Cilantro Cover Crop

Cilantro makes a great winter cover crop in our lush nook of the maritime Pacific Northwest, where the winters are mild, and the coffee is strong. Last Fall we tried four different sowings, starting early and ending in late november.

We bought coriander seed in bulk at our local food co-op, so that we could afford to sow it thickly. The cilantro kept the weeds suppressed until spring when we ended up weeding the beds when they had overtaken our crop. We could have weeded earlier, but pulling weeds when wet winters tends to get soil on the leaves, and our weeders are less likely to work in the damp and cold.

Most of the winter we harvested our cilantro with scissors when it was not much taller than three inches. As the winter turned darker and colder, we harvested shorter and shorter plants, until we were down to the nubbins. (By the way smaller, younger plants are more resistant to cold damage.) Our weed infestation was an unintended consequence of clear-cutting our cilantro crop.

We will yank out the cilantro whenever we need the space for another crop, but we’ll leave a patch to flower and go to seed. You can eat the flowers, and the seeds while they are still green. Harvest the seeds when they are still green for drying.

The flowers attract a prodigious number of pollinators; the air literally vibrates with their hum as they suck the nectar from countless tiny florets. Most insects that are predators of other insects spend a portion of their life sipping nectar. Attracting a wide range of pollinators is important component of a healthy ecosystem in the vegetable garden.

Best of all cilantro doesn’t fix nitrogen. When it comes to cover crops, most gardeners have a nitrogen fixation. Using cover crops to add nitrogen is a good idea for large scale agriculture, but it makes less sense in home garden. Most home gardeners can get more nitrogen they can use. by saving their pee, diluting it ten to one and applying it as a liquid fertilizer. It’s odor-free and sterile unless you let it sit around and ferment. During WWII they used it to clean wounds in England.

The real purpose of cover crops is to maximize the production of organic matter in your garden, and to keep weeds down by filling in the empty spaces. Cilantro can also perform this function as weed in your garden. Let a small patch go to seed, save some for next year, and spread the rest around to become one of next year’s weeds.

Watts Towers

click the photos to enlarge

Pilgrimage to the Watts Towers


The first time I heard of Simon Rodia’s towers in Watts was from my friend and mentor, Niels Holms. Niels was a great admirer of Rodia, along with Gaudi and Hundertwasser - artist builders who thought outside of the box imposed by the Industrial Age obsession with rectangles and squares.


Rectilinear shapes generally require less effort, time and creativity to make than curved shapes; and they are easier to duplicate - a necessary feature of mass production. Our building system based on interchangeable parts: eight foot 2’’X4’’s and 4’X8’ sheets of plywood, and so we have impoverished our lives for the sake of greater efficiency.


Niels was one of those people who believed that box-shaped structures are unnatural. They imprison the inhabitants, and kill the soulfulness of the creative process. He believed that our buildings should imitate the shapes we find in nature - so that we can be at home in the natural world, rather than partitioned off from it.



Watts Towers Behind Bars

Whenever I visit neighborhoods with bars on the windows I wonder who’s imprisoned the people who live behind the bars, or the world that needs bars on windows.

It saddens me to see the Towers behind bars, though I understand the need to protect the artwork from the inevitable vandalism of the dispossessed. Watts is infamous for Its dispossessed and the riots of 1965.

I understand the liabilities of careless climbers - the Towers look like a cross between a cathedral to an unknown god and an oversized jungle gym - perfectly proportioned for a climb to the heaven of your choice.

All the same, I can’t help feeling that the bars are meant to keep the Towers from escaping into the neighborhood. If there is any place that could use a more curvaceous architecture, it would be Watts, where mostly what you see are long rows of tiny box-like houses, unbroken by trees or shrubs.

Watts is one of the epicenters of a new kind of slavery that grips the land - a slavery so subtle that we never realize our own shackles, until one morning when we wake, and discover all of the straight lines separating us from the natural world, all of the possessions that chain us to exploitative jobs, the siren’s song of popular culture that lull us into a false sense of complacency and stifle our creative urges. 

Restoration

Efforts to preserve Rodia's Towers are funded by a grant from LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A great effort is made to respect the authenticity of the original art work - to recreate it as it was. To reproduce Rodia's concrete mix and the artifacts he used for his masterpiece.

The Towers have become Art History, and are no longer a living sculpture. I see a huge divergence between the images of Rodia climbing his structure with his bucket of concrete mix and pocket full of tools, and the pictures of modern workers in risk-reducing lifts.

Rodia worked without a safety net, unpaid, after work, without the strings of large grants, using materials that were cheap and readily at hand.

Our Lady of the Roses

Across the street from the Towers, behind more bars, is a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Buried in my darker memories of growing up Catholic are the May Day celebrations, with girls in their pretty dresses, the statue of Mary garlanded in tiny flowers, and the beautiful songs we sang in procession.

I had forgotten these springtime interludes of joy in what was otherwise a cult of death. In my struggles to free myself from the accumulated guilt, I had purged myself of the sweeter experiences of what I loved most.

Concert at the Watts Towers

Kia looks more like she’s twelve than twenty in this photo. She’s family, but not blood. Her music never ceases to amaze me, her sound is as unique as the Towers themselves.

A neighbor becomes a fan

We admire the Towers for twenty minutes, before she says: “This is so beautiful. Whenever I see great art, it makes me want to sing.” I know what she means, the best art always inspires the urge to create. Days later I still struggle with pen and paper, trying to capture our pilgrimage to the Watts Towers.


She breaks out her banjo, lets loose her voice, so large for such a small person. Her music gives people from different parts of the world permission to talk to each other, to take each other’s pictures.

Two different people tell me that they’ve lived nearby all their lives, and never heard of the Towers until friends came to visit from far away. A neighbor comes out to listen to the music. Simon’ Rodia’s Spires become broadcast towers, beaming Kia’s music to a distant planet, a different time where straight lines are an anomaly and bars are unnecessary  



Kia's music: http://soundcloud.com/thistlebreath

The octopus curled up into a solitary blob, in a corner, at the bottom of it's white plastic tank, and began her career as the most boring exhibit at the Marine Science Center. And there she lingered, until one day, when a man walked in, yanked her out of her seclusion, raised her up into the air, and began to play with her.

Back then our local marine scientists were amateurs, volunteers, just starting out in the business of showing off the wonders of the waters of the Puget Sound. They didn't know much about the proper care of octopus, or what to think about this man who more or less took octopus/human relations into his own hands. There were too many unanswered questions, like what are the effects of human touch on octopi? But before they had time to react, this man's intervention was a fait acompli.

Afterwards the octopus was no longer content to spend her life as a lifeless blob on the bottom of a white plastic tank - she began to crave attention and adventure. Fortunately, at the time, my four year old son, Sam, was being babysat by the Marine Science Center while his mother worked there. 

The octopus would float near the surface upside down while Sam played with her suction cups, tracing circles around the edges until the octopus gently sucked his finger into the center. She would drape one of her tentacles over Sam's hand, and he would slowly lift his hand, letting the octopus' tentacle slide over it. Over and over again, the octopus' tentacle would slide over Sam's hand in a slow dance/massage motion. They could play together all day and never get bored, which was a good thing, since we couldn't afford a babysitter.

The story had a tragic ending. One night the lid to the octopus tank wasn't secured as tightly as it should have been, and octopus squeezed her way through a tiny gap, only to end up dehydrated and dead on the floor.

Octopus Touch and Taste

Watching Sam and octopus play together, it was hard not to believe that they had created a special bond. I can imagine what Sam experienced, but what about the octopus? What did the octopus experience?   

If there is such a thing as octopus intelligence, it is most likely very different from our own. We communicate mostly through our senses of sight and sound. Our minds manipulate images, we identify ourselves with an internal narrative that we experience as an internal voice.

If octopus are intelligent they might think and communicate through touch and taste. Their memories and ideas would consist mostly of touches and tastes. They would describe each other by how they tasted and felt. It would be completely different way of perceiving the world.

We are so different from octopus, that there’s probably little we could say to each other - but we might have a lot to touch.


Octopus intelligence:   http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474/

Octopus sex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSvq7GdFwvY

when god was a tree

Today I worked in the woods making a trail, woods buffing and talking about god with Margaret. It’s hard, but satisfying work - work that’s in my blood. This is what our ancestors did: made easier ways to move through the forests, gathered fallen branches, cleared future fire hazards to heat their homes, and talked about god.

Un-buffed Woods

Our ancestors knew no wilderness; they lived and worked in the forest. They shaped it to meet their needs, and it shaped them - heat their hearths, became handles and spindles, wattles and wickers, a place for pasture and picking nuts, a place for gathering mushrooms and herbs, a place to make love, a place for shelter, but most of all a place to worship.

When god was a tree, all of the trees, the sky, the wind, the rain, the water that flows through our bodies, when god was everything, there was no wilderness. We were at home in the forest, and this is what we did: we buffed the woods, cleared the dead and dying branches to cook our meals and warm our nights.

Nettles Tea & Broccoli bigger Than Your Head

Don't eat anything bigger than your head.

Nettle Tea
This Spring I harvested loads of nettles for teas for myself and my garden. I harvested the first tips without gloves, and enjoyed the baby stings so much, that I whipped my arthritic wrists for the pleasure and pain of too much stimulation.
There are alleged health benefits to the stingle (sting/tingle) of nettles - increased circulation to the stimulated areas - the body's own healing forces  drawn to where they are needed most.
In any case I like to drink an invigorating cup of nettle tea in the morning, and I don't mind a little stingle along with the harvest - makes me feel more in touch with the nettles plant.
Later in spring I come back for more nettles for my garden. The nettles are waste high and threatening to flower any day now. Last year I borrowed the perfect tool, a weed whacker that swings like a golf club with a blade on the end of it. I mowed the nettles down, and forked them into my truck with a pitch fork - a relatively stingle-free adventure.
This year I have a Japanese hand sickle called a kama. To use it I have to get up close and personal with the nettles. The nettles are more venomous, with more sting and less tingle. They sting me through my long sleeve shirt and pants, and through the backs of my gloves. I harvest enough to fill a trash can. I'm harvesting for a large garden - a five gallon bucket would be adequate for most gardens.
I cover the nettles with water, and let it sit for a few days before I use it to fertilize my garden. I'm careful to dilute it ten to one with water before I put it on my plants. I've experimented with less dilute mixtures and burned some of my plants with excess nitrogen. I fertilized the greedier feeders in my garden once a week during their youth. Any plants that looked like they could use a boost, I fertilize now and then.
The nettles tea starts to stink after a month, sooner if the weather is warmer. It's still good as a fertilizer, and you can continue to use it until the stench outweighs the value of the fertilizer.  When blowfly larva start to appear, it's definitely time to toss it.
I grew cabbages with leaves as large as collards and broccoli-bigger-than-your-head, thanks to weekly doses of nettles tea.

Broccoli bigger than your head
This summer we grew so many over-sized broccoli that we had too much to harvest, and had to give some away. A record-setting, cool spring and early summer created ideal broccoli growing conditions. Weekly waterings with nettles tea insured vigorous growth in during childhood and early adolescence of our broccoli plants.

Second summer broccoli

Of course the variety we chose made a big difference - Belstar, an F1hybrid that we purchased from Johnnys Seeds.
I was showing off my super-sized broccoli when my next door neighbor showed me her Belstar broccoli plant that had overwintered from last year and produced a fine head of broccoli.
Wow perennial broccoli! I've had kale plants that lasted more then one year - the longest lasting one lived seven years before the wind chopped its head off. It was growing in my parking lot where it never got fertilized or watered.

Long-lived brassica plants are nothing new. The Walking Stick kale is an example of a brassica  that has been especially bred to grow for more than one year. They are cut, dried and shellacked to create picturesque walking canes, and cudgels to chase away children and other garden pests from the cherry orchard.   http://www.anniesannuals.com/plt_lst/lists/general/lst.gen.asp?prodid=2875

The trick to extending the life span of your kale and broccoli plants is to disrupt the flowering cycle of your plants. Ordinarily annuals and biennials (plants that complete their life cycle in one or two seasons) expend all their energy flowering and producing seeds. Their role in the ecosystem is to fill in the blank spots as quickly as possible to protect the soil from the elements. They live fast, die young, and leave lots of seeds so they can do it all over again.
When a plant flowers, energy from the roots and leaves is sent to the flowering parts of the plants. For long lived plants you can and should cut back the flowers, but it is usually not enough. You need to cut the energy off at the source by picking off the leaves. Good luck in your experiments with perennial broccoli and kale plants.

How peas do it

The sex organs are nested in Robin's egg blue wings.  

Blue wings unfold to reveal a deep purple bud.

The wings turn pink and flare.
Purple keels open.

Hidden under the keels
another layer of frilly undergarments.

The pea flower plays hard to get -

pollinates itself.

The pea just feeds the body,
the flower is soul food.

Paulownia tomentosa

It's commonly called the Empress Tree or the Foxglove Tree. This specimen should be called Paulownia tormentosa because it's been whacked on to accommodate the power lines. So it goes.
Trees tend to get in the way of streets, houses, sewers and all of the other benefits of modern civilization. When there not in the way of progress, they block the view, like the giant Money Puzzle that obscured the full frontal nudity of the Court House.
But better butchered than gone.

This is my first post in the Trees of Port Townsend series. Eventually they will all be on a Google Maps, with descriptions and growing information.