I am new to Woodstock. New to the glorious Hudson Valley, new to its rhythms, and very new to gardening. I’ve lived in cities most of my life—New York, DC, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Dhaka, Baghdad, Rabat—thanks to a Foreign Service career and other meanderings. The only thing I’ve ever grown successfully was basil in a sunny DC backyard. Everything else I touch tends to turn brown.
I arrived at our new home with a dream of cultivating a garden. Friends with a place near Fleischmanns (one of them a farmer’s daughter) spend summers devoted to theirs, and so many around us have lush, raised beds spilling over with produce and flowers. My husband’s new barber—who also offers tequilla shots to waiting customers—regales him with stories of her bumper crops.
When we bought our dilapidated colonial—a remnant of the IBM years—not only the house but its yard was neglected: invasive vines choking the few front plantings, the rest rocks and moss. Out back, though, sat a small raised bed framed in rotting wood and topped with a flimsy wire cover. Enough to give me hope: maybe the prior owners knew what they were doing. Let’s try to grow something.
Enthusiastic, my son spent a weekend hauling mountains of stone from the bed. I spent another tearing out weeds. We made hopeful spring trips to Adams Fairacre Farms, Home Depot, and other local purveyors, buying bags of special soil and seeds—string beans, arugula, spinach, lettuce—plus a tomato plant for good measure. The young garden clerk assured me he’d scattered seeds last summer and ended up with more than his family could eat.
Our results? Mixed to poor.
We harvested about 15 string beans from six or eight lovingly attended plants. The arugula grew long and spindly, a sign, PlantAI said, that it wasn’t getting enough sun. The lettuce never grew at all—still tiny buds months later, silently begging for something I couldn’t identify. I weeded, watered, fertilized, consulted local experts. They asked about pH balance, soil amendments, Moo Doo, peat moss—a whole new language.
Over lunch, my friend Lorraine, a former editor at Ladies’ Home Journal, laughed at my story. She recalled a memoir, “The $64 Tomato,” about the expense, obsession, and occasional absurdity of home gardening. We weren’t seeking perfection, but I got the point.
Fortunately, the Hudson Valley overflows with gardening resources. One discovery was the Hudson Valley Plant Exchange, which hosts occasional swaps. Despite having nothing to offer, we were met with kindness at our first swap at the Kingston Library: a posse of plant lovers offering reassurance, advice, and free bounty—snap pea, golden turnips, and beet seeds, hosta plants, basil, tomatoes, mint, forsythia. Enough to keep us going without breaking the bank and maybe green up our barren land—and possibly our dinner table.
Eventually, I bought a soil tester and even brought soil in for testing at the Ulster County Cornell Cooperative Extension. The pH was borderline, but the bigger problem, it seemed, was sun. Although facing south, the yard simply didn’t get enough of it. That raised bed hadn’t been placed with much thought, I realized. I moved my struggling basil and tomato plants to a slightly sunnier patch just off the back porch, draped them in deer-proof netting. Within a week, they perked up; within a month, a single tomato started to grow. There was hope.
At our third swap, we shared our woes with an organizer—sporting an “I get dirty” T-shirt—who advised against an expensive dig. “Cover it with compost” from the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, he said, and mix with pine bark mulch from a place like Rothe Lumber. “Get it delivered,” he urged, when my husband asked about the need for a pickup truck. “It’s not worth hauling yourself.”
At my husband’s next haircut, the barber laughed at our single tomato. “It takes time,” she said. “Each year, you learn a little more.” He came home repeating her encouragement, and we made plans: move the raised bed to the sunny spot, get the soil right, maybe even budget for his dream of a truck. Most of all, we decided to be kinder to ourselves—like adjusting to our new home, a garden is a long-term endeavor.
Meanwhile, our snap peas surprised us with dozens of pods—enough for a side dish. And our relocated tomato plant is now sprouting seven tomatoes. That takes the per-tomato cost down to below $10. Next year—with a lot of local help—we might just have a harvest worth bragging about.
Carol Volk is a contributing writer. You can reach her at reporting@theoverlooknews.com.