Waste in the Garden

By Debbra Mikaelsen

As a fairly new gardener, I am experiencing many things for the first time. Some of them are a little heartbreaking, but I strongly encourage everyone to grow a little food. If you have a balcony, try a pot of herbs or cherry tomatoes. Kale grows well in pots, even through the winter.

Because that direct connection with your food is a real eye-opener. For a while now I’ve been a little bit freaky about waste around the kitchen, but now I’m obsessing about the waste in my  garden. For example…

Garlic: nine months in the soil of my community garden plot. I cut the scapes, wait for the appropriate number of leaves to turn brown, and pull up the plump bulbs, feeling rather pleased with myself that they seem to have survived the rust that destroyed so much garlic this year. I shake off some of the soil, but they’re still pretty dirty, so I load them into my bike pannier, bulb ends out (this was my mistake!) and cycle home.

But along the way one of the bulbs topples out and gets dragged along the pavement, leaving a wonderful garlicky scent along the road. But grated garlic is not what I wanted at this stage, and definitely not on East 14th Avenue. So an entire bulb is lost and I am beating myself up, promising never again to prioritize a clean pannier over a healthy garlic.

Then, yesterday while watering my tomatoes, I knocked on of the laden plants with the hose. Not just one but four green plum tomatoes tumbled to an early death on the courtyard! A tragedy of Greek proportions.

And what about holidays? I’m going away for about 5 days. Who is trustworthy enough to be left with the responsibility of (carefully) watering my garden every day in this heat? I practically feel the need to screen them by checking for references. And this is just 5 days. How do people leave their gardens for 2 weeks? (Don’t even ask about farmers. Farmers just never get to go away in the summer. Forget that.)

I chose this photo because of the entire row of exotic radish seeds I planted, I got only one radish. Can you believe that? It was perfect, but only one survived. I must lack the knack for root crops, as I had similar crop failure with carrots. So next year I am not buying any carrot, radish or beet seeds.

When you grow the food yourself, every little onion, every tomato, every leaf of basil is precious.  And I think that respect for food will follow you from your garden or balcony container and into the grocery store. Really, I do. Try it.

Debbra Mikaelsen