7
« Last post by Robert on May 15, 2024, 04:51:35 PM »
Hello Ian,
Thank you so much for another pictographic tour of your garden. Words cannot convey my appreciation for your photographs and descriptions.
Why do I garden?
For me this question cannot be answered with words, however the answer to the question takes its form in our garden. Closed-loop sustainability can be seen everywhere in our garden and even in our activities beyond our garden. For example, the 2024 barely crop will be ready to harvest in the coming weeks. Last night I ate barley cakes made from our 2023 barley crop. This is real food grown from compost made from biomass created in our own garden. No chemicals. No poisons, including “organic” poisons. I learned much of this from Masanobu Fukuoka and the folks at Ecology Action, Willits, California. Today is a “training” day – something I learned from one of my teachers Mr. Tri Thong Dang many decades ago. There are no guarantees on this planet, but good food and good exercise do help keep the gardener younger and healthier or at least put the odds in my favor.
A current tour of our garden will find Ethiopian two-rowed barley and Ethiopian Blue-tinged wheat ripening side-by-side with myriad of vegetables, fruit trees, small fruits (like strawberries), medicinal herbs, cover crops (such as clover and vetch), and a cornucopia of ornamental plant species, many of which are blooming right now. We grow Montana Morado and Oaxacan Green maize not because they are “rare” varieties but because they fill our needs. Both are open-pollenated varieties – so we can save our own seed. Montana Morado maize is a soft flour corn and grinds easily in our hand grain grinder. We grow Kanto Wase upland rice because it tastes better and is easier to thresh than other varieties of upland rice. We breed our own vegetable varieties to create regionally adaptable varieties that will thrive in our garden. We grow and breed our own ornamental species for the same reasons. Why I garden is very complex and not an easy question to answer.
Thank you again for the monthly tours of your garden!
Recent Posts
