Edible gardens, homegrown food, home cooking … my new motto is “a little at a time.”

About 3 years ago I had a much better handle on it.  My garden was producing rather abundantly, and we often ate complete meals from the garden, with only the odd ingredient store-bought.  Many weeks a homegrown vegetable would grace our plates at most meals.  We’d proudly serve guests and tell them the histories of the produce.

But after a year and a half (that’s 3 So. California growing seasons) of abandonment while I wrote Legacy, my garden had little except for feral greens to offer.  A scant side-dish here and there in the month’s menu.

Now, almost seven months after the book’s release, my garden once again hints at its previous abundance.

This time around, I focused on what I’ve dubbed “feral vegetables.”  If a plant “liked me” enough to mature and offer offspring, it must be meant to be here.  Chard was first in line to volunteer.  Parsnips, salsify, collards, magenta spreen, frisee and mache soon followed.  Then came the discovery of wild strawberry babies, currant tomato seedlings, tomatillos and par-cel herb.  Johnny-jump-ups, clarkia, California poppies.  (The nasturtiums never ceased, even at the peak of abandonment!)

Certainly I’ve added to the mix.  Yet my garden additions this time around are plants I hope will “like me”.  At a minimum, they’re plants the catalogs called “open-pollinated” and “vigorous.”  Painted lady runner beans, Tromboncino squash, milk pumpkins and the asparagus beans which have my sister rolling her eyes when I ask whether they’ll be vigorous plants amid my jungle.

Little by little I reclaim my garden soil.  The grasses and weeds took over, and skeletal remnants of previous generations still linger. 

When I began gardening here in L.A., my daughter was an infant.  I followed Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening layout, where the plot is broken into 1 foot square blocks.  This method was highly gratifying to a new mom of two, because although my garden time was severely restricted, I could always find time to weed “just one square” and feel successful.  A little at a time, the “just one square”s soon added up.

Now I use other layouts - Emilia Hazelip’s Synergistic Gardening, John Jeavons’ Biodynamics, Toby Hemenway and Linda Woodrow’s guilds and food forest layering.  But the concept of those few square feet, a little at a time, remains.  A few square feet, I can remove the dastardly bermuda grass.  A little at a time, I can mulch and replant.

My garden is not at peak beauty; there are far too many weedy patches still awaiting their turn to be the few square feet du jour.  But those first few square feet are now yielding, with other areas soon to bear.

Now, a little at a time, I work my homegrown produce back into my meal plans.  I allow myself a deep breath of satisfaction to say “at least one ingredient” of this meal came from my yard.  A bit of basil, a snip of par-cel herb, some currant tomatoes, a green onion, counting each small bit as a victorious step closer toward Sustainability.  A little at a time.