Hello my fellow gardeners! It's been three months since my last Hive Garden post. So much has changed in three short months, and now everything is growing by leaps and bounds. My eating habits have had to change too, now that I try to eat primarily from my garden, or the gardens and farms of my friends. How I love to fashion my meals around what I have, not what I can buy at a grocery store! And how I also love not having to go to grocery stores much at all. If I could grow coffee, bananas, chocolate and lemons, I would very rarely have to go to those places, where I always get alarmed about the sorry state of the American diet, and the toxins that are slathered over most peoples homes and bodies.
Enough sadness! It's time for the Joy of Gardening, in upstate New York State, USofA.
My daughters gave me a wonderful Christmas gift this past year, a harvesting apron. I can gently gather lots of stuff in this thing, much like a voluminous skirt can gently hold the tenderest of veggies, but I have both hands free. I just love this thing.
I put in a new asparagus patch along my back fence this year. Unlike my previous patch, which was blocking too much of the western sun on my raised beds and had to be moved, I did the whole shebang: amended the soil to raise the pH, added bone meal, dug trenches to lay the roots in, and covered the shoots up repeatedly as they grew. I'm a bit worried the patch doesn't get enough sun, but we'll just have to wait and see.
When friends visit my garden, they often ask "What do you do with okra?" My fondness for okra goes back to the days of my youth, and one particular summer that I spent living with my recently divorced and very unhappy Aunt Jane. She was an avid gardener, and grew all sorts of interesting things, one of which was okra. We pickled it, fried it and put it in summer stews. I grew to love it madly, kind of like how many people, inexplicably if you ask me, love kale. I've been trying, and mostly failing, to grow the stuff for six years now, and this year the three plants of "Heavy Hitter" look healthy and have already started to produce. I'm delighted!
This is my first year planting bush beans, and boy do they ever look like I'll have a bumper crop. One eight foot row seemed like a modest amount when I planted them, but if each of these blossoms produces a bean, I will be canning and freezing and pickling green beans until I never want to plant them again. I actually did not plant any cukes this year for that reason - I had way too many last year, from only four plants!
I'll be feeding a few extra folks at my lake house this weekend. How proud I will be to serve up food I grew myself! Here's the harvest from yesterday. Nice big fat beets are under there somewhere.
Here it is folks, nearly my entire yard. In this tiny space I am growing a lot of my food. I learned how to can a bunch of stuff last year, mostly pickles, and also learned that I cannot live on pickles alone. This year, I bought an electric pressure canner, and will preserve foods that are not pickled, including meats.
I supplement my diet with meats, eggs, dairy and veggies from local farmers who practice what I preach, regarding nourishment of our bodies as well as of the land.
I'm a little old lady people. If I can do this, you can too. Plant something today!
This is my entry to the Hive Garden community's monthly garden journal contest. Please come show us your garden!
