more gardening, woodworking, mint

I finally thinned the broccoli yesterday, which turned out to be arugula, thank god. I kept pouting where's the arugula, where's the rocket? I don't need all of this damn broccoli. So as I was thinning it, I tasted a sprout and it was spicy, peppery like rocket. Sweet! I also thinned the Black Seeded Simpson which is day-glo green. That lettuce is awesome. After the two days of hard rain last week, I looked out at the garden expecting it to be a tropical paradise, unfortunately the rain tended to wash away a large part of what little top soil we had in the backyard. What I saw when I looked out was a lot of pieces of gravel. But the lettuce and spinach are still coming in strong between the rocks so we'll see what happens.

Also this week I bought a circular saw, (its a Milwaukee, I know, I'm completely wisconsincentric). Why? Well, I decided I am going to build a book shelf, and a record shelf, and a ... Okay, so the real reason, was I was reading web sites on self-sufficiency, blah, blah, blah. And this one, bizarre but strangely compelling one (The subtle way manual) said carpentry is important skill to learn if you want to survive peak oil. A few other books had also recommended this () Unfortunately once I bought the saw I figured out, oh shit, now I need a truck to haul huge pieces of wood and ply wood around, oh shit!

But I have a plan! My first project will be building shelves for our record collection out of found plywood. I came up with this after I read that 60% of landfills was discarded wood. Granted I read this in the Food not Lawns book, and kinda half seems like most of the stats in that book are pulled directly from the authors asshole. Like for instance, the author recommends getting rid of your microwave in order to save electricity, "just plan meals so that there are no leftovers." This seems to me to be the height of waste, because I've been researching electricity and microwaves use less energy to heat than either gas or electric stoves! So you'd have to cook entire meals from scratch, cook them which takes longer than reheating (a lot longer with say brown rice.) So reheating in a microwave will actually take much less energy than cooking 45 minutes on a gas stove.

So the "60% of landfills is wood" meme may be unsubstantiated, but it still seems like a good idea to use discarded plywood. Plus, I won't need a truck to haul it home, hopefully.

Also yesterday I discovered some mint growing in the huge mass of plant/rock garden a former renter left in the backyard. I love mint! Plus, the patch is far away from my garden so it won't be able to take over the rest of the garden.

Dig Dig! Hori Hori!

Dug up another chunk of backyard today. Spent all afternoon in the garden, loosening the soil, digging up weeds, digging up and throwing out all of the Myrtle Spurge that our landlord had in the backyard. Myrtle Spurge, I also discovered, is a class A noxious weed, sort of the Heroin of landscaping.

Also returned to Urban Roots and bought some more garden tools. Bought a pair of garden gloves, a hand fork, a trowel and a Hori Hori (a cool japanese gradening hand tool, hori hori means "dig dig" in japanese. Apparently these tools are used for everything: digging, cutting, chopping. It definitely useful for digging up dandelions, spurge, bindweed, and mallow.)

I measured the space we have set aside for gardening in the backyard. Its about 12.5 x 6 or so feet. So about 75 square feet.

I also planted more seeds today: black-seeded simpson and a Mesclun seed mix in the triangle in between the spinach and the redina. And then later: Bright Lights Swiss Chard in a 2' by 1' square behind the ant compound. (Yes, there is a huge ant colony under a big 2' by 2' rock. Wonder how that's going to work out??)

Also after I dug up the backyard, I started seeing more birds around, I have never seen birds in our backyard before today. I saw a sparrow sitting on the fence and then later a robin (who was obviously looking for some worms I may have unearthed.)

I was so happy today, it was such a joy working in the dirt, I'd forgotten how much this means to me.

The Spinach Lady Returns

I was nearly despairing about being able to garden this year. There was a long waiting list at the nearest community garden (the West Wash Park garden) and the next nearest garden I called (Casa Verde Garden), never returned my call.

So a couple weeks ago I spontaneously, impatiently, despairingly planted some spinach seeds in a bare patch in the back yard. Today I noticed about 7 or 8 spinach plants outpacing the weeds. Hallelujah! The Spinach Lady Returns!

I went to the nearest indie garden center (Urban Roots) and bought a spading fork, a beautiful green and gold steel watering can and a Green Man cast iron mask. Hmmm, $150 all told, but that's okay, because I've made a vow to buy heavy duty stuff that looks like it will last longer and not to be afraid to pay more money if its something that will last and has beauty in its own right. And these tools will last 15 years or more.

I dug up a big chunk of weedy backyard and watered it heavily and then later planted some Redina looseleaf lettuce. Which is a quick 38 day looseleaf lettuce with dark red leaves (I just happened to pick it up at the store).