The Dark Side of Grocery Gardening

 
Guest Rant by Robin Ripley of the Bumblebee Blog

The news media tell us that Americans are returning to the land in their own back yards. On weekends, we trot off to the local garden centers to indulge our newly-found enthusiasm for grocery gardening. Recession be damned! We’re planting vegetables!

But there’s a dark side to all this happy tomato talk and we need to get it out in the open.

Some of my fellow gardeners have committed—or are about to commit—vegetable garden planting, maintenance and design treason.

I’m talking about ugly, unsightly vegetable gardens.

There are would-be gardeners out there who practice the plunk-and-plant method rather than properly identifying the best location for each plant and enriching the soil with compost. They fail to weed early and often—or to weed at all—so weeds thrive and invite their friends. Soon, there are as many unwanted as wanted plants in the garden. That sets up the ideal environment for opportunistic pests and diseases to move in.

The trespasses don’t stop there.

These gardeners give little or no thought to overall vegetable garden design. Rows rule! They fail to consider how they will navigate narrow pathways or reach into the center of large beds for maintenance, reinforcing their excuse to avoid maintenance altogether. Everything is low and flat to the ground. Even the indeterminate tomatoes are horizontal because they failed to be contained by the two-foot-tall sorry excuse for tomato cages these gardeners bought at Wal-Mart.

There are no edible flowers for color. There is no art or ornamentation. Heck, there’s nowhere to sit!

These garden crimes are most acute in the vegetable gardening world because people set aside significant chunks of ground for the specific purpose of growing vegetables. The vegetable gardening offenders start all at once (however badly) and then stop. Potential growers of flowers and ornamentals usually wade in slowly. Their gardens grow in size and momentum in proportion to their prowess with a hoe, so you hardly ever see a neglected flower garden.

I don’t want to suggest that the average weekend gardener now needs to hire a fancy designer to put in a vegetable patch. But is it too much to ask that if you’re going to plant vegetables that you at least take care of them? All of these ugly vegetable gardens are giving us respectable vegetable gardeners a bad name. Frankly, it’s no wonder that homeowners associations have banished vegetable gardens in their neighborhoods. If gardeners are going to approach grocery gardening in that lackadaisical way, I suggest they find another hobby.

Don’t get me wrong. My own garden has the random unlovely patch. Last year my tomatoes succumbed to fusarium wilt. A merciless drought took a toll on the garden (and the gardener with the water hose) a couple of years ago. Sometimes my pet chickens sneak in and stir things up. My garden gets weeds too.

When that happens, I move into action. If I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed by it all, I call out the reluctant reinforcements. (That would be my husband.) We will pull out the unsalvageable and disguise the merely unsightly with moveable container plantings so that even when there are unlovely corners, the overall effect is, I think, still pleasing. Above all, we pay attention.

Vegetable gardens can be places of great joy and beauty as well as great bounty. I am proud of being a vegetable gardener. But the dark side of grocery gardening is a shadow on all vegetable gardeners.

Robin Ripley is a garden and food writer whose special interest is in designing gardens that both produce food and improve the beauty of the landscape. She lives on a small Maryland homestead where in addition to caring for her potager, she raises and cares for small dogs, chickens and a grouchy cat. She makes as much by hand as possible, from bread to cheese to wine to pastries. She is co-author of the book Grocery Gardening  by Cool Springs Press.

Photo by Daniel Gasteiger of Your Small Kitchen Garden

Comments

[greg draiss]

First the lawn police now the veggie police. I can see it now We will soon be forced to buy health insurance and then forced to start a vegetable garden.
What a bunch of COMPOST

The TROLL

[Tee Riddle]

Yes, I admit it. I have used the plunk-and-plant method. It has only been the last couple years that I have put more effort into the design and overall look of my vegetable garden. The main reason was out of necessity.

My veggie garden had become the dominant force in my backyard. So to look out the patio door and see something that resembled the Amazon meant it was time for change.

The vegetable garden can be beautiful, functional and productive.

[Mary]

I am more encouraged by people's interest in vegetable gardening than I am vexed by their lack of expertise. As someone who consistently takes on more plantwise than they can handle, I am guilty of more than occasional green chaos, but then, I live in the country and no one has to see it.

[John]

I think biting off more than you can chew occurs in all sorts of activities - gardening, pets, sports, - it seems to be human nature.

When I am giving advice to novice gardeners, I point out how important it is to start out small. I don't think saying it works as well as lessons learned the hard way.

[luise h.]

Robin, get a grip.My Garden is my business,Design "Rules" do not apply to my veggie and Herb Garden.
I am thrilled that people are finally growing more of their own food,some of them in very small spaces.So what if every vegetable Garden is not a georgeous Potager?
Some of my clients just want to grow food,not have a vegetable Garden as a design statement.Over time there usually is some fine tuning.

[angelchrome]

While I agree a lack of knowledge is a problem when it opens up the area to increased pest and pathogen problems, I am adamantly against holding someone's inexperience in garden design against them. The garden world certainly doesn't need more design snobs.

[Shawna Coronado]

Okay Troll - I have a message for you - Kiss My Grass!

Here's the deal people - Robin has a great point about disease and pest issues. Plus, we are trying to encourage more people to garden, right?

I, like many of us, have far from a perfect garden. However, because the vegetable garden I do have is in my front yard, this means cleanliness counts.

According to the Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at UofI (http://lhhl.illinois.edu), landscaping reduces crime and improves health for your community. Keeping an ugly, messed up, weedy bed is not going to encourage others in your community to veg garden too.

We want to encourage more people to vegetable garden so we have more vegetables to feed the hungry with. I donated over 100 lbs of veggies to my local food pantry last year - you can do this too! Plant a row for the hungry for sure!!!

Besides, where's the health benefits to a garden which you never or rarely tend? My point: sitting on your grass gets you pretty much no where, but helping your community can change a lot of lives for the positive.

Shawna

[vicki]

I don't understand the cynicism and dire predictions re the current craze for vegetable gardening.

How is this any different than the majority of enthusiastic new home buyers who "start all at once and then stop" with their ugly flower gardens--who rush to the nursery to buy up all the pretty plants and plunk them down in ill-prepared beds only let them wither and die/get munched by deer. Or those who line their sidewalks with dots of single-stemmed marigolds or the same old ugly red and white begonias bedding schemes?? Or fill wooden barrels with dracena and geraniums (gag, gag, gag)

People rush into gardening for lots of reasons--and lots and lots of them fail. I'm convinced there are MORE ugly, neglected flower and foundation plantings than there are vegetable gardens.

[Michele Owens]

All vegetable gardens and all babies are beautiful. Or so I say.

[Tee Riddle]

I'm really surprised by the sense of hostility towards this subject. To read some comments you would think Robin asked for the elimination of vegetable gardening.

I think maybe some are taking it a bit extreme. I mean how difficult is it really to take a little time to plan and maintain your garden?

Luise H., if gardening is your business and I walked into where you grew your vegetables to find something that looked like it came off the set of Sanford & Son, I very seriously doubt I'd buy from you.

Would you eat at a restaurant that had food on the floor and dirty dishes everywhere?

Get a grip.

[sara]

Ya know, my garden is my garden. I am not terribly identified with or by it, but it serves a purpose and I work hard to learn as I go and not make too many mistakes along the way (in addition to the many I have learned from for as long as I've been doing this). Form follows function in my planted areas. If I put flowering sages at the ends of rows or within groupings of squashes and beans, they are there to draw the bees, not beautify.

So Robin's post cheeses me off although I do detect some good-natured humor in it. I really don't care if people like how my stuff looks. How do they determine what a weed is, in my cultivated patches? A weed is basically vegetable matter that's growing where you'd prefer it didn't. And now that I have chickens who happily eat the weeds like salad, there's more wiggle room. The weeds keep the soil loose until I remove them and plant something more meaningful.

If someone off the street comes through my backyard and sees aphids on the cukes, are they going to also see the ladybug larvae scarfing down the aphids? Or the beneficial lacewings? Not likely. My garden is its own ecosystem. It took me a year to realize that I had all these beneficial insects keeping the pesky ones at a dull roar. Someone just looking at my yard isn't going to see that at first glance.

Honestly? We are so lucky that more people are even considering subsistence gardening. That they are composting. That they're realizing this is some of the best food one can consume. Yeah, my indeterminate tomatoes get real gangly and bushy if I don't nip off all the sucker vines quickly, but you know... they also hold heat better in the late fall when temperatures drop, and I had tomatoes on the vine survive frost last year for that reason. Remember how tomatoes are perennial in temperate climates? They are butt ugly when they go dormant.

I might not love the red geraniums that my neighbors propagate with stems off a mother plant, all over their yard, but at least they're growing something. And you have to start somewhere.

[Chris Upton]

Maybe we're being a little harsh; maybe not. I'm thinking a bit of tolerance couldn't hurt though.

[Laura Bell]

Wow. Such vitriole.

While "design" in vegetable garden planting may not be what is needed, I agree with Robin that a little thought is. And maintenance. Choosing a good spot for your veggie plants is vital - proper sun, protection from wind or critters or flood will encourage good crops, and crop rotation & clean-up discourages disease & pests. We know this. She isn't telling everyone to turn their plot to a potager. Just take care of it. Stake your tomatoes, trellis your cukes & gourds, don't let large veggies overrun smaller ones, pick up leaf litter...

Make it look appealing & more people will find gardening to be so.

[Ginny Stibolt]

I too think this rant is off base. We want more folks to grow their own vegetables and to include their kids in the process. Perfect-looking gardens is not the ideal; getting more kids involved is. Think of it as in investment for the future.

If you'd like to help me keep my vegetable and herb gardens weed-free, come on down. FYI, my gardens, weeds and all, will be in USA Today next week!

[Michelle D.]

If you care about the aesthetics of your property and have a vegetable garden, you will put value on the design / layout of it.
If you don't put value on aesthetics, then you won't invest the time to make it look appealing.
That's the bottom line and that's the point that will be conveyed when anyone looks at your home, your garden, or your personal appearance, ect....

The people at this link see the value of a well laid out working vegetable garden :
http://deviantdeziner.blogspot.com/2010/03/potagers-and-vegetable-gardens-in-marin.html

[Kathy J, Washington Gardener Mag]

Robin has a point that good design is easier maintenance and just requires a bit of forethought. Like her coment about two-wide beds, flat (not raised) and no pathways. Why set yourself up for extra work when a bit of pre-planning can take care ofa lot of back ache, plus just make the veggie patch an all-over more pleasurable space to hang out in.

[Colleen]

Good planning is essential in a vegetable garden. Whether anyone else thinks my version of good garden planning is attractive or not is irrelevant. I'd rather see people growing food, and perhaps breaking a few design "rules," than not growing it at all. And I think it does a disservice to beginning gardeners to suggest that their gardens are somehow wanting because they lack art or ornamentation. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and feeding one's family from your own back yard is definitely a beautiful experience.

[Chimelle]

Huh. I was thinking of starting a small vegetable patch to tend with my daughter this spring, but you know, after working 8-9 hours, commuting home, and making sure the family is fed, bathed, and extra-educated, I might not have time to keep up with the staking, weeding, and primping. Maybe I should just nix the whole idea. Wouldn't want to give you "respectable" veggie gardeners a bad name.

[Willi]

I think the reason why so many vegetable gardens end up looking unattractive is because people don't know how to make them look nice---not because they want their garden look bad. I try to educate people about plant combinations that look attractive, mulch (which is the quickest way to make a vegetable garden look tidy), how to build eye-catching structures for kitchen gardens, and which varieties are tasty and pretty. And I also let them know if they end up with a jumble one year, they can just plan better the next. My gardens look better every year and it's because I've learned from other gardeners and my own mistakes.

[Mr. McGregor's Daughter]

I agree, Robin, there's no need for veggie gardens to look unsightly. I hate to curb anyone's enthusiasm, but I don't think it's too much to encourage people to plan for paths or at least stepping stones in the garden to allow for maintenance and harvesting without damaging anything (or injuring body parts).
I've recently been thinking about the practicality vs. design dilemma in the garden, and how often a practical solution is an attractive one.
A veggie garden doesn't have to look perfect, but it doesn't have to be an eyesore either.

[Helen Yoest / Gardening With Confidence™]

I strive to keep my vegetable garden weed free if for no other reason than to stop the competition for resources.

I recently redesigned my vegetable garden, which I have dubbed, Le Petit Potager, and forgot to add access. It was laughable, especially since I am a garden designer. Taking the time to get it right is admirable and necessary.

I have a full time job, three little one's at home and grow the garden as part of my families education and well being. We have all learned for our vegetable garden experience. H.

[Carri]

Robin has a lot of valid points. ANY landscaping that is poorly done can lessen the value of your home, and your neighborhood. I know that my own neighbors have concerns that I ripped out my front lawn and simply told them I'm doing "edibles". What they don't know is I'm planning curved walkways, a patio space, and edibles mixed in with beautiful perennials. They don't know that because it takes too much time for me to explain it to them, and they haven't done as much research as I have to know that edible gardens CAN be functional and beautiful at the same time (thank you Rosalind Creasy!). I will be making more of an effort to make the front yard edibles look prettier than I would have if I was just doing raised beds in the back yard, and hopefully my neighbors will be able to learn something from me in the process. But still, I think growing your own food, even if it doesn't look "designed" is better than not growing anything at all. People have to start small to see if it's for them.

[Town Mouse]

When I was a kid and wanted to start a project, my mother always asked: "Are you sure you want to take this on?" She explained what was involved, and if I started and did not finish, there were consequences.

To me, this post is about people whose mother did not do that. They plant and hope for instant, effortless vegetables, and are not willing to put in the work required. The same can happen with other plantings, but at least you don't waste a nice dinner (or 10) if you ignore those plants.

In the end, let's face it, you reap the results of your actions (or lack thereof).

[Tibs]

What jumped out at me was Robin's comment on "two-foot-tall sorry excuse for tomato cages these gardeners bought at Wal-Mart." I have some real tomato cages that must be over 30 years old because they came from my parents. They are 3 1/2' tall, made of heavy gage metal and they can support all but the most rampant of the indetermenate tomatoes. Ban flimsy tomato cages! Do I focus on the minutia or what?

I keep my garden small because I know my weeding limitations and how much we can eat and how much I can can/freeze and how much I can give away. Newbies have no idea how much work is involved and get stars (tomatoes?) in their eyes and plant enough to feed a 3rd world country and can't take care of it. I don't think Robin was being snobby at all. A little planning goes along way to reduce work. Except a potager is more work. I have always wanted one. I have drawn many plans up. Tnen reality sets in and I know there is no way I am going to do the manicure type maintenance that they need to look good.

[Eliz]

I think there is a discernible movement toward creating attractive and coherent vegetable gardens. I also think form should go along with function and a weeded, organized, well-supported vegetable garden is more functional.