Sunday, May 8, 2011

My Garden Gods 1001;12


Gardening is a part of my life, bequeathed by my parents. I grew up on a dirt farm. We had the requisite truck garden to supply table food throughout the growing season, and canning produce for Mom. Mom and Dad each had their own zinnia beds in an ongoing rivalry over the years, as well as other flowering gardens, and acres of corn, wheat, and soy. I always knew where food came from.

I remember the first time Mom handed me a handful of seeds and coached me on how to plant them. They were radishes, which are easy to grow. I was about three, and I remember the small radish seeds, the dug-up earth, and Mom telling me to punch a little hole in the dirt, and put them in one at a time. She showed me how to brush the soft dirt over to cover them up, but “not too much dirt” because they had to get some air. Radishes are easy to grow. I don’t remember if they grew, but they must have, because seeds are pretty hardy and grow at any opportunity.
Half a century later, in my urban garden, I’ve been making like Gregor Mendel (1), and like my Dad. For the last couple years, I’ve collected seeds from each year’s harvest with a specific purpose to develop site-responsive plants. It’s a slow-moving experiment, wherein the qualities of each succeeding generation of seeds are noted. I began with a couple of my favorite plants, and Dad’s: gourds, and Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans. Both are climbing plants, and both are dramatic. Drama runs in my family, and the garden was not excluded.

Like all climbing plants, Kentucky Wonder Green Beans make a spectacular visual. For your own KW tourist attraction, just teepee several long wood poles, and plant the seeds around the base of the poles. When the vines trail up the poles, you have a little teepee which the neighbors will certainly take note of. KW’s are easy to harvest, and if the poles are long enough and spaced well, they provide a tent-space where kids can creep inside the teepee. Next year, my granddaughter will be old enough to walk, and I am planning some interesting garden playspaces for her, including a sunflower room.

It’s only my third year for the Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans seed-saving experiment, but I hope to notice some small differences this year. Last year, the seeds actually self-sowed, coming up in the garden from leftover pods I hadn’t cleared out. My tomatoes always do that, and I have rampant old-growth onions scattered throughout. I like to let my garden raise itself as much as possible, and I’m not squeamish about where and when it spontaneously reproduces. Rows or not rows, my garden is allowed to be individual. I think that well-maintained and disciplined gardens are beautiful and undoubtedly more productive. I just have a fondness for the individual random-expression type garden.

But I beefed up last-year’s volunteer bean crop a little with seeds I had saved. The resulting vines were prolific producers, which Kentucky Wonder beans usually are (yep, I’m putting in a plug for my favorite plants ). My casual goal in saving seeds is the simple one of acquiring plants which are adapted to my micro-mini backyard climate. This year, I’ll keep track of how fast the beans grow and produce; I didn’t do that last year. Even Gregor Mendel probably had to work out his method over a few years. Dad kept a journal of his plantings. I imagine a lot of addicted gardeners do. I may add moon-time of planting, spitting on the seeds, or hair addition to future notes, and include any other factors which interest me as my long-term project progresses. My maternal grandfather swore by planting with the moon phases. Dad respected such practices, and consulted the Farmer’s Almanac for plantings. Mom raised us as Baptists, but Dad instilled nature worship. It’s healthy to have variegated spirituality.

Another favorite plant I am growing is the snake gourd. There are many varieties of interesting gourds. They are great for kids to grow, because they are, again, pretty spectacular. (Really, neighborhood kids think that anything that comes up from a seed is pretty spectacular, and I’m plotting ways to make sure prize efforts are in a good viewing spot.) Many gourd varieties make a great climbing vine for patios and privacy fences, besides their interesting crops. There are dipper gourds shaped like long dippers, birdhouse gourds of several varieties, small decorative gourds, swan gourds, basket gourds, I saw a dragon gourd seed package this year; and on and on. Another fun gourd is the loofa, or sponge gourd. This gourd requires a little longer growing season than I get in Michigan, but if I plant it early I can get a few mature gourds before frost. Loofa gourds average a foot or less in length; after harvesting they dry out to become fibrous sponges. The dried sponges make durable dish scrubbers, or bath scrubbers.

I am attached to snake gourds in particular. They make a great, quick-growing privacy vine for my patio. They produce long, spectacular looking fruits, which dry out to make spectacular looking gourds. This year, I have 3rd generation snake gourd seeds (which need to go into the ground this spring stat, I remind myself as I write). I’m hoping they grow faster in my cool climate than the first 2 generations did, and produce better. I did get a larger crop last year from my 2nd generation-saved seeds, but also I planted the seeds earlier and they had a longer growth season, so I can’t really say that they have developed any adaptations to the micro-mini climate here. I planted them from a seed packet in 2009, and then kept seeds from that year’s harvest to plant in 2010. Seeds from the 2010 harvest are ready to plant this spring. The not-so-original theory is that my plants will adjust to the micro-mini-climates they were spawned in, and each succeeding generation of seeds have greater adaptation to local conditions of rain, soil, temperature, etc. You can check out cool information on this kind of seed religion at the website of one of my favorite authors: Barbara Kingsolvers website. Her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is the documentation of a year in her family’s project of growing their own food, and buying only food grown within 30 miles of their home. The book is a work of love for the earth and our dependence on its sustenance. Kingsolver is an award-winning novelist, whose education was as a biologist. Another of Kingsolver’s books is her novel Prodigal Summer, which is about the inter-relationships of animals, people, and plants. It’s one of my favorite books.

Gardening requires some small commitments. It gives wonderful gifts. Gardening is spiritual. Patience, love, expectation, memory, resurrection, death, ritual, pageantry when its in full growth—all there. Patience is one of my favorite qualities involved in gardening, because I’m not a very patient person by nature. Gourds are a favorite example of this. It takes a summer to grow gourds, and a winter to cure them. Growing anything is an exercise in patience; growing and curing takes patience a little further.

After harvesting the long, heavy, green gourds about the time of frost, I put my gourds in a cool, dry place. My Michigan basement works well for this. In southern Illinois, my Dad used his barn for drying stuff out over the milder winters. The snake gourd mildews from the inside out over the winter, to become a dried pod. When the gourd goes through the process of mildewing from the inside out, it looks as if it is rotting. Circles of white and black mold collect on its green surface as the moisture leeches out. But have patience—after the leeching goes on a few weeks, the mold dries up and the skin becomes a shell. I gently scrub off the mold after it is finished drying. The mold leaves interesting patterns on the gourd. Last year, I left all my gourds natural. This year, I’m painting some of them.

So after curing, you can make stuff out of your gourds. Although I leave a few lying around just to look at, the stuff I decided to make out of mine is rain sticks. If you have ever gone by a Peruvian music stall at a summer fair, you’ve probably heard or seen rain sticks. Rain sticks are musical instruments, of the percussive ilk. Turn them up and down, and you hear tinkling sounds like raindrops. They can be made out of long gourds, or hollowed-out sticks, partly filled with seeds or rice. Horizontal “stops” (thin sticks or dowels) inserted up and down its length cause the rice to sound like a trickling waterfall when the stick is turned up and down (insert webpage directions). They are mesmerizing in the way that kaleidoscopes are.

To make rain sticks, I used a nail to puncture holes in my cured gourds, to insert small horizontal sticks into. When the nail first pushed through the dried skin, there was a small “pouf” of released air. It’s like the dried seeds inside held their breath for the moment of release. I will cut out a larger hole in one of the gourds, to collect seeds for planting. I can glue the cut-out back in place to retain the intact gourd shell. For my rain stick, I inserted the sticks from an unused sushi-roll mat (laying around in my flatware drawer for years) into the nail-holes I punched. Then I have to cut the sticks off flush with the sides of the gourd, and make sure that they don’t slide out. I might break down and use Crazy Glue for this. I leave the seeds inside the gourds that I use for rain sticks, although rice is recommended for making the water-sound. I am a snake-gourd purist on that count.

Two years ago, I harvested 6 gourds. Last summer, I harvested 12. This year, I hope to get double that, or more. Of course, how much I harvest depends on how much I sow, and getting the seeds in at the right time, etc. But I am hooked into my gourd family now. I want to make lots and lots of rain sticks, I want the neighborhood kids to be amazed by my wild garden, and I want to discover over the next few years a difference in the quality and productiveness of my saved seeds.

You never know what research, creative, and spiritual paths a few radish seeds will lead you down.





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