Gardening Wrap-Up

It's been a few weeks since gardening gave way to winter weather, but I haven't put any finale photos up until now. Enjoy!
A final photograph before "turning over" the garden.
This little lady is the daughter of a fellow community gardener. At this point, with a little help from her, I had torn out everything except the corn.
And the year is over. It's a beautiful cycle.

I did end up getting a bit of corn, but the big crops were beans, squash, and zucchini. The big surprise was tomatillo, a relative of the tomato that is used to make green salsa and a vegetable with which I was previously unfamiliar. It was a fantastic experience at the community garden and I urge all of you to find a gardening opportunity near you.

Harvest Time!

My first harvest was today, hooray!!!!

I stopped by for my weekly day of watering and thought a few beans looked ready, so pick pick pick I went.

And pick... and pick.

My estimate that my pockets would suffice was waaaaaaaaaaaaay off, so my brilliant mind turned my shirt into a bag. Three pounds of beans later and I was on my way home. Wonderful!

Below are three pictures: 1) The beans; 2) The garden plot; 3) The little plot on the side.




I'm up to about 10 squash, do I hear "bumper crop"?

Garden Update

We had a big pea harvest last week. I had four friend over and we ate the first haul. The next day I picked and preserved (froze) a bunch more. Fresh peas are fantastic!


Below are two community garden photos. You may notice that there are two raised beds. That is because a few days ago I built and planted a second bed, this one with sweet corn. Fresh sweet corn is one of the most fantastic treats, however for us to enjoy this we have to have a fairly late first freeze this fall. That's the case because I planted late! I have my fingers crossed it will work out, but today was a good sign: they started to come up!

The second photo is of a small plot I started because there were some unused plants laying around and I didn't want to see them die. There are squash and the plant that produces the green part of green salsa. I feel like an adoptive parent.

Community Garden

Today was productive: bike ride in the morning, errands in the middle of the day, worked in the community garden in the evening.

Recently, after reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, I've been on a kick to eat more vegetables and less meat, especially stuff that's organic and grown more locally. It's a sobering book describing the rise in processed food consumption since World War II and the simultaneous and significant increase in health problems facing our society (heart, obesity, etc). He convincingly argues this is no coincidence. I highly recommend the book.

Anyhow, as a result I'm excited to grow some of my own food. It's relatively easy, cheap, and better for my health and that of the environment. My dad keeps a nice garden at home, but I'm also participating in the community garden. It's a place where anyone can develop a plot of land to produce their own food. Today Serena and I spent a little more than a hour turning a grassy area into a raised bed. Below you can see me planting beans (look closely and you can even see the little beans in the row!), but also note the raised bed that I built!


All this left me marveling over seeds. Here are these little things that hang out until they're planted and the germination is activated. My dad relayed a story about a professor at Michigan State who started researching how long seeds will "hibernate" and still grow viable plants. Apparently the answer is more than a century. Astounding.