The Gardener's Year and Gardening Friends

I received a sweet present from my friend Susan in the mail today, a copy of Karel Capek's The Gardener's Year, first published in 1929. And because it is a slim book and one I have been really looking forward to reading, I am trying to digest it slowly and not just gobble it up all in one night as I am apt to do, leaving myself with nothing left to savor tomorrow. Already I've read the two introductions to the book (one by Michael Pollan, the other by Verlyn Klinkenborg), the first short and sweet chapter, and am forcing myself to stop right now on page 7 after reading the lines "Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart."

I have been especially lucky in discovering and pursuing this insatiable passion because I have given my heart over to gardening (or was it stolen from me by the garden I wonder?) in places alongside many others giving their own. I was lucky that my first garden was in a community garden, ensuring that my thoughts about gardening would necessarily forever include thoughts and memories of other people, and I was incredibly lucky to study and work alongside not only the talented gardeners on staff at Brooklyn Botanic, but also my fellow horticulture interns (Susan and Anne included among them). To find a passion at any age is of course a fantastic thing all by itself, but a passion shared with friends is something else entirely.

My friendship with Susan is not solely based on gardening, but it was born and grown in a garden, the most beautiful one in Brooklyn at that.

A Candle on Your Birthday

Joe makes crepes and he also makes candles. When Joe is making candles it looks very similar to when he is making crepes, the beeswax melted in a pan like a flat pancake and then rolled, but it smells a lot different. This year he tried adding some lavender from the garden to the beeswax for scent, but he doesn't think it worked. It's Joe's birthday again and this post is to celebrate.

How to Save Something

Three easy steps.
Grow something.
Dry it.
Tuck it away for a rainy day.

Some things are simple. The challenge, in particular for city dwellers in small apartments with no outside access or maybe even a sunny southern exposure, is finding the space to grow that something in. Am I lucky to have access to such a space, the something saved in this case being open space for a community of gardeners to grow in and on? Tremendously.

Just Potatoes

Are they just potatoes? Well, the seed potatoes came from a family farm from way up north in Maine, Wood Prairie Farm, and they were double certified, both organic and by the state of Maine. The first year that we grew potatoes at the community garden, it was just by some internet searching for certified seed potato that I found the Gerritsen's farm online and ordered some. They yielded well and we continued to order from the farm, both some other vegetable seed and each year since potatoes. But now, I don't just order my seed potatoes from Wood Prairie, I also follow the news about the farm, both in emailed newsletters they send out to customers and elsewhere. And some people are talking about Jim Gerritsen and The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association's lawsuit against Monsanto these days.

So are they just potatoes? Well, yes they are. The ones pictured above are just some potatoes I grew. But there's more than one definition in the dictionary for the word just and it seems to me that the people I buy my seed potatoes from aren't just growing potatoes.

On a Need to Know Basis

Sunflower grown for edible seeds, Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, early August (4 months ago)

How much you come to know about sunflowers depends on how much you need to know. It's a personal thing really. Do you need to know when it might bloom as an annual for decorative purposes? Do you need to know what the optimal soil temperature is for germination because you want to plant seeds or are you curious about when you can expect to harvest yours because you like to eat sunflower seeds? Care to know what the top sunflower oil producing countries are or where in the United States the most sunflowers are grown? Maybe you'd be satisfied with just knowing what local farmers sell them as greens at the farmers market. Are they annual or perennial, open pollinated or hybrid? Are the ones you buy in a bouquet bred to be pollenless for the cutflower market? Are you curious to know what pesticides were used on the ones raised for oil that made their way into the bag of chips at the bodega and how those chemicals might be effecting bees?

There's an entire world to explore in just sunflowers. How much you come to know about sunflowers depends mostly on how much you need to know and the questions you ask.