The Unwound Third > Jam Session

Gardening

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Slack:

--- Quote ---"Forty Acres and a Mule," but just make sure that you don't end up being the mule!
--- End quote ---

Too late Stuart - who do you think had to spread all that compost.  :P

dj:
Let's not forget gathering, as well as gardening.  In a few weeks we'll be picking mulberries from some of the local trees to make pies, and the black raspberries are almost ready, so we'reabout to make our annual foray down the railroad tracks to bring back a few potloads of them.  Sometimes, Mother Nature is the best gardener, and all you've got to do is to go and harvest.

Pan:
Another amateur gardener reporting to Weenie Headquarters.

Quite amazingly we have pretty much all the same veggies as Johnm listed. The short and cold Finnish summer somewhat limits the choice of plants, but we do have some cucumbers and zucchinis on some self made cold frames. One sunny wallside is even enough to keep a few tomatoes alive until the first fall frosts force us to gather the green tomatoes inside -they will eventually turn red in room temperature.

The Finnish summer does have it's advantages though -the long luminous nights give a wonderfull aroma to many vegetables -the new potatoes are a national delicacy and nowhere in the world have I found better ones. Also many plant diseases and pests need warmer conditions to really thrive.

As for gathering, it pays to live in summertime in an old house with a garden gone wild; we have plenty of blackcurrant, raspberries and semi-wild strawberries to pick.
The woods have blueberries, and we are just finishing the false morel season, waiting for the first chanterelle to arrive within a month, followed by the porcini autumn fiesta.

Must go now, victim of a sudden hunger pang  :P

Cheers

Pan

Johnm:
Hi all,
dj and Pan, you're certainly right about foraging.  You can get some great food and you feel like you're getting away with something.  There are a ton of blackberries along a greenbelt trail quite near to our home.  I've been a little leery of them because of a creosote wood treatment plant in the same vicinity (I've avoided honey sold by a beekeeper about fifty yards from the creosote plant for the same reason).  Ginny has been taking a class from a Native American teacher on edible wild plants and herbal remedies, and we've been trying some of the food, like chickweed, cooked up like greens, delicious.
John D. and Stuart, so far I've been enjoying doing the donkey work.  It reminds me of working with my Dad, growing up.  I wasn't always the greatest at staying focused on the task at hand, and was accused, on occasion, of sitting there "with your teeth in your mouth and your mind in Arkansas."  I generally liked the heavier work, though, and still do.  That's easy enough to say when you don't make your living from it, I suppose.  I think you are right, though, O'Muck, that gardening puts you in touch with something really important.  The food is great but it isn't just about that.
All best,
Johnm     

Parlor Picker:
One English gardener here.  I grew up in a working-class family in a village in Yorkshire in the north of England and my Dad grew pretty well everything we needed.  Buying vegetables at the shops was something that only "posh people" did. In those days before freezers we stored carrots in dry sand, hung onions from the rafters and stored potatoes in a clamp, known in Yorkshire as a "tatie pie".

We only have quite a small garden down here on the south coast so it is mainly flowers and interesting structural plants.  I do have a small veg. plot and only plant what grows easily and the things we like to eat. So, we have runner beans, sometimes climbing French beans, courgettes (zucchini), beetroot, spinach, a couple of tomato plants and a little lettuce/salad leaves.  I do everything organically, but have to resort to slug pellets otherwise we would have literally nothing.  I'm also a big compost fan and sometimes more interested in making compost that growing stuff.  We fastidiously save all organic kitchen waste (right down to used tea leaves) and add this to garden weeds, dead leaves, etc. and some paper/cardboard to open it up and add carbon to the mix.

I sometimes pick wild blackberries in the fields not far from our house, but have to admit I find it a really boring job.

Not many blues songs about gardening I can think of...

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