Evolution of an Adirondack Gardener
PART TWO
A hoop house is a gardening game-changer. The protected environment not only traps heat for growing earlier and later in the year, the controlled space seems to hinder pests. Fewer cabbage moths laying eggs, fewer tomato worms and slugs, less intrusion from woodchucks and deer. I wrapped mine in chicken wire around the base so there’s no easy access even when the sides are up.
At first, I was able to get about a month of earlier growing and a month later. Then I read Elliot Coleman’s “The Winter Harvest Handbook” and got even more.
Coleman’s Maine market garden is on the 45th parallel, just about where Elizabethtown is (we’re even a little farther south). He grows all winter in unheated greenhouses. The trick is timing, type of plant, and row covers. Getting cold-hardy greens like tatsoi, claytonia, arugula and spinach well-established by December, then keeping them covered using wickets and row covers (doubling up the covers for the coldest part of the season) means, with a little luck, you can grow all year.
Hoop house in winter.
As many gardeners know, root vegetables such as carrots tend to taste sweeter after that first frost. They will stay sweet and safe in-ground into the winter, along with beets and leeks.
Encouraged by the first hoop house and the success of winter gardening, I built a second house, twice as long. It adds up to nearly a 1,000 square feet of growing space that’s undercover and much hotter than anywhere else on the property.
Greens growing in raised beds in a greenhouse.
With so much production, the next challenge was finding a home for all that fresh veg. If not into the bellies of my families right away, then stored. If not stored, then shared with family and friends.
Which is where the whole world of gardening, and what it really means, truly opened up for me.
The roadside vegetable stand I built was a simple design. Take a pallet, tilt it at an angle, put legs and a roof on it. I built some shelves against the pallet slats, but you can just pile on the vegetables any way you want. This summer, we’ve added a cooler and some signage. I’ve had people coming by with such regularity, I’ve started taking orders.
The veggie stand open for business.
My mind turned toward ensuring the food I was sharing was a hundred-percent safe and nutritious. Remember the sand and rocks I mentioned in Part One? The chunks of old road? While only perennials would really be around long enough to get down past my compost into the ground below, I wanted to test it.
I reached out to Cornell Cooperative Extension, then Essex County Soil and Water, who dropped by for a site visit. The soil samples I’ve taken are being tested at the University of Maine for heavy metals. I’m also testing my homemade soil for its nutrient profile, pH balance, and microbial content.
My first composting heap was passive and took three years; I learned about turning and aerating for faster decomposition. Achieving hot compost for the first time was incredibly satisfying. A pile of grass clippings, shredded cardboard, and veggie table scraps reaching 140 degrees? Priceless. I don’t understand why killing weed seeds is such a thrill, the idea of making rich soil from scraps and detritus so galvanizing – it just is.
But, back to the important part.
In the movie “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner hears the voice: “If you build it, they will come…” I never sat down and decided I wanted to be a gardener. And I don’t really remember what compelled me to build that first 2-by-2-foot raised bed.
I just think it’s in us. A reason why gardening is “America’s No. 1 hobby” deep in our DNA.
You know all of the rest. Gardening is good for you. Nature, exercise, soil between your fingers and toes. The part I didn’t expect was connecting with community. With the addition of the roadside stand, my solo affair had turned into a group experience.
It’s bonding over a love for fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, radishes and crispy greens, but it’s something more than that too.
You can garden for sustenance, but unless you have the land and climate hospitable for growing copious wheat or corn (for carbs), olives or hazelnuts (for fatty oils) and pulses such as beans, lentils, and chickpeas (for protein), you’re probably going to need to vary your food sources. It’s great to grow a lot of different things; it’s also great when one gardener excels at tomatoes, another at potatoes, another at corn and beans. And then you all eat together.
What I’ve learned gardening in the North Country: it’s tough. You’re up against short seasons, crazy weather, animals, insects, blights and pathogens that keep coming back in new and terribly vexing forms year on year.
The communal experience makes it all worth it. It lessens the burdens. You form connections with your neighbors you might never have otherwise.
We come from villages. For millennia, each one of us might have known but a couple hundred people in our lifetimes. We shared and traded. And we could see each other, hear each other, look each other in the eye. Give and receive hugs.
Today, as we strive to keep our economies healthy, as we worry in the North Country about declining population and the uncertain future of global supply chains and climate change, community remains foundational. And nothing builds good community like good food.
Good luck out there, gardeners!
Comments are closed.