PILLOW TALK: Ready-Set-Garden! | Deborah Goodwin

Apr. 2, 2012 (ShapeShiftas) -- We are having an early Spring here in Vermont, and all patriotic Vermonters are getting ready to garden!

Everyone has a garden here, from the native Vermonters who grew up on farms to the transplanted (ha) flat-landers like us who came here looking for a more healthy and sustainable life. In New York the closest I ever got to a garden was the tulip beds in the middle of Park Avenue, or perhaps the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. If I wanted some seasonal, organically grown produce, I would either shop at Whole Foods (aka, Whole Paycheck), or go to the Union Square Greenmarket on Saturdays.

The Union Square Greenmarket. There are signs everywhere to Watch Your Belongings, because of pickpockets.

The trucks for the Greenmarket come into the city about 4:00 AM, driving down from farms in upstate NY, Connecticut, and Vermont. The city's chefs arrive soon after, and they pick up the best of the foraged, the free-range, and the seasonal. The market runs from 8 a.m.-6 p.m., and then the farmers pack up, drive back to the country, and do it again Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Farming is hard work, but selling at the Greenmarket seems even harder. It is certainly a long workday. I can't determine if these farmers are making a killing or barely breaking even, but they sure sell a ton of produce at top dollar to New Yorkers trying to shop as locally as they can.

Buy these T-shirts while you still can. This Vermonter is being sued by Chick-Fil-A for infringing on their trademark, Eat Mor Chikin. I think Chick-Fil-A should be sued for bad spelling.

Here in Vermont, no one would pay $10/bunch for their kale (our state vegetable), even if it is "organic." When the gardens kick in, there is Kale out the Kazoo. If you don't have your own garden, and if your neighbors don't shower you with their extra vegetables, there are always the farmers' markets happening every day all over the state. You can find small roadside tables to huge, multi-booth markets on the town greens, selling crafts and prepared foods as well as the beautiful, organically-grown produce.

If you really want to insure a plentiful supply of local vegetables, you can buy a farm share and for an amazingly reasonable cost you get a huge cornucopia of the week's pickings every Friday throughout the growing season. This will make you a healthier eater and a better cook, as you have to figure out what to do with all those beans, all the ways you'll have to come up with to Eat More Kale.

I designed this pillow, The Gardener, after my first forays in gardening left me with aching knees and a sore lower back.

No one in Vermont would use pesticides on their gardens. The Horror! That means that when you inevitably get pests on your plants, you have to go out and pick the bugs off, once or twice a day. Call me a city slicker, but I don't do this part of gardening. "Call the exterminator!" I'm more likely to screech.

I like planting the "starts" and eating the results, but I don't like the bugs. I'm also afraid of snakes, and moles, and weeding makes me sneeze. The first year I lived here, I managed to grow tomatoes (which is the one thing I want to grow), and basil in pots, enough to make and can marinara sauce (learning my homesteading skills!) and eat caprese salad and tomato sandwiches every day for about six weeks. But the next years were total gardening failures. I didn't take care of the plants, the tomatoes got fungus and these really alien-looking, electric green tomato worms (which are really the caterpillars of these creepy-cool moths), which will wipe out your garden in 24 hours.

There was no way I would pick them off and squish them, as recommended by my gardening friends and in the organic gardening books. The first year, my younger daughter brought some to Show And Share in a Tupperware, and our Gardening Goddess Suzanne just about fainted, she was so afraid they'd get out and infest the school's Community Gardens. "You gotta squish 'em. Or, come feed them to my chickens..."

The Gardener pillow is made in fade-resistant outdoor prints, with a wipe-off pleather bottom. It makes kneeling comfortable for any chores.

Last year I barely tried any plants, just some flowers and herbs in pots on the deck, where I would sit and read gardening books and imagine the beautiful beds of flowers and herbs, the perfect raised rows of spinach and arugula, the well-tied, pest-free tomato vines, the hidden huge zucchini that we would enter in the Tunbridge Fair.

Kyle has brought over some of his "starts". Supposedly they will be growing in our garden this summer.

Meanwhile, our friend and neighbor has run out of gardening room at his place and wants to expand to ours, maybe even start a Stony Brook CSA farmshare, so it looks like we might be putting in a garden this year. Me, I was decided on the farmer's market approach, since before now we have never eaten as much as you get in a weekly share, and figured if we had a garden, I would have to do the gardening.

But my husband and (one) daughter are getting excited about a garden; he wants to learn how to grow food for the coming apocalypse, and she has become a vegan and so needs to eat (ethically sourced) vegetables. (I can already hear how she can't be the one to pick off & kill the bugs.) I've already warned them about the weeds and the snakes and the moles, oh my! -- but they are undaunted. Their Hard-Core Gardener friends have assured them that it is so very easy. Maybe I do want to start some heirloom tomatoes. Hope springs, every year.

peace, Deborah

Visit ShapeShiftas