In The Victory Garden
by Austin Jobes
This week we harvested 185 pounds of fresh produce from our Victory Garden.
The abundance and variety within our not-so-little vegetable patch is astounding. When I take time to step back and appreciate how much food can be produced from a single plant, a single row, a small plot, it fills me with hope. Hope that someday more people will feel encouraged to participate in the magic of growing food, encouraged to demand food justice and sovereignty, and encouraged to subvert insupportable food systems.
Our community grocery stores have been coopted by processed foods with too many additives and preservatives and too few micronutrients and fiber. For many of us, our foodways are directed by the need to save a dollar, not to eat highly nutritious and organic whole foods often limited to other more affluent locales (Alkon et al. 2013).
The Philbrook Victory Garden not only provides highly nutritious food to our community, but also a place to share and learn about horticulture and the process of growing food.
Our Senior Horticulturist, Jack Titchener who oversees the Victory Garden, is fond of saying, “These [vegetable] plants want to grow, they want to be here, we nurture them a little, but we really just need to get out of their way and let them do their thing.”
While there are certainly diseases and pests to contend with, the persistence of vegetable crops to tolerate variable conditions and produce in abundance is inspiring. The squash vine borer continues to be a major adversary. But even with obvious physical damage, vines and stems half-eaten and mushy, there are still summer squash to pick and donate. Squirrels and rabbits love to snack on Cherokee Purple tomatoes. And who can blame them for enjoying something so soft, sweet, and tangy. We find many half-eaten and forgotten on picnic tables or still attached to the vine, and still we have plenty to harvest.
Unlike our furry garden residents, many people do not have the luxury of sampling fresh and perfectly ripe produce. Have you ever picked and eaten a tomato straight off the vine? It tastes like liquid summer sunshine. Have you ever tried a regular supermarket tomato? No contest. They’re often mealy and lackluster, having been picked green then ripened during transport using ethylene gas. We’d love to provide a sample of that “liquid summer sunshine” to you, if you ask. Come see us out in the Victory Garden. While supplies last.
As this summer growing season starts its march into fall, we are preparing space for those semi-hardy fall crops. Check out this helpful resource for fall gardening (McMahon. 2012). Out with the old and in with the new root vegetables, leafy salad greens, and brassicas. Fall is a great time to grow similar vegetables as those in spring. However, with colder temperatures approaching, fall gives greater opportunity for timing and flavor. Fall is the perfect time to grow collard greens in Oklahoma. The first light frost we get will produce some of the best deep green flavor compounds imaginable.
We’re most excited for the many different types of fall radishes: Red Meat (aka Watermelon), Mantanghong, Green Meat, Nero Tondo (a black, round), and Daikon. Radishes and other root veggies give some of the best “bang for your buck”. Like radishes, turnips are great for their fleshy taproots and leafy green tops, both alliums and carrots planted during the fall can tolerate colder weather and overwinter to be ready the following spring providing greater variety of available fresh produce (Hillock, Simons, & Gray).
Needless to say, we are all excited for fall gardening.
Austin Jobes is a Horticulturist at Philbrook Museum of Art.
References
Alkon, A. H., Block, D., Moore, K., Gillis, C., DiNuccio, N., & Chavez, N. (2013). Foodways of the urban poor. Geoforum, 48, 126–135.
Hillock, David., Brenda Simons, Susan Gray. Fall Gardening. Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service HLA-6009.
McMahon, Rebecca. (2012). Fall Gardening. Sedgwick County K-State Research & Extension.
