“The Earth is Tired”

“Tè a fatige,” said 70 percent of Haitian farmers in a recent survey when asked about the major agricultural problems they faced. “The earth is tired.”

And no wonder. Virtually since 1492, when Columbus first set foot on the heavily forested island of Hispaniola, the mountainous nation has shed both topsoil and blood—first to the Spanish, who planted sugar, then to the French, who cut down the forests to make room for lucrative coffee, indigo, and tobacco. (National Geographic Magazine accessed January 8, 2009 at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/bourne-text)

We have a dirt problem on planet Earth. We are covering up some good agricultural lands with subdivisions, factories, and shopping malls and damaging the rest in innumerable ways. But this is the dirt that will have to feed us in years to come. We are fouling our own nest, biting the hand that feeds us, cutting off our nose to spite our face. Such shameless and ignorant disregard for our own well being is the rotten fruit of greed and stupidity.

Problems such as this don’t persist because there are no answers. They persist when we are not interested in the solutions. Here’s the reason: the solutions are not as profitable as the present corporate gang-rape of our farmland. Sadly, the cost will be incredibly high. Simply put, we are setting the stage on which we will act in our own drama of destruction…and…we are doing it willingly. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I feel qualified to speak here because, as a small gardener in a semi-arid patch of West Texas I started with nutrient-poor alkaline clay and now have several inches of productive topsoil. I grow most of the vegetables for our family of six. How did I do it? I read, studied and worked hard. I have loved my soil into productivity and sustainability. I figure if it can be done here then almost anyone can do it.

If you have access to a patch of dirt, you have a blessing from God given into your stewardship. The soil is a living community. Like any living thing it must be cared for. It must be fed and watered. Its needs must be met. It must be valued and cherished. In return, it will give us food to sustain us. If we neglect, exploit and mistreat our soil, it will grow tired and sick. Then, like the precious soils and souls of Haiti, we will grow tired and sick also.

You might not be able to change the world but you can change your world. Here are some things you can do on your own land.

Practice organic techniques. This is a vast subject but my top five principles are:

1. Use only organic soil amendments and fertilizers
2. Avoid the use of chemicals
3. Practice composting
4. Practice mulching

Practice sustainable techniques. Another huge area but some things you can do are:

1. Avoid plowing and tilling unless absolutely necessary
2. Grow cover crops
3. Conserve water using drip irrigation
4. Grow crops suitable for your climate
5. Rotate crops

Update for September

I realize that I haven’t posted for a while but other voices have been calling to me. Right or wrong, the absolutely urgent always trumps the pleasure of writing.

But, you might like to know what has been happening in the Charamon Garden. It is also a record for me when I ask myself, “When did I plant those fava beans last year?” So…here is what has been happening in September.

We have begun reclaiming beds that have not been used or cared for appropriately. We have begun this process with the help of my son, Justin. He has his father’s love of gardening and has been a strong and energetic help to his old man who gets tired too easily. He has tirelessly weeded, chopped, dug, hoed and hauled until things are once again in pretty good shape. He has dug out the trash trees, raked and tilled and mulched.

We have prepared the bed that will be used for tomatoes in the spring by planting a cover-crop of hairy vetch and a few broad (fava) beans. These will grow all winter and then be cut and left where they lie. We will cover all this with more mulch and then set out the tomato plants. We had a tomato crop failure this year because we took some wrong-headed advice and planted the tomatoes in the same bed for three years. Don’t do that.

We (Justin mostly) cleaned our largest bed and sowed more hairy vetch in it. At this point I am not sure what will be planted there in the spring/summer garden.

Our sweet corn is tasseling and silking out and we hope to see some nice ears of corn in the next few weeks. We had an infestation of army cut worms which Justin took care of with a dusting of BT. It has a lot of aphids on it but the ladybird beetles have arrived and will hopefully make meals of them.

We have planted the most garlic ever and the harvest will keep us busy around the last of April 2009. We will dry it and braid it and use much more than the recipes call for.

We have planted more swiss chard and it is looking good. This needs thinning pretty soon. We covered the seeds with a mixture of compost and sand and all sorts of things are coming up with the new chard…mostly squash and tomatoes. Their seed have been residing in the compost waiting for their chance.

We have planted carrots and a row of lettuce and we’re waiting for them to germinate. We are hopefully optimistic.

We have set out kale, cauliflower, collards, broccoli and cabbage.

We are harvesting yellow squash, lovely purple eggplant, okra, swiss chard, green peppers (capsicums) and, if Justin had not eaten them right off the tree (he deserved them), quite a few figs.

The butternut squash is looking very good and we should have a good supply over the next few months.

In the meantime eat your veggies…Nonnie and Pop said so.

Swiss Chard aka Silverbeet

We are in the midst of a weeding/planting semi-frenzy at Charamon. Since I can only devote time to the garden in the mornings, I get up before dawn and start work as soon as I can see things (and have a cup of strong coffee in me).

We are fortunate to live in a zone (7b) where some vegetables grow through autumn and winter (see previous post). One such plant that does very well here is swiss chard (silverbeet). We grow it instead of spinach and we eat loads of it. It is rumored to help stave-off dementia (I meant to mention this before but I kept forgetting).

So for the last two days, Justin (number 2 son) and I have been weeding a bed and preparing it for planting. This also required harvesting the compost from my concrete block bin. After weeding and smoothing the surface, we laid down a layer of compost and then topped it up with a couple inches of mulch. We made three furrows and laid a mixture of sand and compost in the bottom of the furrow. The seeds were sown on top of this and covered with a thin layer of more of the same. Then it is all watered well and…now we wait.

The compost/sand mixture is 4 compost to 1 sand (I use lava sand). The compost is from two sources — a conventional pile of decomposed leaves and grass clippings combined with compost from the bin mentioned above. This is mixed in my cement mixer and decanted into a wheelbarrow. I use this mixture because my soil is mostly clay and can form a hard surface that some seeds have trouble getting through.

Now we are looking forward to eating a lot of stir fried chard mixed with garlic and pine nuts, swiss chard tortes and other delicious preparations. In the meantime…eat your veggies…Nonnie and Pop said so!

Thanks to A Veggie Garden for the photo.

Latest Dirt

Recent activities in the Charamon Garden:

• Planting onion sets
• Planting hard squash seeds (Blue Hubbard and Butternut)
• Mulching potatoes and tomatoes
• Replacing the filtering mechanism on the water well
• Placing drip irrigation lines and replacing broken emitters
• Installing weedblock in Bermuda grass infested beds

Rain, come again another day!

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day.

Rain, rain, go away.

Come again some other day.

Little Arthur wants to play,

In the meadow by the hay.

Rain, rain, go to Spain,

Never show your face again.

Rain, rain, pour down,

But not a drop on our town.

Rain on the green grass,

and rain on the tree,

And rain on the housetop,

but not on me.

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again on washing day.

Rain, rain, go to Germany,

And remain there permanently.

The rains came this week…over 2 inches – 5.08 centimeters! We really needed it. When you grow up in the desert, as my wife and I did, rain is a special thing. We enjoy the thunder and lightning and rejoice in the way rain freshens everything.

 

Our average annual rainfall in Abilene is 23.78 compared to 14.04 inches in our hometown of Odessa, Texas further to the west. Average rainfall in Texas tends to increase as one goes east. Texarkana on the Arkansas border gets a whopping 48.39 inches a year! In Adelaide, South Australia where we lived for over nine years the rainfall is a mere 520 mm a year (a little over 20 inches). It is very dry from November to April and then gets wet from May to October which is the winter season there. So you can see that I’m used to gardening in dry places.

Nevertheless, this is our monsoon season in Texas and the storms can be fierce. The typical spring storm can contain hail and produce high winds and the occasional tornado. We stay glued to the NOAA radio during stormy weather.

For gardeners, hail is especially dreaded. It can defoliate plants in nothing flat. We have a couple of wire mesh cages built by my son that we put over the more vulnerable plants when hail is predicted. So far so good in our two episodes of hail this year.

On another subject — the combination hairy vetch and winter grass cover crop has been cut down in the tomato bed. I use a very sharp hoe which I re-sharpened about three times during the process. I cut only the top parts of the plants leaving the roots to release their nutrients as they decompose. It was a good workout but now it’s done. In a few weeks we will set out the tomato plants which have become quite lanky.

In the meantime, eat your veggies! Nonnie and Pop said so.

Hairy Vetch and Other Stuff

My usual exercise (when I’m home) consists of getting out in the Charamon Garden and hoeing, lifting, digging, grinding, sifting compost, pulling weeds, etc. Yesterday it was preparing the tomato bed for planting in the next few weeks.

All winter the bed has been growing a cover crop consisting of hairy vetch and assorted winter grasses and a few other weeds. The vetch was the only intentional crop but the winter grass and weeds are inevitable. They grow together in happy confusion/profusion completely unaware that their days are numbered.

I cut them off at ground level (plus an inch or two to get the roots of the winter grass)

One Potato, Two Potato….

For the first time in 9 years of living at Charamon, we have decided to grow potatoes. We had, like most folks, been buying potatoes from the supermarket. Then I read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan and will never knowingly eat another non-organic potato. Yes, organic potatoes are available in our town but your have to buy them. And, since we are Irish and Scots-Irish, the Irish genes want potatoes but the Scottish genes are reluctant to pay for them.

So, we have dedicated one of the long beds to potatoes this year. First, Tim (my oldest son) cleared the bed of the winter grass and weeds and did his best to pull out the dormant Bermudagrass roots. We know we didn’t get them all, but we’ll deal with the remnants when they begin growing. Then, we covered the entire bed with cottonseed meal topped-off with about six inches of compost. My job was to sift the compost out of a large pile of tree trimmings that has been sitting so long that much of it has decomposed into beautiful humus. I use a hardware cloth screen over a wheelbarrow (see picture). The good stuff falls in the wheelbarrow and the “unsiftables” go into another pile to be ground up later.

When the bed was ready, we began the first of several successive plantings. We made furrows through the compost down to the topsoil. We sprinkled mychorrizal inoculant in the bottom of the furrow and covered it with a thin layer of compost. Then we placed the potato pieces about 12 inches apart and covered them with more compost. We will fill in more compost as the sprouts grow.

We finished the planting by dinner-time and were blessed by a humongous rainstorm this evening that “watered in” the seed potatoes.

We planted what the feed-store guy called “plain, white potatoes.” However, we want to try several varieties to find the one that grows and tastes the best. We’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, eat your veggies! Nonnie and Pop said so.

GARLIC GROWING GREEN AND GOOD IN THE GARDEN

Good grief, my garlic is great! Having learned a lesson from past neglect, I have kept the bed well-weeded this winter. I prepared it by tilling it (something I rarely do and try to avoid) with a good dose of cottonseed meal and adding plenty of compost and mulch. Our winter and spring climate seems ideal with cool days, only five or six hard freezes (the garlic seems unfazed) and lots of sunshine. We have to supplement the moisture with well-water but that’s par for the course in our area.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I nearly caused a crop failure last season by not removing competing vegetation. The result of that was a lot of stunted cloves. I saved the best for “seed” and will save even more from this next harvest. Stay tuned for pictures of the harvest in a couple of months.

We have six eaters at Charamon and four of us can’t get enough garlic (the other two are my young grandchildren who are learning to like it). We will inevitably run out of home-grown and resort to store-bought, California-grown garlic before the year is out. My goal, however, is to eventually grow way more than we need and have enough to give away or maybe even sell. In fact, locally-grown winter vegetables are rare around here and I think we can make some good money selling stuff like broccoli, chard, collards, lettuce, etc., at the local farmer’s market.

We use it in salads, baked chicken, turkey and lamb. We roast it and spread it on bread. We mince it into soups and stews. We cook fish and shrimp in butter and minced garlic. We lavish it on quiches, chard pies and milkshakes (just kidding about that last one).

We are thankful to the Lord for garlic. He created the plant and when we are good stewards, we can expect good harvests. The picture was taken today and you can see why I am proud of it.

Until next blog…eat your veggies! Nonnie and Pop said so!

A Rotten Idea

Compost is easy (well, sort of) if you use my method. Start by building a bin (as large as you like) from cinder (concrete) blocks. Fill that with the materials you wish to compost. Everything that will rot is a potential ingredient. To name a few: peelings, eggshells, bones, bits of meat, hair, pasta, bodies of irritating dogs, shells from shrimp and other crustaceans, coffee grounds from Starbucks (and other outrageously priced coffee places), stuff that’s already begun decomposing in the back of your refrigerator, animal manure, and if you are not too persnickety, your own manure (I don’ personally doo this).[1] All this plus weeds (before they seed) leaves, grass clippings, ground-up prunings, etc, are added to the bin (add composting worms if you wish). If conditions were right, you will open the bin a year later and be rewarded with rich, dark material of which little, except the eggshells, shells and bones, will be recognizable.

I begin my composting operations in April or May in my region of Texas and begin opening and sifting the compost a year later.

When you get ready to open the bin, use the blocks to build a new bin beside the old one. As you sift the compost from the old bin, throw what hasn’t decomposed (except for the plastic, foil, rocks and other junk that always somehow gets into the mix) into the second bin. This will “seed” the new compost bin with microbes from the old one. Forget about turning the compost[2] unless you are in a hurry (unwise), like to sweat (unnecessary), or don’t have enough work to do in the rest of your garden (unbelievable). So, fill your bin and allow the microbes and worms to do their job. You will probably never make enough compost for your needs, but it will be far richer than the compost you buy.

Pictures in order: 1. Opening the bin of finished compost 2. Stacking the new bin 3. Sifting the compost through a 1/2 inch screen into a wheelbarrow

Until next time, eat your veggies…Nonnie and Pop said so!

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[1] I recommend the Humanure Handbook with certain reservations. It is very well researched and enlightening but the author takes a few shots at Christians and other religious groups which, for me, detracts from his main theme.

[2] You will have compost faster, but not necessarily better, if you just make a “compost pile” (I do this with collected leaves and grass clippings) and turn it at regular intervals. I will combine this with compost from the bin — good stuff!

Tomato Seedlings

It is February and, if you live in my zone, you need to start your tomatoes immediately. Last year I was overseas and had to settle for store-bought seedlings. They produced well, but we’ve been spoiled by our soft-skinned, wonderfully-flavored third-generation heirlooms. As you can see, the seedlings are looking very good indeed.

In a couple of weeks, I will transplant these into larger containers where they will grow until I set them in the tomato bed. That bed is, at this moment, filled with a cover crop consisting of a mixture of weeds and Hairy Vetch (a legume which enhances the soil’s nitrogen content). When I get ready to set my tomato plants in, I will cut the cover crop off at ground level, leave the tops on the bed and plant my seedlings through them. Then I will cover every thing but the seedlings with a couple of inches of mulch

One secret to healthy tomato seedlings such as these is mycorrhizae which you can read more about here. Mycorrhizal preparations can be purchased from any good organic supplier. It usually comes in the form of granules which can be sprinkled on the roots of transplants. They work in a symbiotic relationship with most plants except the brassica and eucalyptus families.

This year I filled my trays about two-thirds full and then sprinkled the mycorrhizae over the surface of the soil. Then I topped them up and put the seeds in. As the seeds germinate and the roots grow down they will be colonized by the mycorrhizae.

I’ll get back to basic garden preparation in the next post. In the meantime, eat your veggies! Nonnie and Pop said so.