Home Grown, Made Easy: Part I

Welcome back to another delayed episode of Lost in the Farmers Market.  As some of you might have noticed there was no post two weeks ago. That post was skipped because of the Tour and the incredibly heavy work schedule wrapped around it.  This week we are going to talk a bit about scarcity. We live in some pretty strange times, the price of gasoline is dropping to a level not seen since the end of the 1990’s. Toilet paper and critical supplies are hard to find and if you can find them they are limited in purchase numbers. There are curfews and stay at home orders all due to a little virus that has wrecked a few countries including ours. However there is one thing we can do in these trying times that can mitigate some of the strain we feel. You see, the stay at home stuff and the curfews do not stop you from doing stuff in the garden, and from that you can grow things to boost your diet. I understand that every reader who visits this blog may not have the same amount of experience as the next but as the tired cliché says ‘ a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.’ If the teeming masses at the home improvement stores are any indicator, clearly folks are starting to see the need.

So, I’ve been a part of the ‘Grow your own’ movement since the late 1990’s when the Organic movement surged to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness. It wasn’t about rebellion, nor was it about sticking it to the man; it was about cutting the biggest weakness of our nation. At the time it was known that on average food would travel several hundred miles just to appear in your grocery store. Think about that, several hundred miles worth of burnt gas, pollution and other aftereffects of a rather inefficient and easily disrupted food supply system. Food would take days just to get to you and by the time it did how much of its starting nutrition density was lost? Trains and big trucks were then and still are the backbone of this system but this system favored production over pollution and ignored the very human consequences of a increasingly corporate profit-oriented system. I’ve already spoken about how ethylene gas was and still is used to force-ripen produce which is why it often doesn’t taste right and has the wrong texture. The savings there is in the fact produces can pick their fruit in a nearly-ready but unripe state then force ripen it reducing shipping damage but also preventing the formation of certain flavor and sugar compounds that make foods taste a certain way. On top of this, you have the aggressive overuse of fertilizers which produce say; those fat celery stalks you are used to at the market that don’t taste like much. Yet when you grow Celery yourself the stalkers are thinner, the flavor is way more potent and boy, home grown Celery has a peppery tone to it that the ones at the supermarket have no chance of matching.

In recent news, it has been stated how meat producers are having to slaughter their herds because of reduced demand and an inability to process their product due to Covid-19 making their factory workers sick.  The irony here is that these same corporations packed the workers in, underpaid them, treated them as disposable and now a little viral tyrant has shed more light on an abysmal industry standard that our animal protein obsessed nation didn’t want to talk about. It is an ugly fact that Big-Agra relies on cheap labor preferably of the immigrant type which almost is a new-age form of slavery. By depressing wages in that sector, it is harder to raise the minimum wage overall and we all lose in the long run. This is just about as sustainable as monoculture growing practices and we all know how daft monoculture is in the long term for the soil, water and environment at large don’t we? No, this isn’t a cue for people to go vegan/vegetarian, but it is a call for you, the reader to look carefully at what you can do locally so that you have less reliance on our quite-fragile supply chain. Right now, we live in a time where it is all the more important to begin the practices that allow you to at the very least supplement your diet with something grown in your backyard even if it’s a few window boxes filled with Herbs. If you are more experienced please consider adding to your existing growing operations, even if it’s just a few container-crops or going so far as to cut another garden bed. Last year before this Pandemic stuff started I cut a new 8’ x 8’ veggie patch, and it’s payed off like you would not believe when shortages happened. It’s still belting out carrots and herbs and some of the Kale is still rocking; soon it’ll be producing Field peas, Tomatoes, Okra and Beans.

This is the heart of the argument; by 2050 America will not produce enough of its own food to sustain itself. Covid-19 may have accelerated the time table on that, and we need to be prepared for food insecurity by taken steps to buffer against a possible outcome. Preparedness isn’t a crime, it’s not paranoia and it’s not some fad to focus on and forget. The slogan we are being fed is that ‘We’re In This Together’, but are we really, those with wealth can afford to go to their second homes which are fully stocked hunker down and pretend Covid-19 and the poor majority and the crisis does not exist. I doubt any of my readers can really afford all that. If that isn’t a good enough set of reasons to start growing even a little bit of your own, I don’t know what is. In the next post I’ll cover some recommended fruits to grow and harvest year-round.

The pandemic has kept a lot of vendors home, but some of us still keep the flag flying.

With that foray into the deep end of the pool covered, this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog. Also, as of the start of 2019, my booth can now process credit or debit cards thanks to the acquisition of s a Square reader so your payment options have doubled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic vegetables, herbs and fruiting shrubs come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

Plants & Stuff Available Now:

Food Plants:

Pepper – Aji Chinchi: $3.00

Pepper – Hungarian Paprika: $3.00

Pepper – Inferno: $3.00

Pepper – Mad Hatter: $3.00

Pepper – Pasilla Bajio: $3.00

Pepper  – Shishito: $3.00

Pepper  – Siracha: $3.00

Pepper  – Sweet Banana: $3.00

Tomatillo – Pineapple: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Tomato – Cherokee Purple

Tomato – Chocolate Cherry: $3.00 (Cherry)

Tomato – Glacier: $3.00 (Large Cherry)

Tomato – Gold Rush:  $3.00 (Yellow Cherry)

Tomato – Mountain Spring: $3.00 (Medium)

Tomato –  Pink Accordion: $3.00 (Large) (Limited Quantity)

Herbs:

Herb, Agastache – Golden Jubilee : $3.00

Herb, Basil – Sweet Genovese: $3.00

Herb, Basil – Thai: $3.00

Herb, Black Fennel: $3.00

Herb, Borage : $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Herb, Chia: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Herb, Coneflower – Pow Wow Wild Berry  : $3.00

Herb, Coneflower – Primadonna Rose : $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Herb, Cuban Oregano: $3.00

Herb, Cuban Oregano – Cerveza & Lime: $3.00

Herb, Horehound  : $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Herb, Lavender – Elegance Pink : $3.00

Herb, Marjoram: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Herb, Mint Assortment: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Herb, Oregano: $3.00

Herb, Rue: $3.00

Herb, Sage: $3.00

Herb, Tansy: $3.00

Herb, Thyme – English: $3.00

Ornamental Plants:

Angel’s Trumpet/Datura – ‘Black Currant Swirl’: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Black Eye Susan – ‘Prairie Glow’: $3.00

Castor Bean – ‘Zanzibar’: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Cranesbill – ‘Vision Violet’: $3.00

Flowering Maple/Abutilon ‘Orange Hot Lava’: $3.00

Flowering Tobacco – ‘Baby Bella’: $3.00

Lily – Formosa: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Lupine – Sundial: $3.00 (Limited Quantity)

Mallow – ‘Zebrina’: $3.00

Milkweed – ‘Hairy Balls’: $3.00

Coming Soon:

Basil – Eritrean

Basil – Wild

Castor Bean – Impala

Cotton – Erlene’s Green

Cotton – Mississippi Brown Lint

Cotton – Red Foliated White

Hibiscus – Red Shield (Limited Quantity)

Roselle – Saint Kitts & Nevis

Roselle – Thai

Sesame – Shirogoma (Limited Quantity)

Pepper – Biquinho Red (Limited Quantity)

Pepper – Biquinho Yellow (Limited Quantity)

Due to the current Covid-19 situation and the state’s requirement that all citizens are not to gather in groups of more than ten, the weekly Sustainable neighbors meeting is online. Please check the sustainable neighbors Meetup.com page for more info about how to attend our online meeting.

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

Since our meetings have an open-door policy you don’t need to sign up for anything or join anything, you can come on in and join the meetings. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market.

This brings to a close the eighth LITFM post of 2020; stay tuned the next episode which should be posted on the 15^th of May. There will be more garden updates and other cool stuff.