Year in review
I’ll begin my rear end review by acknowledging things I know now that I didn’t know then. For example, I grew barley. It didn’t amount to much, but I learned to respect the person who millennia ago saw in those plants what I did not. Barley farmers in Canada and Bulgaria would agree.
What I remember about the past twelve months is how unpredictable the weather was. The Mojave Desert came to visit in July. November did its January impersonation, but early December has been fairly mild. I expect this unpredictability to continue, and this could affect garden planning if I allow it.
For example, my favorite new pepper was Lesya, which looks like an exotic teardrop-shaped mid-sized bell pepper. I look forward to seeing how they perform during a less severe summer, but who knows when that will happen.
Same for tomatoes. Think of how thirsty you might become watching Ishtar or Lawrence of Arabia all day, every day for three-and-a-half weeks. That was my tomatoes after July showed up. They started out innocent, honest seedlings with aspirations of matching what the seed catalog promised, and then – Mojave! This is not my first Arkansas dry spell, and experience said: heap on grass clippings and mulch and water enough to get plants through till the rains come… and don’t miss a turn watering because every turn matters when Mojave is in town.
Volunteer tiny tomatoes were a pleasant surprise because, not only did they sprout on the opposite side of the garden from their previous location, they paid no attention to the torrid imposition and produced scores of half-inch tomatoes till the first frost.
My favorite old pepper was the pepper formerly known as Lipstick. Probably 18-20 years ago, I saved seeds from a snack buffet of short and tasty red, yellow and orange peppers. Now I have only orange, they might reach 2 1/2 inches, and they were so prolific this summer the plants leaned over from the weight of the peppers. The secret for success was a shadier corner where they grew plus the bed was adorned with rock dust and straw. Lipstick peppers advertised in catalogs are not like these, so for now they are the pepper to be named later.
Red onions got my attention again. I read about their nutritious components, so I add onion pieces to meals as often as possible. I have started seeds many times. They do fine, but transplanted onions seedlings are fragile like truth when ego intervenes. My next experiment will be to plant onion seeds in old juice cartons and let them mature until sturdy like teenage athletes before transplanting in the garden. Or I might get some healthy onion sets.
The point about onions, however, is the chemistry. Besides their Bs and Cs, onions are replete with chemical vocabulary rarely heard on the street such as prebiotic inulin and quercetin, an antioxidant that reduces high blood pressure and combats the growth of stomach ulcers.
Peas, beans and Asian greens have their own chemical vocabularies to offer, and the effect of eating these plant-based chemical compounds is to boost your body’s immunity, preserve healthy cells and fight icky diseases while you thought you were just having a salad with your green pea casserole.
The many varieties of basil are famous not only for the delightful flavors but also for their own impressive chemical vocabulary. I grew four kinds last year because I’m out of control.
Some folks think society would be much more serene if we all had longer passwords. I’m not convinced, but this year convinced me again that vegetables, mulch, worms, weather and I are part of the same process. If I plant radishes and they do not grow, I can’t blame the radishes. We all work together, we do what we do, and in the end, that is what we did… and here we are. What’s next? Happy New Year.