vegetables

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Permaculture Lessons, part two: Disabled Permaculture

This is a guest post by Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales (see contact info below).

Hello! I made a guest post on Awkward Botany in March, introducing myself and my spouse, and talking a little about my life with permaculture. Permaculture is a way I learn about plants, love the earth, grow delicious foods, and connect with others. Permaculture has a community aspect, and respect for all beings is part of that. Permaculture is a great idea for disabled people.

Being disabled is a lot of work, and butting up against ableism all around is part of that. A default assumption many have, including many permaculture teachers, is that people are full of abundant energy and can live our values if we choose to. But being disabled means that what we want to do often isn’t the same as what we can accomplish. Disabled permaculture is a great take on permaculture that Ming and I have been doing together for 11 years of friendship and partnership.

Disabled permaculture is a valuable concept that many people can benefit from and customize to their own needs. Throughout this essay, I’ll mention many ways it helps me and Ming live a beautiful interdependent life.

how we’re disabled

My spouse Ming and I are both disabled. He has narcolepsy, so he falls asleep at unwanted times, doesn’t get restful sleep, and many aspects of life are impacted by his low energy and lack of wakeful cognition. Narcolepsy can contribute to struggles with memory, language, and reality comprehension. Ming also has a diagnosis of OCD.

Ming endures heartache trying to get his medical needs met, since a medication he uses for wakefulness is a controlled substance. The drug war plus health insurance nonsense means he has to jump through more hoops than anyone should need to, let alone a disabled person.

As for me, I have psychiatric diagnoses and hear voices, along with social differences and sensory sensitivities. Some terms that might apply to me are anxious and autistic. I like “crazy” as a reclaimed term, like queer and fat, which also apply. I have a schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type diagnosis. I was sedated on a bipolar cocktail for around 11 years.

how permaculture suits us

Permaculture is a helpful design system for disabled people such as ourselves. We have limited energy and fluctuating capabilities. Sometimes we’re not up for much. Permaculture is helpful as a realistic, forgiving, less energy intensive way of growing plants and doing community.

Permaculture is about working with the land forms and nature’s rhythms, not fighting against them. It’s observantly respectful to Mother Earth and one another.

A goal is to create food forests that are self-sustaining. We permaculturists like to take a long view, start small, design for resilience, and rest in hammocks. We create closed loop systems. It’s fun to consider the weaknesses of our systems’ interdependence and arrange backups for our backups, with layers of redundancy. Problems are seen as opportunities. We have a thing for hugelkultur. We enjoy rich diversity, especially at the edges.

image credit: wikimedia commons

Permaculturists love nourishing the land, with compost, generous mulching, water catchment in swales, and other ways of making the land more rich than the scraggly vacant lots and neglected yard space we arrived to. We like doing land justice, so inviting people in, opposing food deserts by sharing our bounty, organizing community gardens, and working together with locals.

We prefer collaboration over gentrification. Smiling, we get a lot of joy out of seed bombs, guerilla gardening wild areas, and having a lemonade party, when life gives us lemons and we make lemonade.

I’ve enjoyed gleaning fruit to share with Food Not Bombs, harvesting olives with neighbors, and lots of sheet mulching with discarded cardboard to unmake lawns. Permaculture has helped me by giving me a framework for the regenerative, earth-nourishing impulses that stirred within me already.

community and energy

If all of this sounds fun, that’s because it is. Why is permaculture especially good for people who are disabled?

Inviting people in and nourishing community means more people care about our garden, and are willing to step in when Ming and I are less out and about. Thank you to the kind community members who see what needs doing and are empowered to contribute to the thriving of garden life.

Also, permaculture is less energy intensive than other ways of growing plants. Long term solution is a relief. Food forests are like Eden. Creating and tending food forests means there can be a bit by bit accumulation of plants that work well together.

It’s not a stressful, all-at-once venture. There’s not the once or twice annual “rip everything out and start over” that I’ve seen other gardeners do. It feels relaxed and cumulative, good for a disabled pace.

When we have the energy and the weather is cooperative, we evaluate how the garden overall is doing. Do we have room for more herbs? Are enough flowers blooming to attract pollinators and keep them happy? What foods do we want to eat more of, in the next few months? Should we put sunflowers somewhere different this time? It’s unrushed, experimental, fun, and slow.

tree collards for disabled permaculture

The tree collards I mentioned last post are easier to grow than regular collards and kale. Let me tell you about these delicious leafy brassicas as a disabled permaculture example. Tree collards give tasty greens perennially, for years. We get a lot of delicious food from them!

Tree collards are easy to propagate. No need to buy or save seeds, then tend tender seedlings. Just break off a branch, stick it in the garden ground, make sure it stays moist for a few weeks, and hope for the best. It may root and start growing soon.

The tree collards we have are purple with the green. They’re gorgeous and can get lush in the winter. They’re tasty by themselves, sautéed with garlic, added to beans. We had some on our Passover Seder plate recently. When I cook rice, I might add a few tree collard leaves at the end to steam and greenly compliment my carbs.

When I make pesto, I throw in a few leaves of tree collard with the basil. When Ming is gardening, he often munches a few leaves. I smell them, pungent on his breath, when he returns indoors and kisses me.

It’s fun to give cuttings to friends and share the bounty. We talk about perennial vs annual and biennial. We talk about permaculture as an important guiding force in our disabled family. Even if the cuttings die, ideas and love were propagated. By sharing our values, we’ve inviting them into our life.

I like watching tree collards age, lean over, flower, die back, surge forth, reach for the sun. We keep them in our permaculture zone 1, right by our front door, as they are our darlings. They’re available to us all the time.

inevitable

Many people are disabled one way or another, and many people will become disabled, if lucky enough to live into old age. Disabled permaculture is a way most anyone can garden. The investment can be small and gradual.

Some people think of gardening as expensive, requiring tools and the building of raised beds, remaking the garden seasonally, and the accumulation of books and arcane knowledge. But permaculture is humble, less expensive, and becomes an intuitive part of life.

Our garden is not a separate thing that we can choose to do or not do, this spring. It’s always happening, like the other aspects of our creativity, our health, our family, and the cycles of nature.

Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales is a queer trikewitch who enjoys zines, ecstatic dance, and radical mental health. Find her at listening to the noise until it makes sense.

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Permaculture Lessons, part one

This is a guest post by Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales (see contact info below).

Hello, I’m Laura-Marie. I love plants, permaculture, and learning what grows wherever I find myself. This guest post is about the permaculture lessons I’ve learned gardening with my spouse Ming. Ming is a kind, brilliant person who enjoys interdependence, being a street medic, and helping our garden grow. He’s a long-time permaculturist with two permaculture design certificates.

I’ve studied permaculture for ten years. I enjoy it for many reasons: responsibility and interdependence of organisms, long view, appreciation of small. Thinking a lot about water storage, microclimates, and what makes sense for a particular place. That “you don’t have too many snails–you have too few ducks” mentality. Anything you have too much of to use can be pollution, even something usually considered good.

origins

Ming and I are both from California. We moved to this Las Vegas desert from Sacramento, which is at the north part of the Central Valley and inland from the Bay Area. I love Sacramento for its diversity of humans, plentiful parks, and proximity to many other wonderful places. Ming likes that it’s compact, but not too dense. Things are close together and easy to get to, but not overly scrunched up and piled on each other. 

Sacramento gets hot in the summers but cools off at night with a breeze from The Delta. There are rivers, a wet feel, many trees. We liked helping with Food Not Bombs and being part of the peace community there.

When Ming and I gardened in Sacramento, our relationship grew and changed as our plants grew. At Fremont Community Garden, I turned compost for the first time. I ate the most delicious Asian pears I’ve ever tasted and learned what espalier pruning is, for easy reach of fruits. 

I learned how to be a good garden neighbor. The man who grew long beans in the plot next to ours went on vacation and asked us to water his plot. Our reward was harvesting from his garden. I never knew green beans could grow like that, and so delicious.

In that climate and soil, the oregano we had in our herb spiral went wild, like mint does some places. It turned into a delicious weed, and we would harvest whole trays of oregano to deliver to a local restaurant in exchange for cookies and drinks. It was informative to watch the oregano choke out the tarragon, as the herb spiral spiraled out of control.

Our lavender bush got bigger and bigger–I liked my fragrant attempts to divide it, as I learned how to use a shovel. I enjoyed our basil forest, pinching its flowers, and seeing basil wood for the first time.

tree collards

Tree collards are a quintessential permaculture plant. People who want food forests do well to grow this charming perennial brassica. Ming and I grew lush, gorgeous tree collards in Sacramento. They are so productive and delicious to eat. I loved to make curried greens with beans, and I added ripped up tree collard leaves to a stir fry or any veg dish for more deliciousness. Yes, I adored those pretty leaves, whether they were green or purple.  

Our biggest, first tree collard we called Sideshow Bob. Its leaves floofed up like the hair of Sideshow Bob on the cartoon tv show The Simpsons. Sideshow Bob got infested with Harlequin bugs, and I learned how to save a tree collard from Harlequin bug infestation. Squishing around 300 Harlequin bugs between my gloved fingers and putting their bug bodies into a bucket of soapy water was a thought-provoking scene of carnage.  

What am I willing to do, to defend my favorite plant and meal ingredient? I considered what must die to keep my own body alive, what’s worth it. I miss those cute orange gardening gloves that I would never look at the same way again.

Sideshow Bob tipped over, and Ming found ways to support its “trunk” as it grew diagonally. It was fun to watch Sideshow Bob’s adjustment to sideways life, and we liked to give cuttings away.

Tree collards are easy to propagate, so we had several tree collard plants in our garden after some time. We brought one to my mom’s house and planted it at the edge of her garden. She lived in a different part of California, further south near the coast. Her tree collard flourished there. Every time we visited my mom, I felt excited to see how the tree collard had grown.

sharing

For a while we had two gardens. We had our plot at Fremont Community Garden, but we also lived in an apartment complex with shared beds.There were four beds when we got there, and then two more were added.  

We learned about sharing garden space with friends, including emotions, not wanting to encroach on someone else’s space, challenges of communication and expectations. I had a clump of rainbow chard that I loved to eat and watch grow. It got infested with aphids, but I was hoping to win that battle.  After some time, a well-meaning neighbor ripped it out, and I cried.

We learned how much space is the right amount, and which plants we like to eat grow well in Sacramento.  Tomatoes do well there.  I learned a permaculture lesson about the wave of energy: how having a high yield might not correspond to having enough energy to harvest it.  

One summer, so many cherry tomatoes grew that we couldn’t harvest them fast enough. Big changes were happening in the lives of everyone who lived in that apartment building, when the tomato plants were covered in hundreds of fruits. It was sad, not to have the capacity to share surplus with people in need.

There’s a mushroom farm in Sacramento that gave away spent substrate, which intrigued us.  We decided to try using substrate as mulch. “It could take nutrients from the soil, since it’s just sawdust.  Maybe this is a silly idea,” we wondered.  But we opened the bags and spread the sawdust on our garden beds, curious,

Then there was a rainy couple weeks in the winter, and we found ourselves with more oyster mushrooms than we could eat. They fruited out like mad. That felt magical and was a tasty experiment in trying something out just to see what happens.

promise

In future guest posts, I’d like to tell you what I’ve learned doing permaculture in the desert, and how doing permaculture as a disabled person is a great idea. Please let this post serve as an introduction to how my spouse Ming and I see plants and enjoy garden life.  

We enjoy new experiences, and we have a slow, grateful pace of loving the land. We love plants as food and sibling organisms on this beautiful earth.

Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales is a queer permaculturist trikewitch who enjoys zines, ecstatic dance, and radical mental health. Find her at https://www.listeningtothenoiseuntilitmakessense.com.

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Book Review: The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food

If you’re new to gardening, starting a garden can be quite intimidating. The learning curve can seem steep and the barriers to entry can feel vast. Having a beautiful, productive garden like those you might see around your neighborhood can seem like an unreachable goal. What isn’t obvious when encountering nice gardens are the mistakes made, the lessons learned, and the years of trial and error that brought the garden and gardener to where they are now. Even the most experienced gardeners continue to fail and learn from those failures, which is part of what makes gardening such an exciting pursuit. The looming question for beginners, though, is where do I start?

Luckily, resources abound for new gardeners – from countless books and magazines, to YouTube videos and podcasts, to university and college courses and degrees. Easily one of the best places to start if you live in the United States are extension services of land-grant colleges and universities. One of their main reasons for existence is to help people grow successful gardens. But while the dream of having a garden is exciting, the information one needs to absorb in order to get there can be overwhelming. Rote learning of basic instructions presented in a dry way can turn people off from wanting to proceed, which is why I find Joseph Tychonievich and Liz Anna Kozik’s recent book, The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food, so refreshing. Just about everything can be made more entertaining when presented in comic book form, and gardening tutorials are no exception.

As with most comic books, The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food tells a story. Mia is a computer programmer who lives next to George, an avid gardener. One day, Mia finds George having trouble sending photos to his grandchildren. Mia offers to help; George reluctantly accepts. In return, George gifts Mia a basket of spring greens and daffodils from his garden, which prompts Mia to share her dream of one day having a garden. George jumps at the opportunity to help, and thus begins a new friendship and yearlong mentorship as George helps Mia start her first garden.

George guides Mia along each step of the way – from choosing a location in her yard, to deciding what to plant and when, to helping her deal with pests and diseases, to knowing what and when to harvest, and to, finally, encouraging her to throw a garden party to share her bounty with friends. Much more is explained along the way, often with George starting the conversation with, “The #1 rule of gardening…”, and Mia cringing at yet another #1 rule to remember.

Planting too early can be deadly for frost sensitive plants. Don’t be fooled by fake spring.

The story is simple and easy to follow, and the information is basic but solid. There are greater details to explore, but for a beginning gardener, this book is an excellent starting point. The resource section at the end of the book will get the reader to those greater details when they’re ready. I found George’s harvesting guide particularly useful. As a gardener living in the semi-arid Intermountain West, I had to laugh when George claimed that some years he doesn’t water his garden at all. A vegetable garden in our climate typically wouldn’t survive long without regular, supplemental irrigation. However, if you live in a region that reliably receives rain in the summer, watering may be unnecessary. Thankfully, there is a “Cheat Sheet” included in the book with a great flowchart to help you determine if and when to water.

Joseph provided the text for this book and is a skilled garden communicator, something he’s been doing for much of his life. Without his words, this book would not be the stand-out resource that it is. However, it was Liz’s artwork that sold me on this book. Having followed her work on twitter for a while now, I was thrilled to learn she had a book out. Much like Joseph’s lessons in gardening, Liz’s artwork is simple and approachable, yet accurate enough to recognize exactly what plant is being represented even without the finer details found in the botanical illustrations of many field guides. This book is honestly worth having just to be able to hold in your hands a collection of Liz’s beautiful artwork.

A selection of easy herbs to grow from The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food

Buy the book, but also check out the personal websites of the author and illustrator:

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Poisonous Plants: Lima Beans

I don’t recall being a picky eater as a child, but one food I could barely stomach was lima beans. The smell, the texture, the taste, even the look of them, really didn’t sit well with me. I know I’m not alone in this sentiment. Lima beans are a popular thing to hate, and I have avoided them ever since I was old enough to decide what was allowed on my plate. To be fair, the only lima beans I remember trying were the ones included in the familiar bag of frozen mixed vegetables, which might explain why I didn’t like them. But little did I know there is another reason to avoid them – lima beans are poisonous.

That’s a strong statement. In case you’ve eaten lima beans recently or are about to, I should ease your concerns by telling you that you have little to worry about. Commonly cultivated lima beans are perfectly safe to eat as long as they are cooked properly, and even if they are eaten raw in small doses, they are not likely to hurt you. But again, why are you eating lima beans? They’re gross.

lima beans in cans

Phaseolus lunatus – commonly known as lima bean as well as a number of other common names – is in the legume family (Fabaceae) and is native to tropical America. It is a perennial, twining vine that reaches up to 5 meters. It has trifoliate leaves that are alternately arranged, and its flowers are typically white, pink, or purple and similar in appearance to pea flowers and other flowers in the legume family. The fruits are hairy, flat, 5 – 10 cm long, and often in the shape of a half moon. The seeds are usually smooth and flat, but are highly variable in color, appearing in white, off-white, olive, brown, red, black, and mottled.

P. lunatus experienced at least two major domestication events – one in the Andes around 4ooo years ago and the other in Central America more than 1000 years ago. Studies have found that the first event yielded large seeded varieties, and the second event produced medium to small seeded varieties. Wild types of P. lunatus have been given the variety name sylvester, and cultivated types are known as variety lunatus; however, these don’t appear to be accepted names by plant taxonomists and perhaps are just a way of distinguishing cultivated plants from plants growing in the wild, especially in places where P. lunatus has become naturalized such as Madagascar.

Distinguishing wild types from cultivated types is important though, because wild types are potentially more poisonous. Lima bean, like several other plants we eat, contains compounds in its tissues that produce cyanide. These cyanide producing compounds are called cyanogenic glucosides and are present in many species of plants as a form of defense against herbivores. The predominant cyanogenic glucoside in lima beans is called linamarin, which is also present in cassava and flax.

Fruits of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus) - photo credit: wikimedia commons

Fruits of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus) – photo credit: wikimedia commons

In order for lima beans to poison you, they must be chewed. Chewing brings linamarin and the enzymes that react with it together. Both compounds are present in the cells of lima beans, but they reside in different areas. Once they are brought together, a reaction ensues and hydrogen cyanide is produced. Because cyanide isn’t produced until after the plant is consumed, the symptoms of cyanide poisoning can take a little while to occur – often several hours.

Cyanide poisoning is not a pretty thing. First comes sweating, abdominal pain, vomiting, and lethargy. If the poisoning is severe, coma, convulsions, and cardiovascular collapse can occur. There are treatments for cyanide poisoning, but if treatment comes too late or if the dose is large enough, death results.

Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is particularly well known for its history of cyanide poisonings. It is a staple crop of people living in tropical areas of Africa and South America. Humans can readily metabolize small amounts of cyanide, and processes like crushing and rinsing, cooking, boiling, blanching, and fermenting render cassava safe to eat. However, consuming cassava that isn’t prepared properly on a consistent basis can result in chronic illnesses, such as konzo, which is a major concern among cultures in which cassava is an important food source.

I guess I should reiterate at this point that most cultivated lima beans contain low (read “safe”) levels of cyanogenic glucosides and, particularly when cooked, are perfectly safe to eat. I’m still not totally convinced that I should eat them though. While researching this article I came across numerous sites claiming that lima beans are delicious while offering various recipes to prove it. I even came across this story in which a self-proclaimed “lima bean loather” was converted to the side of the lima bean lovers. I don’t fancy myself much of a cook, so I’m hesitant to attempt a lima bean laden recipe for fear that it will only make me hate them more. If anyone out there thinks they can convince me otherwise with their tasty creation, be my guest.

And now a haiku:

You are lima beans
I despised you as a child
Perhaps unfairly?

Follow these links to learn more about cyanide producing crops and lima beans:

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Our Backyard Farm and Garden Show: Fall 2014

I had every intention of documenting this year’s garden more thoroughly, but as things tend to go, the days got busy and the year got away from me. Now here we are in mid-October, still waiting for the first frost but accepting its imminence, watching reluctantly as another growing season comes to a close. We took several pictures but few notes, so what follows is a series of photos and a few reflections on what transpired this past year in, what Flora likes to call, Our Backyard Farm and Garden Show.

Abundance

Abundance

I guess I should start at the beginning. Last year I was living in an apartment. I was growing things in two small flower beds and a few containers on my patio. That had been my story for about a decade – growing what I could on porches and patios and in flower beds of various apartments in a few different parts of the country. At one point I was living in an apartment with no space at all to grow anything, and so I attempted to start a garden in the backyard of an abandoned, neighboring house – geurilla gardening style – but that didn’t go so well. At another location I had a plot at a community garden. The three years I spent there were fun, but definitely not as nice as stepping outside my door and into my garden.

Earlier this year, I moved in with Flora. She was renting a house with a yard, so when I joined her, I also joined her yard. Flora is a gardener, too; she had spent her first year here growing things in the existing garden spaces but wanted to expand. So we did. We enlarged three beds considerably and built four raised beds and two compost bins. We also got permission to grow things in the neighbor’s raised beds. And that’s how our growing season started – coalescence and expansion.

Then summer happened. It came and went, actually. Most days were spent just trying to keep everything alive – moving sprinklers around, warding off slugs and other bugs, and staking things up. Abundance was apparent pretty much immediately. We started harvesting greens (lettuce, kale, collards, mustards) en masse. Shortly after that, cucumbers appeared in concert with beets, turnips, basil, ground cherries, eggplants, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, etc. Even now – anticipating that first frost – the harvest continues. We are uncertain whether or not we will remain here for another growing season; regardless, we are considering the ways in which we might expand in case we do. Despite the amount of work that has gone into our garden so far, we still want to do more. Apparently, our love of gardening knows no bounds.

A view of our side yard. It is pretty shady in this section of the yard but we were still able to grow kale and collards along with several different flowers and herbs.

A view of our side yard. It is pretty shady in this bed but we were still able to grow kale and collards along with several different flowers and herbs.

 

We grew several varieties of lettuce. This is one that I was most excited about. It's called 'Tennis Ball.' It is a miniature butterhead type that Thomas Jefferson loved and used to grow in his garden at Monticello.

We grew many varieties of lettuce. This is one that I was most excited about. It’s called ‘Tennis Ball.’ It is a miniature butterhead type that Thomas Jefferson loved and grew in his garden at Monticello.

 

'Shanghai Green' Pak Choy

‘Shanghai Green’ Pak Choy

 

'Purple Top White Globe' Turnips

‘Purple Top White Globe’ Turnips

 

A miniature purple carrot with legs.

A miniature purple carrot with legs.

 

Two cucumbers hanging on a makeshift trellis. I can't remember what variety they are. This why I need to remember to take better notes.

Two cucumbers hanging on a makeshift trellis. I can’t remember what variety they are. This why I need to remember to take better notes.

 

'San Marzano' Roma Tomato. We grew three other varieties of tomatoes along with this one.

‘San Marzano’ Roma Tomatoes. We grew three other varieties of tomatoes along with this one.

 

The flower of a 'Hong Hong' sweet potato. We haven't harvested these yet, so we're not sure what we're going to get. Sweet potatoes are not commonly grown in southern Idaho, so we're anxious to see how they do.

The flower of a ‘Hong Hong’ sweet potato. We have not harvested these yet, so we are not sure what we are going to get. Sweet potatoes are not commonly grown in southern Idaho, so we are anxious to see how they do.

 

We grew lots of flowers, too. 'Black Knight' scabiosa (aka pincushion flower)was one of our favorites.

We grew lots of flowers, too. ‘Black Knight’ scabiosa (aka pincushion flower) was one of our favorites.

 

Some flower's we grew specifically for the bees, like this bee's friend (Phacelia hastate).

We grew some flowers specifically for the bees, like this bee’s friend (Phacelia tanacetifolia).

 

We grew other flowers for eating, like this nasturtium.

We grew other flowers for eating, like this nasturtium.

 

Even the cat loves being in the garden...

Even the cat loves being in the garden…

It has been an incredible year. “Abundant” is the best word that I can think of to describe it. We have learned a lot through successes and failures alike, and we are anxious to do it all again (and more) next year. Until then we are getting ready to settle in for the winter – to give ourselves and our garden a much needed rest. For more pictures and semi-regular updates on how our garden is growing, follow Awkward Botany on tumblr and twitter, and feel free to share your gardening adventures in the comments section below.