A couple of months ago a member of my local foods group told us that she was buying garlic at a local farm stand when she thought to ask where the garlic was from.
“China,” was the farm stand worker’s response.
China? Chinese garlic at my local farm stand?
The garlic harvest from Bumblebee garden
It turns out that two-thirds of the world’s garlic is produced in China. Frankly, given the toxic products I’ve been reading about from China—baby formula, dog food, dry wall—I think it’s a good idea to know where my products are coming from and avoid problems where I can.
That wasn’t my motivation for growing garlic, but it’s as good as any to add to what I already have growing this year—so I don’t have to buy Chinese garlic, especially garlic masquerading as local foods at my local farm stand.
Last fall I planted six varieties of garlic on October 26. I know the date because I noted it in my Lee Valley 10-Year Garden Journal. I planted Kettle River Giant, German White, Chesnok Red, Transylvanian, Music Pink and Applegate. When I harvested the garlic the German White was the largest and, it turns out, the most flavorful in our salads. The Chesnok Red and Music Pink were the most puny and some were a bit bitter.
I have put aside more of the German White to go into the ground after reading about where most of our garlic comes from.
The garlic in May starts to turn yellowish. Garlic is harvestested when about two-thirds of the tops have died back.
I haven’t read about there being any problems with Chinese garlic. But I’ve read about enough problems with our food supply that I’m convinced the more food I can raise right here at Bumblebee, where I am the caretaker and I take care, the better off my family and I are. It’s a matter of health, but it’s also a matter of principle.
I recently ordered a copy of Ken Druse’s Making More Plants. I wasn’t 10 pages into reading this beautiful book when I experienced serious pains. It was gardener’s guilt.
How many years have I gardened and failed to over-winter plants, start new plants from the ones I have, save seeds or pass along plant cuttings to my gardening friends? Druse makes it all seem so…so…natural. And worthwhile. And beautiful.
So this week during my fall garden cleanup, I made a particular effort to make a deposit into my ever-growing seed vault.
This is a scarlet runner bean, beautiful as much for its lovely vines and flowers as for its long bean pods. In fact, truth be told, I never ate the first bean because they became intricately intertwined with the malabar spinach that re-seeded itself and grows like kudzu in my garden.
But I did save the pods and now have seeds for next year. I easily have four times as many seeds as there were in the stingy seed packed I purchased last year. My plan is to try growing the vines up the clothesline poles and perhaps on a section of my white picket garden fence.
With all the news stories on Americans saving more, I must ask: Are you saving your seeds?
I’m going to call my next book Why Bad Things Happen to Good Gardeners.***
The first chapter will be entitled “Sh*t Happens and Mother Nature is on Vacation.” It will be an indignant rant about how disease, pestilence, drought, flood and other natural disasters inevitably happen to every gardener sooner or later.
I will use my own experiences as examples. I will discuss how my tomatoes have fursarium wilt—for the second year in a row, despite rotating them to an entirely new location where tomatoes have never gone before. I will describe how a legion of leaf-footed bugs decimated my tomatillos and sweet autumn clematis last year and how I haven’t seen a single one this year. I will show photos of my monarda blooming with powdery mildew.
And let’s not forget the roses, otherwise known as black spot on a stick.
The title of the second chapter is currently up in the air, but I’m considering something such as “Plants Have Loved and Lost” or “Emergency Rooms I Have Seen, Courtesy of My Fiskars Pruners.”
*big sigh*
As I was watering for hours and hours today (see chapter on drought), I was wondering to myself, “What would I do if I didn’t garden?’
Being fairly obsessed with productivity and in love with checks in little boxes on a to-do list, I would probably do something useful. But what?
I’m not considering giving up gardening. This is more like an intellectual exercise I do when I get frustrated. What would you do?
***Why do I say “next book?” Because, yes, I am writing a book. To be precise, I’m co-authoring a book currently called Grocery Gardening. You’ll be hearing more about it in coming months, but you can reserve your copy now by ordering here.
If you’re in the neighborhood and just happen to have your paintbrush and paint clothes with you, stop on by. Harry and I are taking the day off from work to start painting the master bedroom. We figure it’ll take until Sunday. Harry does most of the rolling—no small chore with high ceilings—and I do all the tedious detail work. You, of course, can pitch in wherever you like.
We’re painting it a dove grey. So if you see some grey in my hair in the next few days, it’s paint. Got it? The grey is paint.
Happy Groundhog Day! What are you doing to celebrate?
We’ll have a special dinner of NOT groundhog. Dinner will be a special pasta (TBD) and some yummy homemade yeast rolls. Then we’ll pull out the photo album of past Groundhog Days and reminisce. We will toast Puxatawny Phil by opening the first bottle of my homemade apfelwein, which I hope is sparkly by now. If it’s any good, you’ll hear more about it.
Working from a home office is not always what it’s cracked up to be. I have a lousy IT department (me). Interruptions range from barking dogs to crowing roosters. I hear my business phone ring during non-business hours.
But there is a lot good about a 15 step commute. Such as today. It’s cloudy and a bit drizzly, but the temps will climb into the mid 60s for the second day in a row. I will turn off the heat, throw open the windows and give the house—and office—a good airing. Ahhh!
It’s cold here with a bit of ice and snow on the ground. The hens hate it.
There was a huge, chicken-y traffic jam at their window/door this morning. As I opened it three hens bolted outside. But they beat a hasty retreat back into the coop while other hens were still trying to get out. There was an impasse and much chicken shoving. There were no injuries—unless you count my sore sides from laughing so hard.
