“Let us go singing as far as we go; the road will be less tedious.” --- Virgil

Books

Gardening Made Easy


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By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Mar 11, 2010
Category: Self Help

WEEKEND EDITION: On Friday, newsletter subscribers get a special edition, not published on the site. Tomorrow's e-mail will include a reader's response to my review of "The Ghost Writer" (she hated the film) and a preview of an exhibit of J.D. Salinger's letters. John Le Carre spills some secrets. A critic lists the best opening lines in literature. And more. At the risk of boring you, let me repeat: You must be a subscriber to get this. So move that cursor a few inches to the right, type in your e-mail address, hit SUBMIT. And then, every Friday, I'll submit to you. Thanks.

Alice Waters got her wish. 

There was a vegetable garden on the White House lawn during World War II. In the mid-'90s, Waters --- founder of Chez Panisse and a leader in the eat-local, eat-organic movement --- suggested that Bill Clinton revive the garden. (He didn't, but Mrs. Clinton planted a tomato rooftop garden at the White House.) In Michelle Obama, Waters found a committed listener; now, at the White House, they not only eat their vegetables, they grow them.

If the Obamas can tear up a patch of the White House lawn for a vegetable garden, then you can probably have one too. And if you can, you should. For health reasons: The organic food you grow is better for you than any you can buy. For spiritual reasons: It's good to reconnect with our ancestral roots. For exercise: You will use muscles that don't get worked out at the gym. For economic reasons: It's vastly cheaper to grow your food than buy it. And, in a hard time, for the simple satisfaction of seeing the upside of life --- watching something small grow into something good.

The good news: It's never been easier to grow Alice Waters-worthy vegetables.

No more digging to China. No more long rows. Use only as many seeds as you hope will grow, so you don't have to spend hours on your knees thinning your crop.

In a word: above-ground gardening --- planting by the square foot in raised beds, contained with planks any fool could hammer together.

The king of this school of gardening is Mel Bartholomew, an engineer who retired in 1975 and took up gardening as a hobby. He had also been an efficiency expert, so he had lots of questions that others might not have dared to ask. Like: Why plant a zillion seeds, only to thin 95% of the young plants a few weeks later? Like: Why plant entire rows of a single crop if you don't, for example, want 30 cabbages to ripen at the same time? Why leave a 3-foot aisle between rows? Why add compost at a rate that doesn't give you great soil for seven years?

The answers he got were the same each time: “That's the way we've always done it.”

To a smarty, them's fightin' words. 

In All New Square Foot Gardening, Bartholomew breaks gardens down to literal 12” squares. With proper spacing, that means just four plants per square. Savings to you? Well, by his math, planting in 12” squares instead of long rows saves you 80% of the garden area. To put it bluntly (and he does): “You can grow 100% of the harvest in only 20% of the space.”

So what does Bartholomew ask of you? Lay out a 4' by 4' area, frame it with planks nailed together (and, if you're so inclined, painted a crisp white). Dig up the top six inches of soil. Mix in peat moss, vermiculite and compost. Now you have a 12” high growing area. Plant it.

Bartholomew shows you how to do everything. When to do it. How much to do it. What tools you'll need (few). How much work lies ahead (not so much). Everything important gets a big, clear, color photograph. And, from the testimonials, it really looks as if a few minutes a day can yield a bountiful organic harvest.

The Vegetable Garden's Bible, by Edward C. Smith, is a first cousin to the square-foot method. Smith lives in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont; whenever you read this, it's probably snowing there right now. Smith is a bigtime gardener --- he grows 100 kinds of vegetables in 1,500 square feet --- so it's harder for him to think small. And he does require a bit more of you. (No readymade compost for him, and he likes to dig deep.) But he adopts the raised bed approach. He likes wide rows. He's organic.

Smith, like Bartholomew, had revelations along the way. “Whenever a plant's growing space gets wider or deeper or both, its growth improves.” He teaches you how to really read a seed catalogue. He shares useful tips, like planting mint and horseradish --- in pots, so they don't grow wild --- to repel cabbage moths and bean beetles. And he takes you through every process, in step-by-step photographs.

Effortless gardening? Only in those TV commercials that show you how to roll out a carpet of ready-to-sprout flowers or grow tomatoes upside down on a porch. Nearly effortless? These books show you how.

Now you have no excuse not to grow your own. 

Short Takes

Simon & Garfunkel: On Tour

They’ve been through every permutation in their relationship, but if you saw them sing together at the MTV anniversary show (sadly, not on the web), you saw two men perform so brilliantly they looked at one another afterward, stunned. So we shouldn’t be surprised there’s a tour, starting in Canada in late April and then moving through the Plains. (More dates surely coming.)

A friend told me a story from the dawn of history: Paul had just started writing songs. He took his brother into the bathroom -- the tiles improved the sound -- and sang a song for him. And his brother shivered, because in those few minutes he couldn’t help but see Paul’s future. This is the song: 
 

Mary Herczog (1964-2010)

My friend Julie turned me on to cancerchick.com, the web site of her friend Mary Herczog, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996. Mary shared her ups and downs on this site for years; I got there late, when it was obvious she’d almost run out of time. On February 16, she finally gave it up; last weekend, there was a memorial service in Los Angeles. Julie wrote to me after: “I know it sounds weird, but it was life affirming and inspiring. The memorial started with Richard Thompson performing and ended with the traditional New Orleans' style "Second Line" with a wonderful jazz brass band, at the oddly wonderful Hollywood Cemetery. She deserved it; she was beloved.” 

Twyla Tharp: 'Come Fly Away'

Nostalgic for the Olympics? No need. World-class athleticism has moved to Broadway, where the women in Twyla Tharp’s troupe are tossing off the dance equivalent of triple-axels and the men could teach Shaun White a thing or two about innovative leaps. Okay, I’m not a neutral observer --- I was Ms. Tharp’s collaborator on her book, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together --- nor am I a dance critic. But even a casual theatergoer can’t miss the level of artistry in Come Fly Away, a dance musical built around the music of Frank Sinatra. Set in a night club, dancers pair up, break up, form new relationships, reunite. The words of love, regret and romantic hope are all Frank’s, who has never sung better; his pristine vocal tracks are supported by a massive --- 19-piece --- live band. But it’s the dancers, who reprise every great move that Twyla Tharp has devised over half a century and add some new ones, who flew me to the moon and back. The show, now in previews, opens on March 25.