The Urban Farmer's Almanac

Robbie and I were out picking raspberries today and he said, “These plants are dead, dad,” referring to the potato buckets we planted earlier this year. He was right. What was lush green leaves a month or two ago had faded to a couple yellowed branches. The dirt looked pretty dry, too. Things on the side of the house don’t get watered much.

I decided to see how the potatoes did this year. The design of the planter makes it really easy to harvest – since they’re sections of a garbage can, you just pull the container up and sift through the dirt pile for treasures. It’s pretty amazing that I was able to plant some mushy, terrifying looking potatoes from the drawer and get these as a result. The harvest was relatively modest but it will be fun to fry up some potatoes for dinner tonight.

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There have been a couple ingredients that have been languishing around here, causing me all kinds of guilt. One was a bowl of porcini mushrooms (King Boletes) that we foraged out near Leavenworth when we went camping a week or two ago. I owe you a post about those, by the way. The other was bok choi that’s been ready for at least a month in the garden, and was starting to flower.

Finally today, we woke up to a bit of rain after a string of 8o° days, and inspiration hit. I decided to make some mushroom and bok choi miso soup with rice noodles for lunch. It hit the spot, used some food up, and the kids even ate it.

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Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion–put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

practice resurrection

- Wendell Berry

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I’ve found lettuce and greens to be one of the best crops for beginning gardeners.  It has a quick growing cycle, is not too fussy and its easy to know what to do with it once it comes in. We’ve been enjoying daily salads even though much of the rest of our garden is still getting established. Even our kids can recognize that fresh young lettuce from the garden tastes great.

This Sunday in the paper I was reminded of another reason why its great to grow your own greens – food poisoning.  The recent outbreak of e coli in Europe is just scary – people are dying because they ate a salad.  This article reminded me that every bite of raw food I eat is an act of confidence in the whole food system that brought it to my plate.  But I don’t trust the system.  I know that contamination happens.  Sprouts were mentioned in the article as particularly worrisome and I was happily reminded that my sprouts are safe from this kind of contamination as is my lettuce.  Certainly the food systems that create these kind of issues needs to be fixed (although don’t ask me how – I am just a humble urban gardener) it is nice to know there is a way to avoid this to some extent at least.  Its great to enjoy fresh produce from our garden for many, many reasons but this one was a new reason why I am happy to have a garden.

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The last few years the strawberry patch has claimed a prized location in our little urban farm and has repaid us with little to no yield of fruit.  This year we’ve added a soaker hose into the bed that is connected to the rest of our watering system.  The location of the strawberry patch made this quite a big project, but dreams of actual handfuls of strawberries made it happen.  We’re hoping being connected to the main watering system will insure plenty of moisture and will be the push it needs to give us some fruit.  If not this may be the last year that patch exists.

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