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| The kale is a-growin'! |
I don't have to tell you it's been a crazy month. The whole global pandemic thing is not only causing death and throwing a serious wrench in everyone's plans, but stirring up a giant cloud of anxiety and helplessness and paralysis that often feels suffocating. All too often I find myself glued to social media, willing my stress and anxiety to make things better.
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| Nectarine blossoms— our tree was covered in all sorts of bees and wasps today! |
Fortunately, though, my garden has other plans for me. More than ever, I've been struck by what an incredible privilege it is to have a bit of earth to garden. A place to grow food, a place to play in the dirt, a place to sit and watch birds picking at my compost pile and squirrels digging holes in my garden beds. Our fruit trees are green with buds, and the nectarine tree has unfurled pink blossoms. The elderberry is sending up shoots. I'm finding mint poking up several yards from where I planted it. Our stinging nettle (a tasty wild green) has propagated itself all along our side yard. Our little suburban homestead is bursting with abundance, even with very minimal tending, and I don't think I've ever been more grateful for that.
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| Elderberry |
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| Empty garden bed (still need to figure out what to do with it) with an asparagus bed at the end. Chives are growing nicely! See next photo to hear about the very green grass... |
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| Our bed of winter rye cover crop— it's been this color all winter! (Plus some volunteer kale.) We're hoping to plant summer crops here in May (perhaps a Three Sisters guild of corn, beans, and squash). |
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| The northern side of our yard, with our hardy fig, lots of volunteer kale, a smattering of spring greens, and two hazels. |
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| Our elderberry and strawberry bed |
Other things we've been up to…
Digging a pond
Zach has been wanting to make a pond in our yard for multiple years now ("But where will I grow my tomaaaaaatoes?!" I've been whining), and a couple weeks ago, he finally dug one in the southeast corner of our backyard! It took him a couple hours and he hit some sort of water pipe (even though the utility guys didn't mark anything there), but we now have a pond-in-progress! We decided against using a plastic pond liner, and Zach's been experimenting with using clay to seal it off, with limited success. In the meantime, we're running rainwater from our garage roof into the pond, and will be getting some water plants soon to fill in the edges. I'm excited to see how the biodiversity in our yard will increase when this is up and running!
Spring crops!
My spring crops have sprouted, and some of them are getting tiny true leaves— maybe I'll be eating some fresh chard, spinach, carrots, and radishes soon! In the meantime, I'm making good use of the perennial greens: kale (which survived the winter), dandelion, violet leaves, clover, and henbit have all made their way into my pesto this week, and soon I'll be able to harvest plantain, stinging nettle, and (hopefully) asparagus. We're hoping to add more perennial crops to our garden this year, but they are surprisingly hard to find online, and the shipping is very expensive. So we're trying to figure out another source. (If you happen to know where I can buy sea kale, skirret, perpetual sorrel, Turkish rocket, or Good King Henry, please let me know!)
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| A polyculture in between the clover: some mixture of kale, radish, spinach, chards, and peas |
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| Spearmint emerging from its slumber! |
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| Comfrey, an important mulch/biomass plant, is coming up nicely in several places. |
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| Stinging nettle— the cooked greens taste like spinach and are waaaay easier to grow! |
Indoor summer seedlings
Our seedlings indoors have really taken off— tomatoes, peppers, flowers, valerian, lovage, St. John's Wort, tomatillos, sweet potatoes, and a few others are making good progress! Some we'll plant as soon as the last frost is over, while others (such as the tomatoes) will need to wait until early- to mid-May. I've been growing them in 4" pots— I've tried growing them in smaller cells, and I had to repot them halfway through, not to mention that they dry out and die much more easily. But growing them in the larger pots seems to be working well so far!
Propagating plants
I've been trying my hand at dividing some of my perennials to plant elsewhere/give away. So far I've tried stonecrop sedum, oregano, thyme, and mint: I just dug up some of the roots, pulled them apart, and stuck them in moist soil. We'll see if any of them survive.
What have you been up to lately?
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We didn't learn any huge lessons. Honestly, there wasn't anything that we gave up that we were like, "Wow, it looks like we didn't need that after all… our lives are so much simpler now." Zach gave up half-and-half in his coffee, but he'll be buying it again because he likes it. We bought some eggs and are planning to start eating more of those again, because they're tasty. One of these days we'll break out some of the meat sitting in our freezer. But in the meantime, we're going to continue eating lots of beans and grains, packing lunches and snacks, foraging and fermenting, planning ahead, and not eating out. I do feel like I established some good rhythms and habits for myself, though— such as cooking beans and grains consistently throughout the week, and keeping a rotation of homemade sauces on hand— so I hope to keep those up.
In a few days I'll be posting our final stats as well as my larger thoughts about the challenge, but in the meantime, here's a list of meals we ate this week:
