Railyard Stewards launch community garden with demonstrations and tips for spring planting
Dennis Carroll | For The New Mexican
Posted: Sunday, April 11, 2010 – 4/12/10
The edible word of the day is arugula. First of all, it’s fun to say — arugula, arugula — as you put your mouth and tongue through all kinds of contortions just to get the letters out. Also, as any restaurateur knows, add Eruca sativa to any salad, and you can get away with charging more for the dish, especially if you sprinkle on goat cheese. And of course, there are numerous accounts of the supposed aphrodisiacal qualities of the arugula — also known as rocket. But never mind all that.
Arugula, a mustard-green type of weedy plant native to the Mediterranean, was among several early season vegetables being sown Sunday in the Railyard’s demonstration gardens by members of the Railyard Stewards and those who had come to pick up a few tips about desert gardening.
Stnina Babankova, visiting from Montreal, noted that, “Whatever you put in the ground there, it grows. Everything grows by itself.” Babankova, who’s spending the spring with her daughter, Zee, in Santa Fe, had gathered with a handful of others and was hoping to pick up some gardening tips for Zee.
Instructor Steve Warshawer of Beneficial Farm’s community support agriculture project, was quick to point out that too many New Mexico gardeners think, ” ‘Oh my gosh, this is the desert. If it’s not growing, it needs water.’ That’s not necessarily true.” Many plants, including arugula, are very hardy and actually don’t need all that much water, Warshawer said. They often are patient, more so than their gardeners, perhaps, and lie content in the ground not doing much until water and temperature conditions become more suitable for a sustained growth.
Warshawer, who farms on Roe Mesa, offered a variety of spring garden tips, including creating a “three-finger” planter tool composed of a thumb and the index and middle fingers to ensure that a seed is planted at the right depth — basically up to the first knuckle of the thumb or until you feel resistance from the undug ground underneath the prepared soil.
He also suggested ways to make the best use of a limited water supply and unpredictable rain showers. They included, in the arugula’s case, hoeing a furrow an inch deep to allow any water in the soil to rise to join the water you or Mother Nature may have added from the top.
Warshawer also demonstrated how to make a “high-tech transformational seeding device” from an envelope or folded piece of paper from a reporter’s notebook.
The group, under the guidance of Warshawer and the Railyard Stewards’ executive director, Eliza Katzmann, also planted spinach (more of a fussy grower than arugula), snow peas and fava beans in the demonstration “waffle garden.” The area is named for its giant waffle appearance created by the construction of dirt paths around the recessed rectangular garden plots.
That helps prevent any water that reaches the plants from simply running off and not settling into the soil.
The Stewards and the Santa Fe Master Gardeners Association still have two upcoming instructional gardening sessions planned for the Railyard plots: spring planting on May 15 and midsummer garden care on July 24.
ON THE WEB
• For more information on the Railyard Park, visit www,railyardpark.org.
• To learn more about arugula, visit www.gourmetsleuth.com/Articles/Produce-440/arugula.aspx
