GARDEN IN THE HOOD – Discovering Local Urban Gardens

The city bus passed directly in front of our house, as do many loud motorcycles, not to mention the  thump, thump, thump (“boots and pants and boots and pants”) of car speakers turned up way too loud. I live here because I was born here, and my father was born here, and although I say to someone most every day that I really should call the cops on those kids racing their all terrain vehicles (without helmets!) down our road or about the other kids racing their screeching loud minibikes, or even about a neighbor behind us who thinks is gradually bulldozing-in the wetland behind our house and ever-expanding his property which includes the worlds largest party deck, pool and aparantly ‘soundsystem’ (worthy of a salsa nightclub), well, I just don’t want to be that guy.

City living has its benefits though. Worcester is so gloriously ethnically diverse that markets and restaurant of all ethnicities abound. If I need a cows tongue to poach, a whole lamb to roast or a split calves head, I can find one. If I need Vietnamese veggies, hard-to-find herbs,  a Middle Eastern market that sells most every spice and rice known to Marco Polo, and Chinese food that is more about frogs legs and kidneys than it is about egg roles. Our kind of town. A foodie-kind of town.

I may live in an urban garden, but that doesn’t mean that I am limited as to what I can grow!

FAREWELL TO SUMMER

Yes folks, it’s just like that – summer is over. At least it is here in the northeast. Kids are back to school, the first cool weather arrived and the tomatoes have succumbed to late blight. I will admit that this summer did feel like the longest summer ever (or at least from 1984 when I last had a summer off) but in hindsight – where did it go?

I know, I know – we’ll still get hot weather, and gardening isn’t over by a long-shot since the fall crops have just been planted, but we gardeners know when the seasons shift, and so do the meteorologists since Sept. 1st is considered meteorological summer. I’m good with all of that, for I love the cool weather (winter-boy here).

Mother Nature thinks that it is autumn too, for right on schedule, the fall bulbs are emerging with this shift in both night-time temperatures and ever-shortening day-length. In the greenhouse the first cyclamen are starting to bloom, coming out of their long hot and dry summer under glass, just as if they would be doing in the forests of the Caucasus’ or in the mountains of Greece. The cool rains of autumn and temperature shifts are a strong force.

The South African bulbs too are stirring in their pots, awaiting their first drink of water from the hose in the greenhouse. Nerine, amaryllis and bulbous oxalis are all making root growth and beginning to show new leaves. I’ve been a little behind in my winter-blooming bulb clean-up given the book deadlines and other projects, but was able to spend a little time underglass today, cleaning up their pots and removing dead leaves. I know that it won’t be long before everything is moved back into the greenhouse and an entirely new gardening season will begin. At least for this year, for this may be the last winter that I can afford to heat the greenhouse.

From the upper deck, I could look down to three different levels of gourds. underneath these structures grew Asian greens, herbs and other shade-loving veggies.

EXPLORING OUR VIETNAMESE NEIGHBORS’ GARDENS

These gardens also reminded me that my parents garden here was essentially an ‘ethnic garden’. Lithuanian and Polish  immigrants comprised most of the neighbors at one time in our neighborhood as well as Swedish. Three of our neighbors are still Polish (as in “don’t-speak-a-word-of-English and wear-big-white-pointy-bra’s-from-the-1960’s-when-they-pick-mushrooms- type-of-Polish-“).

It’s serious.

I love it, for I remember as a kid hearing polka’s on the AM radio as I weeded out back (although now, for some astern-

First visit? My gardening (from the Dahlia Society) friend Chou Ho’s house. Chou’s parents both don’t speak  much English, but that doesn’t stop us form communicating. When his mom needs fertile duck eggs, the delight on her face tells us exactly what she needs. Chou’s family are immigrants from South East Asia (Vietnam) arriving here in the 1980’s.  They live in a big, tidy house with a garden behind it on a gorgeous and quaint cul de sac in a new neighborhood not that far from us.

The flowers on these gourds were just as lovely as the fruit, and because the decks are on three levels, you can enjoy them from above.

Chou’s father and older brother are both serious gardeners (it’s pretty clear where Chou discovered his interests). Like many of us when looking for the one house on the street where a gardener live, we discover that is really wasn’t that hard, and the same goes in this case. How and I drove along slowly through the neighborhood of mostly new houses until we laughed when we spotted the driveway full of chili pepper plants, rows of eggplants in pots and a perfect lawn to boot.

The magic though was happening out back, where an elaborate multi-tiered system was housing amazing vines of all sorts of Asian gourds.

Innovative planting techniques were everywhere, from Malabar spinach growing in troughs to Japanese Horned Melons growing in recycled bakery buckets.

Tiny peppers (Chiltepin or Tepin type) are grown in barrels along with eggplants which lined then entire driveway. The chilis enjoy the additional heat and can be brought indoors for the winter, as an entire underground fan base does with many chili peppers. Oddly enough, Chow explained to me that his family never eats hot food, rather his father shares or sells the plants with others in the community. (Kind of like me and okra!)

Chow is a graphic designer and raises exhibition dahlias as well as many other plants (plant geek certified) but I discovered his parents talents last year when Chow visited us to look at the dahlias bringing along some Asian gourds from his parents garden. Worcester has a very large Vietnamese and Cambodian population, so I’ve been seeing these amazing gourds and squashes growing in the front yards and decks of many homes, but I’ve never been able to get close enough to really see what was going on.

Chow’s father (Mr. Ho, left) shows us how innovative his growing techniques are. These snake gourds and sponge gourds are growing on two different levels of their deck, which is built on a steep hill.

Chow (left) and Joe were getting impatient as we began to smell what was coming from the kitchen where Chows mom was frying up spring rolls, egg rolls and shrimp vermicelli. Not to mention Tapioca cake!