It’s always a sad transition to leave a retreat, to go home. I don’t mind too much once I get home, but don’t like leaving. Today, I decided to stop off at a cool looking garden shop that looks like a giant green house. I mainly wanted to check it out, but was vaguely looking for a small container of Milky Spore, since Ace just sells huge bags of it. I was struck by the strong admonition some young sales clerk gave to a French(?) family, saying they should never pull out their sumacs, because they’ll just grow back, and advised them to kill them with Round Up. I couldn’t get out of the lot going left, so went right, and stopped at Farm & Fleet. It’s been decades since I’ve been to one. I ended up buying herb seeds and a huge bag of bush bean seeds at a bulk rate price (which I don’t really need since I still have some expensive organic seeds that I haven’t planted yet). So that’s how I transitioned.

The weather was perfect, and will be for the next couple of days. When I got home, I let my dog out. I planted him his own green bean garden in a pot, which maybe I’ll be able to bring inside, in the fall — 9 plants, if they all come up. I’ve decided that since we both eat them, it doesn’t hurt to grow a lot.

(This is a picture I took of Sheldon last year, waiting to catch a piece of a green bean treat.)

And in the area where one of my potato plants died away (and where I believe I dug up all the potatoes), I planted chamomile, dill, garlic chives, lemon balm, marjoram and oregano, along with quite a few more bush beans. Some of those things are not “friendly toward” potatoes. But since the potatoes should be ready to pick before any herbs have any adverse effect, it shouldn’t be a problem. I think this fall, I may start a “window sill” herb garden in the house.

The seeds were on sale since it’s late in the season (but not too late). But even at normal price, even one seed that grows would probably yield as much herbs as we pay the big bucks for a small jar at the grocery stores — even more expensive if we want organic. That’s another reason to promote community gardening, or sharing seeds. One packet could grow enough for a whole neighborhood — for only 88 cents, on sale. Of course, I’ve seen seeds for even less — like 5 packets for $1.00. But, the selection was limited.

While looking for the “bean picture”, I found this one of Sheldon & Emmanuel, “the brothers”, having a slumber party next to my bed last winter:

Click here to view pictures I took of most of the gardens at DeKoven today.

You might wonder why I’m posting this icon here, instead of a garden picture. It’s because I thought it’s symbolism was pretty profound, and that all Christians should take note. (If you click on it, you’ll see a larger version.)

If interested, click here to see today’s pictures of my garden.

(I remembered to put them on a separate page this time, which is good, since I have so many taking up space below.)

To recount why I’ve decided to experiment with growing my own food this year, here are a few reasons:

- Imported Garlic: The idea started last September when I heard that most of the garlic sold in this country is shipped from China, and I thought we have enough dirt in our own yards, to grow a year’s supply. (And I thought I could grow a year’s supply in a 3 inch wide and about 3-5 feet long row, along the edge of my driveway — a row that is shorter than my car. No big whoop. With two rows — about 6 inches wide — I’d have more than enough, to share or use as a natural insect repellant for my apple tree and other plants.)

- The “Dirty Dozen”: It was reinforced last September, when I first read about the “Dirty Dozen” foods that retain the most pesticides, and neuro-toxins. (I purposely linked to Prevention Magazine’s list that includes beef, pork, poultry, milk, cheese and butter in their top two. Most other lists just list the top 12 fruits and veggies.)

- Animal-based organic fertilizer: As a vegan, I’m not thrilled about opting for organic food that is grown with animal-based fertilizers, especially fish meal, bone meal, blood meal, or even manure — for obvious reasons, and also because I don’t want to support animal agriculture in any way. Also, I question how organic manure is, if it comes from factory farms where the animals are fed antibiotics, growth hormones, etc. I did have some mushroom compost, but have since read that it’s likely to contain chicken litter. I don’t have a huge ideological problem with earthworm castings, however, since even careful digging or spading in my garden is hazardous to the worms. But I’m more interested in composting, and making compost tea from pulled weeds, and ideas of green manure or cover crops to fertilize the garden.

- Food costs: As someone who might be inclined to want to buy organic food, and have trended in that direction (especially with the “Dirty Dozen” in mind), and with the economy what it is, I’m looking for a way to cut my grocery bill. As it is, I spend more than I need to, and as I posted earlier, what I buy hasn’t increased like most foods have, it would still be cool to be able to cut my food costs down to practically nothing — especially by the time I hope to retire.

- Genetically-modified food: As someone who’s interested in avoiding genetically-modified food, I am trending toward organic and/or heritage/heirloom seeds, to ensure that what I grow isn’t genetically modified. I also am cultivating an interest in biodiversity in crop species. (As an FYI, the PLU codes on grocery store produce differentiate whether something is conventionally grown with chemicals, organic, or genetically-modified. If the PLU code begins with a “9″, it’s organic. If it begins with an “8″, it is genetically-modified. Other than that little-known fact, food labels aren’t required to disclose if any of the ingredients are genetically-modified. Nevertheless, even USDA certified organic, doesn’t always meet the standards that are required by California Tilth, or Oregon Tilth, because the USDA is in bed with Big Ag.)

- Community-building: I gave up on my idea that anyone at my church would be interested in my original idea of having a parish-based organic gardening food exchange club. But I was happy to see that a church in New York was featured in the news for their community garden.

- Grass is a waste of space, and an “invasive species”: I agree with the Food Not Lawns‘ attitude that grass is not only a waste of space, but that it is a manifestation of Western Privilege, that Americans can rely on others to supply their every need and want; and that nice-looking lawns require more fertilizer, weed killer than farmers use on our crops, and polluting, fuel-using mowers to keep them looking nice. (Why do we obsess over growing grass, only so we have to keep cutting it?!) Also, for the meat-eaters who ask stupid questions like “What about plants? Don’t plants suffer?”, I say, our grass is screaming in excruciating pain every time we take a mower to it. Can they hear it?

- Locovorism: Getting back to the garlic, and the environmentalist view that we should “buy local”, there is nothing more local than picking food fresh from one’s own yard.

- Midwest floods: This year’s floods in the midwest destroyed a huge amount of this year’s crops. This would have been a good year for people to plant a few things, to make up for the loss, and the expected soaring costs. (Commercial farmers seem to grown only about 5 subsidized crops in this country. So corn & soy are probably the crops that were most affected by this year’s floods.)

- Tomato recall: This Spring’s recall of tomatoes, due to the cases of salmonella whose source is still unknown, made this year a good year to grow our own.

- As an occasional “dooms-dayer”, I feel that the meek just might inherit the earth, and that the people who are able to live the most simply, or the most self-sufficiently, will be in a better position to withstand any huge, cataclysmic events that could end in food-insecurity, job-insecurity, or worse. In other words, the day may come when Americans find that they’re at a loss for depending on others to supply everything we have to transport long distances to buy.

- Easy gardening methods / humanitarianism: The Square Foot Gardening, Earth Box, and The Growing Connection websites interested me in experimenting in growing food, to see how credible it would be to promote as a humanitarian alternative to supporting charities that perpetuate animal agriculture with their “buy a food animal for a poor family in the developing world” schemes. I believe that for the Church who has various special interest groups that include humanitarianism/social justice, environmentalism (with concerns about Global Warming), animal advocacy, any mission we pursue should seek a comprehensive approach that incorporates all, instead of stepping on the toes of some — especially the animal advocates’. For more information, see my page on humane humanitarian alternatives.

Today I picked a decent amount of green beans, and also decided to cut off my garlic scapes, to encourage the bulbs to grow. I don’t know if I’ll eat them, plant them, or some combination. But I did leave a scape on one garlic plant, just to see if it’ll grow bigger. (Click here to find out what scapes are.)

I also decided to take some pictures of the leaves on my “monster squash” plant, and “monster nasturtium”.

I’ve never had much luck with squash before. The plant(s) in my Square Foot Garden are doing extremely well. The nasturtium leaves in the SFG are about 3 times bigger than the nasturtiums that are growing along the potato patch (which are normal sized).

Here are a few pictures to green up your screen. My hand is to give an idea of their size….

It isn’t too late to register to attend one or both of these national animal rights conferences. Please click on the banners to find out more.

(I’ll be one of the speakers at the second one.)

I shopped for groceries today, and thought again about what I’ve been hearing on the news about the skyrocketting prices.

I haven’t noticed much, if any, increase in the things I buy.

For almost the past year, I’ve been trying to buy organic food, especially if I’m buying anything off the “Dirty Dozen” list. I also buy the expensive organic cereals, bread, and soy or rice milk. I don’t like the whole grain pasta, so tend to buy whichever conventional brand is on sale, and comes in a cardboard box instead of plastic wrapper. I tend to buy whichever brand of (non-organic) coffee that is on sale. I also like certain varieties of the Lakewood brand fruit juices — the ones that are organic and fresh pressed and not from concentrate, which also comes in glass bottles. My choice of peanut butter and jelly also tend to be organic and in glass jars. So that limits my brand choices.

In general, organic varieties cost more than conventional. And soy or rice milk costs more than milk from cows (or at least it did). Also, veg’n meat substitutes tend to cost more than real meat (or at least it did). Recently, as I hear little things on my radio news station, like “this might be a good time to go vegetarian”, I wondered if the time will soon come when meat and milk from cows will be comparable in price to the veg’n alternatives. If so, it might make people consider alternatives.

So, I might pay more for organic or veg’n alternatives. But in general, I haven’t noticed a rise in my grocery bill like people who buy regular groceries have. (I don’t particularly care if the cost of meat, eggs & dairy skyrocket. Maybe people will reduce their consumption of unnecessary animal products, like they’re reducing unnecessary road trips because of the cost of gasoline.)

And today I found “buy one, get one free” deals on organic rice milk, organic cereal, organic peanut butter, organic pasta sauce, where it was definitely a better deal to get those brands than buying comparable brands in the same display that were also on sale.I definitely felt I saved a lot on the peanut butter and the pasta sauce, which are generally much more expensive when I can’t get two for the price of one

If the cost of food was really a problem for me, I would definitely bring my lunch to work instead of buying it at work.

A couple of my “unauthorized” potato plants died away. I don’t know if it was because they came from organic potatoes I bought at the store, instead of actual seed potatoes, or if I have too many bugs eating their leaves. But I thought I should cover the large plants with more straw, and used some from the area where the non-existent plant was. I decided I could use that space to transplant something that is crowded. And maybe I will. But as I was digging, I found these little baby potatoes. I was surprised that they were under the dirt, because I thought they’d grow in the straw. But maybe I added the straw above the tuber line. Anyway, here’s a picture of my first baby potatoes:

How exciting is that?!

My corn is “knee high by the Fourth of July” (but the squirrels will eat it before I’ll get the chance):

Here’s a picture of my “monster squash”:

And the whole Square Foot Garden:

Here are my garlics:

And here’s my niece, Petunia (for whom prayers were answered on three occasions) with her natural, wild hairdo (first time I’ve ever seen her ungroomed). She has “bed head”. Those things that look like ears aren’t:

Most of the pictures will enlarge if you click on them.

Here’s an easy alternative for someone who would like to have a Square Foot Garden, but isn’t good at hammering nails into boards, or doesn’t have a yard — or a yard with a sunny spot. This is my sister-in-law’s patio garden made from cinder blocks. (She thought that maybe next year, she’d have a different mix of flowers with taller ones in the back against the second level of blocks.)

I didn’t take a tape measure, but it seems that 8 cinder blocks arranged as she has the lower row would make a 3′ Square Foot Garden which could be divided up into 9 square feet areas. And the holes in the cinder blocks could grow something else like herbs, marigolds or nasturtiums to repel garden insects. Something simple and small like this could even be put on a driveway.

In other words, an enclosure of 8 cinder blocks in the position she has them (but one level) could be divided up into 9 square feet, and there would also be 16 places to grow things around the edges in the holes, plus room for a pot in each of the 4 corners. So a lot of different things could be grown in that little bit of space with very little work or expense to set up.

(But I just Googled, and found that standard cinder blocks are 8″x8″x16″. So, to be able to divide it into actual 1′ squares, you’d need to go with a 4′x4′ garden, with 3 cinder blocks on each side — where they meet on the inner corners. So that would be 12 cinder blocks, with a total of 24 holes for bug-repelling flowers or herbs, or whatever you’d like that might trail, and cover the gray blocks — and 16 squares for growing different veggies or whatever. Some forums I found mentioned painting them. But I’m wondering about paint chemicals leaching into the growing area. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, if the holes were filled with flowers instead of food. Also, I read on one of the forums that herbs do better in plain top soil, than Mel’s Mix of 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite & 1/3 peat moss, which apparently is too rich for herbs. I don’t know if that’s true, but thought I’d mention it, FWIW. I’m thinking of trying the cinder block idea in the side area of my driveway, which is currently where I still have a pile of topsoil that I bought a couple of years ago, and can’t park my car in anyway. That might be more humane than burning grass or digging dirt in the new area where there are some ant hills. Maybe I’ll use that area for potatoes next year, and try the straw thing on top of the dirt — maybe laid over cardboard.)

Again, if interested in more information, and the benefits of the Square Foot Gardening method, please visit the official website. And while you’re at it, take a look at the Global Warming page, the Global Gardening and the School Gardening links.

Watch the video here.
For some reason, I’m unable to embed the video, like I did on my other post. But this one is cool, because it’s the finale, it’s filmed at my church and shows a lot of people I know.

A blurb in our church’s July newsletter (which will eventually be posted on the church’s website, so is not a secret) said that the (portion of the prize) money Marty donated to our church

“will be used to help cover the costs of replacing the hood in the kitchen so that we can continue with the feeding ministries of the church, especially Community Meal. Because this gift is the result of Marty’s commitment to maintaining a healthy diet, Marty asks that as a parish we implement a food policy similar to the diocesan alcohol policy, which would require every parish event that serves food to offer equally attractive healthy choices as well as at least one meat free alternative.”

I was astounded when I read that. If they agree to do that, it will be one dream come true. I actually went to church the next Sunday, even though I wasn’t scheduled to be there!

See my earlier post (from 6/1) about Marty here.

A couple of people on the HoB/D listserv posted these two links today.

The first is on the problem of plastic shopping bags (not off topic, since it affects wildlife).

And this one shows how to make reusable shopping bags.

What I found interesting on the first site, is that only 1% of the plastic shopping bags get recycled, and that “It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32″. (Maybe it costs that much because we ship our garbage across the world, so it can be recycled into new products to sell back to us.)

My son mentioned that where plastic shopping bags have been banned, people buy more plastic garbage bags. If that’s true, it doesn’t really help to ban them. The only thing that might help, would be if people chose to find some other way to dispose of their garbage. (I find that I have more empty cereal box liners and chip bags than I have garbage to put in them. And if something doesn’t have to be bagged, I just toss it loose in the can.)

Here’s something else I found last winter, shortly before deciding to “give up plastic for Lent”.

And I can’t find the other thing I found then about what would happen if humans disappeared. But the animated thing I watched said that the only things that would remain hundreds of thousands of years after we disappeared would be sound waves and plastic. That did it for me.

I picked some cilantro today, so wanted to find out how to preserve it. I found a lot of sites on drying herbs. Here’s one.

Then I found a web page on curing daffodils to replant in the fall. It may be too late this year, but I should do that, because the ones in the front yard have never been separated since I can remember them when I was little.

Then I wondered what to do with my amaranth. I think I read that the leaves are edible. But mainly, they’re raised for their seeds. I have too many growing in my Square Foot Garden, and should transplant some, maybe to the dead end. They’re supposed to be pretty.

I do have some quinoa which I could have tried to grow this year, but couldn’t find. Maybe next year.

Here’s a page I found on harvesting quinoa and amaranth, which are both very nutritious.

I may use this post to add more later. It’s one thing to grow stuff, and another to know what to do with it once it’s ready to harvest. One good site I found (even though it isn’t organic) is this one.