The Urban Farmer’s Almanac

Dispatches from Paradise Volume 1

We’re spending a couple weeks in Hawaii doing a housing exchange (not to brag). Word is that it’s still pouring in Seattle, so we’re not missing much, and I’m not worried about the garden burning up. Naturally, my first question upon arriving here in Maui and seeing the red clay soil was, “I wonder how well you can compost here.” It seemed like the natural solution to the hard, arid soil, but that’s just me, I suppose.

We are staying in a house with a big lot (over an acre, I’d guess.) And a view of the ocean (not to brag.) There isn’t much in they way of gardens here (besides a pot of basil on the deck) but it has two things going for it in the farm department:

1. Fruit trees - Tangerine, banana and papaya trees on the premises. We’ve had a few tangerines so far, and there are some ripe papayas that apparently we can pick with a bamboo trimmer. (They’re pretty far up in the tree).

2. Livestock - There is a flock of 10 or 12 chickens, from a couple months old to laying hens. Plus, the big bonus, 2 sheep that look like goats. They are a little bit too friendly at times (see the photo below; they think they own the table on the deck.) Our morning routine consists of feeding the sheep (Robbie is kind of getting the hang of it), letting the chickens out to forage, and refreshing their water.

A couple things happen to be alive on our counter these days:

- Carrie bought us these cacti from IKEA (I think as a housewarming gift) and surprise of surprises, they’re not dead. In fact, one is blooming a flower.

- Alicia found a sweet ’70s seed sprouting kit, and so we’re getting our health on and making sprouts. It works a lot better than the mason jar with a screen on the bottom that we tried last year.

- Trader Joe’s sells the most stunning basil plants for $3. So there is one sitting on the counter… it’s getting a little wilty and I’ve been watering it really well, so I don’t know what’s going on. But it’s looking a lot better than the waterlogged yellow basil we have going outside.

When I was in graduate school I spent an entire semester investigating the idea of urban gardening. At that point Alicia and I had planted a few gardens, but I was really just dabbling in planting seeds and seeing what would grow. It took me an entire semester’s of thinking and experimenting to arrive at the notion that our conception of “nature” as city people is a complicated bag of paradoxes. One of my main conclusions is that nature must be controlled to be pleasurable. Nature in an urban setting left to its own devices will not result in the grandeur of an unspoiled wilderness.

Second Nature by Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan, in his first book from 1991, wrote the book that I should have read first while I was working on that project. It would have saved me a lot of trouble and thinking. His thoughts on the relationship between people and nature, people and plants, and people and land helped me see what it is that I am doing with this “project”.

When we first bought the house a couple years ago, we immediately did some terracing and reworking of the front yard so we could use the space more efficiently (i.e. make more garden beds). At one point I got tired of all the weeds I was removing and decided to leave a “natural garden” – just let whatever was growing, a mix of poppies and weeds, keep on growing. It only lasted a week or two, at which point the entire thing looked terrible, and I gave up on “nature”. Pollan talks about the exact same thing in his book, where he tried to let native plants grow into one of his flower beds, temporarily putting aside the idea that anything you haven’t planted is a weed. He lasted a little bit longer, but ended up realizing that the weeds had completely taken over and eliminated what little order he had set out to establish.

I still let sunflowers pop up wherever they will, and there are these stunning red poppies that show up everywhere in the late spring, but besides that I keep things pretty tame around here. The way Pollan writes about all the functions of our relationship to a garden, from the productivity of vegetables to the beauty of a composed set of plants, I began to realize that plants are one of the primary metaphors I’m looking at my life through these days. In many ways the entire project is out of my control, dependent on so many factors that have nothing do do with my efforts. On the other hand, the deep satisfaction that comes from seeing what happens when I put in a little bit of sweat and set the conditions right for something to grow… it always gives me hope that life isn’t necessarily a zero-sum equation. That in fact you might be able to reap far more from it than you deserve based on what you’ve contributed.

There is a story in the book about a scientist who planted a tree in 100 pounds of dirt, and only watered it for years. At a certain point, after the tree had grown to a significant size, the tree was removed and weighed and the dirt was also weighed. Only 4 oz had been lost from the dirt, and from that, a 120 lb. plant had grown. Water, sun, time. Somehow, these base elements produce far more than they should, year after year, and I in turn am fed and watered in watching it happen.

You may remember the Egyptian Walking Onions that we got from a generous gardener down in the south city. They’ve been getting established for the last few months, and now they are doing their crazy thing — the bloom on top of the sprouts (which look like green onions) are opening up and sprouting new onions. If I understand it correctly, eventually the original onion will wilt, fall to the ground, and the sprout will root down and plant a new onion. Right now it just looks like a Dr. Seuss plant, growing a new plant out of its head.

This news from the Urban Farm Hub:

Gardening in Planting Strips: The Seattle Department of Transportation removed the requirement to get a costly permit to garden in planting strips (areas that often have good sunlight for growing healthy vegetables).

Good news for everyone looking for a few more square feet (or the first few square feet) for their garden.