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Our wasabi seed is finally ready to ship.  A packet of fifty seeds is $10 to USA address, $18 for international shipment.  One gram (200+ seeds $35, 5-10 grams @$25/gram, 10+ grams @$20/gram.  You can send payment via Paypal to this email address (joehollisherbs@gmail.com), or mail a check, made out to ‘Joe Hollis’ to 546 Shuford Cr Rd, Burnsville, NC 28714.

In the still of winter, our neighbor Matt Tibbets came by to shoot an aerial video of the garden, while there was a lot of visibility.  Check it out, along with some other new videos on our You Tube channel:

I am trying to make a Paradise Garden, a garden which fulfills all my (our) needs, and so it should go without saying that it must be a beautiful garden, indeed the most beautiful (to me) garden in the world. I have a ‘need’ to live in a beautiful environment – I think we all do. The contents of my garden are ‘useful plants’ for food, medicine, etc.; but these can be arranged so as to compose an inspiring environment or a boring, utilitarian one. Inspiring (latin) = enthusiasm (greek), both referring to ‘the god within’. I want, we all want, to step out the door into an environment which lifts us out of our petty concerns and reminds us that we are a part of the huge, beautiful world. The garden (meaning, basically, your entire property) should be the place you’d rather be than anywhere else. And this is entirely possible. It’s what our hunter/gatherer ancestors had; they lived in awe of, and thanksgiving for, their environment; they ‘walked in beauty’. Can we get it back?

What we did in 2014

A CONTEMPORARY PARADISE GARDEN

Mountain Gardens began in 1972, when I obtained 2.8 acres of woodland in the high mountains of western NC. Almost from the start, the intention has been to develop a garden which addresses the problems of our times: environmental destruction, war & economic injustice, personal distress & dissatisfaction. Paradise Garden theory holds that these are all manifestations, at the different levels of life (planet, species, individual) of a single problem: that humans no longer occupy a valid niche in Gaia, the superorganism of which we are a part.

What it is: After a few years of experimentation, and with almost no requests for replacements, we are this year offering a wide range of ‘bare-root’ plants for sale. This means that, after receiving your order, we dig up a plant, or division of a plant, cut back the top, shake off most of the dirt, wrap the roots in moist paper and then plastic, wrap the whole plant in paper, and pack the plants in a prepaid Priority Mail box for immediate shipment. We ship early in the week so that you will receive the plants before the weekend. You should plant immediately, either direct into the garden or into pots, and provide appropriate after care (watering and, if necessary, shading).

Sansai means, literally, ‘mountain vegetable.’ Mountain vegetable implies wild vegetable., as opposed to cultivated (on the plains). Mountains are high, closer (than plains) to heaven. Mountain vegetables, because they are wild, because they grow closer to heaven, embody more qi(ch’i) (usually translated as ‘energy’ – this is the energy which flows in the acupuncture channels, and is activated by ‘Tai Ch’i’ exercises).

A look at everything that happened in 2012

We have a lot of very exciting projects ongoing. This winter I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the excellent library at UNC Chapel Hill and discovered a lot of obscure reference material, some of which I managed to purchase on line, others have been added to our library thanks to xerox. All of these projects involve both research and gardening, and in both areas we have made significant progress in the past year and look forward to greater progress in 2013. Here is a rundown on the diverse range of projects we’re working on:

Yes, there is an apprentice program for 2013 and below are some thoughts about it. (Below that are last year’s thoughts, and below that the previous year…  It’s all pretty much still relevant, except Steve is gone).

The first day of October arrives with a chill in the air, constant rain, and a bounty of new colors in the trees.  With this change in the weather comes an opportunity to sit down at the computer.

The last weeks of summer brought a flurry of activity to Mountain Gardens.  Wade and I had the opportunity to milk Goldie, the cow who lives year-round at Camp Celo.  We went with Keenan, our friend and neighbor, who gave us a yogurt culture to make our own delicious yogurt out of the 2 gallons of milk we brought back to the farm.

In Colorado, where I lived before coming to North Carolina, the Dog Days of August might mean a long stretch of hot, dry weather with chapped lips and wilted crops, sun-hat, sunscreen, and sunglasses hiding their wearer from too-bright rays.  In other parts of the U.S., these same days might bring excessive heat and humidity.

Here in Celo, August brings a different kind of weather.  “It either rains every day or four times a day,” says Tom Trout, a local builder with whom we recently built a brick and cob oven for the Celo Community Center.  Roger, our neighbor, told us that every year the weather turns colder on August 15.  Sure enough, the evening temperatures have dropped into the 50’s, and wool sweaters have emerged from summer storage.  A cool mist hangs in our valley nearly every morning, and interns keep finding new sources of moldiness in their dwellings (shoes, unused clothing, books, tincture bottles…).

The dog days are not the best for late summer-sun loving crops like tomatoes, squash, and interns. However, one crop has flourished above all:  wild mushrooms!  Every foray into the National Forest that surrounds us brings a medley of edible treasures.