Freighter View Farms | Chris Izworski

I believe in small gardens. Not as a consolation for limited space, but as a genuine conviction — that a garden you can tend well is worth more than an acre you can only manage badly. At Freighter View Farms I work about 200 square feet of raised beds, and that 200 square feet produces more food, more satisfaction, and more seeds than I know what to do with. The size of a garden has very little to do with what you get out of it.

On Heirloom Varieties

I grow heirloom tomatoes not out of nostalgia but because they taste like something. Modern hybrids have been selected for shelf life, uniform color, and shipping durability — qualities that have nothing to do with flavor and everything to do with commerce. An heirloom Cherokee Purple, picked warm from the vine, eaten standing in the garden with a little salt, is a different category of food than what you find in a grocery store. I am not exaggerating. I have done the comparison.

I am not dogmatic about it. I grow a few hybrid peppers. I have tried hybrid squash when I needed disease resistance for a particular season. But when I am choosing, when the catalog is open in January and the possibilities are still infinite, I lean toward the older varieties every time. They carry flavor and history and a kind of genetic honesty that appeals to me.

On Saving Seeds

Seed saving is the most hopeful thing a gardener can do. It says: I believe this garden will continue. I believe next year is worth preparing for. I believe that something worth keeping should be kept.

When I save seeds from my best Cherokee Purple of the season — selecting the most vigorous plant, the best fruit, labeling the envelope with year and notes — I am doing something that gardeners have done every autumn for ten thousand years. I find that continuity steadying. It connects my small raised beds on Saginaw Bay to a practice much older and larger than any one season or any one garden.

On Paying Attention

The garden rewards attention more than almost anything else. Not effort — you can work very hard in a garden and miss what is actually happening. Attention. The habit of noticing: which plants set fruit first, which corner of which bed dries out fastest, where the bumblebees linger longest. The garden is always telling you things. The gardeners who do best are the ones who have learned to listen.

I walk the beds every morning. Not to do anything in particular — to look. A cup of coffee in my hand, the bay doing whatever the bay is doing that morning, and a slow circuit of the beds just to see what is there. I have caught early disease this way. I have found volunteer seedlings I would have otherwise overlooked. I have watched the progression of a ripening Cherokee Purple from green to purple-shouldered to deep, heavy red, day by day, the way you watch something you do not want to miss.

On the Season

Michigan gardening teaches patience whether you want the lesson or not. The season is short. The last frost comes when it comes, not when you want it to. The cold returns in October whether the tomatoes are finished or not. You learn to work within the window you are given, not the window you would prefer.

I have stopped wishing for a longer season. The constraint is part of what makes it. The first tomato tastes better because it has been months since the last one. The seed catalogs in January are exciting because the garden has been asleep since November. The limit is the thing that gives the abundance its meaning.

That is, as far as I can tell, the whole philosophy. Small garden. Good varieties. Pay attention. Work within the season you have. It turns out that is enough.

The philosophy behind the garden connects to the broader work — more at the about page on chrisizworski.com.

Related reading:

• The longer version of this: Why I Garden.
• For how this philosophy meets the specific conditions of Saginaw Bay, see Gardening on Saginaw Bay.

Two references that extend the philosophy into practice: the Michigan native plants guide at chrisizworski.com, and the heirloom seed saving guide — both reflect the same thinking applied to specific choices in the garden.