VEGGIE CONFLICT
Yesterday the new issue of Martha Stewart Living bounced into the mailbox. I always look forward to the March issue, as it is devoted to the seasonal ritual of getting the garden up and running. I can’t claim to have a Martha-like garden or even a Martha-like approach to gardening, but I thrive on the inspiration.
With apologies to all the ardent vegetable gardeners out there, I must say that my heart sank when I saw the cover, adorned as it is with an array of plump, colorful garden vegetables. My heart stayed in the same low spot as I paged through the issue, which focused mainly on the joys of raising edible crops. The advice was good, the spreads were beautiful and if I were a better gardener, I would already be thinking about getting cool season crops going in my handy cold frame.
The problem is that I am an ornamental gardener at heart.
This doesn’t mean that I haven’t raised my share of edible crops. Last summer I grew strawberries, blueberries, basil and a few tomatoes and blackberries. I have grown a zucchini or two in my day. I love the taste of my own fresh produce and the fruits and vegetables that I buy at the local green markets. I think it is ridiculous that local grocers offer only big bland California strawberries in June, when the succulent local ones are readily available.
Still, I have a hard time allotting much of my limited sunny space to edible crops. I love my roses, hardy geraniums, yarrow and lavender too much. I generally put my edible crops among the decorative ones, on the theory that the horticultural glamour plants pull their weight by attracting pollinating insects to the edible ones.
My other problem with the current vegetable garden craze is the odor of sanctimony that hangs over it. The media has appropriated the lowly backyard vegetable garden and made it into a larger-than-life-size stage for an ongoing morality play. If you access any media outlet that focuses even momentarily on vegetable gardening, you will end up with the distinct impression that people who raise their own vegetables are morally superior to those who buy whatever is in the produce bin at the local market or, God forbid, eat vegetables only when they appear on top of a hamburger.
The fact is that vegetable gardening is wonderful for those who find the activity and the results satisfying. It is a great way to show children that food comes from the earth, not from a sophisticated extrusion device in a factory somewhere. It can open the door to other kinds of gardening and provide healthy outdoor exposure and exercise. What it can’t do is make you a good person.
I have known vegetable gardeners who were miserable human beings; just as I have known vegetable-avoiders who would give you the shirts off their backs. Moral superiority is not hidden somewhere in the homemade compost or lodged just under the skin of a homegrown tomato. People who think it is are getting high on whiffs of sanctimony, not the fragrance of fresh basil.
Gardening, whether it is ornamental gardening or vegetable gardening, should be about enthusiasm and joy, not moral superiority. If you get up on a spring Saturday and can’t wait to get out to your tomatoes and carrots–or your foxgloves and hydrangeas–you are gardening for the right reason and you will have a bountiful harvest of one kind or another. Your enthusiasm will probably communicate itself to others who may be inspired to do the same things for the same reasons. If enough people do it, you will be on your way to making an improvement in society. This is what often happens with community gardens. The people who organize them are gardeners with a desire to grow fresh food and flowers. They often end up helping to revitalize neighborhoods.
If you grow vegetables just because it’s fashionable, you will give it up when fashion shifts. If you do it because of a grim determination to save the planet, you will give it up sooner or later, unless the determination morphs into joy and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. Grim determination makes people want to avoid you.
Good vegetable gardeners are not seduced by magazine photo spreads–at least not after their first year as gardeners–because they know that gardening is sometimes hard work. Things go wrong, bad weather intervenes, and deterring groundhogs, flea beetles and all the myriad other plant predators sometimes taxes even the most enthusiastic gardener.
I am not a vegetable gardener at heart, but my heart is with the kind of gardeners that I grew up with, who love the work, live with the disappointments and keep on going whether vegetable gardening is in vogue or not. Those people celebrate their mammoth Beefsteak tomatoes and countless zucchinis. They give gifts of garlic and cucumbers to their non-gardening neighbors. They don’t worry much about saving humanity, though being thrifty; they have always conserved resources, reused all manner of containers and kept compost piles. Unburdened by sanctimony, they have always made the gardens that helped glue communities together. Those gardeners or their spiritual offspring are still with us. They may or may not be reading the new Martha Stewart Living, but they are ordering their tomato seeds.