Eating Local, Very Local!

When Patrick and I arrived in Tucson in mid-August, we were hoping to eventually plant a vegetable garden here. But when we read the August Coop newsletter, we wanted to plant the garden immediately to coincide with “Eat Local” month in September. We envisioned eating so local that we wouldn’t even have to shop for food. We would just graze in our own front yard.

We called around to get opinions about what we could grow, when we should plant, and how to prepare the soil. Turns out September is the BEST time to plant all sorts of winter vegetables in Tucson. In fact, peas had to be planted by September 15 if they were going to produce properly.

That was the good news. The bad news was that we were told that there are two kinds of soil in Tucson: bad - and worse! Supposedly we needed to spread three to six inches of compost all over the yard and dig it in. Since we had just arrived in Tucson on August 15, we had zero compost. Buying enough compost for a 600-square-foot garden is an expensive proposition.

But we had a hunch that our soil was neither bad nor worse, but pretty darn good. We tested that hypothesis by putting a scoop of our dirt into a quart jar, filling the jar with water, shaking the jar, and then letting the soil settle in the water. After 24 hours, the soil looked like a three-layer chocolate mousse: sand had settled to the bottom, clay on top, and silt in the middle. Our soil was about 70% silt, 20% sand, and 10% clay. Neither too sandy nor too clayey, but JUST ABOUT RIGHT! We don’t have the dread layer of caliche that we had been warned about either. The only thing missing in our soil was organic matter.

So we bought several big cubes of compressed peat moss, and spread one to two inches of it (not three to six) on the beds. Peat moss helps retain moisture in the soil. And we bought food for our plants-to-be: a fifty-pound bag of cottonseed meal to provide nitrogen, two bags of greensand to provide potassium and iron, a bag of soil sulfur to correct the pH, and two boxes of “Peace of Mind” bat guano (enticingly packaged to look like a New Age breakfast cereal) to provide phosphate.

On September 1, the first day of the Eat Local challenge, none of our beds was ready for planting, and it was too hot to plant anything outside anyway. So we planted a bunch of seeds in little cells and kept them indoors under the swamp cooler. Most of them sprouted within a day or two. That was the fastest germination rate we had ever experienced! Tucson appeared to be a haven for gardeners.

A week later, we planted three kinds of peas directly into the ground (you can see them in the background on the other side of the driveway on the left side of the picture). In mid September we planted root vegetables like beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and rutabagas (which don’t like to be transplanted), Swiss chard (which likes heat), and arugula and cilantro (in the shade, so they wouldn’t bolt.) Most of those seeds also sprouted within a couple of days. Everything was growing like crazy. We were on a roll.

But then one night a wild furry thing crept into the yard and ate a row of vegetables. Oh, no! We foresaw the garden disappearing one row after another, night after night, until the yard would be bare dirt again like before.

Thus began the fencing project. We put up the cheapest fence we could buy: green plastic mesh stretched between green metal stakes. Installing the fence took Patrick a week. The mesh had to be buried several inches in the ground to discourage whatever-it-was from digging under the fence. Five gates had to be designed so IT couldn’t get under them. So far so good: we haven’t had another raid.

Appropriately, we harvested our first food from the garden (arugula) on September 30. Since then we’ve also harvested spinach, turnip greens, snow peas, lettuce, cilantro, and Swiss chard. I’ve planted spinach again four times. It takes a lot of spinach to make one serving.

Just as rewarding as eating the vegetables has been meeting our neighbors. Our street has a sidewalk and a bicycle lane, so lots of dog-walkers, joggers and bicyclists pass by. Many stop and say they like seeing the veggies instead of bare dirt. Most of them aren’t gardeners, so they make comments like, “I didn’t know peas had flowers” or “That’s BROCCOLI?” So our garden has become a sort of demonstration organic garden.

I like looking at my veggies out of the window next to my computer; they help me feel secure. In a recession, what could be more practical than planting your own vegetable garden?

Top Pics from Two and a Half Years in Asia

From February 2006 to January 2008 Patrick and I taught English in Sichuan, China. We traveled around Asia during our vacations and for six months after we finished our contract. Below are the best pictures from those trips.