V is for Victory Gardens!!!

 

I met the most wonderful blog the other day… Redwhiteandgrewblog.com is devoted to

“promoting the Victory Garden revival and other simple, earth-friendly endevors as bipartisan, patriotic acts in an age of uncertainty.” 

Go there – Go there often… In just one short week I have been inspired by the optimism and energy of this “growing” movement towards raising our own food.  It’s not just exciting – it’s of crucial importance and a simple act of independence and yes, patriotism in a country we can help to become.  The following definitions are from RWGblog: 

Meme:  “A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that can be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to MUTATION, CROSSOVER, and ADAPTATION.”  Source

Social Entrepreneurship: “A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society.” Source

So here’s my response to RWG’s challenge to talk about fall gardening (yeah, yeah, twist my arm!!!) 

Victory Garden Meme Questions

What are your favorite local garden resources:  Sentimental favorite – Emerald City Gardens, a tiny, quirky and passionately run nursery

What are your favorite books and magazines? 

1.  Northwest Garden News -  a regional resource for gardeners in Washington and Oregon. From publisher, Mary Guiterrez: “I want a love of gardening to be passed on to future generations. I believe that gardeners can, one backyard at a time, help to restore health to our planet. We can provide habitat for wildlife, restore lost trees, and create natural spaces for future generations to grow up in.”  full disclosure – I contribute on a regular basis
2. The Complete Guide to Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, by Steve Solomon: a classic for years now and one I always used to refer people to at the nursery for his clear, succinct and thorough explanation on soil science – the basis for ALL gardening success.
3. The Kitchen Garden by Anna Pavord
4. The Art of French Vegetable Gardening by Louisa Jones – hey, a gal can pretend, right?

Truth be told, some of my best inspirational vegetable garden books are in fact Cookbooks. 

1. The Herbal Kitchen by Jerry Traunfeld, former chef extraordinaire from the acclaimed Herbfarm Restaurant
2. Northwest Kitchen by Seattle cooking diva Kathy Casey
3. Unplugged kitchen, a return to the simple, authentic joys of cooking by Viana la Place – a delicious homage to fresh produce and seasonal eating.

(OK, now I’m hungry!)

What have you had success with growing in your (fall) garden? and When do you plant and harvest it?   Well, I’ve only just begin to plant for a fall garden.  What with our fitfully slow start to Spring this year, we’re barely into Summer!  What I have planted so far:

• Beets – beautiful in the ground (ever the sucker for ornamental edibles) and sweeeeeeet on the tongue
• Red mustard – again a beautiful plant that always bolts too quickly when spring planted but holds for months in the shortening, cooler days of autumn
• Arugula – again with the spring bolting, plus along with radishes (a favorite of our household for baguette and sweet butter sandwiches) you can’t beat arugula for instant germination gratification!
• Fava beans – of course – after harvesting my crop in late July I cut the plants back to about 12″ and added a fresh layer of compost.  The regrowth is already about 12″ tall, branched and flowering – can you say more, more, more!?!
• Black Kale – actually I sowed this seed some time ago between the rows of the Favas but it’s not been until the beans were cut down that the little seedlings have really put on some growth.  They should be eating size by late September and hold well into the winter.
• Kohlrabi – I always wonder when I’m moved to plant something I never even buy at the market but these are just too weird to pass by and in the course of my research writing The ECL Guide to Growing Vegetables (Sasquatch Books, due out in 2009) Kohlrabi just sounded too good to pass by, its’ taste a cross between a crisp radish and an apple (?) and perfect  for late summer sowing.

• Lettuces – I’ve really worked to keep some small cut-and-come-again crops coming on.  Usually we have lettuce for the world and then nada for the rest of the summer!
• Leeks – these have been in the ground since May but are sizing up and looking beautiful.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left leeks to flower – an amazing sight – and just bought leeks for the kitchen!
• Rainbow chard – spring planted transplants are still cranking out stems and leaves; a few plants are starting to bolt so I’m planning on cutting everything back fairly hard fava bean-style and going for a second crop that will produce throughout the fall.  Same goes with the sorrel plants.

What is your favorite gardening tip?  Grow it, kill it, know it!!!  I know it sounds glib but in spite of all the information I take in from books, magazines, and yes, blogs, it’s the hands-in-the-dirt successes and failures that stick and live another day to inform my next move.

• On a more practical level my friend Sally told me to regularly snip/mow my tiny patch of chamomile and use as an anti-fungal mulch my tomato plants – It works!!!
• Under “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘um”  – having long ago been handed down (red flag!!!) a division of  comfrey, and after repeated efforts to dig it up, bury it deep, or excavate the entire area to eradicate the beast (fail, fail, failed) I finally have made a tentative peace with the beast when I found out from my friend Willi on her weekly radio show on KUOW, our local NPR affiliate that comfrey also makes a great mulch in the veggie garden.  Check out Willi’s blog Diggin’Food.  I did a little more research and found that comfrey is as high in nitrogen as barnyard manure, with an NPK analysis of 8-3-20.

Why do you call your garden a _________ (Victory Garden, Peace Garden, Freedom Garden, vegetable garden…etc.)?  Definitely “Victory Garden”  I am a vintage ephemera nut with a definite retro streak so’ Victory Garden’ floats my boat on a lot of levels.  (check out these great public domain images from the Library of Congress and the University of North Texas)  I also think we do claim an independence and satisfaction when we produce for our own table and reconnect to the process and evolution of FOOD – I’d call that victorious!!!

So, there you have it my fair readers.  Plant one for the homeland!  I always say…

Plant the World, Grow Yourself!!!