A visit home

A rainy June

A quick trip back to the Piedmont to take care of some garden things -- getting a dead white pine removed and mowing the grass -- as well as taking Woody to see our vet, found lush growth in the garden.

OK, it's good news that it's been rainy, and I was glad not to find a bunch of crispy plants. It was a bit daunting, however, to see HOW much pokeweed, Oxalis, Digitaria, Abutilon, and other weeds had popped up and grown in the vegetable beds in just a couple of weeks, not to mention volunteer redbud, sassafras, and black cherry seedlings elsewhere in the landscape. 

The front meadow is ridiculously exuberant, too;  the common milkweed, planted for monarch caterpillars, has thrived and is falling onto the driveway, and all of the other meadow plants (Solidago, Thermopsis, Helianthus hirsutus, Indian grass, etc. are huge).

Eggplant in container (surrounded by crabgrass!)

The Campsis radicans  on the trellises in front of the garage are thriving.  They were planted this spring, and have already reached the trellis tops.  Hopefully, we'll get some flowers later this summer.

But most rewarding (aside from making a start on the weeding) was harvesting new potatoes (yellow, red, and purple) and yellow and white onions from the satellite garden, along with some nice large leeks grown in a container, and ruby chard in the kitchen window block of the main vegetable garden (doing well in spite of previous problems with root-knot nematodes).

Chard (after harvesting dinner leaves)

Things are doing well in the main vegetable garden blocks following a couple of seasons of being fallow and (possibly) the beneficial nematode treatment, too.  A post later that summer after application suggested I wasn't very convinced.

Except for some fish (from the freezer), everything for dinner was harvested from the Piedmont garden this afternoon.  What fun!

And there are lots of blueberries to pick tomorrow.  And tomatoes to come here, too, as well as in the mountains.

I've added some photos to this post -- somehow, I got distracted yesterday by the weeding, and Woody's visit to the vet.  Happily, he received a clean bill of health, although he's slightly underweight -- masked by how furry he is.  He'll enjoy a bit more kibble.

Local and sustainable food

I'm itching to get back out into the garden. It's time. I've been at meetings two days in a row where local food has been a subject. One was a city environmental committee and the other was an information meeting about our Clemson University Student Organic Farm.

Local food (and sustainability, however defined) are growing interests, even here in a relatively small, reasonably conservative, college town in the Southern U.S. This is a good thing. Our town is quite progressive, actually, and we're often a model for other small communities in our region.

Growing food isn't easy. It takes time and effort. And growing sustainably and organic means taking care of the soil, balancing energy inputs and outputs, and replenishing nutrients that are harvested (and consumed). My friends who are permaculture fans are on the right track, to be sure. We have LOTS of land in our cities and suburban areas that's 'wasted' on grass or on ornamental trees and shrubs that don't support wildlife.

I'm a great advocate of greening our community landscapes, adding plants (trees, shrubs, and perennials) that add both ecological (wildlife) value as well as providing food resources. Why shouldn't we plant persimmons or pecans, for example, in public parks and open spaces? Or use vacant land for community gardens?

At home, we've transformed much of our former lawn into wildlife habitat (with mostly native plants) and grow lots of vegetables in our organic vegetable garden. But this wouldn't sustain us without chickens, perhaps pigs, and a concerted effort to convert a LOT more lawn to vegetable gardens devoted to calorie crops (potatoes and corn are the most sensible crops for us, if we really had to be serious about it).

I don't really think that our big ag food system will collapse anytime soon, but it's definitely worth focusing on local food and supporting local producers.