Square Inch Gardening
Petunia Meets Poblano
In May we celebrated our ten year anniversary of living in our hundred-plus-year-old house, and while we were far from achieving our goal of having finished the rehab, we reflected with pride on what we’d accomplished. Our house is a labor of love inside and out. It was our first home; we never considered it a starter home – it was our dream house from the beginning, even though the stained lime green carpeting and pervasive smell of a dog kennel were more akin to a nightmare. By comparison to our respective flats in Wrigleyville – where I could touch the Brown Line ‘L’ tracks from my south-facing bathroom window and my neighbor’s house from the bedroom window to the north – our “double-wide” city lot in Old Irving Park felt like country living. We had street parking, a hundred-year old cottonwood tree with a canopy that spanned our yard as well as our neighbor’s, and enough grass to warrant a lawn mower. It was nothing short of heaven.
Our first summer we postponed doing battle with the shag carpet and the bubble gum pink toilets in favor of tending “our land”. My husband Greg and I both grew up with veggie gardens big enough to feed a large family for a summer and well into the winter with what we helped our parents can and preserve. While our new yard felt immense to us, the concrete driveway that ran along the sunny south side of our house and the giant cottonwood tree left us with about 400 square feet of “full-sun” growing area. Like Greg, I was excited for a veggie garden, but I also wanted flowers. Oh how I longed for continuous bloom right outside my window, one flower fading, gracefully giving way as another began to blossom. Our seemingly vast green space was bereft of flowers – we had the grass, an unkempt old lilac bush, and a few trees all in desperate need of pruning.
Greg wanted to take all of the sunny spots for veggies, but in the end he agreed to a 200 square foot area for the vegetable garden. In what remained, I’d plant an herb garden, lilies and Echinacea and more, knowing that the shady areas, which accounted for most of the yard, were best suited to leafy green hostas and ferns. Then it was time to dig. Without a tiller, it was back-breaking work. As is typical for Chicago, our soil was comprised of mostly clay. We didn’t see a single earth worm as we worked the soil, turning it over one sticky shovel full at a time – not a good sign. It amazed me that grass could even grow, but upon closer inspection what had looked like grass was really a sea of clover broken up by a few dandelions and patches of crab grass.
Armed with a worn copy of Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening that we’d picked up at a used book sale, we ambitiously filled our little garden with tomatoes, peppers and leaf lettuce, nothing exotic. That we harvested anything that first year seemed to us, a miracle. Our first tomato was perfect and delicious, tasting of sweet childhood memories and the pleasure of having grown it ourselves. That summer we took our first step towards being locavores – though such a term didn’t exist back then – and vowed to only eat tomatoes in the summer, in season, our season, and preferably from our garden.
Today, ten years later, our home has evolved and with it our notions about what we eat and where it comes from. Out went the pink toilets and cracking plaster on the inside. On the outside, we pulled up the old concrete driveway and in its sunny place put a second, bigger vegetable garden. In went asparagus, shallots, kabocha and spaghetti squashes, nine varieties of peppers, six varieties of tomatoes, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, kale, chard, and more. The herb garden also expanded to contain over 20 different herbs. Continually inspired by the bounty of our local farmers markets, we have come a long way from our first garden of bell peppers and Early Girl tomatoes.
Our soil, now oozing with chubby worms, is fertile and rich thanks in large part to a decade of rigorous composting. Still, with almost 500 square feet of our city lot committed to vegetables, our vision continues to grow and outpace our vegetation. What would it take to live off our land? is a frequent topic of discussion at dinner.
As the vegetables have thrived more and more with each passing year, so too have my flowers, but with our commitment to sustainability and urban farming now so firmly rooted in us, I can’t help but feel the occasional twinge of guilt, using valuable sunny yard areas for vegetation that only nourishes the spirit. The bountiful blossoms taunt me sometimes, as if daring me to eat them, which is exactly what I did last summer. Indeed, violas with their subtle clove-like flavor are tasty in a salad and beautiful on the plate.
But it wasn’t enough.
This spring when our gently swaying prairie grass mocked me I thought why do they have to be separate? Not ready to part with the flower gardens we had worked so hard to propagate, I carefully considered combining our vegetable and flower gardens. And so began our adventure in Square Inch Gardening. I started sneaking bulbs and seeds, most of which we’d ordered from Henry Field’s, into the sunny flower gardens in spots where I thought they’d be the least noticeable. Two dozen extra shallot bulbs were used to make a border for one flower garden. Bright Lights Swiss chard seeds were clustered between the peonies, so lush and eye-catching that no one would notice the chard, though lovely in its own right. The compact Bird’s Eye chili pepper plants took up residence among the native prairie grasses, which would eventually provide an attractive backdrop for the tiny clusters of bright red peppers.
And if I can add veggies to the flowers, why not add a few flowers to the veggies, I thought as I nestled a vibrant fuchsia petunia into a pot with a poblano pepper plant. The splash of color made me smile. Reluctantly, the flower gardens look a little more…chaotic, if not a bit wild. But as their perfection has waned, so too has my guilt. Now, I can enjoy the flower blossoms while basking in satisfaction that a shallot is blossoming beneath the soil. We are a long way from living off our land, but we’re getting closer, one square inch at a time.
By: Bobbi Marstellar
Themocracy
ha!!!!! My husband is alwasy trying to add a hot pepper to my flower plots……… I have resisted….but you make it sound fun.
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