What's Growing On?

The journey continues to eat more organic greens in my life and just last week I tasted my first greens from my garden. I haven't been too particularly healthy recently and this is part of my plan to get healthy. 

How about a tour? 

By the way you'll notice a paper doll in the picture below. It's name is Flat Ethan and he is part of my nephew Ethan's afterschool program's project. How it is working is that Ethan made three dolls and sent them to three different people, me being one. Then those people take picture of Flat Ethan in different places  and write about the adventure. When we are finished, we'll mail the pictures and stories back to Ethan who will present it to his class.  

After learning very quickly after my arrival in Wonju that there weren't any nearby places to grow, I had to turn to other options. The owner of the apartment building was kind enough to let me use the roof to grow things and went for it. I built the black planters out of 5,000won(5.50-6 USD) washing containers. I staggered their building over some weeks and I staggered planting in them over that time.

 The barren looking planters in the back were the last to be made and seeded.

I planned on growing both wild plants and cultivated plants and started with buying plant starts for the garden. Starts ranged from 1,000 to 4,000 won for sets. I bought Kale, Collards, Green chicory, red chicory, and swiss chard. All great deals for cutting down my grocery bill and getting healthier.

Collard greens, a southern staple are grown often in Korean to wrap little pieces of meat into and for me will go into the cooking pot when I cook up a brew of food. 

The green leaf chicory has been wonderfully mild with a crunchy texture.

One of my Kale plants, young arrugula, and green chicory. 

Arrugula has been the least fuss to grow, I just scattered them in rows and watered them.  Yet it's so expensive to buy the greens in stores. 

My rosemary bush is recovering from some mistakes I made. Please get better rosemary. 

Mint plants for tea. 

The total costs for shipping and buying seeds and buying potting soil, fish fertilizer and coconut coir amounted to around 200,000 until I put a stop to investing anything more this year. It's been worth it. If I had land of course, it would be much cheaper to start, but for my initial investment over the year it will add up to savings and better nutrition. Yeah for health. 

Today, I harvested 4,000 won of greens for my breakfast and dinner today I will break even in two months as well as save in vegetables through the late fall. 

Next time around, I'll have the containers already and the soil mixture I made for them, including coconut coir which is an organic material to keep potting soil keep more moisture. 

Salad mix greens for gifts, and strawberry spinach for the garden. 

In the meantime, I have been growing more stuff to fill in the empty spaces in those pots. I am going for more diversity of species and wild perenials because diversity is lacking in many diets, and my own. I love the cultivated plants but many are just different genetic expressions of the same species like my kale and collards being genetically the same species as Brassica Rapa, which is growing wild all over Wonju. In fact, they are classified as Brassica Rapa, that means the same nutrient advantages but often missed is that they have the same plant toxins, such as oxalic acid.  I wouldn't want to live off of one food for the rest of my life and neither do I want to many of the same vegetable. 

So coming soon are purslane, lambsquarters, strawberry spinach, and perilla representing  the wild foods with their own awesomeness and to fill up the empty spaces.

I have salad greens and strawberry spinach in the pots for sprouting.

Strawberry Spinach is one such wild plant. and recently I just transplanted Lambsquarters. 

Not pictured is my swiss chard plant in a blue containers and my hot compost at the far end of the mix. 

The hot compost allows a portion of your compost to be meat and fish scraps, something important for many reasons, two of which are, 1. to not waste and 2. they provide good nutrition for the soil.

The landlord below is growing some of her own stuff on her balcony. 

A friend told me that this weekend is record breaking yellow dust weather. Yeah, there isn't fog in this picture. It's pollution from China as well as dust from farmland that are rapidly becoming desert from aggressive agricultural practices similar to the US dustbowl of the 1930s. It's not as visceral as a PETA factory farming practices but I believe growing ethically is just as important as abstaining from factory farmed meat, even more so, because factory farming wouldn't be profitable without these aggressive farming techniques. 

The day is beautiful in its way. Grow on.