Welcome followers of The Gardener's Footsteps. It is time, without further ado, to speak of gardening. Edible gardening. Beautiful, fragrant, tasty gardening. So where to start? How about with a fallow garden patch? For this was the case for a few weeks this spring when about 40 square feet of our main garden was between crops, with the winter crops done and the summer crops seedlings of peppers and eggplants being started elsewhere under birdless cages. I considered a legume cover crop (to fix some nitrogen and add organic matter to the soil), a simple handful of alfalfa and/or red or white clover would work. But I never got around to that. What I did do, however, is make sure the patch was mulched with straw, enough to shade the soil. And I watered it along with the rest of the garden. I did not want the soil to die out while the patch was fallow. There are microbes and worms that need to be fed and watered. The UV rays of the sun will kill off soil life as well. The straw mulch both shades the soil, protecting the biota, conserves moisture, and as it breaks down it adds organic matter to the soil.
So in this fallow, mulched and occasionally lightly watered patch, which had been more or less cleared in a compost sweep, grew a surprising number of things. A big beautiful comfrey plant popped up right in the middle of everything. Comfrey is an amazing plant that we will discuss in detail in a later post. It provided big soft leaves for a very effective and soil energizing mulch to other parts of the garden. A chard plant popped up, and this is interesting. I couldn't tell if it was from a root left in the soil or from a seed. I didn't think that we had let any chard go all the way to seed, but maybe a few seed heads had formed my the time we cleared the patch. Potatoes plants appeared, they had been grown there earlier in the season. Lambsquarters, a wild herb (or weed some would say) was well represented. Lambsquarter is edible, and I have learned it the genetic parent of quinoa. Purslane, another herb/weed, was also present. Purslane is used in French cooking and I have learned that it is high in omega 3 fatty acids and is a good companion plant, helping to break us dense soil for other plants and, with its succulent like leaves, keeping the soil cool. Also I found one solo specimen of plantain, yet another herb/weed. Plantain (aka, "plantago") oddly shares it's name with a type of banana. It has a long history of herbal uses, is edible as a green, and is virtually the same plant that provides psyllium seed, used for digestive cleansing. And of course, tomato seedlings. It seem tomato seed are just about completely indestructible. But the mulch keeps any of these sprouts from becoming onerous. They are also an indicator of the health and moisture content of the soil while the starts get ready.
Now the patch has been reworked with fresh compost, and the peppers and eggplants and pole beans and two butternut squash planted in the patch, with some fresh mulch laid down. I'm hoping for eggplants by mid August.
Thanks for visiting.
Get out there and grow something.
Talk soon,
Swami bruce
So in this fallow, mulched and occasionally lightly watered patch, which had been more or less cleared in a compost sweep, grew a surprising number of things. A big beautiful comfrey plant popped up right in the middle of everything. Comfrey is an amazing plant that we will discuss in detail in a later post. It provided big soft leaves for a very effective and soil energizing mulch to other parts of the garden. A chard plant popped up, and this is interesting. I couldn't tell if it was from a root left in the soil or from a seed. I didn't think that we had let any chard go all the way to seed, but maybe a few seed heads had formed my the time we cleared the patch. Potatoes plants appeared, they had been grown there earlier in the season. Lambsquarters, a wild herb (or weed some would say) was well represented. Lambsquarter is edible, and I have learned it the genetic parent of quinoa. Purslane, another herb/weed, was also present. Purslane is used in French cooking and I have learned that it is high in omega 3 fatty acids and is a good companion plant, helping to break us dense soil for other plants and, with its succulent like leaves, keeping the soil cool. Also I found one solo specimen of plantain, yet another herb/weed. Plantain (aka, "plantago") oddly shares it's name with a type of banana. It has a long history of herbal uses, is edible as a green, and is virtually the same plant that provides psyllium seed, used for digestive cleansing. And of course, tomato seedlings. It seem tomato seed are just about completely indestructible. But the mulch keeps any of these sprouts from becoming onerous. They are also an indicator of the health and moisture content of the soil while the starts get ready.
Now the patch has been reworked with fresh compost, and the peppers and eggplants and pole beans and two butternut squash planted in the patch, with some fresh mulch laid down. I'm hoping for eggplants by mid August.
Thanks for visiting.
Get out there and grow something.
Talk soon,
Swami bruce
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