GRO4US

Well, it’s that time of year when we need to plant indoors, fix up the beds, and remove the dead and dying plants from the garden. Even my little garden is thinning out and needing a good once-over before I plant again. Most my cucumber plants have yellowed and slowed their production, the tomato plants look like they’re dying, and I’ve got to rip out the rest of my much-too-old lettuce.

And yet things are still going well.

The three bush beans that I planted have furnished nearly a full serving for six adults over a week’s time. The carrots that have been ever so doubtful are growing decently, and even my beets have thrived.

The last month or so feels like it has flown. All of a sudden my well maintained garden looks like a nightmare, and the weeds on the border have crept in nearly three or more inches. What doesn’t help is that the last cucumber that I planted has grown to massive proportions, with some four vines almost five feet long. (And they claim you can put a cucumber plant in a three-foot by three-foot space, hah!)

Of course, while I do have to work I also have to start things like broccoli indoors while I prepare my garden for the next plantings. I feel almost like Damocles, except that it feels like a big sack of flour is dangling over my head. It would help if I didn’t have to amend my soil and add more compost thanks to the hefty rains this year (by the account of one long-time gardener, this wasn’t a good year for a new gardener) but such is life.

At least I’ve seen the worst water can do in my region!

Perhaps you remember that I’ve got three kinds of tomatoes: cherry/plum, German Striped, and Beefsteak. I think I slipped up and called the last Big Beef for awhile, but they’re Beefsteak as far as I can tell. The primary problem is that the German Striped are a heirloom variety, and as such are more susceptible to splitting.

All things considered, I’ve done a good job with the tomatoes this year.

The plant that was supposed to produce cherry tomatoes has absolutely thrived, and has maybe fifty or so plum (or Roma) shaped tomatoes currently on the vine. I haven’t counted them, but that was a conservative estimate! According to my refractometer these tomatoes measure eight brix, an approximate measure of taste and nutrition (based off sugars present in the liquid of the fruit); the tomatoes from Costco are quite good for industrial-grade, which measure at about five point five brix. The tomatoes from the farmer’s market have been poor this year, in comparison, and rate the same as Costco did, but their taste was poor. Wish I knew what I’m doing right, but I’m picking enough great tomatoes for the three tomato lovers in our family.

The German Striped is another story. Out of all the fruit that I’ve thrown away I was only able to save three, all of which were split and unattacked by insects. The rain we had recently was tremendous, perhaps as much as a whole foot in the last two weeks. If I were to estimate, then I would say that we’ve had roughly eleven out of fourteen days with wetness.

But the real clincher was Sunday.

On Sunday we had several storms whip through in the wee hours of the morning. I awoke to howling winds and shearing rains at maybe 3am; by 7:30am another storm had come in with even more ferociousness. In less than an hour our yard had six inches of standing water from that one storm.

In spite of everything I’d figured would protect it, the clay soils and fifteen degree tilt to the area, my garden was waterlogged. In the night hours the hydraulic action of the tomato plants kicks in, absorbing all the water its roots can contact—and the storms had provided that in surplus. The net result is that all semi-ripe fruit on both the German Striped and the Beefsteak split.

Yet, I’m still doing something right. Last year’s tomatoes wouldn’t have survived a storm that size, being bent fully to the ground, or being stood back up. But I’ve got stems a full inch in diameter this year, and none of the tomatoes came lose during the storm. Understand that these were 60mph winds that uprooted trees half a mile away. All my tomatoes have survived that wind flattening them and are standing tall, if somewhat askew; the oddball cherry-plum tomato has gulped all the water it could with no ill effects.

If only I knew what I was doing right!

Last Saturday I attended a viewing of FRESH, a documentary about the state of the local farmer. Since then I’ve been pondering what I saw. FRESH very much echoes what I believe, but how I communicate that to others is the issue. FRESH is a tough film to sum up.

Review

The film begins at the bottom and works its way up. The start is the hardest part: you see the cruelty of the system to the animals, the cruelty of the system to the farmers, and the cruelty of the system to the environment. This early illustration shows how the players in this lethal game are the big industrial food distributors, and the pawns are the consumers and the farmers. If one of the big players decides not to renew their contract with a farmer, then that farmer is left with tens of thousands of dollars in high maintenance infrastructure to pay for—with money they did not earn from the stock they sold.

Supposedly the EPA protects us, but how do you safeguard against the manure-lagoons that result from industrial-grade systems? If you observe animals in their wild state you will quickly see that large herds, that are unsustainable in a given area, move frequently so as to have fresh food. This leaves their waste behind to nourish the avians that feed off the insects and the maggots, and replenishes the ground that was just grazed. In the CAFO, concentrated animal feeding operation, paradigm all the animals are crowded together so closely they’ve little moving room. Worse yet, the animals are never moved from the given area and these toxic manure lagoons form; these are lakes of dung and urine that never occur in natural environments. Seventy percent of all the grain produced by the United States to, supposedly, “feed the world” goes to these organizations to cheaply feed their animals. Herbivores such as cattle cannot handle grain because they are meant to digest grass, and grain is too concentrated in energy. And, no matter what they say, it is never safe to feed corpses of animals to an herbivore!

The middle of the film shows the difference between the CAFOs, such as Tyson or Con-Agra, and the local, unconventional farmer is that one cares about the animals, plants, and their local environment. I’ll leave you to guess which of these actually cares.

This part of the film even addresses the myth that all farms are dirty, stinky, and need to be kept away from where people live. As I watch the various scenes showing the unconventional farmers, I am constantly impressed by the greenery that I see compared to the dead and predominantly man-made landscape of the CAFO. Even the fields recently grazed by a herd of cattle aren’t messy, because they were moved recently and the poultry were let in. I’d rather eat happy animals that were able to express their nature, than the denatured, adulterated, bloated, pre-treated (with antibiotics) “meat” the CAFO produces.

The last part of the film concludes by showing examples of farmers who have either made the change, or have come from strange backgrounds. Strangest of all, to me, is a man named Will who came from a corporate background to go back to farming; in a mere three acres he produces so much food that it astounds people. One man nearly died because a boar stabbed him with a tusk, because the subsequent infection was already antibiotic resistant. That man exterminated his whole herd of pigs and started fresh, and within that first year saved $14,000 just by not needing veterinary visits.

By and large, FRESH is encouraging. It outlines the problems of today and shows the solutions of yesterday, that which came before the industrial method, and explains very well why you cannot industrialize everything.

Conclusion

If you get the opportunity to see a screening, please do so. FRESH is a wake-up-call that needs to be sounded to a world already wounded by industrialism. The local farmer is safe and trustworthy, and if you do get sick you simply have to go back and complain. Since when have you talked to the CEO of Tyson over getting sick on their products?

If FRESH isn’t available in your area, think about hosting a screening of it; for small gatherings it is only $20, and is very much a good tool to show that what is in the grocery store isn’t necessarily better for you.

Last year I made a token attempt at gardening around this time of the year, or a little later. Yes, I know that isn’t the time to make a garden but we were starting even smaller than this year. That year’s work wasn’t much success at all. But this year we’ve got a bed with potential problems, which I decided to use as extra space.

It didn’t work.

Cucumbers and zucchini are large plants that take 3′ x 3′ worth of space each—neither of which I like. Because I wasn’t sure how this bed’s soil conditions were, it caused severe blossom-end rot that prevented any harvest of big beef tomatoes, I figured it could serve as a backup bed. So, I planted two rows of carrots, none of which sprouted, and two zucchini plants; I started some cucumbers in planters and then moved them out to the same bed.

The result was a dismal failure of slow death from pH imbalance. The plants paled, wouldn’t grow, and produced nary a blossom.

Or so I thought.

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I know little about both gardening and plants. What I do know I have learned from books, from experience, and from mistakes. That knowledge hasn’t covered most the signs of maturity among my plants; some were obvious, such as the wax bean. The intricacies of lettuce have been harder to learn than it has been to grow.

Anyone can grow lettuce. Throw out some seeds, lightly water at dawn and dusk, wait two or three weeks, and presto! you have baby lettuce. But, now what? Like many, I harvested individual leaves early, before the lettuce qualified as a “head”. This leaf lettuce only amounted to a single serving at first picking, but that picking stimulated rapid growth. For the past month I’ve had nice heads of lettuce in my garden that provide biweekly salads.

Yet, last week I noticed that my lettuce aged almost over night. I looked a little closer and found the signs that I’d missed, so that I will harvest my heads in time from now on.

Maybe one day I won’t commit these mistakes as frequently.

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Afternoon everyone! Today is the day in which you get to see my little garden. It’s making great progress and food, and by next year may double in size. This is my garden, two beds of 30″ width and about 10′ in length. For a full gallery of pictures, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Wide shot of my garden.

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Anyone who knows me personally knows for a fact that I do not have a green thumb.  In fact, out of the 2-3 houseplants that formerly resided in my room the death rate has been 100%.

Usually the problems I faced were related to neglect.  Such as, but hardly limited to:

• Forgetting to open the shades.
• Forgetting to water the plant.
• Watering the plant too much.
• Putting a tropical plant beneath an air-conditioning vent, in summer.

So, the only logical thing to do was to plant a garden!

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