the back plot in my community garden, with mica

Karen Christine Hibbard

“I try to perfect it every year. One year I did a weekly blog about my progress and the community garden gardening cycle. Last year I tried something new with tomatoes. I’ve always been lured by the catalog promises of all these great tomatoes so I started several varieties and when you have 20 plant the temptation is to use lots of them. Last year I grew only Brandywines, and planted only 4 plants. It was my best tomato harvest. But also last year I grew too many turnips and the roly polys got the ones I didn’t harvest right away, and the bitter melons grew over the tomatillos. So there’s always something. Then someone grows something cool that I didn’t think of. One year another gardener grew red noodle beans. Now I grow them every season. They’re abundant, the bean beetles don’t eat them and they look great. They have theses tow feet long deep red beans that grow in clusters.”

“So you grow them because you like the way they look? Do you plan the garden so you can use it for photos or do photos happen because of the garden plan.”

“OK so it’s some of both. But I can’t control what grows in the next plot so there are always visual surprises.”

“You always were cooking interesting things. You had that Indian cookbook before any of us thought about that kind of food.”

“The most exotic thing we were eating then was Pizza with green chiles!”

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