Picture this: out into your potager garden with your coffee, the crispness of the air, the soft pastel colors across the sky, and your plants having nothing but “growth” in their vocabulary. But that is not all; this is a gastronomic dream joined with practicality-a kitchen garden with flair and aesthetic appeal. Think of veggies, herbs, flowers, all playing together in harmony, and you playing maestro with the spade.
Spring almost bursts forth, as if this were the return from some long, really far away, with all vigor and promise. That is renovation time. From cool-weather crops, it’s like the ‘morning cuppa’: it never fails to soothe. Be it lettuce, radish, or peas-all sprinters of the vegetable world. These guys simply love the comfortable, mild weather that early spring sprinkles like diamonds. You are selecting the harvest in a bowl of greens while all your neighbors are fast asleep.
Sprinkling sunshine and rain through summer, she changes her robes with the advent of spring. Summer, thy star-studded season: tomatoes, zucchinis, peppers, and bush beans headline thy seasonal opera divas, all in craving of longer daylight symphonies. They adore the sun, that golden elixir.
Teasing sultry weather tempts you with a cocktail, but never be backward in hurling in some marigolds. But they are not mere eye candies; they are the bodyguards of your garden, keeping away pests. These workhorses earn their keep in the garden, so to say.
Then comes the fall of it all-olive-garbed in gold, russet of apples. Not good-bye but a real nudge to pace yourself. What a good friend this Earth is: chestnuts and pumpkins on offer, homing in, offering you a warm embrace with promises of hefty soups. Plant your carrots, kale and spinach. Your fall leafy greens are your cool cats-so to say-in terms of taking the chill. More of a jazz melancholy-easy-listening rather than a rock concert.
Winter is a grumpy, gruff, and unforgiving old granddad, but let me not be misconstrued because winter, too, has its whispers. With every sobering of frost, so brews the magic underground: garlic and onions snuggle in comfortably under a layer of mulch, waiting for their Oscar appearance this spring. Winter isn’t about hibernation; it is time to think. Stock up the repository with seeds, draw the blueprint of next year, and give those ideas of the garden that nice wine fermentation. Think of the potager not so much as a vegetable garden but as an artist’s palette; the flow of each season yielding its riches in hue and texture. That would be the radishes dolloped with color within a living, breathing work of art; chives, for instance, are like Nature’s tinsel, keeping the pests at bay. It’s all a question of that eternal balance-too much vegetable and it’s a vegetable stand; too little, it’s the florist’s shop. The world of a potager garden joins usefulness with charm, and the lines blur between create and grow. Old tips about gardening passed through picket-fence conversations seem to slide easily with new tips on virtual picket-fence chats, alias gardening blogs and forums. Ever try companion planting? It’s some sort of Shakespearean marriage-making for plants. Basil and tomatoes, like peanut butter and jelly, just go together-they dance across your plate or in whatever dish in perfect flavor accord.
Cultivating Season: Growing and Gathering through the Year
Just think about it: walking into your potager and finding something ready to be picked every month of the year. Well, isn’t that magic? And yet there’s old magic in the almanac of the garden. Take trowel, and let us unfold the secret of the seasons’ travail with few words. Look upon spring as a colour-box newly opened. Your garden having slumbered during most of winter, stretches, yawns, and prepares its muscles.
First the peas and lettuce-this is their season in this cold soil, the vegetable penguins on the ice. Radishes and carrots are edible interim rewards.
Throw in the onions and spinach for good measure, and by the end of spring you will have a virtual salad bar going.
Of course, not all of them arrive in spring, but as soon as summer peeks over the corner, it stitches a tapestry of possibilities.
On stage come the tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, kissed by the sun. They drink in, as it were, these indolent hours of sun like somnolent cats in the window spot. There are the zucchinis that propagate like rabbits unless watched carefully. Tuck in basil and cilantro, aromatic sidekicks that make any dish sing. Now you are at the edge of the end of summer, but not yet time to put the tools away! Along comes autumn with a sort of ‘made you feel like a sower of secrets’ feeling. That is the time when you should plant kale, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts into the cold ground-cold doesn’t bother them, like old friends meeting in hoary pubs. It is also now when cauliflower savors the coolest moments in antioxidants, pumpkin parades in for its Halloween parade. Lest one should forget, nothing screams fall like a harvest of gourds welcoming you into their patchwork quilt.
Winter sets in, frozen in its icy grip. As far as the gardener is concerned, however, the game is not over just yet. Just a pinch of planning will have him picking some fresh produce from the frosty ground. Plants should be winter hardiness. But think of one flying its flag of leafy livery in defiance of all odds, Swiss chard and leeks – the gallant survivors of the season – while garlic and shallots stand low, laying in store those delicious secrets to pop up in spring. If the notion of bleak winters drives you into a tizzy, let me lead you into cold frame and greenhouse magic, thinking of them as jackets against the cold for your garden. These little havens enable one to extend the growing season and give you such greens as spinach and arugula when Jack Frost nips at your nose. The seasons come and go; this again echoes an eternal partner-the schedule of sowing. Your garden whispers possibilities with every rustling of the leaves. And you will find the more you give to it, the greater the rewards. There can be no single, one-size-fits-all answer, rather, it can only be a tasty jigsaw in which each oddly shaped piece may be as valuable as the finished picture.
