pests

We're getting ready to go out of town for several days, so we've been focusing on getting the garden in tip top shape. We have caretakers lined up, but we don't want to ask too much of them. I've spent hours ruthlessly going after weeds this week, which has given me some time to reflect on this gardening season.

I know I've said it before, but I cannot emphasize enough how much time I have spent working on protecting my plants from bugs. Not bugs in general, but specific pests that are especially damaging and with high populations. These include japanese beetles, squash bugs, squash vine borers, and now cucumber beetles (though I've really only seen a few of the latter). I don't completely mind this work, but I would really like to avoid it in the future.

I have spent far more time working on the squash bug eggs and japanese beetles than I have on weeding. I don't mean this to discourage people from gardening - the opposite, actually. I believe a proactive stance towards certain insects is best. Usually that means spraying harmful chemicals, but when you're not willing to do that, prevention is much better than treatment. Especially as these problems are rampant in the area I live - one family told us that they lose their squash every year and they never knew why. After hearing us talk about vine borers, they realize that is what's going on. They were blaming themselves. Since you are almost guaranteed to have these unwelcome visitors try to take up residence, stopping them before they do damage makes the most sense.

I will say I have given up on the squash bug eggs. It just took too much time and after the vine borers, it seems highly unlikely that we will ever get anything to eat from these plants. I do still go out and capture the squash bugs - they still come out of hiding when the plant is sprayed, and they have started to live under the boards we laid out. They are pretty easy to get rid of once you see them. There have been dozens under one of the board every time I pick it up. I don't think the bugs grow fast enough to be ones that hatched from eggs on the plant, they must be coming from somewhere else. According to my research, it takes about a week for eggs to hatch, and then about a month for bugs to grow to be adults. Unless a bunch hatched before I ever noticed the eggs.

We have made the decision to pull up the last galeux d'eyesines plant. It was continuing to grow new vines and form new blossoms, but the plant overall looked really ill. If we were going to be here it might have been a more difficult decision, but we also have to worry about our watermelon plants. I pulled it and have left it on the squash bed as a trap for a couple of days - I'm hoping it continues to attract all of the bugs so I can kill them.

The zucchini is looking okay, but not great. I don't know if we will get any more zucchinis from it before it dies.

We're going to dust the watermelons with diatamaceous earth and wrap the stems in aluminum foil before we leave. I also gave the squash trellis to the watermelon - hopefully being off the ground will help, somehow.

(8/9)

being a vegetarian

I've been a vegetarian for well over 15 years. When I began it was all about animal rights - I learned about how animals were treated in conventional agriculture and I wanted nothing to do with it.

This was in a suburban midwest town in the early 1990s. If free range chicken or beef was available, I didn't know about it. So I gave meat up. Luckily my parents have always given me the space to be myself, so they said that as long as I researched my nutritional needs and made sure I was eating healthy, they didn't pester me about it. I did not know any other vegetarians. I'm somewhat grateful to have had that experience, as it taught early on that I have the strength to stand up for what I believe in, and what is important to me, even if I am the only one doing so. Fitting in doesn't make sense to me.

Then I moved to Eugene, OR and probably half the people I spent time with were vegetarians. It was awesome! If friends or coworkers had a potluck, I could eat most of the food people had brought. And in grocery stores, free-range chicken and beef were available (though expensive). Still, I could not imagine putting a piece of flesh into my mouth and chewing it. I was happy with my processed soy fake meat products.

Towards the end of my time in Eugene I was learning more about local food. Long story short, processed soy isn't great for you and the vast majority certainly isn't local. Now, there are other vegetarian options: tempeh is a fermented soy bean cake that is high in protein and in my opinion, delicious. It is sold here at health food stores and could be made in my kitchen from raw soy beans (one of my criteria for eating locally). But right now I'm facing the question of whether or not I would want to eat tempeh, beans, and peanut butter as my protein sources for the rest of my life. I have always enjoyed eating my veggie burgers and not-hamburger crumbles in my spaghetti sauce. I am convinced that treated humanely, animals are a vital part of a sustainable, biodynamic food system. For one thing, cow and chicken manure enrich the soil. Additionally, chickens are great to have in a garden because they keep bugs under control. Humanely raised chickens and cows produce milk and eggs that I have always been pretty happy to eat. I would encourage anyone who eats meat to switch to organic free range before I would try to get them to give up meat altogether. Yet, I still can't imagine eating meat anytime in the near future.

eating locally/seasonally

At a party a couple of years ago, I was talking about organic food with a couple of friends who are experts in environmentalism. I asked them whether they thought it was more important to eat organic food or local food, given that that is a choice that sometimes has to be made. Without hesitation and in unison, they said 'eat locally!' The very next day I began living by that principle.

Unfortunately this was in December. At that time I was living in zone 8, so a talented gardener (which I was not) with the appropriate materials (say a cold frame and/or some grow lights) could probably grow fresh produce year-round. But we do not have any commercial farms that sell produce during the winter, so I made the decision to basically go without. I figured if I could make it through that winter, it would be easier to enjoy and appreciate good local food when it was in abundance. Many have told me that this was a stupid decision, and I definitely noticed feeling more lethargic that winter. But for better or worse, I am a woman of principles. So I would do the same thing again, and in fact I have done the same again.

One lucky thing was that there was a small local company that sold a few vegetables in the freezer: broccoli, corn, sweet potatoes. The first time I discovered them, I ate two whole packages of broccoli as soon as I got them home and cooked. Nothing had ever tasted so good as that broccoli did! The following winter I made an effort (and room in the budget) to buy those more frequently. Centuries ago, my ancestors may have gone without greens during the winter, but they didn't have a dissertation to write. One thing I learned during this experiment is that I feel best when I eat vegetables frequently; the second year I thought perhaps if I loaded up on produce during the summer, I could abstain during the winter. I will definitely say that the second winter was better in terms of feeling energetic when consuming fewer (or none at all) vegetables, but I still devoured them at every chance.

This winter once again, I will probably go without fresh produce (except on holidays and special occasions, when I try to eat what everyone else is eating). There is still a local company that sells vegetables in the freezer, but this company is large enough that I would be surprised if the vegetables were actually grown in Illinois soil. So my plan is to contact some local farms and see if they have storage onions, carrots, and potatoes to sell me. I need to do this soon, as it is getting late in the year. I am also considering buying a grow light and raising spinach inside the house.

Raised Beds??

I received an email asking about garden beds. To answer the question, we are not doing raised garden beds for two reasons: first, due to issues unique to our chosen careers, we can't be certain that we will be here during the summer of 2012. Because we might be in a position of needing to sell the house, we're cautious about making permanent changes to this property. We don't want to spend money on something that will reduce the chances of resale, or the resale value. Of course, killing the grass in order to have a garden is a permanent change, but that is a sacrifice we are unquestionably willing to make. That's just the way we are:) Second, I'm not convinced that raised beds are the way to go. The temperature of the soil in the earth is so much more stable that the temperature of the air, and I am certain that soil in raised beds varies more than soil in earth. That doesn't seem good for the produce. On the other hand, soil in raised beds warms up faster than soil in the earth - possibly extending the growing season, eeking out an extra couple of weeks on either end. But back to the original hand, that soil is more likely to get un-productively hot during the middle of the summer when temperature highs reach record levels. In future seasons, when I've established good growing methods for at least one vegetable, I might experiment with raised beds. But for now, I'm still trying to figure it all out!