Growing at the Speed of Life - A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden

sits on an acre of land that falls off rapidly to the west, giving us up to 16 hours

of sunshine on our south side in midsummer. For the longest time, we lived with

a south lawn that gradually became a sea of dandelions. (Had I only known that

springtime organic dandelions can fetch $7 a pound at market I might have en­

tered the earth-to-table race sooner!)

I’ve always loved the word serendipity—it sounds like something a hairdresser

might do to create one of those finger-in-a-light-socket hairstyles. In our case, it

was First Lady Michelle Obama putting spade to turf on the White House

lawn—yes, it was the south lawn!

Surely it was serendipity that had me plunge my spade into our south lawn

within days of the First Lady? And now there are two southern lawn kitchen

gardens—and there I believe any comparisons should cease!

Our plans called for three styles, or types, of gardens, all edible. Along one of

our docks (there’s that nautical influence again), we would grow each separately

in a container called an EarthBox.

The second project, for which we’d join the food race in selecting and germi­

nating seeds, came in the shape of a greenhouse. We watched in awe as a great

local company with a worldwide reach (Charley’s Greenhouses) raised our 16×8­

foot structure in just 7 hours! Here we would get a head start on the short Pacifi c

Northwest growing season and, we hoped, grow vegetables all year round.

Our final and most labor-intensive garden would be a tenth of an acre of

raised beds for peas, beans, chard, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, carrots,

parsnips, and a whole raft of lettuce busily keeping down the weeds among the

red beets and summer and winter squash—all in all, more than 30 plants under

the supervision and care of a man with absolutely no prior experience!

While it wasn’t completely clear to me what impact the experience of creating

this garden would have on my life, my neighbors, and even, to a small but vital

degree, our community, I recognized early on that I would want to share the les-

sons learned. And so I started to document my year with the kitchen garden in a

series of short videos, since television had always been my most compelling plat­

form when it came to proselytizing about food and well-being—and now even

4 • GROWING AT THE SPEED OF LIFE