Spring weeds, and the homestretch to gardening season

Yellow crocus

This is the reality of spring in Alabama: she’s a fickle tease or else just can’t make up her mind, and woe to the gardener that is lulled by the charms of a warm week into thinking winter is done.  It was sunny and in the 70’s a couple of days ago, but tonight it will probably snow.  Tomorrow night, the wind chill will drop near zero and actual temps will be in the teens.   But the march toward warm weather is relentless.  The sunlight falls differently and lasts noticeably longer each day, and the birds are singing their mating calls as loudly and often as they can.  The trees are tinged with pink and orange, their buds nearly ready to burst open.  Some of the precocious shrubs like forsythia and witchhazel are in full bloom.

Fields and lawns are filled with color as the early spring weeds begin their cycle of reproduction, giving bees a bit of early forage and us humans a bit of color among the dormant, brown summer grasses.  One person’s lovely bloom is a lawn aficionado’s enemy, but I like the shades of purple, blue, pink, white and yellow that my lawn runs through in spring.  Soon enough the bermuda and St. Augustine grass will take over, but right now belongs to the “weeds.”

Weeds like henbit, an edible member of the mint family.  Notwithstanding the timeless allure of blowing dandelion seed heads into the wind (to the silent dismay of my lawn-loving father), the fragile purple blossoms of henbit were my favorite, and I carefully gathered them into spring bouquets for my Mom.

Bittercress was harder to find, but I would pick that, too.  It’s a member of the mustard family and has a pleasant spicy bite to it, not too hot to eat by itself but gives a bit of a zing in salads.  It is not bitter at all, despite the name.

Speedwell, aka Veronica, is also blooming now.  Its tiny blue flowers are easily overlooked by themselves, but in mass they are a pleasing delicate blue.  Also edible and very nutritious, it tastes a bit like watercress although it can be quite bitter.  My local variety is probably Veronica persica, or Persian Speedwell.  It’s a European import that has spread throughout the United States, and historically was used as a tea to help reduce excess mucus from colds.  Scientific research on this plant is, unfortunately, very slim — but it’s still a cheerful blue.

More lovely spring “weed” flowers are coming, from the cousin to henbit, Dead Nettle, to buttercup, dandelions and clover and the very useful chickweed.  Those are waiting for the soil to warm up just a little bit more, but I will be enjoying the terrible, pretty lawn weeds for their ephemeral spring lifespan.

At the Seed Swap

Last night was the Tennessee Valley Community Garden Association‘s 2nd Annual Seed Celebration, in partnership with the Greene Street Market at Nativity and benefiting the Sand Mountain Seed Bank.  The event was a resounding success again this year.  People enjoyed the buffet provided by local businesses with live music before the keynote speaker took the stage.  Jeannine Windham of New South Associates discussed the prehistoric and historic food ways of the southeastern United States.  Finally, the raffle prizes were drawn: a mounted canvas from local artist Ian McAlister and a large matted photograph from Finch Hollow Photography.

And all through the night the seed swap room was open.  In addition to the seeds brought by individual gardeners and this blog’s donation of Recession Gold tomato seeds, the Sand Mountain Seed Bank shared seeds and there were donations from Sow True Seed and Peaceful Valley via Deep Roots of Alabama.  I may have missed some seed donors since I was busy helping out, but named or not their donations were appreciated and all were taken home by gardeners and would-be gardeners.  (And if you know of any, please tell me so I can add them!)

Seed swaps are all about connecting with your fellow gardeners, making relationships and sharing our food heritage.  Please join us next year in late winter for the 3rd Annual Seed Celebration.

Final thanks:

• To the volunteers that planned the event, set up the room, carried in clean dishes and carried out the dirty ones, cleaned up the room and did whatever needed to be done
• The Church of the Nativity for again providing a great venue
• Rosita’s Farm for providing the edible table decor (all of which went home to be eaten)
• Blue Pants Brewery in Madison and Southern Oak Wines in Anniston for the adult beverages
• Piper & Leaf (formerly Samovar Gardens) for the tasty flavored teas
• Local restaurants who donated food: 1892 East, Carlton’s, Chef Will, Fred Bread, Mama Annie’s and Sandwich Farm
• And last but not least, local purveyors that donated desserts: Belle Chevre, Happy Tummy and Sweet Thang

Turning DIY into a hobby for fun and (somebodies’) profit

It’s tough to be frugal in the 21st century.  It used to be that if you were poor, you did things for yourself to save money, but today, DIY is a mega-profitable industry, and those huge profits mean you are often not saving any money.  Let’s look at a few examples:

• Growing up, my Mom had the time and talent to make clothes.  She made high quality clothes for us at a fraction of the price similar quality clothes would cost in the stores.  While somewhat cheaper clothing was available, it didn’t come with hand tailoring and customization.  There was an upfront cost — a nice sewing machine — and knowledge needed, but it saved money.  Now, the cost of making a nice shirt will be 4 or 5 times the cost of shirt imported from a sweatshop overseas.  There’s no supply side reason denim costs $10/yard in the US, nevermind the zippers, buttons, thread and labor, when it’s the same denim used to make dollar store jeans.  Buying second hand isn’t always a bargain either when the thrift store charges $15 for used dollar store jeans you can get new for $17.
• A few years ago, I priced out the supplies and equipment rental needed to add 15″ of insulation in my attic at Big Blue and Big Orange home improvement megastores.  It was almost $100 cheaper to hire someone to do the same job, and when the blower broke down, they repaired it and had it running again in 15 minutes instead of requiring a trip back to the store for me.  As a bonus, I didn’t spend all day in the attic, and a couple of guys earned some money for their families.
• Two years ago, I priced out building a shed.  The material came out cheaper, true — but when I considered how many hours I would spend on the job, hours that I otherwise would spend on something more productive, hiring the local shed building pros to come out and spend half a day was not only cost effective, I didn’t have to run all over town trying to find all the parts I needed.  Nor did I lose the next 3 weekends sweating over a shed in the back yard.

This is not to say you can’t save money at all with DIY.  Calling a plumber out to replace a $15 faucet cartridge would cost me $100.  It’s okay with me if Big Orange marks it up 185% over their cost because it’s the only way I’m getting it direct, and the only thing else I need is a screw driver.  But when you are trying to be frugal, you have to look at the whole picture. Do not assume that doing it yourself is either good for you or good for your local economy.

Early I mentioned there was no supply-side reason for the high prices of sewing supplies and notions — however, there is a demand side reason.  Most people who sew now do it as a hobby.  It’s entertainment.  Or it’s something special, like a child’s Halloween costume.  And most of these people have at least one of two things in abundance: time and/or money.  You choose to spend time and money on a gift for your child; it is not driven primarily by financial considerations.

So what, the reader is asking, does this have to do with gardening?

Everything.  Garden shops, seed stores and catalogs know that many people who are gardening are doing it as hobby.  Many gardeners are single income families because they choose to be, either permanently or temporarily while there are young children at home.  Or, they are retired, and despite the high numbers of elderly people living in or near poverty, older people statistically have more disposable income than younger people (and what’s more, are more likely to spend it at home instead of in a bar, restaurant or on an experience like traveling).  Like sewing, for this group gardening is entertainment.  And so, prices go up, particularly for seeds and supplies that have a certain cache.  Organic.  Heirloom.  Green.

If you are gardening for financial or preparedness reasons, you need to be very careful where your money goes.  There is no supply-side reason why tomato seeds cost $4.50 for a packet of 20 seeds, while a $3.00 packet of broccoli seeds might have 300 seeds in it, seeds that took two years to produce and were harder to save.  If you are not saving your own seeds, or are not part of a local community that has seed swaps or plant swaps, you may be at the mercy of catalog prices, whether they make financial sense or not.

The long term solutions include saving your own seed, but for most of us with small plots of land this may mean years of experimentation to find the one vegetable variety in each species that does best for us.  That brings us back to the need for gardening communities and relationships that foster mutually beneficial exchanges.  Don’t forget to check out your locally owned garden centers and farmers for seeds and transplants that may be cheaper than what you can order.

And whatever you do, be very wary of obscenely overpriced gardening kits, be they raised beds, rain barrels, hanging bag vegetable things or glorified self-watering containers.  These are not marketed to you, the frugal gardener, they are marketed toward people for whom plunking down $150 for a square of four foot lengths of plastic and some connectors is a raised bed experience.  You can do better.  And if you are truly DIY clueless and don’t want to learn, this is an excellent opportunity to trade either a physical item or your expertise in some other subject for some handyman labor.

Caveat emptor.

What drought means for anyone who eats

Spring drought forecast

Drought isn’t receiving much press outside of California, but it should.  The looming drought in the Central Valley — one which might be as bad or worse than 1977 — has the potential to drastically affect the production of food in the United States.  California produces an astonishing amount of food, but can only do so as long as the irrigation water is flowing.  Rivers are tapped that no longer flow to the sea, deltas are dried up and measuring the snow pack in the mountains is an annual ritual fraught with drama and anticipation for farmers.  Conservation measures by both homeowners and farmers and ecological restoration have modified the delicate balance of water usage, but tap water is sold at artificially low prices so for the homeowner there is little incentive to xeriscape the acres of non-native turf grass or retire their swimming pools.  Homes built in ecological zones where wildfires are normal (and in some cases, necessary to the health of the environment) will be preserved by taxpayer money and the sweat, blood and perhaps even lives of fire fighters.

Indeed, all across the West, the water situation looks dire.  Yet in Southern California, officials are only pondering cutbacks of lawn watering on some days, a feeble response that will not be strengthened unless their reserves drop precipitously.  So much for thinking ahead.  Meanwhile, environmental laws that preserve things like critical salmon runs and smelt habitat are suspended in the wake of the emergency declaration.

Half of the production of America’s fruit, vegetables and nuts happens in California.  Strangely, no one on the news seems to be talking about how the plight of California farmers will affect food prices.  Not just fresh produce will be affected, but also a lot of our condiment processing happens in California, and meat and dairy farms will be affected as well.  We can just import all our food from South America and China, right?  And if fresh food prices skyrocket, well that won’t affect well-paid journalists, pundits and politicians too much.

It will, however, have a ripple effect across the country, and there are three things that need to be done in every home.

First, every household should have at least a week worth of essential water supplies stored at home.  Not just those in drought-prone areas: drought can happen anywhere and water supplies can be disrupted for many reasons.  (Just ask West Virginia.)  Once you have water stored, start thinking about an alternate water source.  For many, that will be storing rainfall and having a way to filter it to make it safe to drink.  Storing rainfall is easy and an astonishing amount of water goes down your gutters in even a small rain shower.   When not in a drought, rainwater is better for your plants than tap water, so use it for watering outside.  (In some places, rainwater harvesting is illegal due to old water rights laws.)

Second, if you are on a tight budget, you need to think about allocating your food dollars now to storable supplies so you can stretch your budget later if food prices rise.  Don’t store anything you don’t eat, and don’t store so much it will go bad before you eat it.  Processed food will be affected less than fresh food (since much of the cost is tied up in processing, shipping and marketing instead of the actual food cost), so while buying three bottles or catsup or four boxes of breakfast cereal when they are on a great sale is good for your budget, it should take a back seat to any efforts you make in your home to can, freeze, dehydrate or otherwise preserve fresh food that you don’t grow yourself.  Nuts grown in California are an excellent candidate for buy-ahead programs, since they require little if any effort to store for the short term, particularly unshelled nuts.

Third, every household needs to think about securing local food sources.  This is recessiongardening.com, so of course I think that growing some of your own — even one thing that you normally buy but could be grown at home in a cost effective way for your region — is the very first thing you should consider.  But few of us have the land, time or ability to grow everything we eat or even a majority of what we eat.  Support your local farmers and other food producers.  By supporting them, you help create strong local food systems.  Decentralizing food production helps buffer the market (and your pocketbook!) against regional disruptions.  Buying local also helps stimulate your local economy, and it may improve your health because produce that has languished for days in transit has fewer nutrients than that fresh off the vine from a home garden, or that picked one or two days ago at a farm 30 miles down the road.

With any luck, the drought out West will not be as severe as anticipated, and food prices will be buffered by a good year in another region of the world.  Nonetheless, personal preparedness is always a good strategy, particularly for anyone who need or wants to be frugal.

A few more signs of spring

Daffodils emerging from slumber

Here come the flowers.  The trilliums are keeping their heads down so far.

And the tulips, too!

 

On the arbitrary line between edible and ornamental

The vegetable gardens at Kew (russellskitchen on Flickr)

Somewhere along the line in America, we have decided that vegetables are ugly.  Nevermind the food photography and the urge to use your smartphone to share your dinner with everyone on Facebook: once they are on a plate it’s all fair game, but while growing, well, they are awful.  Ugly.  Front yard vegetables are illegal in many places and where not actually illegal, people are sometimes harassed and cited for causing a nuisance or being an eyesore.

Granted, I’ve seen some front yard vegetable gardens that are ugly in every possible aesthetic sense except that one that sees it as something to eat.  I’ve seen a lot of non-productive front yards that are ugly, too, but for some reason dead shrubs and rusty cars don’t get the neighbors up in arms quite like a well-tended tomato plant.  Nevermind that nearly 15% of American households are food insecure — meaning they must skip meals for lack of access to food.  Nevermind that for many of those households, a small vegetable garden at home or space in a shared garden might help bridge that gap.  Nevermind that 35% of U.S. households grow at least some of their own food.  Hide it around back, as if providing for your family with fresh nutritious produce instead of buying it with money is shameful.

“Ornamental” greens, Rina Pitucci on Flickr

But a strange thing has happened on the ornamental garden side.  Our garden centers are filled with “ornamental” kale and sweet potatoes and peppers and eggplants; with swiss chard and basil and cabbage.  Our nurseries stock flowering crabapples and cherries and plums, which produce poor fruit but their productive siblings are just as lovely in bloom.  Many of these plants are staples of the commercial landscaping business, gracing the entrances of apartment buildings and fast food restaurants and the stuffiest of Homeowner’s Association buildings.  Be a rebel and eat the ornamental kale.  Or if you need to, just tell the neighbors it’s a new ornamental kale with dark green leaves.

Even our seed catalogs, which should know better, label plants like borage and sunflowers as ornamental, while gorgeous poppies get listed under edible for their seeds.  The separation between ornamental and edible or medicinal is often entirely arbitrary, and it’s not the fault of the seed catalogs that feel the urge to categorize everything, nor is it the fault of plant breeders who are frankly ahead of most of us on this topic since they are happy to breed prettier versions of food plants.

Château de Villandry kitchen gardens, a terrible urban eyesore (Henk Bekker on Flickr)

The challenge is twofold:

• One, gain greater acceptance for functional gardens as places of beauty and productivity just as they are. Gardens that are well-tended and fruitful are beautiful to other gardeners, now let’s help others see the beauty.  Maybe you do that by inspiring a child with dirt and the miracles of seeds, or maybe by sharing prime produce with your neighbors.  Or maybe you break outside the rectangle and grow vegetables like you might flowers.
• Two, as gardeners, to view our own gardens not only for food, but for relaxation and ornament.  We not only have numerous famous European potager gardens to use for inspiration, but also the gardens at American landmarks like Monticello, Mount Vernon and Williamsburg.  These gardens would be lovely whether they grew their vegetables and herbs or something else altogether.  Can you make your garden the same?  Maybe just a little bit each year?

Go forth gardeners, and beautify.

 

Reading List: The Science Behind Biodynamic Preparations

Biodynamic preparation 505 : The oak bark is grated into a powder in Autumn and is then placed in a very clean cow or sheeps skull. (Thea Maria on Flickr)

My favorite myth-busting horticultural educator, Linda Chalker-Scott, has just released a literature review of the available scientific knowledge behind biodynamics.

First, a modest introduction to biodynamics: Biodynamics is a growing method created by philosopher Rudolf Steiner in the 1920’s.  While Steiner is to be praised for creating one of the first modern attempts at a sustainable agriculture system, he was neither trained in agriculture nor did he use any sort of scientific principles in coming up with his methods for aligning terrestrial and cosmic forces.  These methods include stuffing dandelion flowers into the mesentery of a cow, burying it in the ground in winter and retrieving it in spring.  While theoretically possible that there is some sort of beneficial enzymatic reaction between dandelions and cow entrails, Steiner came up with this method through clairvoyance and meditation instead of any sort of evidence or testing to see if it worked.

Advocates have added other principles to the system to create what is considered biodynamic agriculture today, and these principles are generally in line with organic agriculture, with the exception of Steiner’s special preparations.  Some of the preparations have entered internet garden lore as home concoctions used in isolation.  For example, the practice of blending up pests (not in MY blender, thank you) and spraying them on crops to theoretically deter the living members of that pest bears strong resemblance to Steiner’s methods of burning pests and scattering the ashes over crops.

Despite the mystical and decidedly non-scientific origins of biodynamics, there have been several decades of scientific inquiry into its effectiveness.  Ms. Chalker-Scott reviews the available evidence and summarizes it in The Science Behind Biodynamic Preparations: A Literature Review, in the December 2013 issue of HortTechnology.  The article, although scientific in nature, is accessible and understandable to the average garden reader.  It is recommended reading for anyone considering the use of these methods.

She summarizes that most of the available research comes from poorly constructed or inconclusive studies, and that biodynamic plots do not outperform organic plots, although both outperform conventional agriculture in terms of soil health and sustainability.

To date, there are no clear, consistent, or conclusive effects of biodynamic preparations on organically managed systems… Given the thinness of the scientific literature and the lack of clear data supporting the efficacy of biodynamic preparations, biodynamic agriculture is not measurably distinct from organic agriculture and should not be recommended as a science-based practice at this time.

However, that means we can also reverse that: there also appears to no measurable negative effects.  If you are drawn to biodynamics for philosophical or faith reasons, science does not have evidence to suggest that you should not do them.

 

Zone-Busting weather: Brrr!

Most gardeners hate the cold.  If we liked winter, we’d be skiers or ice skaters or something.  Instead, we long for spring.  I’m no exception.  Every year I get grumpy at how cold it gets here in the “sunny” South.  I’m in a Zone 7b.  That means there is a 90% chance the lowest temperature of the winter will be above 5F.  Say hello to other other 10% this year.  It happens every few years.  Say goodbye to those marginal, zone-pushing plants you have outside.

Readers in colder climes will laugh at the life-threatening emergency a forecasted 3F degrees is.  No, I did not miss a digit.  It’s going to snow a bit and be 3 degrees tomorrow night, with a wind chill of as low as -13F.  We grind to a halt under those conditions.  We don’t really have ice and snow removal equipment; just enough to clear a few main roads.  Why would we spend the money on it?  I’ve never even seen a snow shovel for sale here.  (Although when the big 9″ of snow fell a few years ago, my compost scoop worked quite well to clear my driveway.)

So we stay home and wait for it to melt, that is, after people finish stripping the grocery stores of bread and milk they need while being trapped at home for two whole days.  But it is potentially life threatening.  Almost everyone here has heat pumps in their homes, which are fantastic air conditioners in a humid climate, but stop working when the air temp is much below freezing and instead rely on electric strips.  It’s basically like trying to heat your home with an electric space heater, and if those strips give out under the strain… well, we build homes for heat here, not keeping out the cold.  There are public shelters, but once the roads are icy… well, preparedness isn’t just for zombie outbreaks.  If only more people were.

Most of my outdoor plants should be fine.  I have a few zone-pushers in sheltered locations — it seems next spring I will learn how “sheltered” they really were.  The young tea camellias.  The artichokes.  A few ornamental plants.  The fig tree might die back to the ground and the bay tree might killed altogether.  My turmeric is indoors in a pot since I wanted to give it a long summer to get established before exposing it to threatening weather, and I brought the paw paw seedlings indoors.  They can take the cold once in the ground, but pots are colder.

Yesterday I harvested the last of the cabbage before the arctic blast comes through, and I may have been too late.  With wind chills below zero recently, I found some of my cabbage heads frozen.  They are still thawing in the fridge, so it’s too soon to see if all I can salvage is a huge pot of cabbage soup.

Other than the wheat grass (most of which the rabbits ate) and garlic, my garden is empty.  Spring, I am reminding myself, is just around the corner.

 

RG’s 2014 Resolutions

New beginnings in a hazelnut bud

I am not one who usually does any kind of formal New Year’s resolutions.  I believe that we make choices all through the year, not just in January.  And how many of those January plans come to fruition?  Most are forgotten by February.

But the latter half of 2013 has been a difficult one for me personally.  I have been scattered and unfocused and despite an inordinate amount of time agonizing and thinking I haven’t been able to decide much at all let alone act on it.  2014 is likely to bring huge changes for me, some of which may get chronicled here.  I feel they will ultimately be for the better, but there are no guarantees in this world.

So for once, I think formal resolutions are needed.  My blog resolution list is small, but never fear, I will add to my list as 2014 rolls onward!  (Correction: it seems to have grown while I wrote it.)

• Brew something.  I have been wanting to try brewing for a long time but there’s always been a reason to put it off.  This year, it’s a priority.  I’ll be sure to share the details.
• Proofread better the FIRST time EVERY time.  My readers are growing in numbers and they deserve posts which are free of typos and odd words.
• Spend more time outdoors having fun.  I enjoy working outside, but “outside” is starting to become synonymous with work and chores.  I need to reconnect with what a nice place it is out there when you aren’t dragging along a shovel or a camera.
• Barter more.  Bartering connects people in a way that cash transactions do not.
• Start a blog at my other site, Finch Hollow, that profiles plants through four seasons in pictures, with information on their uses and characteristics.  Each plant will be a time consuming task, so expect to see some of that cross-posted over here.

No more posts for a while on intellectually picking apart the future — it’s time to face what 2014 will bring.  See you on the other side!

 

A small matter of time

For the resurrection fern, there’s always more time… eventually.

“I don’t see how you have time to cook/bake/can/garden/etc.!  I never have time for anything.  Oh, did you see That Totally Trendy Reality Show last night?!”

Time is something we all have the same amount of each day while none of us know how much time is allotted to us in this life.  Yet, “I don’t have time” is probably the most used excuse when it comes to practical hobbies like gardening, being frugal, eating better or exercising, or any number of other things people feel they should have time for or should do or merely want to do.  We are constantly bombarded with messages about how little time in the day there is, or what new fast convenience item we need to “simplify” our lives, but these are the messages from people who want to sell you something.  A life full of manufactured and purchased conveniences might be simple if you choose well, but it also may just be terribly cluttered with junk that takes up more time and money than it saves.

If you have spared a moment to plan ahead and thaw whatever needs to be thawed, you can throw together a quick one pan stir fry faster than you can get in the car, drive to a fast food restaurant, sit through an increasingly long drive through window, and drive home.  Or, you could use a modern convenience like a slow cooker or rice cooker to have your food ready for you when it’s mealtime.

I believe it is true that modern life is more hectic than in former years, and that many families truly feel like they can’t catch up with all the things they are expected to do.  Fewer households now have a stay at home adult whose job it is to manage the family needs, nor do they have elders living in the home who can contribute.  But our time is still divided into 3 things:

• Mandatory things you have to do, like sleep, eat and stay clean
• Things you do for other people, like work for money to get things you can’t provide yourself
• Discretionary things you choose to do, like watch TV, or go to the gym, or take up a hobby.

Our modern lives are more hectic because we have more choices.  Choice is a wonderful luxury.  Nonetheless you still ultimately have to decide how to spend your discretionary time.  Some time consuming tasks may surprise you.  For example, how much time do you spend every morning caring for a complex hair style?  Do you truly want to spend time on it?  Perhaps you do — it gives you pleasure and makes you feel great.  Or perhaps it is something you are expected to do by others that is a quiet anchor dragging you down.  Toss it away, then.

Many of you are no doubt pondering new year’s resolutions, either formal or informal.  If you find yourself struggling to “find time,” perhaps you need to carefully reassess the time you are spending now in all three categories.  We all need to periodically ask ourselves:

Am I spending the time I have in this life doing that which gives me joy and that fills my time with meaning and purpose?

If the answer is no, the need for change is clear.   Change may take time when you’ve made commitments and have responsibilities, but the change starts in your head.