In the name of family and of all that is good in this world, we have this beautiful, tender scene painted by Robert T. Barrett – of two brothers embracing. It is a scene of forgiveness, and one of a shared bond that was ultimately stronger than differences. After two decades of separation, caused by two opposing perspectives, offence given and offence taken, misunderstanding and vengeful anger, they come together on a field that could have just as likely, been a bloodbath. Every reason to hate still valid, because though a lifetime had lapsed, the facts still remained. The ball was in Esau’s court so to speak, he could have gone either way. He may have even been uncertain himself, after all he came out to meet Jacob with 400 men. But there. On that field. After long absence, and tremendous mutual familial loss, including the death of their mother in Jacob’s absence, we see one of scripture’s great lessons on forgiveness.(1) Esau let go. There was no chance of bringing back what was lost, nor of undoing what had been done, and to persist in a attitude of vengeance would only cause further hurt and further loss.
Esau and Jacob Embrace by Robert T. Barrett
At what point does one say “Enough is enough. And this truly IS enough!” ? Does it take a year? a decade? more? A veritable lifetime of separation? Does it take the death of a parent? Wherever that point was for Esau, he had reached it and crossed over. And though Rebekah did not, Isaac lived to see it. I can scarce imagine the gut wrenching sobs and father-tears of both grief and joy to hear the news and to feel with his very own hands (for his sight had long ago failed him), both of his boys at the same time. I’m sure he had all but given up hope that he ever would.
Such a reunion! And how could Rebekah not have looked on with similar emotion from her heavenly vantage point? Brothers. Sisters in law. Cousins who never knew each other. Each family had followed a different path, and their futures wouldn’t necessarily be intertwined, but old grudges were gone and peace could once again prevail, as they parted ways, this time with mutual acceptance and respect. “That’s what its all about, ” says singer songwriter Sam Payne “Having good reason to hate each other and not hating each other anyway.” (2)
Most of us can pull an Esau-Jacob story from our family files. Maybe they ended well, maybe they have not yet. For me, I have a few. Some are not quite completed. One saw resolution many years ago, and has gone on to yield life long loving familial relationships, and eternal blessings not even imagined before. My dad came from a large family of sixteen natural born children. Fourteen of those children grew to adulthood and had families of their own, and yes, you’re right – that makes for a lotta cousins for me. When I was very young, we lived many hours drive from my grandparents. We generally saw them once a year. But my Harrison cousins, many of them also lived many hours drive, and I saw them seldom. We had our very first “Harrison” family reunion when I was in elementary school. In Waterton park. I was shy around so many aunts and uncles and cousins. I had a brief but memorable exchange with one cousin from far away during that reunion. I didn’t know how we fit together, but the adults told us we were cousins, so we played. Her name was Jerilyn. We were the same age and we shared the same last name because our dads were brothers. We had been playing together for a time when her family got ready to go on a planned outing; she invited me to come with them. I’m not sure what motivated me to accept, as they were virtual strangers and I was very shy, but I did, and my mom consented. Her dad was an anomaly to me. He was soft spoken and kind. He laughed – with children! He genuinely seemed to want to be with them. He spoke to me directly. He told dad jokes and my cousins were easy and comfortable around him. My memory of that event is brief, and would have faded altogether I believe, had it not been for a converging of our two families only a few short years later.
Sometime in my childhood, whether before or after that reunion I don’t know, my father had been sent to Winnipeg on an assignment. He was in the Royal Canadian Air Force (as it was called then). While there, he was invited to dinner at his brother’s house. This same brother, who also served in the Air Force. My dad was a couple of years older, both in their mid 30’s. By all accounts, dinner went well. I’m sure it was delicious – my aunt was a good cook. I’m sure my cousins were well behaved, there were 4 of them. All girls. After dinner, my dad pulled out a cigarette as was the habit of smokers. It was no secret that he smoked. Most adults did in those days, certainly the ones in my world. Whether it was my aunt or my uncle who asked my dad not to smoke in the house, is unclear, but my dad attributed it to Aunt Jolayne. He went outside on the front porch to have his cigarette. It was winter. He might have been mildly annoyed at first, but as he stood there smoking, he became increasingly annoyed – even offended. It is so common for people to not smoke in homes nowadays that it may be difficult to imagine a time when it was not only acceptable, but very common. My dad was easily offended at the best of times, so this was the perfect opportunity to do what came naturally for him. As he blew smoke out, he became quite indignant at having to do so outside. In the winter no less. And he walked away. Building up a defensive wall with every step. He had been insulted in the house of his brother. Offended. Never would he darken his door again. My uncle’s wife had insulted my dad, and by association, so did he. They were intolerant and inhospitable, and judgmental, and rude. The extent of the perceived offence grew as the distance between them grew. I can only imagine what that may have felt like from the perspective of my aunt and uncle inside the house. Especially if they watched my father walk away. They had all been raised in southern Alberta “Mormon” towns, in Mormon families. Both families lived by the tenants of their religion and keep the word of wisdom – which included abstaining from tobacco, alcohol and tea and coffee. My dad was one of the brothers who deviated from the family religion.
Distance and time created more distance and time, and as sometimes happen, the wound festered. You could say it had even become infected. I didn’t know my aunt and uncle, and I didn’t know this story, until when I was ten years old we learned that they were moving to our base. My uncle Merlin had been transferred to the airforce base in Cold Lake, Alberta. As children, we couldn’t even imagine what having cousins live so close might be like. My parents did not seem happy about the news, so we were filled with concern, but secretly, I was just a little excited at the possibilities. The old wound however resurfaced, and if we had missed it before, we understood more fully now how significantly bad it was. I didn’t even know what my Aunt Jolayne looked like, but I knew she was a “religious fanatic“. I knew she kicked my dad out of her house for smoking. On a winter day! Smoking in my world was like breathing. Every adult did it. Her action was unimaginable and there was no question that it was unforgiveable. We prepared for the worst.
My uncle came ahead and lived temporarily in the barracks while he waited for a PMQ, and for his family to arrive. One night we invited him for dinner. My dad wasn’t home, so my mom and I went to the barracks to pick him up. We shared a meal with this stranger who we knew was our uncle, and he was . . . nice! And kind. He brought us gifts. Hot chocolate mix, something we had never seen before. All four of us got our very own, which my mom protested was too generous, but he insisted and we were very happy. He was complimentary of the meal, and spoke easily with all of us, even directly to us kids. He asked about our interests and school. We didn’t know how to take him – I had not taken note of too many times in my life that an adult other than a teacher, had spoken directly to me, let alone being interested enough to listen to my response. After dinner, he sat at the table with me as I did my homework. I was writing some kind of report about the pyramids in Egypt, using our ‘Book of Knowledge’ encyclopedia. He told me he had been to Egypt! He had seen the pyramids, the very ones in the picture we looked at. I had never met another man like him in all my long life of ten years. I went with my mother to drive him home and listened to them chat in the front seat. When he got out of the car and waved goodbye, I said to my mom “I like him.” She said “I like him too.”
Sometime after that dinner, Uncle Merlin’s family arrived. They came to visit us and we may have had supper together. We cousins became acquainted with each other. I showed my cousin Shawna my guitar, and played her a song I was learning. Having cousins live in our community was such a strange idea. They would even be coming to our school!
When they got settled in their new house, they invited us to dinner. We were all familiar with “the story” by then, and we wondered how it would play out. We were not just a little apprehensive, and I seem to recall my mom reassuring my dad that all would be well, and that he could suck it up for one evening. After all, he had sworn to never go there again. It was . . . our field. And quite literally, it was our Esau and Jacob moment. Though our two households had had touch-points, we had never as a family, been in their ‘home’. We went, my dad – less willing and still carrying his comfortable crutch – a ‘grudge’. He had after all, been offended, and that could not be forgotten, nor set aside.
When we arrived, they met us at the door and welcomed us in. My aunt Jolayne handed my dad a clear, glass ashtray, purchased for this occasion. She told him “Wes, you can smoke in my house any time you want.” To this day, I cannot think of that single gesture without weeping. I don’t recall my dad’s response, but on the drive home, he said to my mom “Well, if that doesn’t beat all. All these years, she hasn’t forgotten. It has been eating at her like it was eating at me.” He affirmed that never in this life, would he be disrespectful enough to smoke in Aunt Jolayne’s house, but that thoughtful gesture skyrocketed her in his esteem. His dislike transformed almost instantly into admiration, even respect. And over the years that we both lived in Cold Lake, it evolved into love. We spent many happy hours in the company of Uncle Merlin’s family. My dad was a better dad in his brother’s company. Without being too dramatic, it set the wheels in motion for not only life altering changes in my life, and life long friendships between our households, but eventually, the sealing of our family as an eternal unit. That is another story for another time. A story of my utter love and gratitude to Uncle Merlin’s family, and for all that came from the seemingly insignificant gift of a small glass ashtray.
Destructive conflict is “when our inability to collaboratively solve problems with others leads us to hurting others or ourselves.” so says Chad Ford, Professor in Intercultural Peacebuilding at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. “With destructive conflict comes a fear of pain both in anticipation and as a consequence of the conflict, a fear of not being loved or seen the way we want to be seen . . . .” (3) Though our dislike of someone who has offended us may devolve into hatred, hopefully it doesn’t de-escalate to the murderous level Esau’s did. He had sold his birth right to Jacob for a bowl of lentil soup (see Genesis 27: 6-29). At the time, he didn’t have proper respect for the value of his inheritance, and when the time came that he had to own his choice, and live with its consequence, he hated Jacob. So great was that hate, that he swore to kill him. Knowing the violent propensity of their elder son, both Jacob’s parents encouraged him to leave home and to travel to the distant land of his mother’s people – where he could not only find temporary refuge, but also find a wife among believers of the one true God. For two decades, Jacob lived among his mother’s people, marrying two of her brother’s daughters, and accumulating for Laban (his father in law), great wealth by his industry and the blessings of God. Laban recognized that God was with Jacob. At length, God directed Jacob that it was time for him to return to Canaan, the land of his inheritance, which in conference with his wives, he set about to do.
As they travelled and neared the place where he grew up, Jacob worried about Esau and his murderous grudge. He prayed for help. “Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.“(4) He sent notice announcing that he was coming home. His servants returned, telling Jacob that they delivered the message and that Esau was in fact coming out to meet him. With four hundred men! – a veritable army. Rightly fearing his brother’s intent, Jacob separated his company into two groups, reasoning that if Esau attacked one group, the other would have time to escape. He separated generous gifts and sent them ahead with instructions to graciously deliver them to his brother, hoping to communicate his desire to reconcile before they met face to face. Unbeknown to Jacob, Esau may have already reached his peace. Whether Esau had forgiven him before that day, or whether it was a gradual transition, softened by the demonstration of good faith as he was offered generous gifts, we’ll never know – and he himself may not even have known. And it doesn’t even matter. What mattered was that he allowed the gesture to touch his heart, and he was softened to his brother. (My dad was softened toward his brother and sister in law, but it wasn’t until the gift of the ashtray, that he finally allowed the sweet spirit of charity, the gift of final forgiveness to take hold and sooth all that had passed – never to be revisited except to recount a happy outcome.)
Brother’s Road by singer songwriter Sam Payne
When they came within view of each other after so long, Jacob prostrated himself respectfully, and was no doubt surprised that “Esau RAN to meet him, and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him; and they wept.“(5) What a glorious scene! Can anything be more beautiful than unresentful reconciliation, powered by true and open forgiveness, a letting go of a former grudge? Who cares what past offense fueled it? In this beautiful story, we see the example of truly “letting go”, of genuine and sincere forgiveness. Of charity in its truest form – which scripture defines as the pure light of Christ. “Deciding to love those who could hurt us allows us to push past fear and become filled with charity.” says Chad Ford. “Love allows us to see our brothers and sisters we are in conflict with, so clearly that THEIR needs and desires matter as much to us as our own . . . . We’ll do whatever it takes to find solutions that meet their needs as well as our own.” (6)
“It took courage for Jacob and Esau to acknowledge the truth that they were not enemies – they were Brothers. It took mercy to forgive each other. It took righteousness – the kind of justice that makes right what we or others have made wrong. . . . When all three of those elements were present, it allowed them to live in peace.” (7)
We all have our Esau and Jacob moments. Offence is given and offence is taken. It’s unavoidable, part of our mortal experience. Perhaps they are within our own family. Perhaps they are between neighbours, former friends, or colleagues at work. It never matters which character in the story we play, but the script is usually recognizable. When we are in destructive conflict we justify our behaviour and our feelings. We rationalize that we are in the right, and that no right-minded person could see otherwise. If they try, we firmly place them in the opposite camp. We may villainize the offender, refusing to empathize with them or the situation. We may rally our troops to try to “infect” others with our intolerance of the offender, and their great offence against us. We in fact, do not want to see their side. We do not want to forgive, or to extend ‘mercy’. We crave only justice, but not justice for all, only justice for us.
We cannot start the process of reconciliation without Courage. I cannot imagine the trepidation that my aunt must have felt in trying to make peace for an offence she didn’t willfully intend, but nevertheless perpetrated. We cannot proceed without Mercy. We must try to see the situation from the perspective of the other person. We must try to FEEL it the way they feel it, without trying to explain away or minimize our own part in it. Mercy requires Empathy. And we cannot sustain it without a commitment to continued Righteousness in our chosen path of reconciliation. We cannot truly ‘let go’ without a change of heart that we are committed to. True forgiveness never goes back. To experience the lasting effect of that sweet spirit of final forgiveness, is to never revisit it, “except to recount a happy outcome“.
The picture at the top – Esau and Jacob Embrace by Robert T. Barrett, spoke to my heart. When I first saw it, I saw a powerful story. One of the world’s great stories of forgiveness. A story of siblings who were angry with each other, and felt justified in their resentment. Insults were given and received – whether accurate or magnified doesn’t even matter; they were real enough to them. I saw the inability or refusal to feel empathy, and of course, the resulting offences. All. Let. Go. On that field. Symbolized by a long, tearful brotherly embrace. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and it was to me. As a mother that is my wish, my hope, and my daily prayer. That unlike Rebekah, I will witness such an embrace, and I won’t have to wait to do so from an other world’s vantage point.
I’ve read many different perspectives on the story of Esau and Jacob. Some paint Jacob as ‘the deceiver’. Some paint Rebekah as the conspiring accomplice. Some paint Esau as a brute who was outwitted. Some paint Isaac as a puppet. All those are short sighted and one sided in my opinion, too easy to judge people of antiquity by the ‘woke’ standards of our day. The story is complex with many layers that would take volumes to discuss. My point here is only to get to the core of what matters most: unconditional love. True ‘Charity’. Moroni says “if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth.” He says that charity “is the greatest of all, for all things must fail— But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever “. (8)
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Warmly,
Cindy Suelzle
footnotes: 1. Genesis 25-35 2. introduction to Brother’s Road, youtube live video 3. Liahona magazine March 2022 pg 26 4. Genesis 32:11 5. Genesis 33:4 6. Liahone magazine March 2022 pg 27 7. ibid pg 28 8. Moroni 7: 46,47
Oats are a staple food in my house for many reasons, and in all the variations. Although I usually prefer the nice thick rolled oats, and even the oat groats, quick oats have a firm place on my list of favourites too. Quick oats are where wholesome goodness and convenience meet, and because of that they’ve earned their spot in my pantry. Adding a little quick oats to baby food helps provide well balanced protein, good representation of vitamin B, and a sustainability that will help baby feel satisfied longer. Keep some handy to add a tablespoon to pureed fruit, soups and yogurt.
I grew up on oatmeal porridge, and oatmeal raisin cookies. Moms for generations instinctively knew that oats were ‘good for you’, and since they’re relatively inexpensive, they were the perfect choice. Good and affordable. Oats had the reputation of “sticking-to-your-ribs”, so were a popular choice for breakfast. But what does that even mean? They are actually, a great source of dietary fiber, (both soluable and insoluable). The primary type of soluble fiber in oats is beta-glucan, which is slow to digest (hence they stick-to-your-ribs), and YES, this is a good thing, as it increases satiety, and suppresses appetite. In short, it is satisfyingly filling, and keeps you comfortable for longer.
But did you know that oats are even better for you than your mom and gramma understood? In fact, oats are among the healthiest grains on earth! They are a gluten-free whole grain and a great source of important nutrients. Although delicious and nutritious, most people are unfamiliar with the whole grain – groats: the hulled, whole seeds of the plants. We’re more familiar with rolled oats.
Oats are a great source of important vitamins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants, like potassium, calcium, magnesium and several B vitamins and Vitamin E, as well as trace minerals: manganese, copper, iron, phosphorus, selenium and zinc, AND – big bonus . . . Oats are a good source of protein. One of the richest sources of protein in the grain family: 11-17% dry weight. Truly, the humble OAT is a grain that deserves a place in your kitchen and in your family’s daily diet.
Groats: All oats start off this way: the whole, unbroken grains. Before being processed into any other form, groats are usually roasted at a very low temperature. This not only gives the oats their nice toasty flavor, but the heat also inactivates the enzyme that causes oats to go rancid, making them more shelf-stable. If you have never cooked up groats, then you owe it to yourself to give them a try. Because they are the original source of oats, they should always be the first “go-to”, but admittedly, they take a little longer to prepare (which is still worth it bytheway), so in our fast passed society, they often get sidelined. Cooked groats have a beautiful chewy texture that retains much of its original shape, and more of a nutty, earthy flavour than regular rolled oats. – see recipe below –
Steel Cut Oats: are simply groats that have been cut to make them quicker to cook. Sometimes referred to as Irish oats, these oats look similar to rice that’s been cut into pieces. Chopping them makes them easier to cook and exposes the starches inside to the water. These starches dissolve during the cooking process, creating a thickened, creamy porridge. It takes a little less time to cook than the whole groats, but has that same beautiful chewy texture. True Scottish oats are ground on stone mills from whole oat groats. They are not rolled, nor cut; they are ground. The texture of Scottish oatmeal is fairly fine.
Steel cut groats are more than porridge: add to stuffing, and even made a savory congee. – see recipes below –
Rolled Oats (or Old Fashioned Oats) These are the oats I grew up with, but in those days we mostly used them for porridge and cookies. My mom also used them in meatloaf.
I’ve since, taken oatmeal to a whole new level and I think I make the best in the world. (only slightly kidding). See recipe (such as it can be) below.
When I was a young mom, my mother in law introduced me to OATMEAL SOUP. The name is not very inviting, but it became a family favourite in our house. I’ve often made it for others, but I never call it by that name because of the images it conjurs up lol. – see recipe below –
My first experiments with Muesli were with the old fashioned rolled oats, which I started the night before. It was pretty much rolled oats and chopped dates in milk, soaked over night. I liked it, but my daughter disliked dates. Immensely. The concept of an uncooked ‘oatmeal’ intrigued me though, so I determined to keep it up, with some necessary adjustments. See below for more on Muesli.
Quick Oats Oat groats that are steamed for a longer period of time and rolled into thinner pieces so that they can absorb water easily and cook very quickly, or not even at all. NOT to be confused with the boxed “instant oatmeal”, available in stores now which contains quick oats plus a lotta sugar and artificial flavours. Instant oatmeal does not deserve a spot in my pantry.
For porridge, I never use quick oats, but they do come in handy for other things. Their convenience justifies their position in my pantry, and I though I rarely used them when my kids were younger, I wouldn’t want to be without them now. They are the base for my Muesli recipe (below), and I often add quick oats and blueberries to yogurt.
the flexibility of oats Truly, I do not know why oats are not more of a common food in most households. They are SO much bigger than the porridge of our childhoods.
Oatmeal: Yes, that generational breakfast favourite – cooked rolled oats. I have fond childhood memories of oatmeal on winter mornings before school, and I hope my kids have those same memories. I’m doing my best to make sure my grandkids do. – see recipes below –
Oat Flour: Your can buy or grind your own oat flour. Throw a little into cookies or bread for a boost of nutrients, and added chewiness.
Oat Bran: Oat bran comes from the outer part of the groat. If you grind your own flour, you can get oat bran by sifting coarsely ground groats. Or you can buy it. When oatmeal is processed, the bran (outer layer), is removed. Oat bran is a good source of protein, B vitamins, iron and soluble fiber. It is used to make porridge, and as an ingredient in a variety of hot and cold cereals, as well as in breads, cookies and muffins. Fiber adds bulk (not calories) to foods, so it helps “fill you up without filling you out.” Oat bran is particularly rich in a type of fiber called soluble fiber, which turns into a gel-like substance in your stomach. This helps you take in fewer calories overall.
Oat Risotto: Simply replace oat groats in your favourite risotto recipe. Easy peasy.
Oat Congee: Congee is a thick Asian comfort food, traditionally made with rice in a meat broth. Simply substitute in oats. Because it uses more water and is cooked longer, congee began as a way to stretch the rice in hard times. Usually a thick stew, or even a porridge (or gruel) type of dish. From its humble beginning, who knew it would turn into a favourite food of so many, and even find its way onto restaurant menus? I guess that’s the way with most comfort foods, they start out as necessities: poor people’s food. Adding rice to a brothy soup and simmering it till the rice actually thickens the soup, essentially IS ‘congee‘. Well you can do the same thing with barley, so why not oats? Remember, you’re the boss. You can add it to any soup recipe that calls for rice or barley. And you can flavour it any way you like. – see below for sample recipe –
Muesli
Let’s talk about Muesli, because it really does deserve more attention than it gets. Developed in the early 1900’s by pioneer nutritionist, Swiss physician Maximilan Bircher-Benner, he used it for convalescing patients in his private hospital. It was not originally intended as a breakfast, but more of an appetizer. Bircher-Benner’s focus was a diet rich in fresh fruit and vegetables which he used as an essential part of his nutritional therapy. Truly, he was ahead of his time. Who knew that over a hundred years later we’d finally understand how important a focus on fruits and vegetables is to our health. And Muesli has stood the test of time, as it is ever growing in popularity.
The original 1900 Bircher-Benner recipe consisted of : apples and nuts in a base of rolled oats, with lemon juice. The oats were pre-soaked water for up to 12 hours, then mixed with grated apples (the most readily available fresh fruit in Switzerland at the time). They were served with milk or cream, sweetened with honey or a small amount of sweetened condensed milk. The lemon juice helped keep the apples from browning. The idea was to serve a small amount of muesli immediately before every meal, as an appetizer of sorts. Modern adaptations of Bircher-Benner’s recipe includes more fresh fruit.
Years ago, when my older kids were little, I came across what was referred to as a traditional Swiss Muesli recipe: large flaked oats, dates and other dried fruit and topped with yogurt and toasted almonds. It was delicious and nutritious. Soon enough I realized the potential for flexibility, and muesli progressed to include whatever fruit was fresh in the summer, or whatever home canned fruit I had on hand in the winter. Some things were constant: usually shredded apples and raisins. Some things varied: sometimes apple juice, sometimes milk. Muesli is like that. Flexible and wonderful.
Though my recipe has evolved over the years, I’ve generally depended on apples as the fruit base, mostly because they were so readily available throughout the year. Other fruits I added depended on the season. As time went on, and freeze dried fruit became more available, my dependence on seasonally available fruit lessened. And less nutritious canned fruit became a thing of the past. The base is still oats, but it fluctuates between rolled oats or quick oats. Rolled oats if I start the night before, quick oats if I decide at the last minute (which is more often these days). Its a breakfast for us, or a lunch, or even a late day snack. – see recipe below –
RECIPES
Oat Groat Porridge ready to go!
Oat Groat Porridge(for two servings) remember, you’re the boss. If you prefer all water, or all milk, or all another type of milk – you do you. This is just how I do me.
1/2 cup oat groats 1 cup water pinch of salt (not more than 1/8 t) 1 cup milk I T maple syrup or brown sugar or honey
Because groats are a whole grain, they take longer to cook, so I find it helpful to give them a little head-start. 1/2 cup whole groats in 1 cup water, bring to a boil, stir, then turn heat off. Let sit overnight (8 hrs-ish). In the morning, t will already be tender and chewy, turn the heat back on and stir, bringing the groats to a boil again. Add a cup of milk and lower the heat a little to bring it back to a slow boil, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Reduce to low, cover and let simmer gently for about 15-20 minutes, stirring once in a while to prevent sticking. The texture will be gently soft, but still chewy. If desired, sweeten with your choice of sweetener. I like maple syrup. Serve and Enjoy.
Steel Cut Oat Porridge A basic ratio for making steel-cut oat porridge is 1 cup of oats to 3 to 4 cups of water. Less water keeps the oats more intact and chewy. More water makes a silkier porridge. Try it a few times to nail down the way you prefer it. I like to start with 3 cups water, and then add the last cup in milk toward the end. Or use all milk. You’re the boss. Add a pinch of salt of course.
Cooking steel-cut oats is easy. Simply boil water, add oats, reduce heat, and simmer. But give it ‘time’, like 20 to 30 minutes to become tender. Start testing your porridge around 20 minutes, and continue slow cooking, testing every few minutes till its perfect. If the oats are tender at 20 minutes, it will still thicken up a little to leave it on heat for a little longer. Try it a few times to find your favourite way. To serve, pour a little more milk over top, and add a spoonful of brown sugar. Try using maple syrup to sweeten instead of sugar. I like putting raisins, or dried or freeze dried apricots on the top.
Because groat porridge takes so long to prepare, you might want to cook a little more, and refrigerate some for tomorrow. It will get dry in the fridge, but don’t despair, just add a little more milk and warm it up. Problem solved.
If you’re the type of person that must see an actual recipe, then see below, but remember, you can edit the details to your heart’s content.
1 cup steel cut oats 2 cups of water and 2 cups milk a pinch of salt (about 1/8 teaspoon) Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add the salt and groats, stir well to prevent sticking on the bottom. Return water to a boil, stirring. Reduce heat to low, add 1 cup milk, stir again and cover. Allow to gently simmer for about 10 minutes, checking every once in a while and stirring to prevent sticking. Cover again, and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes. Add that last cup of milk if you want and simmer another 5-10 or so minutes. That’s where personal choice comes in. When it is the way you want it, spoon into bowls and serve with a little more milk over top and a little brown sugar. Serves three or four depending on how much milk you added at the end.
Cindy’s Oatmeal: I cook mine as little as possible. Bring 2 cups water (with a dash of salt added) to a boil. Add 1+1/2 cups rolled oats. Return to a boil, stirring to prevent clumping. Add 1 cup milk and a little sweetener (usually brown sugar). Gently simmer a few minutes and serve. I occasionally add raisins to the boiling water (just before the oats), as a special treat. Or maybe some freeze dried fruit at the end: blueberries, raspberries, apricots. To me, oatmeal is great with several different fruits like apples, peaches, pears and cranberries. I never use Quick oats for cooked porridge (too mucky, I like the integrity of whole rolled oats). I do however, use them for Muesli, or to add to yogurt bowls.
Overnight Oats: a quick, easy no-cook option. For one person use a pint sized jar: put ½ cup rolled oats + 1 cup milk of your choice + ½ cup fruit of your choice (banana, apple, peaches, etc). Add 2-3 T Greek yogurt + 1 T brown sugar or maple syrup. Put lid on, and shake vigorously till all is incorporated. Refrigerate overnight. The oats will soften and the mixture will thicken. Optional: sprinkle toasted nuts or seeds over top in the morning. Ready to “Grab n Go”.
fresher than fresh muesli made with freeze dried fruit
FRESHER THAN FRESH MUESLI serves 2 or 3, uses mostly freeze dried fruit and takes five minutes to prepare. It doesn’t get any easier than this. 1 c. Quick Oats 1/2 c. dehydrated Applesauce 1/2 c. freeze dried Blueberries 1/2 c. freeze dried Raspberries 1/2 c. freeze dried Strawberry Slices 2 c. Apple Juice (approx)
Lightly stir to moisten completely, and let sit for 5 or so minutes to absorb juice. Add more juice as desired to keep it the texture you want. Serve. That’s it. It really IS that simple, and that quick. And that delicious. NO fat, NO sugar, NO dairy, NO wheat, NO additives of any kind. Super Nutritious and Delicious. Remember, you’re the boss. If you don’t have or want berries, then use what you have or prefer. Option 1: use any kind of fruit, substitute your faves or what you have on hand Option 2: use any kind of juice or milk, substitute your fave or what you have on hand. I prefer apple juice because is mild tasting allowing the other tastes to come through. Option 3: top it off with added nutrition in your bowl: a scoop of plain yogurt, a sprinkling of toasted nuts, or seeds: sesame / chia / hemp seeds. Be creative. Muesli is flexible.
Muesli takes on a whole new world of possibilities with freeze dried fruits. Always ‘fresh’ and always at their nutritional peak, you can have any kind you want because you have all-the-fruit all-the-time in your home-store. No matter what time of year, THRIVE freeze dried fruit is “fresher-than-fresh”.
basic recipe for a Greek Lemon Chicken Soup. Instead of using rice, use groats
Oat Congee first of all, don’t get tied up in using a specific recipe like this one. Congee is simply adding the rice (or groats) to more liquid than usual and slow cooking it till they come to a very soft stage where they thicken the broth. 1 cup steel cut oats 4-6 cups vegetable or meat broth 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup minced onion (I use chopped freeze dried onion) 1/4 cup finely chopped carrots (I use Thrive Life dehydrated carrots that are diced) 1/4 cup chopped mushrooms (I use freeze dried mushroom pieces) small amount of diced meat (leftover meat of your choice, or use diced freeze dried beef) 1 T freshly grated ginger, or 1 teaspoon fresh ground ginger 1 teaspoon soy sauce 1 teaspoon rice vinegar Bring the broth to a boil and add everything in. Reduce to a simmer and gently cook for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. If it starts to get a little ‘thick’ add more liquid.
CINDY’S OAT SOUP (serves 6) 1 cup rolled oats 1/3 cup butter + 2 Tablespoons 1 onion chopped 3 cloves garlic, minced 8 cups chicken broth (or bouillon) 1 or 2 bay leaves 1 quart home canned tomatoes, or equivalent in canned or ripe tomatoes (3-4 peeled and chopped) 1T dried oregano crumbled salt and pepper to taste later Melt butter in large heavy skillet, over medium low heat. Add oatmeal and brown slowly, stirring constantly to prevent burning. It will burn suddenly, so be watchful. When nice and toasted, and smelling good, remove from heat and set aside in a bowl. In soup pot, use remaining butter to saute onions and garlic. Add stock, tomatoes, bay leaves and oregano. Bring to a boil and add toasted oats. Reduce heat. Simmer covered for about 45 minutes, stirring once in a while to prevent clumping or scorching. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Turn heat off and allow to sit for 15 minutes to thicken before serving. This is a soup that is just as good on the second day, and will have thickened even more. And yes, this is a type of ‘congee’.
PATTI SHENFIELD’S OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES (our family’s favourite cookie) 1 1/2 cup butter or margarine 1 1/2 cup white sugar 1 1/2 cup brown sugar 3 eggs 2 t vanilla 1/4 cup milk 3 cup flour 1 1/2 t baking soda 1 T baking powder 1/2 t salt 3 cups rolled oats 3/4 cup coconut (optional) 3 cups raisins (or chocolate chips or both) In large bowl cream butter and sugars. Add eggs one at a time, vanilla and milk – beat until fluffy. Combine dry ingredients separately then add to creamed mixture one cup at a time. Mix until well blended. Stir in oats and raisins and coconut if you’re using. Preheat oven to 350 F. Drop by teaspoon onto ungreased baking sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes. Yield 7 dozen cookies.
* Are oats gluten free? Yes, oats are gluten free, but many commercial brands are processed in facilities that also produce gluten grains like wheat, rye, and barley. Since cross-contamination is common, many GF people feel the need to avoid oats altogether. Big fat shame, and big loss to the individual. If you’re a gluten free person, you don’t have to miss out on oats. Simply look for the “gluten free” label signifying that they’ve been protected from contamination.
I have a simple rule that I apply to everything I ‘did’. Whether its my garden, an event that I was involved in, or a class that I taught – doesn’t matter, it pretty much always applies. At the end of whatever it is, I ask myself these THREE Questions (and answer them of course). 1. What went well? What was I pleased with? 2. What could have been better?What could I have improved on? 3. What did I learn? In my opinion, the most important.
All three questions are very important, and must be asked in order. It is very easy to get down on yourself when something didn’t go right. None of us seem to be short on negative self talk, if the season (or event) was disappointing. Its easy to get discouraged and give up if we focus on the bad, on the things that didn’t work out. So DON’T!
What went well? There is always something that was good. Think about it, and WRITE DOWN the answers. A fruit or vegetable that grew well – a new skill that came in handy – a new hack that paid off – etc. Write down everything that was good about this year’s garden.
For my 2021 garden: What went well?
* Kale. I grew great kale. The year before was the first time I planted kale and I only planted 6 plants, but it encouraged me to plant again, this time I planted double that amount, and some variation. I planted them in three or four different spots, I picked from the plants all summer long, and well into October when I finally harvested the last of it. I used fresh kale in salads, omelettes and scrambled eggs, soups, casseroles, chopped in sandwiches, and smoothies. I tried kale chips in the oven for the first time, and was wowed. Repeated that several times, using less oil each time lol. I dehydrated the excess and ended up with two FULL 2 quart jars of dehydrated kale, crushed into them.
* Tomatoes. I had a reeeeeally good harvest of tomatoes this year. Lots of tomatoes! Mostly the Romanian Giants. For the first time, I grew tomatoes all season long IN my new green house. Eight or ten tomatoes there, four around an arbour in the first garden bed, four around an arbour in the large horse trough, and some in their usual spot on the west side of the house. And some cherry tomato in planters on the patio. Made for a LOT. I admit it – tomatoes are my thing. The backbone of my garden, the one thing I look forward to the most. Everything else exists around them. The most successful places (in order), was the green house, garden arbour and large horse trough arbour – all in the sunniest locations. We ate fresh tomatoes pretty much all of August, September and October. We’ll have fresh tomatoes into November. I canned the excess that ripened faster than we could eat, a couple dozen quarts. I made fresh bruschetta and salsa, canning about 15 pints of salsa. I oven roasted lots of tomatoes. We had so many different types of tomato based soups.
* Compost. We reorganized our compost area since building the greenhouse, adding another large old garbage can turned upside down. Also had a mound of dried lawn trimmings in our compost area, ready to add to compost piles as needed, and use to mulch gardens. We also added to the city compost from time to time – with undesirable compost: either branches and things that take too long to break down, thistle, scraps that included oil or meat, ….. that sort of thing. It was valuable to be able to recycle these organics even though we didn’t want them ourselves.
* Greenhouse. Dan built me a new greenhouse this spring. Not very big, 8×12 – the perfect size for our needs. I dug the soil down deep on both sides, and added gravel, compost and aged horse manure to the soil. When the shelves were no longer needed, I removed them and planted tomatoes, peppers and nasturtiums in the soil.
* Soil amendment in the former spruce area. We took out two massive spruce trees a year and a half before and the following summer it was almost a dead zone. Nothing we planted did well, so we gathered our resources and came up with an amendment plan, thanks to the suggestion of our friend Scott Campbell. Aged horse manure, barley straw and early spring mowing. Became positively LUSH compared to last year.
New Discoveries
Horse trough raised beds Hori hori knife (my new favourite tool) Mexican Tarragon, Papalo, and Epezote
What could have been better?
Grapes. Plums. Carrots. Potatoes. Strawberries. Basil. Beans. Butternut Squash. My planting was too condensed, and I ended up shading some things I’d rather not have. I thought I planted bush beans, when they were in fact pole beans, and consequently they weren’t placed in the best spot. That was unfortunate. I experimented with two different ways to grow potatoes. Both were interesting and I’m glad I did it, but not that great of a yield.
What did I learn?
We’ve been growing tomatoes on the west side of the house which we knew was short on sun, but the best we had at the time. This year, the new greenhouse resolved that issue. 2021 is our last year for westside tomatoes. Next year, that partial sun/partial shade area will be best suitable for greens: lettuce and arugula, chard, kale, nasturtiums and celery.
We topped up all of our beds with aged horse manure and completely redid the entire strawberry bed, including new plants, following the recommendations of some trusted friends. I allowed too many other things to grow in it as the summer progressed: dill, poppies and sunflowers. Next year, I’m gonna limit that. We’ll deep water the strawberries right away (end of October), and cover them in leaves to tuck them in for a long winter’s sleep, and hope for better strawberries next year.
Plans for improvement next year?
Gonna rent a small inground garden plot in our community garden, to plant carrots, potatoes and maybe beets. Those root crops I just don’t seem to have sufficient room or sun for in my small garden, and if there’s one thing the community garden has a lot of, it is SUN!
Seeds for Next Year’s Garden
I ALWAYS buy seeds one year in advance. For the most part, what I plant in 2022 will be the seeds I purchased in late winter 2021, and so forth. It’s part of my personal philosophy of preparedness. There will always be an exception, something I decide to try NOW, but generally speaking, I plan at least one year ahead for gardening. I don’t ever want to have a spring when for some unforeseen reason, I am unable to get seeds. Preparedness is not just food storage.
Some of those seeds will be seeds I saved myself, especially tomato seeds from my own Romanian Giants, Nasturtiums, Poppies and Dill. Garden preparedness includes ensuring I have sufficient potting soil for next spring, as well as planting containers.
I get my seeds from assorted sources: a local seed store on the west side, one of several Canadian seed companies I order online, the odd package that catches my eye at a greenhouse or garden centre, and of course those that I propagate myself or that friends have shared. But for next year I have decided to try another Canadian seed company a friend recommended. I am looking for a company that deserves my loyalty.
Keep your plans for next year ACHIEVABLE.
Seed catalogues are full of all sorts of potential, and it’s good to try something new every year. Some thing you haven’t tried before, a new vegetable, a new type, a new way of doing things, . . . And there’s nothing wrong with trying something totally ‘out there’ from time to time, like watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, honeyberries …. You never know what’s gonna WORK, and you very well may be surprised. Some things may simply have been fun to try, but not really worth investing too much energy down the road, not to mention the garden space that may have been better used for other vegetables. And other things may be tremendous successes. However, keep the bulk of your garden plans for the “most likely to succeed” crops. Go for the tried and true types. Ask other gardeners for their recommendations.
We’re fully expecting our Honey Crisp Apple, which we transplanted into our former spruce area two springs ago, to amaze us in 2022. It got set back when we transplanted it, and had a rough season in exceptionally poor soil, but we’ve apologized, and have done our best to make up for that rough start. I also have high hopes for our Royal Plum, which produced this year, but sparsely.
I highly recommend keeping a garden journal of sorts. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re gonna be a great journaler if you’ve never done well with journals before, but don’t be a defeatest either. Commit to it. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, just a simple notebook will suffice – but have a book that is gonna stick around. Not just a collection of note papers.
Keeping a garden journal WILL improve your gardening experience, I promise. Why? Because you will hone your skills based on what you learned from previous seasons. It will provide you with historical information that will help you better predict future results. It will help you keep an inventory of your seeds and perennials, as well as record your harvests. It can effectively evolve into a personalized garden TEXT BOOK, and every year you add to it, it becomes more and more valuable.
What to include in your garden journal? 15 suggestions
Date your entries and write down your answers to the three questions above. Every year. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did. This will be your core.
A pencil sketch of your garden layout with the year clearly marked. This is more important than you might think. You will want to ensure you rotate most crop areas, avoiding using the same spot year after year for the same vegetable.
A list of the plants that worked out best, and the ones that did NOT.
Dated sources for specific plants: greenhouses, nurseries or garden centres, seed companies, friends or neighbours.
Planting times, ready times, harvest times. Maybe even a few recipes you discovered.
Be more specific about times: dates you started seeds indoor, dates you transplanted them, and dates you planted seeds directly into the garden. Germination times. All these are things you THINK you’re gonna remember. Yeah right, you won’t. The information will come in handy for future years.
Soil tests, soil amendments and subsequent assessments of that soil.
Any problems with pests, diseases or other issues
Approximate dates of harvests and the type of yield you got. I don’t have the patience to weigh, measure or count, but I know some do that. I think that’s great. Just not for me.
Weather. I know right? But seriously, every year is unique, and not every season is good for every crop. So record your assessment on the weather trends by recording details, and make note of what crops are doing better than others. For instance, I have noticed that in our part of the city, we seem to be have less violence in the weather. The worst seems to go around us. I have also noted that other areas seem to get a frost quicker than we do, perhaps owing to our number of nearby trees creating a minor microclimate. You’ll be more likely to make note of weather patterns if you’re writing them down.
New changes and experiments. How else are you gonna track what works?
Suggestions, recommendations, and even recipes shared by other gardeners. I know, again with the recipes.
Expenses: how much spent in greenhouses and garden centres, seed catalogues, garden paraphernalia, new builds, maintenance of raised beds etc, cold frames, lattices etc
Hacks, suggestions, inspiration and ideas. Using your garden journal as the place to make quick notes about what they are, or where to find them, is the best way to keep them all in one spot for easy reference later
Personal reflections, inspiration and musings . . . . . after all, it IS a journal. It is part of you. It is a record of yourself.
What plans do you have for your garden next season?
Thanksgiving is always the second Monday in October for Canadians, about six weeks before our American neighbours celebrate the same holiday. It is an important and very unique holiday for a number of reasons. For one, it’s secular in origin, not religious like Christmas and Easter, and rather than celebrating an ‘event’, it celebrates gratitude, something society as a whole seems to have a hard time practicing in general. Although it isn’t religious in origin, its roots lie with the very Christian American pilgrims who gave thanks to God for bounty at the end of a successful harvest in 1621.
For 400 years North Americans have traditionally paused to give thanks at the conclusion of harvest. Even though most of us no longer feel we’re connected to harvest, make no mistake, it is still a successful harvest that ensures a comfortable winter – for all of us. Never in my life has that been more evident than in the year of 2020. For the first time in memory, the planting of spring was in jeopardy across the nation due to supply chain issues and minimized seasonal foreign workers (upon which many market gardens, grain farmers and ranchers depend), and during the first few months, issues with social distancing caused many meat plants to shut down creating a problem for meat producers who depended on them to get their meat to market. Over the months, we came to accept, and even expect in-store shortages and not being able to get what we order as soon as we were used to getting it. True definition of a first world problem at the best of times, but a little more tangible recently.
Bountiful harvests in 2020 and 2021 were questionable right from the onset of spring planting, and many people were worried. Me included. It looked like we were in for desperate food shortages, and very high prices. But from the perspective of hindsight, we can say that the inconveniences of ‘out-of-stock’ items has been only that, an inconvenience. Some prices rose, but the situation warranted that. Though frustrating at times, these inconveniences were only ever ‘lumps-in-our-oatmeal‘. At least for the time being. Other things were a little more impactful: special events that had to be altered, postponed or even cancelled, ill loved ones we couldn’t visit, funerals that sadly got missed, family gatherings that didn’t happen, loneliness – especially for the elderly or immune compromised, jobs that were affected, income reduced, businesses that suffered and some that couldn’t survive, dental care and other health related appointments that were set aside, as well as the loss of other services we enjoyed and upon which many jobs were dependent. Our economy was driven to its knees and we worried about the reliable availability of food and other necessities.
Now, in the autumn of 2021, we’ve learned many things. We’ve learned to continue on, keeping a bigger distance between each other, washing our hands more often, masks have become part of our outer clothing, and technology has become our connection with the world outside our front door. We’re still seeing results of the global upset, and it is affecting our food supply, promising to be more than an inconvenience in the near future.
But we have SO much to be grateful for, and it is more important than ever to not only acknowledge these blessings, but to focus on them. Yes, in some ways its been tough, but there are many good things that came out of our unwilling courtship with covid. I am so grateful that THANKSGIVING gives me pause to reflect and appreciate the specifics of my bigger picture.
If I were to get into details, the things I am grateful for, are innumerable. Though I try to consciously “count my many blessings, and name them one by one“, to do so takes a long time. Those are better left for personal reflection and my journal, for me to review from time to time with my Heavenly Father. But more generally, I can summarize many of them in these broader points.
1. Jesus Christ The gospel of Jesus Christ blesses my life in every way. Through it, I understand where I came from, where I am going, and what I am doing here. It provides a clearer vision of what I want, it helps me appreciate the many roles I play and helps me define my core values. I am grateful for His atoning sacrifice that paid the price for my sins, and swallows up my sorrows. I am grateful for the example He set, the unconditional love and the gate through which He walked which points the way to my Heavenly Father. I am thankful for His gospel which continues to be a beacon in my life, helping me to let go of the past, overcome weaknesses and to focus on becoming the person I want to be. I am grateful for scriptures that teach of Him, and for prayer that is the means of communication He makes available to me.
2. My family Those who produced me, and those I had a hand in producing and in whose lives I had influence – I hope I did enough. For siblings and cousins with whom I walked in my formative years, and who are still in my life. For nieces and nephews who choose to continue to stay in my life. For those of my family who have gone on before me – I appreciate so much, the choices you’ve made to bring me to this place and time. I will do what I can for you. And for those who have yet to be born – I feel some accountability to leave you a better world, and a faithful family in which to grow.
3. Dan The man I share this life with, and with whom I share all these children and now grandchildren. For the growing experiences we’ve had together both good and bad – they’ve made us who we are. I am grateful for love in my life. And as time goes on, I am increasingly grateful for the future we still have before us. I am grateful with confidence that we will grow old together – sealed for this life and the next.
4. The church I belong to which provides doctrine to help me understand my relationship with God, and my responsibility to my fellow human beings. It provides community to me, of like minded people who I love and respect; a community of people I can rely on, people I can reach out to, and people I can help, serve with and learn from. It has been the village that helped raise my children. It is the vehicle through which I make sacred covenants with my Heavenly Father, which sustain me, bringing me comfort and confidence as I walk that covenant path. It provides me with meaningful service opportunities which allow me to put myself and my perspective aside from time to time, to focus on a bigger, all inclusive picture.
5. Good health and strength to accomplish the things that are most important to me. As an extension of this, I am grateful for a good medical system that serves my community. Doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacies, and all those who work in the medical field, that I most often take for granted.
6. Good nutrition which is the building block of good health. For many of our early years, we lived from month to month, not being able to afford a lot of extras, and many times not even buying much in the way of groceries in any given month, but through it all because of gardens, food storage, tithing and careful management, there has always been healthy food on our table. That blessing was always appreciated.
7. Friends. We’ve been blessed with dear friends over our lifetime. We don’t get together in the same way of course, we don’t sit for hours and chat face to face like we used to, we don’t go to movies or out to lunch as we have in the past, but we do what we can in these covid times. We’re still in each other’s lives and we’ve found ways to be creative. The important thing is that when we do get together its as if there’s never been an absence. How I appreciate the love of good friends.
8. Tradition. Traditions are a critical part of our culture. In many ways they are the building blocks of what brings us together, and holds us together. They connect us to our history and provide clues about why we are the way we are. They separate us from others in a good way, providing unique similarities that bind cultural identities, and family units. They provide context for those who came before us, acknowledging the contribution they’ve made to the quality of our lives and the way we understand our world. They are an important thread in the tapestry of what makes us unique – providing a sense of comfort and belonging. Traditions don’t have to be old, handed down from generations before. We can develop new meaningful traditions that have the power to bless our lives in the future, and to create a legacy that will enhance the quality of life of those who come after us. Truth is, we are all creating a legacy of one sort or another – consciously or not. How much better it could be if we focused on what that legacy will look like to those we’re leaving it to.
Not all traditions are good. Part of our responsibility to our family is not only to pass on healthy traditions, the ones that connect and edify, that strengthen and uplift – but to break the cycle of unhealthy traditions, the ones that foster hate and prejudice, division, unhappiness and abuse.
9. Technology Never thought I’d ever say it, but I am grateful for technology. Even to the degree that I understand it, and the terrifying learning curve that is repeatedly before me, I must concede that it has enhanced my life. It has kept me connected with the people I love and care for, the information I need, the community I want, and a multitude of opportunities to serve those around me. Mobile phones, tablets, desk top computers, televisions, the internet that makes them all friends, and yes even social media avenues that help me reach beyond my own immediate circle. Without technology this year, it would have been a lot lonelier than it was.
10. Our Garden
For many years while I managed our family business, an LDS Bookstore – I didn’t have time to fully enjoy my garden. It was a chore that somehow compelled me from spring to fall. I put in the work, and while I can admit I often found solace losing myself for hours in the distraction of it, I confess that I hardly ever harvested it in those busy years. Some years I was tempted to let it go, reasoning that because the store kept me so busy every fall, the final satisfaction of harvest alluded me. But one day I realized that it wasn’t the harvest that soothed me during the calm peaceful summer hours that I quietly weeded with only the birds and squirrels. It wasn’t the harvest that distracted me from business worries and stress in the spring while I planted flowers and potatoes. It wasn’t the harvest that took me on pleasant greenhouse excursions looking for evening scented stock and some new herb that I hadn’t yet grown. I realized that my garden was therapy, and though one day I hoped it would become a-year-long therapy, I would be making a terrible mistake if I stopped the process simply because one portion of it wasn’t working for me. From this vantage point, I am very glad for that decision long ago. My garden has paid me back many times over for the hours I devoted to it these many years. It has been good for me.
I am grateful for continual clean water, electricity, furnaces and fireplaces, hardwood floors, meaningful employment, vacuum cleaners, brooms, chickens, cherries, kale, dill and sunny days. I am grateful for Vitamin D and aloe vera plants, books, movies and this blog that gives me an outlet of expression. I am grateful for the constant drive to improve and learn new things. I am grateful for Santa and teddy bears and quilts and clotheslines.
Being grateful makes us happier. It really does. Because it helps us develop a more positive outlook, it promotes optimism, lowers stress, depression and anxiety. There is growing scientific evidence that demonstrates expressing genuine gratitude improves our physical health as well as emotional. It improves our quality of sleep and even enhances our immune system.
Thanksgiving is a gift. It is the opportunity we often neglect to take without a reminder, that is to pause, take a few minutes, reflect on what we’re really grateful for. I hope you take this time to do exactly that. I’d love to see your list. No doubt you’ll remind me of many more things I too am grateful for.
We’ve all seen things this year, we thought we’d never see. We can no longer say “it’s never gonna happen”. It already has. It still is. It will again. And again! Stores running out of necessities. Supply chain issues that backlog commodities for weeks or even months, or in some cases – remove them completely. Panic buying which leads to even more shortages, and finally rationing. Not that long before, we couldn’t even imagine it. Now most of us have seen it with our own two eyes. The year 2020. Never to be forgotten. A year full of uncertainty and constant upheaval, where nobody had 20/20 vision.
During much of 2020, empty shelves became common place all over the world.
All of us were affected. All of us were at least inconvenienced, by not being able to get the things we wanted or needed in a reasonable time – if at all. Some of us lost income. Some lost jobs. Some lost businesses. Some lost lots more. The businesses who survived, had to figure out how to reinvent themselves. Some did it really well. Some thrived. Some were so well suited to the new way consumers had to buy, that they had a stellar year. Every one of them adjusted in some way. If they didn’t, they probably didn’t survive. Most will never be the same again.
The question is: “if 2020 didn’t wake us up, what’s it gonna take?” What’s it gonna take to convince us that being prepared could make a repeat of that whole experience so much easier? Look at it as the best dress rehearsal ever! The whole world joined in. It revealed to us our weak spots – things we can improve on. I hope we learned some valuable lessons.
As we strive to care for ourselves and our families, one of our greatest challenges is to find peace in the midst of an uncertain future. Never has our future been as uncertain as it is now. Though we may have the basic necessities of life today, what about tomorrow? Psychologists explain hoarding and panic buying as expressions of the need for “taking back control in a world where one feels out of control”. It leads to “me-before-you” thinking, and disregards the basic needs of everyone else. Experts say that when people are stressed, their ability to reason is often hampered, and they look at what others are doing for guidance. They will likely follow the crowd – engaging in the same behaviour. The great toilet paper shortage in 2020 is the perfect example of this, and has become the “icon” of mass panic buying.
The sad truth is, that none of it was necessary. And it still isn’t. Not because I don’t believe shortages will happen again, but because with a little bit of foresight and planning, we can all be prepared. With preparation comes peace of mind, and there is no price on “peace of mind”.
For over a century the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has counselled its members to be prepared in all things. “If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear” is a basic tenet in the religion. Preparation in all things, not just food. In 1977, then leader of the Church – Spencer W. Kimball said “We have placed considerable emphasis on personal and family preparedness. I hope that each member of the Church is responding appropriately to this direction. . . . This implies the [prudent managing] of our resources, the wise planning of financial matters, full provision for personal health, and adequate preparation for education and career development, giving appropriate attention to home [food] production and storage as well as the development of emotional resiliency.” These were strong words to the members of the Church at the time, and many took them very seriously. The wise counsel was considered “Direction”, and it certainly shaped the direction I took as a young adult, influencing many choices I made then, and in my future: primarily my choice to establish a serious FOOD STORAGE. I guess you could say some of us were “preppers” long before prepping was cool. LOL.
We don’t have to wear a long pony tail and live in a mountain cabin to be prepared. The term “prepper” may be a fairly current term, but there is nothing new about the concept of preparedness. So how does an urbanite prepare themselves and their family for the inevitable empty shelves and high prices of the future? I’ll tell you how. They begin by storing a modest supply of food. And they go from there.
HOW do you start a serious Food Storage?
It is actually really simple. Embarrassingly simple, however, don’t confuse the word “Simple” with easy, it’s about DOING. But with a clear mind and a good plan, we can move forward, beginning right here, where we are today. Below is counsel the Church’s governing body gave to its members worldwide in 2007.
Note that there is no incitement of panic in this loving counsel. It is reminiscent of the counsel a kind and wise parent might give to a child. And therein lies the simplicity of it. While worldwide circumstances and laws may alter drastically, the direction is still clear: to “store as much as circumstances allow“. What members do with that direction of course, is up to them – but if society as a whole followed it, we would never again have to live through the panic buying of 2020.
WHAT TO STORE?
Advice from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, – long recognized as experts in the area of preparation says: “It is important to remember that you should not go to extremes when establishing your food storage. For example, it is not wise to go into debt to establish your food storage all at once. Develop it gradually so that it will not become a financial burden.”
hymn: Come Ye Thankful People by Henry Alford
There are three main components of food storage: *short term, *long term, and *water. Taking on the project of establishing a full year’s supply of food and necessities is huge, and for many – price prohibitive. But breaking it up into bite size, manageable pieces, removes the overwhelming immensity of it, making it feel less daunting, and more realistic; making it Do-able.
Start by setting a goal to store a THREE month supply, and divide that into months, beginning with ONE week: seven days of breakfast, lunch and supper. You know what is normal for your household. Start there. It is very important that you “STORE WHAT YOU EAT, AND EAT WHAT YOU STORE“.
Think of seven family favourite recipes for main dish meals. Write them down, with a list of ingredients for each. Begin your journey by buying what you need for those seven meals.
Now think of seven breakfast meals that are not dependent on fresh ingredients. Write them down, with a list of ingredients for each.
Fill the week’s menu in, with a list of seven lunch ideas, and write them down with a list of ingredients.
This exercise becomes a little more elaborate as you go through it, and it requires serious contemplation to make sure your choices are manageable for YOUR particular circumstances, especially if you have children in the home. Remember, it MUST be liveable. People say to me all the time “if I’m starving, I’ll eat anything“. Okay, I get that, and I might not even disagree with it in theory, but framing it with such extreme adjectives as “starving” is what panic thrives on. Calm down, and try to reframe your preparation in terms of “normal”. In times of stress, you want as much to remain comfortable and normal as possible. THIS is a huge step in the “peace-of-mind” department. An adequate food storage is not simply for some future ‘zombie apocalypse’, it is for those times when life throws you curveballs and you cannot get out to shop; it is for times of illness, disruption in employment, or – as we all saw in 2020, when the stores themselves cannot supply the general public. An adequate food storage removes the feeling of losing control over one’s own environment.
Once you have your week’s menu written down, go out and begin purchasing the ingredients for it – as you can. Make it a priority, pushing less important things to the side for now. Then, when you have those supplies firmly in-hand, repeat it. Or better yet, create another week’s menu.
Think of seven MORE family favourite meals. Repeat all the steps above. And then repeat again. And repeat again.
Now comes a new way of thinking, that is key to making this whole thing work. Avoid the scarcity mentality that “food storage” is food storage and “groceries” are groceries and never the twain shall meet. Don’t buy into that idea of “protecting” your food storage from yourself. That is where the scarcity mentality comes in and starts to mess with you. I have friends who absolutely will NOT touch their food storage. They’ve developed such a mental block against using it because of their belief that it is for emergencies only. But what constitutes an emergency? And when is it big enough? Some of them tell me they’ve got freeze dried food in their storage, and knowing that it has a shelf life of 25 years, they can just forget about it, knowing they’ve done due diligence.
The problem with this thinking is multifaceted. Firstly, they never learn how to use it, so the learning curve never goes away – making using the food seem more intimidating than it ought to be. And nothing ever gets resolved. Secondly, time slips by – and pretty soon 25 years has come and gone. Some of my friends admitted they’ve had their food storage well in the excess of 30 years! The natural question should be “So, WHEN were you gonna get around to using it?” They spent thousands of dollars, on this food insurance – only to have it now, decades past the expiry date. What a waste of a LOTTA money!
I am not speaking against long shelf-life foods. I am speaking against wasting them. Spencer W. Kimball emphasized – and I can hear his gravely voice even still say “We encourage families to have on hand this year’s supply; and we say it over and over and over and repeat over and over the scripture of the Lord where He says, “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” [Luke 6:46.]”
USE the food you’re acquiring, and replenish continuously. This prevents food getting stale and outdated, and saves you money. The key to making the whole FOOD STORAGE thing work, is to normalize it. This is food that you EAT, remember? So eat it. These are your family’s favourite meals right? They’re comfort foods. You’re used to buying these groceries. So keep buying for them.
Put USING it, into your plan. As you work toward your goal of acquiring ingredients for a week’s meals, . . . . simply add more. You should be in a constant state of replenishment: replenishing more than what you’re consuming. As you can afford it! Never, ever, ever go into debt to buy food storage. That is flawed thinking, and completely polar to the whole principle of self sufficiency behind it. Perhaps you’re replenishing with a little bit more than what you’re eating, perhaps with a lot more. Follow the good advice to “store what your circumstances allow”. In the example of my friends with the expired food: they could have saved a whole lotta money if they had been regularly using and regularly replenishing their food storage. You don’t have to worry about buying two sets of groceries every month: one for the kitchen pantry, and the other for your “food storage”.
SHOP THE SALES We all look for bargains when we go into grocery stores. When something we like is on sale, we try to pick up extra. With the food storage mentality, pick up a little MORE than extra. Gradually your week’s supply will expand to a month’s supply, and eventually to three months. This is where you start enjoying the sense of peace that comes with preparation.
NORMALIZE It is critical that the meals you are planning, are as ‘normal’ as possible, because it is also critical that you rotate them: first in, first out. Doing so keeps your food items current, avoiding spoilage. When my family was young, I had an added motivation to ‘normalizing’ our food storage. I didn’t want my kids to ever feel ‘hard-done-by’, if and when we ever relied on our food storage (which we did for short spurts from time to time). No matter how difficult things might be for us, I wanted life to be as ‘normal’ as possible for our kids. That meant that we couldn’t be eating completely one way in the good times, and completely another way when things got hard. That simply meant we stored what we ate, and we ate what we stored.
*hint: You should also have a short-term supply of medications, hygiene items, and any other necessities of your family.
There are lots of resources about storing food, and quite simply – there isn’t ONE way to do it. We all have circumstances unique to us that make our stories a little different. But there is lots we can learn from our own experience and the experiences of others. I intend to create future posts answering questions I have heard, that may hopefully give you some suggestions for how you can work things out in your own home.
Watch for future posts on: what to store, including personal recommendations *where to store it – including to freeze or not to freeze *home canning and other skills for food storage *how to use *water storage *seed storage – and more . . . .
In the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments about what works for you.
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!” – Robert Browning, a 19th century British poet, and famous for the poetry he and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote together, still often quoted today.
Many things he wrote touch my heart. But this: “Come grow old with me. The best is yet to be . . .” this one is my mantra. I first heard it when I was 17, recited by a television character in an episode of “Marcus Welby MD”, and it imprinted in my brain. I thought it was the most wonderful and idealic expressions of love I’d ever heard. Although I couldn’t really visualize a life that wasn’t youthful, I knew already that I wanted to grow old with Dan. And I completely trusted that “the best was yet to be”.
Robert Browning
Well, over 45 years have come and gone – nearly half a century. (Sheesh right ). And I have realized for years that I am living my dream. Although it hasn’t always been a picnic, and we’ve certainly waded through much struggle over those years, I am indeed growing old with Dan. Ironically, Robert Browning outlived his wife Elizabeth by 28 years, never remarrying. He grew old without her, dying at the age of 77. How very, very sad. But not sadder than the hundreds of similar stories we see unfold all around us. Loving marriages, cut short here on earth by the passing of one. How grateful I am for the promise I have absolute faith in: that families are forever. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, families can be sealed together for eternity, and live together in family units forever.
Dan and I are approaching retirement. We hope and we pray for, and we truly look forward to the time to finish growing old together. We have many productive and wonderful years ahead, to spend together and to enjoy our family as they grow old too. But if not. If, for some reason that neither one of us will understand, that is not to be – then we can lean on the knowledge that we have chosen to seal ourselves to each other, with our family, and that we will be reunited in due time, and continue our life together in another place.
Welllll, maybe I don’t absolutely love all of the ‘verb‘ part of it. But I like what it yields. I like the feeling of everything being clean. And I like it enough to do the work necessary to make it a reality. I like the freshness of knowing the medicine cabinet and bathroom cupboards are wiped down and organized, and the mirrors are polished, and corners are wiped clean.
I like dejunking – getting rid of things we really shouldn’t be keeping anymore anyway. I like that the fridge is clean inside and out, that behind it is is clean too. I like the look of a freshly oiled table and sideboard, and the bright clean look of all surfaces that have been oiled. I like clean windows. The truth is, I’m not especially fond of the actual cleanING part – but very fond of the CLEAN part, and so far, in my life – there’s only one way to the desired destination. If I was rich, I’d probably hire someone to come in and do those deep cleaning jobs for me, or at least help me so that I could just skip ahead to the wonderful adjective version of ‘clean’ and not have to wade thru the verb version of it. . . . .
I have many memories of spring cleaning when our kids were home. Some of them are good. Oh well. I guess they’re all kinda good. I just had some lazy-butt kids when it came to spring cleaning, who didn’t always catch the vision of the satisfaction that comes from a job well done. Often times I wondered if the pain of forced labour was worth the price I had to pay for it, but I usually didn’t let that interfere. Especially if they ticked me off.
We made it a habit to use the week of spring-break for spring-cleaning. And by ‘we’, I mean the ‘royal we’ of course. As in – ME. “I” made it a habit to use the week of spring break for spring cleaning. “They” didn’t have much choice. It wasn’t a popular idea, but it had its advantages. I created a list of what needed to be done. The first person who got off their butts to get started, got their choice of jobs, the last person got what nobody else wanted. And of course, their rooms – that went without saying. Everybody over 8 was responsible for their own rooms. Each job was calculated to take the better part of a day to complete. Nothing else could be done during spring break till your job was finished. That should have worked better as an incentive than it often did. There were times when certain individuals spent the whole time feeling sorry for themselves and then the week was done, and they never did get to enjoy their week off school. And then, having wasted their entire spring break getting to do nothing they wanted, they ‘really’ felt sorry for themselves. And they thought I should too. But I didn’t. I just felt sorry for me. And the pain they put me through while they moaned and complained about the injustice of it all.
And now, all these years later, they’re all gone and they have kids of their own, and they can figure out what they want to do about spring cleaning. There are options of course: 1) do nothing and get zero results, 2) be the martyr and do it all yourself, never training your kids how to clean and find joy in a freshly cleaned house, 3) find ways to motivate your family to pitch in and do their part, 4) prevent the need for spring cleaning, by cleaning deeply on a regular basis all year long, which you could do on your own, teaching your kids that some magical fairy godmother is the source of all shiny surfaces, or you could do with the helping hands of those who live in your house. Do I regret being the meanie who made them clean? Nope. Was it easy? Nope. Would I do it again? Yup.
And now, its just me to clean. sigh . . . . and now I have to motivate myself. sigh again . . . . . There are so many other things I’d rather do. But I remind myself: while I don’t especially love the ‘verb‘ part of it, I like what it yields – and there’s only one way to get there.
“A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whether we’re talking about people, animals, or plants, a good companion provides some sort of benefit, so with that definition in mind, Companion planting is simply the practice of deliberately planting different types of plants in the same proximity for beneficial reasons (often mutual benefit). It could be to maximize available space, it could be to minimize damage from pests or weeds, it could be to attract pollinators, or to provide habitat to beneficial insects, . . . . any reason that could yield better health or an increase in productivity of plants is reason enough to practice ‘companion planting’. It could be because some plants release chemicals that attract or repel predatory insects, cause or prevent problems or disease, or even enhance or damage soil suitability. It is the best way to maximize the efficiency of your garden.
When referring to the practice on a larger scale, the term is “intercropping“.
Dill and Poppies growing together in the strawberry patch.
Just like people, plants need good companions to be their very best. And just like people, some plants can be real jerks to other plants. We sometimes think that because plants don’t freely move around, they don’t have control over their environment. In actual fact however, like us, plants have communities that are either beneficial to them, or harmful. If left up to nature, a plant (we’ll call her Maggie) may not repeatedly volunteer to live in certain community environments because the bully plants have crowded her out or shaded her from the sun or absorbed a disproportionate amount of water or nutrients from the soil. Some plants actually exude chemicals that hurt or even kill other plants. But Maggie doesn’t have much choice if we deliberately, but innocently choose to PLANT her into a toxic community. Her only option is to respond to the stimuli around her. And that, all plants will do.
If Maggie is planted in a good community with good companion plants around her, her response will be health and happiness. And she will be beautiful – all that nature intends her to be. If she is planted in a toxic community, with bad companion plants around her, she will be sickly, limp, prone to disease, susceptible to certain bugs, or will otherwise demonstrate any number of variances contrary to her best self. You can water her all you want, fertilize her, prune her, say kind things to her, . . . but she is doomed, because you put her in a place where her new neighbours don’t like her, or vice versa.
in the herb garden, Rosemary surrounded by her girlfriends Marigold to the right, Borage to the left, a Poppy at 11:00 and some red orach babies along the top
Plants compete for resources, sunlight, space and nutrients. Certain plants support each other while others simply don’t get along. As the community planner of your garden, you can create peaceful neighbourhoods with good companionships, or ruiness neighbourhoods of plants that are poor companions. Don’t be restrictive while you’re planning your garden community. Diversity is the key. Just like people of all colours and kinds can be great neighbours as long as we’re friendly, flowers, vegetables and herbs can happily rub shoulders with each other in the same neighbourhood of your garden. No longer do vegetables need to be grown in long isolated rows, where pests and disease can transfer easily from plant to plant. Intercropping with good companions can break up some of that.
This is especially important in an urban garden where space is the issue. Many vegetables are pretty enough to be planted in the flower garden and many flowers are helpful enough to be planted among vegetables providing vibrant splashes of colour among the varying shades of garden green. Tomatoes grown among roses. Tulips grown among parsley. Kale plants in the vegetable garden, flower garden, herb garden and tomato patch. Having a veritable Heritage Days Festival in your garden all summer long is good in every single way, for everybody.
my first experience with the concept of companion gardening
In 1982 I had a great idea to experiment with – for potatoes. Dan hasn’t always been big about all my ideas, but he usually goes along with them, which he did that year – much against his inclinations. We collected several used tires. I laid four of them along the south west side of our garage, and planted one potato plant in each. As the potato plant grew, I covered it with soil and added a second tire on top, eventually filling it with soil. Throughout the summer as the potato plants continued to grow above the tire, I continued to add another tire which I then filled with more soil. I am thinking we stacked them each five tires high. The idea was, that each plant would fill up the whole space, all five tires high – with potatoes. I had read of some gardeners who received up to a hundred pounds of potatoes from a single plant, and I was very excited about the prospects. At the same time as this experiment was being conducted, I planted the entire rest of our garden in tomatoes! One hundred tomato plants. Nothing else. The potatoes were surrounded by tomatoes on all sides but the backside which was against the wooden garage wall. I didn’t know much about tomatoes in those days, and I didn’t stake them let alone prune them. They pretty much took care of themselves and just grew. I had intentions of making tomato everything that year. Tomato salsa, tomato sauce, tomato ketchup, and of course canning lots of tomatoes . . . you name it, I planned to do it.
We moved from that house at the end of August, but Dan went back sometime in the following weeks without me to harvest everything. He brought back boxes and boxes of tomatoes, in varying stages of ripeness, but not.a.single.potato. Not a one! He removed all twenty tires, and not a single potato! We were both shocked, and disappointed. He was disgusted. I was perplexed. He swore off doing anything similar in the future, I remained perplexed. There had to be a reason because the theory was sound, and others who had gone before me testified that it had worked for them. There was something amiss; I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I figured I would try it again another year, but first I needed to figure out what happened.
A few years later, I came across an article that said tomato plants inhibit root growth of potatoes. I was shocked. Who knew? I thought of my poor potato plants surrounded by their nemesis, and it opened my eyes to the whole idea of companion gardening. It made sense that one simply shouldn’t plant everything wherever one wanted, and then expect magical results. Shortly afterward, I came across a book sold by Harrowsmith Magazine called CARROTS LOVE TOMATOES: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardeningby Louise Riotte. I bought it and eagerly turned to read about tomatoes and potatoes. In it, author Louise Riotte says “Potatoes do not do well near pumpkin, tomato, raspberry, squash and cucumbers. The presence of these plants apparently lowers the potato’s resistance to blight.” In another chapter she says “Don’t plant [tomatoes] near potatoes, since tomatoes render them more susceptible to potato blight.” hmmmmmm I can’t say that I noticed blight on our potatoes, I am not sure I would have known what it was anyway. But I did notice NO potatoes. That was pretty hard to miss. I have searched and searched for confirming information about tomatoes inhibiting root growth of potatoes and have never found it again. I can’t say whether its true or not, but a few things I do know – 1) there are many factors that could have weighed in on the potato misfortune that year, 2) there could very well have been a bad arrangement with the proximity of those poor potato plants growing amongst so many hooligan tomatoes, 3) it was worth trying again from a more informed perspective, 4) I now had a newly awakened interest in plant compatibility.
I wanted to plant potatoes in tires again and many times pitched the idea, but Dan flatly refused to have anything to do with it. His reasoning: “We tried it. It doesn’t work! Learn from our mistakes.” My reasoning: “it didn’t work that time, but there were many factors that could have contributed – like all those tomatoes. Its worth trying again.” But then he threw in that clincher “Old tires in the garden are ugly.” He had me there. He was right. Twenty used tires in an urban garden that was an extension of ones’ back yard – is pretty ugly. I gave up. But its haunted me ever since. It SHOULD have worked.
Another example is the black Walnut tree. I mention in my composting article that there is a toxin produced by the Black Walnut called juglone, which essentially eliminates all competition. Walnuts are not friends with vegetable gardens, and not only do you not want them nearby, you also don’t want to use any part of a walnut tree in compost intended for vegetable gardens.
Sometimes, good companionships make sense when you know the reasons behind their suitability. For others it is like memorizing the periodic table in chemistry. You won’t be able to memorize them all, so don’t even bother, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t employ the science of companion gardening. Albert Einstein is reported to have said “Never memorize something that you can look up.” Whether he actually said that or not is disputed and really – who cares? I follow the same philosophy though. In this day and age there are many sources to find reliable companion tables. Find one or two. Refer to them while planning your garden. Follow their advice – you have to start somewhere. Learn for yourself and from the experience of others. Make notes. Go forward. Below, I have a list of companions I have found to be beneficial. It is not an exhaustive list. I only have experience with plants I grow. You might want to add some you have already found to be beneficial.
Terms to be aware of when studying companion gardening
Crop Protection: A protective plant can offer protection from weather for more tender plants. Perhaps a tall sturdy plant can shield another plant from wind, or perhaps a bit of shade from scorching sun.
Trap Cropping: An organic pest management system. Some plants help repel certain pests, while others can be used to lure pests away from more vulnerable plants.
Attracting Pollinators: Some plants are more attractive to bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects, so planting them in proximity to plants which are less attractive, but who nevertheless still need pollination, is very helpful.
Positive Hosting: Some plants attract predatory insects which can help manage harmful insects.
Neighbours good and bad, in alphabetical order
*Asparagus – Since asparagus plants are perennial, they must stay in one spot every year. That means you must bring other beneficial plants to them. Which is perfect, because asparagus is done by the time other plants start to flourish, so they’re good at sharing the same space. Herbs to plant in your asparagus patch – basil, cilantro, dill, marigold, nasturtiums, oregano, parsley, sage and thyme. Parsley is supposed to be especially good with asparagus, adding vigour to both. Asparagus repels nematodes that can attack tomatoes, so plant a few tomatoes in your asparagus patch. Also, tomatoes repel asparagus beetles. Good neighbours.
In my garden, I have a small patch of asparagus. When it is done, I plant three or four tomatoes in it. I don’t usually plant basil there although its supposed to be good for both, because its too far away for me to pay much attention to, and I prefer to keep a closer eye on my basil, babying it to make sure it gets all it wants. Basil is kind of a ‘princess’ plant.
Basil growing in the tomato patch. Young feverfew growing at 1:00 and 11:00, young kale growing at 7:00.
*Herb Basil – “Basil helps tomatoes with both insects and disease, also improving growth and flavour.” said author Louise Riotte. This is easy for me to remember because they go so well together on the plate. I usually serve them together, especially in the summer when they’re both fresh from the garden. I have a permanent tomato patch, where I stake up the tomatoes to a permanent trellis. This keeps the tomato off the ground, freeing up space to plant basil, chives, nasturtiums and a few other plants in front of the row. Basil repels tomato horn worm, and is also supposed to repel flies and mosquitoes but I’ve never put it to the test.
*Beans – bush or pole. Bush beans planted among potatoes protect them from the Colorado potato beetle. In return, potatoes are supposed to protect against the bean beetle. All beans fix nitrogen in the soil. Plant them with brassicas (cabbage family like kale), carrots, swiss chard, cucumbers, peas, potatoes, radishes and strawberries. All beans dislike beets, and ALL plants in the onion family like green onions, leeks, chives and garlic, but especially onions, which impede the growth of bean plants. Beans and onions are like the Hatfields and the McCoys so keep them apart if you don’t want grief between the two of them.
*Bush beans are supposed to do well with moderate amounts of celery. I have never grown celery but I plan to this year. Its recommended to plant one celery plant to every six or seven bean plants. Bush beans also do well with cucumbers. *Pole beans do well with corn, using it as a ‘pole’. Sadly, they do NOT like sunflowers. I say sadly, because I grow a lot of sunflowers and they seem to be the perfect pole to climb up on. Oh well. Beans derive mutual benefit with radishes.
*Beets – Beets grow well near onions, all members of the cabbage family, garlic, leeks, lettuce and mint. In fact, its even advisable to use mint leaves as a mulch for beets.
*Herb Borage – This herb is an excellent all around good neighbour. Borage is great planted near tomatoes as it deters the tomato hornworm, and good near brassicas as it repels cabbage moth caterpillars. It is also particularly good planted near strawberries, but maybe a few along the side of the patch is sufficient as they can get kinda tall, and will take too much room in a strawberry patch unless you live in the country and have a big garden. Borage is very attractive to pollinators, so plant it around squash and cucumbers for improved pollination. It’s also excellent for the soil and compost, as it is rich in organic potassium, calcium and other natural minerals. For those who live in rural areas, borage is deer-proof. The leaves are so prickly, they’re almost people proof too. I have heard recently, that borage juice is delicious, and I’m sure it is, as it has a delicate cucumber flavour. I have tried to eat it in several ways, and the flavour is quite delicious, but its hard to get past the prickly texture. I do however put it in my green smoothies – problem solved. That is an excellent way to benefit from it.
*Brassicas – (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, kohlrabi, turnip) I’ll be honest here, with the exception of KALE and HORSERADISH, I choose not to grow any of this family. After years of trying every method I heard of that was supposed to eliminate the ugly fat worm/caterpillar things that plague these vegetables, I have never been successful, and worse – I don’t even personally know anyone who has been successful. I finally deduced that the only thing way to prevent those uglies is to use chemicals, and since I choose not to use chemicals in my garden, I’ve decided not to grow them. I do however, still like to eat them, so I will buy them from where I know they grow in non-organic gardens, and I will try not to think about the details.
Apparently, they’re supposed to benefit from aromatic herbs such as chamomile, dill, mint, rosemary and sage, so if you’re gonna give them a try, you might want to keep that in mind. And they shouldn’t be planted near nightshade family vegetables like peppers, tomatoes and potatoes so keep that in mind too. Whatever success you have with brassicas, I’d love to hear about, as I would love to try them again with some degree of hope for a better outcome.
*Herb/flower Calendula (pot marigold) – Repels a number of unwanted soil nematodes and asparagus beetles, so plant among tomatoes and asparagus. Calendula flowers provide nectar over a long range of time, so it is a perfect attraction for pollinators. It is possible they may attract slugs, so they might be a good trap plant to pull slugs away from leafy green vegetables. I’m thinking I might try growing a few among my lettuce this year to see how that works.
carrots THAT close to green onions or even chives
*Carrots – Carrots should be planted near onions because onions will repel the carrot fly, as well as aphids. Planting side by side, short row after short row is a good thing. I don’t plant long rows of anything. Also, consider planting beans, other members of the onion family, peas, peppers, pole beans, radish, rosemary, sage, lettuce and tomatoes among them. Carrots grow particularly well with lettuce and tomatoes. Carrots release something into the soil that is good for peas, so a good thing to consider as you rotate your vegetables the following year. CARROTS LOVE TOMATOES! Tomatoes are known to produce solanine, which is a natural insecticide that targets pests affecting carrot plants. Carrots aerate the soil around the roots of the tomato plants, allowing more air and water to reach the roots.
Carrot enemies are Coriander, Dill and Fennel. They are in the same family, and can cross pollinate with negative results for all involved – everyone knows cousins shouldn’t marry cousins. Coriander, Dill and Fennel also produce compounds that can harm carrot plants, dill in particular, is known to stunt the growth of carrots.
*Celery – I have never grown celery before, but I am determined to grow some this year – encouraged by my friend Myrna Peters. She promises me that they are easy and delicious, and easy + delicious = a winning combination in my books. I read that celery does well with tomatoes, and also with bush beans, lettuce and onion, so I am thinking I’ll be planting a few plants in my tomato patch, my greens patch and a few among my cucumbers. This year will be my celery-experiment year.
*Chives – are reputed to improve the growth and flavour of carrots and tomatoes, so I have several small chive plants planted in my tomato patch. It is also supposed to help repel aphids, and a carrot rust fly, so maybe I’ll plant one among my carrots this year too. You should avoid growing them too near peas and beans.
*Herb Comfrey – Comfrey is a perennial herb you rarely hear of people growing. It has a deep tap root, so it brings many trace minerals to the surface. It is high in calcium, potassium and phosphorus, rich in vitamins A and C, and the carbon- nitrogen ratio is similar to barnyard manure. Whether that has anything to do with it being referred to as ‘green manure’, I have no idea, but it is often chopped up mid season and used to mulch other plants as well as an excellent green addition to one’s compost. This is exactly how I use it. Although, like most herbs, it likes sun, it is very forgiving when it doesn’t get much. It is hardy and tough. I have mine growing in a very inhospitable spot – a north east corner that is almost completely in the shade. It grows anyway. I let it get three or four feet high then cut it down when Dan is mowing the lawn. He mows over to chop it all up, and I use the resulting mulch in my tomatoes.
It also inhibits grass growth so I’ve read about it being used along a garden border to keep the quack grass out. This sounds brilliant to me, so I intend to plant more comfrey along a perimeter of our fence, where encroaching grass can be a problem. Because it grows so tall, you mostly want to ensure it doesn’t cause shade for any other sun loving plants.
It has been used traditionally as a poultice for surface wounds, and there is modern evidence to support this, as it contains a chemical called allantoin, which is reported to promote the strengthening of organs. Many years ago I tried using a comfrey poultice on some pretty bad road rash after my teenaged daughter fell off her bike. I didn’t put a layer of cloth underneath it, applying it directly to the wound area. (I know right? One of my many regrets as a mom) It ended badly and my lesson was well learned, but my daughter was never too eager to let me try it again, so my experience is limited – sigh.
Although comfrey is an herb I don’t use in the kitchen, or even medicinally, it is still a welcome addition to my garden because of its value as green manure.
*Corn – Does well grown among or near potatoes, and is a good companion to pole beans (which use the stalk to climb), beets, cucumbers, dill, parsley, peas, and squash which grow along the ground while the corn grows straight up. Also a good companion to sunflowers. Amaranth makes a great mulch between rows by competing with weeds and conserving ground moisture.
*Cucumber – Planted near asparagus, beans, celery, corn, dill, kohlrabi, lettuce, onion, peas, radish, and tomatoes, cucumbers are a regular social butterfly in the garden. They like almost everybody, and most everybody likes them. In fact, both corn and sunflowers can act as a trellis. Marigolds and nasturtiums among cucumbers repel aphids and beetles, and nasturtiums are supposed to improve their vigour and flavour. Dill helps by attracting predatory insects like ladybugs. The only ones who don’t seem to get along with cucumbers are potatoes and aromatic herbs like sage. Sigh. There’s always gotta be someone right?
Some gardeners recommend planting two or three radish seeds into every cucumber mound to help repell the notorious cucumber beetle. Some say that has been successful, others have resorted to other ways to get rid of them. I decided that I have everything to gain and nothing to lose by planting a few radishes that I have no intention of harvesting. And I will also do what many recommend, which is to watch for the little devils and knock them off the plant onto a piece of cardboard to dispose of. I hate uglies.
Nematodes are actually an insect that looks like a tiny worm. I know, more uglies. And of course, they like cucumbers. Stupid ugly. In her book CARROTS LOVE TOMATOES, Louise Riotte recommends spraying the plant with sugar water (1/2 cup sugar dissolved in 2 cups water, then diluted with a gallon of water). Evidently, sugars kills the nematodes by drying them out. The sugar also attracts bees, insuring pollination, so it seems its worth doing even if you don’t have a nematode problem.
Another problem I’ve had with cucumbers is stupid cutworms. They’re actually larvae from different moths and look like a curled up caterpillars. Don’t get too caught up in identifying them by colour because they come in assorted colours. They curl up around the stem of a tender new plant and cut it right off. And you’re right – they’re ugly too. Figures. Prevention is the only solution, but there are a couple of things you can do to help prevent the damage. 1) cut a cardboard paper towel or toilet paper roll into 3 inch pieces and use as a collar around the brand new plant. Put about a third into the ground, leaving the other 2/3 above ground. 2) insert a sturdy toothpick or small twig against the plant stem. This will prevent the ugly cutworm from wrapping itself around the stem. If you’re digging in the soil and uncover an ugly that curls itself up, GET RID OF IT! 3) Also, diatomaceous earth. Sprinkling diatomaceous earth in the soil around your cucumbers is supposed to damage the bodies of those stupid uglies. And apparently it does not damage the bodies of earth worms, which have a completely different constitution. I haven’t tried it yet for cucumbers but it worth giving it a try if I ever get a cucumber pest!
*Weed Dandelion – Don’t be a weed bigot. Yes, I know we’re supposed to hate dandelions, and I don’t particularly want them in my lawn either. But consider the possibility that there might be some good in them. Because of their deep root system, dandelions can restore minerals to soil nearer the surface by bringing them upward and depositing them in usable form. They also attract earth worms. I am not suggesting we let them grow wherever they want, but a few dandelions here and there can be our friends if kept under control. Then there’s this thing about them being good for you. Adding young dandelion leaves to a garden salad of mixed greens is actually wonderful. I grow them in a separated area of my garden where they can be safe, and not annoy Dan. He hates them in his lawn. Read more about them in my chapters about garden herbs.
*Herb Dill – improves the health of brassicas (cabbage family of vegetables), but you already know that the only brassicas I plant are kale and horseradish. Horseradish doesn’t seem to need any help from anybody, so I don’t worry about it. But for the rest of the garden – Dill attracts honey bees and other pollinators, as well as several predatory insects like ladybugs, and parasitoid wasps. Again, open your mind, not all wasps are jerks. Parasitoid wasps are tiny, non-stinging wasps of many different species, and they all work in the job of preying on the more pesky insects in a garden.
Dill is a member of the UMBELLIFERAE family, and it will cross pollinate with some of these plants with poor tasting results. Others in this family that you should keep dill away from are carrots, and the herbs angelica, caraway and fennel – which most people don’t grow anyway. Once dill is mature, it can hinder the growth of nightshade plants like peppers and tomatoes, so best to keep them separated. Dill is a good companion for corn, cucumbers, lettuce and onions, but really, because dill is so attractive to predatory insects, it is very beneficial to most plants in the garden. I don’t plant rows or even patches of dill. I generally broadcast dill seed in the early spring, among the whole of the vegetable and herb gardens, paying attention to avoid tomatoes and potatoes.
*Herb Fennel – most plants dislike fennel. Awwww. Sad but true. It has an inhibiting effect on beans, peas, brassicas and tomatoes, and should be planted well OUT of your vegetable garden. Though fennel and dill are cousins, they cannot be around each other, as they will cross pollinate resulting in poor results on both sides. If you must have fennel, consider growing it in your flower beds or herb areas but not with dill and coriander.
*Herb Flax – is a hardy plant that bears stems of blue flowers midsummer. It is a wonderful, airy flowering annual, that grows as a semi-hardy perennial in our climate. My mother in law referred to them as windflowers, and the flax I have now are descendants from what she brought to my garden many years ago. They always remind me of her. I have never started any from seed, but its worth a try. If I was to do so, I would just scatter them directly into the area very early in the spring, since that is what they seem to do naturally. Choose a sunny site with well drained soil Once they’re established, you should be good for years. For a delicate looking flower, it is a surprisingly hardy plant, you will be pleasantly surprised. Flax is a good companion to carrots and potatoes. It is recommended to grow in potato patches, and I think that sounds like a lovely picture to me.
*Herb Garlic – It is commonly known that planting garlic near roses will help to repel aphids. Because of its sulfur compounds, it may also help repel whiteflies, Japanese beetles, root maggots, carrot rust fly, and other pests. It is a good companion for beets, brassicas, celery, lettuce, potatoes, strawberries, and tomatoes. I have some garlic growing in my strawberry patch. Avoid planting it near peas or beans of any kind.
When we were young parents, we lived in the small town of Calmar. One of our elderly neighbours had a strong and personal testimony of the health benefits of garlic. You won’t be surprised to hear that he smelled of it constantly lol. He grew it. He ate it raw. And he thought everyone else should do the same. He told us that his wife threatened if he ate anymore garlic, he’d have to sleep in the basement with the cats. He told her “Fine! But at least I’ll be healthy!” We adored him, but we didn’t adore his pesky feral cats. He was born on a farm between Leduc and Calmar before Alberta became a province in 1905, and he told us his birth certificate had his place of birth as the “Northwest Territories”. He also had an interesting story to tell of the great flu epidemic that swept through the area in 1918/19. He said people in towns around were getting sick but that his family planted garlic all around their home to keep the sickness away. He swore that it saved their lives, as not a single one of them got sick the entire time. Thus began a lifetime conversion to its healthful properties. I often reflected on his interpretation of how garlic protected his family. I have no doubt it did. I too, believe in the antibacterial, antiseptic, antiviral, antifungal, and other anti-bad-thing properties of garlic, but I suspect his family’s safety was more due to two other factors: 1) intentional isolation on the farm, and 2) EATING the garlic that was planted all around their house.
Garlic should be a bigger part of our eating, and I think it should be in every garden.
*Herb Garlic Chives – is one of the most used herbs in my garden. Every part of it is edible and delicious, from its small garlic tasting bulb to its flat (not hollow, like other chives) stems, to its pinkish, purple coloured blossoms, even its tiny black seeds. I use the bulb in place of garlic all summer long – though not as pungent. And the leaves as one would use green onions. As they are related to onions, they grow well with beets, carrots, tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes, rhubarb, kale, kohlrabi, and other brassicas, parsley, mustard greens and peppers, and are thought to enhance their flavour and vigour. That makes them extremely sociable and easy to plant into virtually any plant community. Yes, in your herb garden, but also plant a small plant in your strawberry patch, tomato patch, and near lots of other vegetables. Everybody in your garden wants to have garlic chives as their neighbour.
They seed the same way that chives do so if you’re not picking those beautiful blossoms to add to kitchen flower bouquets mid summer, they’ll go to seed, which is fine if you want lots of garlic chive plants. You can move the babies around your garden next year, and supply all your friends too.
*Herb Horseradish – It is true that horseradish has a very strong taste and there are not very many people who sit on the fence about whether they like it or not. It seems you either love it or you DON’T, with not much in between. I love it. Dan hates it. But we like each other, so we’re okay. Even if you don’t like the taste, you should still consider growing it. Horseradish produces a chemical called ISOTHIOCYANATE (don’t ask me to say that outloud) which is both antibacterial and antifungal. This quality is good for not just those who eat it, but also those plants growing near it. Horseradish and potatoes are great friends, the potatoes are healthier and more disease resistant in the company of horseradish. Strawberries, asparagus and rhubarb are also great companions, but it seems that in companionships, horseradish is the giver with everybody else benefitting from its neighbourliness. The kind of neighbour everyone wants right? Well, sorta.
Horseradish may be easy to grow but, they say its not so easy to get rid of. Or so I hear. And because of that many urban gardeners are afraid to plant it. I have to admit, I don’t see it as a problem at all. The part you’re harvesting is the root, so if you’re digging up the root every fall, it seems to me that you shouldn’t have too much of a problem with it spreading. Ensuring you leave a portion of the root in the ground is how you’ll get some more next year. My first horseradish plants were three or four that I dug from my daughter in law’s garden midsummer. It was so slow to grow in its new home the following spring that I suspected the worst, and purchased another plant from my local greenhouse. By and by, my original newbies who were probably just establishing themselves beneath the ground, started growing up top, so I had both! I left them that whole season to establish themselves.
Last summer, I discovered that in the spring and early summer, while young and tender, the leaves are delicious and their slightly horseradishy flavour is the perfect addition to a summer garden salad or even a potato salad. This pleased me greatly, as now I don’t have to wait the entire season without enjoying it, and Dan doesn’t even mind it in that mild form. Probably in a larger rural garden where it could get away from you, you might end up with a lot of horseradish, but again, I can’t figure out why this should ever really be a problem since so many vegetables seem to do well in its company. I guess you’ll just have to govern your own horseradish situation.
The only vegetables you should not plant around horseradish are beans and leafy vegetables like lettuce and chard.
Kale in the tomato garden. You can see the cheery colour of marigolds on either side of it. Tomato climbing the trellis behind.
*Kale – I learned a good lesson from Kale one year, and that is to be more open minded and not so prejudiced. I have avoided kale for years, because its a brassica and therefore prone to those ugly fat caterpillars. On a whim that spring I picked up a package of them from a greenhouse thinking they were ornamental, and intending to plant them in a few pots and in one of my flower gardens. I was disappointed to see that nope, they were just the boring old vegetable kind and I was hesitant to plant any – owing to my extreme aversion to brassicas, but they were in my hand, in my own backyard and in the spirit of fairness I decided to give them a chance. I divided them into three groups of two each, planting them in different spots. My idea was that I didn’t want to devote too much space to them in case I had to get rid of them. If they became infested with worms, I would simply pull them up, dispose of them and with my prejudice renewed, swear off brassicas again.
I watched them closely – ready to jump at the first infraction, but what I saw was goodness. Strong, healthy, attractive looking plants. Two among my scarlet runners, two in my tomato patch, but not too close to them, and two in flower pots. In the spring I began snipping young leaves to add to garden salads and green smoothies. As time went on, I began adding kale to lots of dishes, ever watchful for uglies. It wasn’t until the very end of the season that they started to look a little worse off, but by that time I had had three months to enjoy them, and had plenty of other green leafy plants to take their place. I repented. And now I am a lover of kale, it having earned an honoured place in my garden. Where will I plant them in the future? I’ll do exactly what I did last year. I’ll have a few here, and here, and there. It may very well be, that dispersing them like that was the key to their success.
As they are a brassica, you should avoid planting them near other brassicas because they’re all subject to the same pests and diseases. If they’re together they’ll just all share their troubles. Kale is buddy-buddy with beets, celery, cucumbers, herbs, onions, spinach, chard, and potatoes. Apparently, it isn’t happy growing next to beans, strawberries, or too close to ‘tomatoes‘ – which is interesting since I had two plants in my tomato patch that first summer and all seemed to be fine. I think I may try another two in the same patch again, but just a little south in the interest of rotating. I will however, pay particular attention to ensuring that they’re not too cozy with their tomato neighbours.
just a little left of center is a gorgeous healthy lettuce plant in the carrot patch. The lighter shade of green leaves belong to poppies. They’re free spirits – they live where they want to in my garden.
Lettuce – Good companions for beets, brassicas, carrots, celery, cucumbers, dill, garlic, onions, radish, spinach, squash, and strawberries. Since they grow fairly quickly, you can plant lettuce in stages for the first few weeks of the season.
Last year we had more rain than usual. The good thing was that we never once had to water the garden with a sprinkler; hand watering specific areas was sufficient. The bad part was stupid slugs. Which love lettuce. I have since learned, that planting mint among one’s lettuce patch is supposed to keep away the slimy uglies that feed on lettuce leaves, and it makes complete sense to me, so I for sure will transplant a piece of my mint plant into my salad garden area this season, to cozy up with the lettuce. For the same slug reason, its a good idea to have a few lettuce plants interspersed throughout your garden, in addition to a small lettuce patch – a few in the carrots, a few among the cucumbers, a few in the strawberries, a few near the garlic chives, . . . . covering all your bases.
*Herb Marigold – (French Marigold and Mexican Marigold – quite frankly I do not know the difference. I have looked them both up and there are so many overlaps in how they look, that I don’t know how one would ever affirmatively distinguish them. If you know, I am receptive to new information. But for now, it’s “Marigolds” for me. ‘Marigolds‘ produce chemicals that repel certain nematodes and other nasties. They are probably the most commonly thought of companion plant. They attract pollinators, and are said to repel ants and even rabbits. I have no experience with the rabbit theory, and I hope to never put it to the test. I plant a couple dozen orange or yellow marigolds, interspersed throughout my herb garden, in my strawberry patch, and in my tomato patch. If for no other reason, I love to see their bright, cheery faces. They are reported to enhance the growth of basil, brassicas, cucumbers, kale, potatoes, squash and tomatoes. It is recommended that they not be planted near beans. Alright then. I guess Marigold can be allowed some personal dislikes too.
*Herb Mint – There are so many different kinds of mint, and I have learned that it is best if you want to keep them uniquely special, to keep them separated from each other. They seem to intermarry, which produces boringness down the road.
Because mint has such a reputation for being invasive, I mistook that to imply it would grow pretty much anywhere. Not true. While it can tolerate a little shade, it thrives in sun. In a very shady area, it will be less likely to come back the following spring. The more sun, the healthier it will be. It spreads through the roots, so if you really want to keep it segregated from the rest of your garden, plant in separated areas, or in pots buried in the ground. I have one kind of mint growing in a good spot in my herb garden, while I have another kind growing in my ‘protected weed garden’. I know its not really a weed, but I needed it to be in a safe place, where it wasn’t gonna get into everybody else’s business.
Mint attracts earthworms, hoverflies and predatory wasps, while the scent repels cabbage moths, aphids, and flea beetles. It is a good companion to tomatoes, so maybe a plant in your patch would be helpful. The counsel is to avoid planting too near parsley. I haven’t learned why yet, but for now I’ll trust the wisdom of ‘them‘ till I learn differently.
*Nasturtiums – herb/flower Nasturtiums are my current FAVOURITE crop. I’ve always liked their vibrant colours and I knew they were edible, but only last year were my eyes fully opened to just how wonderful they really are. Though they’re often disguised as a flower, they’re the super hero of garden vegetables. Yes VEGETABLES. They’re more than a pretty face. More than a flower, more than an herb. In my garden they are those things, but they are also a vegetable. Every part of them is edible: flowers, leaves, stems and seeds. And all are delicious and vitamin rich. Plus they’re good community members, always helping out a neighbour. At the risk of making them sound too-good-to-be-true, I simply cannot say enough good about them.
Nasturtiums do best in full sun. They’ll tolerate less sun but might not bloom as profusely. That’s okay, their leaves are delicious and make the best pesto. (see the blog article Common Herbs and Spices in your House and Yard: part 4 – Mullein to Poppies) They have a mild peppery taste that is delightful, but apparently many insects don’t like it. Too bad for them. They repel a wide range of harmful insects like whiteflies, cucumber beetles, squash beetles and bean beetles, plus they improve vigour and flavour of brassicas, cucumbers, radishes and tomatoes in their neighbourhood. They’re also a good trap crop for aphids, and their bright colours attract a variety of pollinators. For all the above reasons, I grow nasturtiums in hanging pots (for their colours and to collect seeds), in the herb garden, in the vegetable garden, in the tomato patch and here and there throughout the flower gardens. I hope to never have a summer without them.
*Onions – Plant chamomile and summer savory near onions to improve their flavour. Onions also work well alongside beets, brassicas, carrots, dill, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes. Onions help to repel the carrot rust fly.
Don’t plant onions near asparagus, or peas of any kind.
Red orach among rosemary, echinecea, feverfew, st. johns wort, marigold, mint and others. Not the poppy head that are in varying stages of ripeness, and sunflower at about 12:00. .
*Orach – This beautiful self seeding annual is a close relative to lamb’s quarters and tastes very similar. It has shield shaped, wavy leaves that are sometimes red, sometimes green, grows three or four feet in height, and is sometimes called French spinach, mountain spinach, or red orach. I planted a single plant many years ago and have let it self seed ever since. I have never deliberately planted it into a single spot or row. I really don’t have room for that kind of planting in my garden. I let it come up where it wants to come up, and use the small leaves early in the season to add to salads and other dishes I want fresh ‘greens’ in, then when they start getting a little taller, I pull out the ones that are going to cause unwelcome shade. This works perfectly for me. I have enough plants scattered throughout the garden that I am always assured to have sufficient even if I have to pull out a dozen or two. When the plant is tall and mature it will go to seed – about mid August. The seed heads are similar to lamb’s quarters, amaranth, quinoa – big and ferny, quite pretty. The wind will spread them around for you. For the same reason, these could be labelled as ‘weeds’, but its a weed that is a welcome landed immigrant in my garden.
I haven’t found anything that orach particularly does or doesn’t like as far as companionship goes, so the only thing I would be concerned about is the HEIGHT. Because it will eventually get about 4 or 5 feet tall it will shade whatever is behind it. So if you’re going to plant it in a row, keep that in mind. If you’re going to let it self seed like I do, keep the shade thing in mind too.
*Oregano – Oregano is supposed to be good for repelling cabbage moths, but since I don’t grow brassicas anymore I have not put it to the test. It is also supposed to be good around asparagus, but I’ve never tested it there either. Oregano is a favourite herb of mine for a number of reasons. First of all, I use it a lot of in my cooking, so I’m motivated to grow it. Secondly, it’s very hardy and once it’s established, it comes back every spring. It is easy to grow and forgiving, and I always do better with friends who are forgiving. Its always handy to be in love with something that wants to please you in every way.
parsley in lower center, oregano at 3:00, red orach at 1:00, marigold to the left, and thyme, feverfew, rosemary and other herbs dispersed among
For the first few springs, it’s not certain to come back and occasionally it might not, so be prepared to rebuy a few times. Baby it by covering with leaves in the fall for the few first years. I have my oregano in three different spots; in the beginning that was mostly in case one of them didn’t come back in the spring – I didn’t want to have all my eggs in one basket. In my herb garden, oregano is an herb and I pick it frequently throughout the season, trying not to let it flower. But it does have a beautiful mauve coloured flower which I really like, so I also grow it as a ‘flower’ in my flower garden. There it is free to flower at will, and I snip the flower stalks to bring into the kitchen; I like to have fresh flowers on the table all summer long.
*Herb Parsley – Ideally, parsley is a biennial in Alberta’s climate, which means it will come back a second season and go to seed, but you can’t always count on it, so don’t. It most often won’t come back, so count on replanting every spring. One or two plants will probably give you all the fresh parsley you want with enough to dry for winter. It likes asparagus, carrots, chives, corn, onions, and tomatoes. Parsley mixed with carrots helps repel carrot flies by it aroma.
*Peas – Are known to be a nitrogen fixer in the soil, so its good to move them around from year to year to enrich different areas. Because of their nitrogen, don’t ever get rid of their vines. Either plough them into the ground at the end of the season, or put them into your compost; they are very valuable. They are good companions to beans, carrots, celery, corn, cucumber, parsley, peppers. potatoes, radish, spinach, strawberries and turnips.
The only thing peas seem to not be good for is onions. But that’s okay. Not everyone can be a nasturtium. Peas are susceptible to the stupid cutworms. Diatomaceous earth has been recommended by several people, so this year, I’ll mix some diatomaceous earth in with the soil I plant them into.
*Poppies – There are several different types of poppies, three of which I grow in my garden: Icelandic poppies – a lovely spring flower, California poppies, with their bigger, more showy flower heads, and Oriental (or Opium) Poppies. They all have similar looks to the flowers, but the plants and seed heads are quite unique. I grow the first two perennials, as flowers in my flower gardens but the Oriental poppy is special. They grow at will throughout my vegetable and herb gardens. Each oriental poppy flower lasts only a few days, but new flowers are generated all summer long, so that is more than enough compensation for me. They can come in white, red, orange, pink and mauve (called blue) colours, but the ones I grow are a steady RED, like the poppies we wear every November.
When the snow melts and the ground is warmed, the seeds germinate and start to grow. Seeds can lay dormant for years and then suddenly spring forth and surprise you. They are trouble free in the garden, but they do need a sunny place. If they’re allowed to grow in clusters, they will be small and cute, but useless. I pull them out of spots where its not convenient for me to allow them to grow, and then the ones I do allow to stay, I try to remove all but one or two healthy plants. Allowing them to grow up solitary in the sun, will encourage them to be big, strong and healthy, producing big beautiful flowers and big full round seed heads.
They are annuals meaning they die back each year, but they produce so many seeds that sometimes people think they’re perennials. Nope. Not in the true sense of the word, since they’re not coming back from their roots, but since if you don’t remove the seed heads, they WILL multiply by a hundred times, I suppose for all intents and purposes you could consider them perennial. Doesn’t really matter – just a definition of terms. They produce nice big seed heads, that if you let ripen will produce hundreds if not thousands (depending on the size) of tiny dark seeds. Yes, these are the same poppy seeds you use in cookies, muffins, cakes and breads. I collect the seeds every year to bring into the kitchen for baking, being careful to make sure I spread thousands of them in the garden first. I like the seed heads almost as much as I like the flowers, and always bring in handfuls at the end of the year for fall arrangements.
Flowers that grow well with poppies are irises, yarrow, asters, black eyed Susans, dahlias, hibiscus, phlox and goldenrod, but probably mostly because they all thrive in the same growing conditions. Because they can get quite tall, and shade plants behind them from midsummer on, I pull them from spots where shade will be a problem. Once they’ve flowered (the flowers only last a couple of days), sometimes I might choose to simply remove their lower leaves to help prevent shading of other plants. At that point the poppy doesn’t care anymore anyway.
*Potatoes – Potatoes do well planted near beans, corn and marigold. It is good to plant horseradish in the corners of the potato patch. Bush beans grown among potato plants are supposed to mutually benefit each other against their own beetle pests.
They do not do well near pumpkin and other squash, tomatoes, raspberries, cucumbers, orach and sunflowers. Apparently these plants lower its resistance to blight.
*Pumpkin – Pumpkins grow well with corn, mostly because they trail and corn grows straight up. Potatoes and pumpkins have an inhibiting effect on each other.
*Radish – Before last year, I have never been a big fan of radishes. I’m good with two or three a year. I’ve tried to like them more because my folks did, and I never really hated them, they simply never appealed to me. But for some reason I decided to plant some last spring. Just cause I like to plant new things once in a while I guess, and they are known to come earlier than most other things. I suppose I was in the mood to have something come up early. One spring day, while I was in the garden looking for assorted greens to add to a spring salad, I noticed the radishes could use a thinning. I tasted one and and added them to my salad. That seemingly innocuous act rewrote history for me. I learned that I LOVE young radish greens! They are sweet and tender, and slightly peppery. They are a great addition to an assorted greens mix in the salad bowl. And they also make a fantastic green pesto! I was enjoying them so much, I was even motivated to eat the actual radishes when they matured, but alas, they’re still not my fave. That’s okay, I’ll settle for their greens. When the leaves get old they’re tough and woody, so eat lots when they’re young. Don’t waste them. If they’re not going to shade anything, let a few go to seed. See below for more information on how to do that.
In the garden, because they come up rather quickly, its a good idea to include radish seed with your carrot seeds to mark the row, as carrots always take forever to germinate. Plant radishes near beans, beets, lettuce, mint, peas and spinach. Planting 3 or 4 radishes among your cucumbers and squash plants is supposed to help repel the striped cucumber beetle, and other insects that like squash. Allow them to grow old and bloom to get the best companion benefit. Avoid planting near potatoes.
When using as companions, let your radishes grow old and go to seed. The greens will be tough and bleh, the roots with be woody and bleh, but you’re in for another garden bonus. First, they’ll grow really tall, three or four feet or more! Then they’ll flower – such pretty delicate light pink flowers which attract pollinators (important to fertilize your seeds). After the flowers, come green seed pods which are actually not only edible, but they’re tender and quite delicious, slightly peppery like the root. If you have lots of seeding radishes, go ahead and pick some pods to eat. The seed pods will mature and begin to dry. When they’re completely dry, pick them, or go ahead and pull out the entire plant and hang to dry. Pick the seed pods, and open them up to shake the radish seed into a bowl. Ta dah! Radish seeds to sprout all winter long, or to plant again in the garden next spring.
*herb Sage – Grow a couple of sage plants in your carrot patch to help protect them from the carrot fly. Sage and rosemary are good friends and like to sit beside each other. Sage is not good for cucumbers though – not its fault. Cucumbers don’t like any aromatic herbs, sage being the one they dislike the most.
*Spinach does well planted with strawberries.
*Squash, winter – like Butternut, Spaghetti, Pumpkin etc, trail along the ground and can take up a lot of room. See below in the zucchini section for ideas on tying them up vertically. They are heavy feeders, and should be moved around in the garden from year to year. Amending their beds in the early spring with fresh compostable soil, and older farm manure will give them the best start.
*Strawberries – Usually we see strawberry plants all by themselves in their own segregated neighbourhood, but we underestimate their sociality. They respond very well to nearby plants like beans, borage, garlic, lettuce, onions, peas, spinach, and thyme. In my strawberry patch I grow a few lettuce plants here and there, and a couple chive plants. I lightly broadcast dill seed in it, and I allow poppies to spring up where they want, always thinning to one or two in a spot to encourage them to grow big and tall. My reasons for the dill and poppies is that they grow UP while the strawberries stay pretty low. By the time my strawberries are ready to fruit again mid August, the lettuce is usually gone and the the poppies are beginning to dry so that I can remove the leaves if they’re causing too much shade. I am only interested in the dill when it is green and ferny. By the time it begins to ripen it attracts too many aphids so I usually just pull it out. This allows more sun to reach the strawberries again. I don’t grow borage IN my strawberries just because my patch space isn’t big enough to allow a borage plant to grow in it (they can get pretty big), but if I had a bigger patch I sure would. On the north end of my strawberry patch (their closest neighbours) is my salad garden – lettuce, spinach, radish, garlic, green onions. Good neighbouring communities.
*Sunflowers – Sunflowers attract pollinators to other crops, particularly squash and pumpkins. Planting near or among corn is said to increase yields. Sunflowers also attract ladybugs which prey on aphids. The inherent problem of course is that they not only NEED sun, they end up being HUGE and create a lot of shade, so they must be planted in spots where that is not going to be a problem. I haven’t planted sunflowers deliberately for years. They’ve been there for so many years, that they just volunteer, and of course, the birds plant some for me. Generally, I let them come up wherever they want and then pull the ones that aren’t gonna work. In areas of lots of hot sun, some plant sunflowers along the west side of the garden to provide filtered shade to cucumbers, but in my garden, I don’t have a too-much-sun problem, I am always looking for more of it.
I have read conflicting claims about sunflowers being good for / bad for pole beans, cucumbers etc. They are a heavy feeder, so where you do grow them – or in my case, “allow them to grow”, make sure you enrich the soil with compost every spring. Sunflowers aren’t nice to potatoes, which are more susceptible to blight when they’re in close proximity.
*Swiss Chard – Good companions for chard are bush beans, brassicas like kale, celery and all kinds of alliums such as garlic, onions, leeks, and chives which can repel many undesirable insects. I grow a lot of chard, its one of my favourite garden vegetables and I wait all year long to use it as a fresh green for spanakopita. I generally plant them in rows, but some varieties are so colourful they look great in a flower garden among annual flowers like nasturtiums and marigolds – which happen to be good companions to them. Who would have thought such a ‘vegetable’ looking vegetable could be such good friends with so many flowers? A good example of integration between the neighbourhoods.
*flower Tansy – is another good example of integration between the neighbourhoods. It is a hardy perennial flower that is a good companion to raspberries, grapes and fruit trees. It deters flying insects cucumber beetles and squash bugs, as well as ants, so having a plant in your squash bed would not only look nice, but would be a helpful neighbour.
*Tomatoes – are my all time favourite garden vegetable. I wait eight months of the year to have a fresh garden tomato, and I rarely if ever buy them at the grocery store. The few times I cave and buy a few, I am always disappointed and promise to never do it again. They are fairly easy to grow. All you need to do is make sure they have sun and water. There are other details that will yield better results of course, but those come with experience and time.
About mid June – tomatoes are beginning to be tied up to trellis; to the left of them are chives, basil, marigolds and nasturtiums
Tomatoes are a good companion to asparagus and will protect them again the asparagus beetle. Usually tomatoes are being planted about the time asparagus is being harvested. But as asparagus needs to finish out its season, even after giving all its got to give that year, a neighbourly tomato can help it out. I usually have two or three tomato plants planted beside or behind the asparagus area, and they’ve always been good to each other.
Tomatoes are compatible with and benefit from – basil, beans, borage, carrots, celery, chives, cucumbers, garlic, lettuce, onion, parsley, peppers, marigold, mint and nasturtiums. Planting a single garlic bulb between your plants protects them from red spider mites.
Unlike most other vegetables, tomatoes don’t mind growing in the same place year after year. If you develop a disease problem, you’ll have to move them of course, but that isn’t likely. They LOVE Sun, and are heavy feeders so give them ample quantities of compost or old manure in the spring. Mulch and water to maintain good soil moisture. Always water tomatoes from the bottom, making sure water doesn’t splash up onto the leaves which can cause disease. I prune the bottom foot of my tomatoes once they have grown at least two feet high. Tying them up to a trellis or cage keeps them off the ground, facilitates good airflow, makes it easier to water properly and to plant companion plants nearby. Whenever you can get your garden growing vertically, you’ll create more room for other things.
TOMATOES AND POTATOES DO NOT LIKE EACH OTHER. Potatoes and tomatoes are affected by the same blight, and may spread it to each other, so keep them apart. Other plants to keep away from tomatoes are brassicas, beets, peas, fennel, dill, and rosemary. Corn and tomatoes both suffer from the corn earworm, so again, best to keep them separated.
*Zucchini – is a summer squash (because of its relatively thin skin), and is a heavy feeder, like winter squash (spaghetti, butternut and pumpkin). They do best in warm, moisture-retentive, fertile areas, recently amended by organic compost and aged manure. They also need plenty of direct sun. Unlike winter squash which trails, zucchini becomes almost bushy. Both take up a LOT of space, creating a literal carpet of leaves in your bed. This is problematic in urban gardens for a few reasons: first – the space they take is difficult to justify, second – the canopy of leaves creates a visual shield to the blossoms which so desperately need pollination, and third – the squash can become victims of pests who like to nibble on them lying on the ground. The answer is vertical. Going UP. Tying them to a trellis or bamboo poles, or stakes pounded into the ground. I tried tying zucchini up last summer, but didn’t have the confidence that I was doing the right thing. This year I am going into the planting season with more confidence to do exactly that. Because of how zucchini grows, its not a natural climber so its gonna need a lot of encouragement in the form of tying and trimming of lower leaves.
Tying your zucchini up to some vertical support helps reduce disease and mildew which thrive in moist surroundings on the ground. The free flowing air takes care of both problems. It makes the blossoms more visible to pollinators, and it makes picking the zucchini easier. It also helps nearby companion plants to get a little closer. Borage is commonly used to attract pollinators, and its possible to plant one nearby when the zucchini is tied to a vertical support. Borage also deters pests from your zucchini. Do not grow winter and summer squash near each other as they can cross pollinate with negative affects.
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In addition to companion planting, practicing regular, routine crop rotation, helps balances the right soil conditions for most plants, and when maintained, many soil borne diseases can be avoided altogether.
Have fun with your experiences. Keep a journal entry about significant finds, no matter how innocuous they may seem at first. I’d love to hear some of your discoveries.
There are some basic truths that rule life, no matter what culture or religion we come from. One that, whether we like it or not, we’re all subject to – is the “Law of the Harvest“. What exactly is that? Well, it is very simple and straight forward – essentially “We reap what we sow“. One of life’s great lessons.
Joy of the Harvest by Simon Dewey
A cousin of the Law of the Harvest is “the LAW OF ATTRACTION” which, simply put, is that “like energy attracts like energy”. A negative, complaining type of person always has something to complain about because they find the negative in everything, while a positive, cheerful person always finds the good to be happy about. I’m sure we all can think of examples of both types of people, and can acknowledge that they create self fulfilling realities for themselves. The law of attraction however, goes further. It is based on the idea that people and thoughts are made up of pure energy and that not only can a person attract positive or negative experiences through their positive or negative thoughts and affirmations, but that the process can literally improve one’s health, wealth and personal relationships. I believe this. To a certain extent. But I feel there is a critical component missing.
Let me explain. Harvest is a natural law, a tangible, physical, visual, easy-to-understand law. It says that harvest always comes after a season of sowing. Every farmer and backyard gardener understands the intimate relationship of sowing and reaping. And it is an analogy that transcends beautifully into all aspects of our lives, including spiritual applications.
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Galations 6: 7
In 1903, British philosopher James Allen published a book that he called AS A MAN THINKETH. It is based on Psalm 23:7 “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he“, and follows the process of the mind guiding our footsteps as we progress along the pathway of life. “Purity of mind leads inevitably to purity of life, to the precious love and understanding that should control our everyday acts and attitudes towards friends and foes.” he wrote, and his life exemplified his philosophy.
James Allen, author of As a Man Thinketh
Born into a working class family in England, James was the older of two brothers. His mother could neither read nor write. His father was a factory knitter. In 1879, following a downturn in the textile trade of central England, James’ father travelled alone to America to find work and establish a new home for the family. Within the first two days of arriving in New York City, his father was killed, believed to be a victim of robbery and murder. At the tender age of fifteen, James was forced to leave school and find work to support his family.
Having a better education than either of his parents, he eventually found work as a private secretary in several British manufacturing companies, and by his early thirties, was earning his living in journalism and reporting. He married, and found an occupation writing for a magazine where he could rely upon his spiritual and social interests and skill as a writer. This provided him the time and opportunity to be creative, and he published his first of many books, including “As a Man Thinketh”. James and his wife Lily, had only one daughter Nora. He died at the untimely young age of only 47, having written several books, and leaving material that would be published into several more. His words have had a positive impact on generations, and they illustrate the use of the power of thought to increase personal capabilities. Although he personally never achieved great fame or wealth, his words continue more than a century later, to influence people around the world.
The underlying premise of “As a Man Thinketh”, is that noble thoughts make a noble person, while lowly thoughts make a miserable person. Truly, he knew of that which he wrote. A lesser man could easily have let his difficult beginnings pull him down into a defeated life, but against all odds he rose above it. What he learned through a lifetime of application, was that purity of mind can bring happiness and confidence. By magic? By some miraculous process of magnetism? Not at all. But through hard work, and by applying guiding principles that he learned through heartfelt searching. No doubt his father’s tragic death and his family’s economic hardship shaped his future development. He observed that many people were trying to improve their worldly position without seeking spiritual betterment, when he had learned the opposite was true: that by seeking spiritual betterment one gained the power to improve worldly position. He didn’t teach about getting rich, or seeking power, except as it applied to personal empowerment to ACT. And it was through acting upon the truths he learned, that he created a good and fulfilling life for himself and his family.
Through his book, James Allen pointed the true way to a better life. “Out of a clean heart comes a clean life and a clean body,” he wrote, and likewise “Out of a defiled mind proceeds a defiled life and a corrupt body.”
James Allen may have introduced the concept of the law of attraction, but since then, it’s taken a turn that I kinda doubt he would be proud to be connected with. In its basic form – to me, the principle of attraction sidetracks at best, the part God plays in our betterment. For some reason, it seems to attribute the attraction of good to some mystic force of the universe, some inner energy without a name. It circumvents the missing piece of the puzzle. That piece is ACTION. Action follows intent. Intent alone – no matter how much energy we spend thinking about it, is insufficient to bring about change necessary for a different result.
Viktor Frankl – neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl proved that while we cannot always alter the outer forces of our experiences, we can determine the type of person we allow ourselves to become. He said “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankl and James Allen could have been great friends if they had lived in the world at the same time. Each of them was influenced by their unique and tragic circumstances, and yet rose above them. Neither pretended it was easy, but their ‘thinking’ ultimately changed their lives.
And that brings us back to where I began – THE LAW OF THE HARVEST. It is a foundational gospel truth. One that we can count on to apply in all aspects of our lives. Yes, it is possible from time to time, for our harvest to be slightly delayed, tricking us into thinking we got away with something. But in the end it always catches up, and we WILL reap what we sow; in the end, we WILL get what we deserve.
That isn’t a threat, and it certainly isn’t always negative, although I admit, sometimes it comes across that way. To every action there is simply a consequence. Years ago, a teacher demonstrated this principle visually for me with a pencil on the table. We may only pick up only one end of the pencil, but the other end is unavoidably affected. We may choose an action, but we cannot choose the consequence. There will always be a consequence, and in many cases that consequence is a pre-selected, natural result – governed by nature.
Ben
I knew a handsome young man once who consistently made poor choices, but rarely seemed to pay their price. I’ll call him Ben. Inevitably Ben’s poor choices would catch up and then pile up, and suddenly some spark would ignite the whole pile, and the world would come crashing down on him in consequence of his latest series of poor choices. Most of those times, Ben chose not to take accountability for the results. It was always easier to blame others, or circumstances beyond his ability to control. Of course, it is more comfortable that way. Not very productive, but a whole lot more comfortable to never accept responsibility for ones failures.
Eventually Ben started making better choices, some might even say – excellent choices. Choices that were difficult, and didn’t show too much comfort in the immediate future, and which required firm resolve and commitment to follow through with them. But the consequences of his previous poor choices had long lasting results and he still had to pay the piper. For a time it seemed that no matter how much he did right, he still lived with the ill consequences of his prior actions. He was still reaping – albeit a little late, the dismal harvest he originally sowed. And ironically, that harvest continued to be in affect a long time after his attitude changed course.
A couple years into these better choices, Ben began to see better results. He had become so accustomed to living with his prior consequences, that he was unprepared when they began to fade into the background. One day he realized his life had taken a turn for the better and he literally marveled at the good place in which he found himself. But it was not by accident, nor coincidence, nor even simply a change of heart. The fact was, that the unfortunate consequences had nearly all run their course, and he was starting to live with the results of his better choices. The natural consequences of THEM. A much fuller harvest.
Specifically, how did the Law of the Harvest apply in Ben’s life? He paid a price for his poor choices. At the time the price seemed disproportionately high to him, and lasted too long, and in some ways, he is still living with the regrets of some of them. But he has placed them in the past and moved forward. When his choices matured, and his actions followed, he began reaping a richer harvest.
Amelia
Amelia is a lovely young mother with a handful of cute kids. Now if you’ve never had four or five kids at the same time, trust me – some days can be challenging, even overwhelming. I get it. And overwhelmed she was. Amelia began to dream of the education she wished she had taken seriously in her younger, pre-mom days. And it became easier to escape into a desire to improve her mind, than it was to take care of her children. She justified it of course, because who can find fault with the desire to improve one’s education? It is a noble goal. But the timing was now difficult. Children aren’t ‘hobbies’. They are living, breathing human beings with personalities and potential. Their health and well being is completely dependent upon their parents. They literally have CLAIM upon us, legally, morally, and eternally.
The truth was, Amelia found reading her ‘lessons’ more fulfilling than doing dishes, changing diapers and cleaning house. She found the things that she was learning were insightful, satisfying, and rewarding. The more she escaped to her studies, the worse life became around the house. Who’s gonna make the meals? Not mom. She’s busy improving her mind. Who’s gonna clean the house, take the kids to school, help them with homework, ensure they get their chores done, learn personal grooming, develop good friendships and interpersonal skills, gain confidence to deal with challenges and to go into the big wide world? Not mom. She’s busy improving her mind and getting the education she wished she got when she was younger. Can you see where this was headed?
The result was a house of chaos, and the more chaotic it became, the more Amelia retreated behind closed doors to study her ‘lessons’ – because after all, she had important things to do. Education was important, and she was choosing it. It made her feel good. It was much more meaningful that the lowliness of housework, and the drudgery of meal planning – both of which as we all know, never-Ever end. But no matter how distracted you are, there are basics that need to be done in any household, especially where there are children. So who was preparing the meals? Doing the laundry? Doing the shopping? It isn’t that Amelia didn’t love her children. Any one could see she did. She simply found it easier to depend on others to rescue her when she so often fell behind. She got used to friends bringing in family meals. Often. She got used to friends coming in and cleaning when the house got away from her. She began thinking it was her ‘due’. She expected it. She couldn’t even count the times her well-meaning friends and neighbours had helped out with various things – trying to lighten her load. Sometimes when the meal wasn’t just right, or it was a few minutes late, or was too similar to what someone else brought recently, she’d even complain. Just a little.
The Law of the Harvest was gonna play out in Amelia’s situation; of that there was never any doubt. In fact, it already was. And it was beginning to look tragic.
If I had a relationship of trust with Amelia, the first thing I would suggest she do, is to visualize what kind of harvest she wants at the end of this metaphorical ‘season’. My guess is that in her heart of hearts, she’d want happy, healthy children – equipped to handle the adult world confidently, who know and love their Heavenly Father, and keep his commandments. I believe she’d want to have a happier marriage, where both she and her spouse were not only contributing active parents, but equal loving partners. If I am right, I might suggest she look at her current actions and ask herself serious questions like: “How is this action going to help my son have a better day in school tomorrow? my daughter be a good friend? show my children that I love them and that home is a safe and happy place? How is this going to help my children grow into the happy, confident individuals I want them to be? How will this help me be a better mother and/or a better spouse, and show my spouse that I value him?” and so forth . . .
If the honest answer to any of these questions is “Its not” then, I might suggest its time to reassess the action. Children grow up all too soon, there will be time for Amelia to catch up on her education. It’s alright for her to lay it aside for the time being and focus on those who need her.
How awful would it be, to finally reach the top of the ladder we spend years climbing, only to find out it is leaning against the wrong wall?
Specifically, how can Amelia use “the Law of the Harvest” to guide her life? Amelia planted tomatoes in the sun, and she waters them when she feels motherly, but she’s expecting others to stake them and prune them.
She could try to understand that as a mother, she owes her children more than she is currently giving them. By nurturing the seeds she’s already sown, she will be investing in a more rewarding harvest at the end of season, with fewer regrets. Taking care of the immediate priority of children now, doesn’t imply that she will never be able to fulfill her dream of getting her degree. Not at all. To everything there is a season. Delaying the harvest of one, for the harvest of another that is more important, and by necessity more immediate – is not failure. It is a conscious choice of priority.
Alex
Alex was a sales rep for a well known tech company. His company was the biggest in the country, and he was one of the top sales reps in his region. His clients were professionals, and he was a man of no small reputation. Some time ago, a competing company hired Alex, thinking to benefit from his experience and success in the field, and perhaps even to gain some of his existing customers.
They soon discovered however, that though he was knowledgeable in his field, he was arrogant and unteachable. They learned that though he could give exemplary service, he rarely did; he didn’t like being inconvenienced. Yes, he represented his company with confidence, but he was pushy and impatient with prospective clients. He was the top of the food chain and he liked it there. He felt that he shouldn’t have to work as hard as others did anymore, after all, his ship had already come in. And it was a yacht. His reputation among his clients and peers was now one of mixed reviews. Some respected his knowledge, others resented his arrogance. Some appreciated his confidence, others did not feel he valued their opinions.
Specifically, how is the Law of the Harvest playing out in Alex’s life? At some point, Alex had sown good seed to get where he was. Because the harvest he was currently reaping was the result of previous work, Alex is choosing to not pay attention to how things are changing. Perhaps his previous company had an edge earlier, because of something completely independent of him, and he may have been in the right place at the right time. Perhaps existing clients simply don’t like change, so they stuck with him out of habit. Who knows? Whatever the truth is, his previous reputation and professional success was a harvest he happily reaped. But he forgot about the principle of choice and accountability, and its close tie to the law of the Harvest. He neglected to take into consideration how small the professional world in his field is, and how reputation spreads. With his current attitude and work ethic, he is now sowing an entirely different crop than the one he wanted. He wants tomatoes, but he was caring for them as if they were hostas. Hostas don’t want sun; tomatoes must have it. If you want tomatoes Alex, you must do more than put the seed into the ground. You must give them what they need to flourish.
Frank
Sometimes we get in our own way and we refuse to take responsibility for our own faults. Frank is not getting the shifts he wants at work. He feels persecuted by his supervisor, and is considering filing a complaint with the union. Frankly, (no pun intended), he is lazy and has a reputation for shuffling off when there’s work to be done. Colleagues don’t like working with him, and some have even asked not to. The problem is, that Frank convinces himself he is a good employee, and tells anyone who wants to hear it. He doesn’t think there is anything amiss with his performance.
Sometimes we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask what our responsibility is when we are not seeing the desired harvest. I have no idea what can be done for someone who is so blind to their own faults.
Helen
Helen is negative about most things: her job and the people she works with, her neighbours, her friends, her spouse, her in-laws, . . . . . She has a hard time seeing the good in people and talks ‘smack’ about them behind their backs. When people hear what she says about others, they wonder what she says about them. She has a victim mentality and feels like everyone is out to get her (and by extension, her family). She is quick to be offended, and has no problem telling people off when she is. She considers herself a loyal friend, but usually that means taking up their fight with them. Consequently she doesn’t have a good group of friends who want to be around her. Her nature makes it difficult sometimes to recognize the blessings she has in her life.
Like Frank, Helen may need to take a long hard look in the mirror to discover her responsibility when she doesn’t see her desired harvests. The most important thing she needs to recognize, is that many of her problems are self made. She can learn to alter her thinking with a little hard work, but first she must be able to accept that the common denominator in all she finds wrong with her world, might be herself. And that is not an easy thing to admit. For anyone.
Dean
Dean just got laid off. He hadn’t seen it coming, and assumed it never would. He had had a government position, and kinda felt that he was immune from such things. Like thousands of others, he had been working a lot from home during the Covid months, but was asked to come into the office Monday. That was that. Done. A fair severance, but no job. Understandably, it took a few days to digest it and to be able to talk about it. He reviewed his family’s situation: He had three young children at home. His wife had been working part time – picking up shifts now and again. He had been with his current employer for almost a decade and had a good reputation there; he knew he could get some good references. He and his wife had a house with a mortgage of course. They didn’t live outside of their means. They paid an honest tithing, and understood the blessings that came from doing so. They had a couple of older vehicles that he always kept in good condition. Most importantly, other than their mortgage, they had strictly avoided debt. What a relief that was at the moment! He felt sure that that fact alone was going to reduce the stress and nervousness of being between jobs for awhile.
Hard to say how long it might take for Dean to find another job in this market. Thankfully, they have some modest savings that they’d have to be careful with, but when combined with his severance, it will help. But back to the debt thing. They have NO credit card debt! No heavy monster interest hanging over their heads.
Specifically, how does “the Law of the Harvest” apply here? One cannot assume that doing one’s best will shield them from trials. Trials are inherent to our mortal experience, and we can learn a lot from them, but there are things we can do in preparation to prevent them from being worse than they have to be. We can in fact, soften their blow. By paying an honest tithing, and avoiding credit card debt, Dean protected himself and his family in the very best way he could have. Although this unemployment experience was not on his radar, he was prepared for it. He understands that while it is only a bump in the road, it could be a big bump. But it is not the harvest. The harvest is yet to come.
~
The moral of these stories is singular: “If you want tomatoes, plant TOMATOES.” Plant exactly what you hope to sow. Tomato seeds yield tomato plants, which in turn produce more tomato seeds. Keep your desired harvest in mind: TOMATOES. Choose your actions intentionally. Whatever they are, YOU WILL REAP WHAT YOU SOW. Using my friends Ben, Amelia, Alex, Frank, Helen and Dean as examples, consider the seeds you are currently planting, and ask yourself if those are the ones you really want to harvest? At one time Alex sowed tomatoes, but he hasn’t taken care of them for a long time, and he cannot expect to continue to reap a harvest he is no longer nurturing.
sometimes we Sabotage ourselves with self defeating behaviour
When one finds problems overwhelming, or maybe even painful, it is tempting to find a bandage, some kind of self-medicating behaviour, rather than learning from those experiences or developing strategies to work through them. Self medicating behaviours are ones that offer relief from pain, or fear-of-failure, and though some can be helpful in the short term, many times they are counterproductive. Self medicating behaviours that remove the worst of our fears, might take the form of alcohol, drugs, inappropriate relationships, self harm, over eating, over exercising, pornography, over spending, excessive indulgences, and so forth. The problem with this solution is that eventually it wears off. And reality comes back into focus, revealing the same problem that never really went away, and has now resurfaced. And we have still not developed skills to deal with it. Instead of learning skills to improve, we have simply learned to escape, and very often have introduced a new problem that can be worse than the original. Addiction.
The more one employs escape strategies, the more dependent we become on them. We find relief there. In our self medicating behaviour we chill out, we become more confident, we like ourselves better, we lose our usual inhibitions. Its a happy place for us. But soon enough it ends again, and we’re back to where we started – again. And the only things we seem to be learning, are quicker ways to escape those things we find difficult. Addiction is forming. Addiction to what? Addiction to whjhjhatever behaviour you are employing to avoid the pain you are living with. The longer you go on, the more serious your addiction becomes and the less you are equipped to deal with the new consequences that it brings with it.
And of course, there will be a reaping of this too.
In my studies and reflection, I have come up with five principles of the Law of the Harvest. They’re not official, not very profound, and probably never gonna be written anywhere else but here. But they are personal to me, learned through my experience. Understanding them helps me apply them to my benefit, and they help me hold myself accountable. Perhaps you may find them of benefit as well.
Lesson 1 – We Reap what we sow
Look ahead. What is it you WANT to end up with? If you want tomatoes, start by PLANTING tomatoes. Find out all that tomatoes need to thrive and do you very best to give it to them. They need as much sun as possible, so pick a sunny spot. They need nutrients, so make sure their soil is rich, continually adding to it with compost and mulch. They need air, so prune and stake them to ensure they have space to grow, and air flow to prevent disease. They need water, but water remaining on their leaves may cause disease, so water from beneath. When you ensure tomatoes have the very best environment and care, you can reasonably expect a bountiful harvest of beautiful, flavourful, nourishing tomatoes. Taking shortcuts in any of these areas will reduce the quality of your harvest. Planting marigolds will not give you a basketful of tomatoes. And letting dandelions flourish will not give you a basketful of tomatoes.
Reading text books will not get your kitchen cleaned up, and meals made. Browsing Pinterest, and flipping through magazines will not give you the kitchen you desire. Staying in bed all day because you’re overwhelmed, with not help your kids learn the golden rule and develop feelings of self worth.
When you have decided what you WANT in a final harvest, plant THOSE seeds, and NURTURE them along the whole season.
Lesson 2 – Sometimes the harvest is not immediate
Trying to cheat the natural consequences of our actions prevents us from valuable learning opportunities and preparation. We simply will not develop the skills we should have. Our world is governed by natural laws; its how we know objects will fall down instead of up, how we know the sun will rise in the morning, and why we know the rain will get us wet. These are things we can count on, without which life would be chaos.
Sometimes we make poor decisions, choices others may even have warned us not to make, actions that we innately sense are not for our own good, . . . nevertheless, we don’t suffer. In fact, everything seems to continue on pretty much as normal. We enjoy the immediate fruits of over spending, we neglect to change the oil in our car regularly, or maintain tire pressure properly, and yet it seems to run fine, we eat poorly but our health doesn’t suffer, we don’t study but we do well in class, …. etc. The delay of consequences can be empowering. We might even feel that we cheated them. Then all of a sudden, the exam looms and we know we’re going in unprepared, we can’t afford to pay the bills, the motor in our car fails and our tires wear out quicker than they should, our lack of energy catches up to us, and we seem to be getting sick a lot, . . . . . . Our lack of preparatory work becomes painfully evident, and bluffing our way through isn’t working anymore. It seems the whole world comes crashing down all at the same time, and we can’t “catch a break”. We compare ourselves to others, and fail miserably. And most importantly, we are stressed to the max, and unhappy.
Then the opposite may also be true from time to time. We try our best. We do everything we know how to do, to abide by ‘the rules’ associated with promised blessings. We work tirelessly, we follow the golden rule, we put God first, we pray for help, we teach our children, we show them by example the path we’d like them to follow, . . . and yet it seems, the same problems continue to plague us. We can’t get ahead, the light at the end of the tunnel seems so far away we can’t see it clearly, our kids choose paths we know will bring them misery. I’ve been there, I know how discouraging some of those things can feel. But I have learned that no matter what it looks like now, the promised harvest is absolutely assured. We must carry on, stay the course, do the right thing because IT IS the right thing, having faith that God is in control.
A favourite scripture of mine says: “There is a law irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated – and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” (D&C 130:20,21) I have seen it come true time and time again. I have absolute confidence in it. You might say it has become a mantra to me, encouraging me on, trusting that God is in control and that I will receive the promised blessing.
Lesson 3 – Trust that the harvest WILL come, and it will be exactly what we sowed.
We live in an immediate gratification world that sometimes makes us believe everything should happen instantaneously. That’s hard to argue with, when so much around us reinforces it. Infinite information is a only a click away. We talk to anyone we want, practically anytime we want, from wherever we happen to be. New furniture is ours with the click of a mouse, delivered to our door next Monday. There is an app for everything. Instant results. We don’t like to wait, and we don’t see why we should have to. Hey, I live in the same world. I am as guilty as anyone else.
So how do we trust in something that doesn’t seem to be happening quick enough? How do we learn to step back, take a breath and have confidence in something we seemingly have no assurance of? Well, there are some things we DO have assurance of. Some things that we can count on.
“I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.” (D&C 82:10)
“Do what I say.”? . . . I can do that. I want to do that. I will do that. I made a commitment long ago to do that. Sometimes I might have to learn His will on a particular subject, but when I do, I will do whatever is necessary to align myself to it. Why? Because of this assurance: “My words are sure and shall not fail, …. wherefore be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind; …. ” (D&C 64:31-34)
I decided long ago that there was no one I wanted bound to me, more than God. His counsel here is simple and straight forward, hard to misunderstand: “DO WHAT I SAY”. His promise is equally simple and straight forward: “I THE LORD AM BOUND”. The opposite is true in reverse “when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.”
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Someone recently told me that not only was I relying on unsustainable promises regarding the law of the harvest, but that I was encouraging others to put too much stock in harvests that may never come. She pointed out that sometimes a gardener plants and cares for a garden only to lose it through no fault of his or her own. Drought. Disease. Hail. Early frost. Any number of rotten tricks that nature can play on us will affect a harvest. And can even remove a season’s harvest completely from the picture. I know that. I’ve lost seasons’ harvests to unexpected early frosts, to hail and to other things beyond my control. But it has not diminished my testimony of the bigger picture.
Many years ago, we had an experience that taught me a life long lesson, that became the foundation of what would develop into a strong testimony of this principle. It is a lesson that I have seen recur multiple times, not just in my own life, but in the lives of those I love. Dan and I lived in a small Alberta city – Camrose. Our first baby had just been born, Dan was working in a bank there, and we began to set down roots, expecting Camrose to be our home for some time to come. We bought a modest home that we were to take possession of July 1, and since it was empty, we asked if we could plant a garden before we moved in. It was to be our first ‘real’ garden in our very own ‘real’ home. We felt so grown up.
We planted the garden. I have no idea what we planted in it, only that we did. About the middle of June, Dan lost his job. Big surprise, and overnight everything changed. We couldn’t take possession of the house obviously, and we had already put in notice with our landlord. So we packed up and moved into Dan’s mom’s basement while we tried to figure out what we were going to do from there. By September, Dan was back at school upgrading, working on the weekends delivering pizza, and we found a little apartment in our old ward on the west side of Edmonton. Friends in the ward were harvesting their own gardens and we received garden gifts from time to time. Cucumbers here, tomatoes there, lettuce, carrots and beets – it was wonderful. One day I mentioned to my new friend Shirley Clelland, “I didn’t even have a garden this year, and yet I am harvesting probably more than I would have if I had had one .” She offered a perspective I had never considered, with a gospel truth I had not known.
“You may not have harvested your own garden Cindy,” she said “but you DID plant a garden. And it is because of your garden that you are being blessed this way.“ She pointed out the principle of obedience. That promise that when we obey a law, we receive the blessings associated with it. Plain and simple – according to her. The prophet said “plant a garden” – we had. The circumstances surrounding the fact that we didn’t harvest it were incidental. The principle stood. She bore testimony to me in her straight forward way, that I could count on that principle all the days of my life. “There is a law irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated.” she recited, “And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which is is predicated.” (D&C 130:20,21) I didn’t know it then, but my life changed that day.
I had seen the fruit of the principle with my own two eyes. And yes, Shirley was right, I had planted a garden. Pitiful though it might have been, I had been obedient. I had tried my best to obey. That was all that mattered. God is in the details. When we get stuck in expecting the harvest to look exactly how we think it should, we may miss a lot.
Lesson 4 – Don’t discount a harvest simply because it looks different than you expected
Assurance of a harvest doesn’t mean you’re always gonna have a bumper crop of tomatoes. It doesn’t guarantee employment, or freedom from problems. And obeying gospel laws and principles doesn’t protect us from all of life’s trials. But it will frame them differently, and it will make all the difference in the final outcome.
We’ve had our share of unemployment. Along with many others in the economic downturn Alberta experienced in the mid 1980’s, we lost our house. Dan went back to school and worked part time when we had four children. There were many hard things about those years, and in the following years of repaying student loans. And there were great blessings too, although none of them looked much like money. We learned the importance of having a Food Storage, and we relied upon it. We learned to live within our means. We learned the difficult lesson of staying out of debt. Dan got a job he enjoyed with the government, and we got on with the business of raising our children.
In 1996 we bought a failing business that we believed we could turn around. An independent niche Bookstore. It wasn’t a dream we’d always had, it simply presented itself one day, and it felt like the right thing to do. Dan continued to work full time, and I took over the management of it. Our kids all worked there over the years we owned it, and there were many wonderful things that came from those years. But it was very hard too. 60 hour weeks. The first four years of no income from it – every dollar went back into it, paying off the bank loan, overhead, stock, freight, staff, . . . . etc etc etc. About five years later, we had a big surprise. One day Dan went to work as usual, and was home two hours later.
Downsized. It took our breath away. We were stunned. Could hardly speak. It took a few days before we could even tell the kids. We had five children by then, our daughter had just gotten married, our oldest son had recently returned from a mission. Our other boys were aged 11 – 17. While we sat together in a family meeting, our oldest asked the question that was on everybody’s mind: “What does this mean? What is this going to look like on the day-to-day? What’s going to change? What do we do different?”
It was with relief and tremendous gratitude that I could reassure them with “We are in good shape. Other than the house, we don’t have any debt. We own two decent cars, if we have to sell one, we can. Our priority is to not loose the house. Every ounce of energy will go into protecting it, and we will do without what we must do without to keep it safe. ” I reminded them of our Food Storage. “From the outside looking in,” I said “it will appear as if life is going on the same as it ever did. We pay our tithing and the Lord will sustain us. We’ll simply be careful until Dad is back to working fulltime.”
It went on a lot longer than we expected; in fact – Dan never did get back into his field. It was an emotionally difficult time, especially hard on him, as much of his confidence and feelings of self worth, were tied up in being gainfully employed. He picked up part time seasonal work at a local hardware store, then started building fences and decks. He eventually started a maintenance business and gained a contract with a big property company in the city. But that took years. Through it all, we still had our bookstore, which just before his layoff had turned a corner in that we had finally paid it off. So many times in the months and years that went by, I paused and considered “Wow! Who could have imagined that this would go on as long as it has? What would have happened to us if we had had credit card debt?” I had no doubt that had we been in unnecessary debt, we would have lost the house.
Bad things happen. Even to good people. Job loss happens. Illness happens. No one is exempt from trials in this life. And some of the harvests are less than stellar. Sometimes what we worked for ends up being regrettable. As difficult as that episode was for us, it was a first rate lesson in the importance of staying out of debt. Debt would have changed our harvest considerably. It was a tangible, touchable lesson for our whole family. Most of our kids were old enough to understand, and went into their own marriages with a healthy appreciation for living within one’s means. For that alone, I would say it was worth it. Not that I’d ever want to go through it again, but what we gained from those hard years is hard to put a price on. The harvest? Nothing we pictured in the beginning. But as so often happens when the Lord is involved, it turned out much better.
Lesson 5 – Don’t look back.
Every season gardeners learn new lessons about what they’re growing. Sometimes the lesson is what worked beautifully, so that we can repeat it. Sometimes the lesson is what NOT to do next time. But whatever we learned, it took the whole season to finalize the lesson. Nothing can be done to reverse a season, and we only get one chance at it. We may even lose the whole season’s harvest.
There is nothing to do, but to go forward. Next time – simply do better, applying what we learned, gaining confidence along the way with improved skills. Maya Angelou’s counsel is another mantra to me, and I have it written in big letters on a wall I see every day. “Do the BEST you can until you know better. Then when you know better, DO BETTER.” I love it because it doesn’t dwell on past mistakes. It encourages me not to grovel in guilt after I have repented. It motivates me to go forward and do better. It is simple and straight forward – just like the gospel. I do best with “simple-and-straight-forward”.
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The law of the harvest is as real to me as the sun and the moon. I have seen it implemented year after year, simple and straight forward, and above all dependable. I have confidence in it. I have reaped many harvests – not all of them good, but they were what I sowed. I am currently reaping a harvest I set in motion many years ago. I trust the principle so much that it is a guiding influence in my life. It motivates every decision. Some people refer to serendipity. Some refer to karma. Some refer to luck. Those things imply fickle ‘chance’, and I cannot invest in chance. The law of the harvest is not chance. It is a natural law, as much as gravity is a law of physics, and we can count on it to the same degree. Even more so. And when we do, I pray that it will be the JOY OF HARVEST we experience, as is so beautifully depicted in Simon Dewey’s classic picture above.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the law of the harvest and how it applies to life outside the garden as well as in it.
What a bleak world this would be without flowers: without their gorgeous colour, and their sweet intoxicating, natural fragrance. In the warm months, flowers abound in and around our homes, with many practical reasons for growing them – not simply “to gladden the heart“. But in the cold months, one has to be more ‘deliberate’ about including them. That’s where potpourri becomes an invited guest, but before we get to that, lets talk about how important flowers are to our gardens. Here are 6 reasons to grow them.
1. To attract pollinators
Bee enjoying the flower head of garlic chives, cut and destined to be part of a kitchen bouquet
The most important reason I grow flowers is because I like them. But probably the most important reason I grow flowers IN the vegetable garden, is to attract pollinators. Bees are not the only pollinators, but they’re the most recognizable, and they’re every gardener’s friend. As the bees (and other insects) collect pollen, they distribute it to nearby fruits and vegetables pollinating as they go. The longer pollinators stay in your garden, the greater the pollination rate, so planting flowers among vegetables like zucchini and other squash, and cucumbers is very important. Look for bright coloured flowers. Studies indicate that bees like the colour purple. I grow Borage throughout my vegetable garden primarily because of their purple flowers which attract the bees.
2. As companion plants
rosemary in the centre, marigold to the right, red orach behind, poppy leaf at 11:00, borage leaf at 7:00
Sometimes for shade, sometimes to attract pollinators, sometimes to attract pests away from vulnerable neighbouring vegetables, sometimes to repel pests, flowers are more than just pretty faces in the garden.
3. To improve soil
Flowers from the legume family like Sweet peas, Lupins, Wisteria and Clover can improve nitrogen levels in your soil, not just from growing but even after they’ve finished growing. With the lawn mower, chop up spent bean and pea plants, and then use as mulch in areas of your garden that need nitrogen. As the mulch breaks down and rain filters through it, important minerals like nitrogen are returned to the soil. As my Borage grows bigger and begins to shade surrounding plants, I cut stems to put into summer bouquets, but remnants get added to the mowing. There are many other plants (not just flowers) like Mullein and Comfrey – that provide great ‘green manure’ for your garden. Be open minded to a benefit you may not have considered before.
Many flowers like nasturtiums are more than beautiful splashes of colour in the garden, and more than attractive faces to pollinators. They are delicious, and nutritious. Nasturtium flowers and leaves, pansies and marigold petals are the perfect addition to any summer salad. Making sure they’re free of chemicals is important, but you know what you’re adding or not adding to your own garden. Common edible flowers are Nasturtiums, Calendula (and other marigolds), Borage, and Pansies (including violas). I even freeze Delphiniums and Geraniums in ice cubes to add to chopped water in a glass dispenser.
All parts of the Nasturtium plant is not only edible and delicious, but highly nutritious: flower, leaves, stem and seeds. Search the keyword “nasturtium” to read other posts about this wonderful and versatile plant.
*cautionary hint: Not all flowers are edible so do some research and get recommendations before you freely harvest. My grandkids enjoy eating the many things I give them to try but we have a very strict rule which is – you cannot eat anything that isn’t a berry – unless Gramma gave it you to eat.
5. To gladden the heart
Getting back to the “gladden-the-heart” part. For most of my married life, my mother in law had freshly cut flowers on her table all summer long, and I came to find JOY in that. It is a rare day that I do not follow her example and have fresh garden flowers on my table during the warm months. Through doing so, I have personally come to know the meaning of what ‘gladden the heart‘ means. Growing flowers ensures a steady supply of every changing seasonal bouquets, and that has become increasingly important to me as I get older.
6. Preserving
Drying flowers when they’re in their prime extends their season and their reach throughout the winter. Who says we can’t have flowers on our table all winter long too? That’s where potpourri comes in.
Flowers in the house – Potpourri
The definition of Potpourri (pronounced ‘poh-poo-ree‘, is “a mixture of dried flower petals with spices, kept in a pot or jar for their fragrance“. Variations of potpourris have been used for millennia, all over the world – for fragrance. The type of potpourri I make is patterned after European recipes, mostly because of climate related ingredients. The mixture contains dried flower petals and spices, and essential oils, as well as ‘fixatives’ – the ingredient used to ‘FIX’ the scent.
While there may have been a myriad of reasons people used potpourri in days gone by, there is only one reason I use it. Because I love the smell of flowers. There is something about flowers that come from one’s own garden, lasting for years in a potpourri mixture . . . . I have a 3 gallon crock in my living room full of flower petals that I have dried – some of those petals have been there for decades. I add to it yearly, tossing new petals into the old. Making your own potpourri is easy, and using flowers and herbs from your own garden makes it personal and memorable.
part one – the ingredients
When selecting flowers, look for ones that keep their colour. * Rule #1 – don’t rush your potpourri. Like many good things, sour dough and potpourri cannot be rushed. You’ll be starting in the summer as you’re drying flowers, and you’ll be finishing mid winter – perhaps. This isn’t a race, and good potpourri will last for years and years – so relax, take a breath and enjoy the process.
* Rose petals have always been the most basic and important part of any potpourri mixture. I grow few roses, but I collect some from friends, and of course – I receive fresh roses from time to time throughout the year. I never waste them.
Other flowers: Any flower that has a pleasant natural scent and retains a nice shape and colour when dried, is a prime candidate for most potpourri mixtures. Carnations, lilacs, violets, pansies, geraniums, peonies and lily of the valley are good choices. The only petal that I keep separate for its own unique potpourri is ‘Lavender’, and that is simply because it is different enough that it deserves its own pot, and because I am particularly partial to the scent of lavender. If I am to add any other flowers to a lavender potpourri, they will also be purple, of small delicate petals and similar in general, like lilacs, dephiniums, corn flower (bachelor buttons) and forget-me-nots .
Common herbs: such as oregano, rosemary, marjoram, thyme, lemon verbena, basil, assorted mints, sage, lemon balm and meadow sweet are good choices to add to floral mixtures or to use separately.
Spices: fragrant spices such as cinnamon bark pieces, whole cloves and allspice are sometimes used, and I can see their value, but they don’t usually make it into my own mixtures unless I’m making something ‘Christmassy’.
Citrus peel: In many old recipes, dried whole oranges are crushed and mixed with spices. Or one could thinly pare the rind from an orange, lemon, lime or even grapefruit and dry till crisp. They can be added whole or crushed.
this jar is chopped and dried orris root from 2019 and 2020. Probably next summer I will grind it up in my coffee grinder to use.
Fixatives: A fixative is a substance that absorbs scents and retains them for a long time. You really need a fixative, the gentle scent of flowers is simply too delicate to last.
The only fixative I have ever used in ORRIS ROOT. You may find it in specialty shops like spice stores, some garden shops, health food stores, or even craft stores, and it is something I can make myself – which of course is always appealing. Orris Root is literally the root of an iris plant. When you buy it, it may come in ‘crumbles’ or as a fine powder not unlike icing sugar in texture. It is easy to use.
Sandalwood. I have never used sandalwood, mostly because I don’t know where to buy it, but I do like the smell of it, and wouldn’t be opposed to using small pieces or slivers of it in a potpourri mixture from time to time.
Essential oils: Essential oils are added to potpourri mixtures to strengthen the scent. Be adventurous and experiment: of course you’re going to use your favourite scents, but try combining oils of ‘like’ scents, try mixing floral and herb scents that you like. Constantly test the ‘scent’ when mixing into your bowl of flowers.
part two – colour and texture
Potpourri should be as beautiful to look at as it is to smell, so pay particular attention to the dried colour of what you’re using. Occasionally you come across a flower or herb, that when dried, completely loses its beautiful colour. Don’t use it unless it smells so amazing you cannot pass it up, but seriously, I cannot think of a single example of an ugly dried flower that smells that amazing. Flowers that dry with beautiful shapes and colours are: borage, delphinium, forget-me-nots, hydrangeas, marigolds, nasturtiums, pansies, salvia, tansy and zinnias. Consider adding rose hips and other interesting treasures in your garden for texture.
Sometimes you come across such perfectly shaped small flower heads or beautiful whole buds, that it seems immoral to rip them apart. Keep them in their form. If drying them is an issue, you can use a drying agent – a ‘dessicant’ to help.
using desiccants for texture
Silica Gel The most commonly used medium for drying flowers is SILICA GEL. You should be able to buy from a drug store, a craft store or a hardware store. To use, simply put a one inch layer of silica gel in an airtight container, gently place the trimmed bud or flower on top of the gel, stem tip down. Some flowers may want to lay on their side, some might be best laid stem tip up. Be flexible. Gently pour the gel on top of the flower, taking care to get gel between petals if possible, eventually covering the whole flower. Seal the container and place in a secure place, safe from being jostled. Expect it to take 2 – 6 days for most flowers depending on how dense they are. * hint: Afer use, silica gel must be re-dried. Spread out on a tray and dryin a low oven until completely dry. Store away for future use.
Borax I have never used borax to dry flowers but it sounds very compelling to me. I will for sure try it. According to directions, take 1 part BORAX and 2 parts cornmeal and stir to completely blend. Layer borax mixture in airtight container the same as for silica gel, place flower on top in the same way as above, gently sprinkling borax mixture over top. Not necessary to completely cover. Seal and put away. Leave for about two weeks, checking occasionally after the first week.
part three – harvesting and drying
Flowers: Just when the flowers are at their most beautiful – usually just before fully opening, is when they’re perfect. Afterward, both scent and colour will begin to diminish. Gather on a dry day, mid morning is best – after the dew has dried but before the heat of the sun.
When drying, pay particular attention to not crowding them. I usually just leave them spread out and loose on a clean tea towel in the open air inside the house and away from direct sunlight which may fade them. If you have a lot, use a baking rack to keep the air circulating. Petals should be dry and slightly crisp, which could take several days in some cases, so don’t be in a hurry.
part four – assembling your Potpourri
– Dry all flowers and leaves till they are crisp. – Use a glass or ceramic bowl or pot to mix. Never use plastic or anything porous, or metal. Plastic will keep the smell long after making it difficult to use for anything else, and some metals may react to some oils. You really should dedicate your bowl to potpourri – then you don’t have to worry about scents lingering. – Place all your petals and leaves in large bowl, add any other non powdered ingredient. – Mix your scent and fixative: Simply add drops of the essential oil of your choice a few drops at a time and mixing well after each addition to an amount of orris root. How much orris root? Depends on how much potpourri you’re making, but maybe start with 4 ounces for approximately 6-10 cups petals. Blend essential oil into the powder with your fingers or the back of a spoon until thoroughly blended. – Sprinkle the scented orris root onto the flower mixture, then toss with your hands to ensure it is sufficiently incorporated. – Add whole citrus peel, whole spices and buds if using. Gently toss with fingers again. – Gently move potpourri mixture into jars, crock, or ziplock bags. Seal to leave for about 6 weeks to set. If in a jar or bag, do not leave in direct sunlight. Toss petals or shake bags frequently – every day or two to prevent fixative from settling.
part five – Enjoying your potpourri. For years!
My 3 gallon Medalta crock is the main container for rose scented petals of all kinds. I’ve been using this crock for about 40 years. It can never be used for anything else at this point; I expect that scent has become part of the crock.
For many years I kept my potpourri in a crock pot in the living room. When the house whas freshly cleaned, I would remove the lid, toss the petals and let the scent waft through the room. A very good friend of mine developed a sensitivity to perfumes that evolved into sensitivity to most scents, including flowers. At first, I paid attention to NOT having the potpourri open when I was expecting her to visit, but it got so that I stopped lifting the lid at all in case she stopped by. I didn’t want her to not be comfortable in my house. This was quite a sacrifice at first, but soon we mostly forgot about what was in that crock. Life changes and my friend moved away. One day I rediscovered my lost love of potpourri and began the process of getting back into the habit of using it.
How to use
rose scented and mostly rose based in an antique jar and a not-so-antique jar
Don’t leave your potpourri out in the open for days at a time. The smell will dissipate over time. Personally, I never bring it out until the house is cleaned. It’s kind of a reward I suppose, but it just makes sense to me that a clean smell should go with a clean house.
1. Pour your potpourri into an attractive bowl in your living room. Toss with your fingers. Before you go to bed, pour back into the crock, or jar.
2. Make small sachets out of thin cotton fabric. Store them in your drawers, closet, linen cupboard, or even pillow cases.
3. Keep in pretty antique jars that you can put on the table, your dresser or your bathroom counter when desired. When done, replace the lid and put away. Keep jars out of sunlight.
Remember, that even the best oils will eventually lose their scent. Toss the petals with your hands from time to time, and refresh your potpourri with a few more drops of oil when needed. You can always start a new batch next summer, or continue to add to existing batch every season. For years I have two potpourris going. The big one is probably one third roses, so I use ROSE as my primary scent of choice. The smaller one is LAVENDER which is about half lavender petals and leaves, and the other half – supplemental petals like lilacs, delphiniums and borage flowers.
Lavender with a few like coloured flower petals like pansies, violas, lilacs and even a rose.
4. I buy nice little jars or make nice little cloth sachets and fill them up for gifts. Tie a piece of ribbon or lace.
I’d love to hear your experience with homemade potpourri. If this is your first time making one, be brave – you cannot go wrong. Have fun and tell me how it went.
). And I have realized for years that I am living my dream. Although it hasn’t always been a picnic, and we’ve certainly waded through much struggle over those years, I am indeed growing old with Dan. Ironically, Robert Browning outlived his wife Elizabeth by 28 years, never remarrying. He grew old without her, dying at the age of 77. How very, very sad. But not sadder than the hundreds of similar stories we see unfold all around us. Loving marriages, cut short here on earth by the passing of one. How grateful I am for the promise I have absolute faith in: that families are forever. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, families can be sealed together for eternity, and live together in family units forever. 
