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GHENT, N.Y. — My hunch is that planting a garden is going to feel a lot more significant this spring than in years past. That’s both because of the redemptive power of nature in the midst of a pandemic, and also because the fewer trips you have to make to the supermarket, the better.
Since my gardening skills might charitably be described as rudimentary, uninformed and misguided, but also eager, charmed and childlike, I decided to consult an expert.
Julie Cerny isn’t just a talented gardener. She’s also an educator skilled at communicating her knowledge to low-information enthusiasts such as myself; those of us who can appreciate the preposterous satisfaction of slicing into a beefsteak tomato that we’ve grown from scratch but who have also experienced the heartbreak wrought by blights and pests that would deny us bliss. These include the local wildlife operating under the misapprehension that I’ve gone to the effort and expense of a garden on their behalf.
Julie is also the author of “The Little Gardener” (Princeton Architectural Press), a new book to help children connect to the natural world. The beautifully illustrated and engaging volume is directed at parents and educators as much as kids and it’s filled with knowledge from Julie’s career as a farmer and teacher in the Hudson Valley.
It’s also an excellent resource for adults such as myself whose children are fully grown but have no better than a third grade education in gardening themselves and need things spelled out for them. My excuse is that I’m a city kid.
My ambition is to have Julie visit my four forlorn planting beds when it comes time to introduce them to this season’s bright-eyed lettuce, tomatoes and peppers in a month or so. While social distancing, of course. In the meantime, our inaugural consultation occurred over the phone.
My first question had to do with turning over the soil — Julie thinks it’s demeaning to call it dirt — and how much enhancement it may require to make it habitable for my plants. There’s a spirited discussion in “The Little Gardener” about growing from seed, but I’ve decided to leave that to my local gardening center.
“You don’t have to clean out every ounce of debris,” Julie said, adding that worms and other soil life like to nosh on last year’s leftovers while helping to fertilize the soil. “Why add an extra step that doesn’t need to happen?”
“Too often, we think of a garden as something we do,” she said. “You’re actually co-creating with nature.”
I liked the sound of that. I asked her about utilizing our compost pile even though calling it a compost pile will likely give it a swelled head. It’s a mound where I’ve dumped our organic waste — orange rinds, old lettuce, coffee grinds — for years, if not decades. None of those fancy compost bins for me.
“There have been many compost piles in my life where I’ve done nothing,” Julie said encouragingly. “Some compost pits thrive on neglect.”
The way to test it is by sight and smell.
“It should be rich and earthy,” she said, not stinky, like garbage.
She advises adding 2 inches of compost or other nutrient-rich topsoil to the garden, then mixing it with the existing soil to create 4 inches of earth that plants will find appealing.
Julie’s resume includes a National Science Foundation fellowship working with children and six years as the education director and garden manager at the Sylvia Center. That’s a nonprofit that teaches children and teenagers, many from under-served backgrounds in New York City and Columbia County, how to cook healthy food for themselves and their families.
When they arrive at Katchkie Farm, the Sylvia Center’s upstate home in Kinderhook, N.Y., some of these kids are unaware that fruits and vegetables start from seeds and grow in soil in partnership with the sun and rain. Discovering that everyday miracle comes as a revelation. Sparking those moments is also “The Little Gardener’s” goal.
“The book is about cultivating conscious connections with nature,” Julie told me.
There are many ways to do so. Taking a walk in the woods. Swimming in a pond. But, one of the most focused ways is to pluck a strawberry or raspberry from a bush, an apple or peach from a tree, or to sprinkle a little salt on a homegrown heirloom tomato. I apologize if I’m harping on tomatoes. But, few things fill me with the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment of a succulent tomato that I get to before my woodchucks do.
That was another thing I discussed with Julie: fencing. Last year, I foolishly decided to trust in the civility of our wildlife. It worked through lettuce season — our ravenous rodents were apparently otherwise engaged — but when I visited the garden one unimprovable summer morning to harvest our early tomatoes, I discovered them all gone. Nothing left but the stalks.
This year, my son-in-law has volunteered to put up a permanent fence, and Julie suggested, for added protection, removable wire hoops that protect plants from insects and other critters.
She’s already planted her own peas and spinach — perhaps prematurely, she admits, but the weather has been mild — and encouraged me to consider a mix of lettuce varieties that flourish in summer as well as spring. And one shouldn’t feel social pressure to plant particular vegetables.
“I planted Swiss chard, but I don’t like Swiss chard,” she confided. “I’ve dropped it.”
For all a successful garden’s bounty in these precarious times, its greatest gift may be impossible to measure in pounds of produce. The author admitted that this is a challenging time to be publishing a book. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” she said.
A curse for obvious reason — bookstores are closed. But, it’s also a blessing in ways “The Little Gardener” was created to celebrate.
“This is a book about families coming together to plant a garden,” Julie explained. “In a wonderful way, we have been given a lot of space and time to do that.”