No dirt under your nails? No tomatoes for you!

The New York Times yesterday published this piece about folks hiring gardeners to plant and tend their kitchen gardens so they can have homegrown produce even if they don't have the time, skills, or inclination to garden themselves. All day yesterday I watched this story race around the blogosphere, with fans of local eating ridiculing the rich soft spoiled brats who want to hire someone to do their weeding for them. Slashfood asks what's next, "A service that sends someone to your home to wipe your mouth with an organic, locally-harvested hemp fiber napkin?" Diggin It is annoyed: "It wasn’t what they were doing as much as they were hopping on the bandwagon of the latest trend they’ve read about, eating locally grown foods."

Those who didn't outright condemn the idea made prim moral-values judgments about it. Eat Local Challenge says, "I can only hope that those who have room to grow their own food but pay others to tend it will soon discover the delight of sowing, weeding, tending and eventually harvesting food their own hands have touched." Fresh Greens agrees: "a part of gardening is lost when the hired help is doing the harvesting for you." As if there's something inherently wrong with folks deciding to spend their free time on something they enjoy instead of dutifully picking up a hoe and getting those weeds. There's something Puritanical about this hard-work-is-good-for-the-character approach: Shame on you for not growing it yourself.

I say hooray. Hooray for the folks whose thumbs aren't green but who can afford to have healthy food growing outside their back door anyway -- I wish everyone could afford that. Hooray for the organic gardeners who can turn something they love doing into a way to make a living. Hooray for having a little more garden and a little less lawn in suburbia. Hooray for home grown veggies getting so much attention that people who've never picked a tomato want to see what it's all about.

Speaking as someone who gardens with a lot more enthusiasm than competence, if anyone in Cincinnati is offering a service like this one, please contact me. I will hire you today.

Call for Recipes: Asparagus

I pulled the leaf mulch back from my asparagus beds this morning and there beneath the mulch was a single slender spear sticking up its little white head! Now to go dig out my asparagus recipes, as once I can start harvesting we'll be eating asparagus every night.

If anyone has a good seasonal (that is, all the main ingredients are in season together) asparagus recipe, I'd love to have it! You can email me the recipe (there's a link to my email in my profile) or if you've got it on your blog, leave me a comment or shoot me an email with the URL and I'll update this post to link to it and give you credit. I also promise to try all recipes (or as many as humanly possible) and report back.

Anyone else have an asparagus report?

Planting time!

Hooray, it's the time of year again when I optimistically start seeds in pots indoors, planning an abundant garden to nourish my family all summer. Since I garden with much more enthusiasm than competence, much of my early spring efforts eventually come to naught. I know this to be the likely outcome; nevertheless each spring hope triumphs over experience (see definition of insanity) and I soldier on.

Here in SW Ohio, we're in hardiness zone 5b/6a. That means our average date of last frost is around the 15th of May. Which in turn means we can start seeds during the first week of April and by the time the seedlings are ready to be set out 6-8 weeks later, we can (with fingers crossed) expect them to survive.

This year I'm starting chives, tomatoes, and basil. Chives and basil because I know the deer and rabbits and squirrels will leave them alone until they get desperate; tomatoes because, well, see definition of insanity again -- I know the squirrels and rabbits will get most of them, but I just can't help myself when it comes to tomatoes. I'm also starting about sixty impatiens this year, as last year I purchased four flats and it started to get expensive.

I've also just ordered some wild onion and ramp seeds. It seems odd to be planting wild plants, even more so one that most gardeners would consider a weed like the wild onion, but this year I had plenty of wild garlic and no wild onions. I'd like to have some for next year. And ramps! I am so hoping I have success with those -- it would be quite the bragging point if I could claim to have ramps growing in my backyard.

Is anyone else getting their seeds in yet?