Essay | Garden Harvest

PRESTON TOWNSHIP, FILLMORE COUNTY – The full moon rose in the east like a giant peach on a September night, while the crickets sang mournfully of harvest.

Our garden signals the changing season: ripened Romas and Brandywine tomatoes, picked in the heat of afternoon, sit in a tropical green snow-sled by the door waiting to be pulled inside for canning. A bucket of green beans sits nearby as well; potatoes and carrots await digging, peppers picking.

The garden, just a few months ago, was in the full vigor of bloom with the sun and rain turning seeds into plants and now, into fruit. Some of the vines are withering and plant life is giving back its seed for new life, ready for another year’s planting.

Since man domesticated wild plants some 20,000 years ago, planting seeds in the soil to grow food has become essential to feeding the planet. We have gone from wanderers hunting our food, to sodbusters gathering our sustenance from the land. This is how agriculture began, creating settlements of people that turned into our towns and cities.

Knowing our family can feed ourselves fills us with immense wonder. It takes planning, hard work, and a bit of luck to grow a garden well.

A horticulturist friend once told me, “Each year a garden gives you something, but not everything.” In cold, wet weather brassicas thrive at the expense of tomatoes and peppers, which love hot and dry. “You take what your garden gives you,” he said.

Seed catalogs arrive in the new year and encourage gardeners to begin planning for the next growing season. (Photo by John Torgrimson)

Garden season starts in the winter

For us, gardening begins in January with the influx of seed catalogs: Seed Savers Exchange, Johnny’s Select Seeds and High Mowing are favorites.  We’re particularly interested in heirlooms, old-timey varieties handed down from generation to generation, many of them brought over from the old country by immigrants. Heirlooms are open-pollinated, meaning the seeds can be saved and planted again.

My wife, Pat, winter sows seeds in February, placing them in clear plastic bins with potting soil and putting them out in the winter snow – a low-cost greenhouse.  As the days get warmer, the sun will warm the soil and the seeds will sprout.

In April we will plant the cold-hardy plants in the garden. In late May, after the last frost, we put in the tomatoes, peppers and other weather-sensitive plants.

Tomatoes originated in the mountains of South America, but are believed to have been domesticated in Mexico. Cortés took them back to Spain, where they were considered poisonous and grown as an ornamental plant. Italians changed that, turning tomatoes into an international cuisine.

Potatoes came from Peru, garlic and apples from Central Asia. Beets originated in the Mediterranean, onions from the Middle East.

Every garden is a horticultural United Nations, owing its origins to some place far away.

Garlic drying in a shed on the Torgrimson small farm. Garlic originated in Central Asia. Garlic cloves are planted in mid-October and mulched over winter and is the first thing up in the garden in Spring. It is harvested in July. (Photo by John Torgrimson)

Harvest is full of satisfaction – self-sufficiency in the face of the urgency of winter, when the ground stays frozen and fallow. We will buy beef, chicken and pork before winter fully sets in.

Today I harvested a bowlful of shiitake mushrooms from the logs I set last year. In October we will take our Haralson and Cortland apples to the Amish to be turned into cider. Cider making has its own rhythm, practice centuries old.

Still planting in October

Our gardening season ends with the planting of garlic in mid-October. Many years ago, a friend gave us seed garlic and we have grown it ever since. In spring, it will sprout through the heavy mulch that we put down when planting. We will harvest it in July and dry it in one of our outbuildings.

The sky is full of maple and birch leaves taking wing in the autumn wind as I put mulch on the garden – grass clippings, leaves, and rotting hay. 

I pause occasionally to rest on the garden fork and breathe in the full measure of this glorious time of year, so full of gratitude and hope.