SLUGS - IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME

*WARNING:  This post portrays a detailed picture of a slug.  Viewer discretion is advised.

I have the most dramatic and intense love/hate relationship with these creatures.  I am terribly scared of them and consider them my mortal enemy.  However, in the most fabulous contradiction, my highest self knows that they hold some essential medicines for my path in this life.

If You Build It, They Will Come
A couple of days ago I put in my broccoli.  The starts had been hardening off in the same spot I planted them.  They were in one of those plastic trays:

I had them there for about 4 days and hadn't seen any sign of slug damage. Great right!?! I thought maybe the slug population was down. Maybe I would be able to get a couple of pest free days for my precious starts once they were in the ground.  Wrong.  Totally wrong.

So Wrong!
Because of my relationship with slugs I'm sure that they were laying in wait.  Giving me a false sense of transplant security, while all along plotting their invasive tactics.  That first night I was carefree and proud.  I went out to look at my broccoli starts by headlamp light (as I often garden at night by headlamp - I am the ultimate garden geek).  They were so happy and strong.  No doubt the slugs were saying, "Let's just let them build their sugars up for a couple of days so they're even tastier...".  Sure enough, two mornings later I saw my first signs of damage.  Part of a leaf had been munched on.  The slugs have arrived.

PROUD PAPA!

I planted ten of my broccoli starts today!  I was planning to do it tomorrow, but it rained real good this morning! When I went to look at the beds they were so inviting I just couldn't help myself... I feel like it's my kids' first day of school.  Grow little ones!

CORIANDER

Question:
Did you know that the first type of leaf that grows from a coriander plant is cilantro?  I didn't.  I always thought that the plant was called cilantro...

I was super excited to grow this because it's one of my favorite herbs.   I got my start and put it in the ground.  It started kind of slow and then had a great spurt of growth.  I was able to add yummy cilantro to my salads for maybe two weeks.  Then the leaves started to change shapes and I could see the inevitable was happening.   The plant was going to seed.

This is not my plant, but shows good detail of how the leaves change when it starts going to seed.  Look closely - The leaves on the top left of the plant are pre-seed leaves.

This made me sad because I had assumed that I would get a much longer harvest period.  I had tried to talk a friend in Texas through the process of nurturing the tender plant and assumed her failure was do to the fact that she didn't have my master gardening skills.  Arrogant, huh!?!  Gotta love a garden for putting things in perspective!  As my plant went from tender precious cilantro leaves to thinner and elongated pre-flowering leaves I tried everything to change the course of nature and bring back that yummy cilantro.  I would have pictures of my plant, but didn't want to document my "failure".  Silly me!

A Lesson In Letting Go Of Control:
I watered more frequently and diligently pinched off the forming flower buds.  I thought that maybe coriander was similar to basil and would produce new shoots that would give me back my tasty salad herb.  As the new shoots grew I quickly saw that no, coriander is not like basil.  The new shoots grew that same pre-flowering leaf.  I did at least try that in my salad.  It worked okay.  (I've since learned that I was just growing coriander a bit out of season.  It likes cooler spring and fall temps.  I started it in late May.)

I considered pulling the plant, but decided to leave it in and see what happens.  The flowers were pretty and I didn't really grow many flowers this year.  So I left it.  It is always interesting to watch the flowering process.  As the petals died off I saw these little clumps of small green balls forming.  Curious?

As the plant dried out these seeds grew.  I tasted them and they seemed familiar.  A quick internet search told me that I had a big 'ole bunch of maturing coriander seed!  I was instructed to harvest them as they turned brown.  So far this is what I've got:

It's going to be so hot when I grind my fresh seed to spice up my dinner one night!  Oh my, that sounded dirty.

A GARDENING BLOG? I THOUGHT IF YOU STARTED A BLOG YOU'D DO SOMETHING MORE POLITICAL?

I got this question from my cousin.  It was quite interesting to me and has stuck in my thoughts.  My immediate response to him was that it's so political.  I think I actually channeled the spirit of an old black woman and said something like, "Oh, it's all wrapped up in there honey.  It's all there.  It's much more than just putting a plant in the ground and tending to it while it grows."

I think it has stuck with me because I found it so, uhm... ironic?

Right now urban gardening integrates all my politics, all my life lessons and history, all my passions, joys, obsessions, dreams  -- It has become all of that condensed, focused and put at the tip of a needle ready to pierce a hole through the fabric of common conception about city gardening and how it's supposed to be done.  Don't get me wrong though.  I'm not unique in my perspective here.  There are many amazing urban gardening projects that continue to inspire me.  People who are acting my vision to feed their community.  What I'm excited about is nothing new.  But it's new to me and definitely new to my community.

The Dream
My neighborhood growing it's own food and preserving it's desirable characteristics.  It's that simple.  How we get there is kinda complex.  As I've been learning and practicing growing food and dreaming and thinking about community preservation I have some ideas for how to start.

In my community eight 3,000 sq. ft. lots  outfitted with a solar roofed shed and massive water storage systems (with compostable toilets) would be a good start.  One of the lots as the greenhouse - the other 7 on a yearly crop rotation cycle. Each garden would grow 1 "core" crop.

The programming associated would involve honor and purpose for our elders, youth mentorship, a reworking of what's valued as currency and challenging journeys to reconnect with power that is not an illusion.  I'd say it was my sci-fi utopian dream if I weren't so earthly serious about making it happen.  It's my path right now. That makes me very happy.

Articulating the political through this blog will be interesting.  I'm pretty over heady rants - though I'll always love a dramatic monologue!  At this point I'm more inclined to tell the right story of my dreams.   My garden, my ancestors, my spirits want that for me.  So this blog intends to chronicle what happens.  In the garden and in the community.  As I listen to my dreams and sew a new quilt.    A quilt that the community can snuggle up in for a big HUG!


From Sandy:
this post is a work in progress.  i'm not entirely sure how i feel about posting an incomplete thought.  darned perfectionist genes, blargh!  though i feel like i go way back in the soil biz, all this garden / urban agriculture business is quite new to me and i'm still working it out.  i'd love to hear other people's thoughts about urban agriculture and community work.

THE TASTE TEST - Part One

What a wonderful start to my day!  I was outside tending the garden when my neighbor kids' friend Joshua came by looking for my neighbor kid Uriah.  I make it a point to say hi to all the neighbor kids cuz they rock.  They're also the future of Hilltop Urban Gardens and I want to get them as early as possible!!

I asked Josh if he wanted to sample some orange tomatoes and he said, "Sure!"  Uriah was into it too, but he already knew he didn't like the orange cherry tomatoes.  Josh sampled and totally did not like them.  I'm really curious what it is they don't like.  I think they are super sweet and delicious.  I wonder if their "foreign" color may have something to do with it.

At some point Uriah asked me if I had to go to work today.  What a joy to answer this was my work today!

Josh was actually much more curious about what the green (i.e. not ripe) tomatoes tasted like.  He kept asking me and I kept trying to give him an answer that would shut him down.  Silly me!  I'm so happy that kids are persistent.  I finally started asking me own damn self what green tomatoes tasted like.  So I said, "Sure, lets give one a taste.  Let me go inside and get a knife to cut it up."  When I came back, Josh picked out a tomato to cut open.  I honestly didn't know what it would look like and was surprised when we cut it open and it looked like.... a green tomato.

Ha, Ha.  Silly me!  We tasted them.  Josh said he actually liked it better than the orange one.  Curious?  It could have ended there, but I had an idea.

I am working with magic and practicality to birth an urban gardening project in my community.  What this means when kids are around is that I want to make their engagement in the garden as filled with wonder, curiosity, exploration and fun as I possibly can! (not to mention mutual respect, challenge, creativity, earth-based thinking ---add more juicy descriptors at your pleasure---)

I was pretty sure that they both would like something growing in my garden so I proposed the idea of a taste test!  We would sample orange and red tomatoes, jalapa and chili peppers.  They were eager to proceed.  But before we could move forward Uriah had to take a bath and get dressed for the day...


postscript:  While Uriah was doing his morning ritual he yelled out the window and asked if I had to go to work today.  What a joy to answer back that this was my work today!