The Raven's Roost

"I think you are another of these desert-loving English: Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing." - Alec Guinness as Prince Feisal, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962

It's about the time of year that I start on gardening again. I feel like sort of a failure because the last few years have been low yields and more fails than wins, but then I remind myself that this is a learning process. I learned about gardening from my parents growing up, but a garden in East Tennessee is a very different thing from a garden in Zone 9B - different pests, different diseases, and WAY different climate.

So I'm planning this year a little differently, too. I intend to play to North Florida's strengths rather than fight for what I think I ought to be growing. What do they grow a lot of around here that I like? Cabbage and potatoes, for one thing. Well, that's two things, technically. Anyway, some potato trimmings I composted started putting off vines, though this was before the freezes. So I know that's doable. I've also had success with some beans I tried last summer, so I know black beans will grow, and that's something I definitely like to eat. I'm considering dedicating an entire bed to bean plants. And of course, the Seminole pumpkins, herbs, and peppers.

I've never had good luck with summer squashes, though winter squashes seem to do well. Something was going after my pumpkins late last year so I'm looking at putting down some sort of broad-spectrum pest control before I do much of anything, and I'll need to stay on top of treating the plants. I do all of this as much from the "natural and organic" side as I can but if shit gets bad enough, I'm not above using Sevin Dust.

I also may discuss upgrading my dehydrator game with Fox - considering how easily I can grow herbs it would be worth my while to plant an entire bed of those and dry them. Some different kinds of basil, some cilantro, and oregano would cover the things I use most often when I cook, and several hot pepper plants will easily provide me with fresh peppers for stir-fry and sauce making, as well as extras for drying and grinding.

We're also going to aggressively prune the citrus trees back and acquire one more - probably a Persian lime. The calamondin has apparently decided to grow sideways, so I'm going to build a wooden framework to help train it up and make it more like a tree and less like "what the hell is that thing doing." And the avocado sapling has survived thus far and we'll look at transplanting it. Fox doesn't like avocados but I do, and if I end up with a surplus, then it's "leave avocados on your neighbor's porch" time.

Depending on how the black beans do I may look at growing some more unusual heritage varieties, like cranberry or Jacob's cattle. I sometimes see those in the store but not as often. I think chickpeas would also do well here, but I'll need to read up/experiment.

 I rescued some plants from Home Depot today - hooray for discount racks, right? The poor things just need some water and TLC, and they were cheap. I got serrano and habanero peppers, some flowers, a couple of basils, and a catnip. Once I got home I put everything on a corner of the deck that will stay shady the rest of the day, watered them all thoroughly, and I'll look at transplanting them tomorrow. 

Notice I said I got a catnip plant. You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that later in the afternoon I opened the front door and surprised my neighbor's cat, Jupiter, enjoying the catnip - even in its dilapidated state! She ran off, but just to go hide under the truck so I'm pretty sure she'll be back. I was planning to put the nip in a pot rather than in the garden, since it's a kind of mint and mints are very hardy and can spread when they get happy, and I'd like to keep it somewhat confined. I think it'll be okay, unless I start finding random cats hanging out on my deck, listening to New Riders of the Purple Sage and talking about how life is like, weird, man.

Speaking of plants, not to jinx it or anything but I have something sprouting. Back over Christmas we went to Orlando to hang out with Fox's parents, and on a walk around the neighborhood they showed me this palm that grows all over in garden beds outside offices and everything. It was dropping bright orange seed pods and they mentioned they'd never gotten one to grow, so I took some seeds to see if I could do anything with them. A little Google-foo revealed these to be Coontie Palm seeds (yes, that's the real name) and there's a specific procedure for making them sprout. So I dried them, scraped off the orange hull, planted them, and abso-fucking-lutely nothing happened.

Unnnnnntil NOW. One's put out a sort of fiddlehead sprout after weeks of neglect. I was watering and pampering them but I started to suspect a native Florida plant might thrive on adversity, so I just started ignoring them. If it actually starts growing into a palm, it will likely end up in the front circle. Coonties seem to be low-growing bush-like plants and I suspect when it's old enough to produce seeds it may very slowly self-sow.

It's 93 outside right now. I don't care what the calendar says - it's summer.