As I was walking in the garden today remarking how nice the cover crop looked and how the leeks had perked back up, this bean growing up the sprinkler caught my eye.
I have always loved the juxtaposition between the green growing things and old machines or other mechanical things that are very much created by humans. It astounds and delights me just how quickly green growing things will "take over" what we humans have created. The earth grows green things, after all, and even if you clear and till the soil, green growing things (in the seed bank of that soil) will sprout!
We do have a trellis for those beans, but I think they found a suitable, though unintended, trellis all their own!
Above mentioned cover cop. Oats and Ripper Beans.
There is something so fine to the eye about a mat of green growing things. I think this is why humans like to look at fields, even if they're basically monocrops. The uniformity brings some sense of joy, even though monocrops aren't very stable forms of agriculture. Diversity, while pleasing to the eye in other ways, isn't as easy to mechanize.
To me, when I see this swath of quick growing ripper beans and oats, I imagine how good it is for the soil. We are "resting" it from the activities we appointed for it. I think it's just plain respect to not demand constant output from the soil, to not look at it for how much we can take from it, but to allow it to rejuvenate, replenish and restore. Cover cropping is an excellent means to this end.
Ripper Bean and Oats
These beds "got away from us" this season. Somehow the raised beds had gotten all mixed up and eroded into the paths so we just had one large bed without definite paths. In fact, we grew potatoes in the paths this year as a lot of the "bed soil" was there anyway! It was a droughty summer and the garden was the first place to notice this.
You'll notice amidst the cover crop is a comfrey plant! If you look more closely you can also see Astragalus & Licorice (in its 2nd year). The seed banks of this area surely contain a lot of tulsi, tomatoes, velvet plant, buckwheat, smart weed, chamomile, cockscomb, and more. It's interesting to go around in the spring to see what has decided to come up.. When the conditions are just right, we can be pleasantly surprised how that one chamomile seed was fortunate with the perfect mix of sun, rain and space and it took the opportunity to grow!
It's almost time to dig around the base of the comfrey plants and get some rhizomes to move around the property! Each fall I love to "split up" some of my larger comfrey plants and replant them elsewhere. This always feels like a sacred and intentional act of soil healing. It delights my heart to see comfrey all over the homestead.
If we walk to the right, we see the large burdock plants. We planted these last fall and filled in the gaps this spring. It's our first year growing Burdock as a root crop. I think Ini dug one up a month or two ago and the root was disappointingly small, but we shall see how it is now! It's time to dig em up!
This is the Japanese variety of Burdock called Gobo, which they eat in soups and sautéed. I have tried it- it's very delicious.
Next we have some wee lettuce plants and leeks that Ini transplanted. Our leek mothers reproduced abundantly this year and we had dozens of little shoots off the mother plants to move around. We are huge fans of leeks so I'm happy we don't have to go without them again :)
One benefit of the fall weather is that it is getting a BIT cooler-- and I say a bit. It's still very hot out and we are likely another month off from having the really cold weather set in. Yet, it's cool enough now to grow lettuce that wont taste extraordinarily bitter and we also have put in some other brassica family plants so they can grow their roots down and endure the weather when it does get cool!
Lastly, isn't the buckwheat beautiful?
And as we've said so many times, we love the buckwheat as a cover crop everywhere! It generously reseeds and we welcome it with open arms. It's a great forage for insects and builds soil!
Thanks for taking a little walk through with me.
We haven't put too much energy in the garden this year, but it's good to see some green growing things on the landscape :)