Getting Fresh

Garden planning this year reminds me of a trying to recreate a really good meal through a boozy haze. I made something according (at least in part) to some recipe (source now lost), I remember enjoying it a lot, I probably snapped photos and talked about it loudly with friends — but, for the life of me, I can’t remember how, exactly, it all went down. Which is really what enjoying something is all about; in eating as in gardening, the best experiences are those spent “in the moment” that pretty much defy being written down afterward.

But see, now, months and months later, in the deep of winter, I am craving some very exact and detailed memories from the garden. Because I’m trying to make it all happen again, except even better.

As of this morning, that urge has mainly manifested itself in a totally unruly and, like, aggressively boring spreadsheet. Insert plant name, insert days to maturity, copy, paste, repeat. I almost want to forget it all for another couple months, until I can realistically use the outdoors as a growing area — but not quite. Because this year I have a tiny, shiny greenhouse on the balcony and a DIY propagation shelf in the laundry room. It’s not much, but it’s a lot more than I had at my disposal last spring, and so it feels like I have 100 acres of sheer potential to sow.

Now if I could just rope in that gardening enthusiasm for some fruitful (tedious, anal) garden planning. Stepping away from the merciless succession-planting spreadsheet for a sec, I need some more free-form reflection on went right last year in the balcony garden, and what went wrong.

The “right” category is topped, no contest, by peas, particularly since my in-ground peas were decimated by early furred pests. In the absence of a fenced plot, growing dwarf snap peas on the balcony is the only way to go for me. I guess peas don’t like being transplanted, but I actually had luck last year starting them in a paper bag in the cold frame and then carefully transferring the whole shebang, intact, to a larger pot once the weather warmed. Plan is, do a similar thing this year, but earlier, by starting the peas in homemade newspaper pots or the like, indoors and under the new fluorescent lights.

Last year’s second best discovery: ball carrots. I planted Tonda di Parigi from Fedco but have recently slobbered over “Parmex” from The Cook’s Garden. They’re small, ball-shaped, and win my heart for ease of use in the kitchen: no chopping! That’s why I’m going to persist in growing them again this year, because they weren’t easy; it was tough to hit the sweet-spot of regular moisture, fertilizing, and good growing temperature out on the balcony, which heats up to boiling very early in the summer. The only harvest to speak of came late last fall. For this year, the rough plan is: plant them in containers early, but not too early, and keep ‘em fed and watered so they’ll fill out quickly before the stifling heat hits.

The big fails last year? Bush beans that fizzled out early (I ate five, seven tops), the unintentional “bonsai garden” of stunted nasturtium, lavender, and marigold flowers, and, most regrettably, bush tomatoes felled by blight. I think I’ve given up growing Swiss chard in my balcony containers — they just need more soil than I’m willing to give ‘em, and get positively mummified in the heat out there. I’m on the fence about trying bush beans again — we love to eat them, but again, they’re relative space-hogs.

Greens, for instance, which I know I can grow better and which I find really rewarding, and more alpine strawberries. I won’t make the mistake of planting them too late again — “Mignonette” strawberries are already showing their first true leaves under lights. Aiming to transplant them today and start greens and flowers tomorrow (I’m like “?!” but the spreadsheet commands it!). Then, later this spring, I’ll start tomatoes indoors. Radishes will go in wherever there’s space and shade in a pot — my only ambition for radishes this year is to have a show-off crop late in the fall that we can eat in a festive Christmas salad.

Time to pot-up the strawberries and figure out where to put the peas, radishes, and spinach that have been “breaking in” the propagation shelf. Give them up as a failed experiment, eat them as “micro-greens”, or…something else entirely?