On a stormy day, I visit the garden, ramble on about the garden year, and show you a few of my favorite plants in the garden. There is a lot of me talking to the camera in this one.
Things change quickly in the garden. A recent festival and a few long talks also changed our plans for our future. Now, growing winter wheat is more than a pointless experiment. Winters were never part of the plan. Now, we might stick around. Permanently.
This year really had me feeling the effects of the climate crisis. El Nino gave us a preview of the years to come. Slugs have been the winners with a year perfectly to their liking: wet and overcast. On another rainy day, I check on the garden to make sure the slugs did not eat all of my brassica plants.
Having two large gardens is a trial run to see if my body can handle it. So far, I haven’t missed a deadline. I adapt the techniques and tools to what my body can handle, but the most important lessons were on patience, pacing, and perfectionism.
I usually try to tell a cohesive story. Not this time. The GoPro didn’t record, so most of the footage is missing. I still wanted to share, so expect some chaos in this one.
Weather extremes have been the default this year. From wet, chilly conditions with little sunshine to heat waves and drought… extremes have become the new normal. And yet, humanity is not getting their collective act together because individuals benefit from the social and climate crises. So, while I prune the tomatoes, let me talk about weather extremes in the garden and normalizing political extremes everywhere. After a modern-day hippie rant about politics and climate change, I show you how much I’ve gotten done.
With summer slowly fading away, it was time to start thinking about winter–no matter how much I don’t want to. At least, it meant more planting. It was time to turn the potato beds into brassica beds with kale, broccoli, and cauliflower for winter and through the hunger gap in spring.
August meant most task were maintenance tasks, as spring planting was over, and fall not quite here. So, I cleaned up the greenhouse and dealt with water storage.
My neighbors think these aren’t worth the trouble. I disagree. The blackberries in the surrounding abandoned gardens were in full swing. So I harvested what I could. And then I made jam from what we couldn’t eat fresh.
Planting potatoes in August is very late where we live. Our daylight will fade quickly over the next months. I’m pretty sure we have enough potatoes in the beds I planted in spring. But I still decided to grow more as an experiment, well, two as it would turn out.