She Brings Me Water
An aeclectic look at the nearby worldArchive for American Indian
Why Bother?
“But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.”
The title of this post and the above quote are from an article in the New York Times (April 20, 2008 ) written by Michael Pollan (author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals) in which he talks about why one might want to plant a garden and why one should, if one can, and why one might have to whether one wants to or not. The “Problem We Face”, of course, is global warming. Did we plant our garden because of global warming? Not really, but other reasons that Michael gives for doing so do are, among others, ours as well. You can read the article here.
In a previous post I wrote about the blueberry plants we planted and how I was really hoping they would bear this year; well, one is trying to live up to my hopes. The picture is of our Legacy blueberry with clusters of small, green blueberries. There are still some strawberries in this patch of ground but our two resident foxes generally eat those. Speaking of the foxes (which I believe are gray foxes, because of their black-tipped tails), they are becoming more accustomed to our presence and trot by us unconcernedly as we work outside. One even came onto our porch one night (through the cat door) in search of popcorn.
There’s been more planting in the Native American garden: the Southwest quadrant is planted in Ruby Queen corn; after they have come up we’ll plant Mexican cucumbers (which are supposed to deter the raccoons), King of the Garden lima beans, and Golden Honeymoon and Tigger melons. I also planted nasturtium seeds on the sides of the zucchini and squash hills to keep away borers, and transplanted marigolds to the corners because of their ability to repel all sorts of pests. And speaking of pests, some sort of bug nibbled holes in the basil and tomato seedlings, so yesterday we whipped up a batch of soap spray and sprayed all the seedlings.
Today I sowed some radish seeds in the cucumber hills, as they are supposed to keep away the cucumber beetle. And I planted three mounds with Detroit Dark Red beets. Beet greens are good just steamed by themselves and seasoned with lemon pepper, garlic and butter or olive oil. The beets themselves I like to peel, slice and cook till tender, then add some hard-boiled eggs till the eggs turn a lovely red-purple. Then I use them to make a salad with chickpeas and feta or mozzarella cheese.
Since this garden post seems to be turning into an eating post, I should also mention that our asparagus is coming up thinly, so I bought some from Cullipher’s Farm Market to supplement it. Last night, I steamed them and seasoned them (lemon pepper, garlic, butter and olive oil), sauteed some mushrooms (a la Julia Child: slice some very dry mushrooms, put about half a stick of butter in a pan, heat pan but don’t add mushrooms until the butter foam has just begun to subside, add the mushrooms and brown on both sides, add as much red or white wine as you want, salt and pepper to taste), added some shrimp, combined this with the asparagus and feta cheese and served it all over couscous. There’s leftovers, if you get here quick, and don’t forget to go read Michael Pollan’s article.
Back in the Garden
Winter is on it’s way out, spring days come and go, on sunny days the causeway to the island is lined with turtles basking, piled up on each other like dominoes after the fall. The turtles are mostly sliders; I tried to photograph them last week but they were too wary of me, even though I pulled the truck over across the road from them. They all were sliding into the water before I even walked halfway across the road to where they had been. I did see a snapper walking through the mud alongside the causeway, there’s usually water there but sometimes the water is so low it’s nothing but mud in some places. So I took this snapper’s picture as he/she slogged along, leaving a trail behind and no place to go to escape me, but you can’t see the turtle well in the picture, so I decided not to post it. Here’s a picture of some of our irises instead:
Planning this year’s garden began with the decision to plant more of a variety of things instead of sticking to the traditional three sisters- corn, beans and squash. Last year, we had ears of corn coming out of our ears, more lima beans than we hardly knew what to do with, and no squash. So we pulled our seed packages out of the fridge, went through them all, drew up a new diagram of the garden, and began to plan. Outside, the garden needed digging and weeding and re-making of the mounds, plus the addition of compost and good soil into each mound. Inside, we started tomato, basil, green pepper and swiss chard seeds in peat pots, and because this garden gets full sun, we acquired (from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds- www.rareseeds.com) new seeds to try out there- Poona Kheera cucumbers from India, Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers, Tigger melons from Armenia, and Golden Honeymoon melons.
These are red potatoes coming up from eyes I cut from some potatoes just before we ate them (the potatoes, not the eyes):
Earlier, in our smaller gardens, some of which don’t get much sun, we planted spinach, lettuces, beets, turnips and okra; some of these seeds are old and didn’t come up too well last year, and aren’t doing all that well this year. Which is why we have bought new replacements for some of them. We store our seeds in the refrigerator year-round to keep them viable, but they eventually just get too old.
So this past weekend, I got all the seedlings planted in the garden formerly known as the Native American garden, now informerly known as the “big” garden (see the blog’s previous posts). On our diagram we laid out where everything was to go, consulting our copy of “Carrots Love Tomatoes“ by Louise Riotte so we’d know who likes to be next to whom and who doesn’t, also called companion planting. The weather people were promising (or threatening) days of rain coming up so I also got in as many seeds as I could, even planting some where they aren’t supposed to be, just to get them started. This was Rod’s suggestion, a good one I think; we can transplant them to their permanent places after they sprout.
Here’s a picture of one of the Tiny Tom Tomato seedlings with deer tracks around it- that was close!
Here’s a list of all the plants and seeds that are now in the big garden:
10 tomato (Tiny Tom, Delicious and Rutgers) seedlings, 18 Italian Sweet basil seedlings, 3 California Wonder green pepper seedlings, and 6 Fordhook swiss chard seedlings. I forgot to mention that there’s already three mounds of red potatoes coming up as well, and two swiss chards that over-wintered from last year:
Now the seeds: Fordhook zucchini, Emerald okra, Dixie yellow squash, Table Queen acorn squash, Early sweet sugar pie pumpkin, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, French filet bush beans, Cherokee wax bush beans, Poona Kheera cucumbers, and the Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers.
One-quarter of this garden will still be for corn, and with it we are planting the Tigger and Honeymoon melons and the Mexican cucumbers. They’ll be planted next, and we’ve also marked some places on the diagram for beets, and there are still some empty mounds! Any suggestions? And since today is Earth Day, how about telling us your plans for what you are doing today to celebrate our Mother’s Day for the Planet? Here are some links for inspiration:
http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2008/04/21/lets-make-this-earthday-a-real-earth-day/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080418-pope-environmentalism.html
Since it has stopped raining, I’ll be out in the garden. See you outside.
A Taste of Spring
Today and for the past couple of days, we’ve had a taste of spring here on the island. The temperatures have been in the 70’s, the breeze has been southerly, and the sun has been shining (some occasional showers as well). Our double row of daffodils are coming up and have their buds on them. The narcissus are coming up, birds are clamoring at the feeders…I know it won’t last, there’s more winter on the way, but a little taste of spring is better than none.
Back in December 2007 we ordered and received six blueberry plants from Finch Blueberry Nursery. Each plant is a different variety and their names are Brightwell, Croatan, Legacy, Powder Blue, Tifblue, and Climax. They are three-year old plants and we have planted them where the strawberries that the foxes eat used to be. We were told they wouldn’t produce this year, that it would be next year before we’d get any blueberries, but I’m hoping that the little guys are so happy here that they’ll pop out a few this year. And I’m hoping that foxes don’t like blueberries as much as they like strawberries.
Somewhere earlier in this blog I said that I wanted to choose the seeds for the Native American Three Sister’s garden earlier than we did last year. Because we conceived and executed said garden so late in the planting season, we were limited to the seeds we could find locally. So here I am, looking earlier, and after researching heirloom seeds and Native American varities online, I have requested catalogs from Seeds of Change and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
We don’t really need any more seeds. Our refrigerator’s bottom shelf is half-covered with a basket, bags, and a covered container of all different types of seeds, many that we’ve harvested ourselves, including some of the Ruby Queen corn and King of the Garden limas and Kentucky Wonder pole beans from last year’s garden. But I would like to plant heirlooms, and “real” Native American varieties, and I also want pods to pick that aren’t green and therefore camoflauged in the corn stalks. Picking the green beans and limas last year was like being on an Easter egg hunt where the eggs are all green and are hidden in tall, green grass. Give me some color, please.
So, from the above-mentioned sources, I’m considering pole beans called Gold Marie Vining Bean, and Purple-podded Pole Bean. They should stand out in the crowd. And for the Native American choice, there’s Cherokee Trail of Tears Pole Bean. Green, but native. Also Lakota Winter Squash, Black Aztec Sweet Corn, and Rouge Vif d’Etampes. I threw that last one in to see if you were still paying attention. Actually, it’s a pumpkin that was a staple of the Paris markets, and like my husband says, I’m a sucker for anything Parisian.
Yellow Squash, Native Americans and Locavores
Want the good news first or the bad? Okay, bad news first: A night or two of freezing temps have killed the squash. It was a gamble from the start and we (or they) lost. The good news? Our survival doesn’t depend on the success of our squash crop.
The early English colonists to this country were dependent on their crops for their survival. When the pilgims in New England had a really good year, they decided to give thanks by having a big feast. They invited the locals, the natives who had helped them survive and taught them what was good to eat here and how to grow it. According to one of the only two period accounts that tell of that first “Thanksgiving”, the natives brought five deer. There were games as well, and a good time was had by all. That’s the good news. The bad news? Our United States government still refuses to grant some Native American tribes in Virginia sovereign Indian Nation status (read more about it here). So the descendents of some of the Native Americans who may have aided the colonists at Jamestown and other East Coast settlements, are not being recognized or assisted by the federal government that they helped make possible. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.
Native Americans at a Powwow in Virginia Beach, Va.
I’m sorry I did not ask their names or their tribe.
And while we’re on the subject, we (husband and I) don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but this year I cooked a meal for us that (almost) falls within the definition of the word that was just voted 2007’s Word of the Year by Oxford University Press: locavore. The word means someone who eats only food that has been grown or harvested within 100 miles of where they live (this 100-mile zone is known as your “foodshed”). Here’s what we had:
Swiss chard from our garden (chopped, steamed briefly and seasoned with lemon pepper, garlic powder and olive oil)
Sweet Potatoes from the neighbor’s garden (sliced in half, placed in a casserole with butter, cooked till tender)
Corn Pudding from our corn and using a recipe from Barbara Kingsolver’s new book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (see recipe here)
Cranberries from the grocery store (organic in a bag, cooked with sugar and water)
I said almost locavore because the seasonings in all the dishes and the ingredients in the corn pudding (besides the corn) were not sourced locally. Kingsolver’s book is about the year her family went locavore; I recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about being a locavore or anyone who just wants to read a really fine writer. Or you could read my latest work called Proust was a Locavore. Just kidding.
Garden Update
It’s really beginning to be fall-ish here, the past couple of nights we’ve had temperatures in the mid-40’s and northerly winds…last Fiday and Saturday we even had a “northeaster”, very cold, high winds and low temps. So I thought it would be a good time to get an update on the Native American garden and see what’s still growing.
In the Three Sisters garden, the corn stalks are completely dried up and are only acting as supports now for the lima beans. It was a good crop of corn and we still have shucked ears in the freezer, waiting to be cooked, and there are still lots of lima beans on the vines, some drying but some still ripening and I’ve been picking and shelling them periodically. We’ve discovered that the best way to have them is in a soup, takes some of the bitterness out of them. I also discovered, through the magic of Google, that they were heirloom-type limas, called “King of the Garden”, a high yield variety introduced in 1883. Supposedly they will keep bearing until frost! I see a lot of bean-shelling ahead.
Also still producing in the garden are some volunteer cherry tomatoes, and the green beans we planted are still putting out a bean or two. We did get some yellow squash planted but not in this garden, we put four seedling plants in over on the west side of the yard. They have blossoms and small squashes on them right now but these past two cold nights have set them back and the northeaster injured their leaves; it’ll be a race with time to see if the plants can grow their fruit large enough before the cold kills them. But, no vine-borers (yet!) Probably too cold for the little dears.
Changing Seasons?
I had this post all planned in my head. We’d had some cool days, lower humidity, and the evenings were coming earlier, all adding up to a change of seasons. Fall coming! So I was going to write about preparing to move indoors, books waiting to be read, recipes to try, artwork to do….about planting the fall garden, starting soups to simmer through the afternoon and evening, turning our thoughts inward just as our bodies are drawn inside…and then, back comes the heat, and even worse, the humidity, and even worse than that, we’re still not getting any rain. Despite watering our collard and turnip seeds, they aren’t sprouting. And who wants to think of preparing or eating a hot soup when being outside is like being in a hot soup? On the plus side, our cherry tomatoes are still bearing and some ripen everyday. Some squashes that I started in peat pots and that Rod transplanted outside are doing very well (so we’ll see if it’s true that if you treat them as a fall plant, they won’t be bothered by vine borers. A scientific experiment I know you’ll want to stay tuned for). And the biggest plus of all, for me at least: I don’t like cold and northern winds. I like the heat, although as I get older it affects me more. Fall will come, and then winter, and it’ll be cold enough, soon enough, too soon for me.
So, to get ready for fall when it does decide to arrive, and for Samhain (also known as Halloween), here is a night picture of the Native American garden, with the dead and dying corn stalks and the waning green bean harvest:
And a picture of the harvest moon from the night of September 26th, through the top of a corn stalk:
BYOB
Bring Your Own Butter
Gourds and Lima Beans
The corn is all picked, and shucked, and waiting in the freezer to be eaten. We’ve given away some of it to family and friends. There are still some green beans drying on the vines, they got too big to be good eating but some of their younger siblings are also cooling their heels in the freezer. A sad story concerning the lima beans: we started picking them last week, when we had a good sized bag I shelled them all, steamed them, seasoned them with butter, lemon pepper and garlic powder and- they were not good. They were tough and had a sort of metallic taste. Our gardening neighbor had gotten us this bag of beans to plant from Southern States, an agricultural supply store, where he gets some of his seeds, and on the bag it said “Not for human consumption”. We assumed that referred to the dried beans in the bag, not the product of planting the beans, but maybe we were wrong.
So, lessons learned for next year:
- Choose our seeds earlier and with more attention, maybe choosing from seed catalogs so that we can get types more in keeping with the Native American tradition?
- Four bean seeds per corn mound is too many, if all the seeds sprout and aren’t eaten by critters. We had to stake some of the corn stalks to keep them from being pulled down by the vines.
- There is not enough space in between the corn and bean mounds to plant the squash (here’s a link to the spacing guidelines we followed). The spaces between need to be bigger or space needs to be set aside just for the squash. Or maybe alternate planting beans and squash in the corn mounds, instead of only beans?
The gourds were all volunteers that we transplanted from near the house, they did really well and we have gourds drying in three places: on our screened porch in an old dish-drying rack; outside on a screen; and in our greenhouse on a larger screen. The reasons for three different drying places are: 1) there are too many of them to be all in one place; and 2) this way we can see what is the best method of drying them. Very scientific.
Who was that Masked Man?
That was no man, that was a raccoon- or two, or three. They caused the above damage, and much more too. When we planted this Native American garden, the book we got the plan from said to plant enough to share with the wildlife that will surely be attracted to your lush, green and tasty plants. Okay, we had plenty, enough to share. But what the book didn’t say was that the wildlife wouldn’t just come in, take a few ears, thank us and leave, they’d come in, tear open unripened ears looking for the ripe ones, tear down stalks looking for more ripe ones, and destroy the stalks that the beans need for their support- no wonder they wear masks.
Our neighbor, the one that has done a large garden for seven years now, put out a radio to scare the raccoons (and deer) away, and he said it worked as long as the batteries didn’t run out. So we put out a radio, which seemed to work except for the areas of the garden far away from the radio, so we put out another radio, so that more of the area of the garden is blanketed with a barrier of sound. Nocturnal animals use sound as a powerful guidance system (that’s why a lot of them have such big ears); they also use scent, to guide them and warn them of dangers, so to take advantage of that, we are collecting our urine and pouring it around the garden at night. Both methods seem to be working and we are glad to have found ways to discourage the animals without harming them.
And we are picking, as the ears are ripening very fast now, especially the Ruby Queen. Here’s me and our cat Junior and some of the harvest:
Junior helps by rolling in the dirt, he says it keeps down the weeds.
The package of Ruby Queen seeds showed a completely red ear of corn, all the kernels, not just some like the Indian corn you see in grocery stores around Thanksgiving. Ours were not all red, but having silver and yellow corn growing near it, it probably cross-pollinated with the others. So we have red kernels mixed with silver, some all silver, some all yellow, and some mixed yellow and silver. We had some last night for dinner, steamed for about 10 minutes, then eaten with butter, salt and pepper. It was very good.
Red Silk
It’s been three weeks since my last post and if the corn isn’t as high as an elephant’s eye, it’s pretty darn close. Above is a picture of the Ruby Queen corn tassels, and you can see the cob forming and also some bean vines twining around the stalks.
Here’s a picture of some bean plants at the base of the corn:
Here is a problem: we have realized that if we plant the squash now, they probably won’t get enough sunlight to grow or produce well, as the corn and beans are so tall and lush. Also if we make the mounds for the squash in-between the corn/bean mounds, there will be very little (or no) room to walk, and no sense of space in the garden. The ornamental gourds we transplanted on the west/center of the garden are doing extremely well and running their vines with huge leaves through the corn and out the garden boundaries. I can see how, if we had planted the squash along with the beans, their leaves would have covered the ground enough to discourage weed growth. But, now I think we’ll have to find someplace else for the squash, or just plant them on the edges where they might get enough sun and can be allowed to expand beyond the edges of the garden.
In this picture, I’m wearing my Native American Dance Shawl I bought at a powwow in Cedar City, Utah, and at the bottom of the picture you can see the gourd plants dancing their way through the garden. Those are Tibetan prayer flags hanging across the center of the garden, dancing in the breeze.
She didn’t bring us water…
…but the weeds didn’t care. We were in Pineville, NC and Seagrove, NC from the 7th to the 16th of June. The corn in the Three Sisters garden was about 3-4 inches high and the evening before we left, we planted lima beans and green beans in the mounds around the corn. When we got back, the beans were coming up but they and the corn were struggling because it had not rained (or rained very little) during the time we were gone. But, as I said, the weeds didn’t mind the lack of rain at all and took advantage of our absence to try to take over the garden. The picture above is me pulling weeds from the mounds. Rod hoed in the rows between the mounds, as we had decided not to use a tiller or other “mechanical” devices to weed. We used hoes, cultivators, rakes and our hands.
We also, as I think I mentioned before, won’t be using chemical sprays for weeds, bugs, critters, etc. In the other garden areas we have, we’ve used tobacco juice (soak tobacco leaves in water and spray the plants with it) and Dial soap spray (liquid Dial soap diluted in water, this is good for everything from bugs to deer) to good effect, but we always hope that by maintaining a healthy, natural environment for the plants, that they will be strong enough to fight off bugs or that “good” bugs will proliferate to take care of the “bad” bugs. And while we’re on the subject of good and bad, let’s talk about those weeds. We eat weeds. Or, I guess I should say, we eat plants that are regarded as weeds by many people. These include poke, wild spinach and lettuce, and purslane; so while some of the “weeds” we were pulling went into the compost pile (like the nut grass), the wild spinach was eaten for dinner and the purslane, which is doing really well in this garden, goes in our salads. The picture following this paragraph shows some purslane at the base of some corn plants. We also have morning glories, some that we have left where they came up to provide some color in the garden. All of the above came up on their own, volunteers, we call them, we didn’t plant them. They were gifts.
Also doing well in the Native American garden: the row of sunflowers we planted on the north edge, a couple of Swiss chards we transplanted from another garden (the Swiss chard has been our best “cultivated” crop so far this year), two tomatoes, and six gourd plants that, when we transplanted them from near the house, we were hoping were “volunteer” squash (yellow or zucchini) plants, but they are ornamental gourds. We’re not sure why there were so many of these volunteer gourds sprouting in a dirt pile near the house. More gifts, I suppose.
As for the lack of water, Rod set up a long hose out to the garden and we watered after pulling up most of the weeds. He’s also been carrying wheelbarrow loads of mulch from various piles around the yard to help keep the moisture in. We have had some rain in the past few days, so the corn is a couple of feet high now, and the beans are putting out their tendrils for climbing up the cornstalks. The next major step is to make the mounds for the squash, they go in-between the corn/bean mounds. We have yellow squash, acorn squash and pumpkin seeds ready to plant, and would like to plant some zucchini too. We know it seems late in the season to be planting squash, but awhile back we read something we’d never heard before, and that is to treat your squash as a fall plant, in order to avoid the “squash vine borer”. We’ve already had these in our gourd plants; they dig into the vines at the base, and eventually eat out enough of the vine to kill the plant. So we are going to try planting the squash late, as if it were a fall crop, and test the theory.
It’s been two weeks now since we returned from our trip, and here’s the garden, mostly weeded, some mulch down, looking happy.
