Driveway Potager, take one: Better luck next year?
A first (small, makeshift) attempt at growing food in the northeast.
The text message said simply, “Do you want tomatoes?” It was from my friend J who has been my garden enabler in New York, always offering me whips or seedlings or transplants before I think I’m “ready” to host them. It was April 13th, so I understood she was asking if I wanted any of the seedlings she had no doubt been starting indoors. I wasn’t ready, and wasn’t even sure I was going to attempt to grow vegetables here this year. We are blessed with great farms and farmers’ markets here in the rural Hudson Valley, so we have easy access to great produce and I love supporting the farms. I also haven’t done the research! I don’t know what varieties grow best here, how to accommodate the short growing season, what pests to be prepared for!
On the other hand, I love vegetable gardening, and I loooove tomatoes. The only thing as thrilling as eating a tomato straight from the vine is growing it in the first place. Ready or not, I wanted J’s seedlings. But ... how?
In deciding to give over our roughly 15'x40' patch of full-sun grass to the future forest concept (aka future full shade), I had more or less ruled out the possibility of a kitchen garden. I had considered instead converting the yard into a beautiful raised-beds-and-gravel potager — the likes of which we’ve made before — but I need trees, the house needs trees, the Earth needs trees. With the tiny forest now (however barely) underway, all that remains out back is a whole lot of asphalt, at least for the time being. But of course beautiful raised beds and gravel paths aren’t required to grow vegetables. Nor is a long-term plan. I could start small and makeshift: Adopt some seedlings, go get a couple of big pots, plop them on the asphalt in front of the garage we almost never park in, and see what I could learn.
So I told J yes, and thus was born my “driveway potager.” Glamorous, right? (Although only really amusing if you pronounce it poht-uh-zhay.) She brought over 3 seedlings: an Atomic Grape (never grown it), a Woodstock (never heard of it) and a Black Krim (one of my very faves). I got three 15-gallon grow bags from the garden center, along with various smaller terra cotta pots to hold some herbs and a ground cherry plant acquired from the farmers’ market, grouped them in the sun and crossed my fingers.
Trial and error, friends. Gardening, like life, is all about trial and error. How did it go? Well, let’s see ...
