In Search of the American Potager

Much of my garden plant placement has been an exercise in trial and error. I place plants in one bed one year and opt to plant the same type in another location the next year. Some years I focus on flowers, other years I focus more on vegetables. My herb garden alone has made a move from one location to another and I am still contemplating yet another move to location number 3! I am always reevaluating the best ways to use my space, and with a mostly annual plant type garden, this is fairly easy to accomplish as annual plant life spans allow a gardener to start over in a new location on a seasonal basis. Perennial plant moves are harder and many times one has to start over from scratch. (The herbs didn't transplant well, later died, and needed to be repurchased and replanted in their new home.) Ever practical by nature, I have been searching for a design that would optimize my garden space to fit the maximum vegetables without creating overcrowding and that would give some sort of structure to my formless garden bed meanderings. 

Enter the not-so-new idea of the Potager/ Kitchen garden of early Europe. Through ancient to early modern Europe, peasants, clergy, and lords maintained their household gardens typically close to the kitchen. These kitchens fed families and were the mainstay of main a fine and simple table. These potagers became more formal through the late medieval period as monks and other clergy members developed these agricultural gardens for their specific needs. For more information about the history of the Potager garden, please read Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An America Potager Handbook by Jennifer R. Bartley. This book has been instrumental in helping me start my potager. It includes gorgeous pictures of old world and new world potagers as well as designs. In designing a potager, here are the most important elements to keep in mind:

Review your space: determine how much sun the area receives and place plants according to their sunlight needs.

1. Consider your kitchen's culinary needs: Place your potager close to your kitchen for easy access and choose plants based on what you like to cook and eat.
2. Layout: Potagers look neat and formal from a bird's eye view and repeat sequencing of plants. The key is to create a sense of unity in texture and color.
3. Enclose the garden: Traditional potagers are enclosed by a natural or man made wall to give a sense of charm and exclusivity within a garden space. I struggled with this concept due to practical purposes: how will I water the plants with an enclosure in the way. I opted not to completely enclose the area, but rather used annual flowers to create a border effect.
4. Create an edge to raised beds: Edging makes the space look neat and formal but in my garden, practical needs have outweighed aesthetic ones at this time. 
5. Counterpoint - This is the idea of using colors at opposite sides of the color wheel. I am not good at this because I tend to plant what I want, when I want and damn the consequences. Perhaps this is proof I need more structure?
6. Verticality: A tomato gardener doesn't need to be told twice. Utilize trellises and support for vining plants to increase the visual appeal.
7. Winter uses: I need to contemplate my seasonal plantings. I like to let my beds go fallow for a couple of months during winter so I can recharge my batteries.  My potager only has annual plants at this time so I need to reconsider the winter. (Bartley 97-118)

Here are the step to our first Potager (we started process in March so we could plant in early April):

Amending the soil: we used 3 bags of compost and 3 bags of chicken manure for  ~150 sq  ft

Roto-tilling the soil, crunching up weeds and mixing in amendments

Ready for placement of stones in new pattern

Stones placed, all pieces reused from previous bed configuration.

Round 1 of the planting included beets, kale, sunflowers, green beans and arugula from seed, San Marzano tomato, pepper, and annual flower seedlings. Round 2 will include more tomato and pepper seedlings. Round 3 will include tomato and pepper seedlings and more beets from seed.

Overview of warm season potager

Annual flower edging: marigolds and zinnias

San Marzano tomatoes and basil in bloom

I am enjoying the potager design since it allows me to stagger planting, maximize square footage, experiment with new crops, and rotate crops between the cool and warm seasons. I plan to potagerize the three beds on the east side of my garden and use one side for early spring vegetables (cool season) and the other for late spring/ summer vegetables (warm season). I plan to create a greater sense of enclosure by planting roses on the north side of the bed, but I do not want to start that project until the property fence height has been increased (for more privacy). Lastly, my herb garden is going to need some editing and revision to get it up to potager standards. I keep gaining more form and function in the garden thanks to potager ideals; I look forward to seeing the plants filling in the spaces and producing copious amounts of vegetables for a bountiful summer table.

From Patriotism to Protest: A Victory Garden Retrospective

I have to admit, I am more than oblivious to most politics, most of the time. I subscribe to the theory that the further one is from the Beltway, the less one cares about it. That is certainly true for my corner of Southern California.  We tend to absorb ourselves in local matters, school and library cuts, sales and property tax rates, and ever more glaring infrastructure issues (hello potholes the size of hubcaps). However, thanks to social networking, I recently came across an article on Victory Gardening and the Occupy Movement that presented a correlation that had completely escaped me. I stopped to think, is the act of growing vegetables at home a political statement?

World War I Victory Garden Poster

Kitchen gardens were the norm rather than the exception for much of our country’s history. If one wanted it, one grew it in the appropriate season. Mass urbanization of the population in the late nineteenth century made this less feasible for many depending on their living situation, but the parallel development of commercial, industrialized farming began to meet demand for foodstuffs. War threw a monkey wrench in that process, and as early as American entry into World War I, our government advocated the home Victory Garden as a means for feeding the homeland while industrialized agriculture fed the troops overseas. World War I victory gardening resulted in the planting of 5 million gardens and produced food valued at 1.2 billion dollars! World War II victory gardening was even more impressive with a total of 20 million gardens planted and yielded a total of 9-10 million pounds of produce, equal to commercial produce farming at that time. I can only imagine this awesome feat, half of all the produce in the nation, grown locally for local consumption! It is interesting to note the U.S. Department of Agriculture feared the Victory Garden would hurt the food industry. Since it was portrayed as an act of patriotism, they could hardly protest too much.  After World War II, much of the energy and enthusiasm of the Victory Garden movement petered out and was soon eclipsed by the return to peacetime, renewed agricultural industrialization and the arrival of the baby boom generation.  Who has time to tend garden when tending lots of babies?!

World War II Victory Garden Poster

For the rest of the twentieth century, victory gardening fell by the wayside, but thanks to a dash of revolution (Environmentalism, Back to the Land Movement, and anti-Corporation advocates) and traditional heritage gardeners (grassroots seed banks, heirloom growers, and bloggers), the victory garden has experienced a popular resurgence. This grassroots movement is now so mainstream that mass media print has joined the party. There is a vegetable garden at the White House for the first time since World War II. Occupy protesters now view home gardening as an anti-corporate response the over-commercialization of food; grow local and eat local. Homeowners are killing their lawns to make room for food, fostering community, and wrecking zoning havoc in residential areas. Some see the home garden movement as a component in turning the tide of obesity in our country, providing nutritious, unprocessed, and cheap food to the masses as it did during the war years. I find myself bewildered at times with all the politics. The reasons I started victory gardening were seek a connection to my immigrant heritage and to grow good-tasting food. (I HATE CARDBOARD TOMATOES!) But all actions have consequences and perhaps we are only just beginning to see the results of our home gardening choices.

Tomato Fireworks Part II

It is Independence day weekend and the tomatoes are finally ripening in the Victory Garden. The Tomatomania seedlings (obviously seedlings no more) are beginning to provide a bounty! This weekend's barbecues will include the following delectable offerings!

From left to right, Top row: Marianna's Peace, Pink Berkeley Tie-Die, Haley's Purple Comet
From left to right, Bottom Row: Pickling cucumber, Black Pearl, Black Trifle

Haley's Purple Comment, Large-leaf (Potato Leaf variety) with small, dark red fruit.

My very prolific Cherokee Purple, a favorite heirloom of home tomato growers.

Black Trifles, small yet delectable

My volunteers are Black Pearls - YUM!

Pink Berkeley Tie-Die looks a little sickly, but it is producing well.

Marianna's Peace - my absolute favorite! I need to do some more research on it.