No Slugs in my Lettuce

I became a gardener in the rainy Northwest.  Slugs abound.  Banana slugs, round backed slugs, keel backed slugs, and those tiny little ones that spoil a perfectly good head of lettuce.  Slugs are so ubiquitous in the NW that the UCSanta Cruz mascot is a Banana Slug.  Slugs have been described on the Oregon State slug info site as “basically a stomach on one large foot”.  They are slimy and gross.  It is really hard for me to find anything likeable about them.

Slugs appear during those gray, drizzly days so common in the Northwest spring.  I have spent countless hours building beer traps, placing copper collars, doing death by salt, and hand-picking in the wee hours with a flashlight.  I’ve gone to considerable efforts, just for a head of lettuce without slug damage.  When my son found a tiny baby slug in a salad it put him off garden grown greens for weeks.

Fast forward to life in the Northeast.  With a week of cool, drizzly weather, reminiscent of back home, I noticed a few delicate slugs stretched out on paths as I walked through the arboretum.  Maybe snails venturing from their protective shells?  Suddenly it occurred to me - I’d been harvesting lettuce all week – with NO slugs. This is the Northeast!  My first season here I was so appreciative of those perfect slug free heads of lettuce.  How quickly one forgets and begins to take for granted the simple blessings of daily life.  Another lesson from the garden.

More food for thought – if you had to depend on your garden to put food on the table, how would your gardening change?  Just how much time would you spend on growing food that wasn’t perfectly suited to your climate?  I’m not suggesting monoculture, but the variety would be a little narrower.  No eggplants struggling to ripen in the temperate northwest, spinach bolting in the heat of the south, and artichokes squeaking by in the New England snows.   We’d be planting what grew reliably for our parents, and their parents before them.   But for me, gardening is a hobby. If  my experimental ‘crops’ fail, the market is a quick walk down the road.  So I can experiment, and have the fun of challenges.  For now.

My Kaffir Lime Tree

I’ve received some unusual plants through the USPS – onion starts, seed potatoes, garlic bulbs, but never before a tree, and certainly not a tree with a permit.  My tree came in a cardboard box – about 4 feet long. It arrived in perfect health, with a 3 year warranty, a permit, lots of leaves, and even a few limes.  I had ordered it online from  LemonCitrusTree.com, a company with an astonishing assortment of trees, including Minneola Honeybells and Red Naval Oranges.  They even had 4 kinds of limes: Persian Lime, Key Lime, Kaffir Lime, and a Limequat.  No problem choosing though.  For my first mail order tree I knew what I wanted:  Kaffir Lime.

The hunt for a Kaffir Lime started with Renita Mendonca’s Seasoned and Spiced cooking class.  Renita has culinary expertise which goes way beyond her own native Indian cuisine.  She showed us how to use tamarind,  turmeric root, galangal, lemongrass and Kaffir Lime leaves.  The aroma of Kaffir Lime is heavenly.  The gardener in me went home wanting to grow these exotic herbs.  Why drive all the way to the Indian grocery if you could pluck leaves from a front porch Zone 1 tree?  New England is not Florida, but we do have nice warm summers.  So I bought a few turmeric roots at Whole Foods, put them in potting soil, and went online to find a Kaffir Lime tree.

I will mention that I do have another Lime tree, which has its own special history.  Before ordering the Kaffir Lime, I tore up a couple of leaves from the thorny Lime.  These leaves also seemed to have a heavenly aroma – and to my inexperienced Western nose – indistinguishable from Kaffir.  Renita confirmed that these leaves were definitely not Kaffir lime. 

So the Kaffir tree arrived, I unpacked it, read its permit from the commissioner of the Louisiana Dept of Ag and transplanted it with help from my son. I snipped a leaf and sniffed.  Wow – way different from the other lime, I agree.  I couldn’t wait to use the leaves, so I added some along with ginger for flavoring a chicken broth.  Another exotic dish to come: Beef Rendang. Read more on using Kaffir Lime leaves.

This week’s garden harvest is not abundant, but tasty and fresh.  A pound of mustard, various lettuces, arugula, and other greens.  I’ve been enjoying plenty of smoothies and salads.  I’m learning about seasonal planning.  From my community garden, I see that it is possible to be harvesting plenty of kale, spinach, parsnips, over-wintered lettuce, spring lettuce, and roots.  The trick is to put things in at just the right time in the late summer. There is always more to learn when it comes to growing food.

Oh - and back to that Kaffir Lime tree. I've got plenty of leaves - so if you live in the Boston area, I'm happy to share.

 

Greens from Zone 1

I love green smoothies.  My recipe changes constantly, based on what I find in the freezer and what's abundant in the garden.  My smoothies are hardly the traditional barebones mix of 2/3 vegetables and 1/3 fruit.  I start with a base of frozen fruit - a combination of any of the following:  strawberries, blueberries, banana, pineapple and mango.  In goes either yogurt (a high-protein Greek variety is best) or coconut milk.  Then out to my Zone 1 garden to pick greens for the smoothie.  This week, I've picked beautifully healthy baby mustards, arugula and kale.  No huge yields in this chilly New England spring, but the greens are lovely and undoubtedly packed with calcium and other nutrients.  It's a nice way to start the day.  Here is a link to a green smoothie recipe.

The concept of Planting Zones a permaculture principal which I find so useful.  Zone 1 is the area of the garden which has the easiest access, both for harvesting and for care.   Basically, the idea is that when you are planning your garden, put those plants which you will want to access most frequently closest to your home,  Zone 0.  My Zone 1 is a bunch of containers in a deck off my living room.   I can step out in my slippers and pajamas and quickly snip some vibrant leaves. In seconds they are being whirled up in my blender.  Can't get any fresher than that!

Would I make green smoothies as often if the greens grew in Zone 2 or more?  Probably not.  If I had to walk a few blocks to the community garden, or even just down a flight of stairs to the front yard, harvesting just wouldn't be as simple. 

From Temperate Climate Permaculture: "Bill Mollison once said that if you need some fresh herbs for your morning omelette, and if you go to collect them from your Zone 1 garden and your slippers get wet from the dew, then they were placed too far from the home." Permaculture is fascinating.  Read more about it.

 This week I harvested a scant 8 ounces.  That means 96 pounds to go.   I remember that growth does not happen linearly, but at its own rate, sometimes exponentially, and sometimes not at all.  I was so excited to find beautiful locally grown heirloom tomatoes in a Jamaica Plain block sale, and did some planting before the heavy rains today.  Red Zebras, Paul Robeson, Tommy Toe and more, planted along with the Yukon Golds, and onion sets.  Yes - I think I will get to 100 pounds by the end of the season.  With patience.