Gardening and growing your own food is not always easy. Sometimes unforeseen things happen. I have been waiting for six or so months to eat salad rocket (Eruca sativa) just to see my whole crop be infected with White Rust. What a shame and what a waste. Speaking of waste, why do we see some things in the garden as "waste" and not as a resource? Strange.
In this HiveGarden Journal post, I muse about my lost crop of salad rocket, how I try to use everything from the garden more productively, and at the end of the day, we should just enjoy what the garden gives us. Flowers can make the day seem so much more beautiful.
The Reality of Gardening: Pests and Ruined Expectations
Salad rocket (Eruca sativa) does not want to grow nicely in the summer where I live. It bolts (goes to seed) and does not grow leaves. I always sow some seeds in late summer or early autumn. But this is kind of paradoxical as I never really like to eat salad in the winter. Sad, but it is true. A hearty soup is much better to warm you up than a bowl of cold salad. Alas, here I am each year trying to grow salad rocket even though I mainly use it like spinach.
But every odd year, White Rust Fungus attacks some of my rocket plants and it is never nice to see it resurface.
There is apparently no way to treat the infected plants, but the main thing one can do is to rotate crops and to get rid of the infected plants. I always compost them. (Have you ever successfully treated plants that got infected with this fungus?) What a sad day. Luckily, I allow a lot of the salad rocket to self-sow throughout my garden and the isolated plants do much better. This is more a hypothesis, but for some reason when I plant too many of the rocket close to each other this fungus appears. The self-sowed ones rarely get this fungus. Maybe that says something: let the plants grow where they want to grow.
I always feel sad when I see the plants that I want to use in my food get sick. It feels like a waste of food, even though I compost them. I feel even sadder when I see all the missed opportunities of salads and pasta dishes I could make. Such is life I guess. Even more so when you do not use any fertilizer nor herbicide or pesticides.
Talking About Waste: Burning Plants for Heat
When you garden, not everything can be composted. Some things like palm fronds do not want to turn into compost even if you break them down into smaller pieces. Since discovering their potential as "fuel", I have not even allowed this "indestructible" so-called waste to be labled as waste.
It is funny how our language sometimes structure our world. We see things as "waste", yet this so-called waste can be a valuable resource. Rather than buying "fire starters" that need to be made, use what your garden already gives you to start the fire! Palm fronds are amazing to light a fire and I have been using them for years now to start my fire.
But yesterday I tried to make some soup on the fire using just garden "waste" that I cannot use in the compost.
Even though there is a bit of smoke, the smokey element in a smoked-style soup works great. Plus, I use all of the ash, and if there are some "charcoal" pieces, in the compost. Essentially then, I take something I cannot really use in the compost and burn it as fuel, heating my pots, and then only use it in the compost. In the end, it can be composted!
The garden provides us with so much material. If we just utilize it all and put it back in the soil, we can feed the soil to give us even more.
If we spend other resources, like petrol, to get rid of the "waste", we spend twice as much as we need to. If we use gas to heat our pots, we spend a fuel yet again.
If we can get some other resource that is so-called waste, we elemenate two additional problems with this single problem.
I know this is somewhat utopian thinking, but our minds (at least here where I live) is so set and stuck in certain ways of thinking that people will look at you funny if you just think about questioning the status quo. We burn wood to "braai" (similar to BBQ) and nothing else. But no one has ever tried to "braai" with palm fronds! That said, you cannot get a sustained bed of coals from them, but if you cook your steak medium-rare or in that ballpark, a bed of "palm frond coals" has enough heat to cook a steak. Alas, I am a mad philosopher amongst my friends!
Tieing Knots: Fuel or Madness?
My friends look at me like I lost my mind. Yes! I tell them, you can burn this and cook with the heat. I also heat my pizza oven with it! What a deal.
They remain unconvinced.
But in any case, I spend my days thinking philosophical thoughts whilst I tie knots around bunched-up stalks of dead plants that regrow each year.
New plants have already emerged. I add compost that I made with the leaves and ashes of the stalks. Circularity in the garden is amazing when you ponder about it.
With Madness or a Creative Mind We Ponder the Flowers
In the end, gardening is all about the yellow flowers that brighten your day. For me at least. It is when you walk past the rosemary and lavender bushes and the smell hits your nose. It is when you hear the insects and birds. It is about the bigger picture that is being unfolded in front of you. You are merely a spectator or a contributing-spectator. You add some compost here, cut down something there, or shovel out some deep routed invader plant. Yet, the amount of control you have is so little. You can just do your bit and view the play unfolding in front of you.
At the end of the day, you have yellow flowers in your garden. You should merely look and appreciate.
Postscriptum, or There is a Mushroom on My Lawn!
The sun is shining but it is so cold. The winter is here in sunny South Africa. I hope you enjoyed this HiveGarden Journal post. All of the photographs are my own taken with my iPhone. The musings are also my own. Happy gardening, stay safe, and appreciate the flowers!