Garden 2009: Summary of What Worked and What Didn't

One of the purposes of this blog is for me to keep track of the things I'm doing and learning about sustainability and food security and the like, through my own gardening efforts. I didn't post much about my garden (or anything else for that matter) this summer, but I thought I should at least make note of how some of the things I tried turned out.

I'll start with what went well:

1) Potatoes: Potatoes are plain-packaged miracles in my opinion. I was astounded again this year at how many potatoes will grow from just a quarter-potato planted in the Spring. I planted a section of Yukon Gold potatoes this year - the section was about 5 feet square. I probably planted the potatoes too close together, and I didn't hill them up as much I had intended, yet I got over 40 lbs of potatoes out of that little patch. Some of them were hands down gorgeous! Smooth, creamy, perfectly formed spuds. I have since made a whole lotta potato-leek soup and mashed spuds, which are now in my freezer for Winter. Not to mention the bounty of new potatoes and butter we had over the Summer itself.

2) Carrots: These grew and grew whether I thinned them or not, and tolerated quite the variation in temperature and moisture - I was so enthralled with them I wrote a little post all about it a couple weeks ago...

3) Perennial Herbs: I was so happy that my lavender plant made it through last Winter, despite the many nights of bitter cold we had (and by bitter cold I mean -45C at times, and often many nights in a row of -30C). Not only did it survive, but it thrived and produced lovely flowers that were loved by a lot of bees and bugs. By virtue of a late September trip to a lavender farm just outside of Victoria, BC, I found out that my particular variety of lavender was edible! So I harvested my lavender flowers (probably past their peak, but oh well) and made some delicious lavender scones, like you see in the picture above. I also made some lavender and sage tea with honey, which is also quite tasty. Which brings me to the sage - another plant that just grew like crazy this Summer. I have harvested a huge jar-full, enough to last me over the Winter, for certain. My thyme and rosemary also did well, and I fully expect to see them survive over this Winter, providing there is enough snow to insulate everything nicely, like there was last year.

4) Perennial Salad Greens: I grew three varieties of greens from seed: Salad Burnet, Burnet Saxifraga and French Sorrel. All of these sprouted well and grew quite profusely. Both Gord and I and our guinea pigs enjoyed these greens over the summer and into the late Fall (i.e., now). I am keeping my fingers crossed that they live through the winter - the odds are fairly good since they are quite well established now.

There were several things that didn't go well, some of which I've complained about already, and some which I haven't mentioned yet:

1) Cucumbers: I have absolutely no luck with these. Last year they were killed by frost and this year the seedlings were fried by a hot spell after a cool, dry spell. I had been trying to conserve water becasue of the dryness early in the Spring, and apparently I was a bit too stingy with the H2O.

2) Beans: These things were fried more than once, and were very slow to get going in the adverse conditions of cool dryness followed by hot dryness. Later in the summer they had a burst of growth that happened so fast the beans were past the fresh eating stage before I even noticed there were beans at all. They were even past the pickling stage, they were that big. Fortunately they were a dual purpose bean, in that the seeds themselves could be dried and used for soups. So I have a whole cupboard full of bean pods drying.

3) Tomatoes: Dead. Killed in a late frost (in June). I didn't have the motivation to try again.

4) Pumpkins: Dead. Seedlings eaten by some sort of garden pest, perhaps of the deer or pocket gopher variety.

5) Chard and Kale: started out good, but the above noted pocket gopher decided to invade that corner of the garden after our 'mole repellent' thingies chased them out of the yard. All that underground burrowing killed a good half of the chard and kale after that.

6) Aspen tree "cloning:" Our property is full of trembling aspen trees, but there is one large gap in the treeline from what I assume was some over-zealous grading when the house was built. I want to fill in that gap with the same kind of trees, and when I saw this rooter pot device at Lee Valley tools, I thought it was the answer. I had visions of free trees in my head, and I enthusiastically made my way out into our woodlot to choose some prime cloning fodder. I followed the directions closely and soon had ten aspen saplings fitted out with attached rootpots. I don't know if it was a problem with the rooting hormone washing off of the exposed "wound" inside the rootpots, or my not keeping the soil evenly moist. (Watering these things was a tad more complex than the little instruction book led me to believe.) So instead of planting ten new trees, I killed ten trees instead. Not good.

Despite the disappointments I did learn a lot, and there were some things that did go well even in the tough conditions. I guess that's the most important lesson of all: when the going gets tough, I just need to channel my inner potato. And then maybe have some lavender scones with tea. :)

Dropping the Story

I don't like making phone calls. I especially don't like making phone calls to people I don't know. My family can verify this - I get nervous about calling for take-out pizza. And back when I was in Grade 7, and I needed a mouth piece for my french horn, my little brother made the call to the music shop - I was too afraid. In tears even.

So, when I decided a few weeks ago to put my name down on a list of people willing to make calls to other union members about their opinions about our Local's candidate for president of the union, I don't know what I was thinking. Well, I do know actually: the candidate has really gone to the mat for us over the past two years, and I wanted to help out because I think he would be a good union president. So I put my name on the list.

I had put the whole thing out of my mind until a few weeks later when I got the delegate list in the mail. Once the reality of having to make those calls dawned on me, I began berating myself for being so dumb, and signing up for something I so dislike doing. I worked myself up all into a lather about how this was going to ruin my evenings, and I was busy and tired enough, dang it all, etc., etc.

But then, somehow, another thought managed to sneak into my brain. I remembered something I had read about suffering, and how we create it: by wanting things to be other than how they are, and by projecting stories into the future about how things are going to go, when they haven't even happened yet. I decided I could try Pema Chodron's advice to just "drop the story" I was telling myself about how this thing was going to go.

And so, after reviewing our candidate's platform and familiarizing myself with the purpose of the calls, I dialed the first name on my list. And I spoke to the nicest lady, who had heard about our candidate and who eagerly told me that she was going to vote for him, without me even asking! Then I dialed the next name, and the same thing happened! This wasn't how I had imagined it at all! And it wasn't taking very much time either. People were happy to express their view, but they had other things to do too, so our conversations were just a few minutes long. Over the span of four sessions of calling, the whole thing probably took less than an hour. And instead of being resentful, I ended up being grateful that I was able to connect with other people, people who are eager for change, like me.

Squash Quandary

Last week was our last delivery of veggies from our organic CSA farm. One of the things we got was the adorable pumpkin on the right.

The week previously, we received the two squash further to the left. At first I thought the orange one was also a pumpkin, but it is kinda different from the thing we got last week, which I know for sure is a pumpkin. And the zeppelin squash has thrown me off completely! Does anyone know what these two could be? Are they edible or just decorative?

Carrot Bounty

I just had to post about my bonanza of carrots. I left them in the ground while we were away on holidays in late September/early October. And then we got a really hard frost, and some snow even. And then more frost.

But the carrots survived, and look just beautiful. We will be eating them at our family Thanksgiving dinner this weekend.

I got four ice cream pails full of carrots from my small patch - about 15 lbs maybe? Enough to keep some share some.

Transition of sorts?

Anyone who has stopped by here lately will know that I've been posting at a much lower rate than usual over the past many months. Partly, this is due to it having been a very busy year, with personal and family health matters impacting the amount of time and energy I've had to write down the things I've been thinking about. It has also been due to having had a very strange gardening season, with more disappointment than promise. But mostly, the dearth of posts has been because I am just sick and tired, and I don't want to be posting rants and complaints all the time. And the moments of inspiration I have are so fleeting that they're gone before I even have the motivation to post about them.

More and more I find that news of what the municipal, provincial and federal governments are doing just disgusts me. And I have to not think about it too much, or I just get mad, or nauseous or both, and can't do what needs doing around here. Back when I first started this blog ~ 2 1/2 years ago, I was able to gain inspiration by what others were doing, and my own first steps on the path to sustainability were so interesting and fun that I was certain it wouldn't be long before the whole world was on board.

But as time has gone by, I've become more disheartened and cynical. Things have gotten worse, not better, in terms of corporate control of almost everything, and complete denial of the climate-related challenges that face humanity. The only time being "green" seems to matter, is if money can be made off of it somehow. Greed taints everything, and I find myself clamming up more and more, because speaking out seems to just piss people off and harden their opinions anyway. More and more I feel like a fish out of water. Maybe I will feel differently again in a few months, I don't know.

So, I am not sure what form this blog will take from here on in. I've got to do some serious thinking about what constitutes right livelihood, and how best to work towards it in a way that I can do long-term. It could mean changing quite a few things. I'm not shutting down this blog, but posts will likely remain few and far between. Thanks to everyone who still pops in now and then - I do very much value your comments and support.

Frost!

Darn! One day before I was to harvest everything, we had frost. The chard leaves were frozen solid this morning before I went to work, as were the bean leaves, the carrot tops, etc. I got home after dark tonight, so I didn't see the extent of the damage, but I have a feeling it will be a sad sight when I go out there tomorrow. Well, at least the root veggies are ok, and I think the kholrabi and kale should make it. This year's first frost was two weeks later than last year, and it still caught me off guard. Rats!

Lessons from a Neglected Garden

Over the past month or so I have really neglected the garden. We've had a little rain, so I haven't had to water it every day, but I have had to turn on the sprinkler once a week anyway, to keep things from drying out. The weeds are enormous - truly huge! I have never let the weeding get away from me like I did this year, and when I once entertained the idea of doing something about it, the weeds were already so large it would have disturbed the root systems of everything else to yank them out. So there are 3 and 4 foot weeds in there, seriously.

One of the few bonuses of the weeds is that they have certainly shaded the soil well, and kept the rain that does fall from evaporating immediately. It has kept the soil surface cooler as well, which some of the plants have liked a lot (in particular the beans and carrots).

Because of the extent of my neglect, I may be able to collect more seed than I otherwise would have. Many of my radishes went to seed, and the flowers they put out were really quite lovely. And now there are a zillion seed pods ready for picking. My two varieties of bean plants produced much later than last year, so much so that I didn't think they were going to produce at all. But they did, seemingly all of a sudden, and now I have huge bean pods that are probably way past eating as green beans. Fortunately, one of the varieties I grew was dual purpose anyway (the Golden Rocky bean), and so I will just harvest them as dry beans for over the winter (and seed for next year). The other variety (Tanya's Pink Pod) was interesting to look at and very pretty, but I don't think I will grow many of them next year. I will still save some seed though.

I managed to thin the carrots out once in early Summer, but otherwise they are really growing way too close together. Despite this, they have grown quite big and fairly straight, and since I haven't been grazing on them all summer long, there are actually a lot of them left to harvest and store for the Winter.

My neglect also resulted in my harvesting very few new potatoes. The plants have all yellowed and wilted now, and have been that way for a couple weeks, which means the skins will have hardened and they will be better suited to long term storage. That works well for me, since we had new potatoes almost all summer from our CSA farm share (and probably will have many more weeks of these yet).

So, while I wish I was more on the ball this year with my garden, I have been pleasantly surprised at what will grow anyway, despite the weeds and the overall carelessness and inattention. I'm hoping next year will be a bit of a middle path between my gung-ho hypervigilance last year, and my distracted neglect this year.

Now, if the first frost will just hold off for a few more days, I will dig, pick, dry and otherwise harvest my little heart out this weekend!

Radish pod picture courtesy this foraging blog.