Frozen Green

I took this photo this week while I was outside harvesting some salad greens in the morning. There's nothing quite like picking your evening's salad with numb fingers. But at least it was picturesque.

I found a great article on foraging for salad greens among the garden weeds, which expands upon one of my regular reader's suggestions regarding chickweed (thank you, Ericswan). In the article, Arthur Lee Jacobson, a Seattle-based horticulture author, insists that he never buys lettuce. It's no secret that wild plants contain more health-protective nutrients, but I also recently found out that during the Great Depression desperate people reverted to eating the leaves and roots of just such weeds. You may be surprised which weeds are edible, I know that I was.

Touching on this note, I also stumbled upon a great blog entry at Peak Oil Blues about the difference between being "green" and being, what is now described as "brown." Brown is essentially the extreme of being green, to the point of shunning consumerism.

With the economy the way it is, I invision more and more people becoming "brown" without necessarily doing it for environmental reasons and I could also see those who would-be "green" opting for "brown" or maybe they'd prefer to call themselves "frozen green?"

Harvest Mostly In

Last night was our first freeze of the season. I scrambled to take in everything I could that I had not already brought in. As dusk hit and daylight quickly receded, I was pulling bean pods half-blindly. I noticed myself relying more on my sense of touch and less on straining my eyes to discern bean pods from stalks and felted leaves. While I may not have picked every last pod, I did fill a 2 gallon bucket to over-brimming.

The best part of my evening was actually sitting and removing the yin yang beans from their pods. After so many days this week of absorbing current economic events, it was relaxing to sit by a warm fire and watch my harvest amount to a humble, yet substantial hill of beans.


About a week ago, before regular rains returned to our area, I brought in the Indian corn to dry. I can't really explain to you how magical it was to pull back the different hued husks and find jewel-toned kernels shining in unpredictable colors beneath. That was quite a memorable moment.

There are still apples to be brought in from the frosts and fall veggies to be transplanted into their winter beds. The garden season is nearing a close but it remains a race to the finish.

Sleepy Bees

I once had a friend who was fascinated by sleeping bumble bees. She would step out into her garden in the morning and marvel at them all, clutching their preferred blossoms, their fuzzy bodies often glistening with dew. She said she wanted to reach out and pet them and that if she did that they would "grumble" like they were groggy and grumpy and didn't quite want to be woken up yet.

I've been feeling sort of like a sleepy bumble bee lately. As though I've been working all day to the point of dozing off in the middle of my work and that I am waiting for the sun to warm me back up -- to give me the energy to keep going.

Sometimes the people in our lives can have the warming effects that the sun has upon the slumbering bumblebees. Our friends and family can see our visions and our toils and shine new light on our paths. Last month we were delightfully awoken to a visit from PeakEngineer and his lovely wife and beautiful child. More than just energy, they brought with them some synergy of perception that has strengthened our resolve. Because while they have wisely found an amazing community of like-minded individuals in which to live, my husband and I have plunged forward to go it alone. That was not a reasoned decision on our part to do it this way, just a decision to do what we felt we could when we had the opportunity. And while we have found people who share our core beliefs in a simpler lifestyle, our bigger picture views are not always the same.

Shortly after our delightful awakening, we had a visit from my grandmother. She looked at our yet unpolished projects and immediately saw the long-term dream. There was no doubt in her mind as to what we were doing or why and her enthusiasm was contagious.

And so, back into our projects we have plied ourselves. For all the disappointment of a lack-luster growing season, a few too many wild predators, and the aggravation of shortening days, we at least know that we aren't completely nuts, even if we have bought the farm.

But in the words of (yes, the ever-philosophical) Steve Miller* "you've got to go through hell, before you get to heaven."

*of the Steve Miller band, of course. ;)

Brewing Up Some . . . Veggies?

If you still have a Starbucks in your neighborhood, and you've been working on your green thumb, you might want to stop in for a bit of an unusual to-go item -- used coffee grounds.

Spent coffee grounds aren't just a great addition to your compost pile, they also make a nutritious and, oddly enough, lingeringly fragrant garden mulch. The benefits of using grounds as a mulch, beyond the typical moisure-retentive and soil cooling effects of other mulches, are the rapid release of nutrients (most notably nitrogen, but also calcium, magnesium and potassium) and slug and snail deterrence.

Mulching with grounds will noticeably perk up any of your sulky or neglected plants and help prevent late blight in tomatoes.

Starbucks policy is to give "customers*" grounds for free on a first come-first served basis. When I asked around at locally owned (non-Starbucks) coffee shops, I quickly found out that most had pre-arrangements with other gardeners.

If the Starbucks store in your area does not already pre-package their grounds for your use, the baristas will give you their trash bags full of grounds. These bags do not contain any wastes that are not compostable and typically only consist of grounds. After making several requests for used grounds, the Starbucks we visit most regularly has begun to bag them in the nifty packaging pictured above. Honestly, I don't mind the grounds in a trash bag (no unecessary bags or extra labor), but if it helps get the message out to other customers and gardeners, then I am willing to cope with the spiffy packaging.

* I have never been asked to purchase anything in order to take away the spent grounds. After all, we gardeners are doing them a service by recycling the grounds and greening their image. It's a win-win for everyone.

Know Your Friends

July has offered us many interesting guests. I'm hoping for a relatively quiet August and time to update this blog.

For now, I just wanted to share a chart that I found on identifying beneficial insects in their various stages of life. Often, what looks like a frighteningly nasty little bugger is really a teenage version of an insect ally.

When you buy over $200 worth of seeds . . .

. . . you plant over $200 worth of seeds. And when your soil is rocky you do most of your digging with a pick axe. That's what I've been up to. Racing one bed at a time. Mind you, some of my beds are raised and filled with imported soil, just not all of them. This doesn't even bring into discussion all of the bareroot trees we had to get into the ground before summer drought season. So I'm entrenched in a garden battle.

I'd like to appologize to readers for the lack of continuity on this blog.

Ericswan had an interesting comment on my previous post about the health properties of a common garden weed -- chickweed. It is worth a read.

I'd also like to point readers over to The Easy Garden, which is a new forum for all things garden-related, aimed at helping new gardeners get themselves well-rooted. This is an off-shoot of The Backyard Chicken forum, which I highly recommend to anyone who raises poultry or is interested in learning about poultry husbandry.

I hope everyone's gardens are coming along! Let me know how yours is growing!

February Challenge -- Waste Not Want Not

Modern Sculptural Art? -- salvaged spiral notebook wire, awaiting it's next useful application


"When we throw something away, what does 'away' mean? There's no such thing as 'away.' "

This little nugget of wisdom was brought to you by a 35 year old Berkely, CA resident, Ari Derfel, who decided to save the flotsam and jetsam of his life for one full year. These were my sentiments exactly when it came time to pack up and move house last year. I couldn’t just throw stuff away. My real estate agent, the sweetheart that he is, showed understanding but was unaccustomed to anyone turning away the welcoming arms of the 1-800-Got-Junk army -- who advertise themselves as the equivalent of a full-service trash dumpster.

Instead I invested the time and energy to donate to charities and to drop off re-usable materials for recycling.

How did we accumulate so much junk? A friend confided that she was surprised that my husband and I could have accumulated so much, since we aren’t really the “type” to acquire a lot of things. While this is true, we have, over the years, inherited possessions and hand-me-downs from family members, and we are also reluctant to dispose of anything that MAY prove useful one day. Lastly we are wickedly sentimental. If you bought me something atrocious that I really hated, I would probably still have that item several years later. In a box. In the basement. It’s labeled “sentimental hogwash” if you really must know.

What amazes me is that so many of these items that I considered absolute junk sold very well at the garage sale I had last fall. Never having participated in one before I concluded that: 1. garage sale junkies will probably buy just about anything, so long as it is cheap, and 2. Every item you own holds a little piece of your energy. That means getting rid of that item frees up a bit of your energy. Garage sales are great if you have the time and need to pad your wallet a little, but if not then giving your stuff to charity is just as beneficial.

Not only does each of our possessions absorb some slight slice of our time and energy, but as this article about Derfel states, “Each thing we throw away has been produced somewhere, shipped to a store, entered the home, and then is sent somewhere else - using up water, oil and land.”

If you’re a visual learner, have a looksie here. I must say that these images really make a big statement to me, one that numerical facts alone cannot convey.

OK, so you understand that the American way is just not sustainable, right? But the next time you go shopping, I’ll bet you will see something you just really fall in love with, something that you feel makes a statement about your personality or something that you actually feel you need. Whether you need it or you just want it might be a gray area. I know that holds true with me. I happened across an interesting suggestion for creating a “want book,” a place where you can record all those things you think you want or need and come back to them later with a clearer head.

But remember as you lean toward placing that object in your shopping cart that every object is in many ways an energy sink. We aren’t just draining worldly resources, there seems to be some evidence that we are also putting a damper on our own personal well-being:

“Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The[y] also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases."

“The word 'believe' is the key here. People believe that buying more and more things will make them happy, when in fact research has shown time and time again that this simply isn't the case. What we do know for sure is that buying more and more unnecessary things is damaging our planet and contributing to global warming." (source)

Here are few suggestions of ways to cut back on the amount of waste we generate. I recommend choosing one of these options to work on for a month. If you like your results, you can always challenge yourself to do more.

• Remove your name from mailing lists
• Compost, compost, compost
• Preferentially purchase items in recyclable containers
• Look at your bad habits and try to minimize them
• Shop with a list
• Before you buy an item, decide on where it will be kept
• If you don’t absolutely love an item, re-home it
• For every item you bring in, get rid of two others (donate, garage sale, Craigslist)
• Catalogue things in a want book before buying them
  

January Challenge -- Seeds of Change

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m hoping to offer, every month, a suggestion of a small change we can all make to help conserve resources and green our corner of the planet. Often we will find that these same changes in our lives will help us conserve our own financial resources as well, which is an added bonus.

This month’s challenge was an obvious choice for me, as it was my own challenge to myself – ordering seeds to start this year’s garden. My husband also wants to join in the gardening in 2008. Like any new gardener, his aspirations are high. I have done my best to talk him down to starting small, with easy crops, so that he can get a few successes under his belt before he tackles more challenging crops. I also encouraged him to choose plants that will be successful in our short and often relatively cool growing season. Perhaps the most important lesson a gardener can learn is to grow those plants that suit one’s local conditions best. Otherwise gardening may become more of a disappointment than a delight.

Based upon my discussions with my own eager new gardener, I thought it would be helpful to outline a list of vegetable crops that most beginners, will have a good chance at growing well. For a brief outline on how to get a garden established, you may want to read the following article from the University of British Columbia. Even those of you living without a yard can join in the fun, as all of the suggestions below will also grow contentedly in containers. For a primer on container vegetable garden, you may want to read the following PDF from Iowa State University extension.

Need further incentive for this challenge? Salad greens and lettuce are extremely easy to grow and require only relatively shallow containers for those who don’t have garden space. As with all vegetables, green leafy vegetables are most nutritious when eaten shortly after harvesting. Yet how many of us are accustomed to purchasing our salad greens in those dreaded plastic containers that have flown in from California and then sat on the grocery shelves? Some of those same greens are fairly tolerant of extreme weather and can be grown early in the spring as well as well into late fall or early winter without added protection in some northern climates. With protection you may find yourself with fresh greens well into winter, even in harsher climes. Since salad crops grown in California are absorbing rocket fuel – which is disruptive to the human thyroid – you might also find your self-sown salads leave you feeling healthier and with a bit more energy. Bag the rocket fuel and grow your own rocket (more commonly known as arugula), which is a wonderful addition to any salad and has all the health benefits of the broccoli clan – technically it is a cruciferous vegetable and not a lettuce crop.

What many new gardeners are surprised to learn is that not all traditional vegetable crops grow well during the summer months. In fact, it seems that most of the easiest to grow crops thrive during the cooler months of spring and fall. The advantage of this is clear – your time and labor will be spread out fairly uniformly over the entire growing season. You will find yourself capable of growing a few crops in the spring, several different ones in the summer, and then be able to either repeat some spring crops in the fall or grow something completely different that will tide you over until winter encroaches. And speaking of winter, one gentleman has a fairly simple plan for extending his harvest well into the leaner months.

You will notice some of my links suggest using more conventional growing techniques. I recommend substituting organic methods.

Herbs are also easy to grow, especially mint, oregano, garlic, and Italian parsley. Some herbs will attract beneficial insects and all of them will save you a bundle at the grocery store.

Now for the cast of characters (this list is by no means exhaustive):

BEANS
When: warm season
Where: full sun; well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter*
How: in garden, or in a container at least 16” deep
Why: high in antioxidants, as well as a good source of iron, zinc, and protein for vegetarians and vegans

BROCCOLI
When: cool season crop (spring/fall)
Where: full sun; well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter*
How: in garden, or at least a 2 gallon (10” wide) container
Why: nutritional superstar, high in vitamins A, C, D, and also a good source of calcium

CARROTS
When: cool season crop (spring/fall)
Where: full sun; deep, loose, well-drained soil with plenty of nutrients
How: in garden, or at least a 2 gallon (10” wide) container
Why: antioxidants and carotenes

LETTUCE/GREENS
When: cool season crop (spring/fall)
Where: nearly any soil, but well-drained with plenty of organic matter* is best
How: in garden, or at least a 6” deep container
Why: good source of vitamins A, C, K; folate, manganese, chromium, and fiber

POTATOES
When: warm season
Where: full sun; light, loose, well-drained soil with organic matter* added during previous growing season
How: in garden, or in containers at least 16” deep
Why: high in potassium, high in vitamin B6 which is necessary for building the nervous system and may alleviate morning sickness in pregnant women

PUMPKINS
When: warm season
Where: soil with abundant nutrients and organic matter*
How: in garden, or in containers at least 16” deep
Why: good source of vitamin C, beta carotene and potassium

RADISHES
When: cool season (spring/fall)
Where: loose soil with plenty of organic matter*
How: in garden, or in at least a 2 gallon (10” wide) container
Why: moderately high in vitamin C and K, also has anti-bacterial and anti-microbial properties and is beneficial to cold and flu symptoms


* Organic matter is best added to the garden in the form of finished compost