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| Us! a while ago! In the Garden-To-Be! |
We don't have a rootceller yet (it's on the list), and I've been trying to start writing this first entry for the last two weeks but world events are just too damn interesting!! This is a blog about our journey to competence where we will detail our sporadic bursts of activity in our meandering quest to own and understand "responsibility" in all things. Mostly though, it's about our garden and our animals and our lives. Which is OK, because while unsound politics and cataclysimic world events have a place (and in my life their place is unreasonably constant), these last few years have really emphasized to me just how important it is to step back from it all and just do something productive. So that's what we try to do.
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| Krystal transplanting the Collard/Onion/Celery bed in Feb |
The garden is almost planted for the season, I am unreasonably excited about corn. We placed several orders with Horizon Herbs for various projects (great people btw, fantastic selection and great service but make sure you order over the phone because their online ordering system is... quaint... and didn't process my order correctly.... and was a headache.... but calling them worked quite well). For corn we've got two patches planted - In the Vallejo house we've got a 10x8 bed of Hopi Purple and Anasazi Sweet in your classic mounded row spacing intercropped with Kosovo beans (climbers, very very hardy seedlings) and several types of gourd/cucumbers in various quarters of the bed. All the seeds were direct sowed maybe 3 weeks ago and we thinned + transplanted (with limited success, most of the transplants look like they're not
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| A more recent shot of the Garden at dusk |
going to make it, but we'll still wind up with 85% corn coverage so I'm satisfied). Both varietals are 90 days to maturity and wind up something like 10 feet tall with 2-3 foot long ears per stalk. In addition to that patch, I also have an experiment going in one compartment of the raised cabinet bed - I read that one of the ways the hopis planted corn in areas where rain was infrequent and irrigation impossible 20 or so seeds down one 12" deep hole, which was then mounded up - Most corn would not be able to push that far to break through the surface, but the hopi varietals were selected for that ability and so they do push through (and by doing so further select down the population for next years seed to only phenotypes that were able to do so this year - I LOVE self-reinforcing evolutionary development, it's so natural and yet so efficiently productive.)
- The brilliant part here is that by planting so deeply they don't have to worry about the standard rain cycle nearly as much, but also that in those wind-swept plains the close planting proximity acts as a structurally reinforced living barrier against the wind, or any animal damage that might occur. The outer stocks produce poorly, but the inner stocks produce plentifully. So that's what i'm trying - I planted 20-ish Hopi Purple seeds about a foot down in one section of our raised bed, watered throughly, and then anxiously waited. We're now about 3 weeks in (might be 4) and they're looking healthy as can be - Will post further pictures as this progresses.
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| Red (the Chicken) & Meesha (the Dog) |
In preperation for our breeding set of Californian rabbits (1 male, 2 females) we've planted a 8x4 bed of alfalfa with a back border of sunflowers (picked up $2 for 6 very advanced seedlings at the Loma Vista Farms sale the other day to fill out the space) - Conveniently this should also soak up most of the heat that would otherwise be hitting our chicken coop during this summers inevitable (and groan inducing) heat. I have it in my head that given a bit of additional study we should be able to feed the offspring (intended for butcher, either for ourselves or for the dogs) mostly fresh green matter that is available in abundance all around our house, not even to speak of the availability at my parents place. We may wind up feeding the breeders a more refined diet, but as much as we can we are striving for self-reliant solutions, of which medicated alfalfa pellets are not.
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| Krystal's "All roots, all the time" savory relish - My favorite! |
Despite my adult background (which is nothing but videogames, paper sales, snarkyness, and technology), getting my hands dirty has proved to be.... entertaining. Which is sorta a trip all by itself given how much I absolutely despised everything about manual labor, especially outside, especially in the heat, and how much more tolerable it all is now that I can see the point. It is invigorating and enlivening, and allows me to demonstrate to myself that all I have to do to have a positive impact is to decide to do it, and then do it. It sounds self-helpy, but given how much of my life I had spent waiting for someone else to do something so that then I could go do the next part and allow the next person.... Bleh..... The idea of being able to decide on a course of action and accomplish something that will have tangible benefit to myself in a visible way is astonishing both in its simplicity and in, frankly, the fact that it never made sense to me before.
My wife has been telling me all of these things for years, but it took until now for me to see. I like to think I am getting faster at seeing the trends, but I'm still new at this yet.
