edible garden

Thoughts on the Plot: My Community Garden Life in 2023

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Once again, I had too much going on in my life to make as big of a dent in my Mt Tabor Community Garden space as I’d hoped I’d be able to this season. But, so far, I’ve been harvesting quite a bit from the few plants I was able to get into the ground. Additionally, I’ll have a lot more in the coming weeks as the seeds I sowed late in the season are coming along well.

Then there are the established plants. You see, in this plot, I use the no till method. Weeds are pulled and mostly composted in the plot. Sometimes I use the green bins, but not as often as I did before. Now I just bury debris for the most part. Cover crops are used. But I don’t till the soil. I just add to it: compost, mulch, organic fertilizer, and sometimes burlap.

So all is not lost. It never is, and you just keep going, and sowing, in my case. Tomorrow I will go to purchase more seed starting mix, and I’ll pick up some organic compost and manure too. Those just get added on top as I go and things seem to be going well—but it took a few years.

And it still needs plenty of attention. There is no easy low-maintenance anything in the garden. I don’t care what you’ve read online. This takes work, lots of glorious work, and the happier you are, the lighter it will feel. Making yourself lower maintenance, and your own needs higher priority, is the only way. I feel much lighter now, and gardening hasn’t felt this great in a long time.

This season I got around to cleaning things up late. As is usual, I received an email about the state of my plot, so I asked for help from two well-seasoned veggie gardening fiends, oops, I mean friends. Theo came to help me weed a bit after Evan and I smothered everything with a bale of straw. Many smothering jokes were made as we giggled and tossed the stuff in the air and I may have rolled around in it just since I seem like someone who’d know what a roll in the hay is, but to be honest, rolling in the straw, in the warmth of the sun, pretty much just made me want to nap like a cat. (My plot is in the middle in the photo on the right.) Maybe this is also just a sign that I’ve eased into middle age. I sure do cherish naps more than I ever have in my entire life.

Not long after Theo helped me clean things up Evan and I returned together again to plant some mums. They’re special selections for tea and are hardy, but Evan no longer wanted to keep them in containers at their apartment. That evening we enjoyed the antics of this feline who was owned by an unhoused individual who was parked nearby. Evan and I discussed ways to add value to my space by growing things that are impossible to find, or else just plain expensive.

I kind of vowed to myself to be a bit more daring in some of my choices going forward.

Regularly I bring home food now, and I carefully pose the produce for photos before chopping it up to eat. The plot continues to run a bit wild. Now that I’ve moved on from my job at Cistus Nursery, one of the goals I hope to continue to work on is the plot. This year I’m sowing additional fall crops for the first time. It’s exciting to me to try new things, to grow new skills, and to observe familiar plants in new ways.

I really enjoy growing food.

So this last week, during a heat wave, I started to sow crops of seeds for planting, and I’ve been able to select out packets of seeds I plan to plant in the ground ASAP. I need to weed more, I need to prune, I want to cut back the rhubarb and do something with it. I love my squash, and I eat all of the tomatoes each time I water as I pop them into my mouth with chive blossoms. I love the curly kale, and I pick a handful of leaves each visit. The summer squash is prolific, but I need to get a harvest basket so it won’t make my arms itch after I carry it to the car. Oh, and the basil! Oh how I love its fragrance! Pesto is in my future, lots of it, and with my new seed fridge, I can fill the freezer with more Ann-safe food to keep me healthy.

So, there are many veggies I still purchase, but their cost does make my efforts worthwhile. I just wish I’d planned this all better to be more productive—and yet, it’s very productive and I’m really happy. The plot is a small space, but I do what I can with it, and I look forward to seeing more and more being harvested in the coming weeks and months. It’s truly a gift right now, and I love the surprises it shares with me.

Yacón (Smallanthus sonchifolius)

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Last autumn my friend Evan moved from Castle Rock, WA to the Portland metropolitan area. Most of the moving took place while I was still away in the Carolinas, but I made sure to have at least a day or two set aside to help transport whatever they needed, and to help wrap up garden tasks. On the last day helping there, the last task was to dig up some yacón, a crop I’d only heard about, and one which I was eager to learn more about. Since I finally ate some this week, it seemed like a good time to mention the delicious New World tuberous treat.

Evan holding up the plant before we chopped it back to harvest the two kinds of tubers.

Evan wrote about the crop before, and I encourage you to read the whole post of theirs since it’s loaded with additional information as well as growing notes for the other crops they trialed a few years ago. Since I’ve only just tasted this, I don’t know yet how to grow it but we did harvest this one huge plant and boy did it NOT disappoint!

The flowers are definitely not very showy and are considered insignificant but they were sweet to see on that cold autumn day.

When we dug the plant up, I asked questions but didn’t retain the information since it was a long and cold day. What I remember though was that one plant ended up producing a lot of tubers and that it sounded like it wasn’t very difficult to grow. My hope is that the tubers I kept to grow at my community garden plot will sprout well and I can continue to keep this one around.

What I learned during a followup with Evan this weekend was that the original start was most likely purchased at the garden show in Seattle a few years ago from the Raintree Nursery booth.

Since then Evan kept it going and now hopefully Tamara at Chickadee Gardens and I can keep these going. (We passed on most of the propagative tubers to her, but she and I both got some so no pressure.)

In the post that Evan wrote above, the nursery Cultivariable is mentioned, and I will add that this is not just a resource for edible tubers you can grow, but it’s also a fun site just to sit and read the content. From potatoes to yacón, oca to mashua, ulluco to sunchokes, this is the resource! If you’re looking for potato species to grow for ornamental purposes (since most don’t taste great), again, this is the place! Or if you want to grow the potato (Solanum jamesii) native to the American SW, again, this is where you can find it. (Though the grower makes it clear that this is not a reliable food crop.) Luckily they sell many other interesting ones you can try—but as in vitro platelets it seems, so dare to be different! Why not!?!

While I wish that I could give you some amazing photos of a dish I made with these big beauties, I must confess to only having eaten one of the smaller ones fresh today. After we harvested everything, the propagation bits had to be separated and then we had to store the edible tubers so as to increase their tastiness. Well, even with a diminished capacity to taste and smell right now, I very much enjoyed the sweetness of the tuber I ate raw this afternoon.

Additionally, due to being in COVID-19 isolation, I can’t go to the store. Yes, that’s right, we’ve finally been hit with the modern plague here at home and I cannot yet go to the store again.

So, what did it taste like? It was delicious! Will I eat them again? Absolutely!

Once I’ve chosen three recipes, I’ll add them here in a post. I plan to make a few different dishes to see how different preparations change the taste and flavor. (If you have a favorite, let me know in the comments!)

So until then, stay warm out there and dream about the tasty tubby tubers you can grow in your garden this year!