Thomas Kelly wrote:
Robert,
Always great to get a garden report from you.
Thanks, Thomas!
We've had plenty of sun, but it's been dry. You're getting our
rain. We're getting your sunshine. The garden is doing quite well.
Compost enriched soil holds water. Top-down feeding with a thick layer
of compost keeps water from evaporating.
Something's been funky with the jet stream this year . . . That,
coupled with frequent storms of increasing intensity has made for an
"interesting" year . . .
The insulating effect of compost is genuine. This summer, however,
we've had so much rain that I worry all my plants are developing shallow
root systems that won't sustain them when the hot weather finally
arrives. We're going away for two separate weeks this month and next,
so we depend on a certain drought tolerance in our garden that's been
fairly consistent over the past three years.
Although I've been composting for years, your conversation with
Keith last year (composting) inspired me to make literally tons of
compost. I never had a better, problem-free garden.
Agreed! Yesterday I pulled some new compost out of my bin. It
looked and smelled better than any compost I've ever made, but there
wasn't as much of it as I'd like. I think all the rain we've been
getting simply isn't good for the process. My sweetheart keeps
wondering what I'm going to do with all of that compost, but we've got a
fairly large property for a city lot and very little of it is in lawn.
I need a LOT of compost to build up the soil around here.
I now see myself as a grower of soil who essentially selects
appropriate varieties of plants to grow in it.
I agree with your assertion, but we're still trying to figure out
what grows that I enjoy eating. We can grow potatoes and purple beans
like mad around here. The only trouble is that I grew up eating brown
rice and red beans and though I like purple beans, I don't really care
for potatoes. I'd LOVE to have orange trees, but they'd never survive a
winter in this area . . .
Fruits and vegetables have been bred with more concern for
increasing their transportability, even at the expense of taste.
Farming practices may well compromise nutritional quality.
I sense a growing move towards locally produced food. Restaurant
menus and advertisements highlighting locally produced food. Stores
selling more local produce, milk and meats. Farm markets are sprouting
up again. More air time, at least on radio, is being devoted to the
issue. Sustainability is even seeping into the discussion.
There seems to be a confluence of things fuelling the move
..... food miles, quality control issues with industrial food
production, but I think for many, it's a simply matter of taste. Local
producers grow varieties that grow well in their area. They are more
concerned with taste than how well the variety transports. The produce
can be picked when it is ripe and at its best. Compare a local
strawberry or tomato to one that was "designed" to be eaten a week or
more after it was picked, with added connective tissue so it can be
handled and transported, but at the cost of flavor.
I learned this lesson many years ago when I first met my
sweetheart. She came down to California while we were dating and
complained about our "tasteless" strawberries. Having never eaten
anything other than a California strawberry, I thought she was being a
bit of a snob. The following summer, however, I went strawberry picking
with her in Whatcom County, Washington. The difference between a fresh
berry from the field and the ones I'd always eaten in the supermarket
was astonishing!
We don't buy strawberries anymore. One of our raised beds is FILLED
with strawberry plants, and because we don't spray our produce, we're
confident that we're getting wholesome, healthy (and delicious!) fruit
from our own property. There's a satisfaction in this that is hard to
quantify.
I grow beets. I've never tried cooking the greens. Can they be
cooked like spinach or just eaten as salad greens?
Both. My sweetheart uses the leaves in her beet soup, but like
spinach, I prefer them raw. (And like you, my sweetheart is also my
wife. We're coming up on 18 years of marriage in September.) I like
salads that have a variety of greens so that the flavors mingle as I eat.
I've been thinking about your fruit trees. I had hoped that the
arrival of lady bugs (ladybird beetles) was going to solve the problem.
It probably would have if I hadn't sprayed them with soap! (I
didn't know what they were . . . Honest!)
I had a flower bed in which I insisted on growing flowers of my
choice. No matter how hard I tried the bed always was a
disappointment. My wife ("sweetheart") took over the bed and she noted
which plants did best, which did worst. She then looked at what
conditions the ones that did best thrived under and the same for the
ones that did worst. A fairly clear picture emerged. She
then selected plants that liked or at least tolerated the conditions
in that particular location. She turned it into a beautiful flower bed.
So in effect, she was selecting plants based on her observation of
the conditions. That's a smart thing to do. We've grown HUGE
sunflowers here (and the ones for this year already have stems as thick
as my thumb!); sweet peas, cosmos (which grows like a weed!), opium
poppies and California poppies all flourish in our garden. Irisis and
daisies do pretty well, too!
We've also got lilacs and a wysteria that is astonishingly hardy.
Last winter when we had repeated, massive, sustained windstorms that
knocked down our arbors (and snapped whole tree stems in Vancouver's
famous Stanley Park) we thought the badly damaged wysteria wouldn't
recover. It has, however, and once again graces the new (concrete
foundation-footed) arbor my saintly father-in-law built for us.
This may not solve the fruit tree problem. Sometimes a condition
exists .... soil depth, drainage, even obstruction of air flow .....
making it difficult to grow a particular plant in a particular spot.
Good compost and plenty of it may help .... won't hurt.
I don't know what to do about my plum trees. They're SUPPOSED to
grow well here. We have friends who have cut down their plum trees
because they produce so much fruit it simply falls to the ground and
rots! Those, however, were well established trees. Ours are only 6
years old and started out life in lousy conditions!
We have 8 pears on our sickly, pathetic pear tree right now. It's
NEVER produced fruit before, so we're cautiously optimistic this year.
The cherry is still unhappy and the ground around it remains littered
with fallen cherries. All of the fruit on our two year old peach trees
has fallen, but I attribute that to the parasitic fungus that thrived in
our wet, cool spring and early summer. (Peach trees like it hot!) The
apple tree has had so much fruit on its boughs that we've actually had
to take quite a bit of it off!
So, it's a mixed bag with the fruit trees.
We went into the interior this weekend to look at some land in a
hotter, drier region. I took one look at the soil and thought: "Oh my!
This would be a LOT of work to fix!" So maybe I should stop complaining
. . .
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
"The Long Journey"
New Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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