The Garden Shedde

Today is a dark cold day in January when it’s hard to stay warm. Soup will taste good for the evening meal. I decided to make some ham and white bean soup. Some people call it Senate Bean Soup. I think it must be real American food. I went about the task of peeling onions. Onion in English, the Spanish word for onion is cebolla. It was just a plain, ordinary yellow cooking onion. When I peeled it, that onion was purple! That sent my mind thinking.

How long have people been eating onions? Where did they come from? Well it turns out, we have been eating onions since 3500BC and onions grow wild all over ever continent. (I have eaten wild onions as a college student and willed them dead, as grounds maintenance professional.) Jewels to one are weeds to another.

The beauty of the onion is that it does not spoil in winter. It transports well and moved all over the world with humans. Onions went from Egypt to Greece, Italy, even to the New World with the Pilgrims. Onions mean that much to people. At the heart of all full- bodied recipes is the onion. They are bound to humans by flavor, texture, and tears. The dinner table would be a bland place without them.

More and more people are moving in the direction of buying practical gifts for their friends and family. There is nothing more practical than some great gardening gifts for those families and individuals that are starting to or wanting to grow their own food. The great thing is you can get something as simple as hand tools to a larger and more complex garden gifts that might include a raised bed or even a greenhouse.

The most important thing to consider is the skill set of the person you are giving the gift to. You may also want to ask them what they are lacking or what they would like to add in their garden this next spring. There are some things that are organic specific and others that are for general gardening. Whatever you buy for the gardener in your life, make it practical. You can also give a gift to encourage growing their own food as well. One of the best things to use to get stared is a raised bed and you can get organic beds or beds made from recycled milk jugs that both help the environment as well as give someone a way to grow their own food.

In this day and age when the economy is getting hit hard and we are getting hit harder with bills, it just pays to start thinking green. I recently got a notice in the mail that the water department was going to start charging extra if we went over the allotted water limit per household. I guess at that moment, my beautiful green luscious yard was a curse although I had never seen it that way previously. How was I going to stay under my limit when my veggies and grass need its daily watering?

Thank goodness for the internet and searching for ‘green gardening’ because I found a couple things that have worked wonders for me. First I ordered a collapsible rain barrel that could easily be set up to catch runoff from the gutter and be hooked up to the lawn hose – a simple way to recycle water! And why stop with just recycling water when there is so much that I was throwing out from the fridge that could be used in a compost bin. I’m glad to say my yard has been able to stay ‘luscious’ even in these hard times thanks to these products.

It’s always fun to get together and share a garden. You find out a lot about likes and dislikes when family and friends start talking about all the things they want to grow. If you have a limited space, you have to make some hard choices; thus the choices in our garden this year with several other families. We ended up planting Lemon Balm for one couple who love to put it in their iced tea throughout the summer; cilantro fro two couples who love Mexican dishes an salsa all summer long.

We wanted to try Stevia this year as we have another friend who grows and harvests it year round. There are the staples of culinary including Basil, Mint, Thyme, Rosemary, Dill and Oregano of which we all use for a multitude of recipes. It has been fun to explore the ends and outs of each of these herbs and how they are grown and harvested. I can’t say that we have had a 100% success rate but we are really close to it! Our motto is try once, if we don’t succeed, try twice. If we don’t succeed, buy it!

Rain Barrels are one of those things we talk about but never seem to get around to actually buying and using until we have experienced a drought or water restriction in our area and then we think; we should have done that! But why should you really consider a rain barrel? Here are my top five reasons.

1. Water is a limited natural resource that we can harness and use at little or no cost.
2. Most Rain Barrels are made from recycled materials thus we are reducing our eco footprint.
3. All life needs water to live so it makes since to have as much water as possible on hand, especially when it comes direct from Mother Nature.
4. A roof area of only 1,000 square feet can provide approximately 600 gallons of water during a one inch rainfall so it is very efficient.
5. Rainwater is free of salts and other minerals that can harm plants and root growth so it is always a good source for plants.

Just think if we all collected enough rain water to water our plants and yards we would have more water for everyday use.

What I am about to tell you is very general and will not apply to some plants in some regions and you will need to make sure that what you are planting will have a good chance to grow wherever you live.  Then these general rules will apply. If you follow these general rules you can and will grow most anything that you choose.  Here is what a plant needs:

• Good soil
• Sun
• Water
• Fertilizer
• Weed

They need all of this to not only survive, but to thrive. You need to know that in a raised bed you can easily control your soil but you will need more water because it dries out before an in ground plant will as the ground holds water better.  This is also true of any type of plant that is “out of the ground” including potted plants and hanging plants. All plants need sunshine. Some can withstand a full day while others will wither under full sun.  Read the labels and follow them. Just plant the plants where they get the amount of sun they need.  Fertilize every 7 to 14 days and watch everything grow and bloom and keep the weeds out.  It really is that easy!

Having a bed of some kind to dedicate to growing asparagus is a great way to get started.  However, you will have to be patient in order for the asparagus to have several seasons to establish a good root system.  Harvesting to much too soon will hurt the long term success of the asparagus bed.  So the bottom line is you must wait for the plant to mature.  If you do, you will be rewarded for many years to come.

The asparagus spears can be harvested the first two weeks of the second spring when they are six to ten inches tall.  Do not cut the spears off; snap them off near the ground.  On the third spring through the sixth spring, you can harvest throughout the first month.  Starting the seventh spring (that’s right 7 years!) you can harvest the spears for two months.  If 75% of the new spears are the diameter of a pencil, stop harvesting.  This means the asparagus needs to develop stronger root systems and to do that it will need to develop summer foliage.  As with all vegetables; keep it well watered and weeded.

The last few years we have been dealing with drought situations but this tear we are inundated with rain pretty much day in and day out.  Two weeks ago the flowers were just starting to bloom and today every bloom and potential bloom has been pelted off with hard hitting rain or hail.  If I have to choose one or the other, I would choose the rain.

I have lived out West in terrible drought conditions as well the Deep South, which is still struggling with lack of rain even though its neighbors directly north are literally drowning in some areas.  It’s too bad we can’t get the water to run into those other areas!  I’m not sure what we did before the Weather Channel either.  I find myself watching at least once a day so I can plan everything around what will be happening in my area.  I tend to watch the “local on the 8’s” way more than once and can never figure out why. Oh well, it’s better than a lot of other things I’ve seen on TV lately and it always answers the question; what’s up with this weather?

It is funny how so many things that were used back in the day (a long time ago) are coming full circle and becoming all the rage again.  One of those things is the lowly rain barrel.  Rain Barrels used to be used for one thing and one thing only; capturing water today to be used somewhere else in the future.  There were issues with them that included attracting bugs were also overcome by using the water sooner rather than later for watering crops and gardens.

Today’s rain barrels are more sophisticated and have solved the problems of the past.  They capture clean water to use for your potted plants and garden as well as help reduce runoff.  This is a great way to reduce the amount of fertilizers and pesticides that wash into our rivers, lakes and streams.  The new barrels have lids that prevent the stagnant water developing and attracting pests and bacteria as well as having hoses for easily getting the water out of the barrel and onto the plant areas.  It’s just a great way to save on water usage, cost and reduce waste water into the environment.  A win, win, win for everyone!

I recently had the pleasure of hearing a local chiropractor speak to a group of enthusiastic gardeners about what he sees as their number one problem and how to prevent it from happening.  Like so many other things we do, it seems like our backs are put at risk by our activities in the yard and garden more than any other part of our bodies.  Since the back is supported by our core muscles and those muscles are in the stomach, we tend to forget that those sit ups we hate to do are causing more than our bellies to expand.

So beyond the “eat right and exercise” mantra there are a couple of thing you can do to help prevent a back injury, no matter if you are in top shape or not.  One of the most important things is to always stretch before you start working.  This is more than just touching your toes.  You will need to really stretch and bend and really warm up your body and back for some bending.  Another thing you can do is use knee pads or one of the garden seats you see today to help take the stress off your back and lower body.  I have also heard of a fellow using an exercise ball out in the yard for additional support.  Whatever it takes; you owe it to yourself to protect your back from injury.