Families with food gardens will be celebrating in gleeful gratitude this holiday weekend. The past magical growing season has delivered lavishly bountiful harvests. It鈥檚 almost as though the unusually long and uninterrupted, hot and dry growing season last year pumped mammoth amounts of energy into plants and soil, resulting in exuberantly abundant food production in this more moderate summer.
Emails of recent weeks and months have expressed wonder at the productivity of family gardens on the Island. One avid Cowichan Valley gardener described long days of canning to preserve the exceptional bounty of her food garden and provide winter food for the family.
In my own garden, I gathered extraordinary harvests of peas and blueberries, figs, plums and apples 鈥� favourite home-grown foods in my house.
Toward the end of the fig picking in August, I happened to mention to Bea, who, with her husband Dirk, raises heritage pork, chickens, oats and ancient grains on听a nearby farm, how I had spent a long afternoon climbing up and down an orchard ladder gathering ripe figs.
Bea instantly picked up on the 鈥渇ig鈥� bit 鈥� 鈥淒irk鈥檚 favourite thing!鈥� The next day I听brought some of the last figs to the farm, along with some Italian prune plums. Dirk was thrilled with the tree-ripened, soft and juicy figs, exactly like the ones he remembers eating in Italy. They are almost impossible to find for sale in that condition. Fully ripe figs do not transport well.
Our local farmers carry a heavy work load. In view of this reality, imagine my surprise at the delivery of a plum cake Bea had made 鈥� an unexpected, delicious expression of gratitude.
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The winter pantry. The freezer is filled with strawberries and blueberries, dried fig halves, plums, apple sauce and minted peas. In the fall and winter 鈥減antry鈥� (the open garden) are beets, carrots and parsnips, leeks, cabbage, brussels sprouts, endive, lettuce and radicchio.
I鈥檝e left rows of potatoes in the garden as well, to dig during the winter. They鈥檙e mulched with shavings as markers and also as insulation. I鈥檝e noticed freshly dug potatoes being sold at my local winter farmers鈥� market in recent years, and often in the spring I鈥檝e dug up perfectly preserved potatoes that were missed in the fall digging.
Why expend energy on digging and storing when the tubers will keep in far better condition, and longer, in the ground? If a severe frost is expected, the planting can be covered temporarily with horticultural fleece or some other insulating material.
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Life-supporting insects. As friends and family gather to give thanks this weekend, direct a portion of the gratitude to bees 鈥� our life preservers.
The soft droning of bees has always had听a soothing effect on me. From their earliest visitations in winter-flowering heathers and snow crocus to their concentrated massing in rhododendrons and reverberations within dropping foxglove bells, their presence invokes an instinctive knowing that these insects represent life, hope, and things as they should be in the natural world.
Victory Gardens for Bees (Douglas & McIntyre, 2016) begins with this: 鈥淓nvision a world without bees. A world where 80 per cent of flowers fade away. Where three-quarters of food crops vapourize. Where not a single bee thrums, apple trees stand bare, almonds and avocados are extinct, cherries and blueberries only dim recollections from days gone by.鈥�
Now, the author notes, global warming and changing weather patterns, habitat loss, parasites and pesticides are all leading to a 鈥渂eepocalypse鈥� that we can help to听avert by creating plantings that provide flowers rich in pollen and nectar and by keeping our gardens clear of potentially toxic materials.
Through the summer, bees are active in all sorts of flowers. Most recently, their humming drew me to a group of border sedums, a favourite late summer and early autumn bee flower. As ever, their diligent work was reassuring.
As you plan your 2017 open and container gardens, consider the bees. Victory Gardens for Bees provides profiles of bee species and at-a-glance charts to the best bee-sustaining plants.
May this weekend, and all your days, be听infused with gratitude.
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GARDEN EVENTS
VIRAGS meeting. The Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Garden Society meets Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in Gordon Head United Church, 4201 Tyndall Ave. in Saanich. The meeting will feature a presentation of photos submitted by VIRAGS members.
