I recently outed my dirty little secret on Lisa Bralts' radio show, "In My Backyard" on WILL. The secret is simple, I don't actually like to garden. I advocate that everyone food garden to one extent or another, its true, but I'm not into it. I have friends that are into it. Every late winter I am just as excited as they are, pouring over seed catalogs and planning what I am going to plant as soon as the ground is soft enough. And that first early spring harvest of greens and radishes is heady, I crow all about it and love the food. But every time I have to plant seeds my knees complain about being used and I never remember to water. I'll weed a few time a summer, letting the unwanted buggers get overgrown before I pull them. If a crop is being consumed by bugs I no longer fight them, I just harvest what I can around them and move on. I don't particularly enjoy dish washing or teeth brushing either, but I do advocate for them. They aren't painful things to do, they are just boring things to do that are part of life. I feel the same about gardening.
So I get things planted and I get things harvested and I usually get things cleaned out of the garden in the fall, but I don't do much more. My coworker, Anne, calls it "benevolent neglect", this style of gardening, and we both practice it.
Here's a pic of the current state of the "benevolent neglect" of my garden. Its a total mess, I haven't purposefully watered it in probably months. And I am harvesting cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, kale, bell peppers, and herbs out of it almost daily, I've got a big bin full of onions that will last me through December in my basement out of that garden, and I've got beets just about ready to harvest. Earlier in the summer I harvested a lot of radishes and peas too, as well as tons of currants and some black raspberries and black berries. Oh, and two pumpkins. I got all of this out of about 3 or 4 hours of work all season long and about $20 worth of plants, starts, and a few seeds (most anything I grew from seed was grown from seed saved last year.)
Worth it? I have harvested over three dozen meals worth of kale just this season alone (kale is a biannual so this is actually my second year harvesting the same plants) and have a bazillion seeds for next year. I get to throw an organically grown red bell pepper in my dinner whenever I want most of the summer long, and have luscious and pricey fresh snow peas for stir fries for weeks in the spring. And the tomatoes! I'm a huge fan of cherry tomatoes and could never afford the copious amounts I eat if it were not my garden.
So last night I was able to put two whole red bell peppers in our dinner batch of Ramrong Over Noodles as well as a handful of my favorite spice in the world, Thai basil.
My herb bed is a mess, as you can see, but it doesn't matter, I have still harvested many a meal's worth of fabulous flavor from it with no work at all put into these babies other than planting and watering them the first day I got them.
I know not everyone can afford the time and money to put into building a garden of raised beds like our family did a few years back. We used all free, recycled wood from construction waste and pallets, but we did pay to have a truck load of compost brought to us from the recycling center and have to purchase a few garden tools. If it weren't for my partner's love of physical labor and building things, it probably would never have happened at all and I would have continued to garden out of a few recycled construction pails in my back yard. But even out of a few containers you can grow a lot of food for very little effort, its something worth considering when trying to figure out how to eat healthy on a very tight budget or any budget at all.
Those bell peppers and basil turned dinner last night into something very special and very nutritious. I am certain my messy, neglected garden will continue to factor prominently for me into meeting this Challenge.
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