Growcavore

[talon]

I've decided I'm a growcavore - I eat what I grow, and I grow what I eat, for the most part. I had a growcavore meal last night - I harvested yellow crookneck squash, tomatoes, snowpeas (the last of them until the weather cools off again), potatoes (new ones! This year's unexpected driveway crop that sprouted from a couple of potatoes I missed when I harvested last year - I didn't plant potatoes this year...), parsley, sage, and added a store bought Vidalia onion, some eggs, butter, and cheese to that to make a garden fresh frittata. I made a salsa from tomatoes, peppers, parsley, cilantro, basil, and oregano from my wading pool gardens to go over the salsa, and a salad of microgreens and mesclun lettuces and tomatoes, ornamented with borage flowers, cornflowers, nasturtium, and dianthus blossoms.

I have the leftovers for lunch today.

I don't have a huge garden, and I certainly don't put a lot of effort into it. In this heat, I water it twice a day, but in milder weather, I usually only water every other day or when I remember.

Almost everything I grow is either edible or used as a medicinal, and few people would recognize my "gardens" as food gardens. It's nothing like the Victory Gardens of the wars.

I bought wading pools, cut drain holes in the sides, lined them with weed barrier cloth, and filled them with Mel's Mix (from Square Foot Gardening). Then I planted them. One has strawberries and parsley in it. One has nasturtiums, dianthus, chamomile, and basils in it. One has peas, cornflowers, carrots, chamomile, and a squash plant in it. One has the mesclun mix and borage and dill in it.

I had a row of bags at the top of the driveway last year for potatoes and harvested those. I decided not to grow potatoes this year because I planned to paint the house and the potato patch would be in the way, but apparently, I didn't harvest all the potatoes and so had a crop this year anyway. So I don't paint until this fall. Ah well. It helps, being flexible and all.

I bought strawbales last fall as mulch and got all but one bale broken up and spread out before torrential rains hit - that last bale was then too heavy for me to move. And it stayed too heavy to move as it rotted on the inside. So I planted tomatoes in it to speed up the rot - and I have the best and most prolific tomato plants ever. They are looking rather scraggly and heat exhausted right now but they'll perk up in cooler weather and I should be getting tomatoes clear up until November or even December. Right now, it's producing half a pound of tomatoes a day.

Then I have a gnome garden - a large shallow clay saucer set on a pedestal and filled with Mel's Mix and a variety of thymes, tiny sunflowers (they only grow 6 - 8 inches tall - so cute!), Corsican mint, and reindeer moss, along with a stone path, a couple of gnomes, and a wishing well. I get enough thyme, Corsican mint, sunflower seeds, and reindeer moss to last all year and to share from that tiny little garden!

I have rose bushes that set hips, so I not only get the delicious rose petals for candying, jam making, teas, and perfumery, I also get hips for more jams and teas.

I have raspberry canes (I am getting my second harvest off them right now - I picked a handful for breakfast this morning) under the bathroom window - it's always good to grow thorny plants under windows and why not grow thorny plants that produce yummy fruit?

In the planter that forms one side of the front porch, I have a beautiful rosemary shrub and a lovely jasmine plant that's twining up the trellis to the roof. The rosemary prunings are used for teas, cooking, medicinals, and perfumery. The jasmine provides blossoms to use for tea and perfumery.

Under the living room window, I have sage, oregano, sorrel, another rosemary, and wild strawberries.

Near the curb, I have an old redbud tree that provides me with delicious redbuds and redbud blossoms for tea, crunchy sweet/tart salad toppings, and snacks. Around it, I grow edible daylilies, edible chrysanthemums, edible daisies, edible tulips, edible irises, and crafty lamb's ears. I also grow sweet scented stargazer lilies there.

Between the redbud and the cluster of wading pool gardens, I have a lavender bed with a bird bath in the middle. Lavender is used for all sorts of things and I'm thinking of expanding my lavender beds next year.

Those are the plants I have confined to recognizable "gardens" - containers that passersby would reasonably expect to contain plants.

Now, I have more edibles tucked all over my yard: wild violets that lend their blossoms to candying, salads, soups, and perfumery; plantain as a medicinal, dandelions for sautéing the buds, tossing the petals into salads and brewed into wine and medicinal, roots dried and ground for "coffee", and new leaves to toss into a salad; purslane, lamb's quarters, chickweed, spring beauty, oxalis, and clover to toss into salads and soups or to sauté with eggs.

I have cedar trees, and the needles make delicious teas and jelly. I have a mulberry tree and make mulberry wine and jelly. I have a pecan tree that's now 10 years old and has yet to produce a single nut - it's lived a very hard life and is still shorter than me. I expect I may have to uproot it and plant a new pecan tree if I ever hope to have pecans.

There's always something growing to eat in my yard year round. I plan to add more, much more. My whole yard will be a grazer's delight.

This fall, I'm planting a pair of hazelnut trees - a convoluted hazelnut for the looks and a sweet hazelnut for the nuts, and a pair of elderberries - a black lace for the looks and one for the berries.

Next spring, I'm adding a hedge of cherries with an undercover of lingonberries and wintergreen.

I'll probably add a couple more wading pool gardens for more veggies. I technically have enough land to grow enough wheat to grind for my own bread each year, but I don't want to do that.

I'm sure, if I did my gardening as a serious farmer and did all the "proper" things like soil testing and using fertilizers and weeding and planting in precise rows and stuff, I'd get a larger harvest.

Actually, I'd probably fail as an urban farmer if I did that - every time I've followed all the proper instructions for growing things, they died on me.

So I don't grow things the "proper way". I randomly toss seeds into the wading pool gardens and across the lawn. I water them once in a while and what grows, grows. I harvest what they produce and put up enough for the year and share the excess - and surprisingly, I do have an excess. I do want to add a couple of egg laying chickens to my yard once the big dog dies of old age - but that's been my plan for the last 5 years and he keeps on living. He's an Irish Wolfhound mix and the vet said that given his size, we could expect him to live about 6 - 8 years. He's 14 now. It may be a long time before I can have my pair of chickens.

Yep. I am pretty much a growcavore.