Farmers Schmidt

The garden in July

The fondest memories I have of my dad are the many hours we spent together in our garden. As a child, he taught me how to plant, what to grow, and how much to water. He later helped me get my first job at a small plant nursery in Huntersville. Our home veggie gardens were small but productive, and I remember a few summers when our zucchini output was so prolific we’d have to offload grocery bags of the stuff at neighbors’ doors! After high school there was a ten year pause in my veg-growing life while attending university, optometry school, residency, and relocating to Arkansas. The hiatus was broken a few years ago when Chris and I decided to put in a little vegetable plot in the backyard of our new house. A few things happened: I lost control of the tiller and would’ve ended up in a fence if Chris (one arm in a sling from shoulder surgery) hadn’t come to my rescue, Chris discovered that he loved tending the garden almost as much as he loved me and Bailey (new marriage rule: you have to at least come in and say hello when you get home from work!), and we learned that Little Rock is a great place to grow Italian food. We were eating fresh tomatoes at every meal and making basil pesto by the gallon.

When we moved to our house here in England we immediately decided to put in a veg garden. Chris’parents had given us their old tiller (yep, that came with us from the States) so we (Chris) tilled and mixed in some organic compost last fall. I spent some weeks at South Farm around that time, so had brushed up on old knowledge and picked up a hundred more great tips from Farmer Bart. Last November we tucked some garlic cloves into the newly tilled soil and waited for spring. It was a long wait. It’s been a cold, wet, dreary spring and summer even by England standards. In April, when our Little Rock garden was well on its way to tomatoes, the daylight hours here weren’t even long enough to support growth and a rogue hard freeze set us back even more. It’s been tough to be patient.

Harsh conditions in April - lots of hail.

Although both of us prefer hot and sunny weather, the different climate has given us a chance to grow new types of vegetables. In March we planted four types of potatoes and three kinds of onions. In April we started lettuces, rocket, carrots, beets, chard, leeks, spring onions, pak choy (epic failure), dill, cilantro (failure), and sugar snap peas. In May and June the climbing, bush, drying, and runner beans all went in, as did the corgette, tomatoes, corn, peppers (failure), and kales, and In a few months the cabbages and Brussels sprouts will be planted as an over-winter experiment (again, all new to us). 

Benson tilling what would become our corn, kale, and drying bean patch in June.

 

The garden in early June - still looking a bit scarce!

It wasn’t until late June that things in the garden got exciting.  The snap peas started producing like crazy and after we had our fill, friends came over to eat them off the vine.  Most of the kids in the neighborhood have also taken a turn pulling up a potato plant up and rummaging through the soil for the prizes.  As you can imagine, the kids LOVE this game and the parents laugh as their otherwise picky children are eating spicy arugula and lettuce straight from the garden and asking for carrots be washed so they can be chomped on immediately (always Bugs Bunny style with the leaves still attached!) 

Pulling the first of the early potatoes in late June - they're small but tasty! 

 I’m writing this at the end of July and the carrots are huge and perfect, beets are a good size, each potato plant is producing about five large potatoes, the heads of lettuce are picture-perfect, and the chard and corgettes are producing like crazy.   The Early Purple garlic started looking sad and the leaves were starting to get rusty so we pulled it up, let it dry, and Katherine braided it so it can hang in our kitchen ready to be used!   In about two weeks we’ll be harvesting runner, climbing, and bush beans.  By the end of the summer we hope to the Dalmatian beans will be dried, the onions will fatten up, the corn will produce, and the tomatoes will finally ripen.  All we need are a few good weeks of sun… here’s to hoping!

Lots of lettuce!

Pulled the Early Purple garlic in July, let it dry, and then braided it to hang in the kitchen. 

Corgette is being quite productive!

Corn - not exactly 'knee high by 4th of July'... we'll see what happens!

It’s been a bit of a learning experience, as you can imagine.  The potatoes, especially, didn't go according to plan.  Although they're producing great potatoes, they plants themselves are about 5 times as large as I thought they would get!  The onions are suffering as the hedgerow of potatoes blocks all their sunlight!   

Garden from our bedroom window in mid July.  I absolutely love the various colors and textures.

Katherine and I did some math and figured by the end of the season, if things continue as they are, we’ll have picked about £300 worth of fresh, organic (and very locally grown) vegetables.  We put about £100 into it this year (wood for the border, compost, seeds, tools), so for the first time ever I think having the veg garden has been profitable.  Obviously it’s a hobby more than it is an attempt to be independent of the grocery store but it’s still nice to know that most nights at least part of our meal is straight from the backyard!