It’s that time of year!

The time when I take stock of my seed supplies and decide what to plant, when to plant, and where to plant.

In past years, I’ve usually planted whatever I wanted, just for the joy of tasting new varieties and species, but these days I’m feeling external pressure to anticipate possible food shortages, if it can be done. Our climate is changing, and we are in a serious drought. Our town nearly ran out of water recently, and at the same time more people are moving here to live. On top of that, we have inflation. More than ever, I feel the need to raise as much of our own food, as cheaply and efficiently as possible. I can’t afford to fail.

Clean Squash Ready to be Stored in the Basement

With the drought has come an increase in the price of water.

Very soon I’ll be paying close to $200 per month for basic water service, even if I use only one gallon. Of course, if I didn’t grow a lot of my food, I wouldn’t have to pay the extra $70-80 in August and September (the hot dry months), but then I’d be at the mercy of the big agricultural companies which grow much of America’s food, as well as an infrastructure that is revealing itself to be fragile. That makes me uneasy. In view of all the supply chain problems we had during the pandemic, how reliable is our food supply? A total of less than $200 for much of a year’s food still seems reasonable, even as the prices of water and seeds rise. I’m more committed than ever to growing my fruits and vegetables, but I want to find a way to do it less expensively.

Ground Cherries

Celeriac

Chard

The first way I propose to do that is to change what I plant. Which plants use the most water? I should swap those out for more drought resistant varieties. Spinach has been crossed off my list of things to grow: not only does it need a lot of water, but it also bolts when it reaches barely three inches tall. What sense is there in using $35 worth of water on what amounts to a few small bags of spinach? Celery needs a lot of water if it’s going to be juicy and delicious, so I probably won’t bother growing that anymore. It contains few calories, and it hardly seems worth it. Celery root (a related but different plant) is another story. It’s tasty and stores well on a shelf in my basement. Sweet corn (corn on the cob) is another heavy drinker, however, I’ve found that dent corn, such as blue corn, needs a bit less water, and it produces a lot more ears of corn, which I can store without using any electricity.  I just shuck the ears and hang them from the basement rafters to dry. If I plant beans and squash with it, an indigenous practice called The Three Sisters, at least I get three crops instead of one in the same space, without using much extra water. In addition, the squash plants shade the soil and slow down evaporation while inhibiting weed germination. The weeds, if not suppressed or pulled up, would gobble up a lot of valuable water.

Weedy mulch

Another important consideration when trying to reduce water use in the garden is when to plant.

We know that we shouldn’t plant warm weather plants outdoors before the last frost, which is June first where I live, but there are many things that we can plant during the cool spring months. Some of them can be directly seeded outdoors, like beets, radishes, turnips and kale, but many do a little better when started indoors by a sunny window. Kale, chard, and onions come to mind. I’ve found that when I sow kale and chard outdoors, slugs and birds eat the tiny seedlings. When I start them inside, they’re bigger by the time I transplant them outside, making it easier for me to see exactly where they are, so I can take steps to protect them, remay cloth, for example. What’s important to remember is to maximize your use of the rainy season – plant as many things outside as possible during the rainy season, to reap the benefits of free water.

Experimenting with planting potatoes in a pot for better drainage.

Potatoes can also be planted well before the last frost date, but one must be careful about the soil. On more than one occasion I planted my seed potatoes in an area with dense clay soil, and they simply rotted away. And this brings us to a third important consideration – where to plant. The area where I live has been heating up and drying out, with the exception of last year’s wet early spring. Nearly two years ago we had June temperatures of 117 F (47.2 C!), in the cool Pacific Northwest!  All of the plants in partial or full shade survived well, though their nearly ripe fruits cooked on the vine, while some of the plants in sunny areas burned up and died. More and more, it makes sense to give plants a little shade. I now plant onions, kale, beets, chard, currants, strawberries, dill, comfrey, fennel, and lettuces around trees. The tree protects the plants from excessive sun and heat, and some of the plants attract pollinators and other beneficial insects to the area around the tree. Some plants, like onions, repel pests. This collection of plants cooperating with each other is called a Tree Guild in permaculture circles.

Cor di Bue

Pineapple Tomato

Mad Hatter peppers

Other plants, however, don’t thrive in any shade, such as peppers, tomatoes, corn, squash, and beans. Luckily, once tomato plants start fruiting, one can cut back on watering dramatically. This makes the fruits ripen faster. And there is something we can do to help satisfy these more thirsty plants – mulch.

Leaf mulch

If you are willing to spend a lot of money, you can buy large amounts of mulch.

Tree cutting companies sell (or sometimes donate) it, as do mushroom growers and nurseries. But many of us need to find ways to reduce inputs from outside, in order to save money, and that’s actually the most sustainable way to do it. Save your lawn cuttings to cover the soil around your plants. Save raked leaves and pulled up weeds (unless the weeds are making seeds – if they are, cover them with a dark tarp for a few months to kill them, or drown them for a week in a big bucket to make a nutritious tea for your plants), shredded branches, even old sheep fleece that’s moth eaten or otherwise unsuitable for spinning, and crunched up twigs. Spread these materials around your plants after watering, and you will cut down on evaporation. Mulch thickly, eight inches deep around your tomatoes! The only plants I’ve had to be careful with when it comes to heavy mulching are peppers. I have to wait until the soil is warm before applying mulch around them because peppers don’t like cool soil. Otherwise, feel free to mulch everywhere, even on beds with nothing in them!

Mulched Squash

Herb spiral

Straw around the beans

When you pull up unwanted grasses, lay them down around plants. Just make sure their roots aren’t lying right on the soil, or they might start growing again. Try harvesting leaves from city parks, or from neighbors who may be happy to get rid of them, and spread them around. If you want to shred them, you can mow over them, but I don’t bother. I crunch them up a little in the fall, and leave them on the soil all winter. The earthworms break them down into good soil.

You can also use straw as mulch, but do some research to find out if the straw has been sprayed with herbicides. Each year, our straw mulch rots and breaks down into lovely soil. We use it mainly on pathways just in case there are traces of herbicides.  We shovel or rake up the old pathway straw and put it in the compost or right on the beds. Hopefully, after a year any chemical residues will have broken down. It would be better to get organic straw, but I have never been able to find any.

As it happens, mulching has helped solve more than one problem. It has cut down on water use, and it has improved our soil, which is pure clay. Wherever we’ve mulched a lot, the soil’s structure is improving. It has more organic matter and more worms.

Leeks going to seed

Garlic curing in the shade

Saving ground cherry seeds

One way of saving money in my garden which I haven’t yet mentioned, is saving seeds, as well as propagation through cloning.

Doing this requires some changes in what I grow. If you’re going to save seeds from your produce, to plant the following year, you must make sure that you plant heirlooms and not hybrids. Hybrids may be delicious, and I occasionally plant some, but one can’t use the seeds saved from them. If you do, you’ll end up with very different plants the following year, and most likely the fruits will disappoint you. Some of my favorite heirloom tomatoes are Cor di Bue, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, and Pineapple. There are many others. There are delicious heirloom peppers to choose from, including many varieties of Jalapeño, Sweet Carmen, Shishito, Mad Hatters, Padron, and some Chili’s. Dent corns usually breed true, and I save mine. Some onions will also breed true, especially bunching onions. Garlic is easy to save, as are garlic chives. Most lettuces, arugula, and cilantro will produce lots of viable seeds, which grow all over the place in the yard, though I do actually collect seeds from them so that I can have a say in where they grow!

Squashes and cucumbers are difficult, not because they aren’t heirlooms, but because they cross pollinate with other types of squash, melon, or cucumber. They require hand pollination and isolation of the blossom which can be tied closed or wrapped in a small paper bag. The same goes for carrots, spinach, chard, and beets. Carrots will cross pollinate with Queen Annes’ Lace, even if it’s a mile away, and the results are pitiful. I suppose you could make pesto out of the greens, which is tasty, but you won’t get an edible carrot. Beets and chard cross pollinate. I find that the resulting chard does fine, but the beet seeds you save will often result the following year in a very small beet.  Seed saving is a big topic, and it’s worth pursuing. It is a vital part of survival gardening. Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of seed companies running out of stock, and I’ve been glad for the seeds I had saved.

The problems of drought and poor soil are not new, but they have become more important as we feel ever more squeezed between a changing climate, inflation, and instability in the outside world.

I need to grow more produce that is high calorie, high in nutrients, and heat/drought tolerant in my region.  Other regions may have problems with flooding, for example, which requires a different strategy. I hope that the methods I’ve outlined here will enable us to fulfill those goals.

In my next article, I will discuss ways of preserving food without using much energy. Stay tuned!