One of my interests, which is rapidly becoming urgent, is in root-cellaring, and my first project in this area has been figuring out what to do with all my sweet potatoes.

The sweet potatoes were a great success this year. It was my first time growing any kind of potato, and I knew exactly nothing about it. I ordered “seed potatoes” from Johnny’s for banana fingerling potatoes and for Beauregard sweet potatoes, and my first lesson in sweet potato cultivation was that I didn’t receive “seed potatoes” from Johnny’s at all. I had expected them to look like the fingerling seed potatoes, so when I found these in my mailbox on the 7th of May – wilted, from having spent over 24 hours in there – I was mystified.

I was not at all expecting plants…and to top it off, I received twice what I had actually ordered. I let Johnny’s know, and they told me that they had accidentally shipped the order twice and that I could keep them both, free of charge. Very nice of them; and after my successful year with both of the potato varieties that I grew, you can bet I’ll be ordering more seed potatoes and sweet potato slips from Johnny’s again this coming spring.

So I put 27 of these very sad looking things in the ground, following the planting directions that came with them, and they looked like this.

Not very encouraging.

Still, I let them be, and before I knew it – miracle of miracles – the little buggers began to grow. Looking back, this was even more amazing from the standpoint that I did nothing in particular for or to them to encourage success. I did not test, “improve” or “correct” my soil. I did not specifically water them, but they got water the old fashioned way, from rain, and whenever something else in the garden was in dire need of water, they ended up getting some too. I didn’t weed.  So they really were a no muss, no fuss crop. My understanding is that Beauregards are pretty tolerant of a wide range of soil conditions, and I don’t know for sure whether I happened to have an ideal soil for them, or if they just accepted what I had and ran with it.

My first summer with sweets was full of surprises. I had no idea that they would bloom, and that their flowers would be so beautiful.

Nor did I know that the sweet potato was such a hardy and attractive vine, that it would creep everywhere, or that it would be pretty doggone tolerant of weeds – a must in my garden.

So things were going along pretty well, but like most veggies that were new to me this year, I had a totally inaccurate idea of when I might expect to harvest them. On Monday 27 July, I was out in my garden inspecting, and I found this deep furrow.

What the heck? Closer inspection revealed this! Could that be a sweet potato popping up out of the ground?

It was indeed! Could it possibly be ready to harvest? One way to find out. I pulled that sucker up, marveled at how big it was, and in fact, I ate it for dinner that night.

A quick check inside with my garden diary revealed that the passage of time had snuck up on me. It had been 82 days since I put those slips in the ground. Because it was my understanding that I could leave them in as long as until first frost, I waited a little while longer before starting to pull up more. Throughout August and into mid-September I was harvesting sweet potatoes.

I was able to learn from firsthand experience what my subsequent research confirmed, that sweet potatoes are surprisingly delicate and thin-skinned, and it’s really easy to knick and scratch them with your fingernails as you’re pulling them out of the ground. It’s also really easy, when trying to dig them up, to break off an end. But if you do – no big deal. Because these open wounds close over with a kind of white scab. I believe this is called “corking.” 

My first attempts at “curing” were to leave them out in the vestibule still covered in dirt for a number of days. After that, I would move them to a carboard box under my kitchen counter. I know now that I should have left them in the ground longer, until just before or the day after the first frost, because the roots grow the most in September and October. But what the heck. I’ll know better next year. This year, by mid September I had every sweet potato out of the ground. By this time my new book had arrived, Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel, and my first order of business was to figure out how to “cellar” these sweet potatoes; hopefully for the duration of the winter. (Incidentally my mother has told me that her father used to coat his potatoes in lime and store them in the woodshed when she was growing up. Interesting, but that doesn’t sound like something I would want to do.)

The first thing I learned was that during the 10-14 day or so “curing” process that the potatoes should be kept warm (80-85 degrees) and humid, so with my final HUGE bunch of sweet potatoes (3 boxes full) I kept a big damp towel draped over them all in the same spot in the vestibule so that they were kept warm and humid. After a few weeks of this, I was ready to put them away.

After the curing process, what they need primarily is to be kept dry – no damp root cellar for these babies. They prefer temps of 50-60 degrees, but most importantly they need to be kept dry. So for the time being, they’re all under my counter. Here’s what I did. I used a wine box, wrapped half of them in brown paper and nestled them all in there together, and slid the heavy box under the counter and covered it with a black towel. One wine box wasn’t big enough to hold everything. I could probably use three wine boxes, but I have the rest in mason jar case boxes, which works out just as well. There’s a box of little ones on top. These will need to be eaten first, as they’ll keep for the shortest amount of time.

It may be that this isn’t the ideal place to store them. In the winter it may hover around 60 degrees under the counter sometimes, but it’ll probably be warmer than that. My hope is that as the book says, keeping them dry is the most important thing. I’ll check back in on how they’re doing as we head into winter. I’ll also check back in on what day we finally eat our last sweet potato. Anyone want to place a bet? I’m hoping to have them through maybe April … 6 months … any takers?

Last night, our modest quest for self-sufficiency took a drastic turn.

I mean, gardening – fine. Making bread from whole grain? Great. I’ve even got my own recipe for homemade dog treats. I almost have to. When you have a pack of dogs and you care as much about what goes into their body as you do about what goes into your own, that can get real expensive, real quick. And OK, I’ll admit it; awhile back I was telling my husband that I thought we should get some chickens for eggs. I was extolling the virtues of chickens. Our neighbor behind us, Mr. F, keeps chickens, I told him. They don’t smell if you take care of them. Mr. F showed me his chickens, and they don’t smell! I’m talking about just three or four chickens!

Repeatedly, he laughed at me, and told me there was no WAY that we were getting chickens. He drew the line at chickens.

And yet, I cannot PRY the Northern Tool and Equipment Catalogue out of his hands. What does that have to do with anything, you wonder? Well, nothing actually, but when you still have one foot in suburbia, and homesteading is something new to you, a mere couple of chickens don’t seem to be such a tremendous leap from wanting to buy a tractor.

That Mom might want chickens (and a goat for milk) has become something of a family joke. When I ordered six chickens from a local farmer, I can’t tell you how many times my husband said, “These chickens will be dead, right? These are dead chickens that you’re getting, right?” Honestly, I wanted to thump him on the head with one of those dead chickens by the time I got them home.

The farmer offered to bring me over a few in a cage in the bed of his pickup truck just to mess with him.

But I declined.

I mean, I wanted to convert my husband. Not antagonize him.

And then last night, he threw the gauntlet down.

He said, and I quote, “If you want to get chickens, that’s O.K. Go ahead and order them.”

Gulp.

The last time my husband came to me with this kind of life-altering pronouncement, eleven months later we were bringing home a baby.

Um…WHAT?

I mean, I’ve thought about it. I’ve talked about it. It seems perfect IN THE ABSTRACT. Philosophically speaking. But to actually do it?

Okay. It’s confession time. It may be – I’m not positive, but it MAY be – that that one foot of mine that’s still in suburbia is stuck fast in some recently poured concrete.

Still. Suddenly chickens are on the table (no pun intended).

So I pulled out my copy of The Backyard Homestead, a book that I love, and turned to the section on raising chickens; a section that I had given only a cursory reading up till now. And I know I have a GRIT issue around here somewhere that talks about chicken coops or raising chickens, or something about chickens … and I’m going to read every blog post about raising chickens because I know there’s a wealth of demystifying information right here at my fingertips and because quite frankly – I’m a little bit scared.

But I’m also kind of excited.

It seems that on the ladder of self-sufficiency, “Can you feed yourself?” may be the first rung. I mean, I’m sure it’s cheaper to poke seeds in the dirt and raise chickens than it is to install windmills or solar panels or to build your own home from the lumber on your property (if you even have any).

So. What the heck. I’m game.

I shared with him what little I did know about raising chickens for eggs – and the part that most concerns me about the prospect. It’s not the poop. Are you kidding me? We’ll have our own fertilizer! It’s not that I might occasionally get my hand pecked. It’s not that having chickens requires a twice a day commitment between the cleaning, the feeding and the gathering of eggs. It’s that they really only lay well for a year and two, and that after that, apparently, the best place for them is in the stew pot.

And around here, we tend to get attached to things. How else would I have ended up with four dogs? Quite frankly, having had a few litters of puppies around here over the years, it’s a wonder we don’t have twenty.

But the fact remains that we do eat meat; that the chickens we bought from the local farmer lived for about six or seven weeks before their trip to the butcher; and that they almost certainly had a better six or seven weeks of life than anything I might pick up out of most grocery store coolers.

And then my husband said something both surprising and interesting to me, something along the lines of how having to raise and care for and eventually eat our chickens was likely to reawaken our spiritual sides.

I couldn’t agree more.

I began gardening with gusto because of a perpetual concern about what I’m putting in my family’s bodies, and because of a distrust of the gargantuan pharma-medica-food monster that otherwise runs every aspect of our modern lives. What I didn’t expect from the experience was to be thinking about faith; about what it means to believe in something that you cannot see – like that little seed unfolding some fraction of an inch below the soil line – and upon which you are dependent. I didn’t expect that I would feel so closely dependent both on the earth and on my own efforts, and that this dependency would become tinged with reverence. I didn’t expect to feel a responsibility for every seedling I started, and for every transplant I purchased. And I sure didn’t expect to feel guilt and shame over all of the ones that I allowed – through neglect, or ignorance, and sometimes I suspect through no fault of my own – to die. That is, the ones that died for no good reason; the ones that were not able to fulfill their natural life cycle and end up on my table. I didn’t expect to have an increased awareness of and respect for nature; or a heightened awareness of the cycle of life, and the fact that we, too, are in that cycle, and that life doesn’t last forever, and isn’t supposed to.

So if we do this chicken thing, we’re not going to do it in ignorance. Because one day we’re going to have to look a living creature in the eye, and say, “Thank you” for an upcoming meal. And when we do have that last conversation, I’d like to think that they might also be thinking, “Thank you” to me.

That is both a radical and a sobering thought.

And one we ought to be having more often, I suspect.

So, chickens are on the table, and we have a lot of learning to do. We also have a lot of other, more pressing things to do in the meantime, like solve my compost problem that I just keep putting off, and reading the Root Cellaring book that arrived yesterday, and finding the right storage place for my eight million sweet potatoes. Oh, and finishing the addition we’re putting on the house. Hopefully by Christmas. So, if we can do all of that, and educate ourselves, and my husband builds the coop (no problem there), we may try a few hens this coming spring. So stay tuned.

Oh, and by the way. He’s also on board about the goat. But we’re going to have to work our way up to that.

My three-year-old daughter has been my steadfast partner in the garden from the get-go. I really want her to learn what food actually is, and where it comes from, and I want her to enjoy being outdoors, getting wet and getting dirty (no problems there). So I really try to incorporate her into the daily garden chores as much as possible, for as long as I can maintain her interest. That said, there are days when the heat, a sinus headache, and my own gardening anxieties get the best of me.

Case in point, I made an early morning of it recently, trying to get our fall transplants in the ground while it was still cool, and while I still had the energy to do it. I have had a few of the seeds come up that I planted a few weeks ago – turnips and daikon, and it looks like some chard or lettuce – but not nearly as many as I had hoped.

After the weedy, sprawling mess that my spring/summer garden has become, the blank slate of a fall space comes as something of a relief.

New beginning! Fresh start! A second chance!

And yet, seed planting is always a little anxiety-provoking to me. I have a hard time with that period of time between dropping a seed in the dirt and seeing something green poke up its head. I can’t stand not being able to see the progress. What’s happening down there? Is it working? Why do some seeds seem to sprout within 24 hours of planting, and others of the same veggie and variety take weeks? When that first tiny speck of green finally pokes its head up out of the soil it’s always a great relief to me. I think that’s why when I found THIS, just moments after pointing out the new sprouts to my daughter on that morning, I was less than thrilled.

I didn’t fuss – I explained.

Sure Mom, call it what you want.

But, let bygones be bygones. Moving on. What came next was a back and forth about gardening gloves. I kept putting them on her and she kept taking them off. (I secretly don’t blame her. I hate wearing them too.) I put them back on her again and explained about the manure compost that I had put down the night before, and how she can’t play in it.

It’s cow poop!

Uh huh.

The gloves came off. The gloves went back on. The gloves came off. Literally and figuratively.

Okay. That’s it. You’re out of here.

She walked off across the yard with slumped shoulders. I went after her to make sure that she was okay. Whereupon she told me that I had embarrassed her about the smushed turnip seedling.

Sigh.

Look kid. Here’s the thing. This is all pretty new to me too, and Mom gets pretty worked up trying to do everything perfectly. And yet, perfection continues to elude me. Go figure.

So we try again.

I dig a hole, and she slips in a tiny lettuce plant. We pat the dirt. Job well done.

We do it again. Then she wants to make the hole. Then I make the hole, and slip the plant in, and she pats.

Don’t pat the green part! Don’t touch the plant! Watch your knees! Do you see where your knees are?

Yes, Mom.

And then she loses interest, and starts digging in an empty bed where there are no seeds planted, and no manure compost. And I feel guilty.

Go for it, kid.

And the turnip seed, you ask? Did I get what I paid for?

Heck yeah.

Not since I was child have I been sad to see summer end. By nature, I’m not a summer person. I dislike hot, humid weather. But this summer was unusual. June was quite warm, serving as a prelude for the coming heat. However, the uncomfortable, suffocating temperatures didn’t come. July and August were unusually cool and wet. That’s not to say it didn’t get hot on occasion, but those days were few and far between. We usually have several days of triple-digit temperatures at least once during the summer, but we never even made it to the century mark this year.

A few times during July and August, I turned the air conditioner off and opened up the house. If you’ve ever been in Kansas in the middle of the summer, you know how stifling it can be. It’s like sitting under a wet blanket out in the sun. Air conditioning is a must. So to be able to turn the A/C off and open up the house during what’s normally the hottest months of the year is highly unusual – and to do it more than once is unheard of!

Fall is my favorite season and I eagerly await its arrival after a long, hot summer, but to enjoy a summer such as the one we just had was so refreshing. It was like being in the Rocky Mountains! I talked to my brother, who lives in Colorado, several times this summer and he complained about how hot it was out there. Thanks to a dip in the jet-stream, we were enjoying their normal summer temperatures.

One of the benefits of having a cooler than normal summer is being able to get out and do yard work. Normally, I don’t get out in the yard at all during the summer months. This summer I was able to get out in the yard three times. It feels good to have a head start on the yard work I want to get done this fall. By the way, our grass usually dies at some point during the summer because of the heat and lack of moisture. We had green grass all summer long.

Another reason I hated to see summer come to an end is the availability of fresh garden produce. Several of my co-workers shared bounty from their gardens including tomatoes, zucchini, okra and sweet corn. I couldn’t help but grab several ears of sweet corn – and I picked up a couple of tomatoes for my mom.   

Now that September is here, I can look forward to leaves turning color and crisp autumn temperatures. As I look back on the summer of 2009, I’ll be able to remember it as a pleasant season I actually enjoyed instead of being eternally grateful that it was finally over. The cool, wet conditions we were blessed with this summer should allow for some spectacular fall colors. I hope you had a pleasant summer and you’re looking forward to a fabulous fall.

photo: iStock.com/lakovKalinin

This year after two floods – second one happened in July with 4 inches of rain – I can’t believe my garden is producing this well. So far I’ve managed to get 3 dozen ears of corn, some peppers, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, and potatoes. Sadly, it’s those precious heirloom beans that didn’t quite make it through the second flood. I managed to pick one mess, so we had a medley of sorts for dinner with white-half runner, rattlesnake, and goose beans. It was soo good. I think I will just leave the rest on the vine and save them for seed for next year.

So, it was a nice surprise one day when some good friends called and said to come out to their country garden and pick beans. Well we couldn’t pass that up and we jumped in our truck and drove 40 minutes out to their garden that day. They received the same amount of rain as we did but their garden sits on a hill – so they still have a bountiful garden.

We picked a bushel that day and I canned 14 quarts – there is nothing like good friends.

This year I’ve become used to all the weeds, bugs, floods, and frosts. It’s when something quite out of the ordinary happened (like floods are ordinary) that I just threw up my hands, laughed, and thought, What next? Quite unenexpectedly one day while working in the garden, I heard big paws thumping on the ground, and then I heard someone holler, “TANNER!” I should have realized he was coming after me, his favorite neighbor, but it was too late. The neighbor’s big, brown, 120-pound Lab, Tanner, dashed through the vegetable garden stomping on plants as he ran to greet me, with his big tongue hanging out. He loves me what can I say. Except now the onions are not standing up so pretty and straight, and the poor corn plant on the end... Oh well, I straightened them up the best I could – they’ll grow.

Last night I took Sue out for her birthday. The present was a trip to the IMAX movie theatre at Henry Ford museum, to see the latest Harry Potter movie. She started reading the books years ago, but didn’t want to make some kid wait to get theirs, so was always careful not to buy until each book had been out for a month or so. Well, I tried to avoid all the hoopla over these things for a couple of years, but eventually I got started with it and read all the books myself. And we’ve seen all but one of the movies. Here’s the thing that struck me last night as we were waiting in line: the crowd was a typical Saturday night movie mix- some families, some teens, but also a lot of adult couples of every age and stripe.

I think what makes this series so fascinating is that you get caught up in this world where magic and wizardry become commonplace, where moving photographs, 20 foot tall arachnids, love potions and dazzling spells become just part of ordinary but wondrous everyday life. We all need magic.

So I’d like to try out an idea with you. Imagine this amazing witches’ brew that’s full of complicated ingredients, and all you have to do is add one little drop of some special essence to make virtually anything you wanted. If you wanted a ruby red gemstone, you would add a little drop of brown liquid, stir the mixture for a couple of days and the stone would float to the surface. You could grow an umbrella to keep you cool in the long supernatural summer simply by adding a small oblong stone to the mix. You could even make things to eat, or to smell, or items that in turn could be used to make even more magical potions. Does that seem plausible to you?

Well, this is not a vision of some fantasy world. It is our own world, seen through magical eyes. The potion is our garden soil; the drop of essence is a seed. It has been so long since I have had a garden that this year, when I saw the first tomato beginning to grow, it startled me into amazement. How is it possible that all you have to do is add this particular little seed, and the world magically provides sun and rain to make the mixture of seed and soil transform itself into tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, corn, dill, basil, all of these distinct and wonderful things that you can eat? What magic causes a gem-colored flower to grow, or a tree that provides umbrella-like shade?

You can break it down to a purely scientific description of how this happen, which is what Harry and friends study in their book of potions, but these descriptions cannot take the magic out of it. We don’t need a movie to be immersed in a world full of wizardry. All we have to do is look at our own world, our own lives, through eyes that can see the magic.

I finished the hillside garden near the end of May. In my post, "Phase I of the Garden: The Bare Bones," I laid out the structure of the garden with shrubs – many of which can be considered groundcovers.

Groundcovers by definition can be as small as less than an inch in height, to about four feet tall. They can be herbaceous or woody, clumping or spreading. Once they are established, they require little maintenance in comparison to turf, prevent erosion, enrich the soil, and cool the air. They can be mixed, with attention given to their growth habits. Pairing plants with incompatible growth rates will result in the more aggressive spreader taking over slower growing plants.

With the shrubs planted, the garden is ready for the other groundcovers: the perennials. Perennials can be purchased in different sizes – everything from tiny plugs up to 3 gallon pots. They can be planted at any time, with the exception of plugs, which shouldn’t be planted in late fall. The roots of these small plants won’t have time to establish themselves in the soil, and the freeze and thaw cycles of winter can actually heave them from the ground. Because the garden is a large vista, I chose quarts, and 1 to 3 gallon-sized plants – anything smaller would have got lost in the expanse, and left the garden looking naked.

A common mistake when landscaping is choosing plants too small for the landscape in order to save money. Smaller plants will fill in, of course ... eventually. But until they do – especially in foundation plantings around a house – the garden will look out of proportion. When the scale is large, it’s best to budget for one or two larger plants and a few of the smaller sizes, rather than a bunch of little plants.

I mentioned in “Phase I,” that the garden is comprised of poor soils and will receive infrequent watering once the plants are established. As I did with the shrubs, I had to choose perennials that will survive these conditions. There are many plants that will tolerate dry shade and are low maintenance.

I used a mix of native and non-native perennials. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when gardening with native plants. Remember that just because a plant grows in the wild in your area, doesn’t mean it’ll grow in your garden. Soil and moisture conditions must be taken into account. Always purchase your plants from reputable sources. Digging a plant from its native habitat can disturb the ecosystem, and in many cases, these plants are protected; taking them from the area can result in fines. The natives I included are wild ginger, false Solomon’s seal, Christmas fern, and mayapple. The mayapple is an experiment; I know it normally likes a more humus-rich soil, but I wanted it for nostalgic reasons; it reminds me of walks in the woods with my Dad who showed us how to lift the umbrella-like leaves to find the flowers, and “apples” hiding beneath. For this, I broke my rule of not using soil amendments, and added compost and worm castings to enrich the soil.

Shade and drought tolerant non-natives I chose are sweet woodruff, some of the more durable hosta varieties, Chinese astilbe, crested iris, barren strawberry, lily of the valley, lady’s mantle, and corydalis lutea. Corydalis lutea is a good choice for low maintenance gardens, and can be used in a variety of conditions. Its delicate leaves and tiny flowers are deceiving; it’s extremely tough, flowering from spring to frost in both dry shade and moist, sunny areas. It reseeds freely, but is easily kept under control.

Another low maintenance choice is the ever-versatile daylily. Is there a more forgiving perennial? They require little attention, growing vigorously in most soil types, in full sun to part shade, with excellent tolerance to hot, dry weather, and come in nearly every color but blue. I’ve put a lot of varieties in this garden, some divided from other areas of the yard, and some purchased. ‘Ice Carnival,’ a heavy flowering fragrant white, is a variety I purchased for a number of reasons. First, the four pots were full enough to divide, leaving me with eight good sized plants. White is also a good choice for shade; white and yellow stand out and brighten dark areas, when the deeper reds and purples blend in and get lost.

The last reason is continuity. Whether a garden is large or small, continuity is an important element. White splashes throughout a garden pulls a large landscape such as this together, and gives the eye somewhere to rest in a smaller, busy garden.

To pull things together further, I planted the same variety of Chinese astilbe, and divided hosta that I have in the shady birch garden kitty-corner from this garden. Most perennials benefit from being divided in spring or fall every few years; daylilies and hosta division can be done at anytime during the year.

The sunny area of the garden received drought tolerant plants such as sedums, asters, coneflowers, black-eyed susans, ‘Biokovia’ perennial geranium, lamb’s ears, goldenrod, yarrow and, of course, more daylilies.

The final planting consisted of planting three good-sized American Spice Bush. The change in grade of the slope resulted in a small swale in an already low spot of the ravine. Rain water collected here, turned stagnant, and the soil became anaerobic – it stank to high-heaven. Even a trench I dug from this area to the creek didn’t alleviate the problem. The swamp-loving spice bush did the trick.

Though the planting was done, the garden was not yet complete. It wouldn’t be one of my gardens without some Good Junque in it. The heavy spring rains resulted in a swift moving current in the ravine’s creek. The rush of water unearthed an old discarded clay drainage pipe that had been buried by silt for who-knows-how-long. I dragged it out of the muck, and topped it with a similar colored birdbath top.

I’ve been eyeing a much larger discarded drainage pipe on the banks of the nursery’s pond for years, wondering how I could use it. The answer came when Keith built a new fire pit; one of his spring projects. (When he reads this, he’ll be pleased I’m mentioning it’s the “Mother of all firepits”; he’s as proud of it as I am of the garden.) The rusted lid of the old metal firepit with drainage holes drilled into it, tops the larger pipe, and became a planter.

Both the birdbath and planter sit at the two path entrances to the garden. Old bricks gathered from construction sites line the path. Stacked in a pile on the side of the garage for years, I knew I’d someday find a use for them.

The steps I started with a foundation of concrete cinderblocks in “Springtime Days with the Family” is done, completed with nearly all salvaged materials. Five pieces of flagstone and the gray concrete patio pavers that cap the concrete blocks are the only purchased products. Broken pavers, brick, and rocks I collected from the beach make up the rest of the stairs. In between some of the crevices, I planted creeping sedum, which I’m hoping will drape over the edges once it grows. That, and other perennials planted near the base of the blocks should soften the hard look of the concrete when they fill in.

I like the finished look. The stairs were built without plans except the vision I had in my head, and without measurements except eyeballing. Though nothing is plumb or square, it doesn’t matter to me – I was going for rustic, and that’s what I got. I tackled the garden the same way; I knew what plants would grow in the conditions I had, but there were no plans other than placing them where I thought they’d look good. I wanted a natural-looking landscape, and that’s what I got. It’s a process that would make professional contractors and landscape designers cringe, but it works for me. For folks who are methodical and prefer organization, having a plan on paper is a good idea whether it’s done by a professional landscaper or as a do-it-yourself project. A landscape plan gives a visual impression of what the garden will look like before installation begins.

Choose the method of planning works best for you; it’s your garden and should reflect your personality. The result should be something that looks aesthetically pleasing to your eye, is within your budget, and fits the amount of work you’re willing to put into it. After the soil was brought in, I did every bit of work myself; it was my project, and I’m pleased with the results. I started out with an ugly, broken down, concrete retaining wall ...  

…and ended up with this.

There’s still a lot of work to be done – there’s all that bare ground just begging to be filled with plants. It’ll have to wait though; I’ve already spent as much time and money as I can afford this season. Perennials currently used in some of my planters and divisions from other gardens will be added in fall, but I’m finished for now. Except ... look at the gorgeous wine color of this yarrow we just got in at the nursery the other day. Paired with sunny yellow ‘Happy Returns’ daylilies, how could I resist?

One of the things that I've begun doing this year is to expand on my outreach efforts to new gardeners in my community. It's not that I'm an expert on all things garden related; by no means do I fit that bill. I have however learned a lot of things through trial and error, and this spring my wife and I attended a two and a half month training program called the Master Gardener program. I learned a lot of new information there as well, and it's really helped with my efforts.

In talking to neighbors and friends, a few of which have been affected by the global economic downturn, one of their concerns is that starting a garden can be a costly adventure. That is particularly true here in northern Utah where we call home. We are very near to the shore of the Great Salt Lake, and because of that our soil is salty and alkaline. Add to that the fact that it is a sedimentary soil that over thousands of years has become hard pack clay, and it's not what most would call the optimum conditions for starting a new garden. Because of these factors and because Mel Bartholomew of square foot gardening fame began his whole movement in Utah just a half hour from where we live, raised bed gardening is very big here. It's not cheap to get started though, so I felt concerned with telling people that were already tight on money that they should spend a good size chunk of it on starting a raised bed. At the same time, I know that most people starting gardens directly in the ground have a couple of years of amending the soil ahead of them before they really starting seeing the "fruits" of their labors.

Enter the "Lasagna Garden." I picked up a book at our local thrift store last summer about a garden called a lasagna garden. It wasn't what it sounded like, a garden to grow lasagna ingredients, but rather was a raised bed garden that could be started with little investment and promised little effort for good return. The basics of what this is all about is building a garden bed from miscellaneous organic materials and letting them essentially compost in place to build a fertile soil that can support a garden.

I hate to suggest anyone try something that I haven't done myself, so, last fall, as a part of our "liberate the lawn" efforts in the back yard, we decided to give it a shot as a sort of experimental garden plot for this year. We already had plans to build a new raised bed there, so it was easy to just modify our plans to go with this new idea. We built the raised beds along our fence line using the same type of recycled concrete blocks that we'd used for the rest of our yard landscaping and, after breaking up the ground a bit with a pitch fork, layered the bottom of the bed with cardboard pieces that we got for free from work.

Next I filled the bed with layers of organic material like I was putting together a sort of organic compost lasagna. I took pictures of the process.

To fill the bed, I pulled over a thin layer of soil from the existing raised bed that I was tying into. Onto that I added layers of material like straw, homemade compost, grass clippings, composted chicken manure, course sawdust that was used as chicken bedding, coffee grounds from the local coffee shop and some left over peat and vermiculite that I happened to have on hand at the end of the season.

Knowing that it would sink, I filled it very full and left it to sit over the winter. The fall rains soaked it, the winter snows insulated it, and by early this spring we had what was beginning to look a lot like soil. A few months later and I dug into into it to plant my first crops; a mix of different plants that I hope will give me a good idea of lasagna gardening's benefits for different plants. I've planted watermelons, casaba melon, tomatoes, bush cucumbers, peppers and eggplants in it. The soil was soft and friable, and I needed no tools at all to plant the starts.

This picture was taken a little less than a month ago. So far, I am VERY impressed with the results of this method. The rich organic content of this bed drains well while at the same time holding a good amount of water. Below the surface, the soil looks to be very rich and fertile. This is the first time I've been able to get watermelons to grow well at all, and I'm already starting to see set fruit on my pepper plants.

If you're feeling a pinch in your pocketbook, or maybe have friends that are, this is a nearly zero cost alternative to building a raised bed garden that can support a lot of garden and can be worked very easily. It seems to be a good alternative and is certainly one that I look forward to exploring further.

All the best.

Paul~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse  

So, we have the plan for our garden. We know what we want to plant and where. Our raised beds are all ready, we received our dirt delivery, mixed it all with our compost gold and now we need our plants.

I always have such a hard time deciding where to get the best plants, actually that is not so true, I know the best place is from our farmers' markets! I just have to get there and get them. That also is somewhat of a fib seeing how I have just started going to a new market on Saturdays about an hour away from our home to sell our bakery items, so I am already there, I just need to get them!

I think I was waiting until we had our garden beds all ready for those beautiful little plants, I would not know what to do with them if they had to wait to be planted for too long. I don't think I am an awful gardener but I could definitely use a class or two. I would love to feel more confidant in my abilities to actually get big, beautiful, plentiful plants to grow in my garden. I have not had the best of luck in the past two years when it came to getting a decent – okay even any – harvest from our garden.

Every year I am so excited to plant one and see just how much we can grow, I would love to have so much from our garden that I would have enough to give some to all my friends and maybe even have a little stand out front. Unfortunately that bliss has eluded me for years now and there has always been a reason. The willow tree fell smack-dab in the middle of it one year, and last year we had more of a floating garden than anything else! But, like I said, we have a plan!

These new raised beds will be the answer to our gardening dilemmas; we will achieve a garden that friends will envy. Actually we will be happy with a garden that we can be proud of ourselves, and hopefully we will be able to share with our friends, but only after I have canned 'til my hearts delight!

I think, above all else, that is my driving ambition behind wanting this darn garden so bad! I want those rows upon rows of filled glass gems lining my basement shelves, the same shelves that have sat barren for years. I want to taste the garden goodness well into the winter months, when your not supposed have those goodies available to grace your plate.

So, here we go again for another try at our garden, with high hopes for an overflowing garden full of all the veggies we could possibly imagine!

Every year, right around the peak of spring, we do a whole bunch of yard clean up work in our front yard. It’s usually in that period around Mothers day when we pick up a few trays of annuals at our local nursery and it usually takes the good part of a weekend to do. This year was no exception in that regard.

An interesting thing happened this year when I got to this part of the garden though. It’s one of my favorite places because it's all Columbines that self seed and get bigger every year. As I was cleaning up, I was wondering why the flowers didn't look quite right this year. So I looked a little closer.

Holy Crap! Infestation! The aphids were here and they were here in force!

Now it's not uncommon for me to get some aphids. Not even uncommon to find them out in force from time to time and I deal with the problems as they arise. This was by far the earliest and most intense infestation that I've ever had though.

At first glance I found that almost all the columbines on this side of the garden were under siege. In fact, I was about to break into the organic pesticide. I rarely ever do that, but this just seemed overwhelming. Before I did, I luckily looked a little closer and found something incredible. An ecosystem had developed right there.

Because of the abundant food supply, the ladybugs (Yes I know they're not bugs, they're beetles. That's the name I grew up with so that's what I call ’em OK?) had moved in and were reproducing like rabbits. They are natural predators to the aphid, so I thought it best to let them do their work. Also, I'm willing to sacrifice a few flowers in order to foster a healthy population of these beneficial insects for the rest of the season.

In that vein I decided to remove all the flower stalks from the plants and place them upside down in a bucket, then off to the trash. They were the most infested part of the plant so I wanted to give the beetles a head start on clearing them up. Aphids generally don’t have wings, although they can develop them for purposes of relocating when the food source is endangered or depleted, so I wasn’t worried about them coming out of the trash and returning. Don't worry, there were plenty left for the bugs to feed on.

WARNING ... EXPLICIT photos follow ...

Ok, they’re not really “explicit”, but I did find a regular lady bug love fest happening on some of the under story branches as I was pruning them.

I kind of felt a little peeping Tom-ish for taking these, but in the interest of education I'm willing to go the extra mile for you.

And this is "The act." If you look closely you'll see the two bodies of the beetles protruding from under their wing covers. And that kids, is how the birds and the beetles goes... MMMM K?

Here you can see the collection of yellow egg sacks lain neatly under a leaf and Mom heading off to eat more aphids no doubt.

So then, who’s this handsome little guy? Well, he is the larvae form of the Ladybird beetle. From this phase it'll go through a pupa phase and then emerge as the lady bug that we're all familiar with. So, if you see these guys crawling around the garden, they are your friend!

In the Short term, I had to make a concession to the aphids in that I gave up my flowers for this year. I have others. The bigger point is found in the long term view however. In that perspective I've helped to foster a natural ecosystem and life cycle that will benefit me and my garden later this year.

If the problem had persisted, I’d have had to go to the next step which, to me, would be to entirely cut off all green growth and let the plant try again. I’m happy to say however that this battle seems to have gone in my favor. The aphids have moved on to other plants where the battle continues but are in no where near the same numbers. And as for the lady bugs, well, I’ve seen more this year so far that I think I have in quite a few springs. So far so good I’d say!

All the best.

Paul~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse 

We love gardening but I wouldn't say that we are pros.  I'm fascinated by the term "expert gardener" since I think it is an oxymoron similar to the classics: government organization, adult male, affordable housing, cable service, and decaffeinated coffee.  The simple fact that we, as gardeners, are always learning makes even the best gardener an amateur in the face of dramatic weather changes, invasive insect pests, and blights.  When gardening: expect the unexpected.

I love oxymorons.

Each year, we must pull a Tiger Woods and rethink our strategy.  We spend the off-season studying up, aching over plant placement, sunlight, drainage, soil composition, and potential hazards.  We draw from the lessons learned in years past as well.  Let me waltz you through our basic garden start-up pictorally (and with steady commentary from yours truly, after all it is my GRIT.com soapbox):

We plan out where and when we are planting each vegetable (I painted it with watercolors because I have entirely too much time on my hands) and then set up a table in the driveway to fill the minigreenhouses with seed starting soil and seeds.

We start our seeds in minigreenhouses.  These often grace the shelves of large hardware and gardening stores.  We love them.  I use them year after year in my kitchen window.

Shouldn't every window look like this?  Why doesn't Southern Living or Better Homes and Gardens show this stuff?

When we can no longer keep the lids on the minigreeenhouses without bending the seedlings, we transfer them out to the garden and cover them with wide mouth canning jars.  These work as makeshift gardening cloches (which can be read about in the GRIT article, "Get Your Garden Growing Early").  It only makes sense to use canning jars because the produce will ultimately end up in those jars anyway.  Why not?

As the garden grows, I'll be showing you some of our tricks to getting more plants in less space.  In the meantime, I'm offering one lucky commenter a copy of Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.  How about that?

Want more Lacy? Check out  Razor Family Farms !

This structure might look a little unsightly to the casual observer, particularly in its current unfinished state. To me, it’s gorgeous because it represents ... TOMATOES!!! Lots and lots of tomatoes. 

My neighbor, Ken Krause, has studied the market, tested the waters and jumped in to the heirloom tomato business this spring. The hoop house (also known as a high-tunnel greenhouse, I believe) will give him a jump-start on the tomatoes’ life-cycle, free of disruption by Kansas’ wacky spring and early summer weather. Aforementioned weather can include, but is not limited to, snow, sleet, wind, frost, hot sun, and rain that dumps out of the sky all at once instead of pattering gently on the landscape.

It was the latter that has kept the hoop house in this state of construction for more than a week. Last Thursday the skies opened and, off and on for several hours, “rain bands” whooshed through. They seemed more like flood bands because they absolutely drenched the landscape, then drenched it again and again.

I should have taken some photos the next day but I would have had to wear hip waders.  The row boat, which is usually moored on a little dock on the north side of the big pond, ended up in the second row of trees in the orchard – on the south side of the pond. 

What this meant for the hoop house project was essentially a standstill because the ground was so soaked that even a ladder would sink into the muck – and don’t even think about what the cherry-picker would do in all that mud and mire. 

The weather’s given us a little break this week, however, and the guys are supposed to be back today to finish putting the plastic over the high tunnel’s ribs. Good thing – a couple hundred little baby tomato plants arrived yesterday and they won’t live forever on top of Nancy’s big freezer.

Nothing clears the mind (and messes up the hair) like a ride in the back of a friend’s convertible. It was such a gorgeous spring day yesterday I couldn’t resist the invitation to “cruise” down the boulevard with three of my co-workers. We all needed to get away from our desks and clear our minds. It was the perfect antidote.

On the way back to work, my friend who was driving cranked up the radio and we hollered and laughed, enjoying the last few moments of our lunch hour.

Spring has a tendency to bring out the kid in all of us. There’s something about the rising temperatures after our confinement from the cold winter months that draws us outside and causes us to be a little giddy.

I’m not totally opposed to winter. I do like snow, the holidays, snuggling under a blanket and the frosty chill in the air. But when I feel the mercury starting to rise, see flowers poking through the ground and the trees starting to bud, I rejoice in the promise of warmer weather.

The other day, a pair of house finches checked out the light fixture on my front porch. It seems to be a popular place for them to make their nest. They’re also attracted to the wreath just outside my front door. The robins, however, seem to prefer the flower pots.  As long as the neighborhood cats stay away, my porch becomes a nursery for baby birds every spring.

For weeks now, I’ve heard birds chattering joyfully, heralding the advent of spring. I get a little annoyed on Saturday mornings though when I’m trying to sleep late and the sparrows and starlings seem to be having an argument just outside my bedroom window.

I always feel sorry for the robins when they make their return on a warm day and then a cold snap comes along. When that happens, I’m sure they wonder if they took a wrong turn or didn’t look at the calendar correctly.

As soon as the spring shows its happy face, the gardener in me comes out. I love flowers and when I took over the yard work after my dad died, I discovered how therapeutic gardening can be. 

I just finished proofreading an article (that will be in an upcoming issue of our sister magazine, GRIT ) about kitchen gardens. Now I want to sprinkle herbs and vegetable seeds in with my flowers, so I can have a functional as well as an aesthetic garden. That’s my hope anyway.

Spring is a season of hope. It reminds us that the winter in our hearts won’t last forever. It’s a promise of a new beginning and renewed possibilities. It is a season in which we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus, our Eternal Hope.

I hope I never stop appreciating a beautiful spring day and the uplifting feeling I get from observing the signs of the season.

How about you? Does spring bring out the child in you? What do you like to do when spring appears? Let me know.

The month of March brings exciting happenings in the world of gardening. We “spring ahead” by turning our clocks forward an hour in March to usher in the arrival of Spring and with this much anticipated arrival, we begin to start planning and planting our seeds! Starting seeds is a ritual that brings pure excitement to the gardener’s soul! The basic ingredients necessary are soil, seed, water and light.

My herb seeds were started a few weeks ago and the lettuce seed indoors just recently. This week the peeper seeds found a home in the soil and will be under my watchful eye until I see the first sprout and then until they are transplanted outside.

Peppers are relatively easy to grow and they claim their space in the garden and stay there … they don’t roam all over or invade the space of others. I found that they do take a little longer to germinate but once established they are a hardy plant and a good candidate for the first time garden grower. There are many varieties to choose from and sweetness versus hotness is one of the main components when deciding which pepper to grow.

My pepper list this year includes; Red Mini, Jimmy Nardello, Marconi, Tam Jalapeno, Alma Paprika, Long Cayenne, Purple Beauty and Padron. All I have grown in previous years; except the Purple Beauty, first year for this one. I planted or potted up the seeds two different ways; either in individual pots or in a whole flat. The reason I did this is there are several varieties I hope to grow in mass quantities; such as the Jalapeno for canning:

the Cayenne for drying and the Alma Paprika for roasting and making soup or freezing for later use. These I planted in a full tray and scattered many seeds in the soil, covered with plastic and set under the grow lights. The other pepper types are planted in individual pots (4-5 seeds in each one).

The Red Mini Peppers are exactly that – Mini! Each plant produces a good quantity of small peppers and they remind me of the typical green pepper just a smaller version.

When left to turn red they are very sweet and useful for salads since you don’t have to cut up a whole larger pepper. These I also cut in half, disposed of the seeds and froze as is. The Marconi Pepper is another sweet pepper and a real treat; left on the plant to turn red they are delicious.

The Marconi grows to about 5-6 inches in length and I snacked on them fresh and also used them for stuffed pepper dinners.

The Cayenne and Jalapeno along with the Padron are hot peppers and caution needs to be taken when handling the seeds and also the harvest during the season.

I dried the Cayenne by stringing them up using needle and thread through the stem and once dried I loaded them in the blender and processed into flakes and powder. I did try to dry the Jalapeno in the same manner, but they molded first, so canning was the solution for them. They can also be frozen whole or cut in half; same goes for the Padron which was a bit of a shocker first time around. I saw them advertised on tv as an appetizer and the seed catalog promotes them by saying “one out of 10” is hot, the others are mild. Not so in my garden! Every single one of these Padrons packed a super hot punch! The trick we found was when we harvested them and the size they were. If rather small, about an inch in size, they are neutral. Once they grow past that point, it’s all heat! I witnessed grown men crying over these peppers!

The heat scale on these peppers is based on my tolerance for hotness which is pretty low, so others may think a pepper is mild or hardly hot when they make me scream!

I really fell in love with the Alma Paprika Peppers – they can be harvested at 3 different stages.

In the beginning when they are yellow they are quite hot and they mellow out as they turn orange and then finally red. The flavor is a spicy hotness that adds just the right kick to recipes. I roasted these peppers and used them in tomato pepper soup; made in batches and froze for later enjoyment. The tomato hornworm took a liking to these peppers down south and ate quite a few in my absence.

Any of these peppers can be roasted and the procedure is as follows: rub oil on the peppers and put them under the broiler until blackened (the skins will bubble up a bit) I cut them in half so I didn’t have to keep turning them once in the oven. Remove them from the oven and place in a paper bag and seal for 15 minutes – this allows the peel to come right off and the core and seeds fall out. Chop the peppers and add to recipe.

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

1 teaspoon oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 red bell peppers (or equivalent other type)
4 large tomatoes – peeled, seeded and chopped
1 ½ teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons paprika
6 cups chicken broth
Dash of hot pepper sauce and/or ground cayenne pepper (not necessary if using hot peppers)

Roast peppers. Cook onion and garlic in oil about 5 minutes. Stir in tomato and peppers, thyme & paprika.

Cook until tomato juices have evaporated, about 25 minutes.

Stir in chicken stock, bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 25 minutes. At this point you can strain the soup, reserving broth. Blend the solids in a blender until smooth and add back to the broth. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 ½ tablespoons of flour, cooking for 1 minute. Stirring slowing add the broth mixture and simmer for 10 minutes.

Tonight I finally got around to bringing my newly designed and built seed starter down into the basement where I'll have it set up until I'm done getting starts going; probably until mid May at least. I'm going to just put up a bunch of pictures (since that's really the best way to explain it don't you think?) and explain myself as I go.

The main requirement for this project, outside of the obvious functionality of the starter, was that I could disassemble and store it with relative ease in a minimum amount of space. Above is the framework of the starter minus the lights. The trays are roughly two feet wide by 4 feet long, and the long boards that make up the legs are just shy of six feet long. The leg boards are "L" shaped and nest inside each other.

Here they are all laid out just before my wife and I assembled it. The process is simple, attach the bottom shelf loosely to all four legs and then move your way up. It's a two person job, but in a pinch a single person could do it.

This is the set up that the whole shi-bang is held together with. It's a 2 1/2 inch long carriage bolt with a washer, lock washer and wing nut for easy hand assembly.

This is a view from the top of one of the legs so that you can see how the legs and the shelves attach. Below is a picture of the shelf from the inside.

I lined the bottoms of the two shelves that will hold plants with plastic sheeting because I didn't want to accidentally spill water over the sides and have it drip out the bottom onto either the flooring or the fluorescent lamps.

And speaking of which, these are the brand/s of lamps that I am using. One gives a high number of lumens but is heavy on the red spectrum of light (kitchen and bath) while the other will fill the gaps in the blue spectrum.

Mind you, they're not professional bulbs or anything, but hey...they do put out a good bit of light! I have two lamps per shelf for a total of four. Each shelf can hold 192 individual plants or 48 plastic four packs. Total I'll be able to have up to 384 plants started at one time. Woo hoo!!

And last but by no means least...here it is; my starter. I only have one shelf loaded so far, but I'll be able to get my cabbages and broccoli started to supplement what I direct sow into the ground soon. The bottom shelf will have the later season stuff like tomatoes, peppers eggplants and such. Then I'll spread them out amongst the two shelves as they get bigger.

Spring is here!! I don't care what the weather man tells me. When I start seeds and I can turn my soil like I did today...spring’s here!! Time to get growing!

Hope all your seeds are sprouting well.

P~

The place of the American garden, at least inasmuch as it has become a societal movement from time to time in our history, was outlined beautifully by GRIT editor Hank Will in his blog post on how gardening is good for the soul. The point as I saw it, of the article, was that there is just something about being able to get our hands into the soil and to coax from it a thing as tangible and basic to life as healthy, nutritious food for very little cost, that is good for our soul. I couldn’t agree more! As he outlined our recent history of war gardens, victory gardens and urban collective gardens I found myself thinking that this has been a phenomenon that has largely come about since the time of the industrial revolution when we, as a nation, began to separate ourselves from our agrarian roots. It was natural then, when wars or depression or economic necessity dictated it, that we would gravitate toward something that could bring us together and provide us comfort. Being able to feed ourselves and being able to bless others with food can do this like few other things.

Hank made the statement, in his previous post, that he didn’t “know what to call the new wave of gardening frenzy, but [does] know that it is exciting, and will, no doubt, play a role in healing our culture.” To this I replied “Freedom Gardens” and it has sparked a great conversation I think. He’s asked that I give a little background on how this name for a movement came about so I’ll do my best.

Let me give you a little background. In my first post here at GRIT, I talked about how I had had an awakening within myself. When I realized that, while I was depressed about not being able to drop everything and move to  the country and have myself a farm, I was squandering the land that I already had right in my backyard. That epiphany changed the whole way I looked at gardening. My mind had been limited to growing a garden as merely a hobby, while the “real” farming required having acres of land and tractors and so on. The ability to look at my own small .25 acre suburban lot as an urban farm of sorts came about quite by accident when I stumbled onto the website of the Dervaes family in Pasadena CA called Path to Freedom. There I found the story of a family that not only gardened on their tenth of an acre lot in the heart of Pasadena (hardly the country) but was actively supporting themselves through their efforts both physically, in that they largely ate from their garden, and financially in that they had a thriving niche market selling their excess to local markets and chefs. That’s right, excess food from a 10^th of an acre lot. It’s not unimaginable when you consider that they regularly average over 6000 lbs of food from that same 10^th of an acre.

As we faced issues at the beginning of 2008 of global climate change, increasing costs of oil (which by the way is the basis of all of our commercial “inputs” like fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), regular warnings about tainted foods in our stores and economic pressures that were starting to limit our food buying power the Dervaes family launched a site called “Freedom Gardens” and with it put a name to a movement that was already beginning to form not only here at home, but world wide. Whether you’re a young family trying to make ends meet or a rural farmer that want’s to not just grow commercial crops but actual food as well or a suburban parent worried about the future of the earth for your kids this is a movement for you. If you’re a city dweller who wants to eat organic foods but can’t afford the exorbitant costs at the whole foods stores or someone worried about providing consistent, healthy food to your family in the event of a crisis then this is a movement for you.

The point, I think, is this; gardens ARE good for our souls. Not merely because they’re therapeutic or because they provide healthy foods or even because they give us a hedge against lean times but rather because, if you look at the big picture, they offer us that thing that we all crave so dearly. They offer that thing that drove our founding fathers to strike out on their own. They offer Freedom.

If I sound a bit zealous, well, that’s because I am. I was able to have my eyes opened for me to a world of possibilities a few years back, and returning the favor has been a large part of the reason I write. I hope you find success in your own freedom gardens no matter the size or scope and would love to hear about your efforts. In the event you decide to check further into the Freedom Gardens online community (which is totally free btw.) please drop by and say hi to me. You can find me there as “CornerGardener” and I’d love to help you find your way around.

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse

It might be that I grew up in a seed-producing family, or that I had the privilege of biting into North Dakota grown tomatoes right from the field … still warm from the sun. It might also be that the miracle of drawing food from the earth, using little more than a tiny seed and a bit of effort, captivated me from the very beginning. Perhaps I am genetically predisposed to raise a crop because my ancestors, and theirs, in turn, did just that. In any case, I discovered at a very young age that vegetable gardening is good for the soul.

Many eloquent essays have been written on the healing powers the act of gardening possesses; urban planners in New York City learned that community gardens were not worthless areas of idyllic pastoral tranquility, but the glue that bonded people of different experience, ethnicity and social stratum into an amalgam of healthy urban culture. They learned the lesson the hard way with the DOME garden project on west 84th street. Community gardening, minimizes differences and heals hurts. Community gardening is good for the soul.

During the First World War, the National War Garden Commission was formed in the United States; its mission was to promote gardening, ostensibly as an act of patriotism. The American workforce was engaged in producing materiel; farmers were headed off to active duty by the thousands. Armies needed to be fed, but every bit as important, those left behind needed to be fed … and they needed to know they were doing their part. The War Garden program brought the most likely and unlikely of people together. They collectively took up the cause and planted gardens in unlikely and likely places. The 1918 effort produced more than $500-million in homegrown food.  No doubt War Gardening did much to keep the country marching on, but it also brought people together and helped heal their suffering souls.

During the Great Depression, gardening again became a matter of life for many folks. Unemployed and unappreciated souls found physical and psychological solace in stirring the soil and nurturing their own nourishment from the earth. Early psychologists reported that humans thrived when there was a firm connection between culture and nature … they prescribed gardening as therapy for malaise. Vegetable gardening was good for depression-era souls.

The Second World War helped bring about an end to the Great Depression; the Victory Garden served as a rallying cry for those left at home. Like the War Gardens before them, Victory Gardens produced a phenomenal amount of food. Victory Gardening was good for the soul, and the country, in spite of the fact that it lacked economies of scale.

Today’s economic climate offers an excellent excuse to get gardening once again; it’s already beginning to happen in a somewhat organized fashion. The new program … a grass-roots program at that … is called Freedom Gardening. Freedom Gardens bring the concept of Victory Gardens into the 21st century and take it one paradigm further by suggesting that we grow our own food no matter what the economic climate is. GRIT blogger Paul Gardner turned me on to this movement. I hope he will post a blog about how the concept developed and got off the ground.

In the meantime, grab all the seed catalogs you can. Get all the good information available. And at the very least plant a single-crop garden this year. Take it from me, and millions of others around the globe. Gardening is good for the soul.

My fellow GRIT bloggers are quite a creative bunch, and I’ve learned quite a lot from them during the short time I’ve been blogging here. I’ve learned how to build various styles of chicken coops, (though I have no chickens); I’ve learned how to make soap and can apples; I’ve read about the trials and successes of homesteading and starting a farm. There are mulefoot hogs, jujubes, and black bear stories; book and movie reviews, and a narrow escape from a tire flying through a window. The bloggers allow us to see into their lives through their stories, and share with us places we’ve never been, and things we’ve never seen. From the knowledge of their experience, we learn. The readers who take the time to comment on these blogs and share their own experiences, enrich the stories and make them grow. It’s a lot like gardening in a way: gardeners teach what they’ve learned – often by “trowel” and error; they share from their own gardens, and pass along traditions in order that others may benefit. With Thanksgiving just a few days away, I thought I’d pass along a story of tradition; it’s a story that begins in a garden and is about the sharing of knowledge. It’s the Legend of the Three Sisters.

In 1621, a three-day feast was held by the pilgrims to celebrate a bountiful harvest, and to give thanks to the Native Americans who shared their knowledge and taught the pilgrims how and what to plant in this new land. Along with the pilgrims and Native Americans, the Three Sisters were in attendance at this celebratory feast, and without them there would have been no party.

The Three Sisters of Life are corn, beans, and squash, and they were a staple of the Native Americans’ diet. Legends say these sisters are inseparable; one only thrives with the others near. They must be planted together; they must be eaten together. Planting corn, beans, and squash in the same mound was a tradition practiced by many Native American farming societies and dates back to ancient Mesoamerica.

Ceremonies and festivals were held in honor of the Three Sisters; planting and harvest times were especially important. Rituals and knowledge were passed down from one generation to the next, preserving the tradition for centuries – knowledge such as what the Native Americans told the settlers: "when the oak leaves grow to the size of a squirrel’s ear – then it’s time to plant."

Planting these vegetables together benefits both the plants and people. The corn stalks provide a pole for the beans to climb. The beans help stabilize the corn from wind, and beans fix nitrogen on their roots, improving the quality of the soil. Squash vines act as mulch, shading and smothering weeds, and help keep the soil cool and moist. All three were turned back into the soil to add organic matter, improving its fertility and structure. The three eaten together supply nearly all nutritional requirements a body needs.

Had the Native Americans not given their gardening knowledge, and the gift of the Three Sisters of Life, the pilgrims may not have survived. It’s quite possible there would have been no first Thanksgiving. Today, Thanksgiving is a holiday rich in traditions; it’s a time of sharing, and being thankful for the bounty we enjoy – not only the bounty spread on the table, but the bounty of family and friends.

I’d like to wish everyone in the GRIT family – my fellow bloggers and readers, and the wonderful GRIT staff – a Happy Thanksgiving.

I’d love to own a farm.

There are very few days that I get up and go off to work as a computer programmer that I don’t wish I was just throwing on my overalls and heading off to a day working the earth, feeling it between my hands, smelling it. I’d rather be tending animals, building relationships with them as I master the role of steward and gain understanding of how lives are intertwined. But for now, I head off to an office and code away my day. It’s a normal life; one not unlike most people around us. I make a good living and we have a nice home in the suburbs a little ways north of Salt Lake City Utah. All around us are more average homes with green lawns, a few flowers and maybe a dog or cat, and you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that; the suburbs have been given a bit of a bad wrap I think. Yeah, they have some shortcomings, close proximity, nosey neighbors and the dreaded Home Owners Association, but over all they’ve been exactly what we wanted them to be, safe, clean, stable neighborhoods with decent proximity to everything we need at this point in our lives. So it warrants the question, what can a person that wants to work more closely with the earth and its creatures do while their stuck in Suburbia? The answer: Quite a bit actually.

Is it a farm? No. But truth be told, if I did have a farm tomorrow, I wouldn’t know everything that I would need to do to maintain it anyway. I’m a city kid, or more to the point, a beach bum. Yes I know I said I live in Utah, and yes the Salt Lake does have what some consider beaches, but I grew up on the beaches of Southern California about as far away from farm life as one could imagine, so really I’ll always be a bit of beach bum truth be told. The point is that as much as I’ve always felt a calling to grow things and to have my hands in the earth, and I have felt it, I’ve never had an opportunity to learn how to do it. So when, a couple of years ago, my families circumstances led us down a path that brought us to a closer relationship with our food and our surroundings, I began truly yearn for that idyllic little piece of acreage with the barn and the fields where we could begin to provide more for ourselves. Unfortunately, we were not yet in a position to try and do something like that, nor could I see it on the horizon. I began to feel like I may never be able to have my dream place as I imagined it and honestly become quite depressed about it. Then I had the awakening. “You fool,” I thought, “You’re complaining about not having the land you want, that you wouldn’t even know how to work anyway, while you’re squandering the land that you do have…why not use it to its maximum potential and learn a few things along the way?” And so began a process of transforming our lives.

We had a little bit of a garden, a very little bit, and we decided to start improving and expanding it. We’d us it to use it to learn how plants, earth and insects related to each other and how we could grow things organically and efficiently. We wanted to keep chickens too, but they were currently illegal in our zoning, so along with some support from other neighbors and some lobbing of the city planning commission and council, we got the laws changed and now have a healthy flock that provides us with daily eggs as well as organic soil amendments.

This year we managed to get over 500 lbs of food from our yard growing in a little less than 400 sq feet of garden as well as some 450 or so eggs. We’ve added another couple of hundred square feet again this year and expect to expand it again in the spring by about another 2-300 sq feet as we move into our front yard a bit. We’re also learning how to preserve and keep all of this bounty and to cook healthy and simple foods. Oh we still have a frozen pizza from time to time, and you will indeed find “sugar cereal” in our pantry, but we’re learning a lot more of the old ways of doing things and how to make things from scratch and loving doing it. It’s made our family a little more secure, and brought us a little closer to each other I think. We’ve seen what’s possible and now we want to show it to others.

I’ll be focusing on a lot of the small scale side of things that really separates me from some of my fellow writers here at Grit. I’d love to be in the country one day, but for now I think that the country life style is really more of a mind set than a location. I’ve decide that I’ll focus on what’s possible for me where I’m at, learn a few things along the way, and see where I end up. Maybe I can help you see what’s possible where you’re at too. Either way, I think it’ll be a great time!

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse.

For the past month the pumpkin farms near and far are in full swing! Carnival rides, petting zoos, haunted houses, apple cider and homemade fudge … fall fun at its best! The many different varieties of pumpkins – miniature, white and striped, to name a few – are quite different from what I remember growing up. We would shop for our one pumpkin (maybe two) and the family would make an event of carving the design and roasting the seeds. In recent years, I have enjoyed painting designs on the pumpkins and have expanded my designs to include a few gourds. This year I approached the pumpkin farm differently.

This time around, I was looking for unique pumpkins to grow next year in the garden, and I found a few.

I also became quite fascinated with gourds and more so now that I actually have some drying.

The drying time differs with each individual gourd based on the size and thickness of the skin. I did end up with one swan gourd from my own garden and also purchased two others along with apple gourds, a huge bushel gourd and a handful of miniature ornamental gourds. I have several books on the subject of gourds and after the drying takes place, they have to be cleaned and made ready to work into pieces of art; in my case it will be a bowl or vase. As I patiently wait for them to dry, I am brushing up on my painting skills so I can apply some impressive techniques. The American Gourd Society has chapters in most states and membership along with a wealth of information about gourds and creating artwork and functional pieces. Another organization, Decorative Painters, is dedicated to painting skills and teaching techniques.

Luffa, also known as the sponge gourd, is not a true gourd. It is currently in the final stages of drying on the vines in the garden from earlier this year.

I had quite a successful crop last summer and made luffa soap for Christmas gifts and will do the same this year, since I am receiving requests for it already! Once the luffa skin dries, it can be peeled away to reveal the sponge within. The seeds are removed and the sponge is washed, dried and cut into pieces to work with.

As for squash in my gardens, zucchini has always been a regular member producing plenty to keep my mind searching for new and interesting recipes! Zucchini is a summer squash and another that did very well in the garden this past season was yellow scallop squash.

The summer squash has a thinner skin and can be eaten raw, whereas, winter squash has a much harder skin and should be baked or steamed in the microwave. Winter squash lasts longer than summer squash and can keep up to several months in a cool cellar to be eaten all winter long. Discovering new varieties of winter squash is presently occupying my time as I browse around for gourds and pumpkins. So far delicata squash is my favorite and I made sure to purchase enough to cook up and take to our Thanksgiving dinner so the whole family can experience a new and different dish!

Sweet mama buttercup was the chosen squash to try this weekend along with butternut.

We did pick up three more types, and those that I really enjoy I will be saving the seed and growing next year. Delicata is definitely a winner!

Pumpkins, gourds and squash need a large space of the garden to grow. Some varieties grow in a bush manner, but most develop vines, and the vines can reach many feet in length. A trellis or some type of support is recommended for those that don’t become too heavy as they grow. Regular watering and a watchful eye for pests is about all that is needed to grow a successful crop.

I’ve acquired a concrete corbel. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with it; right now it sits in one of the gardens and it just might end up staying there, filling up a hole where nothing is growing at the moment. I didn’t purchase the corbel; someone else had set it out for the trash.

Yes, I admit it, I’m a trash collector. I pick up junk that no one wants, and sets out on the side of the road for the garbage trucks. “Junque" is the word I prefer – ok, so it’s pronounced the same as “junk,” but it looks better ... more chic; less trashy maybe. And admitting I collect it is actually not much of an admission because everyone knows it. Even my boss, who used to laugh and scoff at the idea of picking up stuff by the side of the road, will come back from a job site with something in hand; a door from a barn, a piece of statuary or pottery the client didn't want anymore – all sorts of stuff. Sometimes the junque he brings me is even too junky for me and it ends up in the dumpster, and sometimes he'll tell me there's junk in the dumpster, and I should go take a look. He’s the one that brought me the corbel ... along with a couple of pots for his wife, and an only slightly rickety, but otherwise in good condition Adirondack chair for another co-worker.

My friend calls this junque "Ju-ju," and it is usually prefaced with the adjective "good" when she speaks of it. She has alerted me to it's presence by phone announcement, like some Blue-Light Special coming over the intercom at K-Mart, "Good ju-ju on the corner of Cherry and Superior - you better get there quick," which means she's already picked through it. There are certain things I always look for, and can not resist: any type of container that I can use as a planter, old wooden furniture, and solid wood paneled doors – a bonus if the fancy old iron hinges and doorknobs are still attached. My door collection is a running joke with my husband, Keith. He says the doors are cluttering up his garage, and wonders what I am going to do with them all? I don’t know; someday I’ll find a use for them ... maybe. Until then they’re not taking up that much space.

I rarely visit yard sales or flea markets; it’s just not the same thrill as finding something that’s already been discarded, and then dragging it home. As my daughter, Shelby once said, "Mom, yard sales are just Ju-Ju with a price tag." Junque is free; free is good.

Hard-good materials are often the greatest expense in garden projects. Brick, stone, and concrete are pricey. Add a few pieces of garden ornament, and the bill gets even larger. High costs can be avoided by using recycled materials: old bricks, broken concrete, even pieces of curbing. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of discarded old bricks edge my gardens. Wooden furniture, pottery, an old farming implement, (my ninety year old neighbor says it's a potato planter), eventually made it out of the garage or basement and into the yard – much to my garage-space impaired husband’s relief.

I’ve used some of these collected pieces of trash as a solution to a problem area of the yard. What’s the quickest way off a side-door stoop? When you’re a kid, it’s not down the steps; it’s jumping off the side – right into a small patch of asparagus, chives, and parsley. This little add-on to the main vegetable garden not only created a nice landing zone for the girls jumping off the stoop in order to cut across the backyard, the ninety degree angle from one garden to the next was difficult to mow.

I used a slated wooden piece, the two halves held together with a strip of rubber sandwich-board style. (I have no idea what its original purpose was – I just picked it up off the side of the road because it looked interesting.) Keith painted it white, and I secured the piece into the ground with landscape staples and used an old porch newel as the corner piece. The “picket fence” stops the girls from jumping off the stoop and into the asparagus patch. Broken concrete pavers and pieces of old curbing, with the cracks between filled with sand, dubs as faux flagstone, takes care of the hard-to-mow angle, and makes a nice place a place to set potted plants.

This spring’s junque project was my daughters’ idea. They wanted a secret garden, and drew a plan to turn our 2/3 acre ravine into a wondrous, enchanted place with stone paths leading to hidden garden rooms, multi-tiered waterfalls, and a tree-house with enough turrets to rival Ludwig’s Castle.

What they got was a 12 x 12 corner of the ravine under a maple tree. This consists of a “flagstone” sitting area made from broken concrete pavers fitted together, surrounded by divisions of hosta, lady’s mantle, black-eyed susans, and daylilies. The top of a bird bath missing its base, sets on an over-turned pot. An American elderberry is planted in a retaining wall made with a semi-circle of brick that was once part of an old well I dragged home, and a Gro-Lo fragrant sumac cascades down the slope. A permanently open wrought-iron “gate” was made from the two separated halves of a corner plant stand that I dismantled, and welcomes one through the entrance. The border is lined with boulders from a neighbor’s father’s quarry. Cannas and potted annuals fill out the area until the perennials fill in.

Plans to expand the small garden are set for next year ... or as soon as we find another piece of junque to add to it. The whole garden cost nearly nothing – even the plants were free; divided or moved from other areas of the yard. The rewards of seeing my girls work together to come up with a plan, watching my youngest, Shannon, as she helped plant with me, and spending an afternoon with Shelby at local antique markets scouting out a bench, (the garden’s only expense: $15.00), was priceless.

So next time you come across some junk set out as trash, stop and take a look. Ponder how it could be used in your garden. Can’t come up with a plan on the spot? Take it home and ponder some more. Store it in your garage until your spouse threatens to set it out for the garbage truck, and if you still can’t figure out what to do with it, send it my way. One person’s trash is another woman’s junque.

It’s that time of year when everything is coming up roses – time to get our spring rose order ready for next season.  It’s so hard to narrow the field down to the forty or so varieties we’ll carry at the nursery.  We pour over the catalogs; which new varieties are “must-haves”; do we really need hybrid teas – they tend to be fussier, and less hardy here than shrub roses, climbers, ground-covers, or the can’t-kill-it-if-you-tried rugosas. We must have at least a few teas, though; when some people think of roses, they have pictured in their minds a tea-rose – the kind of long-stemmed perfect roses that are ordered in floral shops for special occasions. Are they disease resistant, and with clean foliage? Do they re-bloom? Are they fragrant? These are all things that must be considered when placing the order. I’d love to be able look at the garden with rose-colored glasses and find no skeletonized leaves ... it’d be nice if they’d develop a rose that is resistant to Japanese beetles. Oh, and let’s not forget the long-time favorites – ‘William Baffin,’ ‘Therese Bugnet,’ ‘Double Delight,’ ‘Westerland,’ ‘The Fairy,’ and ‘Knockout,’ a bright cherry-red, she’s a real looker, putting out nonstop from June until frost.

That’s not the description of ‘Knockout’ found in the catalog; it’s accurate, but it’s one of my own. I think it’d be fun to write rose descriptions; many of them found in the catalogs appeal to my corny sense of humor.  There’s ‘Honey Perfume’ – “Bee it honey hued or appealing apricot ... it’s just bee-utiful.”  In the mood for roses … or for something else?  ‘In The Mood’ might be the rose you’re looking for then, because “nothin’ says lovin’ like a red rose … a really red rose that turns up the heat with big round petals virtually dripping with super-saturated redness. Each big buxom blossom holds that very same brilliance until they fall exhausted....”  Rose enthusiasts, and classic rock fans will appreciate ‘Hotel California,’ a rose named after the Eagles song of the same name: “We’re ‘livin’ it up’ with this great large-flowered clear-yellow Hybrid Tea … it comes from the Orard family in central France … ‘such a lovely place.’  If you’re looking for long cutting stems, elegant big buds and glossy foliage, ‘you can find it here’ ... most ‘any time of year.’ So give in and say ‘welcome to the Hotel California.’”

Many roses are named after celebrities.  There’s Julia Child, Barbra Streisand, Bob Hope, Judy Garland, and Ingrid Bergman, just to mention a few. ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ is “shocking deep pink with smoky edges. A showy star, Liz can wow ’em with her flashy hot pink colors, her shapely buds and her prolific production of long-stemmed beauties. And her long-lived flowers will draw a crowd of admirers. But keep an eye on your husband!”  Dolly Parton boasts “big buxom full-figured buds and blooms sparkling with provocative orange-red color that’s saturated with a powerful perfume of sweet rose and spicy cloves. As with its namesake, she performs all the better when the hot lights are blazing down.” I wonder what Liz and Dolly would think if they read these catalog descriptions? Eleanor Roosevelt voiced her opinion on the matter, “I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered.  But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: ‘no good in a bed, but fine against a wall.’”

There are people that purchase roses based solely on the name. A friend of mine helped me out of a bind when I returned to work after my second daughter was born by watching the girls until a slot opened for the baby at daycare. I wanted to repay her for her generosity. She would not accept money, so because she is a gardener, I gave her a nursery gift certificate. One of the things she chose was a bi-colored hybrid tea rose because of its name. Seven years later, “Double Delight” still flourishes in her garden, and with each bloom she tells me she is reminded of my daughters – who were a ‘double delight’ to watch.

I have Fairy roses in my own garden to represent my girls. I didn’t plant them for this reason, but because a co-worker calls my daughters “pixies,” I think of them when the Fairies bloom. The characteristics of Fairy roses represent my girls’ personalities perfectly – tiny, but tough-as-nails, and so very sweet … when they want to be. 

One of the sweetest rose stories I’ve heard happened just a few weeks ago. A woman came into the nursery, and when asked if she needed help, said "I'll know what I’m looking for when I see it.” She found the roses, and purchased eight bushes of a single variety. Her grandfather had just died – he was her ‘Grandma's Blessing,’ the name of the rose she chose. The eight roses were just enough for each of his grandchildren to have in their gardens as a memorial to their grandfather.

Roses or not, gardens aren’t just a mere collection of plants. They are extensions of the lives of the people who tend them. Personalities, family, friends, and memories are reflected in many of the plants we choose to grow. I enjoy stories of sentimental gardens; I’d love to hear yours.