From The Garden
When it comes to the local food and foodie movements, I’m gobsmacked how ignored gardening is. If you truly value fresh produce, you simply cannot beat garden produce. And no, it’s not what I call ‘vitamin p’ [p=pride] making it taste better [which it does, btw]. It’s the fact that you can watch fruit or veg grow, harvest it at it’s peak, and eat it that second. No box store can get close on freshness. Nor can your reputable organic producer at the farmer’s market, sad to say. Top quality produce comes from the garden.
And if that’s not reason enough to plant some seed, this cheapass has done the economic analysis to prove to myself that you can obtain the highest of quality at the lowest of cost – a rare relationship indeed, and the kind of thing that gets me excited. Of course, folks who like to buy stuff can spend as much as they’d like as there’s an industry there to sell them stuff – but soil can be stewarded without money, and seeds can be saved. The biggest arguable cost is my time. But I don’t bill myself for wiping my butt, and consequently don’t charge for feeding myself either – so it works out.
Contrary to popular taste, I’m on a crusade against my lawn, developing nearly all of our small urban lot’s grass into edible gardens. I’m a good way into it, but have a long way to go. While doing a fair bit of homework about permaculture principles, I was inspired by Robert Hart‘s forest gardening. In a nutshell, edible species combined in a way that they mimic a forest ecosystem – in my case largely comprised of native species because I feel strongly that wild foods are critical to our regional food culture. In a few year’s time, my front yard may look like a chunk of bush – and if so, I’ll have succeeded. But it will be a chunk of bush composed of saskatoons, high bush cranberries, red currants, black currants, haskap, strawberries, raspberries, and various wild herbs, wild allium, and edible wild greens and flowers, among other things. These species are natively endowed with hardiness to our climate, require no irrigation, consume varied layers/zones of space in the garden, once established require zero maintenance, propagate themselves readily, and can produce a serious amount of tasty food. Sounds like a reasonably logical approach, no?
The second big piece to my gardening endeavors is basic organic vegetable and fruit growing. Although not without its challenges as things get established and I get smarter, we have some form of garden produce on hand year-round. Yep. The root cellar keeps us in root veg until April, and the cold frames get us into baby greens in April. Fortunately, this is not a realm where I have to feel like a weirdo, and there are loads of great resources on how to accomplish this. Only thing that makes me odd is that I’m actually doing it.
I used to hate gardening. Swore I’d never do it. Then I traveled and fell in love with food. Game over for me.
