* Confessions, Lessons, And How To Get Back To The Garden

THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community

by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, August 2007, #26

THIS WEEK’S DISH:

Confessions, Lessons, And How To Get Back To The Garden

THE KIDS HARVEST RADISHES. During Adam’s birthday party in June, Nicole assisted Kai and Nicholas in harvesting radishes for the first time! The white-bottomed pink French Breakfast Radishes were a hit at the party. While there were plenty of mushrooms and carrots left over at the end of the night, all the radishes from our garden had been gobbled down by guests, and some were harvested and then eaten by guests too. The kids picked almost all of the radishes in the garden, which was fun and a good chore to get done since the eating stage of the radishes was almost finished. When the weather starts to warm up, their leaves grow taller, the radish becomes too hard too eat, and the seed stalk begins to form.

WE HAVE A CONFESSION to make. We are not master gardeners. We have plants that have been neglected, stunted, diseased, nutritionally deficient, eaten (not by us), planted too close, planted too late, planted in the wrong spot, never planted, not watered enough, watered too much, destroyed by the weather, or just plain died. We have very serious room for improvement in next year’s garden. And that’s how it works, thankfully. Next season, we’ll know more. And with renewed resolve, we’ll hopefully follow through more often using what we’ve learned. It’s not just about know how, or having the time, or having the space to garden. It’s about feeling good and wanting to make that connection, having the energy and the mental space. The season is far from over yet, but already we have a list of gems that we messed up on and will strive to do better on…next year. And that’s okay.

Well, really, the gardening season never ends. There’s always plants to take care of year round, like indoor house plants, and year round, you can sprout seeds to add a tasty, nutritious boost to salads, sandwiches, stir fries, and other dishes. People often associate gardening with summer time, but there’s also fall crops. Just like you plant cold hardy plants in spring, many of which are harvested into the summer, you can plant cold-hardy crops in the summertime that are harvested into the cool of fall. Mustard greens, collards, broccoli, lettuce, peas, kale, spinach, beets, radishes, and other cold hardy friends can keep the harvest going long after the tomatoes and basil have had their day in the sun.

Now if only we could get around to planting all those seeds! It’s true that saying, as the garden grows, so does the gardener. We’ve got to simplify and organize our space, physical space and mental/emotional space, in order to be better gardeners. And at the same time, c’est la vie, that’s life and whatever we manage to do in the garden, whatever state the garden is in, that’s okay. At our friend’s party earlier this summer, back in June, we brought a basketful of tomato seedlings to give away to people. I think we gave away at least 7 plants. How many of them are bearing fruit in August? I know for sure one is a goner. And another two were stunted in their original tiny paper pots. One for sure got replanted and is reported to be bearing fruit. And you know what, all of those conclusions are okay. Just the act of giving and receiving plants feels good. And there’s always next year. At least an attempt was made this year. Having a plant and then waking up one day to see it no longer alive is a lesson. Now you’ve got experience! And boy, do we have experience from our garden this year. We appreciate every bit of it too. Every rotten tomato, bug bite, and doh!

AIREEN PICKING MULBERRIES. In late June through early to mid-July, the mulberry trees in the backyard were in full fruiting glory, ripe dark red berries falling to the ground and permeating the smell of jam everywhere. The squirrels and birds went crazy for the berries, hopping from branch to branch, and we managed to harvest some basketfuls as well. Mulberries look similar to raspberries, but turn from pink to a dark red-purple when they are at their peak. You’ve probably seen the sidewalks under mulberry trees stained with smashed mulberries, and when you harvest them, your hands turn a happy magenta color from the juice. Mulberries are more delicate than raspberries, so eating them fresh is a real treat because they are typically too much trouble to ship for eating. Our goal next year is to make mulberry jam.

GOT PLANTS? ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM

My biggest resolution for next year is to be more vigilant with the picture taking to document all the trials and triumphs of the garden. I’m so thankful to have the pictures we do have - plotting out the new beds and removing the lawn, our first harvests, making the compost tea, my mother’s artistic touch. Even though we may be moving soon and will lose the garden we created this year, we’ve got big dreams, no matter what the size of the garden. We are determined to find a home for all these plants - whether that’s in a window sill, community garden, shady garden, or dream garden still waiting for its day in the sun.

The other day we were behind a car that had two bumper stickers. One declared “Got Plants?” and the other paraphrased a line from the classic song “Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell that read “We’ve got to get back into the garden”. You can watch an amazing, chilling live performance of Joni Mitchell singing “Woodstock” in 1969 at a celebration in Big Sur, California:

The song’s lyrics go:

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free

We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who I am
But you know life is for learning

We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden

COMPOSTING MISTAKES INTO LESSONS

Sometimes our daily frustrations feel like bombers dropping troubles on our precious day. Joni Mitchell dreamed about those bombers turning into butterflies. Here are some of the bombers-turned-butterflies from our garden these past few months.

SOIL IS EVERYTHING: FERTILITY & ORGANIC MATTER. We managed to have a great time making compost tea for a couple weeks and applying the wonder-stuff regularly. Then….we kind of laxed on this very important step. The worm poop, compost, and other goodies that we did feed to the plants were powerful stuff. They saved a lot of plants. But we also ended up losing other plants that needed more.

The compost we incorporated, partially from our own homemade piles and partially from the store, was not able to supply enough nutrients alone to replace what the lawn had sucked out. The compost tea managed to provide a much-needed nutritional boost, but certain plants, most notably our tomatoes, did not receive compost tea and suffered as a result. Add to this the fact that we underestimated the clay content of our soil, leaving our plants fighting for whatever nutrients they could get.

Our lesson for the future: If you’re planning on building a new garden, especially in place of your lawn, GET A SOIL TEST. We had considered doing this but, banking on our compost and beginner’s luck, never did. The majority of our plants survived, but they were not nearly as healthy (and tasty) as they should have been. There are several companies that specialize in soil tests for home gardeners, where you send in three or more soil samples from different areas of your garden and, for a nominal fee, receive a complete report of all nutrients, micro-nutrients, organic matter, and soil pH levels. One such company, Timberleaf Soil Testing in California, is a favorite with organic gardeners because not only do they tell you what’s in your soil, they make specific recommendations for which types of organic fertilizer you should add, and how much. A basic soil test from Timberleaf costs around $45, a small price to pay considering all the hard work and hardship you could save yourself in the long run.

Another important lesson: if you live in an area that has heavy clay soil, add sand, compost, or extra organic matter such as shredded, dried leaves to break up the clay. This goes double if your lawn, like ours, was constantly trampled on prior to digging the beds, which compacts the soil and turns the initial bed preparation into more of an excavation. We realized by about the third bed that we were not breaking up the soil nearly enough, and upping the compost did make a difference, but we could have added even more compost and other organic matter.

The bottom line: through trial and error, we were able to learn a lot about our soil’s fertility and structure within the first five months of the growing season. Next time, we won’t be so prone to overestimate our soil’s fertility and friability, and we’ll know some of the warning signs to look for from the beginning. And even if the soil seems rich and perfect, we’ll get a soil test- just to be sure.

ORGANIZE. Aireen came across a neat book called Pearls of Garden Wisdom by Deborah S. Tukua. There’s also Pearls of Kitchen Wisdom that we hear is another excellent resource. One of the special tips in Pearls of Garden Wisdom is how to organize all your seed packets. They recommend buying or putting together a mini-filing system organized by month: January, February, March, etc. Under each month, place the seed packets that should be planted that month. You could even subcategorize by week for more accuracy. This would have really helped us out, since we had seeds just packed away together in more general groupings, like: to be planted after frost, to be planted now, etc. Month by month, and for the heavy planting months, week by week would be a great way to not only keep track of different seeds, but also remind you what seeds have the highest priority.

PRIORITIZE. We ordered a zillion heirloom tomato varieties (only ended up planting a handful), but we barely managed to plant any spinach! Actually, we did plant several spinach seeds in flats, but of the few that germinated and survived, we only got two in the ground…and they died. As farm interns on the organic 100-person CSA farm in Wisconsin last year, we helped plant and grow over 2,000 heirloom tomato plants of over twenty-five varieties. We’re a little spoiled by all the diversity of beauty and flavor that nature has to offer. Zapotec, Purple Russian, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Copia, Smeg’s Hollow, Currant Tomatoes. When you see all these varieties, there is a strong urge to get them all. And then, you realize you never ordered or got around to planting some of the basics as far as other herbs and vegetables. Next year we’ll shoot for greater diversity, and plant a more balanced ratio of varieties.

SUNLIGHT, ROOM TO STRETCH, FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Other important lessons. Light is essential in the early stages of the seedling growing. With six to eights hours of full sunlight (or indoor grow lights), a little seedling will be healthier, grow faster, and grow bigger to be as strong as possible when it reaches transplanting time and must begin the growing journey outside. Aireen’s mother generously accepted plant sitting duties for four weeks while we traveled to the west coast and back, but in the process, the seedlings were kept indoors too much instead of being outside in the mini-greenhouse where more light would have been available. We forgot to communicate to Ting how much the temperature in the mini-greenhouse stays warm despite freezing temperatures outside, so she kept the baby plants indoors fearing even inside the mini-greenhouse they would be too cold. Certain plants suffered more by the less than ideal amount of light, like the broccoli getting very leggy and never really growing the broad lush leaves that they should have.

Besides light, another key basic is planting space. For some reason, we planted the purple cabbage much too close. They’re doing alright, but might be producing bigger heads if they had had more room to grow. Also, some of the most enthusiastic tomato plants are totally covering some of the basil, eggplant, and other plants. The tomatoes could have used better spacing, more staking, more roping, more pruning, and more distance from the other kinds of plants. We like the idea of letting tomato plants just sprawl on the ground, laissez-faire do-nothing style, but staking them up seems to keep the fruit off the ground and keep things neat. It probably depends on the variety too.

EATING WILD RASPBERRIES IN THE FOREST PRESERVE. In the middle of summer, we discovered a beautiful walking trail through a prairie field and woods, which were home to fields of the monarch butterfly’s favorite flowering plant, milkweed, pussywillows bordering a natural pond, patches of black-eyed susan flowers, iridescent blue-green dragonflies, and these succulent wild raspberries that were a special treat to find along the trail. Wild raspberries are safe and delicious to eat, and their leaves make a great tea tonic, for women especially.

THIS YEAR’S GARDENING VICTORIES

WHAT WE DID RIGHT THIS GROWING SEASON (SO FAR): Despite all of our mistakes, almost everything we planted in our garden grew. Sure, the rabbits ate the tops off of all of our carrots and parsley (the tops eventually grew back) and made a feast of our tree collards, and some animals (maybe a combo of deer, bunnies, starlings, and the opposum?) ate most of our heirloom leaf broccoli and took out a couple of our sunflowers, which was a perfect opportunity to practice our non-violent conflict resolution in the garden. The leaf broccoli that we managed to eat was nutritionally deficient, and some of our tomatoes have blossom end-rot (a symptom of calcium deficiency) while others are not as vibrant or tasty as they should be. The cherry tomatoes are the tastiest and are thriving.

But in this, our first season growing on our own, the victories have far outweighed the defeats. We have eaten French Breakfast radishes, Osaka Purple mustard greens, cilantro, our deficient but still significant broccoli leaves, and parsley (for two weeks before the rabbits got it). The twenty-something basil plants we started from seed are still going strong, providing us with bucketfuls of yummy pesto, delicious curry dishes, and delectable omelets. The eggplants are beautiful and producing tasty fruit, as are the pepper plants, including our first sunrise pepper to turn an awe-inspiring blush orange color. An initial shallow dig revealed some small, but lovely purple Caribe heirloom potatoes. We’re hoping there are bigger ones further down, but we’re happy to get any potatoes at all!

Although our tomatoes could be a whole lot healthier, most of them are just fine for cooking and canning. The sunflowers in the back garden didn’t do so well, but the ones Aireen planted in the front are nine to ten feet tall and magnificent. Soon we should have nutritious snackalicious sunflower seeds, harvested by hand from the dried flower head. We feasted on delicious cilantro for a good while, and now the cilantro has matured with seeds dried on the stems which are coriander - a fragrant and coveted fresh spice for cooking. We also have saved seeds! These include seeds from mustard greens, radishes, coriander, calendula, eggplant, and peppers. We’d also like to save seeds from the delicious cherry tomatoes, especially from the 2nd generation sun golds.

DOING WHAT THEY SAY CAN’T BE DONE

We now have a special little story about these 2nd generation sun gold cherry tomatoes. To tell the story, you have to go to the parent seed, which is from sun gold tomatoes we grew and harvested in Wisconsin last summer. Aireen’s mother saved some of the seeds from last year’s sun golds and planted them this year. It was a mystery how they would turn out, because the sun gold variety is a hybrid. In this case, a hybrid is not a vehicle that runs on part gas and part electric. All hybrid varieties, including the sun gold, have two very important characteristics. First, the seed variety comes from two different varieties to make a new hybrid variety. For instance, you can use manual breeding techniques to cross a purple flower with a white flower, and the new hybrid variety will have purple and white petals in one bloom. The second key thing to know about hybrid varieties is that if you save seed from a hybrid, the saved seed will revert back to one of the parent seeds. A hybrid plant’s seed will not stay true to the hybrid characteristics. For example, if you planted seed saved from the hybrid purple-white flower, the seed would make a plant that had either purple or white petals but not both in one bloom.

So you’re not “supposed to” save and plant seeds from hybrids, since 1) it won’t be the same as what you got this year, and 2) you don’t know what you will end up getting. Nevertheless, the sun gold’s seeds were planted, and how do they taste? Delicious! The taste is different from last year, but there are so many factors in why this might be. What matters is that they still taste so good, and Aireen’s mom did it. She saved seeds, planted the seeds the next year, plants grew from the seeds, the plants bore fruit, and the fruit tastes amazing.

LONG GREEN BEANS FROM THE GARDEN. Ting, Aireen’s mother, poses with a bountiful harvest of green beans that she grew this year, some over two feet long! We found the seeds, called Chinese Green Noodle Beans, from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (http://rareseeds.com), 100% organic seeds, from Mansfield, Missouri.

WELCOME BACK TO THE GARDEN

This year’s growing season would not have been possible without Aireen’s mother Ting, a natural gardener with years of experience, who provided us with so much inspiration, assistance, and motivation this summer. She has been the anchor of consistency in caring for the garden and acting on its needs throughout the changing season. From roping the tomatoes to the makeshift branch stakes to harvesting drooping tomatoes and planting forgotten seedlings, Ting has been on top of her garden game!

How on earth do we get ourselves back to the garden? You may be thinking, “Back to the garden? I don’t even remember ever being there in the first place!” That’s okay. All our ancestors were there for us, and those memories are encoded in our being, in our hands, in our feet, and in our sense of taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound. Their work is preserved in the seeds passed down every year. The garden is our link to the past and to the future. What we grow becomes what we eat and who we are and what we pass on.

Until next week, the Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!

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