Darius Adel '24
Satire Editor
The bounty of late fall is upon us. If you head to the farmer’s market at the IX Art Park this Saturday, you'll find an assortment of squash, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and an assortment of greens. This is a great time to get fresh vegetables on the table. If you don’t feel like dealing with the hustle and bustle of a farmer’s market, I would also recommend the Barracks Road Farm Market. It’s much smaller, and you can pick up your produce and be out of there in a matter of minutes.
While these options are great, I’ve always been a proponent of growing some of your own food. You can learn a lot by taking something from seed to table, and the satisfaction of eating something you grew yourself makes any meal better. The issue is that most of us weren’t here over the summer and thus are now unable to reap a heavy summer harvest. Luckily, there are plenty of crops you can plant that will grow over the fall and winter.
One of my favorite vegetables I was never able to grow well in sunny California are radishes. Since Charlottesville's weather gets sufficiently cold in the fall and winter, you can continually plant and harvest them this semester. They take little maintenance beyond the occasional watering, mature quickly, and don’t really take up much space. If you have a couple of planter pots, you can easily grow some with just a few square feet of space. The fact that they mature so quickly is really great for a budding gardener, since you can get something on the table in just three to four weeks.
Inevitably though, you’re going to need to learn patience if you want to grow most fall and winter crops. Just like doing readings early in the semester in preparation for a final that is several months away, you’ll need to nurture seedlings you may not be able to eat until late November.
I mentioned in an article last year that Charlottesville is in zone 7a, which is just a label for the type of climate we live in. If you’re ever wondering when or if to grow a crop in town, just look up if it will grow well in zone 7a during the month you’re in. Grow food that you actually want to eat, even if you don't have the perfect conditions. That being said, I do have a few recommendations for late September or early October planting.
Cabbage is really hardy and grows well in the cold weather we’ll be getting soon. If we end up getting some snow this year, they will do just fine. While cabbages are a great cold weather crop, they can take up a lot of space if you just have an apartment balcony to work with. If space is an issue, I recommend growing beets. As long as they have enough space for their roots, you can plant them relatively close together without too much of an issue. Similarly to cabbage, they are pretty frost resistant.
Potatoes may not be the sexiest vegetables, but they are incredibly easy to grow, and you can get a lot of them from a single planter pot. You can buy potato seeds if you want an exotic variety. I’ve done that before, but usually I’ll just take an old potato from my pantry that’s sprouting, cut it up, and bury it in some soil. As long as you keep the plant sufficiently watered, you’ll have a ton of them come spring.
If you really don’t have any outside space to grow vegetables this season, you could always resort to growing herbs indoors. I used to be anti-herb growing for religious reasons, but law school has broadened my horizons. They have a ton of herb growing kits out there, but I’m always a proponent of starting cheap. A bundle of live basil at Harris Teeter is like three dollars. Just separate the individual plants and stick them in a pot of well draining soil in a sunny part of your house, and you’ll have a great edible houseplant. I like to just trim the tops every few weeks and make sure it doesn’t get too tall—just eating whatever I cut off.
I started a garden during 1L as a little non-law related project. Relatively speaking, it’s a pretty low time commitment hobby. You may think that growing produce is a lot of work and that just buying your food at a store is way more efficient. You’re right. But, gardening in a city isn’t necessarily about saving money or being efficient. It's about cultivating a nurturing attitude, practicing patience, living with the seasons, and hopefully learning a bit about the food we eat.
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dsa7st@virginia.edu