Ugly Garden, Beautiful
Food
Coming back from yet
another week away this summer, I venture into the backyard
to see what I can harvest for dinner.
The “Three Sisters”
in one plot are down to two and a hag. The first
sister, corn (maize), grew to about a foot tall before
I planted two or three pole beans at the base of them,
and then some pumpkin seeds around those. Well, the
beans shot up and practically strangled the corn
stalks, eventually pulling them right down to the
ground and creating a solid, tangled mat, interspersed
with the occasional, hopeful pumpkin leaf reaching for
the sky.
The onions
grew into the carrots. The peppers fight for a slice of
sunlight amongst the crazed tomato leaves. Melons and
cucumbers jostle for position. Volunteer potatoes show up
anywhere they’ve ever grown before. I’m constantly moving
errant blackberry vines to where they’re supposed to be on
one side, and on the other, grape vines just snapped their
trellis and are slumping into the zucchinis. Don’t even get
me started about all the Bermuda grass and oleander
invasions I need to beat back.
In short, my
poor garden is a much-neglected mess.
But we’re eating! In fact,
I canned six quarts of wax, snap and green beans last
night. More food is coming, because the main effort I’ve
made is to keep starting the “next round” of various crops
and getting them in the ground. This is WAY more important
than tidying up what’s already growing.
I’m especially
happy to have such a productive garden because it increases
our family’s self-sufficiency. The price of food,
especially fresh food, is poised to go up, up, up very
soon. Consider:
- The U.S. became a net importer of food starting in 2005.
- Water to some growing regions is being curtailed due to environmental reasons, such as in the case of California’s Central Valley, which has seen millions of acres idled, and thousands of growers put out of work recently.
- The government pays still other farmers NOT to grow food, in order to keep prices “stable.”
- When the price of gasoline goes up, more acreage will go to growing crops for ethanol production, which last year caused riots in Mexico when the price of maize for tortillas went through the roof.
- Worldwide, many regions are experiencing severe shortages, and some countries have stopped exporting staples to feed their own populations.
- The Fed is printing money, lots of it, which will create inflation.
It probably seems strange that I’m harping on the importance of growing your own food now that fall is rapidly approaching here in the Northern Hemisphere, but fall is really the start of the gardening year. Next week, I’ll explain more.