Why I'm Not Organic

I love the idea of organically grown food, local food, fresh food, food that didn't ride in a truck all last week.

Nosema Locustae

I was out in the garden talking to Mr. Cross, who arrived again in the cow pasture on the side of the fence on his tractor. He said he was done planting for the season. I am still planting, so I wondered if he was just out of space. He told me that he never plants late. When I asked why, he said, "Grasshoppers'll git ya."

So I turned to Facebook.

Now, it seems like an obscure question to just throw out on my Facebook wall: "How do I get rid of grasshoppers in Texas?" But the answer turned up in no time at all - and it was unanimous. Everyone's grandfather or uncle or friend had used NoLo bait, Nosema Locustae - a biological weapon against the grasshoppers that roam my 10 acres like a plague from mid-summer to fall. I noticed their babies the day after Mr. Cross mentioned them. One footstep in the tall grass sends about 50 of them flying through the air. Tiny as they are now, they will grow up and cause major damage. I once saw a woman's entire landscaping project eaten by them. But the people who have been here a long time (except, surprisingly, my next-door neighbor) know what to do.

NoLo bait is totally organic. It's bran flakes (which I guess grasshoppers love) laced with spores that produce an infectious disease only in grasshoppers and Mormon crickets. Humans, birds, animals, even other bugs, are caused absolutely no damage from the bait (or so the package says). Babies die within days. Older grasshoppers become unable to reproduce and unable to eat. Today, days after I put it out, I'm already seeing fewer of the little guys. Hopefully their parents will take the hint and go destroy the plants somewhere else.

Salad, at last....

This is what I've been waiting for (and hopefully what I'll experience for the rest of the growing season). Today was the first day I was able to go out to the backyard and pick a full plate of salad completely of lettuces, herbs and other good things from my garden. I am proud of my own hard work and thankful for a God who makes things grow while we sleep.

I've spent recent days borrowing Joe Anderson's cantankerous tiller (thanks Joe!) to turn over another column (10-foot rows x 15) to work in, right next to the corn fort I planted by moonlight on the last day of Farmer's-Almanac- approved corn planting days. I wanted another lettuce section, since my longest row of lettuces is about to be totally overtaken by weeds. I'll have to do away with it soon, but I can eat lettuce all summer long. I now have planted in or near this section:

• Rouge d'hiver - an heirloom French lettuce that is red and very pretty
• Freckles - a green heirloom lettuce with red spots
• Strawberry cabbage - a pretty heirloom that looks lettuce growing out of a dish - red and green
  
• Gotte Jaune D'or - a beautiful light green, French lettuce (I love this one, because the heads look like big green roses. You can pick one whole head and make a small salad of it. Very mild.)
  
• Four rows of Paris Island Romaine lettuce interplanted with beets
• Mervielle de Quattre Saisons - A really pretty light green lettuce with red edges
• Half a row of iceberg - just because
• Some herbs - tarragon, basil and cilantro
• Some yarrow flowers - supposed to help the herbs and lettuces; and
• Some bunching onions

We've gotten quite a few meals out of these greens in the last week. I'm hoping the new rows will produce like crazy, so I'll have more to share.

Vertical Gardening and Transplanting Day

Last week didn't have many planting days, so I spent my time trying to figure out supports for the things that would come. I was hoping for zero-budget vertical gardening, since, if all of my tomatoes and beans and peas, etc. grow, we will need many supports. $0 x $0 = $0, and $anything else x the number of plants I could end up with = quite pricey.

I am 100 percent pleased with my snow pea teepees. I found a very nice home-schooled 12-year-old boy with a pocket knife, who preferred time in my garden to time at a baby shower. I'd say it was a win-win. He was an amazing worker and refused to take a break from making teepees until they were completely finished. (Thanks Colin!) He made many more than this picture shows. I am very pleased with the result and think my snow peas will be too. In a couple of weeks, they should be tall enough to start climbing.

I was less satisfied with my tomato cages. I paid, I think, $8 for some chicken wire and stapled it, very crudely, onto some stakes I found left over from construction on our house and a couple of tree branches. They'll hold up the tomatoes, but they're quite unattractive. And if all of the tomatoes we planted come up, there will be many, many, many more to build. I'm hoping for a better (free) solution for these. For now, it is what it is, and my couple of flourishing tomato plants are very happy.

Today is transplanting day. I'll dig in my two pomegranate trees (and not plant them too deeply, like I did to my poor loquat tree - more on that later). I'll pot my tangerine and my lemon trees. And I'll put in the ground my tomatoes, eggplants, butternut squash and dill seedlings.

I'm trusting the Farmer's Almanac this year, believing that if I plant when it says I can plant, I'll have some success. It's all an experiment, but it's working so far.

Garden Party

My garden party will look a little different from a typical garden party. No finger sandwiches or strawberry lemonade. No white gloves and pearls. Leather gloves and sunglasses will be more fitting.

Join us at my house any time between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. if you can.

Bring your gloves, a shovel a rake or a wheelbarrow if you like, and some of your favorite seeds if you'd like to contribute.

We'll buy your lunch and give you some free vegetables if our work proves fruitful.

Oh - and I failed to mention this, but we would welcome any strong teenagers with a desire to work for food. :)

See below for a new map of the garden.

See you there!

My New Texas Home

I came to where I live now kicking and screaming. I didn't want to leave Atlanta. I didn't want to leave my friends. I didn't want to leave the little garden and especially the fig tree and blueberry bushes I had planted in my Georgia backyard. And I didn't like anyone who told me I might have to. I didn't want to move to a brown dusty state where nothing would grow. I didn't want to move at all.

But after a few months of tolerating it, turns out I love this place. I've found friends who are real, a church that is welcoming and (what this blog is all about) a piece of land 10 acres big that is as green now as God ever made green. And it brings me great joy.

Last summer, when we had just gotten here, and when it was so hot I was afraid to step outside for fear I would blister, I would come and sit in my air-conditioned car and look at the home we were building on this land. That's when I met Mr. Cross, my adorable next-door neighbor, who wears overalls and only comes to my house by tractor (which he calls a scooter). He had a Wal Mart bag full of squash he wanted me to have. So we took it back to our rent house, baked some zucchini bread and brought it back to meet Mrs. Cross. We are blessed, now, to be in our home and to have neighbors who are so neighborly.

This January, the day before our biggest snow, Mr. Cross came again and asked a question, the answer to which has changed my schedule and the amount of enjoyment I get out of life every day since: Did I want him to bring his disc plow and turn over some land for a garden for me?

Now it's April, and I read the Farmer's Almanac, I study the National Weather Service soil temperature map and spend hours (when I maybe should be working or cleaning house or something more responsible) studying how to make things grow. My next-door neighbor laughs every time he remembers my answer to his follow-up question in January: "How big a garden you want?" I said, "I will plant as much as you're willing to plow." He and his wife slap their knees and laugh a big belly laugh when they remember I said that, because I have, shall we say, bitten off more than it seems I can chew. But they never laugh when I'm working out there. They trade me seeds and give me advice, talk to me over the fence while sitting on the tractor with their mutt-dog, Nipper on the front. They are some of the best neighbors I have ever had.

And this place is good. Not much is growing yet, except potatoes, lettuces, radishes and herbs. But I am full of hope that the green I see out in the pasture will spread to the garden - hopefully not in the form of Bermuda grass and goat weed!