href="#u5e672af2-2197-5c7b-be2d-fa7d7f93f522">104), as they are tailored so each container on the system can have the exact amount of water it needs. My drip system is connected to an automatic timer and scheduled to water every night for four minutes from spring through fall.
I enjoy planting Mexican herbs in colorful containers It’s also an advantage when growing the tender varieties like culantro and Lippia graveolens as they are more readily brought inside when the weather gets cold.
Here, in the blue pot, is Mexican tarragon; in the purple, an ornamental chili; next, a large pot of cilantro; and in the red pot, a Mexican basil. My patio a number of years ago was filled with herbs and chilis The chili plants included, from the left, a tall ‘Chili d’Arbol,’ a serrano, and a shorter chilipiquín all grown in a large wooden planter box. Another chilipiquín grows in a large blue pot.
interveiw
the Anderson garden
That I grew a Mexican garden in California wouldn’t be big news to most gardeners. But I knew most Mexican vegetables and herbs could be grown in northern gardens as well, and I needed a demonstration garden to prove it. Vermont sounded convincingly northern, so I approached Kit Anderson, my good friend and, at the time, managing editor of one of the country’s finest gardening magazines, National Gardening, in Burlington, Vermont. Kit and I had worked on many projects together and I knew of her great interest in both Mexico and, of course, gardening.
We did some initial planning together, Kit did the ordering and the labor, and, after the harvest, I asked her to write a detailed account of her Vermont Mexican garden. It tickled me to invite one of the country’s premier gardening writers to contribute an essay to this book. Kit loved the idea. Here’s what she wrote:
“The eighteen-inch-tall statue of the Mexican corn god must have suspected something when I wrapped him in a blanket for the trip back from his native land to icy Vermont. Little did he know, but he had his work cut out for him. After all, our New England climate is not exactly suited for tropical crops. That’s why we started planning the garden by crossing off those vegetables that wouldn’t mature in a brief season. It meant we had to leave out chayote, jícama, and some of the southwestern flour corns and day-length-sensitive chiles. But we still had plenty to choose from: many chile peppers, tomatillos, bunching onions, cilantro, Mexican pinto beans and corn for drying, plus such necessities as tomatoes and squash.
“Growing heat-loving crops in Vermont isn’t as absurd as it sounds. We grow fine peppers and tomatoes just about any year, and I’ve even had okra produce some summers. I live in a relatively warm part of the state, the Champlain Valley, which extends all along the western border and is almost at sea level. Our frost-free season often lasts close to 150 days, compared to the 90 to 120 usual in the mountains to the east. And it gets hot in midsummer.
“Nevertheless, we had to choose varieties carefully. After scanning a number of catalogs, we found a number of suitable varieties. Then came the design of the garden. I wanted it to have a Mexican feel to it, not be simply rows of crops that happened to be from that part of the world. Tropical gardens tend to be much less organized looking than the typical American garden. They’re liable to consist of fruit trees, flowers, vegetables, and herbs, all growing in apparent disorder in the area around the house. Where sunshine is abundant, layered gardens make sense, with some crops growing in the shade of others, but without avocado trees and tamarind for shade, and with crops that would need all the sunshine they could get, our Vermont garden wasn’t going to be layered—that approach just wouldn’t work.
“I compromised. The plan became a puzzle, with irregularly shaped beds each containing a combination of vegetables and flowers of different heights, and all planned so that sunshine would get everywhere. At the center, of course, would be the corn god.
“The next major challenge was the heavy clay soil in my garden. Even after adding a lot of organic matter, I can only harvest carrots after a heavy rain (and then I bring up huge globs of soil along with the roots.). Combine that with a cool, wet spring and you have about the worst possible conditions for heat-loving crops.
“Fortunately, we had a wonderful, early, relatively rain-free spring that year, so I was able to get in and till in April and incorporate much composted manure. I still had a long wait before I could plant most of the crops. Our average last frost date here is May 15, but peppers hate to be cold. It does no good to set them out early; they’ll only be stunted. In late April, I started cilantro, tomatillos, and ‘Lemon Gem’ marigolds in pots in my cold frame (a simple affair made of plastic).
Kit Anderson’s harvest from her Vemont Mexican garden.
“Encouraged by the warm weather, I set my pepper plants outside, let the young plants harden off (acclimatize outside) for a few days, and then put them out in the garden on about May 7, with individual wax-paper hot caps (little individual shelters) to protect them. The poor things needed all the help they could get because the weather turned cool and rainy for several weeks. Finally it warmed up again and I uncovered the peppers, as they were pushing up the hot caps. That night a ferocious storm blew in. My children watched in amazement as I screamed at the hail that was pounding the kitchen. But even that storm didn’t faze those peppers. Except for a few ragged leaves, they looked just fine the next day.
“The little cilantro plants and the tomatillos went in next, along with a few cilantro seeds, a row of bunching onion seeds, and a few rows of pinto beans. By May 31, everything was planted, with the corn god occupying a place of honor in the center of the garden.
“To keep down weeds, I mulched with grass clippings around everything. The paths were covered first with newspapers, at least sixteen pages thick, then with shredded bark. Finally, I set up a combination sprinkler and drip system. This last step proved unnecessary, though, for we headed into the coolest, wettest summer I’ve ever experienced in Vermont. Eggplants everywhere languished. Tomatoes ripened late. Squash, even zucchini, produced poorly. We had great lettuce for tacos but not much else to go with it. It seemed impossible that the Mexican garden would make it, but it plugged right along. The peppers started bearing fruit by late July and kept up through September. The corn grew (slowly) and matured beautiful ears. The cilantro, especially the batch started early, made a lot of greens before going to seed. I cut it all back once, froze the leaves, and then let the plants go. The plants allowed to mature produced seeds and from these I got another harvest of leaves later in the season. The beans were fine until September; then I had to take them into the barn to dry because they started to sprout during a few late rains. The tomatillos grew like mad, overwhelming everything near them, getting much larger than I’d planned. The tomatillo is a low-growing, hulking sort of plant that needs its own space. The amaranth I’d carefully planned as a backdrop—with the supposedly smaller yellow strain in front and the red in back—did not cooperate; the yellow turned out to be much more vigorous, dwarfing the dramatic red plants, which just peeked through from behind.
“The garden was at its best in late July, although the marigolds had been slow to begin flowering, so things weren’t as colorful as I’d hoped they’d be. Tithonia, the Mexican sunflower, was a disappointment, too; it had lots of green foliage but flowered only late in the season.
“When corn harvest time came, my son and I had a
