Fall 2009. Planting a Garden(s)

The garden has already had many transformations. It has been adversely affected by human and environmental impacts. Some with disregard walked through the garden several times stomping on small sprouts and torrential rains washed out fledgling plants. Both destroyed the initial garden planted at the end of September. The top right picture shows Prof. Sheehi building raised bends to plant seeds or replant sprouts that survived from the initial garden. The middle picture is in November after the second incarnation of the garden began to flourish.

Vegetables, legumes and herbs that we planted are all indigenous to Southwest Asia and North Africa. The garden is completely organic including the organic and non-GMO seeds. The soil-base is compost from the city dump. It might not be completely non-chemical in origin but it’s compost just the same.  The plants were chosen because they could grow in the South Carolina winter. We planted  the famous Egyptian muloukhiya (or “Jew’s Mallow”), purslane, fava beans, Swiss Chard, garlic, black chick peas (a version that was cultivated as far a 5000 years ago in Iraq), lentils, spinach, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, “Italian” parsley (pots), cilantro (pots), and marjoram (pots).

The moloukhiya and purslane, which were badly damaged by  people walking through the garden, never really recovered. The torrential rains in early December and the extended cold snap at the end of December and beginning of January wiped out what remained of the spinach and cabbage sprouts. The marjoram in pots never took in the cool weather, while the cilantro is doing very well (which I took into my house) and the parsley slowly petering up (also indoors). While I planted some cilantro from purchased seeds,  I am happy to say I mixed in coriander seeds from my own summer garden’s cilantro.

In these pictures, you can see that the garlic, fava beans (the plot of thick rows of green at the end of the garden), lentils, chickpeas, and chard are doing very well in October and November. The final two photographs are images of the first incarnation of the garden planted in September after it was flooded by rains and trampled by pedestrians.