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I wonder

Posted at 11:06 PM on November 17, 2008 by Vera Schabicki (3 Comments)

We have been getting Vegetables weekly from Mr Cheeseman of Flora at Bluebird Farm, I guess this would amount to an almost casual CSA...this week we have lots of beet greens, arugula, salad mix and minutina, as well as duck and chicken eggs, I really enjoy all of these things but they are not universally popular with my children. I drove to Zion Farms this week to stock my freezer with Chicken......My littlest Galen had a blast palying with the the Farmers children, it also happened to be butchering day....Galen loved the kids and puppies, he made no comment about the butchering......wonder if he realises that all of those turkeys running around in the yard where experiencing their last days.

Money has been pretty tight these last few months so I had to wait to place orders for War Eagle Mill flours and Southern Brown Rice ( I had been cheating and just getting bulk stuff at theWhole foods..By the way, Whole Foods seems to have a much larger commitment to local food than Wild Oats did, and they are publishing all of these pretty nifty flyers about putting together affordable organic meals from their store...pretty cool......and their 365 brand of whole wheat pasta is really delicious...and much less pricey than other organic pastas.......not local though).

I wonder about priorities at times....I have time to drive the kids to sports activites, as well as various educational and social opportunities...clean and cook....do school work....but I am so pooped on farmers market day that I really cannot force myself to go....I think I did well in June but really lost it for the rest of the summer.

It occurs to me that maybe the garden suffers from neglect as well as from ineptness, armadillos and Mississippis active and profuse critter population (have I mentioned that I have been getting really horrible poison ivy......I have been a dripping sodden shivering mess for the last few summers......yuchhhhhhhhh!!!!!). I wonder how much time one is actually meant to spend in the garden if one is hoping to get any food of value from it.....maybe I had better step back and rethink this whole gardening thing a little more. I have done some raised square foot gardening beds as well as a ton of Lasagna style beds, I have one long double dug bed ( a real pain to work up in our heavy clay soil, and the least prolific spot in the whole garden). I have read that tilling the soil is not good for the little microorganisms, so I have never done that..

I read my fellow Locavores posts and it seems as if many people are able to just put seed or plants into the ground and stuff actually grows....wow....this is something I have had such bad success with...I think my success rate is about 20% and that is being generous (I do have great parsley and I had a bumper crop of Scotch Bonnet chilies)!

The farther into this Locavore gig we get, the more I am getting the impression that many if not all of us might consider having a garden, but at this point it is such a waste of time and money that I almost cannot justify my continuing to pursue such, for me, lofty goals.

Does any one have a suggestion for a great garden book for one whose thumb is not a darker shade of green......

Best Wishes to Ya'll, Vera

Comments (3)

Hello Vera!
Check out Ann Lovejoy. She is a gardener/writer who lives on an island near Seattle. I believe she homeschooled her kids. She had a column on two days in the Seattle P - I (Wed-cooking and Thurs-gardening). Here is the book you ough tto look at: http://books.google.com/books?id=cW33Wcvu3dcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:Ann+inauthor:Lovejoy&lr=#PPA1,M1

Posted by P. Thompson | November 18, 2008 6:00 PM

Vera,
I mean to say Ann Lovejoy HAS two columns, not had.

Paulette

P.S. Election night was so exciting!

Posted by P. Thompson | November 18, 2008 6:06 PM

Starting with clay soil makes it that much harder and less fun up front - been there, done that, etc. But - if you want to garden anyway, really want to, head for the library when you have time to read a few older copies of Organic Gardening magazine. I learned to garden, step by step, that way. Find a copy of Ruth Stout's gardening book for some alternative no-till methods. (These include gardening in the nude, but I don't think the plants care all that much what you do or don't have on while you mulch.) If you're short on time, the first year, pick a few things that you really like to eat (and that are fun for the kids -- snap peas, carrots, strawberries -- not too much) and just concentrate on growing those really well. Try for things that won't all come to harvest at the same time. Tomatoes, of course. If you want to email me a little more about what you did and what happened, and what you're still into trying, I'll be glad to send some tips your way. As long as you don't have a coal ash dump in your new backyard, like we did, you should have some success next year. And then you will be hooked and can expand the effort :-). And if you don't really want to garden, there's always Whole Foods and the farmers markets to keep in business! That's good, too!

Posted by Cher | November 20, 2008 9:28 PM