Planning...

Jack Deatherage

(12/2024) I preordered "The Maryland Master Gardener's Handbook (2025 edition). The tome cost me $100. I'm hoping the handbook will promote sustainability as that seems to be the current watchword.

Having been two years building a garden without a concrete plan other than setting aside an area for the library's use, a coupla raised beds for the town staff's use, what are supposed to be mostly formal flowerbeds along the sidewalk side of the garden, and several raised beds for growing garlic and shallots for my own amusement, it would be nice to know where we're taking the garden. Not that most people wandering in the garden seem to mind the chaos we've created. With no guidance we've been experimenting with different methods of teasing plants out of the ground. Should enlightenment arrive via the handbook, we'll continue our experiments while working sustainability into them.

As is often the case, when I'm paying attention, the universe steps up with suggestions. Suggestions I tend to ignore and the universe keeps offering anyhow. A week or three after ordering the gardening handbook I get an email from the Town Manager, Cathy Willets, informing me there may be grant money -$20K- for the community garden. Grants Administrator Madeline Shaw also emails with questions about what we're doing at the Cedar Avenue Community Garden. Both Town staffers warn me the grant from Sustainable Maryland is very competitive because it requires no matching funds on the applicant's part. I won't likely see any moneys from it this coming year. However, acquiring some of that grant money might be possible in the future if we bring the garden into compliance.

Compliance? With as Gallic a shrug as I can managed I email back a few wants I don't expect to get, but plan to purchase myself as the community garden expands. A rototiller the DW could operate, metal raised beds, cattle panels, T-posts, a Rubbermaid wheel barrow, straw and hay bales, a couple vermicomposters, and a garden shed. The shed is going to be a bear to raise money for. I figure I mightn't live long enough to acquire some of my wants. Grant money could get those items for me quicker so I wander off on the World Wide Webs looking for Sustainable Maryland and community gardens in particular.

The universe gives me another nudge. The mayor recently gathered some of the local churches and charities to discuss, among other things, a bi-weekly soup kitchen to provide hot meals and fellowship for those in the community experiencing financial difficulties. No surprise that grant money is available to community gardens focused on feeding those in need. Though I don't see our little community garden being of much use to a soup kitchen it might occasionally provide a few vegetables grown in excess?

Educating the public on sustainable gardening practices is another step toward receiving grant moneys, as is setting aside areas of a garden for native plants and wildlife- things we're already working on with the children's librarians.

Sustainable Maryland grant moneys aside, I think we'll focus more on Western Hemisphere plants this coming year?

Beyond corn, beans and squash -easily stored through a long winter- we can get into sunflowers, sunchokes, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatillo, passion fruit, blueberry, raspberry, sweet potatoes, peanuts and amaranth to name a few. All of which could help support a soup kitchen as well as some native pollinators and wildlife.

More in line with Sustainable Maryland's goals, there's also a plethora of flowers native to Maryland we could grow in sections of the garden- a point I think I saw mentioned in the grant application I found online. However, more than a few of the flowers I've looked at require moister soils than we can currently provide at the community garden.

Education is also mentioned in the grant application. I still want to use melons, which were introduced to the Americas in the sixteen hundreds, in a STEM program about pollination. I think the kids would enjoy sampling the melons and possibly creating a landrace specific to Emmitsburg even if the melons aren't native. Besides, most of the "native" vegetables I can find seed for have been selected for human wants over generations to the point the average human wouldn't recognize a wild ancestor of sweet corn. Hmm... I saw seed for what scientists believe is the plant corn (maize) evolved from. Maybe I should add that to the growing list of seeds wants?

A supposedly healthy, long-term storing, nonnative grain I've been talking myself out of trialing for several years now is sorghum. If grown to maturity here, the grain can easily be stored for at least a year and in many places around this rock is a primary grain for human consumption- a gluten free wheat substitute for those with a gluten issue.

An Oklahoman homesteader has convinced me, after about 25 years of haranguing me, to begin growing and eating some of the many types of squash (pumpkins be squash) that are available. Whether said homesteader ever gets me to grow and eat the other two mainstay foods native to the Americas- beans and corn -remains to be seen. Why doesn't she (of course the homesteader is a she, no guy would spend 25 years trying to educate an idiot) include tomatoes among the native mainstays? As she's pointed out, tomatoes do not store well unless they are dried, canned or frozen. Nor do maters provide the nutrients, protein and energy the other three crops can provide throughout a long winter without a great deal of processing.

I'd add potatoes to the short list of native mainstays, but I haven't figured out how to keep more than a few pounds of them past mid October. The DW does share the taters she grows if the library kids happen to be on hand when she takes it into her head to fork a row up. A few of the kids were amazed to learn that potatoes come from under ground. I on the other hand was stunned at how much things have changed around here since I followed the potato plow as one of my uncles opened the rows. First Sister and I picked up the taters, putting them in baskets which would be taken into one of the farm sheds to "cure" before going into the root cellar.

Ah well. Times change, sometimes for the better. Hopefully not for the worse.

About the only aspect of the community garden I'm certain of is it needs to be as sustainable as is possible. If rain isn't falling from the sky the garden's primary water source is supplied by the town. Treated water is NOT ideal, but it does get the garden through our usual droughts. Getting the garden soils to retain as much natural water as is possible by working leaves and compost into it and mulching moves the garden in that direction. Planting drought tolerant, native crops also helps.

With an idiot and a loon (not sure who is which most days) currently being the driving forces behind creating the garden space I figure we might get within spitting distance of sustainability before the idiot turns 80 (I'm 70 now, the loon is a puppy).