garden vol. i: a green greenthumb
learning how to grow my own food
Gardening has always felt somewhat inaccessible to me. Not always for lack of land (though that’s definitely been an aspect), but from a philosophical standpoint. Gardeners and farmers always seemed to just get it in a way that was abstract to me.
I’ve had a deep yearning to grow my own food since diving into food almost a decade ago. It’s strange, given my growing up in a rural part of Southwest Michigan, surrounded by massive corn and soy fields, with many of my classmates making up this farming community. Friends and family of mine would frequently spend a few weeks of the summer making what felt like a large sum of money detasseling and roguing corn. For a teenager, the promise of a few thousand dollars over a month felt like financial fuel for the rest of the year.
My parents also had many gardens growing up where we would lay down mulch, and plant perennials. In the spring, weekends were filled with moving wheelbarrows around our home, weeding and watering. We would spend forever at garden centers, which were the bane of my existence, knowing that the other side of this was spending hours in the dirt, putting in flowers. The fall would bring trimming and cutting logs of errant trees in our yard. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but now that I’ve entered my 30s, I dream of having this same weekend. (No, Dad, I’m not actually asking for that).
The difference in these two experiences were that I was working on food crops that I didn’t own and flowering crops that I kind of owned, but I didn’t produce food that I could eat. I always pushed to grow tomatoes or buy fruiting trees that we could eat from because it was such a cool prospect to me that I could eat the literal fruits of our labor.
This year is the first time that I’m able to do that: I was accepted to a local community garden in Chicago! I wanted to catalogue my first year of gardening for you all, for folks that might have the chance to do it in the future, or those that never considered having one to look into ways that they might be able to. This will be an ongoing experience for myself to learn for next year and beyond as well.
polymorv plot
I applied to a garden near my apartment in late February, after badgering the folks to let me in back in November, when no one checked the community email. This was one of my big goals for 2025 and asked for many seeds for Christmas, mainly from Row 7, but also some fun herbs and such that I had tried in restaurants over the past years that had populated a running note on my phone.
The acceptance didn’t come until April 1st, and I was caught a bit flat-footed. I hadn’t checked my own email for some time (whoops) and was elated to find out that I was going to have a split plot with another community member. I figured I had some time now to get my seeds going and looking into when I should look to plant.
To my surprise, I should have started my seeds in late February to mid-March to grow in my zone. Chicago lies in the USDA Hardiness zone of 6a, which is determined by the minimum winter temperatures over the last thirty years. Unsurprisingly, the climate has changed quite a bit over this time, and parts of the state are in zone 5b, but given this is my first year, I’m going to just go with what I’ve the information available to me. What this zone then tells you is that you should plant seeds six to eight weeks prior to the last frost, which is April 17-30th.
The seeds are in and I’ll discuss that in my next post, but having set this goal of getting into a garden is much more than food to me. The wisdom of folks that just get garden feels like a more attainable knowledge set all of a sudden, and I am going into this with some goals for the year.
my goals with the polymorv plot
This my first garden, despite having grown hops and tomatoes on a Brooklyn patio. My goals are both lofty and also comically low bar. Here’s what I’m hoping for for this year in no particular order, and I will continue writing about throughout this growing season:
growing community
Despite living in Chicago for three years, I don’t have a community that I am really a part of. There are many running groups that I’ve meant to join this year as well, to start growing my community through hobbies I have and I want to make sure that I’m helping others and asking for the help of others. Right now, I’m signed up once a week to water the plots and have volunteered to help fix up the community shed
mental state change
The uh…lofty one.
Learn how spending more time with my hands in the ground changes my mental state over the course of the summer. I would say I’m a chronic overthinker and worrier, but being outside always resets my mental state. How do I notice my interactions with my plot affecting how I feel? Is the simple act of needing to tend to plants, whether they flourish or fold, a net positive in my life?
cooking and eating shifts
The past two summers, I’ve been at farmer’s markets to sell Mez (use code POLYMORV for 15% off!) with Ben, but now that we’ve passed on this phase, I have more ability to go to them for fun. Now that I get to grow my own produce, I want to see how these two changes to my life affect how much my veggie cooking goes up. I love eating things in season and I’m hoping this kicks this up even more. I have a few friends that are going to take me mushroom hunting this year as well, so I’m really leaning into my Danish forager self of 2018.
If you have any good references for me to check out, please send me a message or comment on this post!