Artichokes, or gardening from the ground up
Friends! I have a great guest post for you today. Benjamin and his sister took one of my classes last year and after a successful gardening year, he gave me an update on how things were going, and growing, in his garden. I invited him to write a guest post for me and I’m thrilled that he said yes! Take it away, Benjamin!
This year's garden saw a HUGE expansion for me. I added 3, one hundred gallon fabric containers that are pretty much raised garden beds. That makes my total now; 5 one hundred gallon, a few 30 and 40 gallon containers and well over a dozen 15, 10, and 5 gallon containers. I also have a smattering of other planters growing a variety of my green friends.
I started out about 5 or 6 years ago before the pandemic. Let me tell you, that REALLY got me motivated to study and expand in earnest. My first projects were just learning with herbs and succulents. I added some simple but rewarding flowers to the mix like zinnias, sunflowers, love-lies-bleeding and others. I initially just wanted to encourage pollinators to visit my garden but quickly fell in love with the aesthetics the flowers added to my living space. My new addiction was sealed when I discovered a fascination with my hovering little hummingbird friends that would investigate me curiously as they made their rounds, playfully squeaking while chasing each other around my garden.
When the pandemic hit and my joyful little hobby took a more serious turn, I spent every ounce of my AUDistic talent for deep diving into special interests in agriculture, horticulture, and botany. The following years were spent absolutely inhaling and absorbing all the knowledge I could about my growing hobby. I studied botany books, interviews and articles interviewing "old timers" with years of practical wisdom. I began to formulate real goal oriented projects for the first time. My initial goal was investigating and experimenting with edible perennial plants, which I now have a plethora of examples growing in my garden.
I studied how ancient cultures and indigenous tribes survived. Methods of soil building like Terra petra and mimicking the silt deposits of the fertile nile delta. I've since incorporated those tactics into my soil building. I looked into what plants I could cultivate that have been historically important and impactful. My journeys took me into past events that put a whole new perspective on how powerful this knowledge could be. For instance, when the indigenous peoples of the Americas were besieged with foreign explorers and conquerors, I learned that the Spanish conquistadors actually outlawed the growth of the Amaranth plant, in large part because it made the people too independent and self reliant to be sufficiently controlled, but also because it held a significant cultural and spiritual importance, which the invaders of the "new" world that was in fact very ancient and untouched, wanted to tame and vanquish, both the people AND the plants. I was aware until that point just how poignant of a political statement simply growing a pretty flower had the potential to be.
Despite my reluctance to embrace any romanticism of colonialism, I do find the pioneer spirit of the likes of wanderers such as Louis and Clark to be an exhilarating adventure to learn about and learn FROM. I discovered several native plants that without having been there for those weary adventurers, the trek across the vast wilderness of this once wild continent would have been cut short time and time again. A couple of examples are Paw Paw fruit trees and sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes).
That following season I bought 4 small tubers of these incredible plants, which the following harvest alone yielded half of a 5 gallon bucket worth of them starting from just those 4 tubers! Now, what must be about 4 years later, I've reinvested each year's harvest back into the soil and they take up residence of 2 of my hundred gallon containers and some others which I will be expanding into another 100 gallon container later next month! These lovely little irregular tubers are a powerhouse of sustainability and versatility. They require little, if any, care or knowledge in order to grow. They can actually become quite invasive if not planned for properly. Which, to me, is a great quality in a survivalist garden. In the past they've actually been called, "The Army Feeder", for the many positive attributes their plant profile contains. Not only can they be eaten raw, as well as prepared in any way that a potato can be, if you ferment or pickle them, the healthy, (carb conscious), starch in them called Inulin, converts from a prebiotic into a probiotic, offering a tremendous shelf stable and gut healthy staple food. The drawback of this particular unique attribute is that this prebiotic, inulin, breaks down in the large intestine, similarly to beans. We all know what beans are infamous for. However, when pickled, this "musical fruit"quality is dramatically toned down, making it much easier to digest and resulting in a less offensive digestive experience. It still takes some time to get used to, especially if someone is used to the "meme" version of what commonly passes for "food" these days.
However, with that said, I'd be willing to bet it wasn't a choice for people like Lewis and Clark to turn their nose up at this food source because they found the results of digestion rude or distasteful.
Another unfortunate quality of sunchokes, particularly for our, "just in time", food delivery system, is their incredibly short shelf life which is a major drawback for making them a more commercially available product. They need to be buried to thrive. Therefore, shipping and storing them isn't an economical venture for farmers or grocers. You can find them in farmers markets, online and in the wild, but not in stores. You will also never find sunchoke seeds for sale which I will get into shortly. This means the plant stays fairly local and largely unknown and ignored by the majority of the population.
So, now that I have inundated you with really just one portion of my many other projects. I have a particularly interesting project in mind for this coming season that I would like to share before I conclude my novella.
I've been studying Jerusalem artichoke's biological makeup for a few years now. In a way they could be compared to certain plants like blue berries or Paw Paws that are not "self fertile", only in the case of Jerusalem artichokes they go beyond not being self fertile and actually require a completely different variety. They will not pollinate well with their own genome type. This highlights perhaps why sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) have a notorious reputation for infertility. This attribute is made up for in spades with their ability to clone from the tiniest sliver of tuber. I am a member of an international farmers program for experimentation and conservation. One of the projects I have taken part in was to attempt to cultivate the Queensland arrowroot. With enough repetitive trial and error, the hopes are to eventually develop viable seeds to make a similar development for the Queensland arrow root. I no longer take part in that program due to my love of Canna lilies, which the arrowroot is a variety of. It has edible tubers. Unfortunately there is the likelihood of them crossing with the flowers I love to grow and spoiling my results for the project. I have very much considered the uphill battle I'm taking on attempting hybridization of sunchokes. I consider it a playful back and forth with mother nature. Perhaps she will bless me and share secrets of her majesty that have yet to be unfolded and revealed to the world before I came along and told her a love story about my adoration for her that will take the rest of my life to tell. A story not with words but actions and many drops of blood, sweat, and tears on her soil. Hopefully there will be more tears of joy than anything else, but failure is a vital step to ultimate success. We shall see whether my tears that salt her earth are of comedy or tragedy as the chapters of the book if my life turn. I look forward to the challenge whether I am successful or not. I will pass down my legacy to my niece and anyone else that I am blessed to inspire in my lifetime.
About the author: Benjamin is in the process of taking steps towards entering an interfaith, multi-religion seminary masters program to become a chaplain. He hopes to go on afterwards into a PhD program to become a Dr of divinity and author some books on his spiritual studies and memoirs of his time as a hospice nurse. His goal after becoming a chaplain is to work as an end of life transition doula and also obtain his certification in horticulture therapy at the UT agriculture department. Look for more from Benjamin in the future!
‘til next time
-k
xoxo
