The Serect Garden

The garden through the gate

The garden through the gate

Last weekend, I made a long trek to a completely forgotten and formerly useless corner of Ithaca’s campus. I walked along the twisted road past the pond and public safety office, into the heart of the maintenance and storage sheds, passed the old red barn (unseen from anywhere), onto a short road through the woods and then, in a bright, humid clearing I found four students, their faces in the dirt, scraping and digging into Ithaca’s newest vegetable garden.

Senior Taryn Hubbard and Junior Emma Hileman, two of the founders of the  IC Organic Garden club showed me around the garden. The garden is set in a small field in the back of the college which was ignored by the college except to be mowed every few weeks. Only about 100 feet by 100 feet, Taryn, Emma and their friends have managed to pack more variety of vegetables and herbs into their garden than you could find on an average weekend at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market.

One of the first things Emma proudly showed me was a patch of jalapenos. She practically begged for me to take some.

“We’ve got loads of ‘em,” she said.

Underground grew onions, beets, carrots and potatoes. In the northwest corner grew squash and green and yellow zucchini. Through the middle they grew rows of lettuce, chard and kale. In a robin egg blue kiddie pool grew all varieties of herbs: basil, dill, parsley, Rosemary, sage, oregano.  But clearly the biggest crop of the garden were the tomatoes. Big bunches, at least 10 of them, filled a whole row of the garden. But now comes the sad part of my tale: the unexpected disappointments of gardening.

This was an especially bad season for tomatoes with one of the worst blight outbreaks in memory. If you don’t, as I didn’t, know what blight is, it’s the same disease that caused the Irish potato famine. Emma and Taryn’s tomatoes are small, yellow and the leaves hang low and shriveled. The fruit appears to be rotting on the vine, but in fact it’s the fungal disease eating away at the tomatoes. The cool, wet summer has been good to the blight, but deadly for farmers around the Northeast, including Emma and Taryn.

To add to the unfortunate destruction, aphids chewed through much of their leafy greens, and a small family of baby rabbits, who hid themselves in the thick grass, were fenced inside of the vegetable paradise. They ate the lettuce, kale and carrots.

“It’s been a weird growing season,” said Taryn.

The big winner of the inaugural growing season goes to the butternut squash, beets, onions and, of course, the jalapenos, of which I took a handful for my own spicy use.

Senior Taryn Hubbard, center, digs through the earth for potatoes.

Senior Taryn Hubbard, center, digs through the earth for potatoes.

The IC gardening club has big plans for next years growing season, which includes expanding into the fallow lawn surrounding the garden. They would also like to open a small stand at the Ithaca Farmer’s market, which would include maple syrup from behind the Terraces and mushrooms growing in the woods near the garden. Associate professor Jason Hamilton has helped the group expand their garden, and is in charge of the maple syrup and mushroom projects. The Garden Club, which isn’t an officially registered club with the college, also received $500 from the HSBC commit-to-change grant, though Emma and Taryn admit they reached into their own pockets to put the garden together.

A major highlight of the summer, as you can guess, was when the whole group of friends, farmers and fellow weed-pullers, joined together around a table one summer evening to feast on their harvest. A big dinner of salads and pesto pasta was shared among this group with dirt-stained knees and sun-beat red necks. This earthy group believes college students should should be more in touch with the produce on their plates, and mused that the college should convert a large section of the quad into a garden.

“What a statement that would be!” said Emma.

While the days grow shorter and the nights colder, the summer has set on this growing season. But the secret garden, hiding in a wet corner of the college, will wait till next spring when Taryn, Emma and they hope a new (younger) group of friends come to turn the earth, pull the weeds and begin the cycle again.

“In general, the project feels like a success,” Taryn said. “I’m very proud.”