How I learned to part ways with my plants
A little tough love is called for to remove vegetables past their prime and make room for others eager for their day in the sun.
One of the lessons I’ve learned in the garden is that I shouldn't allow vegetables to remain in the beds beyond their time. Anyone who knows me can tell you I’m terrible at poker, but I do know the refrain from the gambler’s song, you “got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.” I still don’t always get it quite right.
Over the past week, I decided time was up for many of my early-season plantings and I set out to remove them from the garden. This is always a tough step. I knew I needed to make room for summer vegetable seedlings eager to strut their stuff, but parting ways is always hard even when – I know, I know – they’re just plants. I remind myself that they are, after all, only headed to the compost bin, an honorable final resting place for a vegetable where it will help feed and nourish future generations as part of the garden soil.
Part of my attachment to the plants is I’m still amazed I managed to grow them from tiny seeds planted in 2-inch cells under grow lights in the basement. It remains a miracle. I used to leave heads of lettuce in the garden way too long, simply admiring my achievement rather than giving them the opportunity to grace our salad bowl.The result was often bolted lettuce going to seed and bitter to the taste.
I’m more hardened now. Maybe it’s been the two moves we’ve made over the past six years, first to a smaller house in Maryland and then last year to our home in western Massachusetts. Each move required a purge of knick-knacks, mementos, books, CDs, DVDs, furniture, all the stuff one tends to collect raising a family in a home for three decades.
When we started off each time, we’d consider each piece of whatever, reminisce about the time we acquired it or some memory it evoked, discuss how much it meant to us and whether we could fit it in a smaller home. We’d go through family photo albums, not exclusively our nuclear family but also the broader family that encompassed parents and grandparents, great grandparents and aunts and uncles. It ultimately wasn’t a terribly painful process. Or a particularly difficult one, at least for us, though we have friends who are amazed we pared down as much as we did. It actually got easier to do as we decided what things were going with us and what were headed to charity or the library or, sometimes, the dump.
The purges were actually pretty cathartic and rejuvenating. That’s the way I’ve learned to look at my vegetable patch.
The arugula went first. I had planted the arugula back on March 14 and directly sowed more arugula seeds every couple weeks into mid-April. We’ve had delicious arugula in our salads or spread atop pizza for the past two months. Despite the beauty of the delicate yellow flowers floating above the leaves – a clear signal it had gone to seed – I cut the plants out and tossed them into the large plastic bin I use to collect garden detritus headed to the compost pile.
Growing amidst the arugula were several basil plants I had tucked into the bed a few weeks ago. Now the basil has the light and space it will need to branch out and flourish so it can provide us with pesto, and sweeten our tomato sauces and tomato sandwiches and salads in the weeks ahead
.Next on the chop block were two newcomers to my spring garden lineup that turned out to be disappointments: kohlrabi and a flowering Chinese broccoli called Hon Tsai Tai. Both performed admirably but were a letdown in the kitchen.
The kohlrabi was fine, and I may grow it again, though peeling its strange, flying saucer-like orbs is, at the end of the day, a lot of work for a vegetable not too much different in flavor or utility than a radish. I grew a variety called Purple Vienna this year. Hon Tsai Tai is a different story. It’s a beautiful plant, with pencil-thin purple stems topped by green leaves and tiny yellow flower pods. It has a mustard green-like taste when steamed or sauteed but also a kind of woody quality that makes it difficult to chew. I suspect I didn’t harvest it early enough and by the time I did it had lost some of its tenderness. Many people clearly love it but I probably won’t grow it again.
By cutting out the kohlrabi I cleared room and opened more light to a group of celery plants growing in front of it as well as some healthy Piracicaba broccoli growing behind it. I’m going to be planting more leeks in the space vacated by the Hon Tsai Tai.
The final purge was the most difficult. I took out the snap pea vines growing up the string trellis. The peas, which I sowed on March 26, were slow to get going this spring but once they kicked in they really went to town. We’ve been picking bowl after bowl of snap peas for salads or just for munching on before dinner for weeks. They were still going pretty strong though noticeably slowing down.
Growing beneath the peas and looking for a way onto the trellis themselves were the pole beans and cucumbers I planted about four weeks ago. I had to make room for these two summer stalwarts by clearing the pea vines. Our neighbors’ three adorable young children visited the garden over the weekend and had a wonderful time picking the vines clean, packing their pockets and rolled up shirts with snap peas to take home. It was a fitting final act for this year’s pea crop and made saying good-bye much easier.