Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, 35th Anniversary Edition: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening

488 Pages·2015·3.65 MB·English

by  McShane

Copyright © 2015 by Steve Solomon and Marina McShane
Illustrations copyright © 2000 by Muriel Brown
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by Sasquatch Books
Editors: Gary Luke and Christy Cox
Production editor: Emma Reh
Illustrations: Muriel Brown
Cover design: Anna Goldstein
Cover photos: © iStock.com/ Innershadows/ Radishes
© Alloy Photography/ Veer/ Tomatoes
© Zidi/ Veer/ Artichokes
© Collage Photography/ Veer/ Eggplants
Interior design: Rebecca Shapiro
Interior composition: Scott Taylor
Copyeditor: Carrie Wicks
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-1-57061-972-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-57061973-1
Sasquatch Books
1904 Third Avenue, Suite 710
Seattle, WA 98101
[phone]
www.sasquatchbooks.com
[email protected]
v3.1
v3.1
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE:
Basics
CHAPTER TWO:
Soil
CHAPTER THREE:
Composting
CHAPTER FOUR:
Planning
CHAPTER FIVE:
Water
CHAPTER SIX:
Seeds
CHAPTER SEVEN:
Transplants
CHAPTER EIGHT:
Pests
CHAPTER NINE:
How to Grow It
CHAPTER TEN:
Ornamentals and Herbs
by Marina McShane
Additional Reading
About the Authors
Introduction
The cheapest experience you can get comes secondhand … if you’ll only buy
it.
—S S
IDNEY OLOMON, MY FATHER, IN PRIVATE CONVERSATION
IN YOUR HANDSis a food gardening guide for the
Cascadia bioregion. Most people call
it the maritime Northwest.
Cascadia needs its own food gardening book. West of the mountains,
summer days are rarely hot except for a few days during most summers,
when they get really hot; rarely do summer nights feel warm enough for
short-sleeved shirts. Heat-demanding vegetable varieties that perform
excellently in the Midwest grow poorly in Cascadia. Cascadian gardens
can provide vegetables during the winter when soils east of the Rocky
Mountains are frozen solid several feet deep; eastern books say nothing
about this possibility. Cascadia has a perverse rainfall pattern; lots of
moisture in winter when crops don’t need it, but little or none in
summer when they do. Heavy winter rains combined with a unique
geology have leached Cascadian soils into a pattern of infertility far
different than the soils of the eastern United States. The East contends
with different pests; traditional eastern techniques that evade those
difficulties do not apply to Cascadia.
Had the indigenous Cascadians been food gardeners, then the first
Anglo-Americans arriving in the Oregon Territory might have learned
regionally appropriate agriculture from them. But the tribes along the
West Coast did not grow food. So the invaders farmed and gardened as
though they were still in Ohio (where the largest fraction of them came
from). As I learned more about Cascadian soils, I came to think the local
tribes intelligently avoided food gardening. I also strongly suspect,
without evidence, that the first Cascadians knew other Native Americans
raised crops, and probably tried it themselves in natural meadows. And
failed.
When I arrived in the late 1970s, Cascadia resembled a Third World
country exporting wood products and farm crops. Like other poor
countries, Cascadia imported technology. We used gardening books
published in New York City or Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and we bought
seeds from mail-order catalogs east of the Rockies and from national
picture-packet distributors’ racks that offered varieties not suited to
Cascadia. I settled in Oregon one year before the publication of Binda
Colebrook’s Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest. Binda’s book
opened my eyes to this possibility. Thanks to Binda, I started Territorial
Seed Company because seeds for varieties crucial to winter gardening
were difficult to obtain.
These days many Cascadian gardeners take advantage of their
climate’s possibilities. Reputable regional garden/homestead seed
businesses and seedling growers now supply appropriate varieties. I feel
proud to have helped this transformation along. I consider Growing
Vegetables West of the Cascades to be a valuable regional resource that I
am responsible for, so I have kept this book in print by steadily
improving it as I learned more. The last major upgrades were made for
the fifth edition, published over 15 years ago. This, the seventh, has
been broadly improved by 15 more years of growing experience and the
great deal I’ve learned about soil fertility in that time.
Marina McShane, an old and dear friend who lives near Eugene,
Oregon, and has been gardening nearly as many years as I have, helped
me write this edition because in 1994 I moved to Nelson, British
Columbia, and soon thereafter was led to Tasmania, the smallest and
least-known state of Australia. Tassie is a remote, uncrowded temperate
South Pacific island, slightly smaller than western Oregon, with a
noticeably lower population density. I feel blessed to live here. Tassie
life these days is a lot like Oregon was when I first settled there.
Tasmania is a hardscrabble place of forests, fisheries, and sheep; of
people mostly concerned about family; of narrow, twisty roads and
slightly untidy homesteads with chickens, vegetable gardens, and
sometimes a house cow. Tasmanians who are after material wealth move
to the mainland.
Locals consider the part of Tasmania I live in a “banana belt,” much
like Elkton, Oregon, where I used to live. Where I garden now has a
climate like you’d find near the Rogue River, 5 miles inland from Gold
Beach, Oregon, so I have not forgotten how to take full advantage of
Cascadia’s climate. In fact, living in this gentle district has shown me
winter gardening possibilities that apply to coastal Northern California.
What I have lost touch with are the newest pest control products and
some new vegetable varieties because Australia Quarantine makes it
awkward to fully evaluate them. In addition to contributing generally,
Marina has investigated and written up those specific areas.
Why I Grow Most of My Own Food
M
arina and I have long been homesteaders. Homesteading means
producing products or services from your own property that
earn income or that are personal survival necessities, like food
or firewood. I encourage this lifestyle because when people create any
part of their necessities, they develop confidence. They’re less concerned
with pleasing the authority paying their salary; they’re less dependent on
a government that can’t be influenced and often works toward harmful
ends. I think life would be better for everyone if more people would
produce their own necessities. Many independence-minded Cascadians
agree with me. That’s why I’ve sold so many books these past 35 years
and why Territorial Seed Company did surprisingly well.
Independence mindedness greatly increases when a person enjoys a
high degree of physical well-being, but these days the majority of North
Americans are trapped in a dwindling spiral, starting with poor nutrition
leading to poor health, leading to dependency on medicines that further
lower overall health. The way out is not found by seeking a smarter
doctor. The way out requires (1) overcoming unhealthy eating habits
and switching to nutrient-dense whole foods while (2) eliminating
otherwise decent foods that happen to be inappropriate for your body’s
genetic makeup or foods it reacts badly to. In my opinion that’s all it
takes to keep most people healthy, make them energetic and optimistic,
and make them live longer. For those who haven’t degenerated too far,
eating right heals diseases caused by years of wrong feeding.
Upgrading food habits is not easy at best, but this difficult personal
transformation has been made even more difficult because the
nutritional content of all foods has declined a great deal over the last
century. In order to make a profit, farmers have been mining their soil of
plant nutrients. They cannot afford to restore what many previous crops
have taken. So the basic foods like wheat and corn as well as fruits and
vegetables, whether conventionally or organically grown, are not nearly
as nutrient dense as they should be. They do not taste as good as they
could. They do not satisfy. Eating foods that aren’t nutrient-dense creates
powerful urges to munch out on over-seasoned junk.
Certified organic is nutritionally better than “conventional” but not
good enough, partly because it too must be sold into a profit-driven
market. Replace conventional foods with the usual certified organic and
habitual cravings are still slow to fade. A more effective way to reform
eating habits and improve health is to enjoy the wonderful flavors of
fresh, nutrient-dense home-garden vegetables. Give it a few years to
work on you, and a big veggie garden can effortlessly uplift your food
preferences.
Food produced on remineralized, balanced soil tastes enormously
better because it contains much more nutrition. I don’t mean the
insignificant 25 percent increase that the organic farming industry
proudly claims for its fruits and vegetables. I’m talking about packing
200 to 300 percent more nutrition into food by going beyond what most
people think of as organically grown. Imagine eating a carrot that tastes
twice as carroty, with complex undertones of raspberry and ginger, a