Palyne

A reader-friend pointed out that I hadn’t posted on Red Cairo for so long people were going to think I’d keeled over. I have six blogs for different topics and I can’t keep up with one let alone six, so… that’s the way it goes. But I feel sadly remiss at not posting because this one, Red Cairo, is my most personal blog, where I talk about my dreams and weird experiences and psychic sessions and so on. You know, all the stuff that would make readers elsewhere run screaming into the night.

I’ve often felt I survived well in the world mostly because my weirdness was well hidden. I “pass”, as people with issues such as deafness and autism call it; when you function well enough “like other people” that conveniently, they mistakenly assume you are one of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, there you go. Whine, kvetch, gripe, blog, and then throw yourself on your bed and cry your head off until you fall asleep. It worked for me. But finally that glorious time of the month arrived, and I quit feeling like alt.FatGirl.die.die.die and got on with my life.

Today I was reading the blog Weight of the Evidence, and she was talking about trying to successfully live, let alone lowcarb, on a pitifully small amount of money.

It got me thinking about gardens. You know, the last century’s radical shift away from gardening is not just about free time. If anything people have more free time than they ever did, culturally — they just have other priorities, of course. I suspect it’s more about a trend of basically avoiding responsibility, in a way. I don’t mean if you don’t have a garden you’re irresponsible (haha!), I mean that as a culture at large it seems like we grow more and more toward “paying someone to feed us or fix us.”

Like to example the latter, my friend didn’t want to do lowcarb because her doctor said it was unhealthy, so now she’s on a drug to relieve acid reflux. Or another woman I met who said she had a gastric bypass not just for the weight issue but “to deal with major medical problems” like acid reflux. Holy cats on a pogo stick batman! Apparently the second one didn’t know that 10 days on lowcarb (off gluten in particular) solved my major acid reflux problem instantly, bam, GONE — and the first just didn’t care. Don’t bother me with facts. Don’t expect me to eat well. Here’s money. Give me a pill and shut up about it.

Well as much as so many folks wax on about “fresh fruits and vegetables,” I’m led to think that they don’t know much about the vegetables sitting in their walmart produce section. The carbs are often much higher, the nutrients vastly lower, in what you buy at the store, because those are genetic strains designed for single-point harvesting (not gradually like most plants), and to withstand shipment in a box over long distances without visible bruising or spoilage, and to taste as sweet as possible. In short, they are designed to be big sweet cardboard. Kind of like the breakfast cereal version of vegetables. Not to say they’re bad!–they’re not. Just to say that most the stuff in the grocery just doesn’t compare to what you can grow at home.

(By the way. You can even grow mushrooms at home. We buy mushroom compost, from a local firm that sells the typical little white ones you get in the store. It’s usually pretty hot (not really ready to be used IN the garden, needs some more biodegrading) but we dumped some in a bed we weren’t using. Months later, we pulled out several groups of mushrooms, that were literally like 9″ circumference. I’d never seen anything so gigantic. Apparently these little guys don’t have a growth limit on them, they are simply harvested at that size consistently. You can get mushroom kits from most seed selling sources.)

My point is that it’s close to free — not quite but nearly so, moreso over time — to grow your own vegetables, that are as fresh and nutritious as they can be.

If you have, anywhere on your property, a square of even occasional sunlight, even in short-day climates, of at least 2 foot by 2 foot in size (well you could do 12″x12″ but that is really cutting it close! ;-)), you can grow a small garden.

I’m serious. Anybody who has not read the terrific book “Square Foot Gardening” by Mel Bartholomew, please do yourself a favor and read it. It is SO worth the read. It’s simple, interesting, kinda humorous in spots, and lays out a garden plan that is actually fun, even for kids. You can sometimes find it in libraries or used. It shows you how you can grow the maximum yield (food) in the minimum amount of space, soil, water, and effort.

Since the dawn of whatever time God, Aliens or Happy Chance taught man that sticking seeds or fruits in the ground would make something grow, mankind has been growing food. If you went back a century, in any country you may live in, you’d probably find a great majority of the population (outside the inner cities of course) who flat out could not have lived were it not for the serious gardening they did (and often other things, like raising chickens and goats, making butter, etc.).

Let me repeat that. People grew food because they could not afford to shop much, especially if they had lots of kids. So why does that never seem to occur to people today??

I used to do programming for my living and I don’t know if it’s related, but I was kinda worried about Y2K. No, I was not buying a gun and a fallout shelter in Montana. I was buying stored bulk food and medical supplies in case the apt. complex across the street, full of old women and single moms and kids, faced some bureaucratic no welfare checks today kind of problem.

I was pretty casual about it until the official meeting with the president and leaders of all major media sources resulted in a total blackout on the subject except for the occasional mocking of someone worried. Had they said, “Well it could be an issue, but we don’t expect it. It’s a good idea if y’all keep some water and food and TP around in case the just in time inventory system, computer driven as it and bulk product transportation and fuel often is, has any difficulties,” then I would have done exactly that and not worried about it. But the mysterious silence instead — I guess applying that “don’t ask, don’t tell” motto to leadership, as well as other controversial subjects — completely freaked me out. I had a 2 year old at the time I first started thinking about it. As any mother knows, this is related, of course. The biological instinct to protect the child is overwhelming.

So I set out to educating myself. I read so much stuff via internet and via book that it was like cramming for a hard college final, but every single day for like 18 months. I know more about making a homemade brick wall from scratch, delivering babies, baking without an oven, and composting human waste, then you could ever want to know, as just a few examples.

Totally by accident, I came to realize that not only was I a city girl, but I was utterly ignorant, totally dependent, and would basically die left to my own devices. I really had no idea how ignorant I was until I really started studying everything. And one of the most astonishing, horrifying, yet interesting subjects I ended up reading a ton about was natural gardening.

Some people think that even as you read this, somewhere, some machiavellian evil overlord is conspiring to squash research for lowcarb and push carbs not just for product sales but to make the medical industry yet more money and humans yet more dependent on pharmaceutical.

Well, I don’t know about that. Probably. Maybe?

But I do know that even as you read this, those sorts are conspiring and implementing every plan they can to make it so food seeds are unavailable to the public, so food is patented and licensed and seeds aren’t even allowed to be kept or sold or traded, or if they are, they are designed to not work at all for a second season’s growth.

I know, it sounds extreme. It is like an onion, if you study this subject, you just keep thinking it can’t get any worse, and the more you learn, the more you’re just completely lost for words on what a ‘Grand Plan’ it seems to be at some level and how well it is working thanks to the ignorance and unconcern of our population. When I started reading about seed saving and the whole situation of seeds in our world, I was stunned. Were it not for the amazing efforts of a small number of die-hard, ridiculously driven, overworked altruists over the last couple decades in particular, to found tons of seed saving organizations and share seeds and develop farms just to perpetuate and keep rare seed strains alive, and to gather seeds from all over the world — the situation would be 100x worse today than it would have been without them.

I know most people think you just go to the store and buy a packet of seeds. Easy, right?

A few are the sort that will reproduce next year if you know how to save them properly, if you prevent cross contamination of the crop, if you store the seed well, if you have decent soil (which is generally built, not bought). Most of them aren’t. Most of them will grow nifty oversized and over-sweetened (carby!) vegetables and fruits for you and if you want to grow anything next year, you’ll need to go buy more seeds, or what you’ll get may or may not look or taste anything like what you plan.

Now look again at how many options you have in that store. Do you realize that there are hundreds of types of peas alone? Who knew?? How many of those do you see available to you in the store? Probably one. Maybe two. How many different companies do you see on those seed packages — and do you know if they actually share a parent company?

Most people have never given a second thought to the subject of gardening and seeds and the availability of seeds — and seeds that will bear fruit you can collect seeds from to grow another season — I certainly hadn’t. Might be worth your time. Especially if you don’t have much money.

It’s a basic survival skill. It’s the sort of thing we all should know a little about, just because we are human, just because we eat to survive.

And it’s more fun and not as much work if you do it right. Even I at 482 lbs could garden — you just plan it to fit what you can do. Even a small planter, near enough your door/traffic that you see it regularly so watering and care is easy and totally minor, can grow more ’stuff’ than you might imagine! Yummy stuff. Green onions and a diced small roma tomato and a pinch of an herb can make a major difference in a morning’s scrambled eggs.

And add a lot to your health. And save a lot for your pocketbook!

Someone asked me about the creation of the garden I showed pics of a few posts down. Here’s a few pics from its construction.

If you can carry bricks and shovel and bend over, or can pay someone who can, it’s easy to make. Just use cinderblocks to create a square a few bricks high. Fill it with soil and compost (google ‘lasagna gardening’ for good ideas on the content). Most landscaping companies will bring a whole truckload of compost and dump it where you want, if you live in an area where it’s sold like that.

We have a local mushroom-growing factory, and they have to have totally new compost every growing cycle which is brief, and the stuff they used last cycle they sell off — sometimes including edible mushroom spawn of course… we had a cluster of 8″ white mushrooms we dug up that grew under our garden once! They’re only 1-2 inches big in the store but I guess they just keep growing!

I do organic gardening, so I don’t use any kind of pest killer. Generally I have a few approaches to this:

1. Plants send out signals when they are unhealthy that essentially marks them as food for the insect world. (Seriously. There’s research on this.) So a plant that doesn’t have a good soil, that has insufficient water, is going to be a bugfest, that is just a given. Treat your plants very well and that may minimize some of it.

2. Plant more than you need. I figure, the bugs can have some, as long as I get some too. Bugs have to live just like anything else, and if it weren’t for bugs we would not be able to live on planet earth, because earth wouldn’t grow anything for long. My stepmother has the same philosophy in her ground-garden when the wild rabbits, esp. with babies in spring, eat half of it. She figures that really, they needed it more than she did, there isn’t much non-concrete world and food for them anymore, and she tries to plant enough there’ll be some left over.

3. Plant decoys. If it turns out that kale is the favorite food of a certain bug that is bugging you, plant kale at the edges of your garden, a row of onions, garlic or something inside that, and then your cabbage or whatever inside that. They will happily feast on the kale I would not voluntarily eat anyway, they aren’t fond of the onions, and far fewer of them will make it to the plants important to you.

4. Feed the birds. Go out in the early morning with gloves and hat on, with a big shallow basket. Often dollar stores will have wicker baskets like that for cheap. Pick bugs off the plants and toss ‘em in the basket, then when you’re done, set the basket somewhere the birds are unafraid to reach it and can SEE it, and I guarantee in awhile, the birds will show up waiting for ‘em. You might still be killing them but hey, it’s not like dumping poison on them. And birds need to eat too! You would be surprised how consistently doing this make a big cumulative difference.

It’s a little gross at first — I’m a bug pansy, having come from a coastal southern California climate that had few bugs — but you get over it, you’re wearing thick gloves (thick will help with the squeamish factor) and to be honest, it’s beautiful in the garden in the real early morning, and some of the bugs are pretty cool looking, if you remove the fear factor. I know it’s ‘trouble’ but part of the point of gardens is working in them–it might be easier to spray poison all over everything instead, but if you want to eat poison and nutritionally depleted produce, you could just buy it at your local store instead. ;-)

If mosquitos are a problem in your area, well, I found this vietnam-era Army mosquito hat on eBay. It’s just a hat with a wide brim that has mosquito netting that comes down on your shirt. Sometimes we have to be totally covered body-wise even to venture out there! I was a whiner about this at first, like I was entitled to not live in a reality where bugs chewed on me if I didn’t cover every inch of my body, until I realized there are people who live in climates with almost no sunlight and freezing temps and THEY garden; there are people whose sole garden is a tiny container on a roof in New York; here in NE Oklahoma with a decent backyard, my gardening life is a dream come true! I’ve got NO place to complain. ;-)

5. Avoid seedlings that have disease. I know this seems like a “doh!” but many times I’ve gotten seedlings from walmart or a garden shop, only to have the entire batch sprout some disease, which instantly brings squash bugs to the garden in a major way or something, and then all my OTHER plants anywhere near them are in trouble too. Grow your OWN seedlings. If you don’t want to hassle with the seedling process, take up winter sowing! You’ll get some hardy seedlings with minimal effort.

If you want cheap seedlings likely free of disease, find a local garden or organic club or college gardening club or dept. and visit them — usually the gardeners have way too many seedlings to plant as everyone deliberately overplants for loss, and will be delighted to give you a bunch of everything in little newspaper seedling cups or something, often free just to be nice.

6. Compost. The healthier your soil, the stronger your plants will be, to resist bugs, to ‘heal’ from holes bugs have chewed in them, to suffer less from overhot sun or underwatering or whatever.

7. One year I did do something that was very bug-killing, I admit. I had dumped seriously ‘hot’ compost on my beds, and in case you don’t know, hot compost still has a lot of degrading to do, and so it is FOOD still and bugs are insanely drawn to it. Compost bins are bugfests bigtime, but they’re supposed to be. I had one bed that had so many sal-bugs (pill bugs? roly-polies? whatever they are called) that literally, it was like there wasn’t even soil, just so many bugs it looked like soil. I don’t mind those little bugs individually, but the quantity of them nearly made me nauseous to look at it, it was like some nightmare visual in a movie.

I mixed diatomaceous earth into the soil. It’s all natural, not a chemical. But it will kill anything with a soft exoskeleton, meaning everything born from that point in that kind of bug family. It is used in food storage. Of course, that means I’d have ZERO worms in that bed since it would kill them too! But I felt that for that one season, I would do it, and then get rid of most the soil the next season and start over.

My husband took over the garden when he arrived and never got rid of it, so… well he is leaving end of January for good, so that won’t be an issue this season. We are getting divorced.

But don’t be sad for me, be happy. We haven’t had a relationship besides roommate since 1997. I split from him in late ‘99 and the only reason he’s here now, is I was going to get him legal to live in this country, so he could be near his daughter [but elsewhere!]. But after 20 months of not only not pursuing making that happen, but actually resisting anything I asked, messing up my finances (his doing this the first 6 years we were married, then saying he lived in Canada and made zero money, has resulted in me owing the IRS more than a house mortgage!), not contributing a dime, being just how he was the first six years he lived with me like a helpless dependent child, I’ve revoked my invitation, so he is leaving. It was traumatic for a year while I agonized over the decision, not wanting to hurt him, not wanting my kid to lose her dad nearby, but I recently made the decision and so, that is that.

I am so much more cheerful about my future as a result! The garden is mine again!!!!!! I will have my aunt’s landscaping crew take the top foot of the soil in that bed and dump it in a ground-level new bed I’d like to make for some pretty bushes, and some scattered salad-veggie seed so the little critters will have something to eat in spring… I’ll use new soil to re-fill the bed.

The beds can’t keep worms long-term because the beds are not open to the ground. Each year I have to add about a foot of soil to all of it around March. You can add worms yourself each season, but be sure you get the kind that eat soil and not some of the fishing kind that eat plants. ;-)

OK here’s the few pics, sorry there’s not more but it was a miracle even to find these.

First we put down black landscape mat. This lets water through, but nothing else. It is not biodegradeable.

Then we put down hardware metal ‘cloth’, to keep the rodents from burrowing up under it.

Then we put down rock. In the bed shown here, we had a ton of old/broken planter pots around from the landscaping, cheap plastic, and we decided to use those as some spacers, to save on a little soil. The other beds don’t have that.

Then when the first beds were done, and the arches were in place against the fence, and the whole area between them had landscape mat and mulch for a nice walkable area in the middle, it was ready to plant.

Since then of course, I added a big round arbor in the middle, which I think I may put my lovely white birdbath in the middle of this spring, and a couple more beds as well.

Notice the white tubes sticking out of the pots. I originally made all the pots rather like the “earthbox” (google it) but we have SUCH a mosquito problem in this region, that was a nightmare. All the mosquitos went down the tube, nested VERY happily in the water container at the bottom, and literally… well it was just horrible. It was literally walking into a heavy, thick swarm you couldn’t even breathe in and that just attacked you 500 at a time. We cleaned out the rain gutters of the house which were breeding them (the leaves from fall make a sort of cover for water that often sits for quite awhile), we removed the water-layer of the earthbox-type planters and just made them all soil instead. Now, if you do not have a mosquito problem, I recommend the earth box approach, especially for summer. If you do, then ANY standing water is a disaster. The “water bottle” approach I mentioned in my last post isn’t an issue because the water will not stay in there long enough for them to breed.

Funny enough, I have no conscience about killing mosquitos. I figure anything that eats ME is fair game. Bugs that do my species no harm, I have no reason to punish any more than necessary.

If you have a kid,

They will really take to the garden if you plant stuff they love and can eat right out of it. (Another reason not to use poison!) Cherry tomatoes, mini-corns, baby carrots, watermelon, and anything else they like, including flowers, will make it much more interactive for them. So far I have never asked my kid to work with me there or made her; the last two years her dad had the garden and I asked him to blend her into it as she seemed more than old enough, but he didn’t, so she is going to learn this season, whether she wants to or not. Which she won’t, as she’s a video game lazy modern kid, but little does she know …… :-)

This year I also hope to get some ‘toppers’ — flat brick tops that you put on top of cinderblock to make a nice neat flat edge — not for everywhere, because we plant in the holes too!, but maybe on the main beds.
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OK, one of my other obsessions besides the lowcarb lifestyle is gardening. I wanted to show a new buddy on the lowcarber.org forum some pics of mine last summer, even though to be honest it wasn’t really ideal looking at that moment (is it ever?), so I thought I would put a bunch of stuff here so I’d have a page on it and could reference it later maybe.

About the Garden!

First, I’m not getting on my hands and knees to garden, or I’ll never get up. So I decided to make a STANDING garden.

Second, I wanted a BIG garden but didn’t have a fortune for it. I thought of making those 4′x4′ wood-things on legs, but they’d eventually get rickety, and mowing under/around them would be a pain.

Third, I wanted to do a combination of “Square Foot Gardening” and “Lasagna Gardening” — all organic — for my style. SFG has a heavy emphasis on “vertical” and “container” gardening, while LG has an emphasis on “layering” deep-as-possible soil.

So, I made a plan to have it built with cinderblocks. Which I thought was novel, fairly affordable, and I didn’t have it mortared so I could redo it differently later if I wanted. It turns out lots of people do this, I just didn’t know. :-)

My aunt runs a tiny landscaping business, so her crew came out built it for me. I failed to account for the un-movable laundry pole on one side, which resulted in one side being slightly (about 1 foot in both directions) smaller than the other but it’s no big deal.

The various beds are different sizes. The two “big” beds are 32″ high on the end parts, 24″ high on the long parts and about 185+ square feet of soil.

The two “strawberry” beds are split in half depth-wise and are 16″ and 24″ high, about 48 square feet of soil.

I have a dozen 32 gallon rectangle “tub” planters (two for each arch and one at each side of the garden) that are about 24″ high and 3 square feet of soil each. (36)

I have about ten 22 gallon round “tub” containers around the yard; they are each about 24″ high and each about 2.5 square feet of soil. (22)

There’s a wide variety of other tubs, pots and containers hanging around the garden area, sitting on the brick walls, and around the backyard, depending on the season. All told there is probably about 320-340 square foot of soil space in the garden. Which, since we do a lot of trellising, and a square foot approach, means we can have a LOT of volume. If we made the effort and did storage/canning/etc., we could probably grow enough food to feed 3 families nearly year round.

I was a bit optimistic regarding size. In reality the garden has become a part time job my soon to be ex husband did the last year. I will be revising its structure a bit to allow me to maintain a decent portion of it without having to hire someone, which I certainly can’t afford!

I also have little flower beds in both back and front yard that are only 8″ high and vary in size. All but the little flower beds are in 1/3 of my backyard, on a space laid out with wood-chip mulch, so it’s a nice little environment to garden in, and you can reach everything.

The “garden props” aside from the cinderblock beds are:

1. Five ‘cattle panels’ bent in arches along the 6′ wooden fence at the side. These panels themselves are four foot wide, 14 foot long, and they have a four inch “square grid” pattern, which is perfect for ‘reaching through’. I bend them into arches which are 6 foot high and about 4 foot wide and 4 foot deep. You can walk inside them and pick stuff from inside, or from the outside.

They use 32 gallon dollar-store tubs as planters at the bottom of each side. I was told the freezing would crack the rubber-plastic but you know… it’s been a few years and it hasn’t happened. Get the cheap huge tubs of varying size from the dollar store, take a drill and put some holes in the bottom for drainage, and you have a good sized planter. I’m pretty sure the 32s ar storage tubs (they had lids). I also have some 22 gallon size that I think are squat laundry baskets, as they are round with rope handles on each side. Some plastic bottles from the trash and a couple dollar store big tubs and you can have a cool little container garden — and using the “square foot” approach you can plant a lot more in that than the old-fashioned row-gardening might make ya think!

It’s important in the summer to water planters more than you can imagine is needed, they dry out fast. If you don’t have automated irrigation (I hope to get some!), this is really the best idea: get 2 litre plastic bottles or something similar, slice off the bottom. Bury it in the soil open-spout down. Each time you water, ‘fill up’ the containers with your hose. The water will drain into the soil at the rate it can absorb. It’s not a mosquito issue because the water won’t sit long. And in the summer when it’s insanely hot, the plants really need water, and unless you plan on watering them four times a day, they won’t get enough.

2. A six foot diameter, ten foot tall, metal green arbor-thing in the center of the garden. In the middle of it are various pots. Next to each of the three supports are small tub planters that grow stuff that trellises up the arbor. This thing is so beautiful! I gotta get a better pic of it. This year I think, despite all the warnings from people about a billion weed seedlings in my veggie beds, I may vine morning glories or other viney-flowers up it.

3. Copper tubing (1.25″ hollow plumber’s tubing) frames the ‘big’ bed on the right side, only the ‘long’ portion of it. Army parachute cord (thick, slightly stretchy, never biodegrades, essentially indestructible except by knife) is what I use as the ties. I use the copper framing and ties, some anchored to stakes in the soil, for the tomato plants that grow in that section. We get very high straight-line winds in NE Oklahoma, and sometimes hail and major downpours, so every tomato plant has to have decent anchor or the first major storm would wipe out the crop. The pepper plants on the other hand are difficult to kill. Except occasionally by critters like rabbits and turtles (the high beds at least minimize those!).

See the pic above under the “beds” info for the copper framing and round arbor pic.

4. We have a 16 foot long, 8 foot high, 4 foot wide “grapevine arbor” made of 2×4s (some treated, some not) and chicken coop fencing. Ugly, but workable. We just planted this a year ago, 1 year vines, so we will not see a crop for another year or two. We have about 8 different varieties, seedless and regular, a variety of colors.

Outside of the garden beds and props we also have a few “thornless blackberry” bushes we just put in a year ago.

What I hope to do this spring

• Get drip irrigation set up so I don’t have to water it myself much. I don’t have time to keep the garden, as big as it is. I can get help with seedlings and harvesting, and mess with it along the way, but the overall landscaping of my house literally takes about 6 hours a day of twice watering in summer… something’s gotta give!
• Add a long cinderblock bed the width of my front porch, just along in front of it, that I can fill with herb perennials (sage, rosemary, thyme, lavender, etc. etc.). I think going out to the porch chair with the smell of those would be awesome.
• Add a small veggie perennial square in the back yard for asparagus.
• Add a root perennial square in the backyard and let ginger and horseradish and whatever else battle it out. I won’t put anything “perennial and spreading” in my primary beds.
• Possibly, plant a 5-fruit tree in the back corner of my yard right next to the giant pecan tree which I do believe is on its final days on this earth. If it wasn’t the primary sunblock of summer I’d have it taken out before it is fully dead and falls, but… for now I’d just like to start something else in preparation.

What I hope to do this winter

Get a copy of SEED SAVERS catalog or another similar organization. This stuff is worth supporting. Did you know there’s like a bazillion varieties of PEAS? I mean, who knew?! It’ll amaze you.

Last winter I had massive seeds, for the best versions of tomatoes (red, pink, orange, yellow, white, black, purple, and several cherries…) and peppers (too many varieties to count!) and tons of flower seeds. I think it’s possible my husband overused them or didn’t care for them well so I might have to re-buy and trade this year.

Don’t buy most of the junky seeds in stores. Most of them are deliberately engineered to not reproduce true. Unless they are quick salad stuff or marked “heirloom” seeds… why pay monster corps. Sometimes there’s something special that is ultra-hybrid and you want it just for that but otherwise, support heirloom seeds!

SEED SAVERS www.seedsavers.org is a non-profit org that has done more to save seed varieties from literally vanishing from availability than anybody. (Don’t think the government is really doing this. They pretend. Vested interests in favor of making all humans dependent on major corps for food, and one-use-only seeds, prevent the government being all that good for our people at all in this area.) (I am not really paranoid, this is just something you learn when you study it enough!) The current Seed Savers catalog has 667 varieties and this is mostly just food seeds. Now mind you, it’s not the cheapest to buy from that kind of source; there are many far more economical ways to get seeds, not only for you, but for the die-hards keeping them pure, saving them and selling them each year. But I try to buy some every year just as a form of support. You have to be a member to get the catalog which is an annual donation. To find other similar groups, google “seed save”. To find other sources of great seeds, google “heirloom seeds”.

When January comes and I get into my Winter Sowing obsession, I will see if I can post a list of awesome links for getting seeds online including unusual cool stuff.

GARDENWEB www.gardenweb.com is the greatest contribution to gardening online. Even if you don’t pay for their membership (which is not much and you can buy real short periods) you can read their forums for free. “Soil” is one of my fave forums (”You know you’re a compost whacko when…”), but they have EVERYTHING. I mean… search by seed or plant type, by gardening style, even by hobby (garden art? winter sowing?), you name it. It’s amazing and the people are often very nice (if you don’t get them arguing about obscure trivia on plant species or composting that you can’t just imagine anybody worrying enough about to argue — but then, lowcarbers argue just for the fun of it too sometimes it seems!). They even have a “trade” area where you can offer extra seeds to folks who might want them, or ask for others’ extras, or trade something you have more of for something you want, etc.

Now that I’m lowcarb, growing a zillion scallions (they are getting EXPENSIVE in the stores!!) and colored bell peppers and tons of peppers of ALL kinds, and some green veggies and strawberries and squash and salad veggies has taken on even more value for me.

If you don’t know much about gardening and want to start out with something small but a variety and fun, check out the SQUARE FOOT GARDENING website. Get the book — it’s probably ultracheap used — it’s a nice, easy but interesting read. Scroll down the page on that link and look at all the pictures, cool eh. Mel Bartholomew, and ’square foot’ guy, works with schools, with poor areas in foreign countries and more, showing them how to grow food in a minimum of soil and a minimum of space with a maximum of yield. Square foot is a really great gardening approach for kids, too. Don’t miss actually marking your squares. I don’t know why but psychologically and visually it just seems so much neater and easier when you do, silly eh!

OK, my connection on gardening to lowcarb is, obviously, FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD, and did I mention that the Zucchini Pie (one of the recipes on this blog) is SO INCREDIBLY GOOD that I intend to grow bunches of zucchini this year? I was never into it before. I was never into cauliflower either but … well, you know!

January is when I get into “winter sowing” — that means, planting seeds in a way to let them “grow if they will” in the real environment, so instead of laboriously babying seeds and seedlings in spring, you have a whole bunch of plants that are ALREADY “hardy” and growing outdoors. I usually get my seeds then, and plan garden stuff, and become a total freak in excitement about it. :-)