The Perma Life

Yesterday I wandered around my hometown bookstore looking for something fun to read when I came across a new magazine all about urban farming. More and more people seem to be jumping on the bandwagon of sustainability. The good thing is this wagon has enough room to hold us all! Then, last night, gathered at a relative’s home for a family dinner, my little nephew Ned got to go out and collect eggs which he proudly displayed and then took home:

Ned shows off the eggs he collected

I got excited all over again and then felt guilty that over the past few months life has intruded on my best-laid plans for sharing my adventures with all 2 or 3 of you who are reading this. My resolution for the New Year is to gear back up in the yard, in my community and here on my blog to continue to save my own little corner of paradise. I promise not to leave you hanging this long again.

My garden at least hasn’t been completely fallow: here is a small harvest of lettuce, peppers and radishes from last week. And the broccoli is growing happily as well.

Broccoli

It’s been a very busy week in my world and I have to admit that I have not paid as much attention to the garden as I should have. Not getting home from work until at least 9pm 5 nights in a row will do that to a person. (Somewhat) luckily, it has rained every day here so I haven’t had to worry about my outside plants drying out. On the contrary, it has rained so much that I am afraid most of the seeds I planted last weekend in the outside beds have rotted and/or drowned. It remains to be seen whether I will have to replant. In the meantime something has been eating the leaves of my broccoli seedlings and my collards.

On the other end of the watering spectrum, my seedlings in the greenhouse seem to have suffered the opposite fate of my drowned green lettuce mix. Many of  the tender plants just beginning to spring from the seed starting mix have suffered a painfully thirsty death due to my neglect. I’d say all in all my kill rate has been about 30% for the week. And I call myself a gardener! Once again, playing in the dirt is agony and ecstasy.

Phase 1 of my herb lady business is now in effect- I have planted 100 seeds and hope to see them germinate in the coming weeks. But many herbs can also be reproduced by taking cuttings, and today I took several cuttings that will hopefully grow into big strong plants in their own right. Anyone who is not familiar with plants may think this a complicated task, but it is actually simple enough that even I have a hard time screwing it up.

You start with  your “parent plant”:

My herb area

Then take some cuttings from the plants you want to propagate, making sure there are at least 2 sets of leaves, cutting just below a leaf node. Try not to pick tough, woody stems.  Pinch the leaves from the bottom node- this is the part of the plant you will stick in the soil, and what once grew leaves will now grow roots. You’ll also want to pinch off any lower leaves so they don’t touch the soil and rot. Also get rid of any flowers. You’ll be left with a somewhat pathetic specimen like this Basil below:

Pinch the leaves off at the bottom, this will be where the new roots grow

I like to dip the node that will go in the soil in a little rooting hormone to help it root faster, but you don’t necessarily have to do this. Plunk the little sucker in the soil (or seed starting mix, which is what I am using in the picture above), keep things moist and warm and pretty soon you will have baby herbs everywhere.

Told you it was simple!

I spent the past weekend in North Carolina with a group of fellows from the Southeast Regional Network of the Environmental Leadership Program (ELP). This year long program trains environmental leaders from all over the country so that we can be better equipped to do our jobs in fields ranging from environmental advocacy, food security and childhood obesity. This is the second retreat for me and I once again find myself coming off the weekend with a fresh perspective and wanting to tackle a thousand projects at once.

The retreat/camp center we stayed in was particularly fun- Chestnut Ridge Camp in Efland, NC has a small community farm and much of our meals were sourced from the garden on premises. One morning a couple of friends and I walked down the trail to see the farm before breakfast- once we got through the gate, 2 pigs came trotting up, looking for a snack and a scratch. A chicken coop, large garden and goat pen with 3 goats rounded out the farm. Their garden is much bigger than my own, and much weedier, which made me feel a little better about neglecting my own weeding chores over the past couple of weeks.

The weekend was stimulating, to say the least. Each person there was filled with passion, intelligence and an appreciation for the natural environment. Just out of curiosity, over the course of the weekend, I would periodically listen in on casual conversations. The interesting thing? They all revolved around nature, around good food, around being environmental stewards. A regular Joe may find this type of passion for a job incomprehensible, but I felt so grateful this weekend to work in an area that I find interesting enough to talk about all weekend long. It is my wish that we could all be so lucky. If you want to be lucky as well- quick…go outside, turn your face towards the sun, feel the first twinges of the coming fall in your bones, and then dig your hands in the warm dirt and plant something. Lettuce, spinach, a flower- it doesn’t matter. But get out there.

This spring and summer I experimented with my first real garden but I miscalculated how many plants I needed to reliably feed 2 people. I also want to avoid the problem of suddenly having 20 pounds of squash that I have to unload on other people or watch rot. So I have been doing a little research and trying to find the following:

1. How many plants do you need to put in the ground at a time to feed 2 people?

2. How (and when) should you plant successively to have a continuous harvest throughout the growing season?

My Square Foot Gardening Book has some good guides that I can use based on average first and last frost dates, but what I really want is some sort of mega spreadsheet that I can use to plan and track harvest, etc.

I spent almost an entire day looking for a template of some sort because I am not very good at creating spreadsheets.

I found a great one at www.golocavore.com - here is the link to the page where you can download an excel or numbers version of the planner. It looks a little complicated at first, but read the guide that goes along with it and it will make sense. I have modified mine to include a page for planned and actual as well as a page for tracking garden journal info and plant info for what I am planning to grow. I’ll post my version when I finish it, but in the meantime have fun with this one – and check out the entire www.golocavore.com site- it is really great.

This summer I planted a garden using the Square Foot Gardening technique. Based on square foot gardening, you can get higher yields from smaller areas, which is great for people who don’t have a lot of space. I learned a few lessons this summer over the course of gardening season, number one being: don’t get too greedy and try to grow one of everything. While this works in theory, the practical result is that you never have quite enough to make a solid meal. This led to my husband calling my garden the “Snack Patch”. There were always enough peas, strawberries and tomatoes for me to eat while pulling weeds, etc. but there was never enough to fix dinner with.

This fall I am going to try to not have that problem by planting more plants with a little less variety. This is going to be hard, because I want to grow everything, but I only have 3 4×4 beds.

Here is what I am thinking for this fall/winter:

Winter Squash, Broccoli, Greens, Carrots, Potatoes, Spinach

I am using this Alabama Extension Service publication as my guide. I have found the extension service publications to be great local sources of information, and every state has one. For instance, let’s say I am thinking of growing vegetables in Minnesota…

Here is the Minnesota Extension Service guide to vegetables. That was easy!