Sorry to be gone so long from this blog, but here’s the garden for this year as of July 10, 2009. Enjoy!

Big news from Big Pharma yesterday that statin drugs given to healthy people reduce the likelihood of heart attack or stroke by 50%!!! Amazing!!! A medical miracle!!! Or maybe not….

Dr. John McDougall once again debunks the “research” on this one.  Funded by AstraZeneca, maker of Crestor, and written by Dr. Paul M. Ridker, patent-holder of a methodology referred to in the “research,” Dr. McDougall points out that the study is flawed in its subject matter, statistical analysis, unreported side effects, and shortened tenure.  In other words, Big Pharma reports what it wants all of us to see — drugs are good, buy more.  At $3.45 per day, Crestor is among the most expensive of the statins, and has some of the most adverse side effects — unless you consider diabetes and muscle damage to be desirable outcomes.

McDougall has spent his professional career promoting, researching, and living the benefits of a plant-based diet.  Debbie and I have been fans of his for years, and primarily eat a low-fat, plant-based diet.  Check out McDougall’s website, sign up for his e-newsletter, read his books and you’ll be amazed at the positive effects of adopting a plant-based diet…and it’s free with no side effects!  Stay simple.

“A garden is never so good as it will be next year.” –Thomas Cooper

Summer has come and gone. Our first attempt at organic veggie gardening went well in spite of us this year! In July, we had the most lush vegetable garden you can imagine…but life and the squash bug caught up with us in August! I pulled some muscles that kept me out of the garden for several weeks and Chuck spent his extra time doing all the stuff I usually do.

So, the garden had to manage on its own…the beans were done in September, the tomatoes and peppers lasted into October. The voles ate a bite out of most of our potatoes. We dug the rest up because we knew either we could eat them small or the voles would eat them big!

But, in spite of the voles and squash bugs and incapacitated gardeners…our freezer is half full of things we grew ourselves…mostly beautiful tomatoes and green beans. You know…we grew more than vegetables this summer. We grew a little joy, wonder and self-sufficiency, too! And even a squash bug can’t eat that!

Stay simple!

Our first summer of vegetable gardening has been a rewarding experience for Chuck and me. It’s sort of like being first time parents…you start out reading every book you can get your hands on…you’re a little tense and nervous about doing the wrong thing…and then finally you put up the books and follow your instincts and enjoy the wonder of it all!

We wanted our garden be beautiful and have an intimate, cozy feeling… not just utilitarian rows of dirt and plants. Our 4 raised beds have been more successful than we thought they would be when we first started.

Our Romas are hanging in weighty clusters from the vegetable netting on our raised beds. The netting hung between two metal fence posts has been a very effective trellis. The secret is to keep weaving the stems in and out…they grow faster than you can imagine! A few wayward stalks have gotten away from us and lean into our paths!

We like the tomatoes planted in the ground along the fence best. They are healthy and just keep on producing.

The brandywines are all huge and a deep pinky red color. We eat tomato sandwiches almost every day for lunch…it’s the taste of summer and we’ll miss it when it’s gone!

The purple trionfo violetto beans from Park Seeds have been our favorite. Harvest them when they are small and they are melt in your mouth tender…steamed or sauted in minutes.

The potatoes are in bloom now…pretty enough for the flower garden. We have russets, caribes and cranberry reds and are using straw as a mulch instead of using dirt to cover them as they grow. I hope this method proves to be a good one.

I sure hope this sugar baby watermelon dangling from the fence gets ripe before we run out of summer. We picked one last week that wasn’t ripe. It’s hard for us inexperienced veggie gardeners to always know when it’s time to pick…but we’re learning.

Our main nemesis in the garden this year has been the squash bug…in all of its stages. We’ve lost squash and zucchini and they are now working on the cucumbers and cantaloupes. We resorted to using sevin dust on our last squash plant but it did no good. Right now we are trying to take the high road and just hope to get a few more veggies before the bugs do. Next year we need to be ready with more effective organic solutions than we were this year.

I think one of the most important things our garden has produced is joy! It’s been fun to watch it grow and change in character and size. It gives us new things to discover together every day…like the giant tomato produced when 3 brandywines fused together between 2 stalks!

We’re not close to eating totally out of our garden yet, but we’ve taken the first step and know someday we’ll come very close to it. Till then have fun in the garden and… stay simple.

Friday morning Chuck and I made the short trip to Allen’s farm to pick blueberries. We bought a small chest freezer the day before and couldn’t wait to fill it with summer goodies we could enjoy all winter long. Chuck and I had never even seen a blueberry bush, much less picked them…so this was an adventure for us!

The Allen’s are obviously trusting folks because the picking is strictly on the honor system…but then I guess there aren’t many blueberry thieves around here!

Chuck chose a couple of buckets out of the truck box and we were ready to pick some blueberries. The weather was in the mid 80’s with almost no humidity…the perfect day to be outside.

There were probably about 50 or so bushes out there. Some of the ones closest to the drive had been picked clean of most of the ripe berries, but they were full of unripe ones that would be ready in a couple of days. We walked just a few rows back and hit the jackpot! The bushes were loaded with the most beautiful, healthy blueberries anybody could ask for. We started picking…plunk, plunk, plunk…this was fun…but I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the size of my bucket and the size of the blueberries!

After a few minutes I forgot about how empty my bucket looked and just enjoyed being together… talking as we picked…in a beautiful setting… on one of the most perfect days of the year…not to mention tasting a berry or two!

We picked for about an hour and went back to the honor system truck box and paid for our 5 quarts of berries and put our buckets up. We brought a basket to carry our blueberries home.

What a great way to spend a morning! We got home and had the blueberries washed and in the freezer less than a hour after we picked them! They’ll bring back memories of a sunny summer day at the blueberry patch with every taste this fall and winter…and we still have a couple of more weeks to go back and pick some more!! Stay simple and eat well!

The Washington Post has a great article about the increase in the number of backyard gardeners in the US. Seems that seed sales have gone up dramatically as Americans plant and grow their own food. Reasons for the increase: the economy, concerns about where food comes from, concerns about food quality, and a desire to take control of our own food production. It’s a movement that’s gaining momentum everyday. Stay simple!

Today we harvested tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, beans, and parsley from the garden. Add the corn from the Nobles’ garden, along with tomatoes, snap beans, and peaches from the Haskins’ farm, and we had a veritable feast laid out before us. Here’s what we finally decided on for dinner:

• Trionfo violetto beans. They grow purple, but turn green when cooked. We steamed the tender young bean pods until warm, but still slightly crunchy.
• Carrots. Despite earlier problems with the raised beds, we finally harvested some carrots. Although they were small, and could have been a little sweeter, Debbie steamed them with the beans and they were a great taste, color, and texture addition.
• Corn. Jim and Virginia Nobles have kept us in squash since the squash bugs got ours, but Friday they also brought by some fresh corn. Sweet and juicy on the cob!
• Sweetie tomatoes. These we just popped in our mouths, just to taste them. We have tons of these, plus romas, and slicing tomatoes coming, so salads and tomato sandwiches are in our future for weeks ahead.
• Smartdogs. We wanted something else, and Smartdogs got the nod. The dogs and the buns were the only things on our menu tonight that didn’t come from our garden or a friend’s. Summer is great!

Chuck and I welcome you to a guided tour of our vegetable garden! Come on in and we’ll show you around!

You may have read about the problem we had with our raised beds — the mulch underneath the beds was holding water like a sponge making the beds too wet. We fixed that problem as much as we can, but decided to plant more crops around the perimeter of the garden. Then, we decided to expand the garden by about another 350 square feet. The original garden is about 22×20 feet, so we are almost doubling the size. Here’s the expanded garden. As you can see, we’re still preparing the soil on the new plot at the top of the original garden:

I started by tilling up the turf with my Mantis tiller, which works really great for that task. Next I raked out the plot and let the churned up turf dry in the sun for a couple of days. Then I raked the plot, clearing the dried up grass and roots. Then I started back with the Mantis, tilling the soil. But I didn’t like the outcome — the soil was being over-worked into a fine powder. The weather has been extremely hot and dry here, so the soil is very friable anyway.

Abandoning the tiller, I went back to hand-turning the plot, just like subsistence farmers do. I use a mattock to break the soil down to the clay layer, about 6-12″ inches depending on where I am in this plot.

As I am pulling the dirt toward me, I pick out the big rocks and other debris. Our house was built in 1897, and from what I’m finding, a shed must have stood here long ago. Here’s a photo of some of the stuff I’ve dug up:

Lots of rocks, a piece of cast iron pipe, a piece of an old plow, broken cast iron, and roots. So, a tiller would have a really hard time with all this junk underground. After I break up the soil and pull it toward me, I shovel it back onto the row I’m digging, effectively moving the soil from one spot to another. This is my version of double-digging, although I’m only going down 12″.

This has taken me about 8-hours, and I’m only about half-way through the task. But, there is something very satisfying about turning the soil by hand without the noise and smell of a tiller. I also have a new appreciation of subsistence farmers who work under very difficult conditions with much poorer soil than mine. At the end of the day, I’m dirty, hot, and tired, but the satisfaction of doing this by hand is good.

When we get this plot turned, I’ll add compost, organic composted manure, maybe a little peat moss, and a mixture of organic soil enhancers. Then, we’re ready. We’re planting a new garden with potatoes, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, cucumbers, and who knows what else. Once this new plot is established, we will completely re-work the raised bed area by removing the beds, mulch, tilling, and rearranging the layout. We’re learning this year, but already we’ve got great plans for our fall garden. We’ll keep you posted. Stay simple!