The Great Tangle

The garden looks messy, overcrowded, chaotic.  Weeds are running rampant.  What is planted is growing too thickly.  The gardener has clearly run away.  Time is in a tumult with spring, summer, and fall all entangled one with another.

  And isn't this just like nature.  In this bed are kales and cabbages that overwintered from last fall, grown now into teetering top-heavy treasuries of seed almost ready to spill.  Even now there are still delicious greens to be harvested from these plants long past the calendar's judgment of usefulness.  (And there are still bright yellow flowers to pluck for garlanding salads!) 

  Quietly tucked into the ground underneath and alternating with these behemoths are tomato seedlings.  As their roots settle in and reach out to knit into the soil, the leaves are lightly shaded by the sifting dapple of the kale seedpods blowing about overhead.  In a week I'll be harvesting all that seed and then chopping those kale trunks down to the ground (leaving roots to compost in place and feed the tomatoes), exposing my now-settled seedlings to the light they'll need to rocket up in turn.




  In front of the kale are fava beans all in a row, maybe the only hint of human hand here.  Now eighteen inches high, in early April they were curled up in hard, giant seeds in a paper packet, and in their place was a luxuriant bed of red nettles, downy soft green topped with a magenta crown.  Hardly an unpaying tenant to be evicted to gentrify the neighborhood, these greens deserved respect.  Everything is at home where it is.  Before planting my beans I did not "weed" the nettles, but rather "foraged" these wild edibles.  Or did I "harvest" them just as I would any planned crop?  In this crazy tangle of a bed, even terms lose their boundaries.  They were carefully cut back to keep the greens clean, and these were blanched and frozen for winter, when they will be mixed every once in a while with other greens or into soups.

My haul of nettles back in April.

  And at the front of the bed is spinach sown thickly.  Little by little, the patch is thinned for eating, and little by little these little ones remaining grow bigger and bigger.  Here there is some weeding to do, but if the weather's right (hot, sunny, and dry), the weeds can be laid out as a mulch right in place.  Make sure roots and leaves are all aligned in each handful, then lay the first bunch down.  Carefully lay the next one so its roots are on top of the first bunch's leaves, and continue.  The roots of each bunch will be temporarily prevented access to the ground's moisture by the preceding bunch's leaves and on a hot, sunny day will be crispy before sunset.

  But mostly I just eat the weeds.  First there were the red nettles, then chickweed, and now lamb's quarters is rocketing up.  These days when it's time to make dinner, I just walk out with a big steel bowl and pluck either tender top twelve inches of the larger plants or the whole smaller plants.  As I go I tug out the roots and let them die out in place to give more breathing space for the spinach, fava, and tomatoes.  In five minutes or less I easily have enough for a meal.  At a certain point they will likely get out of control.  Then I'll do a massive weed-forage-harvest and blanch them to store for the winter.  Frozen lamb's quarters cooked up is even better than frozen spinach.  It has a silky texture and a richer flavor that makes great saag paneer or other Indian curry dishes.

Another bed with lamb's quarters stitched through a dense brocade of onions, fava, kale, lettuce, burdock, and more.

  But then what?  Just as the lamb's quarters is hitting its stride, purslane seedlings are sprouting.  They will be a juicy crunchy summertime green and when there's too much, they can be pickled.  They in their turn will tangle through this food web.

Carrot seedlings rising up to meet falling bok choy seeds

  And just like the purslane sprouting at the feet of the lamb's quarters and the tomato seedling settling in under the tutelage of the kale, I'm thinking about what to plant among the spinaches and the favas.  Maybe in a few weeks I will direct-sow some basil seeds for a second summer crop, or perhaps spot in a few late plantings of peppers or eggplants.  Later in the summer as the tomatoes are really appearing in August or even as late as early September, maybe I'll try sowing turnips so that as summer crumbles under cooling weather, fall will already be rising up to meet in one great tangle.