Kathy Jentz, Publishing Gardener, Plot 16

Kathy Jentz, Plot 16, Fenton Street Garden. Kathy’s work is featured in numerous area publications including the Washington Examiner newspaper, Pathways Magazine, and Washington Women magazine. In addition, she appears on regular gardening guest spots on Channel 9, Channel
4, and WAMU radio.

I've known Kathy for quite awhile. She is my gardening guru, living the enviable life of producing both a magazine and several gardens. Kathy is editor and publisher of Washington Gardener magazine and a life-long gardener. She says that growing plants should be stress-free and enjoyable. Her philosophy is "inspiration over perspiration."

When we were assigned plots in the garden, I was delighted to learn that Kathy would be gardening just down the row from me in her Plot 16. She's always got a good tip handy; knows most everything there is to know and if she doesn't, she'll figure it out for you. Having Kathy around the Community Garden has also proved useful because she's a natural-born leader. When there's a project at hand, she's got the chops for it. With a quick command, we're all happily lined up and executing the orders. And as a result, we've got two gorgeous communal herb and wild flower patches growing in what once a messy mix of angry, ugly weeds. Without further ado, here's Kathy: 

Kathy lays in the brick path for our herb and wildflower corne

As a gardener, what do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Mid-December thru February - HATE HATE HATE the Mid-Atlantic Winter!

Other than the state of Maryland, where would you most like to live?

New Orleans

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Time enough to read everything in my stacks, cool drink in hand, surrounded by my cats and bunches of cut flowers

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?

Procrastinating


Who are your favorite environmental or botanical heroes?

Ben Franklin, he is not thought that way, but if you really read his stuff, he was a great protector of the Earth


Who are your favorite gardeners in history?

The originals: Adam and Eve


Who are your favorite heroes or heroines of fiction?

Indiana Jones

Your favorite painter?

Dali

Your favorite musician?

Prince

Your favorite tool?

Cobrahead


The quality you most admire in a gardener?

Patience

Your favorite virtue?

Calm

Your favorite occupation?

I'm not sure if this means job or way to spend my time?


Who would you have liked to be?

is this a historic or fictional or not specific person but a job category?

Your most marked characteristic?

Bossiness

What do you most value in your garden?

Anything that takes care of itself and thrives


What is your principle gardening defect?

Hate the thought of weeding - but once I get going, it is not too bad

What is your dream of happiness?

See: What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Making a Plot a Home

This is the entrance to my community garden.

And this is what it looked like in early spring.

Two gardens this summer kept The Putterer in fit gardening form. The community garden on Fenton Street is my new favorite pastime. I got a 10 foot by 20 foot plot in full sun but built on top of an abandoned lot with plenty of nasty stuff in the soil. The county did an awesome job of plowing, prepping and soil testing, but the first year was touch and go. Though after a buying into a share of compost, I did harvest a huge bunch of tomatoes, plenty of basil, some squash and eggplant and pile of pole beans.

Last weekend, I pulled all the tomato plants out. And this weekend, I'm planting a cover crop of clover to help nourish the soil this fall and winter. I'll turn that back into the soil (my back is aching already in anticipation) and next summer, I'll dump a pile more compost in and then, oh what magic will grow there, I can't wait.

But I think the best part of the community garden this summer had to have been my plot neighbors. I got so lucky because I'm just across the path from Gordon Clark, our resident master gardener and just up the way from Kathy Jentz, editor of Washington Gardener. I have new friends Anne McDermott and Pamela Trochesset and Colette Rausch and Natasha Hurwitz. The Putterer

The Plot Thickens

The Putterer's Plot

The front door and the foyer

The Putterer preparing to putter.

Wednesday night after work, I hurried over to the home of a neighbor who had offered up some old timbers—pressure treated wood. They’d been piled up in his yard for more than seven years, he told me, so any leaching of dangerous chemicals would have already occurred. I piled a bucket, a watering can, my red radio flyer wagon, a small rake and a shovel into the car and headed slowly over to my plot (the wood hanging precariously out of the hatchback). Jim came along to help me unload (now he’s complaining of back pain, yikes!).

I had everything I needed, or so I thought. With the car unloaded and Jim gone, and oh yes, Patsy home cooking dinner (bless her) so that I could just work through the evening, it was just me, my plot, a few other gardeners and the desire to get my everything marked and ready for planting before I had to go to sleep and to work the next day.

The posts laid nicely into the shallow trenches I dug out all around the perimeter. One shorter than the other seven easily became the front foundation. Inside the plot, I laid two parallel down the middle to create my path. One more laid horizontal across the top designated the back “room.” That’s when I realized I was building a fort.

Just as when we were kids on a rainy day, we’d push the tables and chairs together and cover it all with a blanket. The compartments within the blanket complex easily morphed into our chambers and hallways. Cozy within, the play fantasies would tumble from our child minds. Here is the door, and here is my room, and over there is my brother’s lair, and my sister’s towered aerie. We’d grab nuts and apples from the kitchen, and hurry back, carrying cheese and pickle sandwiches, to host feasts for our guests in the great hall beneath the blanket. We built forts in every place we played. At my grandmother’s old farm house, we kept two competing forts—girls and boys—under the twin beds in the guest room. On fall days, we piled up leaves and made enormous walled mansions, laid out maze-like across all the yards in the neighborhood.

Inside my vegetable land fort, I traced out a narrow pathway, curving it for architectural effect, through the foyer to the front door. The large room at the back against the fence would be home to my bean tower. Maybe, I thought I could grow beans up the fence with a squash plant at their feet (dare I try corn for a three-sister’s garden?). Along the side, the left chamber would be home for my tomato friends. The right chamber, my cucumber and eggplant aerie.

A woman called from the street, “Looks nice!”

“I’m building a fort,” I yelled back, “Here is the front door,” I pointed with my shovel, “and this is the dining room and the living room.”

She walked away laughing. Crazy lady, I’m sure she was thinking.

Next, I loaded up my red wagon with the mulch chips the county had provided and dumped at the center of the garden. I used these to fill up my center path. The wagon traveled easily over the garden pathways. Back and forth I went, filling and dumping. The leaf mulch, also thoughtfully provided by the county, went into all the beds. And I grew thirsty and my back ached and my arms, covered with dirt, felt heavy at my shoulders.

But oh, so thirsty, and that was the thing I didn’t think to bring over. Water!

Nearby, my new friend Katie was planting her tomatoes in her plot, and she went out to her car and brought back little bottles of drinking water. The cistern in the garden was not yet filled or tapped and so Katie was carefully spilling the drinking water at the base of her tomatoes. I didn’t dare ask. The tomatoes would need it more than I.

I hurried to finish. At home, cool glasses of water and a hot tub to soak in would be my reward once my fort was built. The Putterer

Mobile Gardening

At 4:30 yesterday my tooth, which had just been capped in a torturous experience that involved failures from start to finish, was pounding with pain. My plan to finish my big project was foiled by a simple document transfer that couldn't be completed. And my heart just wasn't into starting anything fresh. So it seemed like a good idea to leave the office and head over to the community garden for a look-see. Traffic and walking the dog, slowed me down. But I arrived with my garden bag packed with tools and a trash bag only to find I really didn't have a clue where to start.

Hi! I called out to the others, who had all arrived with the hoes and leaf mulch and burlap bags and wheel barrows and stakes and string to mark out their plots and dig in. My bag had a trowel and clippers, some twine, all of it perfect for weeding in my garden at home. I plunked my bag down in the middle of my plot and paced up and down, picking up the dirt and examining it, to look expert and gardener-like. I considered leaving to go get more stuff, but the time I had before Jim was due to arrive at the Metro station, made that idea a fool's errand. So then I wandered around to my plot neighbors. Hi, I tried again. That worked. Pretty soon, Anne and I, were chatting happily. Anne had been there for hours it seemed. Her plan was taking shape with paths and beds marked out with burlap. She knew my brother. She had good black gold she'd brought from home. She had a pen and paper.

A husband and wife team had also marked out their plot in triangles and made string boundaries. They were so engaged, they barely stopped to make a greeting.

Then, I saw my friend Kathy Jentz coming across the way, pulling her wheelbarrow filled with good stuff. Hi Kathy! Kathy had a quick and hasty plan and before long me and my twine were part of it. Then we were filling her wheelbarrow with mulch to mark out our plots. Then she lent me some stakes. And then we were talking about sharing the task of watering each others plots. And then I was hurrying because Jim called to say he was walking to the Metro. And then I felt like I had a plan.

And today, I have a list of what to bring for my next visit. 1. My wagon; 2. Small hoe or rake; 3. black fabric for the base of a path; 4. Four bags of leafgrow and two bags of garden soil; 5. some kind of border, either wood boards or tree limbs; 6. posts and string; 7. my bean pole, tomato cages and plant fencing; 9. an old chair or stool; 10. a bucket and a watering can.

But for now, I have to go to work. The Putterer