Failure! The Apocalyptic Gardening Blog
When you anticipate that hailstorms or tornadoes could destroy your crops, you plant some spuds underneath thick mulch, covered by trees.
When you suspect a drought, you lay that mulch on double-thick.
When you expect a famine caused by blight, you plant many varieties of potatoes, keeping each in its own section.
When you expect the possibility of zero percent germination of your survival seeds, you buy seeds from two different companies.
When you expect the potted plants will fail, you plant seed. When you expect the seeded plants will fail, you seed in a nursery. When you expect animals will get in, you lay down hardware cloth on top of the soil to thwart them.
You'll expect the animals to get some of the crop, and continuously seed much more than you need and grow much larger plants than you want so their bellies will be too full to eat all you have. Then there will be twice as much as you and your family and all the animals need.
You plant your garden early in the season so that you can bounce back from a crop failure or two. So that you can install some kind of fencing next time. So that you can use netting over your low hoop houses to protect from pests.
When you've done all these things and all the failures still happen, when you've done all you can think of and everything everyone's tried and all your crops fail, destroyed by weeds that overtake your garden despite daily weeding, you have 100% failure.
The apocalyptic failure you feared all along.
My potted plants aren't dead. But they're not growing. And time is running out.
My seeds aren't dead. But they're not germinating. And time is running out.
What will I have if nothing grows here but weeds?
Have faith. God will provide.
Because God has provided you with seeds to eat on every plant that goes to seed.
Because God has provided you with weeds to eat. Everything on a dandilion is edible. And delicious. All the way down to the root. Your neighbors will let you harvest tons of it. Enough to feed ten families.
Because God has filled the bellies of the birds, the rabbits, the squirrels, the pests, filling their nests with tasty babies for snacks. They are slow and fat and easy to capture and put on your dinner plate.
In your garden, you've set snares to catch them, with your garden as bait for the trap.
As they eat, they've filled your garden with the best fertilizer, so that in its season, you'll begin to have the most bountiful crop ever.
Though you've failed to grow a garden, you've succeeded at growing a powerful soil. The mulch breaks down slowly all winter, pouring compost tea as hailstones melt. The mulch retains that moisture, cooling and protecting the ground and preparing the soil to grow the largest, healthiest crop of your life.
In the drought, as those little seeds failed to sprout up, you realize you've created a mulch in which no seed can sprout and grow. When you stop watering the mulch, no weeds will grow. Only the seeds planted in the soil below the mulch can grow, or will be able to break free.
As God makes your mulch softer each month, softening the hard-packed ground as hard as concrete, the weeds become much easier to pull up. Easier than ever. Rubbing a rake over them and covering them in chips is enough to destroy them.
The mulch is deep enough to thwart the predators in search for seeds because it's far too much effort to dig them all out to eat them.
And though half as many seeds may germinate into starts, God will cause twice as much food to grow from each seed.
God has made your garden bountiful. Not because you have been successful in all your efforts, but because one of those efforts has made all the difference.
It is one of those efforts which has rewarded you and fed you from the first season on.
It is one of those works which set you apart from all the people who grow nothing.
You have had enough faith to sow the seed everywhere it might grow, in the rocks, the thorns, the shade, the open ground, in the grass, under the dirt.
Because you've trusted God to provide, he has done so. And the less work you do, the more delicious dandelions grow to feed you and 10 other families, the more birds and rabbits and squirrels you can trap who invade your garden.
When you suspect a drought, you lay that mulch on double-thick.
When you expect a famine caused by blight, you plant many varieties of potatoes, keeping each in its own section.
When you expect the possibility of zero percent germination of your survival seeds, you buy seeds from two different companies.
When you expect the potted plants will fail, you plant seed. When you expect the seeded plants will fail, you seed in a nursery. When you expect animals will get in, you lay down hardware cloth on top of the soil to thwart them.
You'll expect the animals to get some of the crop, and continuously seed much more than you need and grow much larger plants than you want so their bellies will be too full to eat all you have. Then there will be twice as much as you and your family and all the animals need.
You plant your garden early in the season so that you can bounce back from a crop failure or two. So that you can install some kind of fencing next time. So that you can use netting over your low hoop houses to protect from pests.
When you've done all these things and all the failures still happen, when you've done all you can think of and everything everyone's tried and all your crops fail, destroyed by weeds that overtake your garden despite daily weeding, you have 100% failure.
The apocalyptic failure you feared all along.
My potted plants aren't dead. But they're not growing. And time is running out.
My seeds aren't dead. But they're not germinating. And time is running out.
What will I have if nothing grows here but weeds?
Have faith. God will provide.
Because God has provided you with seeds to eat on every plant that goes to seed.
Because God has provided you with weeds to eat. Everything on a dandilion is edible. And delicious. All the way down to the root. Your neighbors will let you harvest tons of it. Enough to feed ten families.
Because God has filled the bellies of the birds, the rabbits, the squirrels, the pests, filling their nests with tasty babies for snacks. They are slow and fat and easy to capture and put on your dinner plate.
In your garden, you've set snares to catch them, with your garden as bait for the trap.
As they eat, they've filled your garden with the best fertilizer, so that in its season, you'll begin to have the most bountiful crop ever.
Though you've failed to grow a garden, you've succeeded at growing a powerful soil. The mulch breaks down slowly all winter, pouring compost tea as hailstones melt. The mulch retains that moisture, cooling and protecting the ground and preparing the soil to grow the largest, healthiest crop of your life.
In the drought, as those little seeds failed to sprout up, you realize you've created a mulch in which no seed can sprout and grow. When you stop watering the mulch, no weeds will grow. Only the seeds planted in the soil below the mulch can grow, or will be able to break free.
As God makes your mulch softer each month, softening the hard-packed ground as hard as concrete, the weeds become much easier to pull up. Easier than ever. Rubbing a rake over them and covering them in chips is enough to destroy them.
The mulch is deep enough to thwart the predators in search for seeds because it's far too much effort to dig them all out to eat them.
And though half as many seeds may germinate into starts, God will cause twice as much food to grow from each seed.
God has made your garden bountiful. Not because you have been successful in all your efforts, but because one of those efforts has made all the difference.
It is one of those efforts which has rewarded you and fed you from the first season on.
It is one of those works which set you apart from all the people who grow nothing.
You have had enough faith to sow the seed everywhere it might grow, in the rocks, the thorns, the shade, the open ground, in the grass, under the dirt.
Because you've trusted God to provide, he has done so. And the less work you do, the more delicious dandelions grow to feed you and 10 other families, the more birds and rabbits and squirrels you can trap who invade your garden.
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