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Shawnaland
by Jake Farley
“This is my favorite place in the world to be. When I'm here I don't have to answer to anybody,"ť says Shawna Bengivenni of her Wantage, New Jersey, hillside garden. Her words strike pride in the heart of any gardener. “If you take care of the plants, they take care of you. They reward me for my labor."
She picks her way around the garden, pulls a weed, squashes a Colorado Potato Beetle larva with her bare hands as they turn her fingers orange. “I hate squishing them. It's gross. But it's got to be done."ť
She checks down the rows of the 120 x 40-foot garden, through heirloom eggplant and seven varieties of peppers, a patch of colorful and promisingly delicious winter squash including Seminole pumpkin, Sweet Mama, Hearts of Gold. Through five kinds of zucchini including the almost seedless Marrow picked slightly larger than zucchini, and the heirloom Romanesco. She grows lettuce: Romaine, Red Romaine, Red Oak Leaf, Green Oak Leaf. Everything's started from seed.
The garden is in motion. Garlic greens, planted last October, die back now, but the shallots are ready to pull. Bengivenni will pull them out, slosh the bulbs around in water to get the dirt off, then lay them on a bed of straw in the garden. “You can use them right away. If you want to dry them for longer storage, hang them for three or four days in the hot sun."
She eats shallots raw in salad. “Lou and I make all our own pasta. We saute shallots with butter, olive oil, and Ruby Swiss chard. We pour that over the pasta and add Parmesan cheese."
Dill pops up sporadically, and she lets the almost ethereal and non-light-competitive plant grow where it pleases.
Recently, hail pummeled the garden, ripping holes and shredding big-leafed plants like cucumbers, leaving them susceptible to disease. But thanks to Bengivenni's healthy garden practices they all rebounded quickly. She sprayed Serenade Solutions to activate the plants' defense mechanisms. But the bugs?
“Cuke beetles are my worst enemy. I come out in the middle of the night with my oil and a flashlight. They'll be swarming, so I come out and catch them." Bengivenni needs her cukes to make “Aunt Grace's Sweet Pickles." It's a two-day process. Some cukes: Jolly Green, Muncher, Lemon.
A patch of cold crops include Savoy cabbage, kale, collards, Brussel sprouts (“They're sweet. Just add a little butter and some salt. I'm fussy."), red and green cabbage, rutabaga (keep mulching). She positioned the cold crops so that they now get ľ-day of sun. By mid-July and for the rest of the hot summer, they'll get shade from 1PM on.
The broccoli and cauliflower are already gone. Her husband Lou, former meat-and-potatoes man, learned to make her cauliflower frittata one night when she was out in the garden working late. Now, a second crop of cauliflower and broccoli raab grows.
Her five varieties of potatoes will satisfy any carb-tooth. They're a different spud than store-bought. They don't taste moldy, she says. She grows: Heirloom German Fingerling, Yukon Gold, German Butterball, Yellow Finn, Purple “I love to pick basil and carry the leaves around and crush them in my hand. The bush will be five feet tall and every time I brush by it will fragrant-up the garden."
On hog wire panels, she grows 100 plants of 24 heirloom tomato varieties including Aunt Ruby's German Green - green when ripe, so you have to figure it out; Old Italian with wispy vines with heart-shaped fruit. Its shoulders stay green for a little while when the fruit is bright orange, then turn deep red.
The 35 x 33-foot corn patch gets fertilized twice: at four inches tall and when the silks come out and begin to form a cob. When fertilizing the young plants, she pulls the soil up around each plant to the bottom leaves to give the roots a solid foundation. This creates a trough between rows, great for watering.
But not everything is fabulous. She admits she is the world's worst pea grower. Spurred on by the challenge that lays before her she will one day conquer the pea.
A few flowers grow around the garden - marigolds by the tomatoes, Black heirloom hollyhocks and sunflowers by the cukes. Others grow in a screened-in center of the garden surrounding a bird bath. “I love the orange contrast of butterfly weed with purple zinnias. I plant bee balm for the humming birds, and tall white, fragrant Sweet William. I change the water in the bird bath every day. The hummingbirds get very brazen by the end of the summer and come hover in my face. One I named Sassy. She'd get right in my face and yell at me. I liked her. She'd sit in the leaves of the sunflower."
So what's her secret? Why... she mulches the garden with bedding from her pet Alpine goats and dresses the plants with their manure. “The pumpkins and winter squash love goat manure and the corn thanks you for it."
In 1978 in Paterson, NJ, Bengivenni learned to garden from an Italian man who lived next door who didn't speak a word of English. “He grunted at me. He used to grow tomatoes and a fig tree out in the middle of his garden. Now I do all the same things. My first garden was 10 x 15. I dug it all up by hand. He'd come over, point and grunt. That's how I learned to garden." She worked at a tropical fish store and brought home all the dead fish and buried them in her garden. In a few years her garden was nicer than the old man's. He reportedly threw up his hands. “That was the start of my love affair," she says.
Now every morning at dawn, Bengivenni starts her day running the Wantage foothills of the Kittatinny Ridge. She feeds her goats, then hits the garden - coffee in hand - to check for critters, big or small. She gets to her job around noon and leaves by 5. (“I have a great husband who lets me do this," she says. She is his office manager.) She goes back to her garden, feeds the goats, then she's out in the garden till 10:15. “I work in the dark. My eyes adjust. I do things like tying up tomato plants until they get wet. I spend all my weekends up here." By August, her garden will take care of itself and all she'll have to do is keep it tied up and keep the bugs and weeds under control.
Shawna Bengivenni watches the garden from her chair at the garden's edge. “I enjoy sitting here because I see the hummingbirds come in. From here I can see everything. I can see all the way down to my cabbage. I can see everything growing and that's the way I like it."
Bengivenni sells her produce to a local CSA farm, Wright's farm stand on Rt. 23 in Sussex, and from a truck by the road – Clove Road, Wantage, on the honor system. Or, you can call her at LRB Performance: 973-209-7770 or email Shawna at lrbperf@aol.com
A few tips minus the goat products:
Don't crowd your garden. It invites disease.
Plant peppers and eggplant over red plastic.
Rotate your crops. Different plants take different things from the soil.
Use a natural bug spray.
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published July 09, 2005
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