You know that this is not going to be nearly as casual a backyard farming year. With all the veggie growing hoopla at the White House it would be practically un-American to not rip up your lawn and grow edibles, even though here in California we not only have serious water issues but we have practically year-round farm stands selling the most beautifully formed, artful, organic, locally grown produce that money can buy.

Of course, that’s part of the reason for planting it yourself. The hope is you eventually will save money, after a significant investment in plants, drip systems and in our case, new pumped-up dirt.

Yet, the pressure is on – a near farming frenzy – to grow your own. I saw it last weekend when I attended my first-ever lecture on gardening, where a rapt audience of weekend farmers sat in hard chairs and took notes for two hours on how to grow vegetables in containers.

It’s true that Americans will follow just about any trend, but who would have thought self-sufficiency would become the latest cool thing. There are people who never planted a petunia educating themselves on starter fertilizers and how to make your own gopher wire. I imagine by August they will be able to blind taste a green bean and identify it by microclimate and diligence of the gardener.

Self sufficiency, the latest cool thing.

The day after the gardening workshop, our downtown farmers’ market opened for the season, creating a similar nervous buzz around the veggie starts. That’s when I began to panic, like I do every spring when I sense that the gardening race is on and I missed hearing the starter bell.

Sometimes spring gets ahead of me. I like it to come on slowly so I can savor the first appearance of blue forget-me-nots and yellow oxalis. Some scorn their beautiful faces and call them weeds, but I love that they’re free, tenacious and happen overnight. We even have an orange poppy growing out of a stone wall.

But they’re not edible and this year it’s all about planting to eat. Now it’s suddenly April and it seems like the whole world is planted and we don’t even have seedlings in the kitchen window.

Adding to my worries was last summer, which was such a flop. Our tomatoes were like sulking teenagers, ignoring all attention and love. I blamed it on the dirt. My husband said the plants were bad. It probably was both along with the grape arbor next door blocking out the sun.

This year we have relocated the tomato patch to the hottest, sunniest side of the house. We bought special soil and mixed in special compost and have such high hopes we stuck in a teepee-like trellis that makes it easy to harvest the bounty we are sure to have. Cukes, peppers, squash and beans will go into the raised beds that replace the old lawn.

Nothing exotic. I’m happy to remain a nouveau farmer and don’t aspire to veggie queen. I’ll leave that to Barbara Kingsolver and Alice Waters. But I am practicing how to do an Obama fist-bump in garden gloves.

Tags: farmers'_market, gardens, Juicy_Tomatoes, Susan_Swartz

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Environment, Healthy Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.