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Dec. 27, 2005
Gardening
Those of you with eagle eyes will have
noticed that I am the owner/moderator of a small 'gardening with
Children' group on yahoo...
Gardening is, for me, the thing I love
to read and plan about all winter long, and the main means of exercise
and excitement come springtime.
Summer gets a little too hot for my
English blood, and I have a hard time forcing myself to go out into the
garden to work, and by the time autumn comes around I am less than
eager.
Still... I love to do it, and I have my favourite and pet projects.
My first garden love was herbs... of all sorts. From the old
'Antique Roses' used for medicine 'way back when' to the more modern
culinary herbs, I find an increasing fascination with them.
I like
to read about them, go to herb festivals, grow them, eat them... smell
them. I aim one day to start using them for more medicinal and
beauty aids too.
So a chance read in a bookstore the other day, managed to get my interest up and down a long, and somewhat unfamiliar road.
The book was called Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway
and I originally picked it up thinking there would be some herbal
information in there. You may think that the title denotes a
pagan influence... and to be honest, it may well do so. However,
there are a number of pagan resources on herbs and gardening out there,
that are well worth the read, if only for their expert information on
the subject!
The book spoke of a method I found intruiging... something called Permaculture,
a method of utilising the natural structure of the Earth as a guide to
designing a garden in harmony with nature. There is obviously
more to it than that, for it also includes all organic gardening
methods, reclaiming water, composting and recycling.
It sounds like a good teaching project.
As I google my way to enlightenment, reading as many books as I can, I
find that the idea of permaculture is something I had already been
trying out for years.
I try to go organic with my vegetables (only
DH is a barrier here... he will try to add chemicals), I have used
sheet composting... or lasagna gardening, I tried to make a compost
heap and I tried to grow my own food.
Much of my projects have met with failure...
My compost had roaches. I realise this is probably caused by the
temperature being too cool... but DH would not hear of it near the
house! Where the sunlight is.
Then for two years in a row we
had too much rain... drowning much of my garden, and the third year, it
was too dry. The garden was parched.
The corn has never
really produced much in the way of ears... see previous paragraph for
reason! Although my tomatoes grew with abundance (a shame since I
am the only one who eats them) and the beans were terrific (we had
several crops of them). My potatoes grew well, but mites hit my
thyme for the second year in a row and decimated it. I could not
convince DH that it was not in fact just autumn arriving...
My
experiments with mulch have been very successful... when we can
actually cover the garden with it, we get much fewer weeds.
Unfortunately, bermuda grass is able to grow even with mulch, and it is
one of the toughest weeds to mess with.
Typically the weed
population gets out of control in mid summer, when I am barely able to
tolerate the heat... so I am not very productive at the weeding
business.
Permaculture seems to try and help us get through the weeding
business... now perhaps you understand why I am intrigued by the
method...
Googling the term will get you a ton of information, but there is a nice guide here: Beginner's guide to Permaculture to help you get started.
Oh... and if you like to garden with children... feel free to join my group... the link is in the sidebar!!
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About Me
I'm a 29 year old mother of two, who loves to read, bake, knit and homeschool... You can also read my husband's 'rantings' at the link below ;)
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I am currently having problems blogging here. Please check
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Nature Blog
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Posted by
Dec. 28, 2005 - Gardening w/ Children
I, too, have found wonderful resources among the pagan communities with regard to medicinal herbs. One of the ironies of Christianity and secularism is the modern medical model, which has pretty much completely turned its collective back on traditional medicine until just recently - so its light years behind (ahead?) of the earthier communities with regard to herbal and medicinal knowledge. Heck, I haven't been able to find a Christian doctor since I was 17 and switched over to naturopathy for primary care. *sigh* Ah, well. The resources and knowledge are still of great value.
Dy