Stone Soup Row

My favorite story-book version of stone soup.

Each Wednesday at Eli's school is "soup day."  Each family contributes one vegetable to the pot, and a "stone soup" is made.  When I pick Eli up from school on Wednesdays he carries with him a rich aroma of garlic and a potpourri of melded vegetables that is just delicious.

At some point in the summer, when the vegetables were ripening and ready, and Eli had been away from school for a while, he had the idea to make a vegetable soup from the garden, like he does during the school year.  He wanted to pick some of everything and include them in the soup.  "And ONLY from the garden," he insisted.  So we did.  We picked handfuls of fresh basil, carrots, a few different summer squash, tomatoes, thyme, beets, and chard.  I appreciated Eli's enthusiasm for the project very much.  But I have to admit. . .  I was skeptical.  How would this taste?  No broth?  No seasonings?  Just a random assortment of vegetables?

It turns out, it was one of the best soups we had all summer.  (Our family has a soup day on Sundays.)  It was so fresh.  The summer squash and basil just melted in your mouth.  It needed no extra flavors.  And even I (who really dislikes beets) liked the beets, especially the golden ones, in the soup.

Today, though it is far from the ripe days of summer, I made a summer vegetable soup.  It was a cold but sunny day, and maybe part of me was remembering that wonderful day from the garden:  Eli's enthusiasm at harvesting a whole meal from the garden; my own at what a wonderful soup we all ate together.  And really, what more payoff can there be from growing a garden than this?  Joy in the harvesting and eating?  Appreciation for the flavors of the foods from our 5-year-old?

While I was chopping and reminiscing the summer soup we had, I thought of my dilemma of rows (seeTo Row or Not to Row http://getdiggy.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-row-or-not-to-row.html).  And then, it hit me.  Maybe one of my rows can be the summer soup row?  I can grow a little of everything:  basil, squash, tomato, beets and turnips, carrots, some chard.  Anything that would be good in our soup.  I like the idea.  I have grown many themed gardens before:  pizza and salsa gardens to name a few.  But a stone soup row would give credence to the many lessons Eli (and the garden) have taught me:  nature needs no embellishment; there is abundance in little; it feels really good to eat everything from the small patch we have planted.  All things to remember as I ponder my spring seeds.

To Row or Not To Row

Our first seed catalog arrived in the mail the other week.  Johnny's Seeds, which used to be a favorite when I was an unofficial farmer.  I love getting the seed catalogs and one of my favorite essays on this topic is by E.B. White, "A Report in Spring," best known for the quote:  "It really comes down to what a man wants from a plate of peas, and what peas have it in their power to give."  Each winter as the seed catalogs come in the proverbial in-box, I remember this essay and start thinking about spring planting . . . 

But I digress . . .

We had a difficult year gardening this year (as I mentioned in my previous post).  We had a lot of travel and Eli was going through a phase, so to speak.  The garden was not on his list of favorite things to do, to say the least.  It got bad enough that I avoided taking him, but since he had the summer off and I was only semi-employed, he came along.  At the end of the season I said that we would not be having a garden next year:  too much work and not enough interested hands.

This led to an interesting conversation, really a series of conversations, about  some of the things Eli did not like about the garden.  He talked about harvesting carrots at school, for example, but when I asked him if he wanted to do this at our garden, he said no (but was happy to eat them once pulled).  We do have some heavy clay and it can be hard to pull the carrots out, but it turned out that Eli wanted rows.

Rows?

I have moved away from rows.  I started using biointensive gardening practices about 15 years ago.  A friend gave me a book called the Postage Stamp Garden by Duane and Karen Newcomb (now out of print, but a great book for small gardens if you can find it).  In it, she lays out a number of wonderful small plot designs.  When implemented, you have companion plants, all nicely grouped together, with some wavy walkways in between.   Over time these ideas have become less of a garden design and more of a free-for-all.  I also am fond of the volunteer sunflowers, cosmos, and occasional mystery plants that find their way into our garden.  In addition, I've started using buckwheat as a green cover crop/mulch.  I plant it around all my summer veggie seeds, so that when the plants are just sprouting, the buckwheat covers the ground.  Then I pull the buckwheat and lay it on the ground.  I got this idea from the Seeds of Change website:  http://www.seedsofchange.com/digging/cover_crops.aspx

The Green Frenzy, 2010

The result, in my eyes, is a wonderfully green frenzy of plants.  But from Eli's perspective, it was a mess that he didn't like to walk through.  The zucchini or squashes scratched his legs.  He couldn't easily see where to step.   In short, he didn't like the mess of it all.

Also, Jeff said he avoided helping with the garden because he wasn't sure what to do. 

Eli navigating the row-less garden, 2010

So, the plan for this year is . . . .  Rows.  We decided that everyone should have their own beds.  It will be a learning process for everyone.  We all usually say what we want to grow, but this year, we'll choose what we put in our beds, and we will be responsible for planting and weeding and mulching and watering.  (With some job sharing, of course.)  It's funny.  Because in my professional life, I understand the value of everyone having a sense of ownership in the plot.  But I hadn't realized how this was lacking from the garden.  Eli will be 6 this spring, so though he can't fully plan out the succession of plants, he can do some of it, and definitely dig, weed, and water. 

So I am envisioning 6 beds (3 long beds bisected in the middle), with 4 paths lengthwise.  Wide rows, so to speak.  (With room in mine for a little mess!)

There is still a part of me learning to let go.  I just heard a little voice say:  "but what about crop rotation so that you don't get pests. . ."  And after I wrote that "what if some of the soil is bare and blows away?"  I guess I'll just have to learn to deal, or make some suggestions along the way. . .  At any rate, I hope that it will make for a better growing season.  For all of us.  Jeff will learn a bit more about gardening.  Eli will be able to pull his own carrots (his favorite garden veggie).  And I'll learn to let go a bit more and just try to enjoy it.  We'll still have plenty to harvest and many more years of growing!

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In looking for garden designs on rows, I came across this photo of lavender.  Someday Jeff, Eli, and I will bike through France.  Mustard fields and lavender.  My friend Ayesha once said she'd like to be buried in a field of lavender.  I think I'm moving in that direction myself!

Bulbs in Winter

We put the garden to rest a few months ago now.  Even though this was a bit of a rough year for gardening with Eli (he resisted going and whined a lot while there), he was sad to put the garden to rest.  He made a great stone creation out of all the rocks and flagstone we pulled out of the pathways and enjoyed spreading the leaves and straw.  Every now and then we walk our dog by the plot, just to see it resting, buried in snow and straw, bits of rich black soil poking through, waiting for spring.  Maybe this is why I love gardening the most: there is so much hope and wonder in that soil, in what it might be, in what it can produce.

This year I decided to celebrate the 12 Holy Nights.  This represents the time when the 3 Kings were traveling to see the Child of Light.  This is not a tradition I was raised with, but all of the Festivals of Light so resonate with Eli, and his need to cope with the darkness, that it feels right to bring them into our home.  Each day Eli opens a small gift that is something small for the home and family.  It has helped to diffuse the "let-down" after all the excitement of the holiday season.  (Some families rotate, so everyone gets a turn opening something, too.)  Yesterday he found a narcissus bulb waiting for him.  Eli has always loved bulbs.  Maybe it is something symbolic in laying a bulb in the ground and letting it rest through the long cold winter nights.  Maybe it is the cheerfulness of the first spring flowers.  At any rate, I didn't anticipate that he would be so excited to receive a bulb.  It didn't have all the flash of Legos or even the little Ganesh things he received earlier in the week.  But he was pleasantly pleased.  After school, I set out a cookie sheet with a pot, the bulb, a bucket of soil, a spoon, and a small pitcher of water.  He spooned soil over the bulb, very gently patting it down, then watered it and placed the pot in the window.  The green shoots are poking out of the bulb, so we should be able to watch it grow soon.  It's a great mid-winter way to connect to life!