How Free My Garden Grows

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At the root of every homesteading dream lie the seeds of self sufficiency. That good feeling you get deep down in your soul when you do something for yourself by hand, from scratch and without paying someone for it or to do it for you is what I'm talking about. Doing something directly that contributes to your sustenance as a human being is a feeling that cannot be bought or sold. It's honest work. Still, money seems to always be a part of the picture and finding ways around that takes a lot of ingenuity, flexibility, and patience.

One of my lifelong skills and resources seems to be a tendency to attract and collect plants, rocks and sticks. Each time we've moved, it has become apparent to me just how many plants, rocks and sticks I have. For example, there are the plants I have been hauling around with me from garden to garden for the last 13 moves. These are the hardiest of hardy plants that survived being dug up in the heat of August for summer moves, living in pots while we were living mobile in our housebus, and life in over-shaded garden beds when we had nowhere else to put them. Here is a picture of my garden when we lived in the bus. Notice all the pots on the lower right hand side. Great Grandma Elsie's rhubarb, my special rosemary bush, an elecampane gifted to me by our herbalist...they all came along on our adventures.

I was just too thrifty and determined to leave them behind for any landlord's benefit. I figured I needed those plants a lot more than they did. I even moved all of the blueberry plants from my brief stint working as an inventory technician at at blueberry nursery. I asked if I could have some of the plants they were throwing out that didn't quite make the grade, and ended up with 25 blueberry plants. They had lived the last couple of years in very ill suited, shady location, but I moved them anyway and they perked right up.

As I began to plant and plan my garden beds and plots on our land, I quickly ran into the money wall. With an acre and a half to plant, my hard core survivor plants were helpful, but it was still looking a little sparse. A trip to the nursery to get a few perennial herb starts quickly overextends the family budget for the month. All the impulses within me saying "plant it now because it will take a couple of years to get established" were running up against the high price of a 2" potted plant. I realized I would just have to get more creative. I had to think long and hard about un-noticed resources around me. Outdoor recreation and closer proximity to the woods were some big reasons for our moving a half hour outside of town, but it took me a while to realize the wealth of resources I was overlooking. On our many trips to the woods to wildcraft mushrooms in the Fall, I started to notice all the young plants growing along the BLM roads. To the BLM, these would be unwanted weeds hindering visibility on the narrow one-lane roads, and requiring mowing or removal. So, we collected some evergreen huckleberry, oxalis, wild ginger, ferns, elderberries and other "weeds" along the road, and planted them in our garden beds. Voila! Instant garden and edible landscaping!

Then as I worked away on my renegade garden, and brainstormed ideas, I remembered my wild foods instructor's garden in Portland. He just went around the alleys in his neighborhood digging up edible weeds and planted them in his nice, rich garden soil where they thrived. He always had some great experiments going. I decided to rescue some ox-eye daisy (deliciously tender edible leaves in the spring) and some wild chamomile and plant them in my nice, rich garden soil. That spindly little ox-eye daisy grew into a giant!

Then, when I was harvesting nettles for tea, I decided to start a wild nettle patch in the shade behind my garden shed. I dug up some rhizomes and planted them in a big patch. I'm looking forward to harvesting fresh nettles from my own land in the Spring.

My most recent garden inspiration came when I was wanting more herbs in the garden for teas and seasonings, and especially wanting chives and lemon balm. One day on a walk by the Willamette River near an old homestead, I noticed all these little chive and lemon balm starts popping up at the edge of the woods. They were mostly along dry side channels, so I supposed they washed down in flood years, or maybe were deposited there by seed in bird droppings. I happily came back with my trowel and got some little volunteer starts going in my garden. I'm going to have chives coming out of my ears in the summer!

So, you see, a garden doesn't necessarily have to be something you go out and buy at a store. Gardening stores are wonderful, and sometimes you do have to spend money to get set up, but it's good to think about all the options out there. I've had success in the past bartering work trade for plants, asking to dig divisions from other people's gardens, and rooting cuttings in water. Seed saving is another way that I hope to try my hand at in the fall. Of course there are plants we'll have to buy, but I'm aiming to whittle that down to the necessities. After all, they say the best things in life are free.