Garden Update

"Fruit, Pansy, I must have Fruit!"

This is the first year we are getting significant quantities of fruit off the trees we've planted over the years.

We're doing best with Apples and Plums.

We've learned that Plum varieties that don't turn red are best, since red fruits of all kinds (including Chillis) attract vast hordes of thieving Mousebirds.

The Anna Apples pictured here are our best performer, despite the tree in the picture having been severely damaged by a Baboon last year; he took out the main leader brach and left a very large tear in the bark of the main stem.  We painted it with tree-seal compound, and the tree has recovered quite well, though it remains a bit misshaped.


Cucumbers

For the first time I have had enough inventiveness, energy and bed-space for reasonable Cucumbers.  I am trying a variety I sneaked in from elsewhere called "Telegraph Improved", and they're doing really well.I also have Lemon Cukes and Chinese Yellow elsewhere in the garden, though they're lagging quite a bit behind the Telegraph Cukes. I'm hoping to save seed from all three varieties, so they're well separated from one another.

It remains to be seen whether all these Cukes fruit early enough before Fruit-Fly season sets-in. If not, I have managed to acquire some 12% shade-net which I will use to make cages for the plants. Its an experiment to see whether the mesh is small enough to keep Fruit Flies out, and whether the cloth will serve well enough to construct isolation cages when it comes to saving seed from insect-pollinated varieties.

Tomatoes

All nine varieties of Tomatoes are doing really well, and the earliest -- a strain of Red Khaki I have been selectively saving seed for about 15 years now -- are starting to change colour.  Hooray!  Real Tomatoes again in a couple of weeks!  I just hope that we do not suffer too much humidity come February, otherwise we shall surely be struck by Blight again, and I really need to save lots of seed from some of the old heirlooms -- Brandywine and Cherokee Purple -- which are, of course, the most blight-prone of the lot.  I am being particularly religious about keeping other plants clear from around the Tomatoes so that the air movement hopefully keeps the humidity down.

In one sense, now is truly the best time of year in the garden.  The first fruits of our Spring labour is starting to come in, but we're not yet inundated with harvesting and processing, and the Hungry Gap is past.  All the plants are growing vigorously and look healthy, no diseases or pests have taken their toll yet.  The only serious pressure is to cull weeds, mulch and the ever-present water worries.

Restore Your Faith

I don't even remember the context.  A (now defunct) Permaculture mailing list...  I must have lusted after a particular book that I could not then afford (nor can I yet).


One of the list participants struck me with a very great kindness:  out of the blue, a copy of David Holmgren's "Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability".



Thank You, Ian!


Your kindness and generosity restores my frequently-battered faith in us humans.

Pigs to Fly by 2030

A WorldChanging article caught my eye, about New York City's endeavours to become a "sustainable city" by 2030. My immediate thought was

"Pigs To Fly By Flapping Their Pink Little Ears By 2030".

I think their efforts are admirable, but doomed.  I saw no mention of "Where's the food going to come from?" and "How is the food going to get here in the absence of cheap oil?"

So I'll stick to my piggie little guns: "sustainable city" is an oxymoron. Besides which, NYC, along with Cape Town and lots of other cities may by then already be faced with Seriously Rising Tides.

Enlightenment

Once there was a well known philosopher and scholar who devoted himself to the study of Zen for many years. On the day that he finally attained enlightenment, he took all of his books out into the yard, and burned them all.

-- from "Zen and Taoist Stories"

I am often asked by people, "What do you do?".  As if the job defines the person, somehow made more mysterious by my living in the countryside, trying to be slightly self-sufficient.

A few weeks ago, on a whim, I answered, "I am a Research Gardener."

The look of confusion and perplexity on peoples' faces is worth it, since mostly they know me as a computer geek.

Last week I was in Cape Town, visiting friends, among them a Master of organic market gardening.  He was describing how he constantly questions the conventional wisdoms of the organic movement.  Applying simple logic, experimentation and observation to achieve astonishing results.  I said to him, "Ah! So you are a Research Gardener, too!"

Perhaps one day soon I shall burn my gardening books.

The Ozone-Friendly Way of Gardening

Gardening in the Sun is getting scary.  Over the past couple of months I have had the feeling that the Sun is fiercer.  Its not that the weather is hotter, as such, but the Sun's rays burn harsher, sunburn comes easier.  I seem not to be the only one - numerous people are commenting on this.  Are we really feeling the effects of the worst-ever Thinning of the Ozone Layer, or is this just some sort of auto-suggestion effect?  The sceptic in me says, "Let's leave it at 'I don't know.'" though, honestly, I was feeling this before I started seeing news reports about how how bad the ozone layer is this year.

Three Strands of Thinking...

Fit the First: All this has got me thinking, and observing my veggie beds much more closely.  I'm becoming much more concerned with mulching the surface of beds, particularly at this stage of the growing season, where plants are still tiny, and much of the surface lies open and exposed to the Sun, Wind and Rain.  Expecting a dry, hot and burny Summer, I also need to implement soil-moisture conservation strategies - something I've simply been lazy about for too long, now.

Fit the Second: Then, too, as I have been clearing beds, resuscitating the Hex Project, the whole Hex scheme as really crystalised in my mind - outer beds feeding mulch and nutrients to the mid-ring and inner beds; inner beds providing seed, and so on.  I promise a full write-up - to do so now will just be a distraction from my point for this post.

Fit the Third and Final: Lately I have been stacking crops in time a lot - seeding or transplanting directly into a standing crop that is still a few weeks from harvest.  Having neglected garden-bed maintenance during the year in favour of various other stupidities, I am now paying the price in being very pushed for space for the Summer crops.  And there's nothing like necessity to get the creative juices flowing!  This sort of stacking was pioneered by Masunobu Fukuoka, and, though I have not read his books, I think I have a basic understanding of the principles - far too many ramifications and implications to go into here and now - very deep stuff!  I would love to read of his work and hopefully will be able to afford some of his books soon.

...Click

A click brought on by tripping across "The Road Back To Nature".  I feel that I am advancing to yet another stage in my gardening.  Yet a deeper level of understanding of soil biota, the rhizosphere and how they interact. Yet a deeper connectedness with the Earth herself.

It shows up in funny ways, too.  I find myself apologising to Earthworms I have accidentally disturbed; unwilling to kill obvious pests.  Better to leave them as food for the predators that protect my garden.

The more I learn about growing things, the more I have come to believe that the only limit to the productive capacity of our gardens, is our own knowledge, empathy, respect and understanding

I'm Afraid You Have Cows, Mr Brown

Apologies to Gary Larsen.

A neighbour's cows broke free yesterday, and were most attracted by my luscious little Tomatoes and Chillis - or more likely by the lush Kikuyu growth. (Doesn't it sound like a great movie title? "When The Cows Broke Free." Directed by Hitchcock. Or perhaps Woody Allen.)

Eight cows of various ages and sizes wandering around a veggie garden is a fast recipe for disaster. Fortunately OB The PhD was wide awake and alerted us almost immediately, so we were able to chase them off without too much catastrophe. The neighbour who they belong to is very ummmm.... insular? Keep to themselves. Their families have lived here for generations, and, even after eleven years and sundry attempts to "make contact" we are still considered "uitlanders" (foreigners.)

We do have a gate to close our entrance, but it seldom gets used since there is (normally) no threat. I am pretty sure that a farm worker left their gate improperly secured, and, for cows, grass is always greener elsewhere! Especially in veggie gardens.

We lost a few plants that got trampled - unfortunately one of the just-starting-to-flower Cherokee Purple Tomato bushes among them :-( but otherwise got off quite lightly.

Never truer, the saying, "Good fences make good neighbours."  (Unless the fence in question is 2.5m high and highly electrified and reinforced with multiple layers of mesh of various gauges.  But that's another story for another day.)

Evil Supermarkets and Organic Labelling

A fascinating story, "Wal-Mart, the Cornucopia Institute and Organic Labeling" unfolds over at Sustainablog.  Is Walmart deliberately misleading consumers?  Is the Cornucopia Institute simply on a self-serving mission of revenge?

When I did a  consulting gig to a major local supermarket chain some years ago,  I learned that people (shoppers, competing merchandisers, illiterate shelf-packers) shifting shelf-labels around, accidentally or mischievously, is always a major headache for supermarkets.

So this would tend to support Wal-Mart's claim...

On the other hand, a (different) local chain, focused on selling into the A-income (rich people) market, screwed a lot of small organic farmers.  Their tactic was to place organic meat close to non-organic meat, with both organic and non-organic products deliberately packaged in very similar packaging.

After 18 months ( a year? two? - memory fails) or so they cancelled all contracts with the organic farmers, putting a lot of farmers out of business in the process.  They also did not bother to mention to consumers that they were dropping the organic meat products, and, although their labelling and packaging was technically legal, many, many consumers continued buying way-overpriced meat in the belief that they were buying organically-raised meat.

So this would tend to support a "deliberate obfuscation" theory...

I wouldn't like to guess what is really going on in the case Jeff wrote about, but it sure looks suspicious to me.