Organic Mutant

In the pursuit of leaving less of on impact on Grandmother Earth and ensuring a healthy environment for the wee ones of my wee ones, I have been immersing myself in the treatises and philosophies of the so-called “green” movement. I have found many, inspiring on-line mentors who challenge and inspire me on daily basis. Toward this end we started composting last year. In order to get started I did some research into the basics of composting, took a morning class on the topic at the zoo, and purchased a compact composter. Within minutes we were another family keeping kitchen scraps from the landfill! ‘Twas super easy to get started, but a little harder to keep going when we hit the inevitable bumps in the road like fruit fly infestations, too much ‘greens’ in our compost, which results in a sickly-sweet odor, and so on. Fortunately, the mighty and vaunted Goog, praise be xer name, helped us on every occasion, quickly apprising us of effective solutions (wash your bananas, add more ‘browns’ i.e. paper towels or sawdust, and so forth). Several months ago we had a composter full of compost, but little idea of how to use the compost in the yard in an effective manner. In reading about ‘intensive gardening’ and inspired by a family member who raises a huge vegetable garden every year, I decided that the best way to take it further would be to invest in some raised beds and get our own CasaWeX vegetable garden going.

Earlier this spring I designed a type of raised bed that would enable Lucas to help me in the garden. Wade pulled out his tools and crafted an exquisite interpretation of my plans. Then the worst part of my morning sickness hit and the project lay fallow for many weeks. Curious neighbors stopped by and inquired as to our plans for this big, giant redwood box resting on the flagstones. Once I started feeling better, I collected all the ingredients needed for the mix to build the soil for the planter. A few weekends ago, we put the ingredients in and dumped the contents of the composter into the mix. Months of kitchen scraps, ash from the fireplace, sawdust from various projects, grass clippings, paper towels, and haircuts had transformed into a nice, loamy dirt-like substance. There were a few clumps of brittle egg shells that hadn’t broken down all the way and a few paper mache-like rocks, but in the last few weeks most of these artifacts have disintegrated, becoming indistinguishable from the other dirt components. Now onto the seed planting and sprouting. (Note: I am sure we are planting late/early for a winter garden, but I am just trying to get something going here and will hopefully learn a lot from trial and error.)

For the last few weeks, I have been researching plants and planning the garden. This week I finalised the plan in selecting the plants we’ll (try to) grow and experienced an inexplicable joy at seeing all my months of plans get to this stage, but a few small things were needed before we started sowing seeds. The bottom of our 24 inch raised bed is covered with some landscaping fabric to keep unwanted growth from creeping into the vegetable garden. There is a store ’round these parts called ‘City Farmers‘ where you can obtain a dazzling array of necessities for all types of yardening. Dis ain’t your daddy’s Home Depot. Yesterday Mom and I took a field trip to afore mentioned City Farmers Nursery to obtain copper tape and red wiggler worms. The copper tape is for the outside of the raised bed. It is an effective means of keeping slugs and snails out of the vegetable patch. The worms are for the inside of the bed to keep the dirt alive and aerated. Since I didn’t want the one pound bag of worms, we had to go back to the vermiculture bed and dig for the worms ourselves. O, dewd! A year ago I had no idea about all this kind of stuff. I grabbed a little rake and got to it. In about 20 minutes or so we harvested about 75-90 worms, but we also found a bunch of big, fat, happy grubs, which a nursery employee had asked us to put aside if we liked to feed to the chickens later. Later, the owner of the nursery let us feed the grubs to chickens and turkeys and oh my dosh, now I know where the slang ‘grubbed‘ comes from cos those fowl grubbed hard on those grubs.

Well, the bed is ready and we are going to be sowing some seeds later this week in the hopes of growing some organic, local, seasonal veggies like collard greens, chard, amaranth, carrots, eggplant, and brussel sprouts. We’ll see where this fork of the path takes us.