From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
Just so you know, I had to slow down a bit the last week. Somewhere along the line over the last quarter century or so (give or take a decade or two) I managed to overwork the right knee. A snip here and a snip there and a couple of meds to get me through the first couple days, and HEY! I’m back! Better than before!
Now comes the moment of truth. Can yours truly do what is needed in physical therapy to strengthen the weak spots?
Since I can’t afford to hire ALL of my digging done, and since the hubcap gets a little cranky when I offer too much supervision in the field, I will have to work hard to get my shovel foot back in order.
Work work work.
Grow your own. That’s the new mantra for healthy eating. No more partaking of food which has traveled an average of 1500 miles from field to plate. You call that FRESH?
Kitchen Gardens are THE RAGE this year. And hopefully next year and the year after that and on and on and on. Everybody’s doin it! And writing about it. Barbara Damrosch of the Washington Post wrote about kitchen gardens in her latest column. You can read it here, courtesy of Kitchen Gardeners International. (Thanks to the Washington Post as well). Please go to the KGI site at the aforementioned link and join. You’ll be glad you did.
There’s more, so very much more. My pal,Debra Prinzing has the big scoop on the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. The Northwest Horticulture Society is going all out with a 1200 square foot, three- part kitchen garden as the lobby centerpiece garden. Read about it here at Shed Style. Ciscoe Morris will be there. O - la- la!
I’ll be in Seattle for that show. I promise to take a notebook full of notes. To interview all the creative ones. To take tons of photos. To bring it all back to you, dear reader.
However, in the meantime, here is some homework. The temp outside is frightful - all of 16 degrees (yes, I say yes, I say yes, damn you earwigs, may you die a cold death…..more on that outburst later).
Here is some faboo armchair reading, to help you plot (heehee) your kitchen garden:
If you are a veteran of vegetable gardening or just starting out, Jennifer Bartley’s New Kitchen Garden book will be helpful to you. Planting, tending, harvesting and eating home grown food is an incredibly rewarding effort. The design of a potager, or kitchen garden fits beautifully into an all season landscape. Vegetable gardens need not be relegated to the quarter acre at the edge of the landscape. As Bartley shows us, a kitchen garden of herbs, fruits, vegetables and nuts can be tucked into flower beds or fancifully designed to stand alone. The book is beautifully illustrated and has many lush photographs. A helpful planting schedule for spring, summer and fall is included as well as an extended bibliography and source guide.
I will expand on this book review in the next day or so. I will add some resources for seeds and plants. I will create a potager and take you along for the ride. Yippee ki yeah! And I will not sing the praises of the $20000 outdoor kitchen. No siree bob.
About those earwigs. They give me the creeeeeeeeps. Just last week, I was strolling across the driveway, and found one meandering along the concrete. I was shocked and dismayed, I tell you. Shocked!!! I have been hoping for a nice cold spell to put those nasty bastards out of my misery. How deep does the soil have to freeze? We can go to zero and you’ll hear no whining from me for at least a couple of days if it takes out the earwig and aphid population. Bring it DOWN! I say.
Kitchen Gardens will be a recurring theme in the upcoming days, nights, months, and hopefully……..years. Hang with me.
Optimism has entered my garden once again. Even as we approach the end of a tired summer when my plants are showing signs of heat stress or their inability to cope with persistent diseases, there is a tinge of anticipation in the stratosphere above our home.
There is nothing more hopeful in our yards than creating a new garden bed. The aroma of expectation wafts through my creative senses imagining scenes that are still years away. Thoughts of new plants that I will be able to upload for Garden Blogger's Bloom Day traverse my mind. Oh... the accolades - I should begin writing my speech now.
But with this newfound optimism also comes the tyranny of labour. The joy I shall reap in 2-3 years time will only come about if I get my butt into gear and start preparing the soil. No longer will my wife put up with my incessant "One day..." - it's now action time.
So, why hasn't this bed been prepared until now? Unfortunately it's bordered by our new garden shed - which is finally finished BTW - and couldn't be planted out until the walls had been erected and painted. But now all of that is completed and the garden bed was just hoarding various species of weed - weeds that wouldn't dare inhabiting any other garden bed.
Also I had been waiting for my first compost heap to fully decompose and cool down so that I could start using it. And what a compost it was! Four wheelbarrow loads later and I had made way for the next one to be turned.
And 4 barrow loads was only just enough. This garden bed, with its very deficient sandy soil (using the word "soil" is a big stretch of the term), sucked it up in no time and was begging for more.
After watering the compost in it also became very apparent that the sand had become water-repellent. This is a huge problem if you're planning to introduce plants straight away. Fortunately I have some time on my hands as I'm hoping to plant in early spring - some 9 months away - so solving this dilemma isn't as urgent as one would expect.
While most gardeners would propose adding some wetting agents or water saving crystals, at 35 I'm a misnomer wanting to do it the "old way". That is, I'm keen to start a 'green manure' and give the soil a chance to repair itself - naturally.
As this process will take 3-4 months, I'll keep you updated with how the soil is improving and how the plant choices are progressing.
