Since sowing our first sets of Contender bush beans on March 12, I have reconstituted our warm-season plantings four times, resulting in a landscape completely different than that of early March — and certainly one far removed from what I conceived in winter, when all there is that needs doing is cooking up best laid plans.

Looking back, I jumped the gun planting so early this season (an overreaction to planting so late last year). I stuck my first seeds in the ground when the temperatures were too low for the young sprouts to thrive.  This lack of vigor left them vulnerable to the woodlice that were still thriving in the spring rains, as well as to the numerous young grasshoppers whose voracious nibbling the first-round edibles were not able to withstand.  Several attempts to reign in the grasshoppers failed, and the second round of plants followed the first into a hundred tiny bellies.  By April the weather had warmed sufficiently to coax the rabbits and squirrels out of their winter burrows, and the third wave of plantings, having had no time to mature, got eaten up after just a few days of foraging.

Thus, version 4.0.

The latest iteration differs from those that came before, having acquired several key adaptations in the grueling march of natural selection that has dominated this growing season.  Whereas my first and second attempts involved direct sowing of seeds in the ground, much of our current garden is potted so it could be grown close to the house, tucked into the zone we most frequent and can closely guard.  While little of the initial plantings were located in our front yard, much of the current garden resides there — far from the canyon and near where the frequent traffic of people and pets and cars deters the rabbits and squirrels.  And those plots that have been replanted in the upper backyard (we have yielded the lower yard, for now, to the varmints) are made inaccessible with floating row covers, which, while unattractive, have succeeded in keeping out the squirrels and insects where the fencing we’d used in earlier plantings failed.

At this point, it’s not about aesthetics.

I have also introduced a few new varieties of squash, including several heirlooms that are native to the west, in the hope that an uncommon, traditional type might prove resilient and endure to harvest — perhaps possessing an adaptation that can compensate for the slow evolution of a novice grower.  These include Sibley and Golden Hubbard squash, as well as Calabasa de las Aquas, Mayo Kama, and Navajo Gray Hubbard.  These last I acquired through Native Seed Search, a site that specializes in “aridlands-adapted heirloom crops”.

So far, so good — though I hesitate to tempt fate with such a rosy assessment.  Many of the vegetables I have recently planted need 100 days or more to mature, which puts a lot of time between now and picking and eating.  But in many other climates we’d be working against a hard deadline of declining temperatures, and at least in San Diego we hardly ever do that kind of deadline.

There’s still time.

This warm season we will plant many traditional or heirloom varieties of vegetable and through this join an effort to devote space to rare edibles that have been squeezed out of the market and regular production by the boring conformity — and fear of challenging customers to eat something seasonal and new — that comes with industrial agriculture and the McFarming of the world.  With this in mind, we will plant many things we have never eaten before.  We will plant organic seeds, despite the failings in the USDA certification process/criteria, in the hopes that at least some of them are honest-organic.  We will plant vegetables with canning and winter storage in mind.

And we will plant many different kinds of many different species in an effort to share with our pests, but also discover what works best here, on our suburban fifth acre, what requires the least water, is the least damaged by our pests, what appreciates our awful soil and the home-grown compost with which we will begin amending it.  In other words, we’ll continue learning through what we plant.

So, this warm season, here’s what we’re giving a go:

• Bean, Bush: Black Coco (organic); Tiger’s Eye (heirloom, never eaten); Contender (organic).
• Bean, Pole: Dragon Tongue (heirloom, never eaten); Kentucky Wonder (heirloom, never eaten); Scarlet Emperor (heirloom, never eaten); Yard Long (never eaten).
• Cauliflower: Snowball Y (heirloom, never eaten); Green Macerata (heirloom, never eaten); Purple of Sicily (heirloom, never eaten).
• Celery: Tall Utah.
• Corn: Luscious (organic); Strawberry Popcorn (heirloom, never eaten).
• Cucumber: Homemade Pickles (never eaten); Lemon (organic, heirloom, never eaten); Straight Eight (organic, heirloom).
• Muskmelon: Hale’s Best Jumbo (organic, heirloom).
• Pepper: California Wonder Orange (organic, heirloom).
• Potato: Yukon Gold; Purple Viking.
• Pumpkin: Jack O’Lantern; Sugar Pie (heirloom).
• Squash, Summer: Baby Round Zucchini (heirloom, never eaten); Black Beauty Zucchini (organic, heirloom); Clarinet Lebanese (never eaten); Early Yellow Crookneck (heirloom).
• Squash, Winter: Boston Marrow (heirloom, never eaten); Burgess Buttercup (heirloom, never eaten); Delicata Honey Boat (organic); Lakota (organic, rare heirloom, never eaten); Pink Banana (heirloom, never eaten); Spaghetti (heirloom, never eaten); Waltham Butternut (heirloom).
• Sunflower: Mammoth Grey Stripe (heirloom); Mammoth Russian (organic, heirloom).
• Tomato: Ace (organic, heirloom); Brandywine (heirloom, never eaten); Gardner’s Delight (heirloom).
• Watermelon: Crimson Sweet (organic, heirloom); Georgia Rattlesnake (heirloom, never eaten); Moon & Stars (organic, heirloom, never eaten).

Since the beginning of March I have been clearing space and planting a little each weekend, with the hope of getting the first-round of everything in the ground by April (except Cauliflower; that comes later).  As the soil warms up here, the first-planted seeds have started to sprout — and I hold my breath.

There’s no pretension in the name dropping above.  The point is to know something about what I’m growing, that it’s not just a bean, it’s a Kentucky Wonder.  Plants have proper names just like people, and not in a freaky I’ve-personified-all-my-plants-by-giving-them-people-names kind of way.  Most of the time when we eat a tomato it’s called “tomato” and that’s as far as we know it.  That kind of informality results not just in Big Farm monoculture, but the perpetuation of a single variety of tomato to the exclusion — and sometimes the extinction — of all others.  Such a lack of diversity is problematic, not just in limiting our access to a variety of flavors within a single type of food, but also in a very basic, Darwinian sort of way.  A lack of genetic diversity within a species is a precursor to extinction.  Fretting over the loss of a single squash variant may seem a bit academic.  For a better explanation, watch the TED Talk below.

Today we are losing unique edibles like we’re losing languages, and those edibles that are truly unique have a cultural significance not unlike the native tongues that first described them.  One thing we can do is support and protect genetic diversity by growing heirloom plants in our gardens.  Not a radish lover?  There are 20 varieties available at a single retailer of heirloom seeds.  Maybe there’s one you like.  Maybe the only way to get the chance to eat it is to grow it yourself.