Downsizing my Winter Garden

Kids' Garden in Orange

As my summer garden waned in the decreasing day length of October I began to formulate my plans for my winter garden. Last winter’s warm and dry season found me running out to my vegetables them almost daily to hand-water. Now that my wife was going to school full-time it would be impossible for me to be hand-water my garden while getting myself and my family ready to leave for work and school each morning. Something just had to go. 



The rope is meant to keep stray balls (and children) from falling on the plants

I decided that I could grow only the size of garden that would work with a small soaker hose. The only location that was currently unoccupied with “stuff” was the kids’ garden. Though this had previously been a place where my kids could much on veggies at their leisure, I had a family discussion and explained that I would need to commandeer their garden plot this season to retain my sanity. My children understood and reluctantly agreed.



Bull's Blood Beets

Downsizing a garden is really difficult for someone who really enjoys growing as much as possible. I am literally trying to do the same thing as before, but with less space. The Red Creole onions came to me via the Pima County’s Seed library while my chickpeas came to me via the USDA. Should I want to save these seeds for future generations I will definitely have to grow them out again in a larger population to avoid the bottleneck affect that leads to inbreeding depression and poor plant vigor. This inability to select plants based on vigor or trueness-to-type is one of the reasons why this winter’s garden is mostly an “experiment with a few varieties” rather than an actual full-fledged garden.



Onions, such as this Red Creole, take a while to grow




My first herbs ever, Cilantro plants, next to one of my Chickpea plants

With exception of the Atomic Red Carrots and the Bull’s Blood Beets – both of which I planted in greater numbers - the population of my veggies has made it so I’ll have to grow these same varieties out another winter before I can obtain a population of plants in which to save strong seed from.

Some onions growing in my winter garden

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Because of the very limited time I have to devote to sitting down and reading I decided I could listen to CDs about gardening while driving around for my job. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver is about a family who sought to live for 1 year off of mostly local and home-grown food in the Appalachian area. Other than the author’s somewhat irritated agnostic views on the religious, her ability to border on becoming preachy, and her extremely long-winded descriptions of her thoughts about her experiences, this book was alright. The book includes fascinating descriptions of how Kingsolver’s family grew a large garden, gathered food, and how they raised livestock for their own consumption. I greatly enjoyed descriptions of her family – especially the excitement that her youngest daughter had for the miracle of life. The one animal this book describes in detail is the turkey, and the text would be most helpful for anyone who would like to raise turkeys for themselves.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was occasionally interesting.

From time to time, the book becomes quite preachy – though occasionally the facts are a little interesting. Looking back on my experience with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I would say that this book is not for everyone. At times the book can really drag and I would not recommend it to anyone who possesses no interest in how a family could live for a year off of locally-produced food. If you are planning on buying a farm that you plan to live off of or if you would like to create a self-sustaining colony of turkeys, then this book might be for you.

Feed My Garden

The relationship I have with my garden is a bit dynamic and complex – especially with my summer garden. I expect some relatively simple things from my winter garden as I am able to take care of it with an average amount of inputs. In contrast, my summer garden primarily consists of plants that are more heavy feeders and, as a result, requires a lot more. After growing out two generations of cucumber-melons, huge purple hyacinth bean vines, Sunchoke, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, and over 120 pounds of sweet potatoes I could practically hear my garden say “Feed me!” Perhaps I could not literally “hear” my garden speak to me, though the drop of 8 inches in my previously 24 inch soil depth says it all.



Sheep Manure compost is great stuff

This winter’s compost diet consists of palm tree waste, a few bags of 2-year-old leaves and a truckload of 3-year-old sheep manure (thanks to my friend Beryl from TOG). After unloading the truckload of sheep waste I found it difficult I not to combine the terms “high-quality” and “manure” in everything that came out of my mouth. Having worked with well-processed sheep manure it would be difficult to revert to composting the horse manure I settled for in the past.



Using the Summer Garden for Winter Pit Composting

As stated in an earlier post, my summer garden seconds as a compost pit in the winter as my winter garden does in the summer. This allows me to fallow the unused garden as well as build up structure in the soil from the material and nutrients that result from the composting process. In more literal terms – I give my garden what I expect – I feed it well because that is what I expect from it. For the most part this works out pretty well.



After turning the compost the sheep manure looks better

There is a balance to the bacteria and fungus that reside in living soil. I strive to provide a balance of both nitrogen and carbon rich food to my garden – though I did notice that this last summer’s garden did a lot better on last winter’s carbon rich diet than it did two years ago on a nitrogen rich diet. I have read that carbon-rich diets promote fungus decomposition while nitrogen-rich diets promote bacteria decomposition. This is definitely important to keep in mind when thinking about what plants will do best in a given garden environment. I will plan on keeping this summer’s heavy feeders closer to this winter’s nitrogen-rich finished compost.



Purple Sweet Potato Fries

A few of my purple sweet potatoes were not as marketable as the others - so I decided to use them for dinner. Ever had purple sweet potato fries?



Mixing light oil with washed hands to make fries.



Purple Sweet Potato Fries fresh out of the oven.



They were pretty easy to cut up and cook. I would have to say that the purple sweet potatoes are not usually as sweet as their orange cousins but I sure felt healthy after eating them.



Ready to Serve.





Orange and Purple Sweet Potato Fries make for a colorful dinner



As the photos show, my children enjoyed eating the sweet potatoes too. There is something to say about growing vegetables your children will eat. For some reason cooking home-grown vegetables for my family gives me much more satisfaction than preparing and cooking store-bought produce.



You mean eating my veggies can be fun?



Yum!



Purple Beauty Sweet Pepper

Of all my peppers that got shaded out by my Sunchoke plant this last summer, my Purple Beauty Sweet Pepper did the best.





Purple Beauty Pepper Plant


I only got a handful of peppers from it – but that is the way it is with growing tomatoes and their relatives here in Tucson.
 



Purple Beauty Plant growing



 

Thought the outside of the pepper becomes purple, it does so at a time in the pepper’s growth when the inside is still green. As I don’t care much for the taste of green peppers, I chose to grow this variety until the peppers matured to their red color.

Purple Beauty Pepper Plant producing peppers



The Peppers are now Purple

Other than the fact that the inside was green, I would definitely grow this variety again. The purple pepper tasted more like a green pepper. When I let it grow to its mature state, the red pepper was quite sweet. This plant exhibited great heat resistance, great disease resistance, and it did well for longer than my other peppers.
 

A mature Purple Beauty Pepper is red inside and out