My Small Garden Photos

A great year for corn and sunflowers. 

 

Why I Garden?

Why do I garden? There is no single reason that underscores why I like to grow plants, just as there is no single plant, I like to grow more than the others. There are a number of reasons why I enjoy spending time in a garden.

First, I believe that people need a hobby, interest or activity, call it what you will, that takes their minds off their day to day realities.

All of us are busy and often have a number of different thoughts or things to do that are competing for our attention.

Speaking of things to do, your hobby or personal interest should not result in you developing another list of things to do. That is not helpful and may indeed take the fun out of the doing.

That does not mean that you do not make a plan, without a plan you may never get started or get started and then have no idea what to do next.

It simply means that your plan is not the law; it is not engraved in stone, and can be changed or tossed aside, in favour of another approach.

I find gardening to be the perfect activity and that is primarily why I garden. It can keep me enjoyable occupied all year round, either doing it; reading about it; ordering seeds or planning the garden and even redrawing last year’s plans.

When I sit down with a seed catalogue, the day’s news and events slip from the forefront of my mind and images of what the plants will look like when they grow. 

This leads to giving some thought to where the new plant(s) will look best and where they will most benefit in the existing garden.

Will this be the year I plant that flowering crab-apple that I have been reading about or perhaps a redwood dogwood. These thoughts nudge out the concerns about the economy, the environment and all the bad news that fills the media.

An hour spent with a seed catalogue in the deep of winter refreshes my mind and awakens the hope that Spring brings when the gardening season begins anew and old friends reappear and new ones are waiting to be discovered.

I garden because I love spending time outside; feeling the wind and the sun on my face and hands.

Of course, these days you need to protect yourself from any prolonged exposure to the sun’s rays but a hat works and gardening gloves serve many purposes.

I love to grow things; there is immense satisfaction and sense of accomplishment from watching a flower come alive from a seed that you planted a few weeks prior.

Gardening offers you an opportunity to make decisions and choices. It is your garden. You can decide what you want to grow; how much you want to grow and what you will do with what you choose to grow.

I often refer to the garden as a place that exists between Nature and Civilization and the gardener is responsible for maintaining the balance between the two. When you create a garden, you are opening the door to remembering the connection that exist between humans and Nature; a connection that is very real, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Gardens do not require chemicals poured over them to thrive; that is the gardener’s job to create and maintain the conditions that allow the plants to mature and reproduce.

The garden is a learning ground where you can learn about botany, biology, math, history and become acquainted first hand with the processes that make the garden grow.

You see the relationships between the various beings who work with you to make your garden grow.

Birds and butterflies, for example, bring their beauty and other services to the well-tended garden. Bees carry out the important work of pollination and you observe the connection between what the bee does and your garden’s growth.

I garden because I love to grow things and watching a plant break the surface as the seed spring into life is always a wonder and an encouraging moment. I like to have cut flowers for our house and do not want to buy them but step outside and cut them myself. That way I know that they were grown without artificial pesticides and fertilizers.

Tomatoes are a favourite food but the ones I buy at the supermarket just do not have the flavour that the ones I plucked off the vine in my own garden do.

It is only truly fresh when the farthest distance it travels is the distance from my backyard to my kitchen table.

Simply spending time sitting in a comfortable chair in the backyard after a slow stroll through my garden is one of the best ways that I know to calm my mind and relax at the end of the workday.

As I take my first step into the garden, I can feel the day’s concerns sliding off me. My eyes begin to focus on the plants, their fruits and foliage as I look to see what has changed and how each plant is faring.

Then when the quiet inspection is complete, I sit back and watch the dance of life performed by the bees, butterflies and other small creatures who are busy at work maintaining the garden while I sit back and enjoy the view.

There are many reasons to garden and each one of us may well have our own and that is another reason that gardening is a delightful way to spend our time; our gardens are our own creations; and we are free to pursue our own interest when in the garden.

Gardens, both great and small, are a refuge from the concrete and asphalt world that surrounds so many of us as we travel back and forth to work.

Anyone who wants to, can garden; it is a matter of will and design and is a wonderful opportunity to get away from it all without ever leaving home.

Food is Our Common Ground

Everything needs to eat.

What we eat varies due to personal preferences, ethics, financial ability, for in our world, food is a commodity and no pay, no eat, is the rule; culture and political and religious beliefs also play a role when we choose our fare.

Regardless of our food choices, the one choice that we cannot and usually do not want to make is to not eat. We eat or we die

If we eat but do not get the nutrition that our body requires from the food we choose then we become ill. If we do not eat enough, even of good food, then we weaken and become ill.

In North America, we often complain of our fast paced lives and how busy we are; this reality is well reflected in our food lifestyle, fast food dominates the food scene. Drive-thrus and delivery, microwaves and frozen entrées have replaced cooking; which, along with growing our own food, is a basic survival skill.

How many people would suffer greatly, if they could no longer pick up or order in their supper or no longer pop something into the microwave and wait a few minutes for dinner?

How many days food do you have in your pantry or storage cupboards? When was the last time that you preserved any food?

How long would your food last if the transportation system broke down and the food you buy was no longer on the grocery store shelves and the pizza place was out of dough?

North Americans have let the food supply system slip out of their grasp and the very item, the second most important need that we have, after air; water being the first, is in the hands of companies that are in many cases far away.

We can live for up to three weeks without food, but only 3 days without water.

Food is trucked, flown and put in box cars so that it can be shipped to its destination. How fresh can it be if it has been sitting in a container for 2 weeks before it reaches your plate?

Do you know how far your last meal traveled before it became a meal?

Tomatoes, for example are being bred for their ability to travel rather than their flavour. So we get tomatoes that can travel but are tasteless.

Even the fast food that we so dearly love relies on transport to deliver the bulk of what it serves.

Transportation requires the use of fossil fuels to power the truck that carry much of our food and the airplanes that fly in the foods from distant ports. The price of gasoline is rising in many places as is the price of food, they are connected.

The agriculture industry is one of the biggest users of fossil fuels, not just for transportation, but for the production of pesticides and fertilizers as well.

There is an episode of West Wing where President Bartlett is speaking to his chief of staff. The topic is the news that mad cow disease has raised its head in the United States. The President says and I am slightly paraphrasing this: “Often what we take for granted is the very thing that turns around and bites us in the ass”.

The conditions that the animals that we consume are kept in are all too often appalling to say the least; this means that before they are killed they suffer. This reality is the reason that many people become vegetarians.

There are a number of food based movements that are working to address food quality, local economies and the sheer pleasure of preparing and sharing a meal with friends and family. The organic movement has become big business, the push to local food ahs drawn nation attention and the slow food movement has spread across nations.

If we have any real interest in improving our quality of life, our environment and address issues such as poverty and hunger then we only need to look inside our cupboards and refrigerators and begin to change with what we put in them on shopping day.

Food is our common ground; we all eat so let’s give our next meal some thought.

Local Food

Beans, Beans, Beans

Beans are a perfect crop. For the home gardener, there are two types of beans that you will want to consider. One is the pole bean. Pole beans will need some kind of support; support that is strong enough to keep the plants from tumbling to the ground.

The support must bear the full weight of the plants but it has to also withstand the summer winds and storm. You do not want to come out one fine sunny morning and find that last night’s storm knocked your beautiful beans flat.

The other is bush beans, which are a smaller and more compact plant, and will provide a heavy first harvest as well as a lighter second picking before the plants are finished.

When you use bush beans you may be able to plant more than one crop during the season so that a continuous supply of beans is always close to maturing.

I have built tripods/teepees from poles to use as supports and if the poles are long enough and put into the ground at least six inches and securely fastened at the top they have withstood some fairly heavy wind storms.

Beans should not be sown until the danger of the last frost has passed; damp and cold soil will cause the bean seed to rot and bye-bye bean.

There is a wide variety of beans to choose from and remember when you buy seeds of any kind, beans included, read the seed package and follow the instructions.

Beans are also a great way to introduce children to gardening and the connection between food and the earth.

What you need are a bean seed, a small garden pot (3 inches across) some soil and water. You will also need a place at home to put the pot where it will get 4-6 hours of sunlight.

Fill the pot with soil; make a small hole using the pinky finger about ¼ inches deep, put in the bean cover over, water.

Then place the pot in a sunny spot and watch it grow. Be sure the planter has drainage and be sure to place a saucer or something else to catch the excess water.

We have done this exercise with quite a few children over the years and they enjoy the planting and have often told us about their beans and even brought pictures.

This exercise works well with children between the ages of 2 and 4 years old but children up to 7 have participated and had fun.

Are You Food Secure?

Food prices are rising, and more and more people are turning to grow their own food to help keep the costs down. Unfortunately, far too many people do not have the room to grow much, and while growing something is better than growing nothing, very few of us can feed ourselves without going to a store and buying food.

So what happens when you have little or no land and your income is insufficient to feed your family? Food security is often discussed in terms of what we called the Developing countries. However, there are far too many people across North America who are a paycheque away from hunger.

Sure there are food banks and lunch and breakfast programs that can help but there is no guarantee they will always be there to help. The food banks depend upon people being able to give surplus food and what happens when the surplus dries up?

When would your food supply run out if you were unable to buy food anywhere? Do you ever think about how secure or perhaps, better put, insecure your food supply is? What is food security?

In 1996, the World Food Summit defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”.

Generally speaking, food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences.

Food preferences include vegan and vegetarian choices as well as ethnic cuisine.

Food is a commodity. This means it is bought and sold in a marketplace. This is a good way to do business, as long as all the participants have the means to shop, and buy the food their bodies and minds demand. Unfortunately, many families cannot feed themselves on the income they receive each month, and the money often runs out before the month does.

What can we do? We can encourage the growth of local food growing and producing business by shopping local as often as we are able. We can encourage the development of community gardens, yard sharing and community shared agriculture projects.

Community gardens, such as the one in the accompanying picture in Campbellton New Brunswick, enable people without any other access to land, to grow some of their own food. This increases their ability to take care of themselves and fosters a sense of community among the gardeners.

Community Garden BBQ. Bob Ewing photo

Community gardens also provide a gardening education to those who need it, and new gardeners can learn about techniques such as starting seeds indoors in order to extend the gardening season.

These actions localize food production and can create jobs and incomes which means people have money to spend. This localization of food production is happening across the continent, but it needs support both consumer support and political support at the municipal, provincial or state and federal levels.

Food security is a political issue, besides finding ways to grow your own food and shopping local, talk with your political representatives and tell them to make food security a priority. Remind them food is a right, one they need to honour

The Food Chain

If you want to understand an animal’s behaviour, the most effective way is to observe that animal in its natural habitat, its ecosystem. For example, watching what an animal or bird eats will give you important information about that animal.

The food chain, or what eats what is the living part of an ecosystem. A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals.

Al of this is possible because of the relationship between the Sun and the Earth. The Sun reaches the Earth and provides the energy that ecosystems need to produce the green leafy plants that form the basis of our food system. This process is called photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis converts light energy into chemical energy; the leaves of green plants receive energy from the sun and transform this into food that animals and humans, for example, can consume.

In photosynthesis, the energy absorbed by chlorophyll transforms carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and oxygen. Chlorophyll channels the energy of sunlight into chemical energy.

All the food that people eat is dependent upon plants for their basic energy source. This is true whether people consume plants, animals or both. The animals that we eat, eat the plants or derivatives of the plants, to produce the food (meat) that we turn into steaks, chops and burgers.

Vegetarians and carnivores may argue over what makes an acceptable meal but both rely on photosynthesis for supper.

Just where do human sit on the food chain? Well, food chains are composed of producers, consumers, which are broken down into herbivores and carnivores, and decomposers. All are essential for the circle to keep on turning.

Humans fit into the consumer category and humans are both herbivores and carnivores and some will say that humans are actually omnivores, because when faced with starvation, we will eat just about anything, including each other.

I often hear people refer to humans as being at the top of the food chain, but consider this; you are out walking along a forest or mountain trail when suddenly just up ahead there is a grizzly bear looking straight at you, who is higher on the food chain at that moment/

You are swimming in the ocean and are suddenly confronted by a shark, who is lunch?

Okay, these are extremes examples and properly trained and armed the human is likely to come out on tops in either encounter.

Let’s look at a smaller example, the mosquito, they feed off of us and other warm-blooded animals, sure we can slap them and spray them and coat ourselves in lotion to keep them at bay but should one get a good drink from us and we may become ill.

Lyme disease is another threat carried by very small beings and to get even smaller still what about the colds and flues that assault humans every year? Where do they sit on the food chain?

By studying food chains and the interconnected relationships between the various members of the chain we are able to gain an understanding of how Nature works.

Everything eats and this is the common ground that connects us all together. Everything plays a role and we do not really know what role anyone element plays until after it vanishes and things begin to change.

What we do know is that creature had someone for lunch and was someone else’s lunch? Who will go uneaten and who will go unfed if that creature is removed from the ecosystem?

What effects will these changes bring? These are questions that need to be answered before we shrug off a species’ disappearance from the Great Food Chain that is Earth.

Earth Day

On this 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, I am taking time to reflect on the society we have created. I say, we, it is correct to blame corporations and governments for the mess we are in, but, we elect the politicians and many of us work for corporations and consume their products.

If we really want to make a difference, shop local as often as you can. Encourage others to do so. Talk with local merchants, when you cam, and tell them you prefer local products.

In this vein grow as much of your food as you are able to, and buy from local sources when possible. These acts will make a difference. 

Consider taking a cooperative approach to meeting your basic needs. Talk with family, neighbours and friends about bulk buying, sharing space for growing, for example. I know you may not be able to act on this now but we can talk with each other and discover our common ground. The need for food, water and shelter are common to all who live.



#Earthday2020

Permaculture: Ethics: Earthcare 2

A wise gardener grows soil. Growing and nurturing soil is part of Earthcare and one of the most important actions we can undertake.

"According to 2017 study by the University of Basel, the European Commission -- Joint Research Centre and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH, UK), almost 36 billion tons of soil is lost every year due to water, and deforestation and other changes in land use make the problem worse..."  source

A little reading.

No space to grow, then take an inventory of your food habits. How much food do you toss away? 

"Consumers also squander huge amounts. As much as 37% of animal products and potentially a fifth of fruit and vegetables may be wasted after being purchased, according to the FAO. Rich nations have higher levels of waste due to limited shelf life or poor consumer planning, while poorer countries typically grapple with climate and infrastructure issues."  source

Ecosystem restoration may well be the most effective method we have for combating climate change and for practising Earthcare. The next post will go into some detail on the why and how.

Permaculture Ethics: People Care

Be kind. This is a good place to begin. Treat people with respect and dignity. Do not demean them even if they are demeaning you. By all means, protect yourself but think before you act. Are you under attack? Or, is the perceived attacker having a bad day and venting.

You do not have to like a person or sit down for coffee with them, in order to respect their rights. Be polite and stay civil.

Poverty is one of the greatest issues impacting our society. Racism and other discriminatory behaviours and beliefs are serious impediments to getting anything done. 

How can we work together if we are divided along the lines, of gender, race, creed and so on?
And if we are going to combat poverty, hunger and homelessness, not to mention, the climate catastrophe that is upon us then cooperation among all beings is a must.

If you are a grower, add a row or at least a plant or two and donate that produce to a local food program. If you don't grow then buy a few extra cans and give them away, better yet, give the organization a bit of cash. they are best suited to know what they need.

Smile.

Say please and thank you, when appropriate.

Vote for political parties that want to eradicate the evils of poverty and hunger. If no party has a platform that does this, then advocate. Write letters, make phone calls, tweet and so on.

Organize potluck suppers, share your yard with a gardener who has insufficient space.

Join or start a community garden.

Shop local.

How can you honour the People care ethic?

Beyond the War on Invasive Species

I just started to read Tao Orion's book, "Beyond the War on Native Species." This quote needs to be shared.

"Ecosystems should be restored by every action we take and decision we make, including the methods we use t procure our food, shelter, water and other necessities of daily life. Restoration should be designed into every facet of our lives." p.9