This entry will grow with the season.
21 August
We’re so pleased with the potatoes, the beans, the cabbages, and finally! the carrots (they didn’t do well and we had to plant them three times). We have been eating fresh potatoes, making an early kimchi (before the big batch this fall), and feasting on green beans and salad.
Here’s the latest view of the garden.
21 July
Here’s a mid July glimpse.
29 June
Long days of hot June sun are here, and the garden is growing!
It hasn’t rained in weeks, so our corn and cabbage and potatoes and everything depend on the icy cold stream water that runs by our door 24/7. I’m thinking of many people today who do not have good water available to them. We’re so fortunate to live here with such abundant and delightful water, especially on hot days, when we can use this water to bathe and drink deeply.
I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the way we’ve been taught to water the garden.
And this short video shows how we open and close the ancestor-built stone yura (water canal) that brings water 100m to our home and garden and the trees beyond.
And here’s a quick look around the garden, after watering.
21 May
First we planted red-and-white-kernel heritage corn, a mix of seeds that have been in long relationship with Nahuatl and Wabanaki people. This is their second go-round in Ladakhi soil under these mountains. Here they are under willow hoops, with plastic to help keep them warm.
At this time the first sprouts are just emerging from the seeds that we have put in the ground. So there’s not too much to show.
Carrots, beets, radishes, greens, cabbage, potatoes, turnips; their seeds are now also in the ground.
These three videos below show Caitlin watering our nang (garden beds). We want to show the beauty of this process.
Here she is watering three nang in turn.
You can see the gates she makes out of stones and carefully placed earth, with her small shovel.
And this third one is the most complex. Here she shows how our big potato and turnip patch has been formed with rimo (this word is also used for “lines”) across the field, and shau (patterning) to allow a flow of water that reaches all these big-rooted plants.
Notice how she opens the gate to a section. Then there is an initial shallow channel that fills. Then she cuts the wall of that channel many times in order to control the flow over the entire nang (area).
9 June
Here are the latest:
Achey Tashi and Achey Kunzes came up to plant onions in our garden, because onions in Tar get devoured every year by an insect that thrives mid summer. Our home garden is 400 feet higher and a bit colder and away from the place where this population of small beings thrives — and thus far these beds are safe and the onions grow well. These transplants were extra for someone — they were gifted in huge quantity to Achey Tashi from a relative or a neighbor.
And here is the corn:
We planted them out around May 30th from our covered nursery bed, and immediately we got an unexpected and unusual full seven days of cloudy cold weather. Now the past four days have been hot sun with only the occasional cloud drifting by.
The onions again, above.
And below is an amazing green bean variety called Garden of Eden, shared with us by our neighbor in Maine, Linnette Erhart.
Potatoes have come up well, and Caitlin just weeded them.
These cabbages are transplants as well. I bought them from a lady who brings them into Leh to sell.
Below is a row of usu (cilantro) and weeds coming up together.
Some of these weeds are called zhing tsod (field veggies), and now is a time of year when the aunties and grannies and men as well are out in the fields gathering these greens for soup. The extra is dried for winter soups and sides. The drying here happens so quickly that often the greens taste amazingly fresh even months or almost a year later.
Hope you enjoy these. We will share many more garden views as the plants grow this year.
Thanks so much for these detailed videos of Caitlin watering different sections of your garden, just as the Tarpa women have done on the larger grain fields below. Did you raise those seedlings in the “summer house”? You are ahead of our growing season. We had warmer weather than usual for two weeks, seedlings grew well in the greenhouse, but now we’re back to normal, cool spring, when hot weather crops like peppers, flowers and tomatoes won’t thrive. However they are getting huge and a bit root bound. in the greenhouse. Outside our snow peas have germinated and arugula, spinach and tatsoi have sprouted. I separated out tarragon that had grown into flowering candytuft, and moved some of the candytuft to the north, shady garden. I found two volunteer ginger plants in the walkway and moved them adjacent to the ginger the former owner had planted in a back, shady wildflower bed of trillium, Soloman’s seal and lady fern. I am so thrilled that my favorite bird companion, the catbird, has returned and hopefully will find a partner with whom to renest in lilacs. Cardinals also showing signs of renesting here. with territorial calling and displays.
Your detailed videos make me I feel like I’m in the village with you.l particularly appreciate seeing the parking area at the top of the road, the well used trail up to the village from there and the power of the stream under flood to wash out the new road. Getting heavy supplies to the village is a major challenge, you and the dzos physical strength and energy are so needed, and the villagers and I are so glad you and Caitlin are a part of their community.