What We Need Is Here

June Garden

When I went out to work in the garden this morning, the title from a book on my shelf – Nature’s Unruly Mob – came to mind.  Sporadic rain, mid-90s heat, and my neglect while I have been packing have let things get a little wild. 

The tithonia had grown so tall it was shading the tomatoes and completely covering the peppers.  A big orange, decaying, volunteer pumpkin (from a seed in the compost) is a shining example of why we don’t grow Halloween pumpkins in Florida, the broccoli was bolting, and EVERYTHING needs water.

The beans are still coming up nicely though, we are getting about 40 cherry tomatoes each day, the last of the corn was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and the sunflowers are lovely.  We planted two of the giant kind – the traditional Russian Mammoth and “Sunzilla” next to each other to compare. Sunzilla wins! It’s leaves are larger and its stem (trunk) has buds up and down it instead of the traditional one flower on top of the Mammoth.  Both are eye-catching and fun in the garden though, as are the little guys.

I have to say it is a good thing, though, that we are not relying on this garden to feed our family as the neglect has lost us some produce. It was good for the soul though to keep the garden in spite of the moving chaos and the fact that we will leave before everything’s ready to eat.  Grace and I are throwing out sunflower seeds as we remove the spent plants.  Happiness to the new owners.

And I am dreaming about community gardens and SPIN gardens and guerilla gardens in our new urban home (when I am not lying awake obsessing about the termites in the wood floors...). 

Grace's Favorite "Vegetable"

Grace was finally rewarded for her work in the corn bed - preparing the soil, planting the corn shoots, and posing for weekly photos with the growing corn.  I thought it might be too early to harvest, but it was perfect. Grace's favorite vegetable is technically a grain, but that's okay. This week it was everybody's favorite!

Corn's not an efficient crop to grow in a small garden like ours since it takes up so much space for the amount of food it produces.  But we're really growing primarily for taste and beauty (and happiness), and Grace loves corn, so corn's gotta be in there someplace.  As do cherry tomatoes for John, broccoli and  basil for me (and Steven across the street who loves pesto)... you see how it goes.  I long for a real working garden, planted for sustaining my family, but I feel lucky to have this one.  Lucky because it provides beautiful, tasty food to supplement our meals, lucky that a crop failure (like the bean sprouts that were pecked out by the chickens (yes, we experimented with letting them run freely again...) isn't a big deal to us nutrition-wise, and lucky because the fact that we are moving is settling in and I am going to miss it. 

We'll have another garden - a small one in our tiny front yard and possibly a few random things growing in the back in the spots of sun available (buildings all around).  Once we get there, we'll also find other places to grow things - a home for elders has contacted me about helping them grow a fall garden, the after-school center at the police station would like us to garden with the children, and there are some other areas in which we could develop a community garden.  So we'll have a garden; it just won't be this one.

Ugh, moving.  This is a good move for all kinds of reasons, but it's still hard. The next few weeks are going to be so full of packing and cleaning here and painting and organizing there!  I need a good attitude!  I need some coffee.  And a few more tasty, beautiful meals made from the fruits and grains of our labor here.

Garden - Early May

We've had very little rain over the last month which is pretty typical for this time of year - at least over the last few years.  We're watering fairly regularly, though, so things are growing well.  I prefer to water the garden by hand, directing it right at the roots of the plant. It saves water, but it also keeps down weeds since the area around the plants is getting so little. This week, though, I put on the sprinkler for the first time and watered the browning front lawn and the garden together.  If I were going to live here longer, I would just plow up the rest of the yard. Who needs grass when you could have more strawberries?

Everything's thriving at this point. The corn is beginning to form cobs, the branching sunflowers have buds, and we've harvested our first two cherry tomatoes this week (Gracie ate them before they made it inside).  We've also been harvesting some delicious broccoli.  My little experiment over winter yielded this result: It is better to replace frost-damaged broccoli with new transplants than to cut back the damaged ones.  The frost-bitten ones never produced much and went to seed quickly.  The new ones have started yielding normal-sized and delicious broccoli stalks.

Earlier in the week we pulled up the remaining collards which were beginning to bolt and planted green beans in their place since they stand up to the hot weather farily well.  We also harvested the rest of the sorrel and composted the bolted lettuce plants, leaving just one cilantro in that plot to continue going to (coriander) seed.  Grace and her friend, Halle, planted sunflower seeds there which were given to us by my neigbor.

It's been a beautiful spring so far, perfect weather for being in the garden. Click on the photo below for a larger view (with labels).

 

Spring is Bursting Out - Again!

Oh my, it is just beatiful here.  For the past few weeks, you would be hard-pressed, without a calendar, to guess what season it is.  We keep cycling through them randomly: winter, summer, spring, summer, winter, and now back to early spring. Today I went for a long walk and was in awe of the beauty of the bright green leaves bursting out against a perfectly blue, almost dark blue, sky.  If the sight had an accompanying heart-thunking noise, it would be better than fireworks.

 

The Farmers' Almanac, the National Weather Bureau, and history all agree that this will not last, which makes me love it even more. I want to soak it in.  The vegetables have benefited from the heat and rain and are growing quickly.  Our corn looks like I've heard midwestern corn should look in the summer, "knee high (by the Fourth of July)". The only thing knee high here on July 4 are the weeds that sprouted July 3. 

I'm going back outside now.

Is Spring Already Over?

Tickseed - the Florida State Wildflower

You would be tempted to think so, with temperatures reaching the mid-80s lately.  But if you did, you would either have to not be from around these parts or have amnesia - the kind you need to give birth to a second child, or to stay through more than one North Florida summer.  It's hot, but it's not that hot. And it's not yet anywhere near as humid. 

There have been Aprils when we've had frost, and this has not been one of those so far. Almost all the spring veggies are already bolting, getting ready to go to seed.  I may plant some more lettuces in hopes of a cooler May, but cilantro seedlings wouldn't have much of a chance to grow very big before the heat overtakes them.  It was nice while it lasted.

And nice for a little while longer while the cilantro flowers give way to coriander seeds.  Yes, you get coriander from cilantro plants - lots of it. Save them to plant or add them to Indian dishes; they're the last gift of the lovely cilantro plant. My only regret about the whole thing is that, in Florida at least, it's tought to grow tomatoes and cilantro at the same time.  But we'll enjoy them while they're flowering, and so will the bees, butterflies, and tiny wasps.

Gradually, the hay/dried leaves paths are giving way to summer vegetables.  I love this time of year.  Pure potential - when every indication is that it will be a beautiful, bountiful, pest/fungus/flood-free garden. But then, it's not summer yet...

 

Volunteers and Other Life in the Garden

Little Basil Volunteer

Grace and I counted the different “volunteers” growing in the garden today.  We have sweet potatoes, butternut squash, watermelon, tomatoes, basil, lots of zinnias and tithonia, as well as pine trees, hickory trees, and one loquat tree – all growing where we did not plant them.  With the exception of the trees, we will try to keep a few of each of them, since they are evidently growing in a place well-suited to their needs.  I thinned out the zinnias today, most of which were growing near the road in the front of the garden.  Tomorrow I’ll get to the army of tithonia marching due west of the compost pile.  The few basil plants I left near the “sunzilla” sunflowers we transplanted today. 

Watching the undisturbed soil suddenly sprout forth all of these plants makes me think of a novel I once read called Love in the Ruins (Walker Percy).  I have forgotten a lot of it, but one thing that sticks with me is its description of vines growing over and around houses and lawns and other signs of civilization without human beings around anymore to beat them back. I wonder what our garden would look like a few years down the road if left to its own devices.  Probably a lot of little pine and hickory trees vying for sunlight, after a few final generations of flowers and veggies became shaded out.  And vines, definitely lots of cat's claw vines, without me in there pulling out their little tubers right and left.

I think this is one of the things I like best about growing a garden, or I should say “helping a garden to grow.”  I love having a hand (literally) in the chaos, being a "co-creator" of the beauty that a diverse community of plants can bring to a sunny spot, while recognizing the ultimate uncontrollability of it all. I want branching sunflowers and double zinnias, and juicy watermelons and red and green lettuce, and vines weighted with sun gold tomatoes.  I will probably have a lot of them, but will also have aphids on the lettuce, and squirrels in the seed pots, and a squash popping up next to the tithonia sprouting right in the path to the compost, and of course bettony and oxalis and Spanish needles and slugs and snails and fungi and bacterial wilt… Like life, I will want to control it, and I will try.  I also hope to enjoy when possible - and learn to tolerate with some grace when not - the uncontrollable, the unforeseen, and the disappointing.  It’s not by chance that one of our most beautiful creation stories has us plopped down in a garden wanting apples and finding a snake.  C’est la vie.

March Garden - Taming the Local Food Chain

 

We made some real progress in the garden this weekend – setting out transplants of peppers, cucumbers and corn, replanting tomatoes (see below), mulching the collards, broccoli, onions, strawberries, and lettuce, and sowing sunflower and zinnia seeds. 

We got a slow start this spring, mostly on account of an unfortunate suburban food chain taking place in our yard. In a perfect world, the corgi pup would herd the free-range chickens into their coop at night, and the chickens would peck harmful insects off the veggie plants during the day.  But, instead, the corgi is trying to eat the chickens who are, in turn, pecking to death every tender sprout in the garden or in flats.  This is partly my fault.  We introduced our birds to chicken heaven last summer when we kept them for a couple months in the front-yard garden, housed in a “chicken tractor” – a small coop that we could move around in the garden so that they would scratch at and fertilize the soil.  When we returned the chickens to the backyard, they started hopping the fence and visiting the vegetable garden regularly. Who knew that those tiny heads held such strong memories? Or how much chickens love baby tomato plants, and unripe strawberries?

So the chickens are no longer ranging freely. And the pup is no longer trusted.  But the garden is being planted at last!  While it may look like free-form hay and leaf formations right now (hay for the mulch, leaves for the path), tiny transplants are setting down their roots now, full of promise for May (provided they survive any late freezes, early heat waves, torrential downpours and/or insect invasions between now and then).

We also sowed sunflower and zinnia seeds in flats.  The zinnias are long-stemmed and some of the sunflowers will be the smaller, branching types - so they'll add color inside and out starting in about 60 days.  Once they’re transplanted in the garden, we’ll sow Seminole pumpkin and roselle seeds – two things that we like that will take the heat.  We’ll plant them in the place vacated by the collards and lettuce as the weather warms up.  We’ll also sow bean seeds around bamboo teepees.  Most things do better here in Florida when they have a chance to grow in flats for a bit rather than directly sowing them in the garden, where they are subject to the plagues mentioned above.

 

I always draw out a garden plan, trying to visualize what it will be like once everything’s up and producing, hoping to have the next thing ready to plant as the previous one begins to bite the dust. It never turns out exactly as I imagine; volunteers from years past sprout in unexpected places, some plants don’t thrive, others take over… but it’s always good - for both my mental health and our family’s table.  

Where the Farmers Go

When it comes to picking up seeds and seedlings, it's good to go where the farmers go.  Alachua County Feed and Seed is the last of its kind in Gainesville, and visiting feels like walking into the past.  Today, James Duncan was behind the counter and helped me get some hay for our chicken coop (bedding).  While I waited, he also helped a customer who wanted to know the best determinate tomato for these parts - "celebrity" according to Mr. Duncan.  He knows because he grows them himself; he's been raising plant in his own greenhouse since he retired and started working at the Feed and Seed almost 20 years ago.  (He wanted me to explain that the lights on his cap are there because he needed them to take care of his plants before sunrise and the workday.)  Here, you won't wind up with lettuce that bolts in our spring heat or other plants that won't thrive here - like you might at one of the big box stores. And you can get chicks here, too. A new bunch is coming in every couple weeks.  

Buying local has other advantages as well. For one thing, we vote with our dollar to keep store like this open (and maybe someday to open more...).  And for another, buying local keeps more of our money in the community - supporting our friends and neighbors.

And the "shopping experience" is so different.  I go to the Feed and Seed to buy something I already have in mind and to get "boots on the ground" advice.  I almost always come away with what I need.  When I go to Lowe's or Home Depot, it's hard to find anyone to ask for one thing.  It's also hard (for me at least) to come away with only what I need.  There's so much STUFF.  And I admit I'm attracted to shiny copper lawn sprinklers and beautiful tomato supports with fancy finials.  Not to mention lawn furniture and lighting and hose rewinders (most made in China) - stuff I didn't know I wanted and certainly don't need.  There's a reason for this.  And I'd prefer my dollar not to go toward supporting it.

Plus Mr. Duncan is so nice. 

 

February Gardening

Ahhh... cilantro.

This might be my favorite month for gardening.  The weather is nice and cool, there's regular rain, and we're on the cusp of two seasons so a lot of diversity is possible.  And it's just a pleasure to be out there.

This weekend we bravely planted two little tomato plants in the hopes that hard freezes are behind us. We also planted some more lettuce and replenished our chicken-tattered strawberry plants and frost-bitten broccoli.  In real-world food production where we relied on these plants as our primary source of food for our family, it would probably be more productive to remove the damaged plants and replace with the new.  But it will be interesting to see how the old ones will recover in comparison to the new ones reaching maturity.  So we'll enjoy the luxury of using the garden for education as well as food.

And for happiness.  It is truly fun to be out on the garden on a beautiful day.  Robins and sandhill cranes are in the neighborhood for a while and people are out strolling, cycling, and jogging.  It's so pleasant.  And little Riley's two year-old tendency not to distinguish work from play is contagious.  Here's a Riley "tutorial" on the use of worm castings in the garden. 

   

1. Dig a hole.  2. Take a tablespoon or two of castings from the bucket.  3. Pause to appreciate how much easier this is than shoveling horse manure.  4. Place castings in hole before adding plant.

I started using worm castings in the school gardens I managed for several years.  The school children even raised their own worms, feeding them apple cores and other healthy snack leavings as well as school garden debris.  We got ours from the worm man, but I think we'll ressurect the worm composter once the puppy settles down.

In addition to placing the castings in the holes before planting, we also sprinkle it around the top mid-season and water it in.  That and a seasonal distribution of finished kitchen compost seems to be all our garden needs to thrive.  This year we are adding soiled hay from the little hen house, and I'm interested to see if that will make it even more productive. 

February garden plant inventory:  Collards (planted in the fall and still thriving), cilantro, sorrel, lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes.  What's in your garden this time of year?