Happy Accidents in the Garden Part 2 (Jeff's Version)

We sat down to write two different blog posts and when we traded them to read each other's, we discovered we had basically written the same post. So we decided to post both, from each perspective. Enjoy!

We rented a little garden in our town of Caldes de Montbui. It’s a fully mediterranean climate with 4 olive trees growing down the middle. It cost us 50€ a year and isn’t much more than 200m2. Our first job was to clean the whole space. It was piled high with years of weeds that had been chopped, and mixed into that were mountains of plastic and garbage. We even found the back door of a refrigeration truck amidst the brambles of an overgrown blackberry bush. The owner told us we had to practice organic farming, but how can one be organic when throwing so much plastic and garbage into the mix?

As we finally got the ground cleared, we found a patio next to the small shack and could see just how much space we actually had to work with. It was clear that many things had just been left to grow wild and pile up. While being extremely hard work, it was incredibly rewarding to see the potential of the space.

Upon clearing the ground, the weeds began to grow. While walking though with our friend, Gerard, he bent over excitedly and said, “Es manzanilla!” It’s chamomile! He bent over, picked the small leaf and chewed it. I did the same, and I could taste the very distinct sweetness of the chamomile in my mouth.

About 8 years ago, during a routine medical check, the doctor informed me that I had extremely high blood pressure. I’ve had to change my diet, begin exercising, and at times, cut out coffee. With the subtraction of coffee, I switched to drinking chamomile infusions every morning.

So, right then and there, we decided to leave certain sections of the chamomile to grow wild and see what happened. Well, we didn’t have to do much, the chamomile has grown out of control and we often have to remove plants because they just don’t stop.

As the flowers began to appear in the spring, we have picked the heads off and set them to dry, letting the plant live to produce more flowers. We can pick for a couple of hours at a time and usually only have a coffee can worth of flowers to show for it, but the flavour is worth it.

So far, we are only using it for tea. There are a myriad of health benefits and the plant self germinates every year, so all we have to do is choose where we want it to grow and we will always have a crop. We hope to continue discovering all the uses of the plant so we can further take advantage of its healing properties.

So, while trying conventional vegetable growing, we are finding the benefits of learning what the ‘weeds’ are which may carry some benefit and value.

Happy Accidents in the Garden

We moved outside the city of Barcelona hoping to learn more about farming. We are still living in an apartment at the moment, but about 7 months ago we began renting a little plot of land in our town where there are many private gardens. Back in October when we were first given the keys to the space, we spent a lot of time simply cleaning it. There were weeds up to my forehead and lots of trash and broken equipment just laying around. There was only one small space of a garden at that time, but as we began to uncover the earth and land, we began discovering things.

One of the exciting finds was that we had a tiled patio just off of our tool shed. I think I legitimately leapt for joy at the sight of it. We cleaned it up quickly and put a table with chairs there. We carried load after load of trash up the hill to the garbage dumpsters, there were numerous plastic bottles in our garden (don't worry, we recycled those), and random wheels and metal bars...it was a mess.

Once the trash was out, we started working with the soil. There are two separate parts of our garden separated by 4 olive trees. As we raked up leaves and clippings, we spread them over one side of the garden as our plan was to use it for Spring/Summer so we wanted to keep the soil moist and healthy.  We had no clue what was under all the debris and weeds so we weren't very careful as we cleaned. Luckily for us, plants are very strong and resilient. What we found at the very end of winter was that we had raked over calla lily plants and damaged them badly. We saw other calla lilies in our town so we knew they grew here, and as we watched others in town blooming and getting tall, nothing was happening with ours.

...Until...it did! Those calla lily plants fought their way back to life and grew big and tall producing so many beautiful white flowers. We've even given some away to friends and cut them and put them in vases in our home.

As we weeded and tidied up, we noticed a fresh, sweet, familiar smell coming from the ground. We had stumbled upon several small mint plants that looked incredibly healthy with a deep green color. Since uncovering the mint, we have dug up a few plants and given them to friends who are planting it on their terraces and in their gardens.

Another herb that was lingering under the middle olive tree was parsley. It was a small plant with only a few leaves when we first discovered it, and now it is practically a bush, lush and full! This has been a great find as many recipes use fresh parsley for cooking and it's easy to grab some whenever we need it.

I'm unsure if these things were planted at one time by another gardener years before us, or if the seeds were carried over by birds, or if this was just what was growing wild once upon a time.

The most recent discovery we have made is probably our favorite one, just after we cleaned the garden and had planted some spring pea seeds, a friend of ours noticed a new weed that was coming up. He bent down to grab it and put it in his mouth. 'Creo que es manzanilla!' he exclaimed. Manzanilla is Spanish for chamomile, a tea infusion we drink almost daily at home. Fast forward 4 months later, we have bushes and bushes of chamomile growing wild in our garden. We are just finishing drying the first big batch and hope to begin selling it to friends and neighbors. We are enjoying the excess of this beautiful plant and I am enjoying a cup of it right now.

And last, but certainly not least, our roses are heavenly. I trimmed back the rose bush we have in the back of our garden in the winter and it is out of control with big beautiful peach and pink roses that smell better than any I've smelled before. We cut them for every room in the house and still the bush is full of blooms every day.

Even without planting a single seed, we had an active garden that was giving us herbs and flowers. It's been 7 months of learning and looking and having patience with the land and then, just now, we are beginning to receive in huge abundance.