Deconstruction Commencement

A bittersweet moment indeed, the week when the garden is beckoning to be harvested in earnest, indefinitely. It happened last week, and I waited until a photo shoot for an upcoming feature to break the ice (if you’re local, be sure to pick up this Sunday’s Star Tribune). Fortunately, this year I am committing to harvest at a steady rate so that we have a little bit of fresh produce at the ready indoors every day of the season. This way, I may avoid massive, overwhelming spring harvests — that’s the hope, at least.

It’s a funny thing how attached we grow to our plantings. But it also makes a lot of sense. As a mother, it’s not unlike the bittersweet passing of milestones in my children’s lives. On the one hand, I delight in their growth while simultaneously mourning a time gone by, never to return. Each time we plant our gardens they are each as unique as every moment of our lives. They are dynamic, fleeting, and filled with immeasurable hope and love and joy. So taking the harvesting knife to these carefully designed blocks of edible art is never easy. But then again, what about life is supposed to be easy, right?

For me I think it’s in part the desire to slow life down, to freeze frame some aspect of my life. To possibly wield control over something, anything, in my immediate life that most often feels and is, frankly, completely out of control. This has intensified exponentially in the past five years. It’s also that these plants become fast friends. Am I the only one to share some of my deepest internal thoughts, hopes, and dreams with my garden companions?

Head lettuce is also mentally challenging to chop down. Last summer I was so attached to our iceberg lettuces that they ended up going to seed instead of in our bellies. True story, and as soon as I saw the flower stalk push through the middle of the head, I knew I had to just enjoy it. This year I’m aiming for more salads.

One way to really embrace the deconstruction is to intensively plant your food. At this point, my bok choy is starting to shade out the neighboring kale, my anchors of these beds in summer and fall. So I endured only minor pangs of despair when the first head was decapitated. The salad turnips are also encroaching on the available light for the scarlet kale so they must go, tool.

I’m embracing harvesting entire heads this season where in past seasons I would harvest individual bok choy leaves until sometime in June. Often, the plants would be nearing flower stage before I harvested the heads, so in an effort to really live in the season and embrace these early flavors, I am actively working on more actively harvesting food each day. We have about 10 heads of bok choy remaining for spring and early summer, plus the baby bok choy. I am thinking I’ll sneak in a few rows of baby bok choy under one of my bean trellises next week for early July stir fries.

The more we harvest, the faster these early beds will open up for their second succession. It’s almost like composting yesterday’s thoughts to open space for tomorrow’s dreams. Embracing the hope and surety of late summer beans and carrots is motivation enough for me to head out into the garden with our sharpened harvesting knife, a basket, and gratitude for the plans that came to life this spring.