Never In It

Here's to being an outcast.

Gobs of Garlic

There it is, in all its rosy-shouldered, pungent glory. There are forty heads that took nearly eight months to grow.

A True Garden Salad

The peas are sweet, the peppers tangy, the onions pungent, and the chard... well, it's chard. While it might not sound delicious or gourmet or any other word that gourmands or other food snobs have come to use, it is true, it is ours. We grew these foods with our bare hands, hard work, and lots of love... and maybe a few curses along the way. The tiller proved an invaluable asset, the hoe laid waste to many weeds, and my new straw hat became my best friend. Colorado Potato Beetles, aphids, ants, and wind have been our biggest enemies. Yet, we still have this dainty, delicious salad. My three-year-old can roam in the garden and pick whatever he likes without me having to shout at him to "STOP!" because of chemicals on the plants. It makes my heart swell... along with my eyes on some occasions, to see him covered in dirt, eating peas he just plucked off the vines making "Mmmm" sounds. I'm livin' the dream, ya'll.

Edit: Just to list what we've harvested so far. Everything is in pounds, except for mushrooms, which are in grams, and cucumbers and garlic, which are counted as quantity each.

Bright lights chard: .25
Strawberries: 1.74
Banana peppers: .22
Jalapenos: .34
Snow peas: .35
Cucumbers: 6 each
Garlic: 17 heads
Onions: 1.1 (even after the failure, I am happy.)
Potatoes: 2.4 mixed red and white
Chanterelle Mushrooms: 50g (weighs about 6.5 nickels... not really enough to warrant using pounds on the scale. When I get enough, I will. Can't wait!)

Downy Mildew

The picture is not of our onions, but it may as well have been. Ours got attacked by downy mildew when high heat hit our region and they never recovered. We are keeping pretty much anything with -cide out of our garden, so all commercial fungicides were immediately crossed off the list. We could have used powdered sulfur, but it would have affected the flavor of the onions. That and there's that whole thing about powdered sulfur mixing with water... It turns into sulfurous acid... bad juju. We have kids, bad juju is out. There is also a copper mixture, but there again is the "is it really good for you" thing rearing its ugly head. This is more for large-scale operations and for the tiny patch we had, the best solution was to pick them and put something else in its place.

What to look for:
For us, the leaves started to turn yellow and the tips withered. Some of the stalks bent at the top of the bulb and laid on the ground. The leaves developed spots and the necks turned soft. The necks in these were squishy, but not bent. In the mornings, there were purple-brown spots on the leaves. This is the fungus moving around. It tends to disappear as the sun gets more intense.

I don't count this so much as a failure, but as a learning experience. Our soil is different from that of our friends, by a vast degree. We live on the remnants of an old pecan orchard, so our soil, while sandy, is full of rich, organic matter. It's also full of fungi. We can grow beans, peppers, and potatoes like there is no tomorrow. Onions do not appear to be on that list. Next year, my onions will come from a local farm and I'm alright with that.

Plenty of Peppers

We've officially gone overboard. What started as the desire to grow and can our own peppers for year-round use has turned into an obsession, a hunt for more. It has resulted in the making of mental lists that will likely turn into pen-and-paper reality. It will probably evolve into the pair of us cultivating our own pepper patch.

We wanted jalapenos and banana peppers. Simple, huh? Jalapenos for when we wanted a kick. Banana peppers for when the milder side took over. We bought two jalapeno plants and four sweet banana plants. We are the only people in our household of five that eat them, so surely it would be enough, right? Then, we went to town. Aerron was lost to me for a while. He was hypnotized by Scoville units, flavor charts, and wordy descriptions of varieties he had never before seen. We left with four more plants. We managed to find Mammoth Jalapenos and a tame variety. They are happily soaking in the sun where our onions used to be.

Next year, it will be bigger. We will go early and find the ones we wanted, but the store had already sold out. I will also be putting out a call for help to harvest them around July or August. I am hoping they do as well this year as they did last year. We had so many that a lot of them were simply left to rot on the ground, even after canning and giving them to friends. I am also hoping we become the "Jalapeno People" at the farmers' market, should it get off the ground.

This summer, if you find a mysterious bag of peppers on your doorstep, yeah... We likely ran out of jars and the will to live.

**Update: As of noon today, we have four more pepper plants. Someone call the men in white coats, please.

Watch This

"The Future of Food" is a 2004 documentary by Deborah Koons Garcia. I could launch into a tirade about how much I despise the Monsanto Corporation, but all I would get is a sore throat. I lived near a Monsanto plant for many, many years and still have family a few miles from it. The fear started there, but grew into hatred over the years. There was the looming fear of a major explosion, which the local EMA had to plan for. We got disaster preparedness plans every year because of the plant. There was lawsuit after lawsuit due to dumped toxins. After learning about all the dirty tricks the company has pulled with food and with farmers, I am left with a feeling of disgust. I am reassured that growing my own food is the right thing. I am also more motivated to find or start a farmers' market in our area. (Thank you for being excited with me, babe.)

Start a food revolution in your own home. Grow something, anything to take at least a small portion of the power away from these food industries. I want these companies (Monsanto, ConAgra, Smithfield, and Cargill) to crumble in my lifetime. If not, I want to instill into my children the desire to take their food back from them. If we do not start now, we will monoculture the entire world into starvation. Vote with your money and put those votes into your yard, into your farmers' markets, and into your community.

Better Late Than Never

Plants should be in the ground, in pots, in raised beds, and in other various homes by now. We live in zone 8. This means we have an amazing growing season. We get to start planting in February for some Spring crops and can have two harvests of others, such as broccoli and beans. Here is a wonderful resource for both Spring and Fall planting dates, seed depth, and spacing.

I read this again after Terzo asked if we could grow broccoli. I now have renewed visions of perky greens, plump turnips, and fresh broccoli in the garden when it is in its autumn decline.