Artwork by Rae and Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Typically, during the second week of March, I plant the seeds for my garden, mostly tomatoes and peppers, in the depths of my basement. This year, we’ve just finished digging out from a winter storm that dumped over ten inches of snow on us, but down in the basement, on my workbench, the smell of damp soil and the feel of dirt on my fingers say that springtime is just around the corner.
Yesterday, daffodils and crocuses were starting to poke up out of the cold, cold ground. Today they’re buried under the snow. Hopefully, we’ll see them again. And on this dull gray morning, with even more snowflakes cascading from the sky, the criminal theft of one precious morning hour by that absurd tradition called Daylight Savings Time is tempered by the confirmation that spring is really (snow be damned) right around the corner.
I’ve been planting my backyard garden for over thirty years now and starting my own seeds (my wife loves the heirloom tomatoes) for over twenty. The process is so ingrained in me that even though I only plant once a year, it’s become routine. I know every inch of my little ten by ten-foot backyard plot. I know when to plant, how to plant, and what to plant. I know what to watch for and when to act. I know my enemies. My nemeses are the fungus gnats, aphids, damping-off disease, and mold. I know them well. I own them.
Even though my wife sometimes assists me with choosing the heirloom varieties (from those ubiquitous seed catalogs), weeding, and other sundry garden tasks, gardening for me has been mostly a solitary activity. I turn the soil in the spring, transplant the seedlings, fertilize, mulch, place the ladybugs, nematodes, and other beneficial insects in the soil by myself. Gardening is a relaxing and soothing activity for the solitary times. It gives me time and space to think and work in the great outdoors.
I usually grow more seedlings than I can use so I end up giving some away. About three years ago, a co-worker and good friend wanted to start her own garden and so I gave her a few of my seedlings. She did very well with them and loved the heirloom tomatoes so much that she began to expand her spread. Her husband built her brand-new planter boxes, and she is now growing herbs, carrots, and radishes. She shared some delicious recipes for fresh tomato sauces and garnishes with me. We got to talking, and then she mentioned it might be fun to start a tomato club so we could get together and share resources, know-how, technique, and recipes. It sounded like a great idea. And so, The Tomato Club was born.
Another co-worker harvests his own tomato seeds from year to year for his garden. He joined. My sister-in-law and her husband maintain a beautiful yard complete with a vegetable and herb garden. They joined. I also persuaded my wife to join. We’ve only had two meetings so far, but it’s been a ton of fun. We’ve hung out, drank wine, exchanged seeds, and talked about transplanting techniques, soil-blocking, late blight (my archenemy), and which heirloom varietals we could exchange. We’re talking about getting t-shirts and hats with our very own logo.
At the last meeting, my sister-in-law handed out some beautiful homemade carrot seed strips. As anyone who’s sown carrots can tell you, it’s nearly impossible to plant them at the recommended spacing because the seeds are too tiny to easily manipulate. Some of the bigger seed companies sell carrot tape, but my sister-in-law decided to do it herself. She had simply pasted carefully spaced carrots seeds onto paper toweling and glued them down. Her husband, an illustrator, even created some beautiful packaging for them.
Another co-worker brought in seeds he had harvested from last year’s tomato crop. These were varieties I’d never heard of before and I was intrigued. He also talked about how his garden space seems to somehow be expanding every year—you lose a bush here, a perennial there, and boom—you have a few more square feet.
The founder of the club inaugurated the first meeting with The Whole Seed Catalog, a beautiful catalog put out by the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. It is a five hundred page lavishly illustrated catalog, recipe book, and reference to the hundreds of varieties advertised inside. It’s a pleasure just to page through it. In fact, it reminded me of the Sears and J.C. Penney’s Wishlist catalogs that were mailed to the house around the holidays when we were kids. My brothers and I would page through them, marking the toys we wanted for Christmas: the G.I. Joe gear or Man from UNCLE spy kits or even the Gilbert chemistry sets. Of course, we only got a fraction of what we wanted, but the catalogs opened up our imaginations and let us dream a little bit.
The Whole Seed Catalog also sparked the backyard gardeners’ imagination. Unfortunately, though, unlike children at Christmas, our buying power is not tempered by any sort of outside budget. We were allured, enticed, and seduced by the Abe Lincoln Original Tomato, the Bull’s Blood Beets, and the Kajari Melon. Our garden potential had grown exponentially in our minds’ eyes—but that’s half the fun. Of course, it’s easy to forget we are constrained by space.
My wife had discovered the new technique—new to us—of soil blocking, a seed-starting method that does not require pots. That soil is compacted into pre-shaped blocks into which a seed is placed. This technique not only saves space but prevents seedlings from becoming root-bound, reducing transplant shock. When my wife first told me about soil-blocking, I must confess I mentally raised an eyebrow. After all, I’d been raising seedlings on my own for the past twenty-some years with no little success. Why reinvent the wheel? Why invest in some new-fangled technology? The answer (I told my curmudgeonly self) is of course that soil-blocking could very well be an improvement, as could homemade carrot-seed tapes or harvested seeds or The Whole Seed Catalog.
The whole reason we have a gardening club is to share ideas, resources, and techniques. And wine. In what for me had been a mostly solitary—but not lonely—activity, and what had also become an insular pattern of routines, customs, and methods, the tomato club was like a fresh breeze coming off the lake. I find myself considering doing things differently, of breaking with time-honored traditions.
New ideas, new hopes, new friends, new techniques, and new wines beget not only better and more productive gardens, but a happier and healthier me. Growing a garden is all about renewal, but the club is also about rejuvenation. It almost makes me feel young again–but not young enough to participate in World Naked Gardening Day.