permaculture

I never mentioned what happened after that emergency harvest. So what happened was most of those lush, beautiful plants turned brown and withered. We put tarps on some plants but it didn't do much good. I dug up the rosemary, lavender, and two of the Thai basils and brought them inside. The rosemary and lavender have been thriving in a large, south-facing window. The Thai basil is still alive but it hasn't grown anything new as far as I can tell. I still have winter squash in my kitchen. And potatoes. Unfortunately, many of the tomatoes and peppers ended up in the compost. The parsley, thyme, leeks, potatoes (below ground), oregano, sorrel, cabbage, kale, and peas all did really well after the temperature dipped into the twenties a few nights in a row. I planted some fall crops by direct seeding, including lettuce, radishes, kale, kohlrabi, peas, cilantro, and spinach. It was too late and none of them got very big. Some animal ate the pea plants, and the grasshoppers got some of the other stuff. The spinach tasted incredible. I ate about 7 leaves of it before it froze to death but it was the best spinach I've ever tasted. Unfortunately, I don't recall the variety and I think I composted the seed package. Oh, here's something interesting: the snapdragons were the last to die! They were so hardy for some reason. The cilantro actually lasted longer and survived lower temperatures than I expected, too.

I am starting to think about the back yard and the plants I want there and how to arrange them. I want it to look nice rather than simply utilitarian, which is how last year's garden looked and felt. I didn't have the time or energy to map things out beforehand, and the tracks left by the tiller were too compacted for easy digging when I began to transplant crops to the garden, so I ended up placing them somewhat randomly from the outside in. I liked the potato spiral, though. I replanted it with onions and garlic as I dug up the potatoes, kept the hill and covered it with the straw mulch.

I debated about what to do with the dead plants: whether to leave them where they were and recycle the nutrients back into the soil or pull them all up to prevent the spread of disease and harboring of insect pests. 
I decided to pull them all up and compost them. I figured it was safer to do that, especially since I could still recycle them back into the soil as compost, which is a more beneficial form anyway. One thing I should have done and really, really regret not doing is plant a cover crop. That soil is naked out there (except for the snow), and cover crops are good for erosion control and for replenishing the soil after it was inhabited by heavy feeders like broccoli and tomatoes. Maybe there will be time for cover crops in the spring.

Today I find myself in the strange and wonderful position of having a well-paying garden job in January in northern Minnesota, one that requires me to grow food and medicine on a 1/4 acre demonstration garden, teach workshops, and write a blog about it! I am so blessed and grateful to have that! What I've noticed, though, is my need for an outlet for my spiritual feelings. My employer is an Ojibwe reservation, and there is a spiritual element to my job and to the Ojibwe approach to farming. I respect that spirituality and I want to learn more about it, but it isn't mine and I don't feel comfortable expressing my own spiritual feelings in the arena of my job blog or in the workshops to come. So I'm resurrecting this blog. I guess I abandoned it in the first place since I felt like a failure for not making a living off my farm in the first chaotic year. I'm realizing that's not the point anyway. I would want to have Magic Summer Minifarm in my back yard no matter what.
 

a new direction

So our produce sales at the Fall Feast were underwhelming, but it was a fun experience anyway. I discovered that what my husband lacks in patience for gardening, he makes up for in salesmanship. He did a great job engaging customers.
I just started a new job that I really like and that will likely take up a great deal of my time and energy for gardening, but nevertheless I intend to expand Magic Summer Minifarm this year. I will have a new area tilled that is about the same size as the existing garden bed. This new area is beyond the shadow of the tall pines that begins to shade half the garden by 3 in the late summer. I have ordered an abundance of seeds and plants from Companion Plants, an amazing resource for medicinal, native, culinary, and ceremonial use plants ( www.companionplants.com ) located in my home state of Ohio. I plan to turn the existing garden bed into a perennial bed and use the new one for annuals and fruit bushes. I will put the raspberries closest to the edge of the yard, where there is a forest full of deer, to act as a living fence in case I don't get around to putting up a fence right away. I got lucky last year so maybe I shouldn't push it with the deer any longer than I have to. I must say, though, that I have 2 plants in the yard that are typically considered "deer candy": an apple tree and a white cedar. I did try that new product "Repellex", which is a systemic capsaicin for ornamental plants, on the white cedar, but the apple tree has no such protection. Both plants, as far as I can tell, have not been touched by the deer at all. It probably helps to have neighbors that hunt.