Turnips and Beets and Cabbage (oh my!)

What is a gardening post doing in a planning blog? Planners should, by definition, be excellent gardeners. The scientific approach to planning means careful consideration of placement, varieties and resource management, while those of us who are designers as well should be able to make beautiful, humane spaces. That's the theory, anyway. In reality, life gets in the way, too much or too little rain/sun/time to weed yields a poor crop and we are forced to come to terms with the fact that, just as humans are independent agents and difficult to plan for, so are the vagaries of nature and busy schedules. All that aside, the garden is a perfect tonic for the toxins of modern living. We are so accustomed to treating the seasons as a nuisance (too hot, cold, rainy, etc) that it is tempting to forget that our lives are intimately tied to seasonal processes. A trip to the produce section of the supermarket will amply illustrate our increasing detachment from seasonality in that most elemental of human requirements: our food. Availability of every vegetable and fruit imaginable at all times may fool us into thinking that we have conquered the seasons. However, the convergence of peaking oil supplies and climate change will require us to think in local terms for just about every aspect of our lives, especially food, and we owe it to ourselves to become reaquainted with and take some ownership of our sustenance.

I must admit that the distraction of the Winter Games made it very difficult to think about the spring chores, but there's nothing like a few days of sunshine and the daily reports of Grapefruit League baseball to put one's mind back on track. I dug out the seed trays last weekend and got the early vegetables started.

While we're fortunate to have a reasonably sunny balcony, the yard is about three-quarters shaded by June. This means that root vegetables that profit from early-season weak sun and shade in the hottest months do pretty well, including beets and turnips. The crop was pretty miniscule last year, but I aim to double it with careful feeding. With any luck, the pickles will last until the new year. Lettuce has been pretty successful too, and by letting a few plants go to seed, I pretty much always have a spring crop. On a friend's advice, I'm trying cabbage this year, with a plan to lay down some sauerkraut in the fall, to add to my growing roster of preserves. It's a bit bewildering to me when others ask why I would spend the time to preserve vegetables when I could more easily buy them. I might ask why a person chooses to spend their time skiing or painting-by-numbers or watching television for that matter. As any first year art student can tell you: it's the process that counts. When you add in the satisfaction and insurance of being self-sufficient, the time spent is a bargain.