The Essence

Just in time for planting warm season plants it looks like the weather will finally cooperate and allow me to work my plant beds. Actually, the weather cooperated last weekend but it was just too pretty to spend double digging the garden. Instead, I ended up
heading south with the family to visit the town of Bath NC and Goose Creek State Park in Washington County. The park was a real hit for the kids who swam in the shallow, tea colored waters of the Pamlico Sound, looked for fossils along the trails and chased lizards across fallen logs. Needless to say they had a blast exploring and having some dedicated time with Mom and Dad. Gardening is great but life requires balance and this proved a very restorative day trip. But I digress...

Since my last post, I've selected the location and size (30 X 45 feet)of the garden expansion but a few issues relating to its placement have ruined my motivation to have it ready for a summer planting. Number one is that the chosen site has been heavily "utilized" by my 100 lb "house dog". I could paint a nice verbal narrative on the problem but will spare you the details. Anyway, because of this I've decided to let the expansion area go fallow for the summer. I'm fencing the plot to exclude the dog and planting it with a warm season cover crop. This should allow for attenuation of dog nasties and in late summer, prior to prepping it for fall and winter crops, I'll cover the area with black plastic to cook off the rest.

The other issue with the selected area is that it is wind swept by frequent northeasterns. To mitigate this I'm planting two parallel rows of bushes along the north border to block the brunt of these damaging winds. For this I've successfully rooted three cuttings from an amazingly wind hardy blueberry bush in my neighbor's yard which will be mixed in with two other cultivars from a local grower to ensure adequate cross-pollination. The other row will be grapes. I lean towards putting in native vines as they are completely trouble free but I already have an arbor of scuppernongs in the front yard. Some have suggested wine grapes (V. vinifera). I'm not adverse to the idea but I need to find out how much chemical support they require. I'm hoping that a small isolated arbor can be supported organically so I'm continuing research on my alternatives. In any case, I doubt that either of these fruiting "hedges" will provide much in the way of a wind shield for a couple of years so I'm planning to use alternating rows of rye grass to block late spring and early summer winds for the next year or two.

Perhaps I'm just deluding myself but this "delay" is really not keeping me from reaching my objectives. I've mentioned before that our food choices have tremendous implications from their impacts on our health to our dependence of foreign oil but somewhere in the middle is their influence on our communities. As a citizen gardener I don't want to produce all my own vegetables just those that I reasonably can. For the balance, I plan to rely on other local producers, be they other back yard enthusiasts or commercial growers. In other words besides growing vegetables I need to grow support for the types of land use I want to see in my community. In my mind, developing such relationships, seems to be the essence of becoming a citizen gardener.