GOOD PLANETS ARE HARD TO FIND
Wild Gardening
I love this planet. One of the things I love the very most is gardening. I love the soil, I love growing things I can eat, I love getting the weeds out and making the plants look beautiful. I especially love it when the seeds come up by themselves. That is why I have started different gardening methods.
Janet, walking the property with Cameron Gordon, Resident (left), and Dennis Bruneau, Founder and President of Sun Lodge Farms (right).
I guess you could call it “wild” gardening. (No, I do not garden in the nude, my skin is very sensitive to the sun.)
I totally believe in using Heritage seeds. Why would I want to plant something that has been hybridized? (For sure I am not wanting to use Monsanto and GMO seeds.)
So...I heritage seeds, and save a few plants from which to collect the seeds, and then I am good to go for the next year. If I let some plants go to seed in the garden, or cover the hardy, cool-weather plants, sometimes I can have a late garden or greens all winter, and then in the spring they come forth with early greens. I will then plant a crop when it is time, and let the wintered plants go to seed and have a fall crop which I can sometimes keep alive all winter. It just seems so natural, and I love it when volunteer plants show up.
My Love Affair with Beans
How did I get so “involved” with beans, you might ask?
At our seed exchanges, I kept finding different varieties with beautiful colours. When I put them up in jars, I loved the addition to my kitchen decor.
Mostly though, I loved the idea of not having to can beans.
It is hard work, cleaning, snapping, bottling, and canning. My kids didn't eat them, and if it was not done right you risked bacteria poisoning. Freezing was easier and safer, but people argued about the best method, and they got freezer burn.
Join Janet at her Bean Plot in this imaginative and fun video blog that introduces Janet's plans for her bean garden.
O'Glorious day when I discovered drying beans! You plant the lovely, coloured things, then leave them alone. When they are sufficiently dry, but not too dry that they pop open, you shell them, and mulch the rest of the plant into the garden to nourish the soil. Placing them on drying racks was not a problem for me, and when they were sufficiently dried, I poured them into jars and put a lid on tightly. Voila! They look pretty on the shelf and feed you through the winter.
One bean can produce 30x itself and that is exponential expansion in sustainability. GO BEANS!
Shanty Town
My gardens sometime look like homeless shelters. I am very much into recycling cardboard and using it for pathways in my garden. Worms move into the holes and tunnels between the outside paper layers. By the end of a growing season, the cardboard is disintegrating, and the worms have made a good bit of new fertile soil. From cardboard paths between your rows you can turn over new rich soil into your beds for the next season. Of course your paths get deeper and deeper and your rows get higher and higher. You can always move the row into the path, along with the cardboard and worms, then start over with new paths where the rows were.
What I call "The Ladies Method" of gardening can take place anywhere - in the middle of a field, on your lawn, or wherever you wish. Decide where your garden will be. Put down cardboard, cover it well, and then water. The best way is to use mulch, shredded paper, compost or whatever you have lying about, then layer this onto the cardboard, watering and watering. The easiest thing to do next is to buy soil, but if you have a big, strong person to assist you, they can dig, toil, and labour to bring you the topsoil you need to cover your “lasagne” layers, and you are ready to plant your garden. An instant garden can arise in a few hours if you prepare your layers. Make sure to water well to help the layers and cardboard to settle in and begin the transformation to soil process.
People look at you a bit askew as you remove cardboard from recycling bins and have cardboard all over your lawn, but they get over it when they see the beautiful garden producing nicely, and will change their tune to “ooohs and aaahs”.