Growing Strong

Plants are growing, growing, growing. Better to show you:

The patch where I keep finding a friend frog.

 Easiest planting ever (if it ends up working, that is). I set down some hay, allowed it to begin rotting then covered it with compost, sprinkled on the seed, and then a little hay to hold it in place. That's it! Trying this on Belgian endive, since at a point the roots need to be dug and it will be much easier to dislodge them from this than from the ground. My potatoes are planted similarly, and they, too, seem to be doing fine. 

 I'm planting close, a lot closer than many sources recommend. And I'm going with it, since it seems to be working just fine. Any volunteers that come up, I let them do their thing. Above, in a hugelkultur bed, I've planted kale, cabbages, broccoli, cucumbers, marigolds, chard, borage, plus volunteer sunflowers, mustard, and cilantro. I have, generally, four to six inches between plants, and in some other spots more and in other spots less.

 Butternuts, Long Island cheese pumpkins, and beans, alternating spots with an array of zinnias and sunflowers.

 And I'm trying out a Three Sisters planting with my squashes, corn, and beans. I planted my squash and melon seedlings directly into some compost and mulched heavily. They are flourishing, and everyone else seems to be healthfully on its way.

Rather than break my back, I'm incorporating techniques that reduce the amount of energy I need to put into the gardens. And so far, the most difficult part has proven to be installing and repairing fences.

And every day I can harvest chard, lettuce, mustard, kale, peas, and all kinds of herbs. Raspberries are ripening, tomatoes are setting, corn is rising, beans are flowering, and there's more to come.

So how much does this all cost me? $333.59 this year to date. About $80 was on seeds, and the rest on supplies. Less than I had guessed. And out of that I get a new 1,200 square foot plot I can use year in and out, plus more plants whose seeds I can save for subsequent years!

Definitely worth no longer frequenting ShopRite.

What is permaculture?

Permaculture was a word that I pretended to understand since I was into organic gardening. I would nod along like "yeah, coool" whenever somebody started talking about it. But I was thinking "Permanent-culture? Like...shrubs? Trees? You can only grow trees?" When I looked it up I got more confused, 'cause there were multiple answers, interspersed with a good amount of hippies carrying on pseudo-pagan rituals and cultivating more confusion in me over these 'philosophies' they failed to actually describe.

It isn't the kind of gardening I was taught. My grandparents lived where I do now, and they grew all their own vegetables. Every spring my grandfather would tune up the roto-tiller, plow the plots, plant the plants, probably use some synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, then pick the vegetables until they died in winter and do the same again the following year. It's what I did as a kid. When I became interested in gardening again in the past few years, I followed this model. This year I've done much of the same. It all works and it's very straightforward, but as I'm reading more and more into other methods, it doesn't make the most sense.

That's because plants live in nature. People have worked to breed certain kinds of plants, but they'll always be part of nature. So why not let them grow like they do in nature?

You don't plant the weeds in your garden, but every year, every week, more grow. Their roots trail underground or they drop new seeds, which don't fall into plowed dirt, don't get covered with a quarter inch of fine soil, and aren't guaranteed consistent water, but they always make it back. That means the plants you want to grow can do it the same way.

Although at this point I'm playing a highly active role in cultivating my plants, I'm taking steps to assure that in the future I won't need to, and my plants can grow in a way like they might in nature. My number one rule is don't use any substance that I wouldn't touch or eat. Any food scraps I turn into compost, which I use to fertilize my plants. Insects need to eat, too, and if I were to use pesticides I could kill the critters I want around which kill the critters I don't want around; lately I've seen a lot of wasps, bees, and spiders, along with a lovely lack of caterpillars nibbling my plants.

With certain plants I take a few extra steps, like tomatoes: a Tums near the base of each plant to provide calcium and ward off blossom end rot, a sprinkling of Epsom salts once a season to provide magnesium, and an occasional misting of a little baking soda dissolved in water to help keep away fungus. They're still substances I have no problem touching or eating, and they've been working so far.

I put down a lot of mulch, which composts over time to fertilize and rebuild the soil, it reduces the erosion that a wide-open plowed field would experience, and conserves a huge amount of water. Ruth Stout says that by mulching, she never had to water, and I'm coming to believe that. I also do a lot of interplanting, and use companion plants. Interplanting, I can be sure, works, because I've seen insects and fungi have a much tougher time traveling from this plant over here, to that same kind of plant all the way over there, than to one right next to it. Distance and variety have been my friends. 

Organic farming is better than chemical farming, but nowadays it doesn't have the integrity I'd like to put in it. It's funny to see "organic hydroponic lettuce" and "organic farmed salmon" in the store, since I really can't imagine any natural situation where lettuce will sprout and grow to maturity while just suspended in water, nor where salmon corral themselves and spend the rest of their lives making babies 'til they die. 

So permaculture is organic farming that happens naturally. It's recognizing that your plants need to, and are able to, grow the way they grow. Naturally. I think that makes sense.

What's going on.

 

  

 

 

Good stuff's going on. Now that my new plot is ready, just about everything's planted. Corn, squash, greens, tomatoes, beans, herbs, flowers. And I'm paying much more attention to creating a permacultured environment.  More about that to come.