One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, More

2013 was the first year I really made an effort to grow potatoes, and it paid off...or I was lucky. Now that I've harvested 2 of 3 varieties (I grew Ozettes by choice, as well as some Redskins and Yukon Golds because I didn't eat them in time), the experience is ripe enough to jot down some lessons. I've already posted about taters over at Mocavore, but here's where the gardening info will show.

Instead of buying seed potatoes this year, I just grew surplus food. The Ozettes came from Rising River Farm at the Olympia Farmers Market; I bought them in late fall and stored them in a shoebox in the garage. The others were probably from the supermarket, and I planted them because they were getting soft and sprouty at the right time. Lesson: As long as you keep an eye out for blight, you don't need to buy something labeled "seed potato."

In Olympia as in much of the country, St. Patrick's Day is a good time to plant potatoes, and I did put in the bulk of the crop around them. I tried some in February, tucked up against the sunrise side of the house, but it did not result in a head start on harvest. They're still in the ground, which I think is pretty poor to begin with and was negelected in terms of both fertilizer (none) and water (under the eaves, so not much rain, and I didn't really water). Lesson: Starting early may not hurt, but it doesn't seem to help, either.

The soil here is a sandy loam, which makes it easy to work, it drains well enough that the tubers won't rot, and there are not a bunch of rocks to get in the way and deform the potatoes. On the other hand, it's not very rich in nutrients, so I augmented it a bit. When I dug the bed and prepped it in January, I added bone and blood meal (didn't record the amounts, but less than 2 pounds on a 25-foot by 3-foot bed, as well as wood ash. How much this had to do with the rampant growth that followed I cannot say, this being my first crop on this ground (which was lawn for decades before). Lesson: Sandy soil may be great as a growing medium, but it probably needs some food; adding fertilizer a month or two before planting seems to have helped.

So yeah, growth took off  like crazy, but the plants didn't get too leggy, except for the Yukons, which were planted in a much shadier spot, and which at this point have vines nearly 6 feet long, sprawling all over the place. I hilled everything a couple of times, but contrary to mythology I've heard time and again, but at harvest time it appeared that a second hilling did not create a second round of tuber formation. Even when the plants were growing, and I still harbored the belief that another round of hilling would produce another round of potatoes, I held off on a third attempt, deciding to let the plants focus on fattening up the existing tubers. Lesson: You do need to give your tubers some protection and room to grow, but continuing to hill them up does not seem to give you a bigger crop, and only makes the potatoes harder to get at.

By July, the main potato row was yellowing a bit, and the rapid growth had stopped. Based on pretty much nothing more than a hunch, I figured that potatoes are a little like taro in this respect, with the rate of vegetative growth following something like a bell curve--a slow start, a vigorous middle age, and then decline. Working from little more than superstition, I like to let the decline take its course, as if the strength of the stems and leaves is draining back down and collecting in the tubers. At the end of July, with the tops partially drained, but not yet dessicated skeletons, I started harvest. Having controlled by urge to graffle, I got the whole crop at once. From a 25-foot row, roughly 2/3 in Ozettes and the rest in Redskins, I got a half bushel of the former and maybe 2 pecks of the latter. Looked at another way, each potato I planted turned into several pounds of potatoes that I can eat. Lesson: One row is only a long-term supply if you are on a low-carb diet, but it's a pretty good return on the minimal investment. Also, one of the things that makes gardening fun is that it give me an excuse to use what are otherwise archaic units of measurements--I can hear my grandparents saying those words.

Somewhere along the line, I've heard that you should let potatoes dry out for a little while without washing off the dirt (it being so sandy, not much stuck on anyway), and since this approach appeals both to my love of loam and loathing of extra work, that's what I did. In fact, a couple of weeks later, the Ozettes are sitting in my archaeology screens, which consist of a 4-inch deep frame with 1/4 or 1/8-inch mesh. They're plenty dried off now, and I suppose it's about time to put them in the dark, or maybe hang them up in one of those coffee shipping bags I've been saving. Lesson: Being an archaeologist has its advantages when it comes to harvest time.

The earliest Ozettes and most of the Yukon Golds are still in the ground, and I'm inclined to leave them there for as long as I can. Sandy soil is good storage, and until winter rains saturate the ground, they'll be fine. A holdout Russet from the previous tenant's garden did this, and put out it's own surprise crop this year, maybe a half peck from one plant. Lesson: No need to harvest everything at once; it's more work, and just creates storage issues. In fact, maybe with the remaining ones, I'll just graffle all but a few, and see if they produce and even lower-labor crop next year.

That exeriment will take a while to play out, but looking back at this year, I'm pretty happy. At $2/pound for good varieties of organic potatoes at the Farmers Market, it's not like I've saved a huge amount of money, but I did get enough for a bunch of meals. Being able to put them in in March and pull them a month or so after the Solstice also means that I can grow a Fall crop in their place, and in fact there are already radishes, beets, carrots and kale coming up where the potatoes came out. Because they start fairly early, and hilling happens later on, potatoes work well with the approach of having beds that expand as the season progresses (as in the Tidal Beds post). Lesson: The tater has a place in my garden.

Garden at the end of May

Let's see,...we had the fake Spring of mid-May, and then the week o cool rain, ruining many a Memorial Day plan.

I'll admit that the warm week tricked me into buying a dozen tomato plants (among them every single Paul Robeson I could find and several Marmondes), but at least I had the sense to tuck them into the hoop house, where carrots are also sprouting just fine. On the other hand, the beans planted without cover went into hibernation until yesterday.

Meanwhile, in the next row, Ozette potatoes are growing better than any taters I've ever planted. I've been good to them, prepping the ground with plenty of cultivation and doses of bone meal and wood ash, but not overly solicitous. I've hilled them up, digging into the grass next to them and shaking the dirt free where it could do some good. Mostly, sun and rain have done their job, and the plants look healthy and sturdy. Now, a week into June and back in sunny weather, they are flowering. I could start graffling soon, but will hold off.

"Graffling" is old southern term for reaching into the dirt and feeling around, pulling a few tubers without hurting the plant and stopping the rest of the crop from continuing to grow. There are variants, but this is how I remember Grandma saying it. She was a mischievious and skilled gardener. She might appreciate the random offshoots of my garden more than the neat rows. I wish she were around to enjoy a meal of new potatoes.

Toeing the Line

February is time to dig. The frost has only reached skin deep this year, and the rain rain has stayed away to come again some other day. This perfect non-storm afforded me the opportunity to dig, shake and rake. I dig up some sod, shake off whatever topsoil and worms I can (most of 'em, when to soil is not saturated), and use my grandma's long-handled garden rake to get the beds ready.

My maternal grandma, whose rake I think this is, was more unruly than row-ly. Like her, I plant haphazardly, tucking things in here and there. But a true chaotic high note takes some time to achieve, and being on rented land (owned by someone I have reason to believ would not appreciate random island of plants in his lawn), I've gone for a more orderly, rectilinear garden layout this year.

Ergo the row-beds and rectangles that comprise my garden this year. The ones pictured above (wide one is for a hoophouse full o' tomatoes, other one for taters and pole beans), and a strip along the house's eastern front for snap peas, the early potatoes and various herbs and flowers. Oh, and another rectangle in the far back where there is sun in the morning and again in the later afternoon, when rays sneak in beneath the neighbor's trees. 

Planting has begun--early taters and snap peas in the sundrenched east, poppies and the first lettuce and radishes wherever--but February is mostly about getting ready. Dig the bed. Apply gore (blood and bone meal).

The linear beds will flow and then ebb, and probably become a grassless mass by Summer's end. If this became my place for more than a year, a piece of ground I could count on long-term, the lines would meander, the rectangles would chaoticize. But however anarchic my gardening may be(come), however prone I am to planting hither and yon like my grandma, a Year 1 garden looks tamer, rowed, and conventional.

The Year According to Garlic

Sitting down to peel some of the 2012 harvest, 2013's cloves in the ground, I have time to think about garlichronology. Like its pungent Allium kin, it's ideally planted in the Fall, not too long after harvest. Add to that the need to cure the crop to get the best out of it, and the garlic cycle tales a year.

This will be my 5th year of garlic growing near the southern tip of the Salish Sea, and I feel like I'm getting the hang of it. At least on a forgiving glacial sandy loam at 200 feet above sea level. In this 5th year, I feel like I get the rhythm and finally can write about it without being a (complete) fool.

The goal is to write the garlic-centric year, and to post in time to be useful, instead of my usual procrastinatory irrelevance. Today, I'm posting a calendar, beginning with October planting. As the garlic cycle rolls on, I'll post with more detail. 

 

Lil Tomato Houses

Girl in action. Lil tomato house inaction.

The first weekend in April, Olympia's Farmers Market opens (and I rejoice). That time of year around Puget Sound, even the best farmers don't have much produce, so they fill the gap with plants started in greenhouses (and all of us gardeners rejoice). 


But April, even May, can be a cruel time for plants to have their roots thrust into cold wet soil, tops shivering in the mist one day and wind the next. This is especially true for tomatoes, which might enjoy the occasional sunny days, but not the cool wet ones, and especially not the frigid nights (which tend to be even colder following a clear sunny day). They may not actually shrink, like mammalian maleparts may in such conditions, but they sure as heck don't wanna grow, and cannot summon the strength to fight blights and fend off fungal foes. 


So you either wait til it's warm, which may not happen til days are already getting shorter, or you give them shelter. Following Solomon's advice (conveniently reproduced for us moderns in Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades before he took off for Tasmania, that devil), I grew them in a hoop house (instructions here) last year, which worked out very well. Even though the Spring was long and cool, a little bit of plastic allowed me to harvest photons throughout, giving the plants a big head start by the time Summer finally arrived.


This year, I decided to grow more, and to experiment with individual tomato houses, which are basically cages with a form-fitting plastic cover. This will let each plant get about twice as big in the warm confines of its home before it starts bumping into the plastic cover, demanding release.

This shot gives you the basic idea. First, make a wire frame (what does not show up well is that if you use fence like this, you should cut out a few 2 x 2 holes in the grid so you can reach in later and harvest). Then, cut plastic wide enough to wrap completely around and tall enough to close over the top. Slide this prophylactic over the cage, and wait for juicy tomatoes to burst forth. That's about it.

But not completely it. Already, I've learned of some flows in my brilliant plan. Try not to replicate my idiocy and inexperience:

• Plant the tomato first, because it's a pain to reach inside to plant it. Literally, if your cutting left sharp wire nubs like I did.
• Stake down the cage, or it'll blow over. I used the wire I cut out to tie the cage to a rebar pounded into the ground, and it has held so far.
• Make the plastic slightly loose fitting. That way it is easier to slide up so you can water, or let the tomatoes breathe on the hot day that will inevitably follow your planting. 
• Don't depend on tape to hold the plastic together. In the photo above, I did not remove the plastic to make the cage visible; it fell off. [I am leaving a couple like that as controls to test the efficacy of the remaining lil tomato houses. Ineptitude and laziness can be recast as science.]
• Don't leave town. You can cook your plants in a hurry if you don't slide the plastic up several inches on sunny days, and make sure they are watered. 
• Try and make the roof tighter than I did. All I did was clip the top, which does not make anything even close to a sealed envelope. I am pretty sure the heat flows out by nightfall,  but again am too lazy and inept to fix it. [Sometimes they cannot be called science, although I am able to rationalize that I'm probably not baking the plants during days when I am not there to coddle them.]

No doubt, as time passes, I'll learn more. Maybe I'll follow up at the end of the season. It will be interesting to see if the covered plants outperform those left to the vagaries of the Puget Spring (as I write, they are enduring a cold rainy night). If nothing else, they are in nice cages, so I won't have to do anything more than guide a few branches through the holes to give them support. These plants won't be as crowded as their hoophouse sisters, which according to Solomon should pay off. We'll see. 

Second Spring

 

Hot on the heels (or is that, coldly nipping at the heels?) of First Spring, comes the mayhem of Second Spring. Clear days approaching warm followed by snow that plays mayhem with morning commutes only to disappear by lunch. At the greenstead, this time requires constant motion combined with a focus on the long term, instantaneous reaction paired with faith in the long slow progression of earth in her orbit. 

This year, Second Spring was Nettle Spring, early March madness devoted to snapping tender tips as nettles push up from the leaves. Already, these plants are stretching, gathering up urticaceousness sufficient to keep the tender-skinned at bay through summer. Only about a week  separates the hidden in humus from the lanky "Howdy, you're a might late ain't ya?" wave of the stinging nettle, but this year I managed to gather a couple big grocery bags full and freeze them for later. To get more this year, I'll need to head up, following Nettle Spring into the lagging hills.

But here at the greenstead, Second Spring gives the snowdrops a rest while the daffodils begin opening. Grass grows rank, berries black and blue loose leaves from huddled buds. The wild greens get a head start on the planted ones; some say this is weeds getting the upper hand, but I see it as first course of the long garden feast.

But there is planting to be done in Second Spring, especially successive sowings of spinach, broadcasts of poppies, rills of radishes, pokings of peaseeds, and all the other cold spring crops. Sow early, sow often. If round one succumbs, the next will fill in, but if it succeeds, I get to eat early. I plant too soon because it just may pay off, books and master gardening 'wisdom' be damned. 

 There's still time in the prequinox to make some last minute moves: take those blueberries languishing under the hazelnut and put them where they stand a chance. Gather up that rhubarb from the not-quite-right spot before its leaves turn from pale crinkly February scrotums to stalks aroused by full-on Spring.

A little weeding this early (whether it yield a meal or not) is a good bet. Dandelions plucked easily with small roots in moist soil will never be this cooperative again. Grasses can even be manageable. It's time to decide where you want to let blackberries roam, and where you will do battle. A minute of Second Spring becomes an hour of Summer. 

In truth, Second Spring is already over. Most of the perennials are already putting on growth. Firework bursts of flax have exploded everywhere, valerian and lupines remind me they are not dead yet, emerging from the grave. It'll be too late to plant early things soon (or will it? I push the boundaries in both directions, because you never know when we'll get one of those everlasting springs), and there are still those clean-up jobs lingering from First Spring procrastination. I observe with a mixture of anticipation and franticism that the soil is warming, that dry days arrive more often,...and I rush.

But not so much that I cannot pause to soak in sun that actually has some warmth. Not so frenetic that there is not time to listen to the varied thrushes with the mellow substrate to a growing list of songbird virtuosos inhabiting the Indian Creek watershed. With each new Spring, new levels of beauty and bliss, the kiss of the sun awakening passions from chlorophyllic cells to the sparrows nesting in the birdhouse by the door.

First Spring

Spring in the northwest defies the simple "April showers bring May flowers" logic I grew up with back east. Since arriving here four years ago, I've been presented with several theories about how it works: Spring comes late some years, Spring takes it's own sweet time reaching fullness, there is no Spring between Rain and Summer. According to my yard and the plants and critters of the maritime northwest, however, the truth is that there are many Springs.

A foot of snow and ice may have distracted us, but First Spring began not so long after the Winter Solstice, as the earth revolves toward longer days, and some things begin to awaken. But if you looked closely at those branches downed by the storm, you could see swelling alder buds, catkins, and other signs of growth. By mid-February, even in my procrastinating yard (which seems to do everything a week or so after the rest of Olympia), shoots are emerging from the ground, blueberry buds are swelling, and the grass is growing again. Even garlic in the pantry is heeding the call, going soft and sending out roots and shoots.

It will take months for this precursory promise to become full flower, but it's enough to keep me going. More than that, to get me going. Emergence begets urgency. Dormancy is slipping away, so it's time to transplant those things I intend to move, plant new fruit I want to establish, and cut those scions if I am wont to graft. Seeds need sorting, new beds must be dug, bushes and trees cry out for pruning so they can grow in the right direction, and so on. Garden gear stashed or abandoned in the Fall has to be checked and fixed (or culled), and Winter's windfall is not totally sorted, stacked, and otherwise re-deployed. The list grows longer as time flows faster.

First Spring is the farmer's breakfast, imbibed early while the rest of the world sleeps, warming the belly and fueling the body for work that must be done. While the rest of the world awaits the more obvious Spring, replete with flowers and sunshine, here at the greenstead those first shoots and sprouts say it's time to wake up from that long Winter's nap. Subtle snowdrop blooms and blushing budswells reinvigorate me with beauty--latency before blatancy--and serve as quiet reminders before fully unfurled foliage says it's too late to be ahead of the game.

Some people are already busy starting seeds under lights and on heating pads. Maybe I am too cheap to buy the gear or the watts (in more pious moments, I'd say I'm loathe to consume too much), and it definitely could be that I procrastinate (or, sayeth the self-righteous me: not hubristic enough to force nature to my timetable). In the end, I know that come April I can support local growers by buying their starts at the Farmers Market: I get a good healthy selection without having had to buy seeds months ago, and they get some income before crops are ready.


Another thing that has been on people's minds over the past few months has been planning. I've never been that disciplined, and since the garden skeleton (trees and bushes, the woody parts that don't move so readily) is articulated already, I don't do that much planning. While others studied and fretted, I ate and carved. At some point soon, I'll think about how I want to flesh out the gardens as I plant spinach and radishes, but for the most part the foodscape is formed by habit and whim. Shoots of garlic, daffodils, and tulips, as well as the hoop house full of embiggening lettuce and spinach seem to suggest that I did some planning last Fall, but I don't recall. The seasons, and in particular this year's version of how they will play out, have their own plan, and I am mostly just along for the ride.


Which brings me back to where I started: First Spring. Spring begets Summer begets Fall is way too simplistic, and not so helpful. The first year I was here, I saw signs of Spring and immediately started planting. The result? I had some beans that sprouted and remained in suspended animation as tiny seedlings for a few months, while the rest just rotted in the ground. Things like that need to wait til Warm Soil Spring, which is after Nettle Spring and Burgeoning Spring. OK, I am just making up those names on the fly, but the point is that the seasons hold more complexity than how our calendar is drawn and quartered. Look at the "moons" identified by farmers, or those named in Lushootseed and the other native languages of our region, and you'll see that for most of our history, humans had a more refined appreciation of what happened to their world as it swung round the sun.

There Used to be an 'Awa Patch Here

Auwe

This is where I gardened for years. Before this glaring repair of the big wall that holds up Iolani Avenue wiped it out. In fact, that darker part behind the Mini, you see that? That's the old new wall, that went up years after I first started building terraces and composting, and in a minute I'll tell you something about what's on it.

But in the meantime, imagine it back in the 90's, gardens where there is now an impervious apron, and at the end of that, a big old mango, recently rejuvenated by some nut climbing around with a big Swedish chainsaw. The same guy planted a hala tree that grew fast and huge, but that's gone now, along with the bananas and cane clumps, ti-leaf. Kalo and `uala in the sun, mulched by maia, ko, and ki.

On two terraces heading up from the mango, more than a dozen `awa plants went from cuttings in pots to being old enough to go to first grade if their roots weren't so deep and happy in the Puowaina cinder, so well moist cheap city water. 'Awa is kava is yanqona is Piper methysticum, a relative of black pepper whose roots are pounded and mixed with water to make a drink that relaxes without dulling the senses. It has practical and ritual uses: for relaxing muscles tired from digging and stacking stone, for sharing over stories with the Tongan and Fijian guys at the garden, and once for presentation of an entire plant to an elder anthropologist being honored by the Rotuman community. 

I go on, because the 'awa patch was something I was proud of. In soil that had begun as parched and lifeless cinder, compost and a soaker hose gave it a black and worm-rich foothold on terraces that would have fit right in at many of the archaeological sites I'd worked in. Having a garden with `awa and all its Polynesian companions in the middle of Honolulu was satisfying, it felt like a place of refuge (if not a real pu`uhonua) from the concrete jungle. Growing the plants for years--not only resisting the urge for an early harvest, but somehow managing not to get ripped off--was an accomplishment, and yielded some fine quality root, not to mention cuttings that became many more plants. 

The 'awa was just part of the garden, though. Eventually, I had maybe a thousand square feet of space, lush with descendants of the plants Polynesians thought enough of to transport across the Pacific in canoes. It was a lab, testing varieties (60+ going at any given time), experimenting with planting schemes and horticultural techniques gleaned from the many published and archival accounts of traditional gardening in the islands. It was, as I said, an island of peace and green in the midst of a large hot city, a place I took my daughter to play while I worked, and to share meals of mangoes, bananas, and cook-out chicken. It was, by the time I'd gardened there for a decade and had to leave, a place that had transformed from barren to brimming with life.

When I started, in 1991, the big wall had partially collapsed. It had been built decades earlier from the local stone, part of Puowaina (aka Punchbowl), which was beautiful and interesting, but also pretty weak and crumbly, not suited to holding up a heavily used road. The community garden there was officially closed, but an old local Chinese woman still slipped in and tended her plot, inviting me to do the same. So I took rubble from the big wall and made terraces in the hilly northwest corner. 

After a couple of years, the city fixed the collapsed part of the wall, replacing the cut Puowaina rock with massive boulders. It happened while I was away doing fieldwork somewhere, and they did a little damage, but I rebuilt and replanted. The garden officially re-opened, and I struck a deal with the city that I would keep my large, irregular plot, and they could carved it up when I left. In the meantime, I enjoyed a run as the 'president' of the garden, having the occasional meeting in which we'd all share food and maybe resolve one of the inevitable minor disputes and agree that we were autonomous from the city, all of whose other community gardens were sad little grids, none of the terraced hills or Chinese havens or Korean restaurant feeders or Tongan subsistence plots that made our place special. We broke the rules against big plots, against bananas and trees, against fires, and so on, and were very happy.

Last time I visited was at least 4 or 5 years ago, and of course it didn't seem the same. The `awa was gone, replaced by spindly cassava, one of the terraces pulled down in the process. One of my old banana clumps clung to life, having eaten all the compost and not been fed again. It was sad, but still better than when I'd first peered over the wall.

I don't know exactly when they fixed the wall again. The satellite view claims to be from 2011, and the concrete looks fresh. The devastation is clear. Gone is the mango; only a common mango, but it had been the anchor for the terraces, the shade for young plants and the girl I trained to recognize and track down the thunk of a ripe one dropping the mulch. Gone is the hala, whose roots were a playground, whose leaves grew long and clear and would have been excellent for weaving. Gone are the terraces: the lower garden, the plant nursery, the cookout and play area, the highest one (above which was 'natural' ground with native plants). Gone is the topsoil that took years to grow. 

What remains? Maybe a bit of terrace, perhaps the stone adze I found and built into the first terrace, and probably some artifact dropped by me or my kid. Some tenacious root or shoot, I hope, propagating itself as an act of defiance against the machines and concrete. One thing I am pretty sure is still there is on the old new wall. I carved some petroglyphs into it, something I'd never have done on a natural boulder, where spirits may still live and take offense, but which seemed alright adornment for roadkill rock. There was a giant lizard head, it's forked tongue licking it's eye the way they do. Also, an owl, a recognition of the animal associated with that place. Maybe some other stuff, too. Someday I'll check. If I live long enough, I'll come back when I am 80 and the petroglyphs are old enough to be recorded as historic.

In the meantime, I hope the process of renewal starts again. That somebody will peer over the wall and again feel the surprise and joy of finding a garden in the city. Maybe there's enough rubble for them to build some new terraces. Maybe as they dig, the new gardeners will find that trowel I lost, or a toy my daughter stashed in the hala roots, or a buried organic layer still willing to grow something. Maybe somebody will find a way to make that concrete slab below the wall produce something. 

I hope so.

To Begin With

To begin with, there was this. Actually, not quite this, since the shot you see here is from 2009. To begin with, there was about a quarter acre with a house, a couple of driveways, and a fenced back yard. 

That was in early 2008, when I moved into this corner of Olympia. Since then, I've been digging, planting, and composting my way toward something a little different. This blog is where I'll try to write what I did before I forget it all. 

There are a lot of blogs like this, with the general theme of "urban homesteading," and I'll admit that this one's title is an oblique nod to that movement. But it's also an uncomfortable sidling away from the word "homestead," which is bandied about with little awareness of its history. In the US, many fine people claimed homesteads, but various homesteading acts were gamed by crooks and robber barons to transfer public lands into corporate hands. Worse yet, homesteading was a primary mechanism by which native people were chased off lands they'd known since time immemorial. In many cases, it was a foregone conclusion that the homestead would fail (you cannot have a viable 160-acre wheat farm), but it was a convenient way to get a piece of earth into the title records and a fenceline. If and when we reverse the polarity and allow citizens to homestead corporate property, then I'm all for it.


But in the meantime, I will greenstead, on a property of my choosing and purchasing. To greenstead is to establish a root-hold for a more environmentally friendly and conscious habitation than what greeted me in 2008. If I have the time and money, the process will include things like solar power and a graywater system, but in the meantime it amounts to simpler and more literally green actions like growing food, planting native species (plus maintaining some habitat for the critters), and tearing out driveway. I'll never end up with a self-sustainable homestead, but I'll leave this place healthier than how I found it.


How I found it to begin with was not all that bad. A typical low-slung late-1970s ranch house. No diesel stench or other contamination indication. No asbestos or lead paint or vinyl siding. A 1600 square foot house adequate for a family or four (and to be honest, a lot more by any other than American standards) with everything powered by electricity. 


Unfortunately, there were also a couple of driveways and a sidewalk. The main drive and the sidewalk were poured concrete, impervious; a good-sized chunk of the property created runoff and could not support crops. The previous owner had exacerbated this by dumping multiple truckloads of crushed gravel along one end of the property, creating a huge driveway for an RV. As I would soon learn, this layer was up to a foot thick and was quite compacted, creating more runoff and dead ground.


In the front yard, which slopes down toward the house from the gravel shoulder of the road, there was weedy grass, which I was glad to see. Maximum sun (other than the shade-zone of the hedge forming the south boundary), a tabula rasa. In back, a half dozen or so alders, a cherry, and a big-leaf maple formed a mature clump of summer shade, beneath which a hastily mulched area was clearly going feral. (Unfortunately, beneath the mulch was plastic sheeting, an ineffective attempt at weed control that has proved to be a pain in the ass.) The entire neighborhood has sandy soil, easy to dig and great for root crops, but also not very rich in organics, and not good at holding moisture. Here and there were scarcely buried fir stumps (and a big maple stump too, now that I think of it), as well as ground that had been stripped of its topsoil, compacted by trucks, and used to dump everything from construction debris to blue aquarium rocks to a Tab can. 


To begin with, I also had very little knowledge to work with. I've gardened for years, but in tropical and subtropical climes, nothing like the Pacific Northwest. Same goes for my knowledge of the native flora. Fortunately, there are books and websites, and I am used to sniffing out ethnobotanical and gardening info, and I'm willing to experiment and observe. Now, four years later, I may not be an expert, but I've learned a lot. 


So, what began as one of many eclectic directions at Mojourner Truth (whence will come relevant re-postings for readers here) is yet another blogject of its own.