Ac Baker

I consider this is what it takes to be a good cook: not to need a recipe, because you understand all the ingredients, techniques etc.

This means you can feed a household on whatever food arrives, as long as there's a balance nutrient profile in those ingredients taken as a whole.

Many "professional chefs" are poor cooks by this metric.

Many households had generations of good cooks, because this was seen as core knowledge passed down from grandmothers, and they lived with the peace to do so.

I aspire to be a good cook.

Firstly, I am so glad that your health has been improving after your hospitalisation.  Long may you thrive.

Your story & pictures are so inspiring (although, about half of the images won't load for me unfortuately).

I'm very interested in your journey as a gardener, particularly from a climatic perspective.  I think I may be going on a slightly similar journey without physically moving ..

So I'm interested particularly in learning more about what vegetables work well for you as drought-tolerant varieties?  What seedling raising and watering patterns enable you to get a good harvest e.g. of brassica root & leaf crops?  

What other tips have other readers experienced with gardening in similar conditions to me (see below) got for success with vegetables? (Our top fruit: apples, pears, plums, damsons; have done pretty well, but our perennial soft fruit: grape, tayberry, gooseberry, raspberry, currants etc.; clearly needed more watering than we managed).

My favourite hardy vegetable at the moment is what I call tree kale.   I believe the most successful variety is Taunton Deane tree kale, from what my generous source N says.  One of my jobs this autumn is going to be, taking as many offsets as I sensibly can from my current 'parent tree'.  I have three offsets at the moment, but two are struggling due to the drought.

I grew up gardening in Southern England,  which I presume has a climate more similar to Denmark than San Diego, although milder winters?

We're historically considered to have a temperate maritime climate, roughly in winter equivalent to zone 8b (not expected to get colder than -10 C, nor that cold often, with freezing weather during Oct-Feb more around -4 C).

But now our first frost doesn't usually arrive until November at the earliest, cold snaps are rarer (although we still do get down to -10 C).

Moreover, our winters are wetter - almost approaching a 'rainy season' - and our summers hotter and drier.  We've breached 40 C for the first time, and this could be the worst harvest on record for England due to heatwaves from April (which is expected to be mild & damp, great for a lot of seed sowing), and severe drought since March.  

Many thanks! and best wishes.

I hope to this winter, now I'm recovering from all the challenges of the past days, weeks, years, decades (!!) ..

"Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices have roots in African wisdom. ..

"Soul Fire Farm, cofounded by author, activist, and farmer Leah Penniman, is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system.

"Through innovative programs such as the Black-Latinx Farmers Immersion, a sliding-scale farmshare CSA, and Youth Food Justice leadership training, Penniman is part of a global network of farmers working to increase farmland stewardship by People of Color, restore Afro-indigenous farming practices, and end food apartheid."
 
https://www.FarmingWhileBlack.org/

This year, the badgers dug up everything we watered, compost included ... Finally getting a week of rain at last, thanks to ex-Hurricane Erin, after a long, tough drought. Going to be one of the worst harvests on record for England, with much higher than historical average temperatures several spells too.

Satoyama culture seems to be seriously endangered.

But photographer Nagahata Yoshiyuki "has spent 30 years observing and recording their ecosystems" & appears to be actively involved in trying to bring new generations of people into Satoyama culture.

https://www.nippon.com/en/images/i00059/

Fascinating: I'd not heard of manzanitas and bearberries before (the latter occur in a suitable ring around the northern polar region, apparently).

I've found an interesting compendium of known Indigenous uses for manzanita berries - apparently known also as, for example, "pyah" in Yurok: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~yurok/lexicon.php - here:

https://www.suddenoakdeath.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Tribal/Tribal_uses_for_Common_Manzanita.pdf

Nancy Reading wrote:mundane 'long handled tea spoon' here, but if you're offering a knickerbocker glory I think I would need one!

My dear late Mum adored a Knickerbocker Glory, so-called I guess because it made someone think about a 'long shorts' garment pinched at the knees (including bloomers!?)?

So these were always, "knickerbocker glory spoons" in our house.

I find it handy to think of 'pole-wards' and 'equator-wards', although there are differences between the Southern & Northern Hemispheres of course.

Our climate has effectively moved equator-wards by a significant extent in my five or so decades of growing: we're often significantly drier & hotter in Spring & Summer now.

So we need to learn new techniques for keeping the soil moist in dry conditions, and work harder at storing & moving rainwater from Autumn & Winter now.  But the slugs are less of a challenge in the garden in hot, dry conditions, for example.

Then again, we need different varieties & types of crops.

Our 100+ year old brick-built house is also in need of eco-retrofit to cope with hotter summers & more driving rain in winter.

So I'm inclined to say, the biggest challenge is climate instability, at many latitudes?

Ooo! "Kanuchi" or "Ganvtsi"

"Cherokee Nation .. language specialists David Crawler and Phyllis Sixkiller explained the kanuchi process first in Cherokee, then in English.

"How to prepare: Gather hickory nuts when they fall from the trees after the first frost.

" .. dry the hickory nuts in a box, basket or other container. .. after two weeks ..

"Once the nuts are dried, they are cracked open with a rock. ..

"Cracked hickory nuts are sifted and strained. ..

"You see the nuts are falling and the hulls are staying in here," Sixkiller said. "There should be more nuts than hulls."

"Traditionally, the nuts are then placed in a mortar, or kanonv in Cherokee, where they are mashed into an oily paste with a stick. ..

"The nut meat is then formed into a ball roughly the size of a baseball. ..

"The kanuchi ball is heated in water until it dissolves, then a finer strainer is used to remove remaining hulls. .."

https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/news/cherokee-eats-kanuchi/article_b856db8f-c297-5c4b-83a5-01a2a0400df0.html

Many thanks for the pointers .. the uneven support for a longer-lasting tarp is really useful information.