Every year around this time, Elspeth checks in with a local farmer or gardener. She asks questions like, what seeds are you ordering? What new tricks are you trying?
Nicole Parkington of Wellfleet, who has a big, prolific kitchen garden, says she’s starting with the basics.
“Carrots, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, and green beans,” she says. “Those are like my staples. Know the seeds are going to germinate and become something.”
Every gardener has had the experience of getting all geared up to try something new and exciting—a melon, or a very particular pepper—only to find the seeds don’t even sprout. So, for the most important crops, Nicole makes sure she sticks to varieties that are tried and true.
“Shishitos is on my list because they're so good and they're so easy,” she says. “You pop them in the oven, salt, olive oil, and boom, you have like a great little snack.”
Then there’s Marketmore, one of the most disease-resistant and abundant cucumbers around.
“Those are the pickling cucumbers,” she says. “You can also use them for slicing. That's why I like that variety, because you can do both for them. I grew the Suhyo Long cucumbers and they were excellent to grow. So that's another variety that I like.”
Those cucumbers can grow up to a foot long, so she uses a climbing fence so that they have somewhere to hang. They are also known for their fast growth. The vines can get up to 8 feet tall, so making sure they have a trellis to climb is key. When it comes to zucchini, Nicole plants several varieties—not only the usual yellow and green suspects, but also a summer squash known as Grey zucchini for its pale flecked skin and small size—at least when you’re paying attention.
“These are kind of a little bit smaller, she says. “But I mean like any kind of vegetable if you let it go too long, they get big and kind of tasteless so you kind of have to catch them. But the best thing about zucchini and squash is you can always make it into bread or something amazing comes out of it. That's why I grow zucchini. I can make so much with it. Not only can you use it for slicing vegetables, but I mean, my kids love when I make lemon poppy seed zucchini bread. It makes it so much more moist and delicious. My kids really love when zucchini season's happening.”
That is how Nicole picks her staple crops.
“I'm picking out, obviously, what I know my kids are going to eat,” she says. “So, carrots are another big one. I used to have a really great crop, but the last couple seasons they haven't been great. And I think that's because I've tried other varieties like the rainbow varieties.”
Before that, Nicole always grew a carrot called Napoli known for it’s thick, blunt roots and dependable germination, and she says this year she’s going back to it.
Elspeth finds planting carrots at the right time and getting them to germinate to be tricky, especially in recent drought years. But as Nicole reminded her, this tinkering is at the heart of gardening.
“You know, I think with gardening, you just have to keep on trying because something is going to come out amazing, you know?” Nicole says. “Something's going to fail, and then something's going to come up amazing, and I think that's what keeps gardeners going. You're like, it's so disappointing. Every day you come out and you look at a plant, and you're like what am I doing wrong? And then you look at this other plant that's growing amazing, and it's just kind of having to figure out, it's like a little equation. What are you doing right or wrong, and you just learn from there.
Nicole suggests that it's impossible to master gardening completely. "I know there are master gardeners out there, but I feel like they're always learning to garden," she says. "No matter, every year you're learning something different. That's the best part I enjoy about it.”
Another trick Wellfleet gardener Nicole is going back to this year is spreading salt hay on her garden—not only is it free for the taking if you pick it up after a good tide, but it’s also free of weeds and grass seed and excellent at keeping moisture in the garden.
Elspeth Hay is the author of Feed Us with Trees: Nuts and the Future of Food.
