a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: August 2016

Sandbox for Adults

Grow savoy cabbage. You won’t be disappointed. Few vegetables are more beautiful, or so delicious.

Grow corn. You won’t be disappointed. Few vegetables have such wild hairdos.

Plant a noble fir. In midsummer, its cones will remind you of Christmas. The sap, capping the cones, even looks like icicles.

For a really great time, grow potatoes. When its time to dig them up, it’s like a sandbox for adults. I grew up in sandboxes and on the beach, digging through the sand, making roads and bridges, and castles more than I can count. Digging through the soft, warm dirt, looking for potatoes is every bit as much fun.

And look at all the potato fruits I found. I’ve got thousands of seeds to plant, just with this lot. Something interesting and new should grow with this many seeds.

Don’t forget to thank the earth and all the creatures living in the earth which made your potatoes possible. A sack of potatoes will provide many meals and plenty of conversation, all made possible by the good earth.

A surprise this afternoon was coming upon a snake skin on a log. You can picture the snake rubbing its belly against the log to remove its old skin. It makes you wish you could crawl out of your skin and leave it behind. If we humans did that, we’d have all sorts of rules as to where and where you could not leave your skin. NO SKINS ALLOWED IN THIS PARK! Or country people would say, “I’m so glad I live somewhere I can leave my skin wherever I want.”

Wherever you live, may you be surrounded by flowers.

August 17, 2016
Worth It

With its showy leaves, zucchini is worth growing just for its looks. Just one turns into a stunner. And it will feed you too!

I’m preparing beds for fall. So how wide should I make them? A meter? A half a meter? Three feet? Two feet? I’ve decided to ditch the tape measures, rulers, and yard sticks this fall and stick to rulers I have with me at all times … my own feet. It’s as simple as can be. Just line my feet up. And for smaller measurements, I’ll just use my hands and fingers. I’ll never forget where I left my measuring sticks and tapes again. The best solutions are often the simplest ones.

Growing your own food is worth it just for all the amazing creatures you encounter. This looks like a ground beetle larva. These beetles, larva and adults, are predatory and devour all sorts of insects and even slugs. Keep your garden free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and other poisons, and you will end up with a healthy ecosystem with sufficient predators to keep the harmful insects in check. Everything is food for something, and when there are too many aphids or other pests, something will come along and enjoy a feast, taking care of the problem for you.

The mornings are fall-like, but the days are summer. The mimosa is in full bloom. After working the vegetable beds, the powdering fragrance of the mimosa is pure delight.

August 15, 2016
Hints of Fall

The chilly, dewy mornings hint of fall. It’s down in the low 50s when I head out early in the morning, cool enough to put on a light jacket. On mornings like these, kale leaves are jade jewels. In the hoop house, the tomatoes keep ripening. It may be chilly in the morning, but midday, it’s over a 100º in the hoop house. The tomatoes soak in the sunshine and trap it inside, turning redder with each sunbeam they soak in.

A surprise today was finding some white flower beans 白花豆 ready to pick. The handful made a great side dish for supper. A few more weeks and I should have buckets of these.

August 14, 2016
Every Day is an Adventure

For these young chicks, every day is an adventure. Even though these dark cornish chicks are hatchery chicks, the moment they arrived on the morning of July 20, I introduced them to their mothers, and here we are, three weeks and a few days later, an adventure every day. The only way little chicks can enjoy adventures into the woods is with a mother.

August 13, 2016
Potato Heaven

Chickens go nuts over potatoes which is why they are banished from the vegetable garden. A few years ago they dug up the entire crop of potatoes and ate them all. It’s not that they went looking for potatoes, but while digging for their favorite food, earthworms, they uncovered the potatoes one by one.

This pile of potatoes came from a single plant, nearly four and a half pounds, over two kilos, of potatoes. This was a potato that came up from a potato I missed when I was digging up potatoes last year. My experience is that potatoes which overwinter do better than those planted in the spring. My guess is that throughout the winter, they are growing roots so that when spring comes, with a well developed root system, they are able to grow more vigorously. The trick to planting potatoes in the fall is to have beds that stay well drained through the rainy winter months. If they sit in water during the winter they will just rot.

Fresh onions are the jewels of the garden. The whitest of whites, the most beautiful greens are those of freshly dug potatoes. While I was cleaning the onions in the garden this afternoon, Ena 枝那, slept peacefully next to me. You can’t ask for more than to have a sleeping dog at your side to keep you company while you work.

August 10, 2016