The Camel's Nose, or, How Gardening Grows on You

There is an old saying that says something about a camel wanting to “just put his nose in the tent” during a sandstorm. Pretty soon, his head is in, then his front legs, then…well, you get the picture. Before he knows it, the owner of the camel is outside in the sandstorm while the camel is in the tent.

I’m not sure that gardening in the backyard isn’t exactly like that.

First, you get a nice potted plant and it looks good on the plant stand in the corner or in the windowsill. You just do it for some 'color.' Then, you think that you would like to have some potted geraniums out front by the door just to dress it up a bit. Then the flowering plant in the corner of the yard. Then the flower bed along the fence or driveway. Then you think you might like to have a peach tree in that far back corner of the back yard. Just one, because you don’t know if you can grow peaches in your area.

Later on, you visit your neighbor and he has some nice, fresh, juicy tomatoes that taste so good you start to think that you should do that, too. So you plant one. Just one. After all, you don’t really have all that much time to garden. Mowing the lawn and trimming the bushes and pruning the now productive peach trees (you had to add another one for adequate fertilization) take up all your “yard time.” And you are surprised at how well it does. 11 cups of cherry tomatoes from one plant in one season. And they are sooooooo tasty, too, that you cannot remember how many of them actually made it into the house.

And in buckets, no less.

Then you decide that if your neighbor can grow those big, juicy beefsteak tomatoes, you can, too. So you plant several, not knowing which ones will do the best in your area. When they start to ripen, you can’t believe how easy it was compared with how expensive they are in the store (and how much better your own taste!) that you start to think about making salsa.

This year you buy the peppers and the onions and the cilantro to go with your tomatoes, and it’s good. But something just isn’t quite right and you realize that your wonderfully tasting tomatoes are being mixed with rather bland, tasteless “store-bought” food and you decide that you need to grow some of the other things. You don’t need a lot, just a few onions, maybe a couple of pepper plants and of course, you’ll only buy one packet of cilantro seeds. (How much cilantro can you grow with only one packet of seeds anyway?)

You absolutely cannot make salsa without cilantro.
To do so would not only be unthinkable, but possibly criminal.

Sweet red onions.

In the fall you plant the onions. In the winter you start the tomatoes indoors (you didn’t need all that stuff on those shelves of that rack in the garage anyway. The neighborhood thrift store can get much more use out of those things anyway.). And those light fixtures weren’t all that expensive, either.

Love those apricots.

In the spring you plant the cilantro and transplant the tomatoes outside. Come the middle of July, you begin to harvest the whole thing and you make your first batch of home-grown salsa. As you sit under the shade of you apricot tree (the peaches did so well you decided that a couple of varieties of apricot might be nice, too) and sip lemonade (who knew lemons could do so well this far North?) and dip your toasted kale chips (much better for you than fried tortilla chips and kale grows so well that you don't miss those silly shrubs along the fence) into your fresh salsa, you think to yourself “Now if I take out those shrubs and remove that lawn over there and …” you suddenly realize that the camel is in the tent leaving you outside.

Chard, not kale, but you get the idea.

But that’s really OK because that’s where your garden is.

Breaking it Down, Barrel-style

A long time ago, I listened to a farmer who said that we cook and prepare our food so that it doesn't resemble what it really is. If we can still tell what it is, we probably won't want to eat it.

Now, although I agree with him on the concept of shrimp (which I love to eat but get kind of grossed out when I see them) and liver (ditto), I don't necessarily agree with him on things like fresh fruits and vegetables. I really don't mind if a peach still looks like a peach when I eat it. I actually prefer that. But I have come to the conclusion that plants follow that rule themselves pretty closely.

If you put a pile of manure on a plant bed, it just sits there. The plants don't want it in that form (can you really blame them?). They want it broken down and reduced to forms they like. That's where the bugs and the worms and the bacteria all come in. They break down the manure and the waste materials into their component parts, add things to make it better, and then leave it for the plants to use. It's a great system, but it takes time.

We mimic and encourage this system with our compost piles. Here we pile up our grass clippings and plant waste and manures and kitchen scraps and then let them sit for a year or so while Nature takes its course. We keep it moist so it can work and we turn it periodically so it can breathe, but mostly we don't even think about it until we need to pile up some more waste.

I don't have the luxury of having a space that I can dedicate to the annual decomposition of materials so I have to make sure that I can keep my pile small and speed up the process. To do that, I "borrowed" some ideas from some commercial products and built a compost tumbler for myself.

Finished compost tumbler in its own stand.

We started with a 55-gallon barrel that at one time had held smoke flavoring for food products. We hosed it out a few times (didn't help, still smelled like smoke) and cut the top off.

By inverting the top, we were able to get a very good fit between the top and the sides of the barrel. It seems that the lid has a deep groove around it that just fits the sides, making me wonder if that was planned by some re-use engineer or if it "just happened that way."

The lid fits quite snugly.

We cut a hole in the center of the bottom for an aeration system. This is a 4" ABS plumbing pipe with a series of 1/2" holes up and down the shaft. Two screw-on adapters securely fasten it to the bottom of the barrel, one on the inside that is screwed to the one on the outside. We put a cap on the other end, and drilled a hole in it.

Standard plumbing components for the air system. If I were to
do it again, I would use a toilet flange instead and save a
couple of dollars in attaching the air pipe.

The axle is a pipe inside another pipe. The theory is that the outside pipe will act as the bearing on the axle so that the holes in the side of the barrel don't get bigger with age and movement.

The lid is currently held on with a ratcheting strap, but will soon be changed to some truck bungees as soon as I get them. It's worked fine all summer so far, and I don't seem to be in a rush to find the bungees.

Here's how it works. When the grass gets cut, the clippings get dumped into the barrel. Some water gets added and it is given a couple of turns which tumble all the stuff inside. Same thing when we add kitchen scraps, garden trimmings, shredded paper, manure, etc.  I haven't kept track of everything that we've thrown in there, but we have certainly put more than 55 gallons of stuff into it. I would estimate that we have put at least 600 gallons of material into it. I'll bet we would have had a pile the size of a small car with everything we've put into it. It just keeps shrinking the stuff down into really great compost.

It gets pretty hot inside there, obviously the bacteria are getting enough food, water and oxygen, and it has never stunk. It gets hot enough that the sides of the plastic barrel, normally quite rigid and firm, are soft and somewhat pliable. I think it gets hot enough to cook any smelly stuff because there is no smell. Not only that, there is only a slight aroma of smoke when you lift the lid. Certainly nothing like it was before. And the materials get converted in a matter of a few weeks, rather than months.

Here you can see the air pipe. Proper oxygenation is important
so that you keep you compost process aerobic. Anaerobic decomposition
stinks. Makes for bad farming neighbors.

I've only emptied it once so far. The strap slipped and the lid came of during one of it's tumbles (Of course it was while it was upside down. When else would it have happened?). So I took that opportunity to sift it through my 1/4" sifter and put the rest back inside to continue cooking. I had about 10 gallons of great smelling, black, rich compost to top feed my garden beds. (Soil amendment is almost a religion in the desert. At least you have to do it faithfully.)

It's amazing to me how much this thing can eat. 6 months of grass clippings, all the kitchen scraps my worms can't eat, all the plant waste from the spring garden and lots of tomato plant trimmings, several bags of shredded paper, and several 5-gallon buckets of horse nuggets. Although it fills up when we add the grass clippings, by the next time we need to add stuff to it, there seems to be plenty of room. It's like the black hole of the garden. It has worked so well this year that we are actually planning on building another one this fall to double the amount of stuff we can compost, although I'm not sure where we'll get the waste materials to put into it.

Recently, my son-in-law was eyeing the neighbor's grass, suggesting that we offer to cut his lawn for him in exchange for his clippings.

Come to think of it, it is looking pretty shaggy over there....

Beans, Beans, The Magical Fruit....

The more you grow, the more you begin to really like these things.

I know that doesn't exactly follow the old ditty, but it's close enough for my taste.

Earlier this summer, I had finished the lettuce harvest and needed another crop to sow in that bed. My grandson was out there with me, helping to turn and rake and supplement. When we got done with that, he asked me what we were going to plant in it. I guess it seemed the most logical thing in the world to him. We had just prepared a garden bed and now he wanted to know what we were going to plant. I didn't know. I hadn't thought that far ahead. The lettuce succumbed to the heat sooner than I thought it would and I wasn't ready for my fall garden yet.

I scrambled a bit and as I was walking into the pantry, I noticed a bag of beans on the shelf. Pinto beans. Next to them were some white beans, then some Navy beans (smaller white beans). In the freezer were some black-eyed beans that I had grown last year. I don't know how they got into the freezer, I don't freeze my seeds. I grabbed all of these and went back out to the garden.

I showed him how to broadcast them and get a nice even distribution. I didn't plant these with a lot of faith that they would grow. These were store-bought pintos intended to be eaten, not grown. The white beans we had dry-packed nearly 10 years ago intending to eat them. And the black-eyed beans had been in the freezer for who-knows-how-long? But, we sowed and then blanketed them with a mulch of straw. I showed my grandson how to water them and set him to it.

Amazing how much effort is displayed here. The seed halves have
not fallen off yet, and it has pushed up through two or three inches of straw.

He watered them every day as instructed. I checked the soil every evening after work. It was always moist and warm, two good things for germinating seeds. After a few days, I noticed an wonderful thing. Strong beans pushing up through the mulch.

First one, then two, the three hundred.

These guys just kept popping up day after day. I noticed a few one morning, then dozens the next, then too many to count on the next. It was magical.

A new neighborhood overnight.

The true leaves started to unfold and grow and the straw began to disappear. It went from a calm sea of yellow-brown straw to undulating waves of bright green leaves in the course of a week.

About two to three weeks after planting. A foot+ tall and no sign of the straw mulch.

Then the flowers came. Beans have weird flowers. They are flat and smooth and not really very pretty unless you consider their purpose. Then they split and the beans start to appear.

The beans a-bloomin'

These are strong plants, in spite of the fact that they are growing at about twice the "advised" density that the garden manuals say. I guess they like living that close together. Kind of like living in a city.

Look closely, you can see the bumps inside the pod.

My grandson got to show off his bit of the garden recently when his other grandparents came to visit. He proudly led them out to the garden to show them all the green stuff. He talked about planting them and watering them. If he had had any buttons on his t-shirt, I'm sure they would have popped off. His grandparents were duly impressed with his work.

The pods push the flower petal up and off. These grew in about 12 hours from flower to pod.

My daughter had the coolest comment about them. She used the same comment on my tomatoes earlier this year and it has become the standard comment about the plants in the garden. She said they were happy beans. Seeing the growth and the lushness of the plants, the flowers and the abundance of the pods, I'm inclined to agree. They must be happy.

And they're not the only ones.

Over the Fence, or, in My Case, The Wall

I live in Las Vegas and we don't have lot of fences that separate our homes from our neighbors. We have ugly gray cinder-block walls. They help with the wind we have here, last nearly forever, require absolutely no maintenance (except to over-paint the occasional graffiti artists' latest works) and divide us further from our neighbors.

My neighborhood is no exception. Since my subdivision is built on an alluvial fan of rock and sand debris from the nearby hill, my neighbor to the east is 3 feet higher than I am and my neighbor to the west is 4 feet lower than I am. It gets worse. My neighbor to the north, the one directly behind me, is 16 feet higher than I am. This is what gave me the berms where we built my garden beds.

The garden beds when they were first built. The one on the right is 2-feet wide, all three on the back are 3-feet wide.

These walls give us a sense of permanence and a feeling of isolation. I'm not a big fan of them at all. They hold heat in the summer and radiate it back to you at night. Not fun. (Kinda OK in the winter because it gives you more frost protection, creates an warmer micro-climate and assists in year-round growing.)

Recently, I was chatting over the wall to one of my neighbors about gardening and fruit trees and such and happened to causally mention what I've got growing and what my plans were for the fall seasons' gardens. I also happened to mention that I was thinking about raising garlic this fall. We talked about putting in some pomegranate bushes and he said that he was visiting his family in a rural town north of us and he would bring me back some cuttings.

The next day when I got home, my kids said that my neighbor had stopped by and brought some things. I expected to find some cuttings to root but he had brought some pomegranate jelly he made last year and a big bag of locally grown garlic bulbs. Nearly 5 pounds of garlic!

A most fragrant and wonderful gift!

I am so excited. I have been given nearly all of the garlic I will need to plant this fall. And since it has been locally grown, it has adapted to our climate and knows what to expect. Some of these bulbs are softball sized, nearly the size of elephant garlic. I'm not sure of the variety; looks like a porcelain soft-necked variety, but no matter. I'm very excited.

I can't wait for my sweet corn to ripen so I can return the favor.

Our block walls may keep out a lot of things, dust, wind, the neighbor's dogs, but they don't stop kindness and generosity.

Now, isn't that a great by-product of Stealth Farming?

I'm Not In It For The Money

I'm in it in spite of the money.

My wonderful wife and I have an ongoing debate about gardening and the whole stealth farming concept. We each take a different position on the subject of the cost of gardening. We each have what I consider to be very valid points and concerns. We each have considered our positions and feel that we are right. I see her points and understand them to be valid concerns. This is one of those issues where I'm right and she's...right, too. We're both right from our individual perspectives.

The idea that is the issue in the debate is whether or not it is cost-effective to have a garden. My wife looks at the cost of the seeds, paying for the city water, the time expense and the tools and supplies it takes to be effective gardeners in a harsh and unforgiving environment. (And it is hard to grow things here in the desert. When I lived in Missouri, you only had to have a thought of a seed and the dang thing would start to grow. You didn't have to coax them to grow, they just did. Not here, but I digress.)

My contention is that very little cost has gone into the garden for the yield it has produced. I harvest pounds of tomatoes for pennies of cost. A dollar for a pack of radish seeds yields literally $20 worth of radishes. Some sunflower seeds that I harvested from one of last year's sunflowers produces pounds of sunflower seeds to roast and eat, without buying another packet of sunflower seeds. I just planted another dozen sunflowers for fall from previously harvested seeds. That could potentially yield several pounds of seed yet again.

I save money by composting manure that I obtain for free. I met a great guy who has given me two full pickup truck loads. He even loads it into my truck for me. All I have to do is haul it into the back yard and set up the composting process. How much would that cost me?

I save money by using free straw that I got from an ad on CraigsList. This saves money on water by holding the moisture in the ground until the plants can use it. It also keeps the summer sun from baking the life out of the soil. The soil is 15 to 20 degrees cooler when it is shaded by the straw.  (How many of you have to worry about your soil being too warm?) After the crops are harvested, the straw becomes part of the soil, further extending its usefulness and getting another use for no cost.

I harvest seeds from peppers that I like, from tomatoes and tomatillos that are tasty, and I don't have to buy them. I use beans from the grocery store instead of the seed store. So far, the yield has been as good as the "seed" beans for far less cost. A pound of white beans or pinto beans or black beans costs much less at my neighborhood store than a pound from the seed companies.

With all those things in mind, I have spent quite a bit on soaker hoses, PVC plumbing parts, timers, way too many seeds for one year at a time, and I have to pay for the water I use. I don't have a well, a stream on my property and I can't harvest rainwater because it almost never rains here. That adds to what I have to pay for my garden. And I do spend a lot of time watering, weeding, planting, sifting compost, making worm food, tilling the soil and just looking at my plants. Time is the greatest cost.

Do I grow $20 tomatoes? Not yet, but I'm close. Would it be cheaper to buy the food from the market than to try to grow it at home? Without question. And it would be a whole lot less work, too. Plus I would save time.

But it wouldn't taste as good, be as fresh, provide me with good, healthy exercise, nor would it teach me as much as it has. What I have learned about the universe, about people, about nature and about myself by gardening has been far richer and much more beneficial than I would have expected. What I have enjoyed by sharing these experiences with my family have been my greatest gardening harvests. I don't think I could have had those successes any other way. And I'm certainly not done. I have many more goals to reach.

Money is cheap. I don't believe that I'll take it with me when I die. I do believe that I'll take the memories, the lessons learned and the deep and abiding appreciation for this wonderful life and its experiences with me when I die. To me, those are priceless and well worth the time, effort and treasure that they have cost me.