Garden Rant

Urban Agriculture in the News

The director of DC's 7th Street Garden told me about this terrific story about urban farming in the New York Times and observed that reports of the rise of urban agriculture are all OVER the media these days.  Good news!

So when I went online last night to find the story,  just look what was was front and center on the Times website - a "zen gardener" turning her compost pile!  I'm talking page 1 above the fold - if web pages could be folded.  Since then it's been shuttled to the Home and Garden Section but screen shots don't lie.  Here's the story, where unfortunately I found this: "An unapologetic 60, Ms. Johnson has earthmother-y white hair, liver spots, knee socks and gnarly rose-scratched hands that horrify her two fashionable younger sisters in New York and Los Angeles."  Well, as a bottle-blond 59-year-old myself, what horrifies ME is that description.  Is 60 so old that it needs to be apologized for? 

U.S. sees no need to teach people to grow food

by Susan
You've probably never heard of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service but it's high time we all paid some attention to it.  That's because its funding is slated for BIG cuts, and 11 research centers around the country face closure.  In her column this week Barbara Damrosch blasted the $3 million cut in store for the premier agricultural library in the world - in Beltsville, MD, an address that's revered by hort folks around the world.  The plan for saving that pittance is to stop sending printed food-growing information to people who need it, one of whom for the last 30 years has been Damrosch's famous food-growing husband, Eliot Coleman.  So starting next year, the resources will only be available in person and a global resource will become merely local.  Poor farmers in developing countries without access to the Internet will be the hardest hit, according to Damrosch.  Here's the story.

Sure, with food shortages, concerns about food safety, a growing interest in local food and finally some growth in gardening in America - of edibles - what better time to stop helping people learn to grow food?  Makes sense to me!

Another venerable institution slated for crippling budget slashing is the National Arboretum, whose plant collections and breeding programs are a global resource.  So, collections will be abandoned, public programming canceled, and so on ad nauseum. Adrian Higgins recently reported this depressing news and the Washington Post ran the story on page 1 above the fold.  (So I take heart that somebody in the mainstream media thinks it's more significant than the latest bloviation from Jeremiah Wright.)

While you still can, take a virtual tour of the collections and gardens.  The lower photo is from the Gotelli Collection slide show.

Float Like A Butterfly, Think Like A Bee

Beekeepers on the loose

Some people are animal people.  I'm a plant person.  I'm much more interested in communing with my shovel than with my cats, for example--though it makes me happy to have them slinking through the household, being attended to by the non-gardeners here.

I like having the fauna around, in part because they give me a new perspective on the flora. 

Right now, we're having vicious cat fights in the backyard because of a pot of catnip my five year-old and I planted.  Neighborhood cats that would generally never intrude on the territory of the fearsome Lilac and Maple are willing to risk having an eye gouged out for just a taste. Everybody compares catnip to pot, but it must be much more interesting, because even when I was 16 and most of the boys I knew were idiots, I cannot recall any cannabis-related fistfights.

I also had chickens for a while in my city yard, but banished them when they were digging up my ornamentals.  Now, I'm missing the chickens and the fantastic eggs and looking at those delicate ornamentals differently, thinking, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

The goldfish in my little artificial pond prompted me to stick a pot of calla lilies into it to give them shade.  Stunning, stunning, stunning.

And the bees are making me rethink everything.

My husband was inspired to buy a hive last spring by all those news stories about colony collapse. He stuck it in a prime spot at our country place, underneath one of our cow apples, in a meadow full of wildflowers that we only mow once a year. He and my ten year-old son have managed the project, and I've barely shown any interest in it, being far too busy fencing and re-fencing and re-fencing my vegetable garden to keep out the rabbits. Plus, it hasn't generated anything edible yet--and that is the gold standard for Michele's interest. The men left the honey last fall to help this first-year colony overwinter.

My husband has been pessimistic about the bees' survival all winter long, but was thrilled a month ago, when he and my son each stuck an ear against the hive, banged on it, and heard an angry buzz deep inside. They were even more thrilled last week when they opened the hive for the first time and realized that it was stuffed to the gills with honey. They want to be conservative and not harvest any honey until mid-summer when there will be a riot of nectar for the bees out in the fields.

These Italian honeybees look different from any native bee I've seen.  They're small and brown and compact--identifiable in the yard.  I was shocked three weeks ago when I noticed them all over some crocuses planted by the previous regime.  The snow had barely melted, the crocuses were the first sign of life in a grey world, the sun was weak and sickly, yet there were the honeybees, having their first fresh produce in months.

Growing food in Cuba, post-peak-oil

by Susan
The 2006 movie "Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" is one of those underground things here in DC - with screenings in private homes of would-be revolutionaries, like enclaves of the American Communist Party in the '30s.  So I jumped at the invitation and joined 20 other would-be rabble-rowsers to watch and then discuss a movie that goes waay beyond easy tips for "going green".

"Peak oil" refers to the moment at which the world  oil resources max out permanently, after which they decline forever.  And Cuba went through an abrupt version of it in 1991 with the demise of the Soviet Union and the loss of its oil subsidies. The Cuban economy and the entire society were radically transformed - a drastic reduction in the use of cars, a switch to sustainable agriculture (from farming methods that were even more industrialized than in the U.S.), and a change in diet and health for all Cubans. Nothing like a crisis to get things done, huh? 

Too bad it took famine conditions and an average weight loss of 20 pounds per adult between '91 and '94 for Cubans to change the way they grow food and eat.  Food was actually rationed for the first five years.  And it's hard to imagine the disruptions caused by their 14-16-hour power black-outs.

So a group called The Community Solution has put together their plan for food in the post-peak-oil world and made this documentary about the amazing changes in Cuba - a possible model for the rest of the world.

POST-INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE
So how DID Cuban agriculture become even more industrialized than ours?  The movie didn't tell us and I'd love to know that back story.  But the movie does describe their decidedly unsustainable practices, like the use of massive amounts of pesticides, complete reliance on synthetic fertilizers, and the use of imported inputs.  Today oil-based fertilizers and pesticides are a thing of the past.  Lands formerly used for large conventional agriculture have been distributed - free if you grow food on it.  Over a period of 3 to 5 years the soils have become fertile and productive again through the use of compost, green manure, and crop rotation.  Eighty percent of Cuba's food is now grown organically, and permaculture practices are commonplace.  Oxen save fuel and cause less compaction than large equipment, so they've made a comeback.   And of course there are backyard and urban community gardens everywhere, with all vacant space used for growing food.

I wonder if Americans are open-minded enough to learn anything from our Commie heathen neighbors to the south.

Radical Front Yard Farmer Needs a Little Coaching

by Susan
Showing you this photo feels oddly like unveiling a drastic new haircut, or taking off my robe at the beach. It must be all that bare ground showing, something we beauty-seekers of the gardening world avoid like slug tracks! It's not even mulched, for crissakes!

But moving on to the task at hand, I have some questions that need answering - because I don't know what I'm doing.  (Veggie-growing virgin here.)

WHAT I PLANTED
Here's what I planted on about March 10 (see, I'm already a bad gardener for not being able to find where I wrote the date):  Sparkler radishes, Mesclun Spicy Salad Mix, Simpson Elite Lettuce, Olympia Spinach, Tyee Spinach, Detroit Dark Red Beets, Chinese Mustard, and some Plant-a Row-for-the-Hungry brand carrots.

And yet to be planted are: Purple Top White Globe Turnips, Early Purple Vienna Kohlrabi.  And/or anything I find at the market.

WHAT NOW?

1. I assume they need thinning, but can the little plants I remove be moved to  the empty spots?

2. When should I mulch?  And preferably using the leafmold I have too much of.

3. I've been watering every other day when it's not raining.  Sound about right?

4. I aIso bought packages of Canary Creeper Nasturtium and a mix of sweet peas.  Is there any way to use them here?

5. And most importantly, can anyone answer the question in the lower right of my diagram?  Plant ID, please - carrot or radish?

One More Reason To Grow A Few Vegetables

The New York Times has been running an amazing series about a food crisis in the developing world.  The price of commodity foods has been going through the roof, thanks to a number of factors, including the rising cost of fuel, the conversion of food-growing land to biofuel production, and the increasing use of agricultural land for animal feed as the demand for meat rises worldwide. 

Today's story, "Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger," by Marc Lacey is just heartbreaking.  Read it. It will ruin your day.

It occurs to me that the metaphorical sin we Americans commit in huge numbers by wasting our yards has just become a literal sin. I'm not saying that any one backyard vegetable garden is going to lower the price of cooking oil in India or feed Haiti--but enough of them might ease the pressure on the world's agricultural land a little bit. 

The Once And Future Project

The year will come when I won't spend all of April arduously redoing the fence in my vegetable garden in order to keep those crucifer-thieving rabbits and groundhogs out. I like to think that year will come because I will have found the Ultimate Answer. But maybe it will arrive because I'll just be too old and worn out to care any more. 

Community Gardeners in the Washington Post - all season long

Adrian Higgins' article in today's Washington Post brings some really exciting news.  In it he introduces us to the Glover Park Community Garden and to a few of its gardeners.  But the best part is that Higgins will be checking in with them via video every month throughout the season, so we'll be "Following a Growing Drama, with Many Plots".  The main characters are the wiseguy chairman of the garden, some young but experienced gardeners, and a total newbie.  Man, this is our kind of reality show - and how cool is that?

Higgins and the Post deserve a big rave from the Rant for this terrific idea.  Watch the first installment. 

Edible Landscapes (and Ed) on Chow.com

Check out this article on the food website Chow, all about growing food in the front yard.  I was interviewed for the story and got a tiny little mention and a link but the interviewee I suggested to Chow - our friend Ed Bruske - made MUCH better copy and ran away with the whole story, photos and all! 

Well, it couldn't be helped because when the reporter asked me about neighborhood reaction to my modest little veggie garden and I had nothing interesting to report, I knew she HAD to talk to a real urban farmer like Ed.  Some of his neighbors have posted such vicious and personal attacks in anonymous comments on his blog that it's a wonder he hasn't turned it all back to lawn.  Which I suppose is their goal, but they don't know Ed.

Virgin veggie-grower vows to do better next year

by Susan
You all know I’m growing food for the first time ever, right?  There's so much talk these days about growing food, though, I can't say how much I'm swept away by all that, or falling under the spell of two passionate food-growing buddies - Ed Bruske and our own Michele. Tough duo to resist, and you see the result - my spanking clean kitchen garden with hundreds of tiny seeds tucked into that A+ soil (and I have that test to prove it!)  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

SEEDS FROM CATALOGS
Ed’s strictly a buy-local kind of guy, and he suggested the D. Landreth Seed Company in Pennsylvania and the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Virginia.  And John Scheeper sent me his catalog because I’m a regular buyer of their bulbs. Following orders, I acquired and finally assembled the catalogs, a few post-its of notes, and got to work.  For a good 10 minutes, I swear.  But after that I started feeling overwhelmed - just like beginning gardeners usually feel.  I'm identifying with my clients like never before. I feel their pain.  I want a coach myself.

SEEDS FROM PRETTY DISPLAY RACKS
So you see I was unusually vulnerable to bedazzlement by seed packets.  And I didn’t actually PLAN any seed-shopping mischief but since I was already AT my favorite indie nursery for a free workshop, I thought I’d give their seeds a look-see and came across rack after rack of these irresistible displays.  So I bartered with my better self: When I get to be a super-sophisticated suburban farmer, THEN I’ll buy from super-local and heirloom-only suppliers.  For right now, give me the damn packets.  Below you see my selection.

PLANTING ‘EM
Back home I got back to following orders - studying my new-old copy of Barbara Damrosch's Garden Primer, then planning my first veggie arrangement as best I could.  Next I smoothed the surface of the growing space with a metal rake, drew rows, and proceeded to drop the teeny tiny seeds as evenly spaced as I could manage.   And I only have two questions:

1. How on earth do you get anywhere close to exactly one-eighth or one-half inch of soil on top of these microscopic seeds?  Somebody, show me a video!  I mean it.
2. And how do you keep from having a really bad backache after all that?  It’s even worse than weeding!  I’m starting to understand why everyone touts the virtues of raised beds, REALLY raised.  Where’s my physical therapist?  Hey, I just remembered.  A masseuse just contacted me for garden coaching and offered cash OR barter.  What timing!