D.O.P.-T.

[weofodthignen]

The runner beans in the side yard are something like 6th-generation self-sown or regrown from the root. They are scraggly. I'd been seeing tiny beanpods on one, but suddenly, down near the ground, there was a full-sized pod. So I sliced it up and added it to my pasta.

This evening Monty and Prudence were there again, but on the roof of the neighbours' shed, sitting watching me. When I emerged with the food, Monty had come down to the driveway and was waiting there ... with his back to me. Prudence was on the fence. He started eating as soon as I shut the side door; I suspect she came down soon after.

Comments

[altrinc]

Have you ever been tempted to grow your own? Presumably you have good conditions for some crops, such as tomatoes. You could plant some more runnerbeans as they don't need a lot of care. Or do you have lots of wildlife that eats budding crops?

As well as my herb bed, I'm growing potatoes, tomatoes and chili peppers this year. No lettuces or leafy crops as the rabbits and deer eat those - I have to restrict myself to sprouting seeds for salads indoors.

I have masses of blackberry thorns flowering in the garden that are really weeds; some of the prolific crop from last year is still in the freezer. I'd like to have been able to plant raspberry canes but it's a rented house and I can't be sure I'd be able to transplant them if I move. Besides, the soil is very poor. Every time I dig in with the trowel there is a clang! and I have to prise out a large nugget of chalk.

There is no shortage of apples here; my neighbours have a large cooking apple tree in the front garden and some of the fruit falls on my side of the hedge. The back garden has a long hedge of espaliered apple, pear and quince trees, with a plum tree at the far end. They are happy for me to take the fruit that falls on my side of the hedge. Last year there was a bumper crop of apples across the village and I joined in the annual village apple juicing day, taking crates of the apples to the old stable block at the local manor house, where we all mucked in with washing and chopping apples into largeish pieces, ready to go into the scratter, which dices them. Then we juiced them, taking turns to rotate the long handle to lower the press. The juice was pasteurised, bottled and labelled on the spot. I've just finished my last bottle; it contained cookers as well as eating apples so was deliciously tart.

Meanwhile I managed to buy gooseberries in their very short season at a local market, so I am making pies today. Are there any small, brief harvests you look out for in the shops?

[weofodthignen]

I used to look out for cranberry beans and fava beans, both of which are in the normal supermarkets for a week or so and then gone. Other than that, there's a well-oiled system for keeping most things available year-round in the supermarkets, using the full length of California (they count it as "local" if it's grown in California!) plus Mexico and under-plastic techniques, and climate-controlled storage. I'm far from a gourmet cook, but most shoppers are only marginally closer to that than me, and except for the stone fruits, unless one prefers, say, onions below a certain size, and a particular variety of avocado, the seasons are almost unnoticeable in the "produce section", which is the intent. Even strawberries are available almost year-round. Then for those willing to make more effort or needing things like Chinese vegetables, there are the farmers' markets, some of them excellent, and the Asian supermarkets (we shopped at an Indian supermarket for a brief while). And for those with the money and no qualms about Amazon, there's Whole Foods (where I used to get my plantains if the supermarket had let me down on that that week).

I basically hate cooking, so for many years we had the weekly box of vegan meals. That only stopped when the company imploded. During shelter-in-place it was a lifesaver; the supermarkets delivered, but it wasn't realistic for fruit and veg, partly because of the supply chain problems and crazy substitutions, and not least because people were saying you should scrub the stuff down with disinfectant. I think it was soon after things started opening up that we tried the Indian supermarket.

Prior to the vegan meals, I did plant runner beans in the side yard (the ancestors of the volunteers), and one year in the bed that's now got the gladioli. I grew tomatoes in pots for several years, and if I'd been able to get seedlings from the community garden (allotment centre) and fresh potting soil, might have done so again in 2020, but those were exactly the kinds of things that were difficult and unsafe to simply impossible. Plus, by the time the pandemic arrived and I was suddenly retired, I'd found that the housemate just wasn't going to get round to eating more than a smidgen of what I grew. The grapevine died because I couldn't figure out how to look after it properly, and eventually the chainlink fence I'd had it on went away, but even the grapes, I basically ate alone. The year I grew a few herbs in pots, she didn't use them, and I don't use herbs at all (whereas if I grew any kind of peppers, that would be the year she would start reading in the garden, see them, and run screaming). So even after retiring, I've concentrated on geranium cuttings, on trying to get stuff to grow in the boxes at the top of that damned privacy fence, and on keeping the grass green all summer, which I didn't have enough time for when working.

Other people responded to the pandemic and to the increasing panic about water by replacing their lawns and even their fruit trees with raised beds, but that can get to be a full-time job, and setting it up would require a lot of materials and probably more muscle power than I've ever had. Plus our rather meadow-like grass is more for dogs and other critters than for us, and I would still be substantially the only one eating the stuff, and I still hate cooking. As to what can be grown here, it's supposedly some of the best soil in the country, and the former owners of the house used the basement to store and jar stuff as well as raising rabbits in cages behind the garage, but I don't know what they actually grew. You have to water every day when it tops 90 (and certain things would like that anyway, such as the potatoes I keep feeling compelled to rescue when the housemate fails to eat them and puts them in the compost), and the soil is very depleted in that side yard; some year, I should dig it up and put in vast quantities of compost in January or February when the soil is wet enough to turn, but apart from the sheer work involved, there keep being visitations of workmen who always tramp all over in there and install things in the ground or on the house wall. And it's just too hot for some things here—broccoli and cauliflower went straight to seed, gooseberries are unknown and rhubarb almost unknown. Or, of course, I'm not a good enough gardener, as with the grapevine.

Leaves do get nibbled, and oranges eaten on the tree, but we have relatively few pests; the one thing I remember trying that was eaten alive was sunflowers. Possibly I'd have better luck now; the Burgundian snails that some entrepreneur imported decades ago as a food crop and that of course escaped and overran much of the state, seem to have succumbed to the drought years, and they may have been the sunflower leaf munchers. I also haven't seen a dragonfly in a while; they would appear over the lawn, obviously confused. But we still get the occasional big yellow butterfly, and the occasional bumblebee.

One of the odd things about America is, no cooking apples at all. That variety is simply not grown here, and the foodies have never asked for it, even after they try Branston pickle. But there's a reason the apples that are grown in the US are grown in Washington state. There are some valiant apple trees around here, but it's a hostile climate to them. (It's also no longer suitable for growing cherries, a traditional crop in this valley; temps no longer consistently dip low enough in winter to trigger the fruit production cycle.)