I don’t know about the rest of you, but Minnesota is getting a very late start with our gardening. It snowed once again on May 1^st. Luckily, it didn’t stick. All our greenhouses are busting at the seams hoping each day will be a little bit warmer to get the outdoor satellite Flowermarts started. I am looking forward to the rhubard coming up as soon as possible. That is our real hope that summer is finally here. I want to share an old recipe of rhubarb coffee cake with you. When I was younger, my father purchased a farm (to resell). Five brother and sisters, never married, lived on this farm and all of them were getting on in years and were unable to keep it up. My father purchased the farm and worked out a deal where the brothers and sisters kept only one acre. Dad built them a 3-bedroom rambler on that acre with a small shed and chicken coop. It was all they needed in their later years. The sisters, who were excellent seamstress’s, made homemade quilts, and baked and canned like the end of the earth was coming. I would stop in to visit with my Mom and the sisters made the best rhubarb/strawberry coffee cake I’ve ever had. I am happy to share the recipe with you:

 Goth Sister’s Rhubarb/Strawberry Coffee Cake 

 Cake: 

½ c. butter                     1 c. buttermilk

1 ½ c. white sugar         2 c. rhubard, diced

1 egg                            1 c. ripe strawberries, mashed

2 ½ c. flour                    1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda         1 c. brown sugar

½ tsp. salt                      ½ c. walnuts, chopped

Mix butter and white sugar together, and add egg. Combine flour, salt, and soda. Add buttermilk and stir in rhubarb, strawberries, and vanilla. Put into 9x13 inch pan. Combine brown sugar and walnuts in separate small bowl. Sprinkle over cake and bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes

 Topping: 

½ c. butter

1 c. white sugar

½ c. evaporated milk

 Heat butter, sugar, and evaporated milk until sugar dissolves. Pour over hot cake. It's so delicious!

Though my Mother never really planted or tended a garden, her mother (Grandma) always had a beautiful patch. She had a garden for every season, and it escapes my memory what veggies grew in which season, but seems like every day of the year, she went to the garden to fetch something for dinner. And my most fun thing to do, especially in the summer, was to spend a week at Grandmother's house. Whenever she started toward the garden, with basket in hand, my stomach started laughing, because it knew that it wouldn't be long before it would be filling up with something more than delicious that Miss Maud would send its way.

Now, I must admit, I never helped her tend her garden, and she never asked me to. Because I did so much other field work, I never really liked digging in the dirt and hoeing and pulling up grass. Then again, it could have been laziness that made me sit on the porch in the swing while she worked. I would wash the dishes and clean the kitchen, but garden work just wasn't my "thing." And to this day, I still don't like growing anything, not even a potted plant. So, so much for my "green" thumb.

I grew up eating all the vegetables that my Grandmother grew. We seldom ate anything from a can except sardines, mackerel, and occasionallyVienna sausage. The majority of our food was grown or came from what we raised. Actually, to this day, I don't really like anything canned, but living in the city, there aren't that many options for garden-grown produce (except the grocery store or Farmer's Market).

At any rate, Not only did my Grandmother grow some mean vegetables, but she was one heck of a cook. I can still taste her yellow summer squash, fried with what we call "country cow butter" stirred in with garden fresh onions. Now, that's just good, down-home eating and you can't get much better than that.

Let's see if I can remember what all grew in her garden. Okra, butter bean, summer squash, collard, mustard, and turnip greens, turnip roots, cabbage, onion, corn, peppers, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, field peas, snap (string) beans, sweet potatoes, and of course, most of our fruits, we bought from surrounding farmers or from grocery stores.

Every vegetable we plant at Forgotten Forty Farm is heirloom, organic, and delicious, but what we're really known for is our tomatoes.  

Every year people in the area anticipate our nearly 50 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and inevitably ask to purchase some plants for themselves. I don't have a great deal of space in my indoor grow-boxes for many more than the 600 I have to start for myself each year, and I won't have a heated greenhouse until the hobbit house is finished, so the problem presents itself;  "Where do I start plants for everyone else?"

I clone my tomatoes and I use my fish tank. 

When I start the process, to save space initially, I plant my tomato seedlings 5 to a four inch pot, in a dice pattern. I let these seedlings get to a transplantable size, with at least 2 sets of mature leaves and a decent growing tip, and then I separate them into individual pots. This usually occurs for me at about 3 weeks after sowing. When they are transplanted, they are dropped down in the soil to the first pair of true leaves as a means of supporting a stronger root system, and buying me more time under the grow lights in the space available. 

My shelves are set up to support a maximum of 18 inches under the lights in order to give me as many shelves as I can manage vertically, while still having room to move the lights up and down as needed to promote good growth of the plants at any size. When the plants reach their maximum height for the shelves, it's time to clone. I find that mine usually take another 2 weeks after transplant, but every system will vary. The important thing is to make sure the plant is sturdy, healthy and at least a foot tall with a minimum of 4 pairs of true leaves at a good size, and a well established growing tip. 

When cloning, I prefer to do a coppice cloning, leaving two leaf petioles on the mother plant to form 2 new growing tips. I string my tomatoes vertically, so this gives me a great base to start from when I plant them out, and also gives insurance in case one of the growing tips doesn't take. If I end up with 2 growing tips, I wait until they are old enough to clone again, and I take another cutting of just one sucker.  This way I maintain my single growing tip for the plants I'm keeping, while still being able to clone for sale to the public. When I take the cuttings, I make sure that there is at least one leaf on a stem, and that the stems will be long enough to stick into the water (about 3 inches minimum). 

The aquarium is a 90 gallon tank set up with a HOT (Hang On Tank) filter, and a jet pump filter to help circulation. It is heated to roughly 70 degrees, and has a single length of white wire closet shelving laid across the top of the tank to organize and support the cuttings until they root. Labels are hung from the lip extending down the front of the tank for easy identification, and grow lights are suspended above the whole system. I have Fiddler Crabs, Ghost Shrimp, and Apple Snails stocked in the tank for cleaning. The Apple snails are especially beneficial, as they eat decaying plant material and algae only, not live plants, so I'm able to clone in the tank, and they help tend to any clones that fail to strike for whatever reason. 

With the Apple snails cleaning up the edges of the cuts that would normally die off, along with any other problem pieces, I get a near 100% success rate. The clones usually start rooting immediately, with noticeable development in 2 days. They are almost always ready to plant by the first week, and take to soil very well at that stage. With this method, I'm able to save space in my grow-boxes while developing 250+ clones in the space that only 36 would normally fit. 

I call that a win.  

Happy Homesteading!

Yesterday as I attempted to sleep while the day carried on around me, I was harshly ripped from dreams by Peanut’s soul cracking howls.  This was his oh so subtle way of letting me know my husband had gotten home.  After hubby was settled inside, I slipped back into sleep.  Again I was wrenched from quiet stillness with the persistent gallop of hooves on the wooden deck.  Up and down the stairs was a loud clip-clop trotting and the sound of the adirondack chairs being readily rearranged around the back deck.  Try as I might, I could not shut out this noise.  Next came the ear piercing shrieks of the hawks.  This got my attention indefinitely.  As I clumsily raced down the stairs and out the door, I was greeted by 4 crazy eyed goats munching on the cardboard boxes left on the deck.  The pigs rooting around in the chicken coop with everything half-hazardously strewn around and chickens dispersed around the back half of the homestead.  Love these kind of wake up calls.

As I looked around further, there was a nice Houidini shaped hole in the fence, again.  After wrangling everyone back into their pen and yelling like a crazy person at the skies to scare the hawks away, I began to put the chicken coop back together.  Hubby then arrived back home with materials to repair the fence once and for all (hopefully).  What a morning.

With the stretch of Spring weather continuing tomorrow, there is much to be done.  Our chicken coop for Princess arrived so we will get that set up and show her her new place.  We are hoping to have time to pick up a Silkie buddy for her also.  We also have plans to finish the raised bed gardens, so a trip to the local topsoil supply store is on the agenda as well.  I have been setting the hanging planters with the lettuce and cherry tomatoes on the front porch to soak in the sunshine while I am at home and bringing them in at night.  I have noticed the cherry tomatoes are not doing so well with the transfer, so I am hoping the sun will help renew them. I definitely learned that this year I began planting too early.  Next year I will be waiting until March to begin my seedlings inside. Live and learn!

10 more days until Spring has sprung!

Until next time...

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE. 

There are only 18 days until Spring has officially sprung.  My seedlings seem to be well aware of this fact and are busy outgrowing their designated space in my kitchen.  This year I started out my seeds in a mini-greenhouse which was amazing.  I did not have any idea seeds could germinate that fast.  Next year, I plan on waiting until later February to start my seeds since I have now had the problem of them outgrowing being inside, but it is still too cold for them outside.  Due to this, I have had to transplant them to larger containers and then will have to do it again when the weather is warmer.  Transplanting is tough on your plants and a delicate process, so the fewer times you do this, the better.  

I keep all of our soil outside in the shed so when I am going to transplant into a pot, I fill a ceramic planter with the dirt I need.  Although from what I have read ceramic planters aren’t the best for long term use (they absorb the water out of the soil), they were only 99 cents at the local feed store.  Since both the soil and the pot are very cold from being outside, I place them in the oven for about 15 minutes on the warm setting.  Make sure you don’t overheat the soil, hot soil wouldn’t be good for the young roots either.  After the soil is warmed, I dig down until there is only a few layers of soil between the pot and where the roots will be.  Removing the seedling from the original pot is a very gentle process. You want to make sure you don’t disturb the roots or break off any part of the seedling to ensure successful transplanting.

As you can see from the picture, this has more than outgrown it’s little piece of soil sponge (they are what came with the particular brand of greenhouse I purchased).  I very carefully pushed up on the sponge from the bottom to remove it from the container.  I then carefully place it in the ceramic pot and cover with the warm soil.  I then water thoroughly.  The ceramic pots I bought have drainage holes, so the roots won’t get rotten from too much water.  So far this method has been very successful.  As you can see, I am running out of room for all these seedlings!

I use leftover wine corks as markers for which seedlings are what so I don’t get them confused.  I also made a legend for the greenhouse to keep those organized as well.

The next steps are to place the lettuce in the hanger planter I have since they will live on the front porch, but I am hoping the weather will warm up before I have to do that.  I also have started the majority of my seeds indoors (including ones that recommended starting outside, not inside) just to see what would happen (don’t press the little red button never worked well for me).  I am interested to see if they will survive the final transplanting to outside.

Happy transplanting!  Until next time…

Don't miss any Homestead Redhead adventures, check out the full blog HERE. 

When I first heard the lyrics, I thought it was an old folk song, maybe written by Woody Guthrie...

He put gold in the ground; 
He turned the water into wine... 

But no, it was the voice of Mary Kay Place, best known as appearing as Meg in the movie The Big Chill and for her lively role as Loretta Haggers on the old TV show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman  

To our American ancestors, root vegetables surely did seem like "gold from the ground" in winter. When the weather was fiercely cold, animals too scarce to kill for food, and purchasable supplies running low, a family always could rely on their winter store of root vegetables.

Rutabagas: ugly now, pretty later

Rutabaga is one of them. I’m surprised at the number of people who have never tasted a rutabaga, think it’s a "large turnip" or think it’s bitter. The yellow flesh has a delicate lightness, reminiscent of artichoke, perhaps a faint hint of turnip. It is a firmer vegetable than many, and requires longer cooking if you want your vegetables spoon-soft. But it can still be fully cooked and have a bit of nice crunch. 

This dish contrasts the texture of rutabaga with the softness of sweet potato, and also has a crisp/sweet contrast. I don’t like to heavily flavor good organic vegetables, since they have a natural harmonious taste that need not compete with seasoning.

I recommend you buy peeled and roasted chestnuts. Save your fingertips and a half-day of valuable time.

Here I added chestnuts as an enhancer. I like chestnuts and enjoy serving them because many people have never even eaten them. They mistakenly think they’re hard like other tree nuts; they’re soft. People also think they will have the same nutty taste as peanuts or cashews. They don’t. It’s a subtle nut-like flavor. Everyone knows the lyric "chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." but don’t realize that the American chestnut tree was almost extinct by 1950, with only 50-100 trees left. If you can’t find chestnuts at your local store (check the kosher section if you have one), you can order them online at Allen Creek Farm, a family-owned farm in Washington started by city-escapers like so many of the readers here. I don’t recommend you peel chestnuts yourself, unless you have lots of time and patience. I did it once and that’s it.

Rutabaga-Sweet Potato Hash

2 rutabagas, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
3 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
½ teaspoon salt (with boiling water)
½ cup peeled and roasted chestnuts
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano (or 1 tablespoon dried)
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a large saucepan with approximately 3 quarts of water, add ½ teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil. Add rutabagas and return to a boil. Cook 10 minutes. Add sweet potatoes and cook 5 minutes more. Drain rutabagas and sweet potatoes in a colander, rinse with cold water, and let rest for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine rutabagas, sweet potatoes, chestnuts, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper. Stir until all is coated. Spread in one layer on a large baking sheet and place in center rack of oven for 20 minutes. Remove and serve.

 by Lisa at Fresh Eggs Daily 

We don't eat a lot of chicken at our house. Since we started raising our own flock, eating one of them is out of the question. I don't care if you name an animal or not, you're still interacting with it every day, feeding it,caring for it and much as I would LOVE to be able to raise meat birds and animals, it just isn't in me. I applaud those who do because you know the animals are humanely treated until the very end and you are eating meat that has been raised naturally without antibiotics, hormones or chemicals.  I'm sure it tastes better than anything you could buy, just as our fresh eggs do.  Maybe one day...but for now, chicken isn't on the menu very often.

But this pot pie is just SO darn good that my husband requests one a couple times a year. So I trudge to the grocery store and usually buy one of those pre-cooked rotisserie chickens  to minimize my handling of the whole bird that reminds me of our 'girls'!

The nice thing about this recipe is that you can also omit the chicken all together and make a wonderful Vegetable Pot Pie - just add a few more vegetables to what is called for below.  

 

One of the other things I really love about this recipe is the herbed crust. I mix some fresh or dried parsley and thyme in to the dough as I'm making it. Not only is it pretty but it adds another layer of flavor to your finished pie.

Here's my recipe. It's easy and really hits the spot on a cold winter evening. It's also a great way to use up leftover vegetables. Feel free to substitute what you have available or vegetables you prefer.

Chicken Pot Pie with Herbed Crust

Crust:2-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
Generous pinch of fresh or dried parsley and thyme
2 sticks cold butter
1/2 cup ice water

Combine flour, salt, herbs and 2 sticks butter in food processor. Slowly add ice water until dough holds together. Flatten into two discs between plastic wrap. Chill for at least an hour.

Pie:1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
1-1/2 cups milk
1-1/2 cups water
Shredded rottiserrie or roasted chicken
2 sliced carrots, cooked until soft
1 medium potato, diced and cooked until soft
1/2 chopped onion, cooked until soft
1/2 cup green beans (fresh, frozen or canned)
1/2 cup peas (fresh, frozen or canned)
1/2 cup corn (fresh, frozen or canned)
Parsley, thyme, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Melt butter in saucepan then slowly whisk in flour. Add milk and water and simmer until thickened, stirring constantly. Season with salt, pepper, parsley and thyme.

Roll out bottom crust and generously fill with chicken and vegetables. Pour liquid over top and cover with top crust. Vent crust, brush with milk and bake 30-35 minutes until golden brown.

Join me on Facebook at Fresh Eggs Daily and my BLOG for more tips, tricks and advice to raising naturally healthy chickens, as well as recipes, DIY and craft projects.

 I am fortunate enough to live in a family that has kept a lot of old family memorabilia. There are times when it’s over whelming and you wonder what to do with it all. And to be honest some of it is just junk. But my dad made an interesting discovery a couple of weeks ago. It is a journal that his grandmother, known as Mom Hill to the family, kept during 1924 and parts of 1925 and 1926. In 1924 she was married to her first husband Victor and had four little boys Ralph, Donald, Louis (my grandpa) and Eugene. 

Hubby and I just got done watching Ken Burns’ Dust Bowl on Oregon Public Broadcasting. I knew that my grandpa came from Kansas to Oregon (via Idaho) in a wagon at the age of three in 1921. I had always assumed that they came as part of the great migration as a result of the Dust Bowl – the dates don’t quite follow that train of thought. So we’re not really sure why the family came, but one thing Mom Hill mentions is that her sister sold the place in Kansas, and there was no hope of going back (obviously she had harbored that very hope for three years). Seeing what the poor souls on the plains endured I think they were fortunate to sell when they did.  

As I read through her year starting in August I marvel at the stamina of this woman to spend the day picking and canning fruit and vegetables, feed her family and then help her husband plow and sack potatoes, cut firewood or slash and burn brush piles in the evening.  

By the end of the fall I am plum tuckered out by the canning, preserving and freezing of bounty for the winter. But this woman puts me to shame. The last page of the journal lists her canning for the year. I’ve copied it below. May we all be so industrious.  

Fruit and Vegetables canned in 1924  

27 qts prunes                                                                       40 qts butter  

32 qts peaches                                                                    08 peach             

42 qts pears                                                                          12 pear  

6 ½ qts strawberries                                                         11 blackberries  

32 qts blackberries                                                            05 plum  

04 qts pickles                                                                       07 apple  

08 qts corn  

49 qts tomatoes  

70 qts vegetable in all                                                                      17 ½ qts jell  

5 qts piccili                                                                             6 qts apple  

6 qts pumpkin                                                                     4 ½ qts plum  

6 qts apples                                                                          1 qt strawberrie preserves  

                                                                                                  6 qts blackberries  

                                                                                                  3 qts apple jelly  

Fruit [and] vegetables canned in 1925  

19 qts peaches                                                                    14 qts beef  

50 qts blackberries                                                            3 qts pears  

35 qts pears                                                                          3 qts strawberries  

12 qts plums  

24 qts beans  

16 qts corn  

4 qts beets  

40 qts tomatoes  

    qts quinces  

Well, with the New Year approaching and the next couple of months bring hibernation. Now is the best time to plan your 2013 gardens. Planning your vegetable gardens in advance is so important for many reasons. Planning is very cost effective. When I first started growing vegetables I would look through the seed catalogs and get drawn into a frenzy of excitement with all the varieties and gorgeous pictures of perfect ripe veggies. I would order enough seed to plant 10 acres of a hundred different veggies when in reality I had one acre to work with and knowledge of about five vegetables. Having a realistic  plan of your available growing space is the first place to begin. Measure the perimeter of your entire growing space. Whether you plan to grow in row crops or in raised beds, knowing the total amount of space you have to work with is important. 

Next thing is to find a good garden planner tool. Now I have a friend who still uses the good old reliable notebook and pencil method. He simply draws a pencil drawing of his space, writes the measurements along the edges of the page and lays out in rows what he is planting in which location. He then keeps his notebooks from year to year for reference and remembrance of what worked and what didn't.

My garden planner tool is online. I have tried quite a few of the online planners and I have a reliable favorite that starts with a 30 day free trial and then has a $25 annual fee. It is wonderful and worth every penny of the fee.

You can find this planner at Grow Veg Garden Planner   

This planner will help you grow fruits and vegetables to the best of their ability, whatever the size or shape of your garden or plot.

With GrowVeg.com it is easy to draw out your garden plan and decide how best to plant it. The GrowVeg.com Garden Planner software shows how much space plants require and how to group them for maximum success, removing the need to look up planting distances and crop families.

Growing advice is just one click away as you select the plants that you wish to include, enabling you to solve problems and maximize your harvest from the space you have.

This planner has everything you need to be thorough and organized about your garden design. When growing vegetables there are many factors to consider to ensure success and an abundant harvest. Spacing, companion planting, crop rotation, each plant has it's own special needs and this planner helps you keep everyone in the garden happy. But, I think my favorite thing about this planner is that it has such a huge selection of vegetable types and then it has a drop down menu with variety names of the particular vegetable you have placed in your plan. For example, I have four raised beds just for my asparagus crop and in those four beds I have two different varieties, the same for my strawberry beds. Well, after I created my four asparagus beds in the plan, I could click on the asparagus image in my bed and a drop down menu appears with different varieties of Gus to choose from. I pick my variety and now my plan shows me which variety is planted in which bed. For those of us who grow a great deal of veggies over many years this is a great benefit for memory sake.  This plan also chooses the plants that are best for you according to your zone, because when you first set up your account it asks you your zip code and finds your hardiness zone for you. Awesome! I love this garden planner, it is not only smart and useful but it is fun and colorful making it appealing to use.   

There are many vegetables that cannot be planted where another particular vegetable has grown previously, so keeping a good plan of your gardens makes it easy to know who grew where and who can follow them in that particular bed or location of your garden. This is known as crop rotation. Planting certain veggies in the same place consecutively can cause diseases in your plants. It can also cause low production in harvest. For example, when you grow tomatoes in a bed, they are depleting the soil of the nutrients they need to grow. If you replant tomatoes in the same location there will not be enough nutritional value for them in that spot. But another crop, say green beans will do great there because they have different needs from the soil as well as adding nitrogen back into the soil. Crop rotation is an important factor in growing veggies especially if you live in an area where you have a long growing season. Here in Massachusetts I can grow two to three different plantings of green beans over a growing season, so I move those plantings around and put them in beds where say, broccoli had grown in early Spring, or my lettuce and spinach bed.   

Another benefit of planning before planting is growing realistically. As I mentioned before it is easy to get so excited at the prospect of growing every veggie known to man, but we must be realistic about space, our true likes and dislikes, "am I going to eat this veggie?" And how much of a particular vegetable do you consume. Our first couple of years growing I planted everything! I discovered we could grow great white turnips, they grew like weeds for us. But how many turnips can you eat in a year? And we also discovered we didn't know many people who liked turnips, so we ended up growing a crop that mostly went into compost. This is a tremendous waste of time and growing space. Now if your talking about beets, well, that is another story! Don and I could grow a full acre of beets and stand there looking at them all, then look at one another and say, "Gee, do you think that's enough till next year?" We can never grow too many beets, we love them! So I keep a good amount of growing space just for these burgundy beauties. Knowing what you like and what you'll consume or be able to give to others and what grows well in your area, are all realistic considerations when planning your gardens.   

When Don I lived in North Carolina and farmed, we could easily grow, leeks, and varieties of Winter squash that required 100+ days to come to harvest. Here in Massachusetts I have to consider varieties that require much shorter growing days because we do not have enough warm days for vegetables that take a long time to grow.  

All of these factors may seem overwhelming or just too much to think about to make it worth while growing your own vegetables. But trust me a week or so of dedicated planning and thought will make creating a bountiful vegetable garden a piece of carrot cake! I personally get a great deal of pleasure and relaxation in sitting down with my lap top and seed catalogs in hand, a steaming hot cup of coffee next to me and a window in front of me that I can look out and see clouds and snow covering my beds while planning and dreaming of next Springs gardens.  

A little planning now and this is what you can have in a few months.

Happy Planning!!!

For more great gardening articles and tips please visit our blog at http://itzybitzyfarm.blogspot.com/

And visit our web site at www.itzybitzyfarm.com 

My friend has a bright green thumb!  While others often struggle to grow the perfect crop, she’s a natural at growing just about anything.  She told me that when she was a little girl, she dropped a seed onto the ground, used her foot to cover the seed with dirt, and eventually that little seed sprouted.

One evening when I dropped by her house with some apricots, picked right down the road, I didn’t expect to leave with enough vegetables to feed my entire family for days.

Between the produce I received from my CSA and my friend’s generosity, my family really did eat off the land…for about one week.

We savored baked potato french- fries; salads with sliced peaches, drizzled with olive oil; zucchini muffins, so moist; and crisp apples. The flavors were exceptional. And, I thought about my friend's kindness during every meal. Oh, the pears are just about ripe!

I almost forgot...she also gave us the sweetest grapes I've ever tasted, a couple of days ago. 

Isn’t it true that the best gifts are the unexpected gifts? 

Thank you, Nona!!!

Today’s featured vegetable: Romanesque

Recently my CSA box included romanesque. Doesn’t the name sound regal? I’ve never seen romanesque in the grocery store.  Have you?

Romanesque tastes somewhere between broccoli and cauliflower…but so much better! Plus, it’s rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, fiber, and flavor.

Something so beautiful must taste delicious. Right? So right. Maybe that’s the real reason that my daughter loves the logarithmic spirals of flavor. Plus, the vibrantly green color is appealing.

Here’s how I prepared romanesque for my family- It’s so simple! And, so fast! Who knew that eating healthy is so very easy?

I cut the head into bit size pieces, added a bit of olive oil to my granny’s cast iron skillet, turned the heat on medium, added the romanesque and a stir-fried the veggies for just a few minutes.

Viola! That’s it! Just a bit of olive oil and chopped romanesque. Nothing else.

We savored every crisp bite. We like romanesque almost as much as cake!

Have you ever tasted romanesque?

Happy summer,

Heather

Pickles. Dill, spicy, sweet, you name it. Just typing the word makes my mouth pucker a bit. I’m not afraid to say I have long loved pickles. When I was little, I would drink the brine. Straight. And as a grown-up, I love that same brine mixed with a bit of vodka and a pickle spear (simply called a pickle martini or Rabbi). At around age six or seven, some neighborhood friends and I decided it was high time we left home to eke out a living in the woods. Surviving without adults would be difficult and the others determined toilet paper, flashlights, water, and peanut butter sandwiches were a must. What did I bring to our packing meeting? Pickles. I was that kid that contributed absolutely nothing but pickles. Because what else was there?

Needless to say, I was beyond thrilled to be introduced to pickled onions on my first visit to England last summer. According to the National Onion Association, onions actually have a fascinating history. Not only are they one of the earliest cultivated crops, perhaps even a staple in prehistoric diets, the circle-in-circle design of an onion symbolized eternity to the ancient Egyptians and thus became an object of worship and esteemed funeral offering. The Romans, one of the first to travel with their food in containers, carried onions on their journeys to England and Germany. Today, pickled onions are a traditional addition to English fare, my personal favorite being an appearance on a ploughman’s (hunk of crusty bread, butter, pickled onions, Branston pickle, bit of salad, tomato, and super sharp cheddar or Stilton…a simple lunch that can’t be beat!)

Unfortunately, I’ve not been so brilliant with our own onion crop. We planted yellow and white onions as our first garden crops but tragically, failed to thin the rows. The result? Onions with beautiful tops but coming out of the ground very, very small. So right before leaving for last month’s visit to England, I pulled up our tiny onions after realizing they would be perfect for pickling. I let them set for two weeks while I was away and upon my return, already missing family and friends in my second home, I opened the jar and tried my first batch of pickled onions. I’m happy to report they taste just like in England. Crunchy, salty, refreshing.

Other than their irresistible taste, pickled onions are great because they can be done in the refrigerator (no need for a boiling water bath) and not give you botulism. My father-in-law pickles onions and his steps are simple: 1) peel the onions, 2) sprinkle with salt and let sit for 24 hours 3) rinse and place in jar with brine.

…But for my first attempt I didn’t yet have that not-so-secret English recipe, so I used the refrigerator pickle recipe from The Hip Girls’ Guide to Homemaking: 

Pickled Onions 

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup vinegar (I used white, but the Brits I polled recommended malt)
• 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp. salt
• Spices (I added 2 chopped garlic cloves and some peppercorns, but you can add whatever your pickle-loving heart desires!)

1. Wash and cut up your vegetables and pack them into a clean jar. *You don’t need to buy Ball jars, you can just save and reuse salsa jars, pasta sauce jars, etc. You can also opt to blanch your veggies, though I prefer the crunch of raw.

2. Add spices.

3. Combine in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil the vinegar, water, and salt. *Add sugar for sweet pickles.

4. Pour the boiled brine over the vegetables in the jar.

5. Seal your jar and let them sit in fridge for at least one week (the longer you wait, the better they’ll taste) and voila! Pickled onions!

Anyone else pickling vegetables this summer? What’s your favorite method? 

Today I thought I’d give you a visual tour of my little garden and discuss what is working, what is not, and make a few guesses as to why.

My biggest problem has been battling the bugs; a warmer than normal winter has left us with battalions of bugs and I’m trying to find non-chemical solutions that don’t kill the plants as well.  I've experimented with hot pepper sprays, Fels Naptha soap spray and Eco-Smart spray. 

I’ve also been busy building the rest of the fence boxes and planting the last of my crops.

I have two boxes of tomatoes: 9 plants per box.  Cherry tomatoes (though they look more like grape tomatoes to me at this point) a bunch of Romas, some Best Boy (red) and a few Black Kren.  No yellow tomatoes this year; I still have a freezer full of yellow tomatoes that never got used for anything.  Somehow yellow tomato sauce just doesn’t fly.  As you can see the bushes are bearing heavily.  The Krens are starting to take on some color, I expect they’ll be the first to ripen, but the others may come from behind for an upset at the finish line.  When they do start to ripen, we’ll have lots and lots of tomatoes to deal with.  The Romas are more meaty, less fluid, they should be better for canning.

I just recently got my black beans in the ground.  The delay was caused by lack of funding to buy the soil materials and PVC for the fence.  Once that was done I planted the beans, but forgot to soak them overnight first.  I worried that perhaps I’d messed up because it went a couple of weeks and I saw no sign of activity at all.  But I kept the box wet, watering each day.  One morning I came out and where there was just bare soil the night before was now a forest of little cotyledons.   In a couple of days their secondary leaves began to spread out and I eased back on the watering.  A few were a bit late in coming up, but it looks like all but two or three did germinate.

I planted four Zucchini vines in one box and a pair of summer squash and a pair of patti-pan in another.  All of these have come up and are doing well.  Some have flowered and we will soon be shoving excess squash off on our neighbors – or maybe taking it to the Farmers Market.

My cucumbers are doing phenomenally: look at all those blooms!  We will soon be eyeball deep in cucumbers!  I’ve harvested a few already.  Too bad there isn’t any way to preserve them.  What we can’t eat, sell or give away will end up in the compost bin.

I tried some sugar snap peas this year (in the back, climbing the trellis) and they are doing well.  I stagger planted them so the first round would get tall enough to start up the trellis before the second round got going.  They can then climb up the first round and all will be supported off the ground.  They’ve begun producing and I’ve gotten a handful of tender, sweet pods each morning for the past few days.  Marie is planning on using these in her stir-fry this Friday.  They will also be good raw in salads or steamed as a side dish.

In the foreground are my Roma II bush beans.  I stagger planted two rows; the back row is big enough to be blooming, the front row is just getting going.

My first round of beets are doing much better now.  They were under heavy attack from some unknown insect that was decimating their leaves.  I tried insecticidal soap, but that was no-soap.  Then I tried Eco-Smart’s insecticide and that took care of the problem.  We’ve been harvesting beet greens for our salads for several weeks now and I’m seeing beet bulbs forming in the ground.  I’ll plant my second round tomorrow.  I was going to get that done today, but NBC came out to do an interview with Marie and I for a special they’re running on July 2nd.

Also in this box are 4 eggplants.  one is doing well and has several blooms and one small fruit on it.  The other three are kind of runty, though one has started to bloom.

My box of Mesclun lettuce was another troublesome box because of insect damage.  This was brought under control not through my efforts but because a momma garden spider hatched a brood of bitty spiders in one corner of the box.  They seem to now have whatever was munching the lettuce leaves under control, so I’ve avoided any treatment at all here.  I am careful to shake the leaves as I snip them to dislodge any spiders and keep them in their home not mine.

I was very late getting my corn in.  Same excuse as the beans: being cash poor.  The corn in the fields is already 18” or so high.  I actually had soil in the box for a while but dared not plant until I have a fence around it because Dolly thinks baby corn is the sweetest, most tasty grass there is and would chew the tops off my entire crop if it was not guarded.

My sweet potatoes got off to a slow start because Dolly discovered a liking for the baby sweets as well and chewed off several before I discovered it and strung chicken wire over the top pending building a proper fence box.  Now my biggest problem is keeping the vines IN the box.  Every morning I find the vines have poked through the wire mesh and are several inches outside, straining for freedom. I worry about depth.  My reading says they need 12” minimum depth, but in the garden boxes they have only 6” to start with.  I’m adding mulch as I can make it, but now that the vines are starting to shoot all over, working the mulch in below them to build depth is getting harder to do without damaging the plants.  Hopefully, if they can’t go down, they’ll go sideways.

I’ve got Yukon Gold taters as my Early Crop and I’ve been harvesting 6 to 8 egg sized spuds each week for the past couple of weeks.  That's enough to accompany a meal for Marie and I with some left over for fried taters with omeletts on Saturday morning.  I’m trying to keep the plant stalks upright so I don’t damage them by moving them around while poking around in the mulch looking for taters.

Yellow Finn potatoes were my choice as a Main Crop this year.  They too seem to be doing well, but I’m leaving them alone.  I’ll harvest the crop of full sized potatoes later in the year and hope to store them for at least part of the winter.  I don’t have a root cellar, but in the winter my workshop stays pretty chilly.  If I close them up in a box of wood chips they keep pretty well for a couple of months.  Storing them in rice is recommended, but I haven’t been able to locate a 50 pound bag of rice.

My pepper patch is pitiful.  PITTIIIIIFUUUL!  I planted 4 varieties of sweet peppers, 12 plants per variety.  All were started from good quality seed I’d purchased from a nursery.  But starting them in peat pellets made them get leggy, and they didn’t take well to being set out, the tops fell over and the leaves rotted from laying in the dirt.  Planting the seed in the dirt has done better, but cut worms chewed the roots off of about half of them: nearly all of the Sweet Banana Peppers.  I picked out the cut worms and replanted seed.  Most are doing better now.  The Cajun Belle peppers (this end) will be a scant patch because I used all the seed I had and still only got 5 of the 12 spots to produce viable plants.  The others I still have seed and am getting seedlings going.

Most of my herb bed is doing quite well: thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, and sage are all growing nicely and I’ve snipped sprigs off many times for use fresh and for drying.  I just added a Stevia plant for sweetening things without sugar.  My parsley is finally starting to grow.  I have 16 fists of garlic that were planted last fall and are almost ready to harvest.  Green onions are doing OK, chives are coming along slowly.  It will be next year at least before we can expect to cut any of these.  My Cilantro and Dill have been major disappointments.  I’ve planted both three times, the dill has finally put up a shoot or two, nothing at all on the cilantro.

I have one box that is onions and carrots.  Here I put in white, yellow, and  red onion sets.   A few are getting large enough to harvest.  I have a few sets left, so I’ll put them in as I pull their predecessors.  I’ll  store the onions in Marie’s discarded nylons, with a string tie between each.  This allows air all around but prevents them touching.  Hang the stockings in the barn for a week or so to toughen their skins, then I can move them to the food storage room in the workshop until needed at home.  Snip the stocking below a tie to remove the onion for use.  I’m supposed to braid the stems of the onions, and that might work OK if you’ve got a dozen onions or more coming out at once, but trying to braid two or three together than add two or three more each week doesn’t work out.  I’ll compost the greens, dry the bulbs in nylons and we’ll all get along fine.

I’ve found that I very much like chopped carrot tops in my scrambled eggs, the two flavors work together wonderfully, try it!

I had Mesclun lettuce and radishes in this box.  The Cherry Bell Radishes (foreground) have been doing pretty well; they don’t get very large but taste great, and I snip some of the greens for use in cooking.  These are not good in salads, but when sautéed up in a dish they add a nice peppery flavor.  A couple of the radish plants shot up and produced flowers but no bulb.  Odd.  Just for giggles I’m letting those two stay and see if they’ll produce seed.  As I pull the radishes, I pop another seed in the vacated spot so I always have a mix of mature plants and sprouts to deal with.  This may not be the best way to go.  I stagger planted; one square each two weeks, thinking that I’d harvest an entire square and replant that square, but the bug battle messed that plan up.

As the mesclun runs its course I’m replanting with Green Ice Leaf Lettuce (middle rows).  We’ll have plenty of mesclun from the mesclun box.

The back row are large white radishes.  They take longer to mature and I've stagger planted them: more mature plants on the right and seedlings on the left.

In this box I have turnips and spinach, two rows of each, alternating.  The turnips I stared in peat also got leggy.  After transplanting them, most survived but the “bulb” of the turnips are developing above ground.  I’m snipping greens as they become available: I’m not sure how many I can take without endangering the rest of the plant, so I’m being conservative, but I want to get a “mess” of greens harvested and set aside before it gets hot and they turn bitter.  We’ll get some more in the fall when the temps cool off again.

My spinach did the weirdest thing!  The plants didn’t get more than 6 or 7 inches tall and developed only baby leaves before they bolted.  Unlike lettuce, spinach can be harvested and eaten after flowering, but needs to be done quickly because the leaves will degrade rapidly after flowers form.  I suspect the soil is too rich.  I’m disappointed, but I’ve replanted and hope for a better crop the second time around.  Marie is fine with this, she likes baby spinach for her Race Day Pizza.

Only about half of the asparagus crowns I planted put up shoots this year.  I’m disappointed in that, but am told that it doesn’t mean the others died, they may shoot next year.  I may be able to harvest a few spears next year, but more likely will have to let them go again, snipping the ferns off in the fall for composting as I allow the plants to develop a good root system.

I recently harvested our batch of blueberries and the strawberries have completed their first run of the season.  Being Everbearing, they’ll go again later on.  I can now pull the bird mesh and convert the little hoop houses into this big hoop house that encompasses the grape trellis as well as the blueberry and strawberry beds.  Today I pinned down weed barrier, added 2x4 borders and laid on some pine needles as a mulch/path.  I think I’ll end up moving the needles into the berry beds and covering the floor with shredded pine bark mulch; it will pack down better and not be as slick on these slopes.

If we ever get to where we can afford a chipper shredder we’d be able to make all the mulch we want, I have a giant brush pile assembled that just gets bigger each week.  But chippers are quite expensive. I'll make good use of it though because eventually I want to replace the grass (or bare dirt) between all of the boxes with the weed barrier and mulch to keep grass and weeds out and reduce the amount of labor needed to keep the area mowed and trimmed up.

The next step will be to acquire a piece of bird netting that will go up the front, across the top and down the back of this structure.  Then I’ll build a door and frame and add netting to the ends.  That should exclude our feathered friends and keep the luscious berries for ourselves when the next batch comes on.

I’ve begun planning flowers around the outside of the garden area.  I’m focusing on those that will attract beneficial bugs like lacewings, big-eyed bugs, and lady bugs to control the bad bug population.  I have seen several very small praying mantises, but so far they have not helped much.  Of course ANY form of insecticide – organic or otherwise – will tend to kill the good bugs as well as the bad bugs.  I want to get away from that all together.  But I can’t be putting all this labor and expense into a garden that only feeds the insects.

And there you have it, a quick tour and a look at what’s what in our mountain side mini-farm.

June marks the beginning of our sixth month in urban gardening and general homesteading shenanigans. Happy half-birthday to us! Hubs and I have learned some hard lessons (watermelons will overtake everythingif you’re not careful; without thinning, peach trees drop their fruit; and the dogs will poop in the garden boxes given the slightest opportunity), and I don’t doubt the next six months will continue keeping our egos in check.

Some of the lessons have been absolutely necessary, namely: patience. Though we both have country in our background, we’re city folk these days. And although our particular city prides itself on a laid-back, casual lifestyle (we named a downtown street after Willie Nelson, my friends) we are guilty of getting swept away in the flurry of work, volunteer obligations, birthdays, baby showers, and everything in between. Growing our own food has required –demanded– us to slow down. We pay attention to the details: the weather patterns, the birds and insects on our property, and does that Ancho Gigantea look a little droopy? And we wait, wait, wait, until just the right time to plant those seeds or thin that row. Nowhere has anticipation been more painful than waiting for harvest, as my mouth practically waters everyday I see our tomatoes on the vine. I’m this close to pulling them off, green, and frying them in a pan.

But not all lessons have been so difficult. One in particular has been delightful: sharing. In our excitement to garden Hubs and I maybe –okay, absolutely– overdid it with our summer vegetable sowing. Hear me now, believe me later: no two people need four watermelon plants, six okra, eight squash, or seven cucumber (I believe wholeheartedly we need four tomato plants). While I’m giddy at the prospect of learning to can, our pantry space might not support my new hobby. So. Giving away it is.

A few weeks ago, we were hosting a cookout and after a couple glasses of wine, I gave a giggly tour of our newest garden addition– the front yard rows. Star of David okra, Lebanese squash, Yellow Crookneck squash, and Pencil Pod beans were barely peeking out of the soil. I beamed with pride as our friends oohed and aahed. Exactly seven days later, they had more than quadrupled in size and were becoming proper young plants. I was thrilled. We again had friends over for dinner. One in particular praised the new veggies and wished she had her own. While everyone finished dessert I snuck out to the front yard, gently dug up a few plants and put them in small pots with soil. I loaded them into her arms on her way out.

Okra seedlings turn out to be a great gift.  

I prized those veggies. I carefully nurtured them to life, protected them from the elements and helped them grow. I couldn’t wait to eat the fruits of my labor. But more than that, I realized, I wanted someone else to feel the same quiet satisfaction of growing something good. That day, our rows were a little bit thinner but our hearts a little bit lighter. The cherry on top? Getting a message the next week from our friend, glowing about her new plants and how much they perked up her backyard. She, too, is excited for the harvest. 

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, tells us “kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

I have a feeling our garden will be creating a lot of love in the coming months.  

The time has finally arrived! It is time to see just how well those pigs worked all year long. As you can see, when we moved the pigs off the garden area it was completely devoid of any weed vegetation. Go pigs!

Several weeks ago, Andrew got our smallest garden and what we call Garden #1 (shown above) worked up. We set out in a whirlwind to plant before the pending thunderstorms arrived. We finished under the cover of darkness, with only a shop light hung from a pole to light our way. In our haste, I didn’t have time to sit and plan out exactly what I wanted to plant where in our four gardens this year. Last year, I spent several days with a sketch pad, ruler, and pencils mapping out where each different veggie would go. This year, with the baby and bizarre weather creating an almost impossible gardening situation for us, we are doing good just to get things in the ground!

So, in that first planting we filled up our smallest garden which we call the melon patch. Last year, we had it full of watermelon. This year it is home to shallots, garlic, horseradish, cabbage, Kennebec potatoes and red, yellow, and white onions. We then moved into Garden #1 where we planted red Pontiac potatoes. Shortly after getting these rows done, it began to rain and didn’t stop for three days!

Two weeks later, we put in a few rows of purple bush beans, sweet corn, sweet pie pumpkins, four varieties of tomatoes, three kinds of bell peppers, green bush beans, cayenne pepper, banana pepper, pickling cucumbers, and zucchini squash. This pretty much filled up that garden, with only one corner left to plant some watermelon which we saved for today since it is warmer.

This past week we found ourselves with a long stretch of pretty weather. Andrew has just recently moved Boss, Bacon, and Ellie Mae off of Garden #2 and into the woods where they will be living until garden season is over. He then took Daisy Duke out of Garden #3 and moved her in with Boss and Ellie Mae, putting Bacon in a section by herself while we wait for her to furrow. So now we had two vacant gardens, and no plan!

I pulled out all of my remaining seeds and set to work. Since we did not plan out all of our gardens before we began as we usually do, there was an issue of making sure different varieties were far enough apart to not cross. In the past, I have pretty much grown only one kind of corn, bean, and squash. With the exception of squash and zucchini, which I always put at opposite ends of the garden. We usually only grow pickling cucumbers, and ever so often try some cantaloupe. So cross pollination hasn’t really been an issue for us before. I have heard all the “old timers” talk about the year they grew those pumpkins to close to the watermelon, or when the squash tasted like pumpkin and the cucumber fruit grew colored and misshapen. Since neither of us were really sure what would cross and what wouldn’t, it was time to do a little research.

The first thing I learned was the rumors of waterloupes and pucumbers is false. It is not possible for watermelon to cross with cantaloupes, or pumpkins with cucumbers. And even if they did, you would not notice it. Or at least not this year. Instead, you would see a difference in the fruit produced from the vines grown from cross pollinated seeds from the previous year. This is true regardless of the plant type. Beans, melons, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, they all can be cross-pollinated to produce a modified crop next season. The only vegetable that does not hold true to this is corn, if corn is cross-pollinated then it can produce crossed ears of corn the same year. Meaning, if you have a white corn that crosses with a yellow corn, you may have ears with a mixture of both white and yellow kernels in the same season.

So if you do not plan on saving seeds from your garden to use next year, breath a sigh of relief! You have no worries of cross pollination. However, if you are like us and want to save your garden seeds to use next year then here are a few pointers to ensure you can do so safely.

Know your names! Does KPCOFGS sound familiar? Think back to high school science and you may remember King Phillip Came Over For Good Spaghetti, an acronym used to remember Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family Genus, and Species. Many common vegetables share the same genus. Zucchini, squash and patty pans are all members of the Cucurbita genus, as are butternut squash and most pumpkins. However, zucchini, yellow squash, and patty pans are in a different species than butternut squash and most pumpkins. Therefore, a zucchini can not cross with a butternut squash, and a howden pumpkin can not cross with a patty pan. However, a zucchini and a yellow squash can cross since they are both members of the same species.

Now going back to the little old women talking about their bitter cucumbers… while their cucumbers may have been bitter, it was not a result of any cross with a squash or pumpkin. All slicing and pickling cucumbers are classified as Cucumis sativus. Squash is a Cucurbita pepo and pumpkins (depending on variety) fall under Cucurbita pepo and Cucurbita moschata. They are simply not compatible!

Here is a little cheat sheet to help clarify what exactly will, and will NOT cross:

1. Cucurbita pepo               Straight and Crook neck squash,zucchini, patty pans, and sugar pumpkins

2. Cucurbita moschata      Most other pumpkins, butternut squash

3. Cucumis sativus            All slicing and all pickling cucumbers

4. Cucumis melo               All muskmelons, canteloupe, honeydew melons

5. Citrullus lanatis             All watermelons 

Any two vegetables on the same line will cross, if they aren’t they won’t! Take caution to check the genus and species of your pumpkins though, as the fall into two different groups depending on variety. 

Beans are another easily crossed, and widely misunderstood vegetable. There are many different types and colors of beans ranging from the most common green beans and limas to more exotic types such as purple bush beans and speckled runners. Again, we can look at the genus and species of each type of bean and tell whither or not they will cross pollinate.

1. Phaseolus vulgaris          Kidney beans, green beans, black beans, cranberry beans, pinto beans

2. Phaseolus lunatus           Lima beans and butter beans

3. Phaseolus Coccineus     Scarlet Runner beans

Other garden vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers can also cross with other varieties, however there is no 100% sure way of keeping them from crossing with other varieties planted nearby. There are several ways though of reducing your risk of cross pollination. 

1. Plant plants of different varieties at a minimum distance of 25 foot apart. Spacing at 50 foot is recommended. Planting varieties at 25 foot or more apart reduces the chance of cross pollination to around 5%. 

2. Stagger your planting schedule so no two varieties of the same species will be flowering and fruiting at the same time. 

3. Plant barrier plants that have pollen between rows of tomatoes to lessen the chance of bees flying directly from one tomato to another. 

4. Use physical barriers (such as bagging) to enclose flowers completely. This will require hand fertilization. 

If you are determined to save seed from a precious family heirloom that is not crossed, you may want to simply grow one variety this year. Remember that cross pollination is possible (however unlikely) if any other plants of the same species are grown within a ½ mile radius!

Armed with our new found knowledge of plant species and pollination, we now have three of our gardens planted! We have watermelon, pickling cucumbers, and zucchini spread out in our first garden. Garden #2 contains patty pan squash, yellow squash, canteloupes and slicing cucumbers in various locations. Garden #1 has green bush beans and purple pole beans while Garden #2 has runner beans, Dixie speckled butter peas, and speckled lima beans. Mixed among those varieties are a wide assortment of other garden veggies. Look for further updates as gardening season progresses.

Good luck with your own garden!

Don’t forget to stop by our Facebook farm page for new updates! Find us at “Ans Farms.” 

My mailbox has been filling up in recent weeks. While a part of me hates to think of the number of trees that have been sacrificed to produce this year's crop of seed catalogs, another part of me is jumping up and down with glee.

 It is finally time to begin planning the 2012 garden. That's right! Regardless of whether or not the world ends on December 21st (as predicted by the Mayans)we still want fresh veggies to enjoy throughout the summer and fall.

 I always approach the garden with such optimism. The plan usually includes some innovative design plot that I've seen over the years at nearby Cornell University. When I'm in garden planning mode, weeds drought and garden pests don't exist. Instead, every vegetable is envisioned in a blemish free state and is the epitome of perfection.

Despite all of the choices offered by the seed companies, we actually buy very little. We have lots of commercially packaged seed from prior gardening years. We are also fairly good seed savers with much of the saved seed coming from heirloom & non-hybrid vegetable varieties. This means that we will see fairly consistent results from the seeds that we collect each year.

Last year, we grew groundcherries for the first time. Related to the tomato, the plants were started in the greenhouse and did very well in our soil. Those seeds were the result of a particularly wonderful seed swap that we do with an internet friend in Wyoming.

We have seeds to grow the things that we like to eat & some for things that we don't!  Unloved seeds, like okra and rutabaga, are traded away to people that actually (shudder) like to eat them. Seed swaps are an excellent way to taste test new veggies and to see if they will do well in your type of soil.

Each year, we decide to try a few new varieties of something but we try to spend exactly $26. Why $26? Because many of the seed companies offer free shipping or discount coupons redeemable on purchases over $25. A good portion of that $26 is spent on permaculture. Things that we can plant once and reap the harvest from for a number of years. Though I love to garden, I really don't like to work so hard at it!

A while back I explained my plan to extend the garden’s growing season by building  domed covers over my raised bed garden boxes and planting cold-tolerant plants.  I thought I’ll let you know how that’s going and what I’ve learned from the experience.

Fresh Vegetables in January

I planted mesclun lettuce, leaf lettuce, carrots, onions, chard, spinach, garlic, and Brussels sprouts.  On a weekly basis I’ve been able to harvest the lettuces, carrots, onions.  Chard comes in a little more slowly.  The spinach is alive but pretty well stopped in its tracks as far as growth goes.  I think this is mostly due to a lack of sunshine; which I will discuss in a moment.

  I didn’t plant more than a couple of squares of each plant because I didn’t want to be inundated.  That need not have been a worry.  We get enough each weekend to make one good salad, which will provide dinner once and provide a side salad once or twice for lunch through the week.

 My herb bed is also doing well and we can clip rosemary and oregano as needed.  The sage has gone dormant, so I don’t take cuttings from that.  I moved a basil plant into my office and that serves our needs well since I have to clip it aggressively to keep it from bolting.  I’ll plant fresh seedlings in the herb bed in the spring.

What I’ve Learned

The biggest mistake I made was in planting beds that are in a shaded area during the winter because the sun sits lower in the sky in winter than it does in summer and trees along the edge of my property block the sun.  In the summer this was not a problem.  Next year I’ll need to put in more boxes and the winter garden will be higher up the slope where full sun is received most of the day.

This lack of sun is compounded by the fact that the plastic covering the houses is semi-transparent, so it may be blocking some of the sun.  Whenever possible I go out and pull the covers off the beds on warm sunny days.

I was afraid that watering the beds would become a chore since I had to disconnect and drain the water hose for the winter.  But this has not been a problem.  Rain that falls on the cover slides down the sides and into the edges of the box.  The vermiculite in the mix then helps hold the water for the plants.  And because there are not many warm, sunny days where I pull the covers, the moisture that gets inside tends to stay there.  Evaporated moisture condenses on the inside of the cover and falls back to the soil as it gathers into droplets.  I have not had to add water even once so far.

One thing I did think to do was to make slits on the plastic where it wraps around the lower side bars.  This allows the water that runs down the sides to escape and fall back into the soil instead of building up in the pocket this wrapped plastic forms.

I have learned that there are some PVC pipe fittings that would allow me to build a “house” shaped roof rather than bending the piped into a hoop.  The hoop puts a lot of tension into the system and this can cause some problems with joints popping loose and legs not wanting to fit into their sockets.  Building domes with short straight sides and a peaked roof would take all the tension out of the system.

Conclusion

I’d say the project is a success; it is providing us with fresh food and will have a great start on the early spring crop because much of it is already in the ground.  I need to be more mindful of the suns winter position and put out more plants next year.  But it has worked well.

This post is being written at the request of Marie, my wife, because it struck her last weekend while she was making up our usual Saturday night pizza and salad that she still had most of what she needed for both without having to go through the produce department at the supermarket – except for mushrooms.

And it’s December!

Thanks to the hoop houses I built a while back, we are still harvesting lettuce, spinach, onions, carrots, chard, and in the herb bed I’ve got garlic, oregano, rosemary, thyme and sage going strong.  I dug up a basil plant and took it inside and we’re still getting fresh basil as Marie needs it.

Admittedly, the cold temperatures slow things down; I harvest once a week now instead of every day, but that just means we eat it as it comes instead of canning or freezing most of what I pick.

A week ago Marie made up a batch of black bean chili, all of which came from the garden.  Dried black beans, home-canned tomatoes, frozen jalapenos, dried cayenne, fresh onion, only the ground turkey had to be bought.

It just impressed her as being a wonderful thing to have so much free food at the ready when she wants it, especially at this time of year.   

To keep fresh veggies growing, I have to start seeds in my indoor greenhouse; the ground is too cold for seeds to germinate, but once they’ve sprouted and gotten a little size to them I can put them out into by garden boxes with hoop houses over them and they will continue to grow – slowly – all winter long.  Of course not everything I grew in the summer will grow in winter; I’ve selected cold-hardy greens and root crops for the winter garden.

With a little planning I’ll be able to keep an assortment of garden fresh vegetables coming onto our dinner table year round.  That’s pretty cool!

There is one thing almost every cook has in common: he or she has a favorite cookbook. Sometimes it’s the one Mom used. Or a church cookbook featuring the recipes of friends and neighbors. It might be a classic, such as the Joy of Cooking. But strangely, I’ve found I cannot pick one cookbook as a favorite. Maybe it’s because I own so many: my philosophy is that it is never an indulgence to have as many cookbooks as you want, because they can be used many times. I can’t even name a favorite few cookbooks. I have favorites by category! 

Here are my favorite side-dish cookbooks. For those who grow their own garden, have an ample root cellar, or just love to cook vegetables in creative ways, any of these are as good as gold. You won’t find a title like Best American Side Dishes here, the tome from Cook’s Illustrated Magazine, because I like the personality of an author to come through. It’s like the two of you are in the kitchen, cooking together. Ironically, none of these are strictly side-dish cookbooks; they are the standouts because they but have such a good array of recipes for side dishes. 

Greens: A Country Garden Cookbook by Sibella Kraus (Collins, 1993). It’s easy to produce a salad. But if you want to include other, super-healthy greens in your diet—kale, collard, mustard greens, turnip greens, sorrel, chards—it is a challenge to cook them in a variety of ways. This is one of those books I like because it showed me ingredient pairings I couldn’t have thought of. Knowing how to cook them is also tricky, without instructions—cooking makes some greens bitter and others sweeter. This was part of a series of books with titles like Lemons, Apples and Potatoes, and though out of print, can be found online. Star recipes:  Sorrel Cream Soup, White Beans & Winter Beans Gratin, Kale & Potato Soup, and Grilled Radicchio with Bagna Cauda. 

 Recipes from the Root Cellar by Andrea Chesman (2010, Storey Publishing) sports a creative yet simple set of 270 recipes featuring root vegetables. These hardy standby vegetables can be much more than baked or mashed potatoes. Most Americans have sadly missed the delights of our ancestors, who regularly enjoyed not only potatoes and carrots, but also parsnips, rutabagas, celeriac, turnips, and Jerusalem artichokes. Star recipes: Winter Squash with Caramelized Apples, Honey-Balsamic Roasted Parsnips, Potato-Carrot Tart, and Gratin of Turnips and Rutabagas. (Available for purchase here.) 

 Vegetable Harvest by Patricia Wells (Morrow, 2007). This French cooking expert transforms the best of French techniques for vegetables into a simple, exquisite process. There are recipes for all types of dishes, such as main dishes, breads, and even desserts, but with such a concentration of vegetables there is a great variety of side dishes. Uniquely, she has good recipes for even seldom-seen vegetables. Star recipes: Zucchini Puree, Steamed Creamy Cabbage, Eggplant Daube and Curried Beet Soup. 

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois (St. Martin’s, 2007. Not all side dishes are made of vegetables, of course, and there are so many baking books it’s hard to pick one. But this is the one I recommend for general use because the price of the book is worth one recipe--the “Master Recipe,” the dough to make and refrigerate. You use portions of it to bake fresh bread whenever you like. It’s truly easy and produces incredible bread. The remaining recipes are all extra goodies you can try when you like. With the Master Recipe you can have fresh-baked bread daily. (Available for purchase here.)

These are chosen for practical reasons, but next time I’ll include my favorite cookbooks from an emotional standpoint--like my “Grandma cookbook.” How about you? Can you name your one favorite cookbook, or do you have several? Is it for memories of Grandma, or something you actually use for cooking techniques? I love hearing people’s stories about their cookbooks! 

 How nice to discover someone who was writing about gardening, cooking, country living, the coziness of home and family and the beauty of nature—and was doing it decades ago, during the suburbanizing 1950s, the plasticine 60s and wrapping up her career in the 70s, when there was finally a turnabout in the appreciation of Mother Earth. (Remember natural-eating Euell Gibbons, and Johnny Carson doing funny skits about Euell Gibbons eating twigs and leaves?)

Gladys Taber came from an era of literary nonfiction, where writers could muse and observe rather than write a stream of how-to pieces. (I am guilty myself of spending the 90s writing “how to get flat abs” and “build big biceps” for men’s fitness magazines). Her column “Diary of Domesticity” began in Ladies Home Journal in November 1937, and she wrote a similar column, “Butternut Wisdom” for Family Circle from 1959 to 1967. Writing about gardening, raising animals, pets and cooking dominated the themes of her columns, much like these very blogs on Grit.com.

Most of the time she lived in Stillmeadow, a 1690 farmhouse near Southbury, Connecticut, a home she refurbished over many years, the amusing progress--or lack thereof--appearing in her writing.

 She wrote more than 50 books. Among the most known are Harvest of Yesterdays (1976) and Country Chronicle (1974). Of her cookbooks the best is Gladys Taber’s Stillmeadow Cookbook (1965). Many of her narrative books contain recipes, too, written like this: “Then I add a cup or so of carrots cut in pieces, quartered onions or small white ones, half a parsnip, and, if I have it, a wedge or so of turnip. On my next trip through the kitchen I add some celery and quartered potatoes…when I get around to it, I add some tomato paste…”

Her cookbooks are reflective of an earlier era, and curiously contain instructions like “Accent can improve anything,” when any good cook now knows that Accent is pure MSG. But for home cooking, the recipes can’t be beat. She had an ample garden and created a bevy of great vegetable recipes.

This recipe springs from her “Fried Tomatoes” recipe, which has a gravy made from the drippings, flour and “top milk.” Another similar recipe, “Fried Tomato Bake,” she recommends for a dinner party because “who wants to stand watching frying tomatoes when the guests are in the living room having fun?” Hmm, I don't recall ever having that dilemma. Her recipe says to use green or red tomatoes but with red, ripe tomatoes and tarragon, it’s a tantalizing side dish. It seems very simple, but it tastes complex.

She’s right, it is best to stay close by when you’re making these. They are worth it.

FRIED RED TOMATOES 

2 large or 3 medium ripe red tomatoes, sliced about a half-inch thick

1/4 cup (half-stick) of butter, plus additional 2 tablespoons (additional needed if frying more than one panful)

1/3 cup heavy cream or half and half

1 cup cornmeal

1 tablespoon dried tarragon leaves

1 teaspoon coarse salt

 Heat butter on medium low heat in a heavy skillet. Mix cornmeal, tarragon leaves and salt in a shallow bowl and stir to mix thoroughly. Pour cream into another shallow bowl. Dip each tomato slice into cream, then dip into cornmeal mixture and coat thoroughly on both sides. Once butter is hot, place tomatoes in a single layer in pan and fry, uncovered, until golden brown, approximately 7-10 minutes. Gently turn each with a large fork to fry on the other side. Fry an additional 5-7 minutes, testing with fork to see if tomatoes are tender. Transfer to a platter. Add another 2 tablespoons of butter to pan and heat butter to repeat the process for additional tomatoes, if needed. Serve immediately.

When I was a child in northern Missouri, our primary garden vegetables were tomatoes, corn, and green beans. My parents said those were the main garden vegetables when they were kids, too. So even though we had delicious homegrown and (though we didn’t know it) organic vegetables, I never actually ate asparagus until I was in college. And it was love at first sight.

Imagine a few years later when a friend who grew up in rural Kansas said they often found wild asparagus by the side of the road and picked it for that night’s dinner. That would be like finding gold, I thought. I think it might have also grown wild in northern Missouri, and I just didn’t know what it was.

The first time I ate asparagus, the family who served it said they always steamed it and served it lathered with mayo. Later I discovered it’s good just about any way. Maybe that’s why it appears in the oldest collection of recipes known to exist, the De re coquinaria, Book 3, by Apicius in the third century.

Asparagus is even a magical word. Spell it backwards and you get a food ingredient I like and a type of music I don’t like.

Not able to leave a good thing alone, I decided to experiment with asparagus. And here’s a great, simple recipe that brings out the best of this early-summer vegetable while making it fit for a king.

Asparagus with a Zing

• 1 lb. asparagus spears, washed, woody ends snapped off
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teas. dried parsley
• 1/2 teas. horseradish
• 1 tablesp. dijon mustard
• 1/4 teas. paprika (I prefer Hungarian paprika because it is sweeter, but regular will do)
  

Mix horseradish, dijon mustard and paprika into a paste. Set aside. Heat olive oil and parsley in a skillet on medium heat. When hot, add asparagus. Saute, with constant attention for five minutes. Pour off remaining oil, turn heat to low. Add paste mixture, blend throughout asparagus, and stir. Serve immediately.

Drew takes you on a trip to one of the largest farmers' markets on the East Coast: the Georgia State Farmers' Market and encourages you to support agriculture in your neck of the woods.

In spite of my somewhat over-zealous tilling exercise from a couple of weeks ago, thankfully I avoided wiping out my asparagus patch. I got to day dreaming a bit and forgot about the growing asparagus patch a couple of times and just tilled right on top of it -- oops. Luckily the growing asparagus crowns were smarter than I am and hadn’t sent the first probing spears close enough to the surface for me to grind into oblivion. I love growing asparagus. I enjoy the way it stakes a wild claim along the fencerows and I love that it performs year after year in my garden. I especially dig that asparagus is the first meaty vegetable crop of spring.

I planted this asparagus patch three years ago. Finally, in 2010, the spears are fat, luscious and hopefully plentiful – thanks to all that chicken manure and compost that got worked into the soil last fall and over the winter. My mouth is watering as I write this because for a few fleeting weeks, beginning this week, my Partner in Culinary Crime and I will be able to grill, sauté, steam and smother with melted real cheese (not that processed kind that was the subject of a food show last week) the freshest asparagus we can ever get. I know I will also eat a few of those spears straight from the garden, with no more prep than a quick brushing to get the big pieces of debris off.

In a perfect world, you might want to have fresh asparagus from the garden all year long. Not me. I prefer the seasonality of the spears – I know that spring is well along when I can break the first bunch, soak it with olive oil and wrap the works in a foil envelope to set on the charcoal grill right next to that lovely grassfed lamb loin. Some folks don’t like lamb because it is “too” flavorful. Some folks don’t like asparagus because it makes their urine smell “funny.”  I enjoy it all and all of it helps me realize that there are seasons and that those seasons shape my life.

Things have been very busy here in our neck of the woods!

My little darlings, as I like to call them, are now permanent residents outside. Of course I am referring to the three baby squirrels that we rescued earlier this year when I found them fallen from their nest. They are looking for food on their own, but we still spoil them with corn and sunflower seeds.

On some days they greet us on the porch in the morning, and will still come running up my leg, or jump onto my shoulder. My husband, Jim, built a couple more squirrel boxes and hung them in trees near our house. The babies are all staying in one of those boxes overnight. They have been a great success, and it is a joy to have them around!

Our garden is growing beautifully! I have already picked sugar peas three times, and I have gotten quite a few Eight Ball zucchinis!

Our green beans are in blossom, and our potatoes just started to blossom.

Our cabbages seem to put size on every day, and my carrot tops are beautifully frilly!

The onions are big enough to start harvesting some to eat, and there are little green tomatoes hanging from the vine!

My peppers haven’t started to blossom yet, but I was a bit late getting them in the ground this year.

My flowers are starting to bloom beautiful too.

My Delphinium are opening, one of my favorite.

I’m a sucker for the cottage garden look!

On the fauna side of things, I have had lots of broody hens in the past month!

We now have four mother hens with peeps running around, and another that is still sitting, but not on chicken eggs! Our neighbor over the hill is a farmer, and farms the fields right next to ours. He came to our house a couple of Saturdays ago. He was mowing his field when he came across a turkey hen sitting on a nest. The hen took off without being hurt, and he just missed the eggs with the mower! He gathered up the clutch of eggs and came to our house. He knew we had chickens, and wondered if we had any broody hens we could stick the eggs under? It just so happens that we had a Welsummer hen that had just gone broody. It’s funny how things work out sometimes! So that hen is now sitting on ten turkey eggs. We don’t know how long it will take them to hatch, because we don’t know how long the turkey hen was sitting on them before she was disturbed. We also don’t know how they will do if they hatch. I know wild turkeys are very touchy. It is an experiment, and we’ll figure it out as we go! Our goal is to get them big enough to let them loose.

It is fun to watch all these mothers with their babies, and as they get bigger, we will start culling some of the older chickens from the flock and put them in the freezer. The first four babies that Mamma hatched for us back in December are now laying beautiful darker brown eggs.

Another change with our chicken flock is they are now in a very large fenced area. I prefer them roaming free, but we couldn’t let them roam and have a nice garden and flower beds! They thought they had to remove all my flowers and replace them with large dusting holes for themselves! We bought 300 foot of chicken fence and made a large enclosure. We hope to add another 300 feet very soon. That fence also gives us a little more peace of mind as far as predators are concerned.

My husband and I just took a vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in May.

The beach there is so nice. It is never crowded, and is within walking distance from the house we rented!

What a way to relax! We had a great time! As I said at the start … life is good!

This structure might look a little unsightly to the casual observer, particularly in its current unfinished state. To me, it’s gorgeous because it represents ... TOMATOES!!! Lots and lots of tomatoes. 

My neighbor, Ken Krause, has studied the market, tested the waters and jumped in to the heirloom tomato business this spring. The hoop house (also known as a high-tunnel greenhouse, I believe) will give him a jump-start on the tomatoes’ life-cycle, free of disruption by Kansas’ wacky spring and early summer weather. Aforementioned weather can include, but is not limited to, snow, sleet, wind, frost, hot sun, and rain that dumps out of the sky all at once instead of pattering gently on the landscape.

It was the latter that has kept the hoop house in this state of construction for more than a week. Last Thursday the skies opened and, off and on for several hours, “rain bands” whooshed through. They seemed more like flood bands because they absolutely drenched the landscape, then drenched it again and again.

I should have taken some photos the next day but I would have had to wear hip waders.  The row boat, which is usually moored on a little dock on the north side of the big pond, ended up in the second row of trees in the orchard – on the south side of the pond. 

What this meant for the hoop house project was essentially a standstill because the ground was so soaked that even a ladder would sink into the muck – and don’t even think about what the cherry-picker would do in all that mud and mire. 

The weather’s given us a little break this week, however, and the guys are supposed to be back today to finish putting the plastic over the high tunnel’s ribs. Good thing – a couple hundred little baby tomato plants arrived yesterday and they won’t live forever on top of Nancy’s big freezer.

It might be that I grew up in a seed-producing family, or that I had the privilege of biting into North Dakota grown tomatoes right from the field … still warm from the sun. It might also be that the miracle of drawing food from the earth, using little more than a tiny seed and a bit of effort, captivated me from the very beginning. Perhaps I am genetically predisposed to raise a crop because my ancestors, and theirs, in turn, did just that. In any case, I discovered at a very young age that vegetable gardening is good for the soul.

Many eloquent essays have been written on the healing powers the act of gardening possesses; urban planners in New York City learned that community gardens were not worthless areas of idyllic pastoral tranquility, but the glue that bonded people of different experience, ethnicity and social stratum into an amalgam of healthy urban culture. They learned the lesson the hard way with the DOME garden project on west 84th street. Community gardening, minimizes differences and heals hurts. Community gardening is good for the soul.

During the First World War, the National War Garden Commission was formed in the United States; its mission was to promote gardening, ostensibly as an act of patriotism. The American workforce was engaged in producing materiel; farmers were headed off to active duty by the thousands. Armies needed to be fed, but every bit as important, those left behind needed to be fed … and they needed to know they were doing their part. The War Garden program brought the most likely and unlikely of people together. They collectively took up the cause and planted gardens in unlikely and likely places. The 1918 effort produced more than $500-million in homegrown food.  No doubt War Gardening did much to keep the country marching on, but it also brought people together and helped heal their suffering souls.

During the Great Depression, gardening again became a matter of life for many folks. Unemployed and unappreciated souls found physical and psychological solace in stirring the soil and nurturing their own nourishment from the earth. Early psychologists reported that humans thrived when there was a firm connection between culture and nature … they prescribed gardening as therapy for malaise. Vegetable gardening was good for depression-era souls.

The Second World War helped bring about an end to the Great Depression; the Victory Garden served as a rallying cry for those left at home. Like the War Gardens before them, Victory Gardens produced a phenomenal amount of food. Victory Gardening was good for the soul, and the country, in spite of the fact that it lacked economies of scale.

Today’s economic climate offers an excellent excuse to get gardening once again; it’s already beginning to happen in a somewhat organized fashion. The new program … a grass-roots program at that … is called Freedom Gardening. Freedom Gardens bring the concept of Victory Gardens into the 21st century and take it one paradigm further by suggesting that we grow our own food no matter what the economic climate is. GRIT blogger Paul Gardner turned me on to this movement. I hope he will post a blog about how the concept developed and got off the ground.

In the meantime, grab all the seed catalogs you can. Get all the good information available. And at the very least plant a single-crop garden this year. Take it from me, and millions of others around the globe. Gardening is good for the soul.

 The numbers are in for 2008 and they look good for the seed industry. They look even better for folks who want to grow vegetables from seed and save money in 2009.

By some estimates, garden seed, especially vegetable seed sales, were up by anywhere from 40 percent to well over 100 percent compared with recent years. In fact, some industry watchdog organizations suggest that seed companies in North America and much of Europe experienced their best year ever in 2008. We’re talking record seed sales … AND they project another record for 2009.

So, what is the fuss all about?

Easy, people are looking for a safer food supply, while adapting to a tighter economic outlook. If you have never grown a vegetable garden, or started your own garden plants, there’s still plenty of time to save money in 2009 by growing your vegetables from seed. If you are like me, you will be amazed, and thrilled, by all the different varieties of vegetable species from which to choose. If you are looking for that little early-maturing tomato called Bison from your youth, you can find seed and save money by growing your own in 2009.

 

Even the American government recognized the value that a garden-growing public could offer to a war-embroiled and slow economy. They no doubt also recognized the community building value in making it easy for folks to grow with one another in the garden patch. At those times, it was much more important to feed the folks at home and share the excess with others than to worry about E. coli-infested spinach … oh, that’s right, we hadn’t pushed our agricultural production models so far, back then, that E. coli and other fairly benign microbes had yet to figure out how to be pathogenic.

Our government called those programs War Gardens during World War I and Victory Gardens during World War II. I don’t know what to call the new wave of gardening frenzy, but I do know that it is exciting, and will, no doubt, play a role in healing our culture.

When you consider that a package of tomato seed might set you back a couple of bucks, and that you might get 50 viable seeds in that pack, it doesn’t take much math to figure out that you can grow hundreds of pounds of tomato fruit from that $2 pack of seeds. Even if you factor in the value of a little labor (it can be hand labor, mind you), a small piece of ground, a source of supplemental water and a few miscellaneous supplies, those tomatoes will be cheaper than cheap. But more importantly, the growing, nurturing, eating and processing will pay that elusive dividend of extreme satisfaction; no amount of store-bought or farm-stand-bought tomatoes CAN EVER bring that. Farm-stand tomatoes, when grown locally, do have added value in the dividend department, because at least you are supporting the local economy at its root level.

 

Add the pleasure you will receive from spending time AT HOME and WITH FRIENDS and LOVED ONES working in, marveling at, and generally enjoying your garden, and those tomatoes pay even more. And if you happen to have an extra-giant bounty, think of the joy those tomatoes will bring as you share them with others in need … or sell to pay for that tank of propane when winter arrives.

The way I see it, if the pleasure from that $2 pack of tomato seed replaced the pleasure of just one latte at the local coffee shop and the fuel needed to drive there and back, you are at least $10 ahead. That’s right, folks, vegetable gardens can pay big time if you only let them.

If you are skeptical of my analysis, check out Paul Gardener’s personal blog and follow his annual fresh food tally. He and his family produce a significant dollar-value of crops in minimal growing space. And they don’t factor the weight of family fun, joy, etc., into the formula to inflate those numbers.

Look for all kinds of gardening resources on this website and at Mother Earth News for everything you need to know about how to prepare for and plant a vegetable garden from seed that will save you money in 2009.

For the past month the pumpkin farms near and far are in full swing! Carnival rides, petting zoos, haunted houses, apple cider and homemade fudge … fall fun at its best! The many different varieties of pumpkins – miniature, white and striped, to name a few – are quite different from what I remember growing up. We would shop for our one pumpkin (maybe two) and the family would make an event of carving the design and roasting the seeds. In recent years, I have enjoyed painting designs on the pumpkins and have expanded my designs to include a few gourds. This year I approached the pumpkin farm differently.

This time around, I was looking for unique pumpkins to grow next year in the garden, and I found a few.

I also became quite fascinated with gourds and more so now that I actually have some drying.

The drying time differs with each individual gourd based on the size and thickness of the skin. I did end up with one swan gourd from my own garden and also purchased two others along with apple gourds, a huge bushel gourd and a handful of miniature ornamental gourds. I have several books on the subject of gourds and after the drying takes place, they have to be cleaned and made ready to work into pieces of art; in my case it will be a bowl or vase. As I patiently wait for them to dry, I am brushing up on my painting skills so I can apply some impressive techniques. The American Gourd Society has chapters in most states and membership along with a wealth of information about gourds and creating artwork and functional pieces. Another organization, Decorative Painters, is dedicated to painting skills and teaching techniques.

Luffa, also known as the sponge gourd, is not a true gourd. It is currently in the final stages of drying on the vines in the garden from earlier this year.

I had quite a successful crop last summer and made luffa soap for Christmas gifts and will do the same this year, since I am receiving requests for it already! Once the luffa skin dries, it can be peeled away to reveal the sponge within. The seeds are removed and the sponge is washed, dried and cut into pieces to work with.

As for squash in my gardens, zucchini has always been a regular member producing plenty to keep my mind searching for new and interesting recipes! Zucchini is a summer squash and another that did very well in the garden this past season was yellow scallop squash.

The summer squash has a thinner skin and can be eaten raw, whereas, winter squash has a much harder skin and should be baked or steamed in the microwave. Winter squash lasts longer than summer squash and can keep up to several months in a cool cellar to be eaten all winter long. Discovering new varieties of winter squash is presently occupying my time as I browse around for gourds and pumpkins. So far delicata squash is my favorite and I made sure to purchase enough to cook up and take to our Thanksgiving dinner so the whole family can experience a new and different dish!

Sweet mama buttercup was the chosen squash to try this weekend along with butternut.

We did pick up three more types, and those that I really enjoy I will be saving the seed and growing next year. Delicata is definitely a winner!

Pumpkins, gourds and squash need a large space of the garden to grow. Some varieties grow in a bush manner, but most develop vines, and the vines can reach many feet in length. A trellis or some type of support is recommended for those that don’t become too heavy as they grow. Regular watering and a watchful eye for pests is about all that is needed to grow a successful crop.