The Growing Challenge

We've been having bone chilling wind, surprise snow flurries, hail, and just plain old freezing rain in the past couple of weeks so it's no surprise the spinach took a while to pop up. I haven't planted any of my other seeds for this challenge yet because I'm in the middle of building beds for them. I have a row at the community garden and I might just plant some of my beans there since they're very nearly ready to start the planting season.

In fact, I am covered in dirt and blisters from volunteering there for a couple of hours today. Two hours of removing weeds from muddy beds. We weeded in the rain and sun both, this being Oregon, you get it all in one day. Don't pack up your picnic just because it's raining suitcases on you...the sun will come out in another five minutes.

Hopefully the next update will include pictures of planted raised beds.

Overcoming Clay

A Growing Challenge Update

One of the biggest garden discoveries I have made since moving to the farmhouse* is that the plot of heaven I have purchased stands on 10,000 square feet of SOLID clay. I am saying that if I wanted to start a career as a potter I would never need to purchase any clay. Indeed, it is sticky and thick and heavy as a Victorian widow's veil. You were hoping (if you're a gardener) that I was going to tell you that there is some magic way to transform clay into...not clay.

There is no such thing as overcoming clay. So I lied to you. And I'm mildly sorry for it. Except that I'm not. There are blessings inherent in clay earth. Aside from the fact that none of us would have such fine dishes without it it retains moisture and it is loaded with nutrients. Drainage is really the biggest problem with clay soil.

Believe it or not, lots of things can grow well in clay soil. If this wasn't true the Pacific Northwest would be a wasteland of cracked packed empty dirt. Instead it is a lush landscape in which, among other things, roses flourish. There are only two things that you can do to improve the performance of clay soil:

• Amend it lavishly with organic compost every year. EVERY YEAR. It will take years, but your clay's texture and drainage will begin to improve immediately and continue to improve as time goes on. Organic matter breaks down fairly quickly which is why adding a ton of it just once won't get long term results. For long term results you need long term practices.

• The other thing you can do to help plants grow well in clay is to add calcium to the soil (every year if you live in a wet climate) because clay is often slightly (or incredibly) acidic. In wet climates you will lose calcium every year because it is a water soluble mineral. In some situations it may be wise to get your soil tested to find out just how much calcium to add.

It is clear that this garden is going to involve the use of mostly raised beds. Which I love anyway and was planning on using. What I thought I would be able to do is move in and plant a few things directly before having to build beds. Since this is not going to happen (except for the roses I planted after a backbreaking session of removing quadruple layers of "weed cloth"** and mixing the mulch in with the virgin clay) I cannot plant any of my seeds for the growing challenge yet.

So I planted up a very pretty (and very small) glazed pot that my mom gave me with spinach. I will show that when sprouts have appeared. It felt like quite a triumph to finally participate in the challenge. Like all gardeners here in the Pacific Northwest I have been completely crazy to get into the dirt but the weather has prevented me. This week there is supposed to be more rain but I will be building my raised beds anyway. Once I have those filled with the kind of soil and compost that doesn't compact just from looking at it cross-eyed I can garden in the rain all I want.

Our move is complete now. Philip and our friend Jim got everything from the old house over here. My feeling is...we have too much crap. Other people should have more crap than us (this is an arbitrary opinion based on nothing in particular but a desire to be able to smugly say that others have a lot more than we do.) I have to admit that part of why we have so much is because we are still hauling around the inventory from our defunct retail business. So it's not exactly like we have been hoarding crap because we want to or anything.

In fact, we all know how hard I worked to sell off all my inventory. I'm not going to use that term I used to use to describe myself and my relationship with money. I've decided to embark on a new relationship with money in which it comes to me like a dog when I whistle.

I managed to get to the Hillsdale farmer's market with my friend Nicole yesterday and got some fabulous produce. I really wanted to buy some ricotta but as I mentioned before, they are charging a ransom for it and so I'll just have to learn to make it myself. I got tons of cilantro (HEAVEN!!!), lots of dark leafy greens, three small heads of cauliflower, one tiny bunch of asparagus, and best of all....six tiny heads of tender Romain lettuce!

For dinner last night I made a cilantro pesto with home made fettuccine, canned corn (brought as a gift from our friends), home canned diced tomatoes, black beans, and Parmesan. It was wonderful! Oh, and roasted potatoes. I have missed fresh cilantro and wanted to put some seeds of it in one of my small pots but discovered this weekend that I haven't got any cilantro seeds.

We have had a full week-end. There were some sketchy bits like when the toilet overflowed (always a favorite moment) and we had to call a plumber to unclog it which Philip had to help with. It turned out that there were leaves helping to clog the line which must have accumulated quite a while ago since there are no trees on our lot at present. The line wasn't old though which is great news. There was some challenge hooking up the washer and dryer as well and it's very important that it was finally successfully hooked up since I am officially on my last pair of clean underwear today. I would rather go commando than wear dirty underwear.

I almost just made forty comments about the unsavory sight of large butts without the genteel confinement of undergarments but decided that perhaps that might finally truly gross the world out beyond recall.

My studio is now absolutely completely packed to the brim with stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. I'm going to have to face it soon since I'm hoping to get a little sewing done before my trip. The carpet in their is a pretty pink and grey Victorian style fancy number and I was considering painting the walls either a spring green or a dove grey. Nicole votes for dove grey. I have been wanting to do a grey wall for a long time but have been a little afraid. My writing/sewing room is going to be my personal sanctuary from which boys will be largely excluded, unless it is to come in and admire how feminine and awesome I am. I loved my orange studio but I am ready to do a really girly room. Dove grey is a color that is supposed to look great on me and so I would look good in it, in theory. Since my ego has been stupidly fragile lately, that's not a bad plan.

We are off to Lowe's now for fencing materials to keep the dog from terrorizing the neighbors and wood for raised beds! Ha! Wonderful! And I will get more paint chips too.

*Secretly called "Thistlewilde" by me and M.S.S. at Zanthan Gardens.

**Four layers of non permeable heavy duty black plastic. Non permeable weed solutions are not healthy for your soil, in case you find yourself tempted. Be sure you're putting down something that lets water through.

The Growing Challenge

In which I am mostly waiting and dreaming

My kiwi vines are ready to be planted. I can't oblige them yet. Like all plant geeks I find the minute details of growing plants as enchanting as watching babies take their first tentative steps. This fuzzy kiwi has the prettiest pink down and I almost can't believe that nature makes such delicate beauty in food plants. You couldn't make a maiden blush like that.

We are in a holding pattern. I have just finished a job and for the first time in weeks can look around me and see what's going on under my nose.* Well, for one thing, as I mentioned already my spring plant purchases are all wearing the impatient look of beings who have been waiting in line in the social security office for too long. They aren't looking at me with a great deal of charity when I say "Oh little kiwi, I will plant you soon! I promise!"

For another, there are stacks of dishes and crap strewn all over the place. Laundry is the same as always at least. Which is to say that I'm behind on it, Philip barely has enough underwear and socks, and the clean stuff is busy getting dirty in piles where the black dog sleeps.

Still, I am with the growing challenge in spirit and an enormous part of me is focused on medicinal herbs and which ones I want to grow this year. These thoughts took an interesting (to me) turn after the lecture on weeds in my Master Gardening class. I ended up buying a very expensive field guide full of glossy pictures called "Weeds Of The West" on a hunch that it would also make a great field guide to spotting medicinal herbs in the garden and in the wild. I was not wrong at all.

During the same week I bought that weed book I bought a book I have coveted for months called "Culpepper's Color Herbal". Culpepper was a medical doctor from the sixteen hundreds who cataloged all of the herbs and plants used medicinally in his time. Nicholas (as I like to call him in my familiar American style) had one of the earlier mullets seen in fashion. In most cases I find it impossible to look beyond a mullet for the gem of a person beyond the hair because I think there are few hairdos more distracting. However, in Nicholas's case I feel I must look beyond his unfortunate personal style. He is a person after my own heart.

He studied to be a traditional medic but became disillusioned with the elitist nature of his medical peers and was apparently disgusted with their habit of treating people for things they didn't have and charging them for remedies they couldn't afford. So he dropped out to become an herbalist to the common people. Although he came from pretty well off people, he set himself down amongst the people who needed him most. He made it a practice to use only the common names of herbs so as to not alienate his patients and only prescribed what he thought they actually needed and when possible, told his patients where they could find the herbs they needed for themselves in the wild and what to do with them.

The man was amazing!

To be honest, I don't think I'd care to have him treat me medically though. I mean, I'd be concerned a little because of his happy use of certain poisonous plants like Lily Of The Valley. Here's what he says about this plant:

"The spirit of the flowers distilled in wine, restores speech."

But here's what's fascinating me: my weeds book is absolutely filled with traditional medicinal herbs. Which means that out there in your garden you are most likely able to find quite a few natural remedies if only you knew how to use them! One of the ones that surprises me the most is the weed called "Cleavers", though you are more likely to know it as "Catchweed" or "Bedstraw". I used to pull this sticky stuff up with loud curses because it clings to absolutely everything with the vigor of a two year old in a violent tantrum whose arms seem to be everywhere at once.

Yet this very obnoxious garden weed is apparently the path to my body resculpting plan. This is what Culpepper has to say about it:

"It is familiarly taken in broth, to keep them lean and lank that are apt to grow fat."

The real question is- will this work on them that has already become fat?

Happily, my Culpepper book, though full of his original descriptions of the plants and their uses and his opinions, is also edited to include the modern herbal uses of the plants and as it turns out, Catchweed is an important remedy in modern practice as a soothing, relaxing diuretic as well as being used to treat skin diseases internally such as psoriasis and eczema.

Which? I have.

The irony here is that since moving to Oregon I haven't been accosted by this weed at all.

I feel I should say here that I pull anything out of my garden that I don't want in it. Even if it has great medicinal purposes. I only have a small plot of my own earth to work with and I'll be damned if I let things grow in it just because they have some value to the bugs and possibly me unless I really want them there. However, if I know that dandelions can be made into an excellent** wine, I just might uproot them and make them into wine instead of adding them to the compost heap. Or if I'm digging up some Catchweed, knowing it could be valuable medicinally, I just might learn to make a tincture of it to add to my medicine stores.

What amazes me most about my weeds book is how many of the plants listed there are ones I have planted on purpose in my own yard or am planning on planting: sunflowers, cornflower, wormwood (my mom doesn't think this is a great one to plant, but doesn't it sound medieval?), burdock, yarrow, poison hemlock (oh, don't pee your pants, I'm just kidding!), foxglove, mullein, toadflax, and violet.

That is only a sampling.

I could get all riled up and incensed that sunflowers are included in a book of weeds. I like to take the alternative route, however. Often we speak of weeds as a negative thing in the landscape and calling something a weed is meant to cast it into the undesirable class of plant. Really, though, it is just as easy to change how we see weeds. Weeds seem to simply be plants who have the superior ability to thrive and flourish in a multitude of conditions, making it hardy and reliable. Generally weeds also have superior (and sometimes completely surprising) methods of reproduction so that they multiply rapidly. These are traits they share with humans, incidentally. In humans we admire vigor. We admire vigor in plants we think of as ornamental but not so much in the plants we have no room for in our gardens.

I'm not going to get mad that foxglove is considered a weed. (I know I sounded like I was going to in a previous post, but I've now given this much greater consideration.) I am going to think of weeds as a generally wonderful and useful group of vigorous plants that may fill up my medicine cabinet on occasion and may possibly land in some broth as well. I will happily uproot them from my garden when they annoy me as they most certainly will.

This week I am going nettle hunting with a friend.
Soon I will have growing challenge posts that actually include some growing action.


As a totally random unrelated note: last night I had a dream that was filled with chickens, night walks with Philip, Ewan McGregor, his wife, and their grown up daughter (they have small daughters only), and Max learning to cook in school. Plus some disgusting bugs about to hatch. Isn't the subconscious a wild place? I think Ewan's wife would enjoy knowing that for once a woman dreamt about her husband without ravishing him.*** In fact, Ewan and his wife did an annoying amount of kissing in front of me in my own dream which I think was slightly disrespectful. But we were all great friends so I put up with their shameless PDAs. No swinging occurred. You must know how I feel about that already.

*This job didn't actually take up a lot of time so much as having a deadline hanging over my head made every minute I wasn't working on it feel like stolen time and I don't have a head that weathers that sort of thing well. You know, because I'm such a delicate flower.

**Has anyone out there had dandelion wine? Because I really want to know how it's possible to make an enjoyable beverage from them. If you have some, can we do a trade of some kind so I can taste this mythical drink? I have deep doubts about it but endless curiosity.

***Jesus! What the hell is wrong with me?!!