When the barbarians are at the gate, what will we eat?

It is a truth, universally unrealized, that commercial farmers have no incentive to grow tasty produce for resale. If you get your fruits and vegetable at a local grocery store, you may have noticed this for yourself. The produce is grown in overworked soil, picked and shipped unripe to cut down on damage. It softens and changes color while it's transported, sometimes great distances, but never develops much more flavor separated from its mother plant and the soil. It saddens me to think that many younger people in this country have never tasted a properly grown vegetable in their entire lives and may never appreciate what they've missed.

Leisure has given me opportunity to watch the news with its dire predictions of rising food costs (and watch post-apocolypse zombie movies too). It chaps my hide when I think of paying even more for produce that never has been satisfactory and never will be. As a result, I've been motivated to grow organic vegetables again this year. After all, when civilization collapses and the barbarians (or zombies) are at the gate, what are we going to eat when the Twinkies run out? I want to have food and viable currency available when the new world order emerges.

Beans, peas, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, cabbages, Brussels sprouts, leeks, herbs, edible flowers ....some are easy to grow and some more challenging. Skipping past the hard work of building raised potager style planters in my backyard, I combated Seattle's overly cool La Nina Spring weather by relying on healthy plant starts for many of the longer growing vegetables. I didn't expect or get much encouragement until the weather finally warmed up in August. (I'm not joking.) And then, things started to take off.

It's October now, and I can acknowledge that greed is, on occasion, good, that occasion being when the first ripe Early Girl tomato made its way from the vine to my mouth for a cautious bite. Sweet, but not too, firm, and my taste buds did a happy dance. The undersized tomato quickly disappeared and I looked mournfully at the rest of the green "rocks" on the vine that I would have to wait many weeks for. The new Yukon Gold potatoes I picked just this week have been a revelation too. I know your Mamas told you not to eat dirt; but potatoes grown in rich, well composted garden soil taste strongly of it. It's wonderful, better than butter. I won't even try to describe the green beans except to say that we had guilt free All You Can Eat Bean Night more than once this season.

I learned that some plants are targets for a variety of pests. Aphids, and cabbage butterflies attacked the Brussels sprouts intended for Christmas Dinner. And I have learned that Pak Choi is greatly loved by slugs and flea beetles, and doesn't grow well in planter boxes. Green pest control solutions have had to be draconian and involved, strong jets of water from the hose, nets, rubber gloves and a sturdy rock--good practice for the zombies to come, maybe.