A Victory Garden

Planning for Fall

Each one of the eight Sabbats is, for me, not only a spiritual guidepost but a garden marker, full of reminders of tasks and anticipation of delicious harvests. Through the magic of freezing and canning and other tricks of the trade, I eat at least a few things from my garden year-round, and each turn of the Wheel brings a different treat from the garden.

The Summer Solstice usually marks the first batch of the Sungold tomatoes ripening, along with early garlic and basil, so I get to have the year's first iteration of what may be my favorite dish -- bowtie pasta with olive oil, garlic, fresh chopped basil and Parmesan Reggiano, with halved Sungolds to top it off. It never tastes quite right if the tomatoes are not from my garden, so I'll be able to enjoy it only until frost finishes the tomatoes. Fortunately, the Sungolds are prolific, the first to ripen and the last to give up the ghost. I'll eat a lot of this dish in the next few months!

Solstice is also a reminder that it's time to start thinking about the Fall garden, because many of the brassicas -- like cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage -- need to be planted in late June or early July for a good fall harvest.  I planted them today: Amazing and Cheddar cauliflower; Thompson, Bay Meadows, and Waltham broccoli; Early Jersey, January King and Beira Tronchuda cabbage. The Beira Tronchuda is also known as Portuguese Kale, and it's an experiment this year. I'll freeze the extra broccoli and cauliflower, but the cabbage will be stored in the corner of my garage that passes for a root cellar, and fed to the chickens over the winter. Perhaps I've just never learned to cook it well, but cabbage has never been a favorite of mine, except when shredded raw into Fall salads.

So if you want an Autumn harvest, take a fresh look at what's going on in your garden over the next week or so and assess what space you can free up by pulling non-productive plants, both now and as the season progresses. Get a copy of the Winter Gardening catalog from Territorial Seed company--it will give you a good idea of what to plant and how to plant it over much of the continental U.S.

Then note what space will open up in your garden as other crops stop producing, and make a plan for what you will plant, when and where. You'll probably want to transplant the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage after the weather turns cooler, so start them in pots -- and soon! (Keep the newly-planted flats out of direct sun until they germinate -- they germinate best in soil temperatures between 55 and 75 degrees.) Some things, like carrots, Chinese cabbage, and spinach, will be best if direct-seeded later in the season. Lettuce can take transplanting or direct-seeding. Winter greens will be direct-seeded in late Summer to early Fall and garlic for next year's harvest won't go in until October.

Start planning now, and you can keep your garden going almost all year!

 

 

The Garden Begins at Solstice

For me, the year ends at Samhain, the new year begins at Winter Solstice (what happens in between those dates is the subject of a whole ‘nother post). The secular new year is pretty meaningless to me, philosophically, but the energy of the zeitgeist can always be worked with magically, and for many years now I have usually spent New Year’s Eve in quiet and meditation, channeling the celebratory energy that is zipping around into my own working to implement shifts I had decided to make during the dark weeks of the year. 

It’s a time that is still close enough to the Solstice to resonate to that energy, and the increasing light is noticeable now. The word “Joy” is tossed around -- on cards and ornaments and wrapping paper -- a lot during the season of the Solstice, and I like working with that energy, too. Joy is a foundation of my personal spiritual path, and I feel it is our birthright. Sadly, it is one we often have difficulty claiming.

My thoughts last evening were particularly bittersweet. I see so much change and upheaval coming, and with an astrological event involving expansion, luck, and change peaking in a few days*, I sent out strong intentions for change in our world that constantly spins to the better outcome, and for clouds to have silver linings.

I also set some intentions to carry with me into the time of the growing Light. I will:

• Listen even more carefully to the voices of the Earth.
• Deepen my relationships with my spiritual allies, both physical and non-physical
• Stay in gratitude for the beauty of life on this amazing Earth, for the gift of love, and for the indomitable human spirit.
• Nurture the cycle of life on our planet

Where better to do these things than in my garden? So my garden will be, as it so often is, the primary focus of my spiritual work this year. It teaches me focus and discipline, flexibility and an expanded awareness of other worlds. It keeps me grounded in the beloved Earth, and connects me with the Sun and stars. It speaks, so I can learn to listen, it opens my heart to beauty, and to the Love that is the Source of all.  

I will post this, and then go into the garden. There are still some tomato cages that need to be put away, beds to be cleared of plant debris, and plans to be made. The snow is all gone here, and temps are in the 50s.  

Happy New Year!

 

*The final conjunction of this Jupiter-Uranus cycle at 27 Pisces. Uranus continues on to square Pluto for a few years. That, and my own psychic insights, are why I see change and upheaval coming.

Peppers, Garlic, and Mulligatawny Soup

I’ve decided to start up this blog again, in the hopes that it may interest, intrigue or inspire at least a few people to pick up a digging fork and a trowel and start gardening. The world is changing quickly, and the weaknesses of industrial agriculture are becoming inescapably clear. Not everyone can grow their own food, but many of us can, and food must and will become more local. Instead of a chicken in every pot, we need a flock in every yard, and a garden, too. So I’ll share my gardening challenges and solutions, as well as a few recipes and advice for storing all that produce. I have a degree in Soil Science and I’ve been raising and preserving at least some of my own food for 35 years now, so I have plenty of knowledge to share. Feel free to write me with questions.

This week, I’ll be doing some “putting the garden to bed” work – pulling up plants, doing a final mowing and trimming, and planting garlic. Garlic does best around here if it’s planted in the fall. It overwinters well, gets a head start in the spring, and by early July, I have a new crop. It’s an excellent antibiotic as well as one of my favorite foods, so I like to grow lots of it.

Garlic’s a heavy feeder, and likes lots of sun. The same is true of peppers, and I’ll be planting the garlic in the beds where my peppers grew this summer. So I’ll add a LOT of compost to the beds after I pull up the peppers, and then check the pH, to see if I need to add some lime, as well. Like most vegetable crops, garlic prefers a pH of around 6.5 to 7.0, and while many veggies do well under a relatively wide range of pH, garlic tends to be a bit finicky about it.

Now I need to deal with my bumper crop of sweet peppers, both green and red. Fortunately, peppers freeze very easily – you don’t even need to blanch them. Remove the tops and seeds, cut them in half and stick them in a freezer bag. Don’t cut them any more than you have to, though. The more cut edges there are, the more quickly the quality will degrade in the freezer.

I’ll use some of the peppers, and some of this year’s crop of garlic to make Mulligatawny soup in big batches that I’ll freeze. Here’s the recipe:

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves (or more) of garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 small apple, peeled and diced
1 cup raw, boneless, skinless chicken, cubed
1/3 cup flour
2 teaspoons (or to taste) curry powder
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
5 cups chicken stock
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup tomatoes, chopped (canned is fine)
½ cup mixed parsley and cilantro

Sauté the veggies and the chicken in the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed soup pot for 15 minutes. Add flour, nutmeg, cloves and curry powder, cook for a minute or two. Add stock and tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for 1 hour, partially covered. Cook up some rice, but don’t add it to the soup until you serve it. Then top with a tablespoon or two of parsley and cilantro.

Offerings for the birds

This morning, as I was picking blueberries, I heard my neighbors drive off to church. I was already in my church, dropping berries into my big colander as the sun finally climbed over the trees, listening to the birds singing, my cat Robin Hood twining between my feet, my chickens grabbing the berries I dropped.

I believe that a balanced and healthy relationship with Nature is essential to a balanced and healthy life. I believe that a greater Consciousness, of which we are a part, creates physical reality and we are co-creators, part of a web of existence, not separate from it.

So today, after picking another couple of gallons to freeze, I will pull the bird netting off of the blueberries and allow the birds to finish off the harvest. There are still quite a few berries on these bushes, both ripe and unripe  – I could get at least another gallon if I left the netting on – but it’s important to me to share with the birds, to give them a gift that is the result of my labor planting, growing, pruning and fertilizing the blueberries. After all, they give me so much -- their songs and beauty, not to mention the insect control. I acknowledge the web of life with this gift, and I'll offer a prayer and a song to the spirits of the land as well on this fine morning.

 Here’s an interesting article on how food gardening is taking off in Britain.

Back to my blueberries!

Growing blueberries

I’ve been promising to answer some of the questions I had gotten about blueberries from my previous post, and then this morning I found that one of my favorite bloggers (and singer/songwriters!), Christine Kane, had been taken to task for not giving enough information about blueberries in a post she had titled “A Crash Course in Blueberries” (which was really about taking delight in life – and blueberries) But it certainly seems that more info on blueberries needs to get out there, so here goes…

Blueberries are pretty easy to grow, especially here in the Eastern US, where the soils are naturally somewhat to very acidic. Depending on the variety, the bushes (and I’m discussing the more common highbush blueberry here) are anywhere from 2 to 7 feet tall. They are pretty, and turn a lovely color in the fall, so they work well as a hedge as well as a food crop. I suggest planting several varieties with different maturity dates, so that you have a longer harvest. You can plant pot-grown plants at any time during the growing season, but spring is best. You can get a head start on site preparation now. 

First, you’ll want a location that gets full sun, with well-drained soil that has a pH low enough for blueberries (between 4.8 and 5.5). If rhododendrons and azaleas grow well in your soil, you’ll probably be fine, but a soil test is always a good thing, courtesy of your local agricultural extension agency. If your pH is too high, talk to your extension agent about how to lower it, but you’ll need to delay your planting for about a year while you do that. Good drainage is also important.

Blueberries like a soil that is high in organic matter, so dig in plenty of compost, leaf mold or well-rotted manure. If you are not too impatient, I’d suggest tilling the area now and planting a cover crop of oats or something else that will grow quickly and winter-kill reliably in your area to add organic matter and get a head-start on weed control. You can also just throw down a few inches of fairly fresh horse manure right on top of the soil now and let it rot over winter. But don’t plant until spring if you do this. 

When you plant, dig a hole twice as big as the root ball, and plant a bit deeper than the plant grew in the nursery. Plant 6 to 8 feet apart. Don’t put fertilizer in the planting hole! Backfill with soil about halfway, then give it a good soaking to settle the soil around the roots. Finish by filling the rest of the hole, watering really well, and mulching. I use brown cardboard or newspaper under wood chip mulch. Wet the cardboard/newspaper before putting down the wood chips. The mulch is important, as blueberries are shallow-rooted and sensitive to drought. 

I find blueberries don’t need much fertilizer. I throw down some compost and a bit of bloodmeal or some Holly-tone in the spring before renewing the mulch. Newly planted berries should be fertilized about a month after planting. 

You won’t need to prune out anything except weak or broken canes for the first 4 or 5 years, then you’ll want to prune out the old canes (gray with peeling bark) and weak shoots. I’ll write more about pruning them in late winter, which is the best time to prune. 

Now, I still owe you that peach/blueberry cobbler recipe, and I promise I won’t forget!

Getting serious about food storage

Sharon Astyk has an excellent post today on the need to store at least 3 months of food. Read it here

She makes an very good case for stocking up NOW.

Water, water, here and there….

We are in the middle of a drought here in the Southeast. My friend Byron gave me a rain gauge a few weeks ago, and I’m loving it! I now know, for instance, that we accumulated a whole inch of rain over the past 3 days (for a change!), and I don’t have to water my garden this week. I’ve been guessing/intuiting or digging down in the dirt to check how much water is needed for so long, it’s fun to go out there and check quickly and accurately without leaving my front porch.  It’s also a great relief to get all the rain that is currently needed for the garden from the sky alone.

Gardens – vegetable gardens, at least – need at least an inch of rain per week to thrive. You can shave that a little with heavy mulch, but only a little. Most veggies are between 80% to 90% water – they just can’t do without it. Today I put a bit of fertilizer down today here and there just before the rain. When plants are flowering and beginning to form fruit is usually a good time to give them a bit of fertilizer as a side dressing (in other words, scratch it into the soil near the plant), and let the rain carry it to the roots. I am partial to Vegetables Alive from Gardens Alive.

 Soil crusts over when it is dry and little seedlings have a hard time breaking through. This is one of the reasons I’ve always found carrots to be somewhat daunting – I plant them too deep, or I don’t keep them watered enough (they are sensitive to soil crusting), or I don’t thin them enough. Since organic carrots are easy to find in supermarkets, I’ve only planted them occasionally and experimentally, but this year I’m working on growing my own  --  or at least a few of my own!

I just planted some last week, and put a layer of burlap over the bed to hold in some moisture. Of course, I need to watch carefully and remove it as soon as the little seedlings start popping their heads out of the ground. I also planted in rows instead of broadcasting, to make thinning easier, AND I planted on a waning moon, the best time to plant root crops. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and I had blueberry questions to answer…but I don’t have time now. Next post!

Quote of the day...

"The $1.2 billion the World Bank says will solve the food crisis in Africa is a $1.2 billion subsidy to the chemical industry," said Vandana Shiva, an Indian physics professor and environmental activist speaking at the forum in Modena.

"Countries are made dependent on chemical fertilizers when their prices have tripled in the last year due to rising oil prices," she said. "I say to governments: spend a quarter of that on organic farming and you've solved your problems."

Read the whole article here: 

I'll be back tomorrow with answers to some blueberry questions and my latest carrot experiment...

More evidence of our communal insanity...

There are options. We do not need all these pesticides to grow food. Continuing to foul our nest like this is insane!

Home-grown veg ruined by toxic fertiliser

And, of course, if the manure is contaminated, it's likely the animals are too. And anyone who eats food grown or raised on that farm.

Raspberries!

I’ve been away for a few days, and when I wandered out this morning to pick some raspberries for breakfast, I was able to pick several pints. What I didn’t eat went in the freezer.

Rasps are easy to grow, but be sure to buy certified virus-free stock. Plant them in full sun (though they’ll still bear if they get some shade). I prefer to plant where I can mow around them, as they spread quickly. If you do some research, you can find lots of ways to fuss with spacing, pruning, fertilizing, etc., but I prefer to keep it simple. I put them in well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter, make sure they get at least an inch or so of water a week during the growing season, and throw down couple of inches of compost or well-rotted manure in the spring. I mulch when I plant them, but after the first year or so, they are growing so thickly they don’t need the mulch.You are supposed to prune out the old canes but I never bother and always get a good crop.  That’s about it. 

Most rasps bear in the spring/early summer. Some are fall-bearing. The spring/summer ones fruit on canes that are in their second year. The fall ones fruit on canes that have sprouted that year. Some do both, giving a small fall crop on first year canes and then a main crop on the same canes in the spring. The fall-bearing ones can be mowed down each year, since they fruit on the current year’s canes. 

You know the berries are ripe when they slip easily from their core. Also, be aware that wineberries, a wild type of raspberry, are quite invasive. They grow wild in much of the eastern U.S. in the same ecological niche as blackberries. They don't really taste like cultivated raspberries, but are quite edible. They just don’t have the same great flavor.