backyard garden

Sure, August is the hottest month, but the temperature's got nothing to do with it. For most backyard gardeners, these 31 days are the culmination of 11 months of waiting and wondering and breathlessly anticipating the climax of the entire year. The month of May is but a flirtatious glance, a mere glimpse of possibility, a hint of a romance that may or may not come to fruition. But in August, we experience the panting, sweating, throbbing, uninhibited consummation of a relationship that began a few months back when we pressed a few vegetable seeds or seedlings -- firmly, gently, probingly -- into the fertile earth.

Dick Larsen is not the guy you'd expect to be at the helm of a revolution. He's soft-spoken and slightly built. With his thick, retro, architect glasses and pink rock-a-billy shirt with two roosters over the left pocket, it wouldn't be surprising to see a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve, but there are none. A carpenter by trade and, now, the sole proprietor of The Vegetable Revolution, Larsen is a self-taught man. His workshop, located in Northeast Minneapolis, is bathed in sun pouring in from the windows that run the length of the space, crowded with heavy duty carpentry machines. The air is light with the smell of freshly cut cedar, which he fashions into cold frames, the starting point of his brainchild, The Cabbage Patch Garden.

Spring is such an exciting time! Although it's too early to start planting right now (apparently, winter might not be over yet), it's not too early to start thinking about the work that needs to get done to make this summer our most productive and fun ever. For me, that means warming the soil for our backyard farm, experimenting with different homemade mustard recipes, joining a CSA, and looking for ways to help my kids understand where our food comes from.