My friend Derek and I started having a conversation about all the crazy things going on in the world on the Armagedon Revisited Thread. It has gradually taken on a conversation
about our gardening experiences.
As Derek says, it’s more fun talking about gardening than Armagedon .
So I am opening up this thread for anyone who wants to talk about gardening or
anything else one is doing as we move into a new paradigm.
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Hey Bonnie, I have watermelons! I actually have watermelons growing on the vine. We took it out of it’s container and planted in the ground and now it’s growing actual melons. We also created away to have reseviours of water for each container and now the peppers and squash are producing very nicely. They just needed more water. Each container has a tray and the water in the tray is getting green with algea and there’s all kinds of little dead bugs and things in the water. We don’t seem to need to put any kind of nutrients in the containers.
We have tons of tomatoes and snow peas, the sweetest I have ever eaten, and greens beans. A freind gave us a wolfberry cutting and it has taken root and is growing very well. We have had the hottest and wettest summer ever this year, so the wild raspberries are growng in record numbers in the mountains. You can pick handfulls in seconds and they are so sweet you can only eat one handful at a time. Just magic.
With the heat and humidity, if I didn’t know better, I would think I was back in Houston. Colorado Springs is like a tropical rain forest this year. Normally all the grass and vegitaion is dead from dry heat by now but this year we have not even had to water anything. Our garden, especially the flowers, is like a jungle. The city and the surounding mountains are so green, I have to constantly check where I am. We have five foot tall Zenia’s. This has been a very unusual summer. We drove up Independence Pass yesterday and the wild flowers are breathtaking. The streams are maxed and the waterfalls are roaring like I have never seen. I just can’t get over how different this summer has been for Colorado.
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I think gardening is becoming a better subject than Armegedon.
derek
Hi Derek
Isn’t it amazing how good food that you have grown yourself tastes. My garden got off to a slow start this year because of the weather but once it started growing, I am almost overwhelmed by the amount of
food we are getting. I have preserved lots of spagetti sauce, chili, pickles, broccoli, green beans, corn and squash. I even grew a few potatoes and onions. Even though my tomatoes stopped setting fruit when it got so hot, I still have plenty and have given away dozens. I am trying a new cover crop of buckwheat this year to enrich the soil in the beds that are finished producing. Haven’t decided if I will try a fall garden of greens this year or not. I love snow peas, but can only grow them in the early spring here.
It has been an unusual summer. When we get rain, it usually comes in violent storms with high winds and lots of lightening. But then, the wildflowers here are gorgeous as well. This past weekend, I watched dozens of humming birds feasting on jewel weed. Twas a real treat!
What is a wolfberry? That’s a new one for me but I am learning all the time. My husband and I went for a walk in the forest and found what the locals call fox grapes growing wild. They were soooo sweet. I love the idea of having a forest garden where you can just harvest what grows wild. Sounds like the blue people in Avatar. he he.
peace and vegetables
Bonnie
Hi Bonnie
The food I have grown tastes completely different from store bought food. I would swear someone is injecting sugar into all of my vegetables in the middle of the night. Even the yellow squash I picked and ate last night was so sweet. I have never had a sweet squash before. I can’t stop eating the little cherry tomatoes right off the plant. They are like candy. I don’t know if I can go back to store bought vegetables after growing my own.
The Wolfberry, which I think is also called the gogi berry, is a sweet little orange fruit. I think it is originally from Tibet.
For my first attempt at a garden I am very pleased with the results. I still have a lot to learn to get my yeild up. I am taking up a ten by ten area of lawn and reclaiming the soil. I think some plants are better in the ground than in containers. We have been composting all of our food scraps and vegetative debris and I’m going to start turning that into the soil before the winter sets in.
At 6300 feet elevation, our growing season can be a challenge. I think we are in Zone 4. I put some lettuce out in April and it survived some heavy spring snows. I let several of the lettuce plants go to seed and have planted those seeds. I hope they come up and we get another batch of lettuce.
There is a lot of wild food growing all around us here in the Springs. I am learning what is what and am discovering there is food everywhere. Hunting and gathering in modern times may not be as hard as we think. The hardest part is relearning what our ancestors all knew, what we can eat that is already around us. I think most people would be surpised how much food grows in they’re backyard. What many people think are weeds are very often highly nutritional food.
Gardening is way better than Armagedon.
peas to you
derek