I’m planting another round of all my root staples – carrots, parsnips, spring onions, beetroots – starting seeds off in the shadehouse, and planting out the seedlings started last month. If I do just a tray like this every month, we have a good steady supply. But my main little task today is to dig up some turmeric to take some rhizomes for planting.
It is one of the reasons I use a lunar planting calendar though: in the hurly burly of arbitary fixed deadlines, it reminds me to make time for the more elastic but more real deadlines of the seasons. And then, by doing so I create real wealth – good food, health, beauty, integity, freedom.
If I can get the micronutrient level nice and high and balanced early enough, I will give the garden plants enough immunity and the predators enough of a head start to avoid most of the spring and summer bugs.
If I were at home today I would be planting potatoes. In my frost free garden, I would be planting them straight out – making…
A couple of months ago I wrote a post about time, thinking forward, and how much gardening involves being aware of the seasons in advance. I still get trapped by the turning of the wheel of the year. Stop, I’m not ready for you yet!
For twenty years I’ve been trying to decide whether the lunar calendar is a bit of superstition – an old wives tale that seems to work only because you see what you are looking for – or whether it is folk wisdom accumulated by generations of gardeners with a lot more to lose by getting it wrong than we spoiled Westerners with a supermarket in reserve.
I went out intending just to plant out the seedlings of the staple root crops – beetroot, carrot, onions, and parsnips – and get another round of them in. (Have a look at last month’s post for my method of starting them off in the shadehouse). And then I just kept going. And now as I sit at the computer I can hear it all being beautifully watered in.
The seasonality of gardening is a profound reality. There is no getting round it. I think in our modern, urban culture, we are so divorced from the seasons, so used to having strawberries in autumn and apples in spring, that it is easy to think we are boss of the seasons.
These days I plant even carrots out as advanced seedlings.
This time of year is perfect for leafy greens in my frost free garden. The various kinds of cabbage moths and web moths have all disappeared and my predator population can keep up with everything else. The days are still shortening as we head towards the winter solstice so they are not in too much of a rush to bolt to seed. The cooler weather makes it much easier to…