Mysteries in my garden

Monster kale. PHOTO BY AUTHOR.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. Maybe nobody else has noticed. But I’ve been gardening for an awfully long time. And something is definitely going on now — something different.

Remember the story of Jack and the Beanstalk? My garden looks like it might produce a beanstalk so high it would entice Jack. The okra last year looked like they were reaching for the clouds, so this year I got clever and bought the “Baby Bubba” hybrid from Burpee designed to remain short. And while they have, yes, remained shrubby, they are huge. Monstrous. I planted them the recommended distance apart, but it’s like a jungle in there.

I don’t have any beans at all. I do have kale. My kale has become the stuff of legend among my neighbors and friends. The good news is that for everyone who disdains kale, there’s someone who wants it, and is happy to take it off my hands.

But it’s everyday, almost, now, that I have kale to harvest. Bags and bags of it. And because I was fortunate to remember to plant marigolds amongst it, the dreaded harlequin beetles of last year have not made a re-appearance. So far. I’m ever vigilant, though. Even though I have too much kale — way way too much (and too big, like the okra, with leaves the size of dinner plates) — I do not want it pared down by harlequin beetles; I’m happy to do the paring. I tote bags of it every few days to our community clubhouse, put out an email — “There’s kale again, folks!” — and at least so far it’s disappeared.

I did plant much less kale this year. Yet it seemed to make no difference. The space in my garden alloted to kale was filled by kale nonetheless, even though there were fewer plants.

Because the plants are bigger. Did I say that? Kale, okra, tomatoes, peppers — the peppers should be called “pepper trees.” Kale leaves as big as the leaves of bananas.

And that’s just the vegetables. The flowers are marching to the same drum. Baptisia, sunflower, coneflower, rudbeckia, hosta, anemone…

Let me tell you about my anemones. They’re a variety known to tolerate shade; I had just the place for them, a small bed inside my patio; with the patio’s concrete surface surrounding what the builders had thoughtfully included — a little garden “space’ of about 3 ft by 10 ft, totally surrounded by patio concrete. When I moved here I planted that area with the anemones which I knew from experience to be very invasive. I’d keep them corralled here, I figured.

And as far as the “corralling” goes; it worked. They had nowhere to spread. But they did spread — up. And up and up. This is a plant whose foliage normally lies close to the ground — leaves rising maybe a foot or so, forming the base for the tall stalks that shoot up in late summer, rising high bove the ground-hugging foliage with umbels of pink showy anemones.

But that was then. The foliage is up to my waist. The stalks are over my head. And they’re blooming. In early July.

Anemones as tall as the celing. PHOTO BY AUTHOR.

Do I use fertilizer? No! Not with nitrogen. I’ve been avoiding nitrogen.

Last winter, as I was going over notes I’d taken the previous summer to remind me of what I should and should not do this year, I ran across notations like this: “Do not use fertilizer in 2024.” “Do not put nitrogen on plants; they already seem to have too much.” And that was last year. This year it’s worse. Far worse.

Yet none of my gardener friends ever mentions having this problem. When I ask them about it, I get a look that suggests I might just be imagining things. Am I?

What is going on? I see these things, I remark on them, but other gardeners I speak to either don’t have this happening, or haven’t noticed, or… I’m not sure. I’m as confused as I was last year about the little brown birds which nobody else seemed to be noticing, either.

And I have to wonder: is it me? Am I imagining things where none are to be found?

I’ve dug soil in various spots and sent it off for soil tests. Results should be back in a week or so, I was told.

If there is too much nitrogen in my soil, how did it get there? I’ve added a bit of compost over the years, but hardly enough to put such an imbalance into ground that, until I began digging in it, was basically suburban lawn turf: heavy clay-y soil, unamended.

I remember an episode from the Eureka TV series: a hidden outdoor glassed-in dome harbors monstrous plants: they’re testing the effects of too much carbon dioxide.

I feel like that episode is happening all over again, in my garden.

Could it be? Global warming?

Nobody seems to be noticing it but me.