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My
wife and I started a Community Garden across the
street from our house in 1996 with the help
of a nonprofit group called Grassroots Gardens
of Buffalo. Our garden won First Place for public
gardens in the Buffalo in Bloom contest in the
first summer of operation.
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Garlic
shoots uncurl in July's warmth.
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07
February 04: After I discovered words, books,
and writing, and before I discovered boatbuilding, there
was gardening.
On
a city corner lot barely bigger than our house, at one
time I was growing more than 100 varieties of herbs.
Lately, I have switched to specializing in garlic. I have
been planting at least 10 varieties per year for five
years now.
My wife and I started a community garden we called Herkimer
Hollow, across the street in a vacant lot. After
several years of varying success, the garden effort is
over, though I continue to grow a yearly crop of garlic
in raised beds around the foundation of our house.
We
grow enough garlic to meet our own needs for half the
year -- limited more by the keeping qualities of garlic
in general than by the size of our harvest -- and we
do so in about 130 square feet of raised beds. To call
this a farm puts one's tongue in one's cheek, I'll admit,
but garlic farms are generally tiny by usual standards,
so our's is at least a micro-farm, I guess.
I've
cultivated my garden library for a long time, and I think
I have almost everything worth reading concerning herbs
and garlic, and a good selection of gardening classics.
The
Internet is rich in gardening information. I am particularly
interested in herbs, garlic, vegetable, and square-foot
gardening. (Are you picking up on the In
the Garden thing? ("And
he walks with me and he talks with me, and he tells me
I am his own. And the joy we share as
we tarry there, none other has ever known ...".)
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