New Moon Spring Self-Care

Spent an amazing Saturday evening *by myself*.  This week has been a really intense ending to a fairly intense semester.   As part of my self-care, I finally got out in my garden and planted all the seedlings I bought weeks ago (some of which look the worse for wear after waiting outside for me to find time for them).   I sifted through the springy, alive compost I spent all winter making, and just got back in touch with the ground that I hadn't touched for almost nine months.  I pulled weeds, cleared ground, and dug nutrient-rich compost into some of the harder winter dirt and planted about half my garden with kale, cabbage and tomatoes.   Last year, I tried, as usual, to have it all - but my cabbages, shoved into a shady corner, grew slowly and  were ravaged by bugs and bunnies.  This year, I thought about what I *really* wanted, and what I had energy for.   Instead of tucking in carrots or onions where they really wouldn't have space to grow, or crowding in larger plants in an effort to "have it all," I chose a few plants I really wanted to prosper - cabbage, kale, spinach, tomatoes - and spread them out all over the garden.  I gave them a crap-ton of compost and plenty of room to be strong and well.   I knew this meant I would have to give up some things - eggplants, for one, and maybe green peppers - but I know that I won't have time to tend high-maintenance seedlings or slow-growing, disease-prone tropical plants like them.   So I did the hardest thing for me - I said "no" to possibility and variety.   Instead, I channeled strength and power into the "few good things."  Cabbage, kale and spinach have become staples- this summer, I'm hoping to provide weekly food instead of dazzling breadth.   We'll see if I can hold back, though.   I do love the *4* eggplants or peppers I usually get.


This is, as usual, a metaphor for my life.  I am fueled by the possibilities - or my dreams of how life *could* be.    This is both beautiful and dangerous.  

August Update

Well, it's the beginning of August and I am....at home.

Let me explain: usually, every year from August 2/3 - 15th, I am more or less out of commission - Dawn and I load up approximately half of our worldly possessions, hop in the car, drive 2 1/2 days out to northern Michigan, camp in the woods with a bunch of dear friends (and about 1,500 other like-minded ladies), get sweaty and dirty, then drive back home again.   By then, half the month has passed. Dawn usually has to go right back to work, and even if I have been off of work it still takes me a couple of days to get back into the groove of home, life and summer.  (i.e., I want to sleep for approximately 27 hours).   I get some food preservation done, but in a week or two, it's time to start getting ready for work/school in September.

This year, we skipped the trip.   I missed the feeling of being rejuvenated and sparkly about the whole world, but I finally realized why my late-summer/early fall garden usually goes straight to hell: August. Usually when we come home, the tomatoes are a mess, the squash has died, the weeds are rampant, the carrots are bitter and I have no more energy to deal with any of it.

This year in late July, instead of packing and shopping and cleaning for our trip, we bought string and 8 ft. poles and strung up our tomato wildness.  Dawn pruned the raspberry canes.   I harvested onions and garlic, pulled up our (meager) carrots, fed the plants, made compost tea, weeded and laid down straw on our paths, sifted compost and have actually started fall plantings!    (usually I try to do this, but don't get around to it until early September, and thus everything is only barely getting started by the time frost comes around).

What am I planting for the fall?   A second try at carrots, a second round of beans, some radishes, and today (this very day) I am going outside to plant lettuce and arugula for the fall right on the new moon!  (It is said among gardeners that planting on the new moon harnesses lunar energy to help plants sprout and grow faster - one is also supposed to harvest on the full moon!).

So, I missed a week of blessed-out connection to the land.   But I also got to not feel frazzled and crazed around the edges of the trip.   I saw family and friends.   I am slowly preparing for the fall.  I celebrated Lammas, a holiday on the pagan calendar, for the first time, with some local lady friends.  I never really appreciated Lammas before - it represents the midway point between the solstice and the equinox, so it doesn't have the energy of shifting daylight that the quarter-year festivals have, but garden-wise, its an important transition time nonetheless, and one that I usually miss.  (I think) it represents the first harvest of wheat - so it is the time to harvest things that you started sewing months ago, back when it first got warm (remember that)?    I was just finishing teaching a class that I started in early May, so it seemed extra appropriate - I could see how much my students' writing had changed over that time, which is a cool thing to "harvest".   It's also a nice reminder that it does take months to harvest things - the things we "plant" now (exercise, self-care, planning for the fall, meditation, stories I start writing) may not have immediate payoffs.   Sometimes by the time we get a payoff, we almost can't remember who we were when we started.   hmmm.

Last, I think for this important date, early August, it's a time when we can turn all the way around.   The stuff that we planted in the spring is now harvested and eaten or mature and ready to use.   Now it's time to start a new planting and look forward for the fall.

Garden-wise, August is also the time when everything is wet, damp and sweaty.   In this time, inevitably, the tomatoes have some kind of disease, the squash has some kind of mildew, and the grasshoppers are happily bouncing off of every surface, chewing through our leaves.   A period of intense rain in late July brought on the mold and mildew (and blossom-end rot on some fruits), but with sunny days things are evening out.   Also, although there are grasshoppers, there are also bees and dragonflies, ladybugs and tiny parasitic wasps whipping through my garden.   I let some of my herbs and even weeds  flower to provide food for these little helpers, and they pay me back by keeping  my plants well enough to grow.   My compost is fine and dirt-like, thanks to the little red compost worms who happily chomp through almost anything we put in there.    We are also at a period where I've harvested enough veggies that I'm starting to make entire meals (almost) just from the garden.   That is always the coolest to me.

Dried:
garlic & some onions

From the garden:
eggplants (A whole bunch of little ones!)
tomatoes (cherry, roma and regular)
beans (only some!  next year, the bean teepee returns so I can make dilly beans!)
kale (so much kale, mountains of kale)
beets
cucumbers (also few, we planted late)
basil (pesto city!)
hot peppers
squash (only one so far).
(one last) Napa cabbage.
(one last regular) cabbage (in the fridge).

Cruel, Cruel Summer

Well, my work part-time gardening is only paying off....medium.


So far, my straight up late start on some things plus an incredibly cool, wet and rainy summer plus my very shady backyard = not a whole lotta action.

So far we've harvested one cucumber, one eggplant, a handful of (sickly) roma tomatoes, onions, garlic, a bunch of tiny bitter carrots, a few peas and plenty of lettuce, nappa cabbage, arugula and herbs.    So greens = happy (except for my cabbage that has been eaten by ....something),   roots and fruiting plants = not very happy.
Right now my garden makes me think of mid-July, not early august:   squash and cukes are just flowering, we're just getting the first ripe tomatoes, tiny peppers forming, beans flowering, etc.

But today at least is hot and sunny...we'll see if things are able to take off.


The biggest pest I have right now is something, probably a rabbit, that ate my carrot tops and half of one of my cabbages.   I'm used to dealing with tiny pest problems (like bugs and slugs).  I'm not sure what I'm going to do about the big nibblers.  They've been in our neighborhood for quite some time, but I was hoping the cats would keep them away.

I have managed to make at least one *amazing* stir-fry dinner so far:

From our garden:  
garlic
onion
eggplant
nappa cabbage

From Boston Organic:
Mango
more onion
green pepper
ginger (amazing!  so juicy!)

From Trader Joe's:
Basmati rice
"Thai Curry Simmer Sauce"
chicken.


I grilled the chicken, cooked the rice, fried the eggplant, garlic and ginger in peanut oil in a big wok.   (cooked eggplant for over 1/2 hour a la Mark Bittman...it became creamy and delicious!) Threw in onions.   Peppers.  Cabbage.   red pepper.   Fresh mango.  Cut up chicken and stirred it in.   poured simmer sauce on top.  Delicious!   (also, I am very proud to now be able to grill a chicken breast *while* stir frying on the stovetop inside.  I am magical.)

Still raining...

Well, in the spirit of "it's always fun to read these things next year," I'll give the most obvious update: It's cold and rainy, and has been for days.    Like, low 50's cold.   Like, cold enough in June to put a cloche over my eggplants (i.e. a fairly large pot.   To keep them warm at night).   Of course this is my first year trying real (i.e. non-asian) eggplants, and of course it gets wicked cold right after I plant them.  

My tomatoes look cold, my peppers are shivering, etc. etc.  The drama of a spring garden.   Maybe early June is the season for whining.   (Example: I think the only time its been warm and sunny was for the long weekend when we went outta town and all the seeds I'd planted withered up from lack of water.  Wah).   

Updates:  I've been forcing myself to eat garden lettuce, knowing that even though it might grow bigger, I've often waited and had lettuce bolt or get bitter before getting to eat it.   So I harvest one plant or two plants per salad (one plant at this stage seems to equal two small servings).  The upside of this is that, since I planted the lettuce in the cucumber plot, the faster we eat the lettuce, the faster we'll be able to plant the cucumbers, if it ever gets warm again.    My arugula looks great, and I use it to supplement my (but not Dawn's) salads.   We also are eating radishes, green onions and herbs.   I planted my hot peppers and I'm avidly reading salsa recipes, excited to eventually use them - the older I've gotten, the more I like just a small amount of spice in my food.  And I did my annual carrot re-plant - you know, the one where my first, carefully curated, two-seeds-every-two-inches, hours-on-my-knees, carefully-dusted-with-fresh sawdust-and-watered-every-day planting yields about fifteen carrot sprouts after weeks of careful spa treatment.  And weeds, it yields lots and lots of weeds.  especially since my compost is "cold" instead of "hot" - which means that any composted seeds aren't killed over the winter.   So for the second planting I'm ripping up all the "volunteer" tomatoes, squash, crabgrass, purslaine and other randomness around my fifteen tiny carrot seedlings, painstakingly trying to preserve them agains the much heartier weeds.     Then I basically dig some lines in the dirt in the empty spots, pour out an ass-ton of carrot seeds, swirl them around a little and say, "good luck!"
  The beets are doing their usual thing of barely coming up and growing slowly.   Well, if they don't shape up, they are going to be bush beans before they know what hit them!  :)

Also, the teensy little potted apple tree I got a few years ago has its very first apples growing...so, so cool!

pictures to come!

Spring planting

You know, I always tried to restrain myself from too much "crop update"-style posts where I just listed everything that was happening in the garden - but in reality,  I just went back and read the late-May posts for the last two years, and it was really cool.   I really like having photographic evidence of what I have done each year, and feeling like I have some kind of record of the seasons.   For example, yes, this week it is rainy and not the warmest, but it seems like its been a whole lot warmer than it was in past years.  I already have tomatoes and eggplants in the ground, and my lettuce is straight-up edible size.

Also, although I notice that each year I do resolve to "tone it down," as of last May I was still calling for a "no ground left uncovered policy."   If I continue reading into June, however, I see all my frustration: peas that were just starting to bloom when it was time to plant the cucumbers, lettuce that was still producing (and stealing growing time) when I needed to plant the eggplant, etc.

This year I'm not only trying to "plant within my wants" (meaning planting only the things that we will truly eat and want), I"m also refining  from last year - no bean teepee, more eggplants, more arugula, no broccoli (which I don't think I could say no to last year!).   Furthermore, I'm also continuing to plant "within my means" - which means doing the work that feels right, not what "must be done."

Garden Diary - frustration, salad days

Well, here it is June, for real now. Finally hot - classic New England non-spring: straight rainy cold into boiling heat.   So, conditions not so perfect.   But as David Mas Masumoto writes in his farming memoir "Epitaph for a Peach"  - we can't control the weather.   And we can't control the garden.   In fact, organic gardening, and growing food in general, is in a big way about letting go of control.   Of course, its way different to grow food for the table than for income - I don't have a season's worth of work on the line.   But still, after putting in work into a home garden, I wish I could guarantee that everything turns out perfect.

The good: despite the weather we have big, beautiful heads of lettuce that taste delicious with a little homemade vinaigrette - if we can eat them before they bolt.   There are herbs and green onions to sprinkle on food.

And the peas out front are finally flowering, but no pods yet.   Spinach, kale and bok choi still growing, but small.  carrots tiny.   Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes and beans all growing, but none even close to producing fruit or roots: the bigger ones are just starting to flower.

Even more frustrating, the backyard peas are small and will probably need to get pulled to make room for the cucumbers.   Only a few radishes balled up, and the beets are still teensy.   (Also, Trouble dug half of them up.  Sometimes she thinks the garden is her litter box, little jerk).  The carrots are patchy and it will take at least another month to see how they do.   Caterpillars are chowing down on the cabbages, and barely any of my beneficial-insect plants have flowered yet. Nothing in the broccoli department, and each green onion means one less big, full season onion.

Strawberries have come ripe almost all at once - delicious, but a time-limited proposition - we have to eat them before they go squishy.

In other words, despite lots of hard work, the garden produces some frustration along with produce.   But I've been thinking about this - about how working on this garden project is a lesson in humility.  A certain kind of manic energy, of perfectionism, will always be thwarted in a living project like this one.  And I have those qualities in spades, always rushing around, trying to plant something and fill in blank spaces where something failed, trying to cram another plant in, trying to prevent any kind of failure.  But another way of thinking might help us prepare better for reality - prepare for imperfection.  Yes, squash vine borers will inevitably seek a home in our zukes - yes, some tomatoes will rot on the vine because I run out of time or energy to preserve them.  Yes, some things will not grow or grow poorly, weeds will come up, and sometimes I'll forget or won't have time to weed, prune, water or feed.   These things could (and do) cause a little anxiety in a home gardener, especially for me, this season when I'm feeling so on top of my game and have put some much time into making things healthy and productive.   But a garden is good for teaching me a lesson about control - that we are not, in fact, in control.  There is the weather, there are insects, there are the plants themselves, and there is life, which sometimes switches up our priorities without warning.   We do our best, and then all we can do is wait and hope and appreciate what comes - and forgive ourselves if it doesn't.

Right now, I'm trying to exist in the here and now, in the salad days.  I could stress about how the beets aren't doing that well, or how maybe my decision to plant carrots between the spinach will make it hard for me to plant fall crops in that section.   Or I could eat lettuce.  Lots and lots of lettuce.  Truth be told, with a chopped green onion, a tiny radish, Boston Organic carrots, a head of our lettuce and bbq'd chicken on top, its something I made almost from start to finish.   And its lunch.  And just about the best damn salad I think I've ever eaten.

Recipe for vinaigrette, courtesy of Alice Water's Simple Foods:

Mix together 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar,
pepper and salt
to taste.

Whisk in 3-4 Tablespoons olive oil.

pour over your salad and eat it.

Memorial Day, Redux, 2011

 It's funny, I thought this year was much colder and wetter than other years... (we just had our first stretch of warm, sunny weather in the last few days of May)...but looking back one year in the blog, I noticed a post with the same title as this one....apparently, last year memorial day was also the first time it got warm enough to put everything in the ground (especially tender stuff, like the tomatoes and eggplants.)   And I thought I was slacking.  Nope, turns out we just live pretty far north, in the scheme of things.   Reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (my annual re-reading), she talks about putting in tomatoes and harvesting lettuce in the first week of May.  I feel only pissy envy ("Well, if we all lived in Virginia, maybe we could all have an extra two months growing season, and maybe I could grow melons and okra and peppers that needed their own cages!).  

"upstairs" back garden: shade-tolerant

As it is, weather is a huge part of our limitations as gardeners up here, and getting to know, and possibly accept, the growing cycle, is a part of it.   I know I shouldn't be shocked by looking back to last year's May pictures, but when I remember last year's garden, I remember the July version - five foot tall tomato plants and every possible growing space filled with plants, or, less happily, weeds.   Its a big surprise to see how much last year's Memorial Day pictures look like this year's.  I guess I feel like I should be starting earlier, or the weather should be warmer - I should be ready to eat things by now.   But its just not time yet. 

My second attempt at a perennial border, May '11

Here's what I try to remind myself: June is when we harvest lettuce, peas, bok choi, broccoli (if we're lucky) and maybe some tiny carrots.   Beans, cukes and zukes won't be until July, tomatoes and eggplants at the very end.   And then the season goes until mid-september. Be patient, I try to tell myself, but it feels unfair.  It's exciting to be eating fresh-grown stuff right from the backyard - nothing tastes quite like it - but if we want to try to eat garden-fresh all year long, its a lot to bank on basically eight weeks.   This year I opened up a new bed and planted it full of Roma tomatoes for canning - two hybrid romas, two heirloom "paste" tomatoes.   It feels like a luxury to devote a whole bed just for canning (and don't worry, I'm trying to squeeze out every inch of space from it before the tomates get big), but I think its something I want - its been fun to make sauce from our home "cans" this winter, and it would be easier with more Romas, even if they are more "meaty", less spicy-juicy than some of their heirloom cousins.

This year I am trying to be mindful about where my gardening energy goes - I'm trying to think about what I really want to eat, not just how I can cram in the maximum number of plants.   And so far, it feels good.  I know that we can never get enough carrots, peppers, cucumbers or tomatoes, and I love my pickled, canned beans, so I tried to make space (or give space) to a lot of those.

Onions, lettuce, and tiny peas along the fence. 

I loved my tiny golden beets from last year, and now there is a beet patch.   But gone are chard and zucchinis, big broccolis and a huge sunny spot devoted to herbs.   The broccoli takes up a lot of space and barely gets going.  The Zucchinis always get borers.   The herbs have been moved to shadier locations, freeing up space.  And nobody ever ate the chard.   The carrots were planted all at once, instead of the whole-summer labor of love that used to be devoted to getting a new crop every two weeks, like the package recommends, and always ends up confusing me about what to harvest when.   We're working here for maximum satisfaction, maximum yumminess, for the least amount of stress and worry.  I've been putting lots of time into the garden recently, but that's because I have the time, and the weather is beautiful.  Later, I hope to not feel guilty about not doing enough or not eating enough of the produce.   If I don't get a second crop of lettuce or peas, I'll try not to fret.  Sure, I'll work my butt off canning tomatoes and making bean pickles (and possibly sauerkraut, this year) - maybe I'll coerce Dawn into drying some herbs.   But I'm planning on harvesting the lettuce young (no more waiting for it to reach "full size" and have it bolt) and the carrots all at once.  I'm not trying to plant in marginal spaces anymore - I'm letting those go back to weeds and groundcover (and a violently virile oregano plant), and not wasting time planting anything where it won't thrive.   I planted only potatoes and onions in my community garden plot - the kinds of things that can make it through a few hot days without any water, much less TLC.  I'll give away what I can't plant or eat.  Or at least, that's my plan.   In May, this is my intention: to enjoy what I can, and not sweat the small stuff if I can't.  (Let you know how it goes.)

Peas...soon w/ peppers and tomates

Garden diary:  By now, the carrot seedlings have shown their heads as have the beets.  Both are a little patchy.  The spinach is hardly growing, as usual, but the lettuce is big enough for a baby harvest, radishes on their way.   This year I planted a bunch of cabbages (where the herbs used to be), and they are looking good.  Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant in the ground, bean teepee still needs to go up. (pics from May)   Tasted first strawberry today- tart but very good.  


Here's some pictures from the May garden, before the sun came out.  

I'll have more of  the June garden soon...

Monkey

Dawn's front Raised Bed...in May.   Compare with May 2010....

Peas in the back. Party in the front. (radishes in the middle).  Cucumbers coming later.

Schlubby potato buckets (by now they've just sprouted)

Spinaches planted, w space for eggplant (I call this my "no dirt left behind" policy).