Augumented urban gardening - a snap shot
2012-11-22 15:31:31 by Dismas
One thing I knew for sure was the challenges of writing about the experiences of breeding mushrooms alongside green edible plants in the augmented urban gardening structure. I knew it from the beginning it wont be easy to write about it but it was great that I didn't have to worry about breeding them, neither taking the chance of caring for them. It was the likes of tomatoes, salads, potatoes, paprikas, beans, cucumbers, pumpkins, oregano, rosemary, thyme, mints and so many other aperitive plants that kept me working on those hanging beds since i knew at the end of the day they are all going to be eaten, and of course I will be part of the feasting activities.
Apparently I also did not forget this African proverb (don't forget that Africa is a country) ''hauling a basket of delicious food is not laborious, neither boring''
It was like; come on, if it is colorless to write about it, why not take photos before planting, harvesting and eating all green family and of course breeding, harvesting and eating the other non-green family (elms oyster, pink oyster and stropharias)?. Or what about making photos after eating all the greens and the mushrooms and see how delighted people were to have the resilience augmented non-green and green gardening fulfill their desire to good food.
The idea of documenting the process through photos worked better than the academic style of writing papers that nobody is interested in on reading especially right here, right now where preparation of uncertain future through resilience philosophy needs people to act and experimenting the actual living models, and not only reading about it.
So many things came along to challenge the whole process but the desire to good product and basically delicious food kept me working hard until the enjoyment part of the whole work were achieved. Yes, there were these monsters aka slugs who were very smart to find different ways to snick around and be the first to taste the mushrooms.
Yap, they did quite a destruction, (I liked to say 'they assassinated big number of mushrooms').. Everytime the mushrooms needed to get some fresh air outside, the only enemy to think about was slugs. The last option was to kill them (to some point it was very brutal) but that was the only way left since the used coffee grounds did not helped much as well as the aluminium bars.
Although the cat was doing a good job but turning the onions bed to be its pooing spot was to some point, a pain, but what could you do about it. He was the best in catching all the mice around but ironically it was always running away from big rats who were more destructive.
This dude turned our onions bed to be his pooing place-hahahaa.
It didn't matter anyway. At the end of the day, the autumn came so quick and everything has to stop and gives way to the skiing season.
It was a great experience and hopefully next season the Time's Uppers will challenge the cat, slugs and all odds to have best food supply around the corner.
nik