Lucky

I’m feeling lucky right now, in that special Friday night kind of way.

How perfect it is to wind up a week of cold, wet and dismal weather looking forward to a blissfully warm weekend of gardening. How perfect it is to have my small yard to dig in, a few plants to set in the ground, lots more perennials waiting to be moved and a few more packets of vegetable seeds ready to be planted. Add to that, at least a yard of Lewis Farm compost still in my driveway, and about half as much of my own finished compost in the backyard, ready to be dug in to the perennial beds. All the ingredients for a weekend of puttering are in place.

After a hectic week, with not enough time spent in either the kitchen or the garden, I’m ready for some time doing the things that replenish me–the things that bring balance and quiet back into my life.

Spring blooms are coming on with their typical exuberance, so just being in the garden is a good thing. I’ll be sure to spend some time near the Korean spice viburnum. Its blooms smell heavenly right now, from almost anywhere in the front yard. It’s a pleasure that asks only to be enjoyed now; in just a few days, it will be gone.

It’s even a good thing that tomorrow’s temperatures will hit the high 80s; that’s nature’s way of making me slow down and enjoy a book in the shade. After all, placing chairs in all the right spots is the most important garden design element to remember, right?

Last weekend, I struggled with a feeling of pressure to get it all done, to give up my zig zag nature and focus on priorities in the garden. Not so, this weekend. I have two goals for the next two days: to garden and to cook something. Whatever shape and form those goals take will be fine with me. Neither stresses me in any way and both are so wide open that there’s room for all kinds of things.

When Sunday night arrives, my knees and fingernails will be dirty, my body will be achy and I’ll probably be eating something involving spring greens and heirloom beans (yes, I still love them). I’ll be tired, in that special kind of way that comes from pulling weeds, digging and hauling cartloads of compost and plants around. That’s a whole different kind of tired than the kind brought on by worries of the workaday world. A better kind.

And, I’ll go to sleep with the sweet satisfaction that I’ve made my little corner of the world a better place.

Apr 25 2010

Zig Zag Gardening

I garden in the same way that I cook. Although I may have some idea of where I want to end up, I allow myself the pleasure of getting there in whatever zig zaggy way the spirit moves me. I don’t subscribe to a lot of rules in either discipline; I make decisions often on intuition alone. I make a lot of mistakes. But, I live with my mistakes or correct them later if I can. (I can think of at least six sizable shrubs I’ve moved and a handful more I’d like to move.) With cooking, I eat my mistakes.

Some people plant a garden and leave it alone. That’s not me. I can spend an entire day (and sometimes do) walking around with my shovel, moving perennials from here to there. Today, I moved:

two peonies that weren’t getting enough light
lots of echinachea to make room for a second raised bed for tomatoes (I built the bed yesterday)
culinary sage
lavender
Russian sage that was being overgrown by a Korean spice viburnum
a hosta, to make room for the new herb garden
day lilies
sedum autumn joy
catmint

That’s when I caught myself, and realized I was cleverly avoiding the nasty task of pulling up sod in the new kitchen garden to establish new bed lines. (I was also avoiding more weeding, but I couldn’t bear another day of that.)

The new kitchen garden is taking shape and the vision (in my head) is becoming clear. I’m struggling for ideas for the boundary between the garden and my neighbor’s property, which is grass that’s unfortunately used to park four or five cars. I need to devise something to stop my eye at the edge of my garden and going right to those cars–something that seems to make me grumpy every time. At the other end of the garden, where you enter from the front yard, I’d love to build an arbor…another day.

There’s more work to be done and more sod to be pulled up, but I’m off to a good start. The new raised bed for tomatoes is nearly full with compost, composted cow manure, leaves and soil. I planted a few herbs in the expanded beds:

sorrel
hyssop
thyme (two varieties)
more sage
flat-leaf Italian parsley
oregano

In the vegetable raised bed, the spinach, peas, radishes and mizuna are all up. Today, I planted carrots and a few more peas to fill in some holes.

The downside of being a zig zag gardener is that I risk not getting to all that needs to get done, at the best time to do it. After a few days off, I’ve accomplished a lot, but there’s so much more. Things unfold so quickly at this time of year; it’s a challenge to just embrace it and enjoy the process, rather than getting overwhelmed by all that there is to do. This usually involves adjusting my ever-changing wish list as the season moves on, and just going with the flow.

After all, there’s really no such thing as being “done” in a garden.

That’s the joy of it.

Apr 19 2010

Hanging Out with Inspiration on National Hanging Out Day

There’s always more to learn, and there always seem to be inspiring people ready to share their stories. And, just when I think I’m doing fine, I realize there’s more I can do to make a positive difference.

Tonight I attended Project Laundry List’s annual meeting and celebration of National Hanging Out Day. Project Laundry List works to make air-drying and cold-water washing laundry acceptable and desirable as ways to conserve energy. Tonight’s discussion was to focus broadly on the small changes we each can make to save energy in our daily lives. A couple of names on the panel of presenters drew my attention and I was curious to find out about energy and conservation initiatives underway right here in my hometown.

The panel included an owner of a vegan restaurant in Concord, a car dealer (speaking about vehicle maintenance and changing driving habits), a very active community volunteer and green businessperson, and the mayor. The audience of forty or so people was a lively group of environmentalists, eager to share information and inspire action in others.

Here’s a very short list of things I realized I could easily do now to conserve energy and water:

Drive 55 miles per hour. If we all did this, the United States would cut 20 percent of its fuel usage.
Wash my clothes in cold water.
“Imagine an egg under my gas pedal” to help avoid excessive acceleration and braking.
Walk to work, even once a week.
Buy a low-flow shower head.
Check my tire pressure more often and keep my tires inflated properly.
Give up plastic bags completely.
Get more involved in making my community a better place by volunteering.

The list of suggestions was lengthy, and I did feel good about the things I already do to lighten my footprint on this earth. Being a (99 percent) vegetarian, growing some of my own food, driving a hybrid vehicle, using CFL and LED lightbulbs and drying my clothes on a drying rack are all great things to do. But there’s so much more to be done. The need is huge, and it will take small and big changes made by all of us to truly make a difference.

I was inspired by the challenge to think of my own lifestyle in contrast to that of people in a third world country and evaluate my energy consumption accordingly. Making that comparison should help me to rationalize any change I might be reluctant to undertake. How would I view my one mile commute? My need to do several loads of laundry each week, some in hot water? My habit of leaving my computer on all the time?

I came away realizing again that perhaps the biggest way that each of us as individuals can contribute to creating positive change is to inspire someone else to make even a tiny change.

Consuming one pound of meat is the equivalent of driving an SUV 40 miles. If I can inspire a couple of friends to give up one meat meal a week and try a vegetarian alternative, that would be the equivalent of not driving that SUV 4000 miles in one year. Meatless Monday really is a powerful concept, isn’t it?

One woman spoke of the pledges she made twenty years ago on the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day, one of which was to give up the use of paper products. “The more I’ve done it, the less I’ve missed it,” she said. A panelist described walking to a public place in the evening to read, to take advantage of lighting that would be on for the evening anyway, rather than turning on lights at home.

It takes 16 to 21 times of repeating a new activity to create a habit. After that, it’s a routine that requires little or no conscious thought to continue, which means we should be ready for a new challenge.

As we approach Earth Day in just three days, let’s consider the small and not so small things that we each might do to create a cleaner, more sustainable environment. Then, go one step further and inspire someone else to make a small change, too.

A woman in the audience commented to the panel: “Thank you for all that you all do to make this place a community instead of just the place we all live.” Judging by her energy, she’s been a major contributor herself to creating this community.

And then, I got recruited by the mayor to join the City’s Energy and Environment Committee.

Like I said, there’s always more to be done!

Apr 16 2010

Edible Landscaping: Lessons from a Squatting Squampkin

Last summer, tucked in between a sprawling juniper and a mugho pine, my tidy front yard mixed border had a squatter. I was out of commission for several weeks, not tending to tasks remotely like weeding and, during that time, something resembling a squash plant popped up on that spot. It bloomed beautifully and thrived in its sunny location.

A mystery, for sure. At first, I assumed it grew from a seed deposited by my unfinished compost. (I often rush the process a little too much.) Then, I realized the plant was growing from exactly the same spot I’d placed a pumpkin from a friend’s garden the previous fall. My expectations shifted and I began to get excited about pumpkins in my future. Giant ones. I pinched back all but a couple of the flowers and fertilized my new friend.

I wish I’d thought to take a picture of what developed from those flowers. It was neither pumpkin nor squash. It resembled a large spaghetti squash in size and shape, but was a darker gold in color. I’m guessing that this crazy fruit resulted from cross-pollination of my friend’s pumpkin plant the previous year, or perhaps it was something related to the pumpkin having been a hybrid variety in the first place. In any case, the squampkin joined the real pumpkins on my steps in the fall. (This spring, I found a hard, brittle shell left behind, yet no sign of its tender-skinned pumpkin neighbors.)

My front yard gets a good amount of sun. I believe this happy accident opened my eyes to the reality that, if I’m to grow food on this property, it will be in the front yard. I’ve since moved my raised bed vegetable garden to the front yard, and it’s partially planted now. I’m planning one more close by, and will fill in around them with herbs to create a front yard kitchen garden. If possible, I’ll add an arbor or some sort of entry gate from the main part of the front yard, a finishing touch that would set the new garden off beautifully.

But, remembering the lesson of the squatter squampkin, I’m eying other corners of my yard differently this year, too.

I love my perennials, flowering shrubs and evergreens, and have no plans to dig them up, although I’d happily give up even more lawn, bit by bit. What I’m interested in now is interplanting food crops with perennials and shrubs in a way that’s beautiful and interesting. In the squampkin’s spot this year will go some blue hubbard squash seeds shared with me by Daniel at Your Small Kitchen Garden. I’m considering some beautifully colored lettuces here and there in the cool end of the long perennial border. Eggplants and peppers might be beautiful as well, at the sunny end where everything just bakes in the summer sun.

This isn’t a new idea. Edible landscaping practices began in ancient Persia and Egypt. Victorian gardeners later embraced the concept of interplanting vegetables and flowers, creating elaborately beautiful garden landscapes. There’s no logic to planting food crops only in the backyard garden, although maintaining a neat and aesthetically appealing front yard appeals to me.

In addition to taking advantage of the full sun available in most of my frontyard, I can be assured that no dogs will be paying visits to my edible landscaping. I love my dogs, but I’d never look at a salad in the same way again if it were coming from their territory in the backyard.

Here’s a quick list of the edible plants I’m thinking about incorporating into the non-kitchen garden areas of my front yard this year.

Nasturtiums (both flowers and leaves; the leaves have a peppery flavor)
Pansies (won’t my summer salads be beautiful?)
Lettuce (all colors)
Purple bush beans
Blue hubbard squash
Long-neck pumpkin (also from Your Small Kitchen Garden)
Rhubarb (anyone have any to share?)
Blueberries (doing okay in my backyard, but I bet they’d really rock with more sun)
Elderberry (so I can make my own elderberry/echinachea/honey syrup for colds and flu)
Sunflowers (if I can figure out how to keep the squirrels from running off with the flower heads!)

Do you have any other ideas?

Apr 13 2010

A Gardener’s Hearty Jacob’s Cattle Bean Tortilla Dinner

Beans are such a wonderful staple, and discovering the beautiful variety of heirloom beans has been a fun and tasty exploration for me. It’s so easy to cook up a simple pot of beans, flavored only by a carrot, onion and some garlic, and then use them later in a few different ways during the course of a week. Sort of an 18th century convenience food (thank you, refrigeration). They’re satisfying, warming, high in protein and fiber, and delicious.

I was introduced to a few new beans this winter, one of which I might try to grow this summer. The Jacob’s cattle bean, also called the appoloosa or trout bean, is an heirloom of Prince Edward Island, Canada. It’s a red and white speckled, kidney-shaped bean, with a rich, nutty flavor.

I learned of the Jacob’s cattle bean a while back from Ozark Homesteader, who suggested it as a shell bean that I might try in my vegetable garden. Last month, I stumbled on an heirloom bean lover’s goldmine at the winter farmers market in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, where I discovered Baer’s Best heirloom beans, including Jacob’s cattle. I came away with a shopping bag full of beans, some familiar and a couple new.

Bean farmer Charley Baer grows 20 varieties of heirloom beans in Beverly, Massachusetts. He uses antique machines to carefully shell and clean the beans and handpicks them of debris himself, so his beans are free of sticks and stones, as are so common in most dried beans. A chemist by day and a farmer by night and on weekends, Charley Bear grows only beans, and take pride in his quality product. Baer’s Best are available at farmers markets and at a few specialty stores in Massachusetts, including Russo’s in Watertown and Wilson Farm in Lexington. Having ordered my heirloom beans to date from Rancho Gordo New World Specialty Foods in Napa, California, I’m thrilled to have found a source closer to home. (Baer’s Best does not have a website at this time.)

The difference between “fresh” dried beans and grocery store beans is noticeable. Beans are best if used within a year after harvest, while they still have some moisture in them. (Freshly dried beans have about 15 percent moisture content.) Older beans, or beans that have been subjected to high temperatures or humidity during storage, are usable, but often just won’t get completely soft when cooked. Fresh beans also taste better.

Heirloom beans are beautiful, endlessly interesting, delicious, and eating them is one more way that we can preserve the diversity of our food supply. Finding locally grown heirloom beans is an extra bonus. Growing them will be even better.

It may be spring, but the spinach in my garden is barely an inch high and my peas are close behind. I’m still eating root vegetables and spinach from my winter CSA while I wait a few more weeks for my own garden to put anything on my plate. (Of course, there’s the countertop sprouting operation, producing a steady supply of broccoli, radish and alfalfa sprouts.)

Jacob’s cattle beans, corn tortillas, some locally produced salsa, brown rice and a few veggies made for an easy, hearty tostada dinner. It’s one that I’ve repeated a few times over the last couple of weeks, especially after long, hard days in the garden. Add cheese if you like; I did not.

Hearty Gardener’s Spring Tostada

Cooked beans (about 1 1/2 hours in water with a carrot, garlic and small onion, for flavor; salt when cooked)
Garlic
Spinach
Carrots, grated
Green onions, sliced
Salsa
Corn tortillas
Olive oil

Heat up the cooked beans in olive oil with a few cloves of chopped garlic. Cook the corn tortillas in a small amount of olive oil in a cast iron skillet, or brush with oil and bake for ten minutes at 400 degrees. Layer spinach, beans, vegetables and salsa on the hot tortillas, and enjoy after a long, hard day of gardening!

Apr 10 2010

Invasives in the Garden: ‘You’ll Love It. It’ll Spread!’

Most gardeners have been there at some point. Whether faced with a tiny yard or wide open spaces, filling our newly dug garden with perennials seemed a daunting task. Heading to the local nursery to get the job done is often not feasible, depending on the size of the garden.

Sharing plants and plant wisdom is one of my most favorite things about gardening. Gardeners are generous people by nature and seem to love to share plants and to teach each other what they know. I was a blank slate when I moved into my current home and started carving gardens out of the sandy soil, and my friends were there to help. Not only do I remember and recognize every single perennial in my garden that was given to me by a friend, but I remember the odd little stories that go along with each.

I’m famously bad at remembering plant names, but I have one plant in my long perennial border that, at least ten years after receiving it from a friend, I still call the “specimen plant.” When she so generously arrived with one more in a series of boxes of confusing balls of soil and roots, she pulled one clump out, saying, “this one is a real specimen plant.”

I’m sure I’d be a better person if I knew its real name but this makes me smile every time, remembering the many plants she shared with me to help me get that forty-foot border started.

Unfortunately, not all memories of plant gifts make me smile. In fact, a few make me curse.

A gardening coworker, about fourteen years ago, offered me white violets that she was supposedly “dividing” in her garden. Recalling early childhood garden moments spent picking tiny bouquets of purple violets and johnny jump-ups, I envisioned a similarly pleasant scene in my new garden. Encouragingly, she said, “You’ll love them; they’ll spread.” I don’t think she had love in her heart when she made that offer.

Those blasted white violets are the most invasive plants my garden has encountered. Any attempt to dig them up only causes them to retaliate by multiplying. Allowing them to show their sweet little blooms is sure to result in thousands of tiny seedlings the next spring. Their knobby roots make them ridiculously hard to remove.

At about the same time, I wandered into a not so reputable nursery, in search of cheap perennials. I found a pretty, variegated plant, that the owner told me was a groundcover that “would spread beautifully.” He told me it was ajuga, although I’m sure he didn’t specify what variety. I really only heard the words “spread beautifully.” I bought one.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours, I’m sure, digging ajuga from all corners of my yard. It’s now growing behind my yard in the woods, not seeming to care if it has sun or not. I have since learned of, and acquired, a couple of very well-behaved, small purple ajugas, but this one would eat my shed if left alone. It spreads by sending out runners, then putting down roots wherever it can, which is anywhere.

If I were at all entrepreneurial, I’d probably dig all the ajuga plants in my yard up (as I imagine that nursery owner must have done), pot them and sell them from a fly-by-night roadside stand. I could make a big sign saying, “Perfect Plants: Will Spread Like Crazy!”

A north country friend is establishing a new shade garden and I’ve offered to share a few things from my garden. Of course, I love the idea that she might walk through her yard one day and remember a story about a plant I passed along. Mindful of having been wronged by at least one generous gardener of the past (not a friend–friends know they’ll be around when the cursing begins years later), I’m considering giving her a box of my favorite all-time ground cover, sweet woodruff.

Sweet woodruff does spread. It blooms in May into a beautiful flotilla of tiny white blossoms. In my garden, it spreads in a slow, predictable way. It doesn’t burrow under the foundation and appear on the other side of the house, or leap through the air. It just spreads a little more and becomes a little more dense each year.

Can I be assured it will behave this way in another garden? As long as she’s not planting it in a very wet area, it should behave itself. It’s a little risky, but it’s a beautiful plant, so I’ll take the risk. If I hear my friend cursing in a few years, I’ll be there to help.

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Update: I now know, thanks to reader Pam, that the photo above is not ajuga, but an invasive lamium. Funny that it never occurred to me that that garden center guy himself could have misidentified the plant. That’s probably a good indication that he did, in fact, dig it up himself, with dollar signs dancing in his head all the while. Buyer beware!

Apr 7 2010

Ben Hewitt on Fox

One more step toward bringing an important topic to mainstream America: Ben Hewitt, author of The Town That Food Saved, on Fox Business television. A rather challenging interview, handled well.

If you haven’t read it yet, check it out.

Apr 5 2010

Digging into the Future

What a perfect weekend for gardening we had here in New Hampshire. With temperatures in the mid-70s and no biting insects to speak of, possibilities were around every corner. I love this time of year, and I love tending to my garden.

This year’s apparent early spring has given us the gift of a few extra weeks to get out there and get things ready, before the crush of May chores arrives. And yet, the possibilities seem almost more endless than usual, perhaps because of the wide open spaces of early spring. This is the time of year when I forget exactly what perennials are going to come up where, and have to stop myself from digging around too eagerly. It’s a good thing that it’s too early for most planting, because I’d be filling those deceptively open spaces with new plants. Every year, I think I’ll take the time to mark everything carefully so I’ll remember, and I never quite get to it.

Having moved my vegetable garden to the front yard, I was able to start working on a spot for a new herb and flower garden in its place, and plant grass seed in the new path. A box of old Mexican tiles found a new purpose. It’s important to have chairs in all the right spots; gazing is an important step in the process, too.

I spent time in the long perennial garden alongside my driveway, thinking all the while about what plants I’ll move this year, what I might add and, once again, whether or not a perennial border should really be mulched with bark mulch. I turned to the website of my favorite local nursery, Uncanoonuc Mt. Perennials, in Goffstown, New Hampshire, for a refresher. The factsheet on perennials and mulch does advise bark mulch. It also mentions that using pine needles is okay, but suggests applying lime to the soil before putting down the pine needles. If only my pine needles weren’t completely mixed with oak leaves, this would be a great option for me. I love the look of the pine straw mulch in southern gardens; my scruffy red pine needles tangled with oak leaves just don’t make the grade. It seems a little crazy to be bagging up my pine needles and oak leaves and buying bulk mulch, but I haven’t found a satisfactory alternative yet.

Unfortunately, I also grumbled a lot about invasive plants. This particular perennial garden is the site of one very memorable back injury, the result of a few days of pulling up suckers and roots (and not knowing when to stop). Last summer, this border was pretty much on its own and those same suckers and roots took over. Forsythia and multiflora rose roots of shrubs removed years ago are popping forth—everywhere. Bittersweet, too, which I blame on a neighbor who allowed it to adorn her pine tree because it was “so beautiful.” And, some persistent perennial weed I know by the name of Bouncing Bess, that spreads underground and seems to like to be pulled up. That is, just when I think I’ve got a good hold on it, it snaps, only to back in a couple of weeks in multiples of its former self. All of this seems to have been made worse by my abutting neighbor’s installation of landscape fabric (under mulch), which (I imagine) serves to redirect all frustrated roots toward my garden.

I did not achieve perfection in that garden, but I did make progress and sustained no serious injury. Grumbling out of the way, at least for a little while, I was able to refocus my energy on more productive, hopeful things.

What I love best about gardening is its ability to pull me into the future, to fill my head with fully developed images of how I want my gardens to be. Whether or not those images translate into real projects isn’t even the point. Every chore in the garden is an investment in tomorrow, next week, next month or even some more distant time.

There’s no other aspect of my life which is simultaneously so in the moment and so fully about the future.

And, oh yes, I planted cucumber, sunflower, lettuce and basil seeds in flats.

Apr 2 2010

Preaching to the Choir

For the most part, I think I surround myself with people who care where their food comes from. Not all are vegetarians; those who aren’t are increasingly thoughtful about the choices they make in purchasing chicken, pork, fish and meat. Most of us care about the food we choose in general and are interested in improving access to good food. I seem to be a vegetarian at this time in my life but I’m comfortable with others making a different choice.

Like politics and religion, I tread carefully on food topics at work, unless I’m talking to the handful of people who I know also care. Somehow, today, a couple of us (vegetarians) stumbled into a conversation about being present when chickens were slaughtered. It was not a graphic conversation. We had not been disgusted by the experience, although we certainly remember it vividly.

I took one step too far and commented that I thought that if most people had more intimate knowledge of how animals were raised and slaughtered, they might eat less meat. Oops. Another coworker shot me a puzzled (angry?) look, paused, and said, “Not me. It’s all part of the food chain. I don’t care where it comes from or how it’s killed. I eat meat with no problem.”

I wanted to walk away and pretty much did, after politely ending the conversation.

I realized in that moment how sheltered I am, how much I protect myself by not even engaging in conversation with people who disagree (or I believe might disagree) on issues like this. Sure, I talk about gardening, growing sprouts, cooking, CSAs–all safe topics. But, I stay clear of opinions and proclamations like the one I came out with today, or more radical ones, in the same way that I might avoid speaking openly about Sarah Palin’s probable IQ.

Cowardice, I think.

Hanging out with the choir gives me that assurance that I’m on the right track, and that my ideas have value. It allows me to work under somewhat of an illusion that there’s reason to hope for change, and I want nothing more than to believe that there is reason to hope. I envy people who are brave enough to engage respectfully with people who disagree; that’s hard for me. That leaves me to wonder how I might be useful in working toward change on the issues I care about, and I’m not too sure right now.

Today, the choir feels small.

Nourishing Words

on food, sustainability, gardening and healthful living

Monthly Archives: April 2010