The Unrepentant Omnivore

Time for a study break. After reading several dense chapters of a textbook, my brain simply shut down and said “Self, go hang out in the garden for a few.”

I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of produce coming out of this thing…my maiden voyage into agriculture (and thanks to ExploreSacramento.com for the new term “urban micro-farm”) having succeeded beyond my expectations. Sure, I’ve made many, many mistakes, and there have been some disappointments, but I am learning what to do differently. I think my biggest upset so far came the day I found the corpse of my little bumblebee assistant. 

The hardworking little fellow showed up every morning and diligently buzzed from bloom to bloom. It seems like the tomatoes and eggplant have been worse off since he died. Some other bees have shown up, but they aren’t as industrious and don’t seem to be getting the same results. The boyfriend has suggested that I plant some lavender to attract more bees–so I’ll try that and see what happens. 

But all this gardening has really made me focus on food issues.  What I eat, where it comes from, how it’s cooked, etc. I was a vegetarian for several years, but now am an unrepentant omnivore. Which leads me to a favorite quote from Michael Pollan: ”Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” 

Here’s a shot of one of the beautiful eggplants my garden has produced. BF grilled one the other night and it turned out perfectly. He salted each side, let it sit for about 1/2 hour, then rinsed. A quick drizzle with olive oil, and onto the grill. Simple.

One problem with all this bounty is, of course, ODing on it. I mean, I can only eat so many cocozelle. We’ve been eating it with every dinner and every breakfast, plus leftovers for lunch. I’m not sick of it yet, but it could happen. I made a quick attempt at zucchini patties with some cocos, too. Using an aunt’s recipe, I grated the coco, beat in a couple of eggs, and ground in some black pepper. I also tossed in a bit of chopped garlic–an ingredient I don’t believe I’ve ever seen in any family recipes (yeah, I’m such a rebel). The recipe called for green onions and mushrooms, too, but I didn’t have them on hand. Heck, with my family background, I am totally shocked it didn’t call for shredded spam or american cheese. I fried the patties in a tad of olive oil and they came out…well, just so-so. I’ll have to try again with other ingredients–certainly, I won’t be running out of cocozelles anytime soon…as you can see:

Much as I am enjoying all this fresh, homegrown produce, I’m also enjoying eating meat. Because the BF is such a great cook, my meat intake has increased exponentially. Probably a little too much, actually. I like to think my clogged arteries are being offset by my veggie intake…

 Another quote from the same Pollan article:

This brings us to another unexamined assumption: that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health. Hippocrates’s famous injunction to “let food be thy medicine” is ritually invoked to support this notion. I’ll leave the premise alone for now, except to point out that it is not shared by all cultures and that the experience of these other cultures suggests that, paradoxically, viewing food as being about things other than bodily health — like pleasure, say, or socializing — makes people no less healthy; indeed, there’s some reason to believe that it may make them more healthy. This is what we usually have in mind when we speak of the “French paradox” — the fact that a population that eats all sorts of unhealthful nutrients is in many ways healthier than we Americans are. So there is at least a question as to whether nutritionism is actually any good for you.

I think the whole point (which I tend to belabor into oblivion, I know) is that we should enjoy what we eat, and we tend to enjoy and appreciate it more when it comes from our own efforts. And if I’m in the undergrad class on this one, I just want to give a shout out to a guy who’s in the PhD program…Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

Becoming an “urban gardener”

 With more cocozelle coming out of my garden than I can eat, my first eggplant and bellpepper harvested, and impending tomatoes…I am starting to feel like an urban gardener. Seriously, though, what was I thinking all these years, going without a garden? Too much trouble, too much work, not enough time, and not enough knowledge. Vegetables have always been things that other people grew. The whole process seemed mysterious, arcane, and not just a little bit boring.

But if a complete novice like me can do this, anyone can. The wealth of information that’s out there is amazing. One of my tomato plants has leaf curl (no, not the roma!!! nooooo!). I googled “tomato leaf curl” and found encyclopedic information that allowed me to assess and diagnose the problem in under 15 minutes.

I stumbled across a great website the other day (while trying to figure out when to harvest my eggplant)…check it out:  

http://www.sacgardens.org/index.html

My garden started off in a little 8×8 plot, but I’ve had to pull up the fencing and let the garden spread out.  I’m okay with this–my lawn sucks anyway and I’d like to get rid of all of it.

Not to be all melodramatic here, but this experience is incredible. It’s such a simple act, growing vegetables. And I didn’t do it as a political statement, but in fact it is, and I’m starting to realize how much I have missed out on by not simply sticking a couple of seeds in a little bit of dirt.

It’s mediation, exercise, self-sufficiency, cost savings, and a sense of accomplishment that doesn’t suck–all rolled into one.

Welcome to the Jungle

My garden is bursting its seams, literally. The plants are growing so large, they’re overlapping each other. Everything seems to be quite happy, except the last little tomato plant, which is being overshadowed by the cucumber. All this is in only an 8×8 space. I wanted to start small because of my lack of gardening experience–now I find myself wishing I’d planned a larger garden. But, this garden is manageable, and I am already telling myself I can do a bigger one next year.

Back to our regularly scheduled program…

Yeah, okay, so I post a bunch of political grousing and get like 400 hits or something (who reads this? I have no idea…). But I really didn’t intend this as a political blog, so much.

The more urgent issue I’m facing is that something is totally chowing on my eggplant. In fact, I argue that this issue is far more pressing than anything to do with the mayor’s race because (1) I am the only one who can do something about it and (2) I can have a far greater impact in my garden than with my one measly vote next week. Here’s the scene of the crime:

 

  

A dastardly deed, indeed…

I searched the entire plant for the culprit, but came up snake eyes. So I’m trying the boyfriend’s tried-and-true wood ashes solution (good thing I still haven’t cleaned out the fireplace, huh?).

Otherwise, the cocozelle and the eggplant are both growing as if I’d given them steroids. The cocozelle had a huge yellow flower on it this morning. I’m worried that these two plants are going to overrun each other. As you can see in the pic below, the cukes, pepper, and tomatoes are all doing well, too.

 

You know, it’s gratifying to watch all this stuff grow..but in the back of my mind, I wonder if I’ll actually get any produce out of all this work. Since I’ve never been much of a gardener, I keep expecting to walk out one morning and find that all the plants have turned brown and died. Other people make it look so easy…and it’s not like it’s a lot of hard labor…but it’s more that I just keep expecting the whole thing to tank because of my lack of authentic green-thumb credentials or something.

Anyway, the other good news is that the cherry tomatoes have sprouted (and this time, they’re safe in my kitchen, so whatever mouse or bird ate the last ones can’t get these…yet.)

 

Drip Irrigation Can Be Fun?

So, when I’m not running around in the dark of night, swapping Obama signs with Hillary signs and KJ signs with Fargo signs,* I’m diligently tending my little organic veggie garden.

Today (yes, Monday morning), I installed a drip irrigation system. Then I sashayed all over midtown with an “I’m conserving more water than you” bumpersticker stuck to my butt. Okay, not really. But seriously, it took me about three hours and was fun–in the sense of logicking-out-a-puzzle fun, not trip-to-remote-Mexican-beach fun.

As you can see…it’s a very simple system, so it’s not like I think I’m a genius…But it’s pretty cool and it was bizarrely enjoyable to lay the whole thing out, figure out how to position the 1/2″ mainline and each of the 10 1/4″ drip lines (hard to see in the photo). In the upper right corner are the tomatoes I finally transplanted. There’s a roma, a brandywine, and a Cherokee red. The 4th tomato cage is for the cherry tomatoes…the first batch of which were devoured by a mouse or bird at the boyfriend’s house.  So a couple of new seedlings are in the works on my kitchen counter.

The little garden is taking off…

As I mentioned a while back, I’m starting a garden this year for the first time in a very long time. And let’s just say…mistakes have been made. But, overall, things are going well.

I couldn’t put the garden in the most logical (and sunniest) spot in the yard because it would sit right over the water main that needs to be replaced soon. But the alternate spot gets good full sun for several hours a day, plus it’s right next to a spigot, so it’s easy to water.

I probably should have installed raised beds, but instead decided to simply remove the grass and rototill. Unfortunately, the bermuda grass is extremely persistent and I’m having to stay on top of the weeding a bit more than I thought I would. I’ve installed benderboard around the edge of the garden, and I’m going to add a bunch of mulch to see if that helps.

The big bag of dogfood in the pic? That’s my secret ingredient!