My First Garden
I love everything about growing food. I have no idea where this love for growing things came from. The closest my family came to gardens was growing tomatoes in pots every now and then. Fresh tomatoes taste so much better than store bought, which so often taste a bit like wet cardboard! So I planted my first garden.
I also have a passion for learning about the healing properties of plants and how they were used before modern medicine came along. How did people figure out what plant was good for what problem? Even more interesting to me are the various studies being done that seem to confirm many of these plants do have chemical properties that do what herbalists have been claiming they do all these centuries.
Back and Forth
Since we don’t live here full time because, as so many of us, I will probably be working until I drop dead, I’ve had to get creative on watering. I’m using various self watering options, such as ones used to water potted plants when you go on vacation. It’s too early in the season to know if they will work, since we are still getting plenty of rain. We get to come up every two to three weeks, so I do my weeding while I am here and stagger plant anything I want an ongoing harvest on like carrots.
So far, my watermelon plants have died. Maybe I planted too early. My cabbage seems to be doing great. Something is chewing on them so I used neem oil spray. My so carefully, prepared carrot seeds still came up in clumps. I tried to separate them and replant an inch or two apart but I’m not sure if they are going to survive. My banana pepper plant looks like it bit the dust. Maybe it will come back. All the herbs I planted look happy. I guess I will, at least, have herbs but I’m not sure about actual food.
My Jerusulem Artichoke Saga
The Jerusulem artichokes I planted, on a hügelkultur mound, are doing great. Eventually, I’d like to see the entire mound taken over by the sunchokes and the ground nuts I’ve planted. I’ve stuck to perennial plants that aren’t commonly looked at as food. Not many people would recognize these plants, and so they are stealth gardening plants for emergencies. I planted sunchokes on this mound a few years ago and the weeds somehow outcompeted them. This year I used landscaping fabric. I actually didn’t think anything could outcompete sunchokes! If they take this year, I’ll have an emergency source of food in the ground that will just keep multiplying every year and in my Zone 7 climate can stay in the ground over winter and be used as needed, just in case the mutant zombies take over.
All I Grow Naturally is Rocks
Since there is very little top soil on my property, I had a gravel bed laid and put up raised beds. I used railroad ties to surround it and built a fence on top of the ties. I’m so close to the bedrock, I was not sure I could set a fence post. The railroad ties will probably last longer than I will and it makes a nice fence base. I was unable to have a basement when we built this house, because it would have needed dynamite. I do have a nice crawl space being on slanted ground. Also since I grow rocks so well, we didn’t need much rock fill. My contractor just harvested the ones already here. I’ve got other beds scattered about where it’s sort of level, growing various things.
Johnny Appleseed I’m Not
I have planned 6 apple trees. One died. I think one may have fire blight. None of them have produced any apples as yet. I saw a few blooms this year so who knows, maybe I’ll have an apple this year. I did make sure I had the correct pollinators together, and bought older trees to begin with hoping they’d produce faster.
I’ve also planted two peach trees, an elderberry tree, 6 blueberry bushes and a bunch of strawberries. I have multiple nut trees. Beaked hazelnut because they produce faster but I have seen no nuts thus far. I did choose varieties that cross pollinate.
Is it something I said?
So if you expect to plant an orchard and have it feed you, I’d get started, as it’s been 4 years and no crop yet
Oh Grapevine, Please Don’t Die
I was never under any illusions, I had a green thumb for all, I keep trying. But I have killed every grape vine I’ve planted so far. I planted a few vines on the mound of one of our swales. I surrounded them with landscape fabric to give it a chance against the native plants. I kept them watered. They all died.
I’m trying again this time in a raised bed. I lined it with cardboard which will break down and allow the roots to grow as deep as the bed rock allows. I came back this week. One is dead. On the hopeful side, one has three leave on it.
My Limited Expectation
I have very limited expectations for this year. If I get enough produce to make a few quarts of fermented vegetables I will consider it a success. But since I am interested in self-sufficiency and homesteading I hope I get better at actually growing food. Nevertheless, I am having a blast playing in the dirt! I’m just hoping the mutant zombies put off taking over the world for a few years,