A TASTE OF NATURE, Part 2
Last week, I gave you a bit of the history of my gardening experience. Not much to speak of, but a healthy start to my retirement lifestyle. My biggest takeaway from those years was the new experience of picking something that actually grew in my garden—wild, or intentionally planted. The first year that I planted peas and watered them religiously, they grew and gave me such a treat, picking the pods, shucking them and eating the peas, so sweet and crunchy! They never made it to the cooking pot. Of course, I saved some for the next year’s planting.
I bought a few organic potatoes from Garden Works and planted them in an old, deep laundry basket, beside my raised garden. I had learned that the wicker was good for potatoes, because it drains well. I cut up the potatoes, put the pieces at the bottom of the basket, covered them with six inches of soil and watched for the leaves to sprout. Then, I covered those leaves with more soil, and repeated that a few times until the whole basket was full of soil (and growing potatoes). By August, I had about 20 pounds of potatoes. Not bad, for an Irish girl! When I had harvested them all, I threw the soil into my raised garden, and dried out the basket for the next year. Little did I know that there were some bits of potatoes in that soil, that grew the next year in the raised garden. As well as I dug out the raised garden, after that year’s potato harvest, I still found them growing in another corner this year. Oh, well, I can’t fight it.
One fall, I went to a presentation at North Shore Neighbourhood House and came home with some garlic cloves and a Russian Red seed head, which contained about 30 bulbils—each about the size of a grain of short rice. I had learned that garlic takes 2 years to grow from a bulbil, but one year from a clove. I shared the bulbils with friends. That opened up a new door to good health. I was so eager to grow garlic that I researched it online. I watched it closely, following the advice of farmers and, in July, I couldn’t believe my luck! The harvest was more than I had expected. I gave some away, hung some to dry under my porch and planted cloves in the fall.
In 2019, I met a landscaper who needed to find a good home for a small raised garden which he had built. I was eager to expand my vegetable garden, so I gratefully accepted it. In it, I planted many curly lettuce seeds and beets, which I picked up from the City library seed catalogue. Again, success meant that I had more lettuce, beet greens and beets than I could eat. But those beets were the best! No sugar added.
Success is so sweet, eh?
Fiona