Relative Location and Garden Realities

Our farm is located in rolling savannah oak woodland as I have mentioned previously. North latitude 39 degrees. Our climate is Mediterranean. We get between 22-24 inches of rain per winter. Our growing season is 274 days. Our first frost is Dec. 5 most years and our last frost is usually March 3. But most people don't plant heat-loving veggies until mid April.

Some things I learned already from our food garden experiment of 2009:

1. I planted the sugar snap peas and dou miao (which are grown for their greens) too late. They couldn't handle the heat we had in early spring. My sister had a whole bed of volunteer sugar peas and they were flowering before I even got mine in.

2. Brussels Sprouts take FOREVER to mature. They were some of the first plants I put in and only now are they ready. I like them but they take up valuable garden space. And with the grasshopper devastation, we won't even be eating them!

3. Next year we will plant more soybeans for edamame. They are really good straight from the garden and the grasshoppers don't like the pods.

4. The broccoli could not take the heat either. It never bunched nicely and went to flower instead. If we want it, we may have to plant it in the late summer for a winter crop. Same for the kale.

5. In order to even remotely come close to feeding a family of two adults and two children, I will need much more garden. I knew this on paper but now I can really see how much food you get for your space and time investment.

I wanted to grow amaranth and see what it was like and how much you get per plant. Maybe next year. My volunteer lentil suddenly exploded and projected lentils over the side of the garden bed where it was living. Beans do that also if you let them go too long. The lentil didn't take nearly as long. But you would need a lot of it to get a bag full of lentils.

When we get down to growing our own food, or even attempting it, we realize how cheap our food in the store really is. We may also realize how it's deceptive on two levels. One, the price of most food in stores doesn't reflect the real fuel cost nor the considerable environmental cost to deliver it to your store. Two, the price doesn't reflect a fair living wage for most of the people who grew it and picked it. If we had to pick strawberries all day long, I bet the price of those berries would be far different than what we expect to pay in Safeway or FoodMax. Someday the true value of food will become evident again. It may be in a hundred years when oil is running out, but it's certainly on it's way. And while it may be easy to say, "Well, who cares I won't be around in 100 years!" Others will. Two of the most important things we are trying to teach our two children is how to grow food and how to live sustainably. So that they in turn can teach others.