! From time to time
after that, we'd spot those big dark eyes peering out from the hole of the
birdhouse whenever we interrupted his sleep with too much commotion in the
garden. We nicknamed him Rocky, after the old cartoon character, of course.
These are the stories I tell when someone asks why bother gardening. It's natural
encounters like these that make it all worth while, even when nature sometimes
defeats our best efforts—like the morning a moose trampled everything in sight.
But I suppose we should have expected him.
Probably just Bullwinkle, looking for Rocky.
About the Author:
Jeanne Prevett Sable is an organic gardener, editor, and freelance writer
specializing in farming and environmental issues, with hundreds of articles
published in local, regional, and national publications. She has written
environmental scripts for children's television, live puppet theater, and the Web.
She is also the author of Seed Keepers of Crescentville, her first novel.
by Jeanne Prevett Sable
Welcome to Garden on the Edge, a column
sharing the successes and challenges of
home gardening and the joys of living
in the woods. In case you're wondering
why I've decided to combine these topics
into a single column, let me explain. The
fact is, it’s nearly impossible to separate
the two. Where garden interfaces forest,
one invariably spills into the other.
Here on the 12 acres of New Hampshire
woodland my husband, Charlie, and I call home, that's fine with me. When
Mother Nature deals a blow to our best gardening efforts, we can take solace in
the natural world around us and celebrate the unique wildlife observation
opportunities that gardening "on the edge" (of the forest) provides.
This column will not offer step-by-step instructions on how to cultivate the
exotic, award-winning gardens you see in glossy magazines. Nor will it tell you
how to consistently produce bumper crops of perfect, marketable produce. This
will be a hands-on, low-cost approach to raising enough healthy vegetables and
tempting herbs and flowers for your own enjoyment using earth-friendly
methods, recycled materials, and a tad of Yankee ingenuity.
March is the month we sow our tomato, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, and
flowering annual seeds in flats before a large south facing-window. Though it
presently overlooks a carpet of snow, I know it’s only a matter of weeks before
the frost begins its annual retreat, loosening the soil in our raised bed boxes
enough that we can plant peas, spinach, lettuce, and other cool weather crops.
Why Grow Vegetables at Home?
People sometimes ask why grow vegetables at home when local produce in
season is so inexpensive at the market. True, if you dared tally the value of your
time spent planting, cultivating, watering, weeding, thinning, fertilizing, erecting
trellises and fences, patrolling for pests, and, if you're lucky—harvesting, you'd
discover you were paying a handsome ransom for those baskets of home grown
strawberries, shopping bags full of green beans and tomatoes, or that carload of
zucchini. But it's hard to put a price on the calm reassurance of knowing exactly
what goes on, and into, the food we eat, and where it comes from. And it's
impossible to measure some of the more abstract benefits we receive from
gardening.
Home gardeners can avoid a growing list of health concerns associated with
most commercially grown produce. They include potentially harmful sprays,
reduced nutritional value due to depleted soils or artificially extended shelf life,
and the uncertainties of genetic engineering so new it makes guinea pigs of us
all. Call me old fashioned, but I have a strong suspicion that flounder has no
proper place on the family tree of the tomato. So add "peace of mind" to the list
of obvious health benefits of growing your own.
Studies have linked gardening with improved cardiac health. It's easy to see how
healthier eating and the exercise involved in gardening might strengthen the
heart. But I think there's more to it than that. A garden is like a dog begging to be
walked every day. Even if you are pressed for time, tired, or just plain not
feeling up to going out on a particular day, those plants you tended from
infancy have a way of beckoning you outside. The "little peek" you'd intended
to check their progress often turns into a much-needed weeding session. Next
thing you know, you're thinning the beets, staking those tomato plants, or finally
mulching that bed of eggplant. You're operating in full gear, taking in the fresh
air, and feeling better for it. The life you've been nurturing is suddenly nurturing
right back. It nudges you into action, just like that puppy on the leash. You
return with a healthier heart, perhaps, and a lighter spirit to boot.
The Real Benefits of Home Grown Produce
That's because the real benefits of gardening are measured not so much in the
armloads of fruits, vegetables, and flowers you'll harvest as in the little
unexpected delights you'll encounter in the quiet moments spent outdoors
tending your garden. One year while watering the carrot bed during a
particularly dry spell, I was visited by a hummingbird who stopped to shower
at the edge of the spray just inches from my hand. It returned for a daily shower
for the remainder of the drought. That made my day. If nothing grew in the
garden that year, I'd still know what it's like to help a hummingbird take a
shower.
Another time, I was absent-mindedly chucking rotten tomatoes into the woods
when one accidentally hit a metal barrel at the edge of the garden. The resulting
loud BONG startled a flying squirrel living in the bird house overlooking the
garden. He evacuated the premises, giving me a rare daylight glimpse of this
common nocturnal mammal. I was astounded at how perfectly its loose folds of
skin rippled to match the patterns on the beech bark to which it clung. It was a
master of camouflage except for those telltale, bulging eyes! From time to time
after that, we'd spot those big dark eyes peering out from the hole of the
birdhouse whenever we interrupted his sleep with too much commotion in the
garden. We nicknamed him Rocky, after the old cartoon character, of course.
These are the stories I tell when someone asks why bother gardening. It's natural
encounters like these that make it all worth while, even when nature sometimes
defeats our best efforts—like the morning a moose trampled everything in sight.
But I suppose we should have expected him.
Probably just Bullwinkle, looking for Rocky.
About the Author:
Jeanne Prevett Sable is an organic gardener, editor, and freelance writer
specializing in farming and environmental issues, with hundreds of articles
published in local, regional, and national publications. She has written
environmental scripts for children's television, live puppet theater, and the Web.
She is also the author of Seed Keepers of Crescentville, her first novel.
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