The Organic Garden

"Basically, organic gardening means a partnership with nature.  Nature's gardeners are numerous and eager to help.  Millions of beneficial organisms (everything from bacteria to earthworms to ground beetles) thrive in a fertile soil, and they make things go right if the gardener encourages them.  The gardener does that by understanding the natural processes of the soil and aiding them with compost.  The inherent stability and resilience of natural systems can be on your side if you work with them.  Organic gardening is a great adventure, an expedition into a deeper and more satisfying understanding of vegetable production.  You are now a participant rather than a spectator.  You share creation."

- Elliot Coleman, Four Season Harvest

Paleo/30 day anti-inflammatory diet

So...I'm writing here so I don't annoy everyone on Facebook  (and don't sound like a groupie for the so-called "Paleo" diet, which feels like it's gained a sort of self-righteous "look at me, I'm awesome" glow around it).    And because it feels like a big deal to be making big changes.   Also, warning:  I talk about lady things (like menstruation) in this post, and if that freaks you out...sorry?

This is the end of my first week eating no: sugar, grain, dairy, legumes, canola/soy oils.  


Why did I do this? 

Garden Takedown

It's become part of the seasonal flow - a time-marker for me:  the end-of-main-garden season takedown.   I'll have to check when we did it last year - I think last year I tried to do it very early, because I knew I wouldn't have time to do a lot of gardening while starting a really hectic schedule.

This year, the beginning of September marked the beginning of another new teaching schedule at another new school - which meant a shift in priorities:  prepping new classes, learning new routines and administrative requirements, learning about a new student population, grading many more student papers all took precedence over the garden - or at the very least, gardening had to sneak in around the sides! 

Which means, as always, that I'm a little sad that I didn't get fall crops in.  I tried for some second rounds of stuff (carrots and lettuce) but when the self-watering system didn't water by itself, that was that.   New seedlings take a fair amount of TLC,  and I pretty much only had time to harvest, cook and eat.  

Now it's nearly Halloween, and almost everything has stopped being productive (even if we've only had *maybe* one light frost).   Tomatoes, squash, beans, peppers and cukes are fully done - so it felt excellent to pull them down, clean up any plant waste left around (after all the late blight I want to try to get rid of anything tomato-y to try to make it through next season!), pull up the hold straw and put down a layer of compost for next year. 

And, while cleaning up there turns out to still be some bounty to gather: a bunch of green tomatoes that can slowly ripen in the back hallway, 2 - 2 1/2 big handfuls of red fingerlings, a few beans, fall radishes that made it without any TLC, a few rogue carrots and onions, and a bunch of slightly -frost-burned jalapenos and habaneros...got to figure out how to preserve those!   We still have herbs, and I pretty recently got two tiny eggplants from the Asian eggplant.   It's fun to still be eating from the yard this late!   (And of course, the Kale lives on, proud and healthy - we'll see how long we can keep eating that!)

So....before, it was making me feel kind of bad, looking out and seeing all these half-dead plants and unharvested ripening tomatoes, etc.  Now, the soil is covered, vegetable "trash" gone, rich compost spread, poles and cages down, extra pots in the basement - it's nice to have a sense of closure on the season and turn our thoughts to what we have now (Kale, frozen tomatoes, canned goods, potatoes) and what's coming next year.