This piece talks about the gardening I'll be doing this growing season.
I low-key biffed my Vernal Equinox plans; I didn't do most of the ritual stuff I planned to and didn't photograph the ritual feast my partner and I had (it was, however, very good). I also ordered some more seeds and decided to put off my blessing ritual until they all got here. I'll hopefully be doing that tomorrow, weather permitting.
I think what I'll do is put all the seeds in my harvest basket and bless them over the smoke created by the remains of a cornstalk that I grew last year, sort of a connection between this planting and last year's harvest, which I could continue doing year after year.
This year I'll be attempting to grow a lot of plants and because of that I'll be working a lot with plant spirits. I use a lot of exercises found in Lupa's Plant and Fungus Totems. My plans are a nice mix of very easy to grow, highly fruitful plants for food and annoyingly complicated plants that are for spiritual, non-food, or luxury purposes.
I am taking what I learned from the past growing season and growing Three Sisters Gardens again. This worked fantastically last year and I got a lot of food out of it. It's worth mentioning that I have strong questions regarding whether this is appropriate or appropriative... I had been avoiding going that route and then was told in no uncertain terms that the way we grow corn is disrespectful because it was designed to be grown with beans and squash.
I tried to go with very old varieties for these beds... there will be likely four Three Sisters beds. All will have the same variety of corn (Hopi Turquoise) and then vary on the beans and squash. I'm thinking two of the beds will have Cave Beans (an old dry bean) and the other two will have some sort of fresh green bean. One of the beds will have watermelon instead of squash (Art Combe's Ancient Watermelon; the history is dubious and it's unclear if this is a true watermelon that is being misrepresented or a North American watermelon look-alike). One will have Gete Okosomin, one will have a zucchini with a name I'm not remembering right now, and the other will have a small butternut squash variety. I'll throw in some cucumbers too.
I've allotted a part of the garden to growing broom corn/sorghum so that I can make a fancy ritual besom using the broom making instructions in the latest issue of Mother Earth News.
I cleared out the old tomato stems and leaves from my bed to compost... the area I grow tomatoes in I'm planning on trellising because the tomatoes keep reseeding themselves and coming back every year into a big unwieldy bush. I have some new tomato varieties, one closer to a wild tomato and the other a larger tomato, that I'll add to the bush patch. I'll also be planting jalapeno peppers and some other similar plants in that area, and a bunch of carrots which I hear really love growing with tomatoes.
I have cabbage and lettuce seeds but haven't fully worked out where they're going. I will probably wind up putting them in containers.
Some plants I grew in the past or that came with the house that will come back are Walking Onions (Egyptian Onion), rhubarb, Concord grapes, raspberries, apples, and cherries.
I'm bad at growing herbs from seeds but I'm going to give it another go this year, mostly with sage.
Finally there are some "luxury plants" I'll be trying to grow. Part of it is because I have a heavy self-sufficiency/prepper mindset, but a lot of it is just... fun I think I mentioned that in my ecological pessimism piece, right? I'll be growing tobacco and already have tea and coffee growing. I probably won't this year because I'm already seeded out but someday I may also try growing luffa... to make sponges and stuff.
My roommate also created a new garden bed. I know they'll be planting garlic but I'm unsure what else they'll be planting there.
