A Gardening Manifesto, or something

Before I dig deep into the current state of my garden (har har) I want to make clear what my passions, intentions and motivations are regarding vegetable growing. I also want to define a word I am going to be using a lot...

Regetable. Yes, regetable.

Regetables = your staple, backyard vegetables. Regular Vegetables: standard, safe, reliable, normal. Sold on most seed racks, grown by most everybody. Blue Lake bush beans, Early Girl tomato, Straight Eight cucumber, etc.

Now, there's nothing wrong with regetables. They're regular for a reason: they tend to produce well, are tasty and reliable, and are usually resistant to some of the things that want to kill or eat them (besides us).

But as for the second reason I call them regetables... Regret. Though you wouldn't pronounce it this way, it's exactly how I say it in my head: regretables.

Why regret?

Because each time I grow one (unless I have an ulterior motive of crossing it with something else) I always end up feeling... kinda depressed. Why? Because watching the plant grow may have been fun, and eating it may have been tasty, but ultimately I'm left with exactly what I started with: a regetable. Or, at best, seeds from a regetable slightly more adapted to my personal garden.

What's wrong with that? Nothing! Nothing at all.

It's more about personal motivations -- I need change, evolution, growth. I need to put bricks in a wall, walk an overgrown path, create something that wasn't there before. While saving seeds from a regetable is not a passive process, it's nevertheless not enough for me, personally.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy the simple act of gardening and eating what I grow. But when it's 106° and I'm double digging a new bed and fighting an invasion of spider mites and trying to pay my water bill, I start to wonder if it's all worth it... why am I doing this to myself? And simply saying: Yay! Good job Day. You grew the thing and then you ate it. Now, do it again...

...forever.

Just isn't enough. On the other hand...

...using the amazing genetics of regetables to try to create new, fun, resilient, and tasty variations? Now you've got my attention. What can be crossed? What new rogue can be found if we plant the funny look seeds, instead of the uniform ones? What shiny new edibles can be born through luck, cleverness, and determination in a single urban backyard?

I'm enraptured with the weirdos, the late bloomers, the sports. My gut reaction is to rouge out the regulars and keep the rogues. After all: the mutations that evolved to become our food crops today needed stewardship once too -- otherwise we'd still be enjoying grilled teosinte at the family BBQ. Yum.

Of course, I don't intentionally want to grow crappy, non-productive, bad tasting vegetables. I'm not a masochist. But I am willing to let the rouges be rogues. To let them develop beyond the stage normally culled by gardeners. Let them show me what they're got. And, if they're got something, I'm willing to save seeds and plant the next generation: let the genes fall where they may.

I'm also passionate about crossing regetables, both with each other, and with rare and uncommon varieties from around the world.

For Example:

Love the cool Andean corns? But... alas! You're the King of the North. And those daylight sensitive bastards won't set cobs before winter. Boo. To address this, I've crossed Painted Mountain with K'uyu Chuspi. With a few generations, maybe we'll have an Andean style corn that doesn't take from April until the apocalypse just to tassel.

Left: Painted Mountain, Right: K'uyu Chuspi. (Photos from rareseeds.com)

Or maybe you love winter squash. And guess what? It loves you too!... and it loves your squash bed, the neighboring bed, your yard, your fence, your tree, your neighbor's tree, and your dog, if he sits still too long. But besides growing exclusively bush buttercup and gold nugget,what other maxima options are there?

In response, I've let Bush Buttercup promiscuously pollinate with Candy Roaster and Turk's Turban (Gold Nugget and Gete Okosomin adding to the mix in a few weeks when they start flowering). In a month or so I'll have F1 seeds from the Buttercup mothers. Sure... the F1 offspring won't be true bush, and the fruit might taste a little off, and potentially the squash could look like penises... but hey! Those short-internode genes are in there somewhere. With selection and a few generations, and we could have cute, compact Turbans for the kids (with vines that won't eat the kids) and a banana squash that doesn't require its own zipcode.

Or, maybe we'll just end up with weiner squash. The price of science.

Left to Right: Bush Buttercup, North Georgia Candy Roaster, Mini Red Turban. (Photos from rareseeds.com)

In conclusion, I look forward to awesome gardening experiences this season, and in seasons to come: cool successes, cool failures, and tons of vegetable hacking adventures. And I can't wait to share them with you.

So if reading any of the above got you excited, stick around: You're my people.

If not... well, that's OK too.
I'll make a pirate out of you yet.

Let's hack some veg.