garden daydreams

[dragonlady7]

So I've had kind of a stressful week. Month. I don't even know-- I've lost track. My knee was bothering me today and I just couldn't take the uncertainty with the damn health insurance and after the Copier Incident I worked myself into a state that I wouldn't be allowed to skate, that I'd have to step down from skating in the bout, and I sobbed at Z as I drove scarily home that all was lost and my life was over.
I didn't want to go to practice, I was burned out and this wasn't fun and I wasn't interested and this was the end. The technical run-through meant that Z (and therefore, otherwise carless, I) had to be at practice by 6:30-- two hours early. I glumly sucked it up and packed tissues in my pocket for my inevitable breakdown that night.
But I got there and somehow, all was well.
It's either magic or this is how addictions work. I haven't figured it out. I'll have more details on why all was well later-- with photos-- but this is a post about my garden.

Yes, it's hard to not talk about derby, but I'm going to.

I read up on the Three Sisters polyculture, and asked my sister Ann, the ecologist, for her advice and she agreed that's the most common form of it and she'd been thinking of suggesting it. For those who don't know, as I didn't until this week, the Three Sisters polyculture is a series of mounds comprised of corn and beans, and squash. (I separate them because the corn and beans are interspersed, and the squash beside them on separate mounds.) I did know that the Iroquois (among others) grew them in this manner, but hadn't read up on precisely why-- but corn requires a lot of nitrogen, while beans are nitrogen-fixers. This means that when a patch is repeatedly replanted in the same spot, corn planted where beans have been, the corn grows better. The beans climb the corn. The squash does not, but grows around the base of the other plants, and its broad leaves shade out weeds. What a neat idea! It's a variety of crops in the same space, relatively compact, and they really are convenient.
I hadn't planned on growing corn but come to think of it, it'd be kind of neat.

You need ten square feet, though, to have enough corn plants to pollinate one another etc. The squash need to pollinate too. I want to plant more than one kind of corn, for a longer harvest, and more than one kind of squash, and more than one kind of bean, even in that tiny space, but I'm realizing maybe I can't do that-- I'd have to look into the pollination issues. It'd be great to have both summer and winter squash, and even greater to have some cucumbers in there, but I don't know if it would work.

Meanwhile I also like urban_homestead's idea of using climbing nasturtiums to pin bush beans to a chain link fence. How neat!
And I saw an herb spiral on Wikipedia and want it badly for mine own.

All Ann mostly did was agree with my other research. She confirmed that yes, I need a better composter, preferably two; I also need a really good rain barrel, preferably two. Anyone who gardens really needs a rain barrel-- not only is it a huge drain on "the grid" to use the volume of water necessary for a garden, but also drinking water has a lot of chemicals in it that are bad for plants. Melted snow is high in nitrogen; rainwater is almost pure.

I also read up on composting toilets and am oddly compelled to want one. But I think that will have to wait until, well, probably never. Still, it's an excellent point that it's completely stupid to use heavily-processed purified water to dispose of human waste that needs yet more processing, when proper thermophilic composting will kill the dangerous bacteria more thoroughly dead than a sewage plant will, and will return the considerable nutrients to the soil. Well yes.
But it's still kind of icky.
I won't be using humanure. Though I should tell my horrible neighbor that I am. "Humanure. You know. Poop. I just go out back when I feel the call of nature, and dig a hole. That's how my tomatoes are so big."

Good thing she doesn't speak to me, or I'd give her a heart attack.

Ooh, the best part about getting into gardening is that I can resume Operation Wear A Bikini And Expose Your Pasty Flab To Your Neighbors So When They Talk About You At Least You've Bloody Well Earned It.

I haven't yet stepped it up to You Know, Naked Female Breasts Are Perfectly Legal In New York State, though I have been considering it. What with the boys' Catholic high school right across the street.... I'm just not sure I want to be a test case.

Comments

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

That's not really how humanure works. You have to kind of compost it. Though pooping outdoors would be kind of fun.

I'm considering planting a hedge of 14' sunflowers on that side, actually...

I'd be more enthused about topless gardening if not for the sheer physics involved in attempting to do anything with my breasts unrestrained. It's just... difficult.