A potager in progress

09/24/2009
A potager in progress

2009 has been the year my long-cherished dream came true:  I finally had a potager in Provence.  Although the climate in Normandy is perfect for lettuces, peas, beets and other cool-season crops, I don't bother trying to grow melons, cucumbers, or any of the sun-loving solanaceous tribe.  There's simply not enough heat to bring them to fruition.  So I'd been dreaming of the day when I could complement my Normandie cool-weather crops with some sun-packed tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and melons from Provence.  Plus, the establishment of a potager at our Provence home was for me as fundamental as furniture.  I didn't feel I'd fully moved in until I had a potager.

I drew out the plans for my new potager. It would have the same configuration as the garden in Normandie, except it would be a bit bigger and would have two longitudinal borders:  one dedicated to 'fruits rouges' (strawberries, raspberries, currants) and the other to asparagus.  (Asparagus was another thing that wouldn't really limped in Normandie. 

But it took off like a rocket in the Provence garden--photo left.) 


The garden would be laid out in raised beds 1 meter (about 3 feet) wide and 3 meters long with paths of half a meter between the beds.  As in Normandie, there would be 4 quadrants, each arranged around a central lozenge-shaped bed, with one central lozenge in the dead center of it all.  Somehow, even though I'd drawn out the plan, I lived in blissful, self-imposed ignorance of the number of beds I'd committed myself to here.  That is, until my son visited in May and commented incredulously, "Mom, you have eighty beds!"  Until he said that, I thought I had things under control.

My neighbor Jean-Claude prepared the soil thoroughly by running a subsoiler through it to break up post-construction compaction.  Then he slathered it with lots of rotted sheep manure and plowed and disked all that in thoroughly.  Another helper actually laid out and constructed the beds--an amount of labor that was beyond my weekend capabilities.  We spread straw in the paths to help control weeds.

Of course, my next several weekends were spent in a fury of planting those 80 beds.  As the garden was prepared later than I had hoped, I didn't finish the spring planting until the end of May.  By then I found that it had gotten so hot that seeds simply wouldn't germinate. ( I found a solution to this problem later; see below.)  I also learned that for peas to succeed in Provence, they needed to be planted no later than March. Nevertheless, by early summer, the garden was presenting a pretty nice picture--to my eyes, anyway.  I observed with curiosity how things would grow in this sandy loam soil, under the burning days and cool nights of Haute Provence.

What I immediately observed was that things grew fast under that burning sun--much faster than under the Norman clouds.  And what grew was incredibly flavorful.  Of course, all that is entirely logical.  More sunlight=more photosynthesis=faster growth and more sugars.  Sunflowers rocketed skyward, lettuces seemed to form heads before my eyes as in time-lapse photography, and before I knew it we were tasting our first courgettes.  Mmmm!

I was excited about growing plants I'd never tried before that need lots of heat, such as chickpeas (left) and chufa, a short grass-like plant in the sedge family whose tubers are used for making horchata, an almond-flavored syrup.  These were plants I'd not only not grown, but never even seen before.  Chickpeas, to my surprise, grow one to the pod.

In keeping with my personal and the larger French potager tradition, this garden included plenty of flowers (and will have even more next year.)  I've found that flowers attract not only butterflies but beneficial insects that help establish a natural pest-free balance.  Lavender, calendula, scabiosas, dahlias, sunflowers, spray larkspur, and others were present in large numbers.  The garden was immediately populated by flocks of birds, who gorged on the sunflowers, and clouds and clouds of butterflies (Haute Provence is home to more species of butterflies than any region in France).  And of course, we enjoyed them too (and are still enjoying them, now in late September.)  They helped make the potager a real ornament to the house.

My potager in Provence has already taught me a lot about gardening in a dry climate.  Typically, it stops raining sometime in July in our area and doesn't start again until late August...or even later.  I learned the importance of shade under this fierce sun.  Raspberries that were planted leeward from a row of towering sunflowers flourished, while those that were in full sun all day foundered.  I quickly decided to leave a double 'hedge' of gone-to-seed coriander in place to shade the lemon grass, lovage, and tarragon planted in the middle of the bed.  The dry coriander offered just enough shade to allow the perennial herbs to take hold (right).

One of the most striking observations I was able to make was the difference in drought resistance between heirloom varieties or varieties closer to the species type, and modern hybrids.  The relativeness weakness of modern hybrids was most striking among the winter squashes.  The heirloom 'Muscade de Provence,' the French market pumpkin par excellence stood proud and turgid while the foliage of the modern hybrid 'Amazonka' (below) lay flat and wilted.  Similarly, single-flowered cosmos varieties such as 'Purity' were twice as vigorous as the double-flowered 'Seashells.'   I  was stunned by the vigor of the 'Noir de Carmes' cantaloupe, as melons had always been an intrinsically weak, insect- and disease-prone crop for me in the U.S.  No wonder Provence is a center of melon production!

The French intensive way of vegetable gardening has always seemed second nature to me.  The second a plant wanes, whoosh! It's off to the compost heap to make way for a succession planting (at left in photo right).  But, again, that burning sun brought me up short.  Even if I kept the new bed constantly moist, nothing wanted to germinate in that heat.  I invested in a roll of heavyduty burlap, which I cut to size to cover my newly planted beds.  The burlap cover (photo below) mitigated the temperature and dryness just enough to allow strong germination.  But then, a second challenge awaited me.  If I tarried even a few days after germination before removing the burlap, the shock of the sun immediately vaporized the new seedlings.  The trick, I found, was counter-intuitive.  It was imperative to remove the burlap immediately after the seedlings first appeared.  Then, with attentive watering, they were able to adapt to the sun.

Sun stress also caused some biennials to bolt, such as this 'Purple Dragon' carrot (photo below right).  But I decided to take advantage of this by letting the flowers go to seed, and then saving the seed.  Under normal conditions, I'm never sufficiently organized to allow some carrots to overwinter in order to collect the seed the following year.  Or maybe I'm just too impatient!  This amplified tendency to bolt required that I keep more space between plants in a row.  Crowded plants bolted much more readily (especially true for bulb fennel and chard). 

Those lozenge-shaped beds are devoted to old roses and ornamental fragrant plants, such as scented-leaf geraniums and dianthus.  The very central lozenge became home to a little olive tree.  Our particular location is iffy for olives, because we are in a valley where cold air pools in the winter.  This tree is a perfect way to try our luck, before we invest in the big olive trees we would like eventually to flank a future swimming pool.  So far, so good.  The little tree grew considerably in three months (see photos below:  June, at left; end of August, at right.)

Of course, gardening in a region that is new to you always involves, unfortunately, getting to know some new and horrible weeds.  In my case, these two are a stoloniferous grass called chiendent (dog's tooth) and a nightmare of a little pink-flowered morning glory.  The chiendent I will eventually be able to vanquish, because it can--with a backbreaking amount of effort--actually be removed.  But the morning glory is another story.  Like most of its tribe, it has a huge tuber deep underground--so deep that you can never reach it.  Plus, it behaves rhizomatously.  I'm about at my wit's end with this one and if any of you knows of a solution short of Roundup or nuclear war, please let me know.

On the other hand, this garden has proffered enormous rewards.  At last, I've been able to enjoy luscious tomatoes.  And the weather in August was so hot and dry that I was actually able to sun-dry my plum-type varieties.  I simply cut them in half lengthwise, removed their seeds, and arranged them cut-side up in shallow flat baskets called claies.  I covered the loaded baskets with cheesecloth to keep off the flies, placed them on the hot stone border of the lavoir,  and in about 4 days, the tomatoes were ready to store in an antique jar.   There I can admire their beauty and enjoy that particular satisfaction that comes from putting food by. 

The bounty of the potager stimulates my kitchen creativity and brings us untold hours of pleasure at the table.  But, especially as the daylight wanes toward longer autumn nights, I am not too different from the industrious squirrel.  I'm secure in the inimitable comfort of knowing  that the larder full of  gleaming jars of tomatoes, fruits, and jams  will preserve that precious summer sun against the cold, short days of winter to come.

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