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Ralph Gardner Jr: Call In The Experts

Julie Cerny, author of the Little Gardener
Ralph Gardner Jr,
Julie Cerny, author of the Little Gardener

Ours is not a victory garden unless your idea of victory is just enough lettuce to eke out a salad, grape tomatoes sufficient to garnish cocktail hour, or the random sprig of rosemary to add some interest to roast chicken or lamb.

We’re fortunate in these parts to have thriving farmer’s markets where one can purchase a head of lettuce so bounteous that it makes mockery of my flimsy efforts and gets me wondering why I go to all the effort of underwriting a garden in the first place.

I was actually wondering just that as I was watering the plants on a recent evening and worrying about how long it would take some invader – one if by land, two if by air – to discover them and reduce them to stubble.

The answer is fairly simple. I do it because I like to watch things grow. Because when one manages to wrest a beefsteak tomato from the earth before your woodchuck does the sense of accomplishment is profound and out of all proportion to the flavor (mediocre) and texture (fibrous). And because there’s a lovely nurturing component to watering the plants that some of us aren’t very good at in other aspects of our lives.

And the final reason is hope. A garden is an exercise in faith, in the belief that you’ll finally beat the odds and grow enough produce for a CSA of one.

In this otherwise dour and diseased season hope, at least as it relates to gardening, is actually in splendid supply at our home for a couple of reasons. The first is that my son-in-law Malcolm constructed a fence around our raised beds. The structure thus far seem to be impressing the local wildlife. I helped, though mostly by sponsoring the rental of an auger we used to drill the fenceposts.

And then there was the socially distanced visit by a professional gardener and author to critique our efforts and offer advice on how better to boost our yield or have any yield at all.

Her name is Julie Cerny and she’s the author of The Little Gardener, a new book published by Princeton Architectural Press. It’s aimed at helping children connect with the natural world by growing stuff themselves. Julie drove over to admire our fence and to suggest ways to make our eggplant, cucumbers and peppers explode, metaphorically speaking.

By the way, The Little Gardener is a handsome illustrated portable tome addressed to parents as much as to kids. It offers insights and ideas on topics such as designing and caretaking a garden in language that neither talks up to parents nor down to children. In other words, it’s the perfect companion for an adult who has absolutely no idea what he’s doing in the garden and fears that his blood type is especially appealing to swarming mosquitos.

Among this year’s enhancements, in addition to the fence, is a new raised bed twelve feet long and four feet wide. When Julie visited the soil to fill it up had not yet arrived which turned out to be a good thing. She suggested lining the bottom with wet cardboard to thwart weeds from growing up through the soil.

She’s also a big proponent of mulch. “I love mulch,” she said as she took one of our arugula plants, broke it up, and replanted it in a row to let it achieve its full potential. “Mulch keeps moisture locked in.”

She said a garden should get an inch of rain a week. One way to know how much nature is contributing and how much you’re on the hook for is to buy a simple rain gauge. “It’s super fun for kids,” she said. And I might add for adults who are easily awed.

And what about sun? Our place is called Shady Glen for a reason; I know it sounds corny but it came with the name when my grandparents bought it back in the Forties. The sunshine is intermittent, having nothing to do with the weather and some parts of the garden get more sun than others.

A good rule of thumb, Julie said, is that plants whose fruit you’re planning to eat – such as tomatoes – require more sun than those whose leaves you’re coveting, such as lettuce or Swiss chard.

And if your real estate is limited certain plants can co-exist peacefully in other plants’ shadows. “Basil and tomatoes love each other,” Julie said cheerfully.

However, you may prefer to water your tomatoes in the morning than the evening. “Tomatoes don’t like wet leaves,” Julie said, and moisture tends to linger overnight.

She also suggested we repurpose some straw bales left over from Malcolm and our daughter Lucy’s wedding last year. Spreading them, or some other mulch around the foot of the plants inhibits weed growth, helps retain moisture, and softens the splatter from rain.

As much as Julie admires soil – and keeping it as close to nature as possible by promoting its richness and the critters and processes that help enhance a garden’s flavor – we were in full agreement that dirt doesn’t enhance a salad’s flavor. The less of it the better.

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