Countryside Chronicles: From Garden to Table
Cultivating Family Connections through Shared Harvests!
Wherever you find yourself living, I truly believe that one of the most important things that you can do to enhance your life and preserve your health is to grow some of your own food.
When you take responsibility for growing some of your own food, you begin to nurture yourself (and those lucky enough to get to eat it!) in the most important way possible. Plant heirloom seeds and you've taken your food choices away from big agriculture and the chemical companies that control those choices. By growing some of your own food organically, you're helping preserve our dangerously dwindling pollinator population. Remember! No bees, equals no food. If you want to learn more about the sad plight of the honeybee and the rest of our native pollinators, visit the Xerces Society for Invertabrate Conservation online.
Save your seeds and you're doing your part to preserve and strengthen our ecosystems. Youâre also preserving delicious and sane food choices for everyone! Once youâve tasted an heirloom tomato or eaten a salad that youâve made from lettuce that you just picked thereâs no going back, and you donât need a lot of room to do either.Â
As you break through the warm juicy flesh of that tomato with your first bite, you'll experience a pleasure that humans have been sharing for centuries, that of a deep connection to the earth as our mother, our provider.
I'll never forget my son coming to me every summer with purple stained handfuls of fresh wild blackberries to share. They were all over his little face, all over his clothes and spilling out of his pockets and they brought me instantaneous joy as I stuffed them into my mouth! Breaking bread together is something that we need to do and perhaps one of the greenest things that we can do as families.
Cooking food that we've grown, eating it together by soft candlelight, using our grandmotherâs plates that have been passed down through generations. I've said for years that using cherished family dinnerware and serving pieces is the ultimate act of recycling! Buy some cloth napkins and sit down with your family and find out about their day. When your serve the tomato sauce for the pasta made out of fresh tomatoes and herbs that you've grown together, you are engaging in the ultimate act of sustainability!
It is impossible to grow anything without having that awareness creep through into your soul, that we are all connected through the simple act of growing and sharing our food. Some evening when a friend desperately needs it, you'll make a salad from lettuces that you've grown yourself and you'll take it to her house with a bottle of wine, French bread and some cheese. As you share that meal and listen to her story, youâll have the satisfying feeling of knowing that you've given her the best medicine ever, which you've grown with your own love and time. If you have children, you'll be teaching them to feed themselves in good times and bad, through their own efforts. All children should know that they could feed themselves without relying on someone else to do it for them; it empowers and makes them proud.
Here are a few of my favorite container tips and tricks!
Even if you have a large plot for a garden, I encourage you to experiment with container gardening.
¡     Fill the base of your containers (about 3 inches) with a mix of rocks and bits of broken up brick. This way your plant roots will have something to grab onto and you will also have created a great base for pot drainage.
¡     Make sure that you have at least two good drainage holes in the bottom of each pot. That way your plants wonât have wet feet!
¡     With potting soil you get what you pay for. I donât use the pre-packaged bags that you find in the big box stores.  Try to find a good organic potting soil and the vegetables that you grow will reward you with stronger root systems, strong flowering and amazing flavor. Remember, youâre eating the soil as well as the plant!
¡     Be sure to mix a good fertilizer into the soil, donât leave it sitting on top. I donât like to use premixed soils because I want to control the food that I use for my plants. I like a mixture of pelleted chicken poop and liquid fish emulsion. I also use mycorrhizal fungi as an innoculant for each plant or if Iâm planting seeds, I mix it into the soil.
¡      Twice during the growing season I make a mixture of egg shells, coffee ground and water. Iâll let this sit for a couple of days, strain it and then water my plants with it. They love this, much like a good cup of tea will perk you up after a long days work!
¡     Every plant is different in temperament. Two tomatoes of the same variety can want totally different care. One of the reasons that I love to garden in containers so much is because I can cater to each plants needs. For example, I had a Pineapple sage plant this year that flourished in the shade. Its sister is thriving in the bright sunlight by my front walk!
¡     Be sure to deadhead! This is the process of cutting off spent blooms and fruits before they go to seed, because once they begin to go to seed you wonât get much more life out of them. This is really important with herbs and flowers as once the plant puts all of its energy into creating its seed the flavour of the leaves will be for the most part diminished!
¡     Choose your varieties carefully. If you are a beginning gardener, start with dwarf or patio plants. Once you gain more confidence you can try your hand at regular varieties.Â
¡     Donât be shy about massing many different plants. Herbs, vegetables and flowers can all live together happily in one large pot and you will love the beauty of the display.
Iâm getting so excited for our first Sweet Tea Social. We will be meeting on Zoom on Tuesday, April 9th at 4:00 Eastern time to just relax and enjoy some great gardening conversation. The Zoom link and other information can be found below. If you are a paid subscriber, your participation in Sweet Tea Socials is included as part of your membership perks and you are helping me to be able to keep my writing free for all to enjoy. And if you're not a paid subscriber yet, it's not too late to become one! You can find out more here!
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We can't wait to raise our glasses with you in celebration of spring, growth, and community.
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