Anarchist (and Other) Plots
Posting from: Tucson, AZ
Listening to: Everly Brothers, Bye, Bye, Love
Round about this time of year, some of my favorite blog posts start showing up- garden updates from some of my favorite anarchists and other members of The Family. I'll rake 'em all into a big pile here. You go ahead and jump right in!
Sunni provides a brief garden update, and Mama Liberty chimes in with her update in the comments below. Wendy reports that in addition to her extensive edible plantings, "The world is a disheartening place these days and flowers help." This one's a little old, but lewlew has something to say about persistence along with her garden update. Here's Dare2BFree's update on this year's garden. I feel like I'm missing somebody. If you have a garden post on your blog, feel free to post a link to it in the comments, and I'll add it up here.
My garden status? Uh, well, err... Look! A butterfly!
Okay, okay...
Fifty peat pots of tomatillo sprouts are dead after I abandoned them to go on vacation. My original plan was to pot them and take them over to my friend A.'s house to babysit them, but I ran out of time. One small basil plant was eaten down to two little green stems stuck in dirt three days after I planted it. On the fourth day I drove into my driveway only to see a jackrabbit munching on one of the two remaining stems which is now gone. I may try again indoors.
On the plus side, I do have a good compost pile going which things keep popping up in without my consent. Also, green grass (if you've been in the Sonoran desert in the summer, you know this is a big deal) is growing just outside of the section of my terraces that I'm composting in. Must be some good stuff even though I'm just winging it- wasted fruits and vegetables plus skins, pits, and trimmings, some manure from the store, plus two trash bags of horse poop. In a couple of weeks I think it may be time to build a screen sifter and harvest some of this black gold. Not sure what for yet, but maybe I can use it to kill some strawberry plants or something. Meanwhile, I'll be harvesting nature's garden this year- mesquite pods for grinding into flour this fall and then prickly pears later this summer for juicing.
Listening to: Everly Brothers, Bye, Bye, Love
Round about this time of year, some of my favorite blog posts start showing up- garden updates from some of my favorite anarchists and other members of The Family. I'll rake 'em all into a big pile here. You go ahead and jump right in!
Sunni provides a brief garden update, and Mama Liberty chimes in with her update in the comments below. Wendy reports that in addition to her extensive edible plantings, "The world is a disheartening place these days and flowers help." This one's a little old, but lewlew has something to say about persistence along with her garden update. Here's Dare2BFree's update on this year's garden. I feel like I'm missing somebody. If you have a garden post on your blog, feel free to post a link to it in the comments, and I'll add it up here.
My garden status? Uh, well, err... Look! A butterfly!
Okay, okay...
Fifty peat pots of tomatillo sprouts are dead after I abandoned them to go on vacation. My original plan was to pot them and take them over to my friend A.'s house to babysit them, but I ran out of time. One small basil plant was eaten down to two little green stems stuck in dirt three days after I planted it. On the fourth day I drove into my driveway only to see a jackrabbit munching on one of the two remaining stems which is now gone. I may try again indoors.
On the plus side, I do have a good compost pile going which things keep popping up in without my consent. Also, green grass (if you've been in the Sonoran desert in the summer, you know this is a big deal) is growing just outside of the section of my terraces that I'm composting in. Must be some good stuff even though I'm just winging it- wasted fruits and vegetables plus skins, pits, and trimmings, some manure from the store, plus two trash bags of horse poop. In a couple of weeks I think it may be time to build a screen sifter and harvest some of this black gold. Not sure what for yet, but maybe I can use it to kill some strawberry plants or something. Meanwhile, I'll be harvesting nature's garden this year- mesquite pods for grinding into flour this fall and then prickly pears later this summer for juicing.
Labels: gardening
posted by Kirsten | 6/25/2007 12:54:00 PM
4 Comments:
Mesquite flour is gluten free. I like it.
So you tried it? What did you make?
Just out of curiosity, do you know of other people in your area that have gardens? One of the reasons I have not had a desire to spend much time in the southwest is the climate - just doesn't suit me. But I know there are others who love it and there has to be someone who grows some of their own food. Do they just spend a fortune in watering it all the time?
Oh, and how about joining in on a meme ?
There are tons of gardens and gardeners down here. One way to do it is to use a lot of water. It turns out, though, that this does not actually cost all that much since water prices are government-regulated and the water company is taxpayer-subsidized. If you didn't want to waste perfectly good drinking water pouring it into your garden, though, you could still have a very nice garden by going the rain harvesting route.
An alternative to using a lot of water, either drinking or rain water, is to use low-water usage native plants. There are desert-adapted varieties of all sorts of foods including tomatoes, melons, corn, beans, peppers, squash, etc... There is a non-profit organization here in Tucson called Native Seeds/SEARCH which preserves native heirloom crops. Here's their seed list which gives you an idea of the wide variety of desert-adapted food plants you can grow down here.
Thanks for the meme invitation. It might be a while, though. I'm getting ready for GCMIII.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home