Now We're Talking Chemical Free: Mr. FC&G Battles the Squash Bugs

Oh, goodness, dear readers; I forgot all about this one! Today I was downloading pictures from my phone, and I came across this ugly little specimen, and it reminded me of a story I wanted to share with you.

A couple of weeks ago, as our squash crops were maturing, we developed quite a squash bug infestation.  You know those ugly, gray, angular bugs?  You know, these guys?  They make my nose itch just to think about them.

Well, we are pretty serious about not using chemical pesticides around here, and we've done a pretty good job controlling pests with beneficial nematodes and plain old "manual mechanical" methods (that is, picking bugs off and squashing them).  But there was no way I was getting near enough to squash these with my bare hands, and we had far too many of them in any case.

Enter Mr. FC&G.  One morning, I saw him inspecting the plants, and the next thing I knew, he was out in the garden vacuuming up the squash bugs in his old shop vac, leaving them to die inside before emptying them out.  He was very seriously and thoroughly vacuuming each leaf, stem, and cluster of bugs on the ground, until the garden was more or less clear of the critters.  And our squash harvest went off without a hitch.

So back off, ladies.  He's all mine.

Amish Cinnamon Bread

"Oh, so baking has replaced gardening," Papa FC&G commented to me this week.

He's right.  With only a few crops left in the garden, I seem to be using my nervous food-creation energy to bake.  And this week I'm making recipes that friends have shared on Facebook.

This is a recipe making the rounds that is unattributed, but the name is Amish Cinnamon Bread.  I have adapted it slightly to make it mix up easier.  The recipe is huge, enough to make two loaves, but it is easy to half. Then again, with the speed with which we ate the first loaf, maybe it would be more efficient for me to make two loaves at once anyway, even though there are just two of us!

Amish Cinnamon Bread

1 c. butter, softened
2 cups sugar (I used half turbinado and half granulated)
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk or 2 cups regular milk plus a splash of vinegar or lemon juice
2 t. baking soda
4 cups flour

In a large bowl, mix together all but the flour until the ingredients are well-mixed, then gradually add flour.

In  two greased loaf pans, pour about half of the batter (1/4 in each pan), then sprinkle granulated sugar and cinnamon across this first layer.  (The original recipe calls for 2/3 c. sugar and 2 t. cinnamon mixed and divided between the two, but I was not that exact.)  Top with the remaining batter, and sprinkle more of the cinnamon/sugar mixture across the top.

Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes or until tester comes out clean. (I needed every bit of 50 minutes in my oven.)  Let cool for 20 minutes before removing from pan.

The Analysis
Fast:  Yes, this recipe mixes up very quickly, especially if you aren't too worried about whether or not you're adding "too much" streusel topping!

Cheap:  As with all baked goods, buying organic butter and pastured eggs bumps my price up a bit, but I still think I'm well under what a bakery loaf would be.

Good:  As I indicated, we finished this loaf in less than a day.  I really should make another for the weekend for our breakfasts!  (This kind of thing would also have been right up my alley for a before-school breakfast when I was a kid, so that's an idea for those who have picky eaters in the house.)

Squash Snickerdoodles

This was a great year for squash here on the microfarm, which leaves me with the happy problem of finding ways to use it up.  The biggest producer, by far, was the butternut squash, so I'm always on the lookout for butternut-friendly recipes.

This is a version of a recipe making its way around Facebook (and credited to Annie's Eats).  The original recipe calls for pumpkin puree, which you certainly can use.  I used pumpkin butter in one batch just to use a jar up, and that worked as well.  But the butternut squash gives the cookies a milder flavor that is a nice alternative; you may wish to boost the spices a bit when you use the milder squash.

Squash Snickerdoodles
3 3/4 c. flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. ground nutmeg (freshly ground is nice)
1 c. organic butter, melted
1 c. turbinado sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
3/4 c. squash puree
1 egg (free range/pastured is nice)
2 t. vanilla extract

Cut squash in half, remove seeds, and place face down in baking dish partially filled with water.  Bake squash at 350 until flesh is soft.  Let squash cool and remove the flesh.  (This can be done the day before if you wish.)

Combine all ingredients but flour in a mixing bowl and mix with immersion blender until creamy.  Add flour.  You may need to add additional flour if your squash is particularly juicy or if you wind up using a bit more squash.  In that case, boost the spices a bit.

Chill dough, then form dough into balls about the size of a golf ball.  Dip in sugar mixture:
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. ground nutmeg
dash of allspice

Place balls on cookie sheet and flatten with a fork.  Bake for 12-15 minutes or until done.  (Start checking at 10 minutes until you figure out how much time your squash needs to bake up -- juicier squash requires a bit more time.)

Yield: 3-4 dozen cookies

The Hope Chest

When I was in college and in my 20s, I had a hope chest in which I kept items that I was saving for my eventual marriage.

Now, I know some readers think that's a delightful old tradition, and I know an equal number think it should have been thrown out with corsets and male-only voting.  But nonetheless, I had one.

There wasn't much in it, and it honestly wasn't even a chest.  When I bought my first house, I kept my hope chest items in the bottom drawer of my china cabinet.  I only had a few things, mostly good serving ware that I had no use at the time for but wanted to save for use at future family holidays.  But the important part of the "hope chest" is that it allowed me to enjoy my dream of being married and having a household that I would fill with things I would enjoy using.  It gave me pleasure.

Well, I realized the dream of finding Mr. FC&G, but I have recently started my hope chest anew.  As we dream about our eventual retirement in Key West, we certainly have the practical considerations put together in the form of retirement and savings accounts that will help us fund the dream.  But I have also started to collect the things we want in our future beach house.

Above you will see one of my "un-quilts," done up in colors that I hope will find their way into our future home.  It is now part of my hope chest.  And this hope chest is entirely metaphorical -- I don't have a special place to put these things, and, indeed, I will start using them right now.  This un-quilt is currently sitting on the bench at the end of our bed, and we will certainly use it for summer picnics and the like.

But its purpose is far larger.  Every time I look at it, I get a renewed surge of energy for working toward our dream.  It is keeping my hope alive, and that makes it part of my hope chest.

What are you doing to sustain your dreams?

How Much Does a Garden Grow: August 2013

If you've been wondering where I've been this week, I've been updating my garden spreadsheet.  With pages and pages of handwritten harvest notes, it took some time to quantify the bounty of August.

The garden became profitable during the first week of August, and we ended the month in the black by over $300.  This means that, had I purchased all the produce I have harvested this year so far at a grocery store, I would have spent $595.47.  Even with the $278.70 expenditure on garden seeds and supplies in the tally, I have thus far carved $316.77 off the household budget.

Some highlights of the month:

• Even with this being a fairly mediocre tomato year due to the cool, wet summer, I still show all of my tomato varieties to be profitable, with each variety producing more in retail value than I spent on the plants.  The big producers for August were the Italian (168 ounces) and Big Daddy (114 ounces), although the Brandywines and Ox Hearts appear poised for a later showing.
• This has been a fantastic cucumber year!  Through August, I harvested 1216 ounces (76 pounds), for a total harvest of $195.43 in value.
• Zucchini have also been wonderful, with a harvest of 594 ounces (37.125 pounds) and a value of $124.74.  In fact, the garden would have been profitable with these two crops alone.
• Basil was another important crop, with 49 ounces worth $49 coming in through the end of August.  As I mentioned previously, I am now comparing my basil prices to what it would cost to buy fresh basil leaves at the local market.
• In lesser crops, August saw the harvest of our first apple from our dwarf trees.  It also saw us harvest a few ears of corn, which were yummy until the squirrels started beating us to them!
• The butternut squash harvest finished up at 177 ounces (9.188 pounds), a value of $33.63.

September is starting with robust harvests as well, so we are nowhere near done with our total garden profit.  I'm so happy that this year has been so much better than the past two with their heat waves and drought.

Finally, you may wonder why I am comparing my prices to retail rather than farmers' market prices, which can sometimes be lower.  This year, I am achieving some consistency by taking only retail store prices in an attempt to demonstrate how much money I save by avoiding the stores for my produce purchases.  You can assume that, had I instead purchased all of this produce at a farmers' market, I would still be in the black, but not by quite as much.  So, even if you don't garden or don't garden extensively, you can still save money by buying direct from the producer.

Dill Relish

I've been blessed this year with a really phenomenal cucumber season.  I stopped keeping track of the harvest mentally once I got over 60 pounds, I think it was -- so I can't wait to do my end of the month tally to see how many cukes I brought in this year and what their retail value is.

However, one can only eat so many cucumbers fresh, so I have been making gallons of pickles.  While I have primarily focused on making my grandmother's Bread and Butter Pickles, I also searched for a recipe for more of a "side salad" pickle.

Basically, I wanted a pickle that would more closely mimic the fresh cucumber so that it would be easier to just scoop some onto a plate or into a wrap during the winter.  You can easily do this with bread and butter pickles, but the flavor is definite enough that they pair best with more aggressively-flavored foods.  I was looking for something just a touch milder.

This recipe is adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving.  I decided to cube my cucumbers rather than shred them to keep them a better texture, and I used cider vinegar as my base rather than white wine vinegar.  I also used dill weed instead of dill seed for the flavoring.  The result is rather dill pickle-ish, but the sugar and turmeric really smooth out the bite.

Dill Relish
8 pounds pickling cucumbers, cubed
1/2 cup salt
2 t. turmeric
water to cover

1 pound yellow onions
1/3 cup sugar
2 T. dill seed
1 quart cider vinegar

Wash and cube cucumbers and place in a bowl sprinkled with salt and turmeric.  Cover with water and let stand two hours; drain and rinse.

Chop onions and combine with cucumbers and remaining ingredients in a large sauce pot.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes.  Ladle into pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace, and cap.  Process 15 minutes in a water bath canner.

Makes about 7 pints; the recipe is easily halved for smaller batches

Sustainable Bookshelf: Saving the Season

(Disclosure:  I received a review copy of this book from Random House/Knopf.  The opinions in this review, as in all of my posts, are mine alone.)

It is so difficult to find a really great new book on food preservation.  Of course, everyone starts out with some of the basics:  The Ball Blue Book and Putting Food By are two of my stand-bys that I recommend to beginners.  But if you want to go beyond that, you typically find books with one or more of these problems:

1. They assume you know exactly what things should look like at every step.
2. They assume that you are either preserving bushels-full (and want recipes for giant quantities) or cups-full (and want to load up on expensive, luxury add-ins).
3. They are boring to read.

This is why I was so thrilled to receive a review copy of Saving the Season.  Kevin West manages to solve all three of these problems in a book that is just beautiful to hold.  (And I do sometimes judge books by their covers and paper quality -- once a mark of literary shallowness, but I think a reasonable criterion on which to judge paper additions to your library when you also have e-book options.)

First, West assumes that you know nothing of the canning process.  He includes line drawings of all of the necessary equipment, and he isn't afraid to add explanations about things he misunderstood while learning.  West's explanation of Basic Strawberry Jam is a triumph in this regard -- he devotes two whole pages to talking the novice through a recipe that most experienced canners know by heart and can do in their sleep.  But I am confident that, given the right equipment, the virgin canner could walk through this explanation step-by-step and emerge with a batch of impressive-looking jam.

This attention to detail continues to the photography.  The photography is beautiful, but, more important, it is sometimes messy.  That is, it shows what food looks like smeared on a plate or a utensil, something that is important for canners hoping to learn what things should look like.  I absolutely swooned over a photo of jam jars that had vented hot jam onto towels beneath.  It was artistically beautiful, but, more important, it showed what that accident actually looks like, which should dilute the terror that you feel the first time it ever happens in your kitchen.

Second, West does an admirable job of including both basic and gourmet recipes for small farmers' market purchases and home gardens.  I grow a big suburban garden, but I don't bring in produce by the bushel.  However, I favor the basic recipes, and I'm often faced with cutting down recipes that are designed to fill a 9-quart canner.  This book is idea for figuring out what the basic way of preserving a variety of crops is, in quantities that are easy to manage and easy on the budget.

Then, he includes the specialty recipes that will have you running for additional add-ins that may not be frugal, but are sure to impress your guests and gift recipients when they find out you make your own aromatic bitters or cocktail onions.  I don't always appreciate recipes that send me to several stores for a pinch of this and a jar of that, but occasionally I will want to make something truly gourmet, just because it is something special for me and my family.

Finally, the book is fun to read.  West is, first and foremost, a writer, and he includes stories, memories, poetry, and detailed explanations highlighting his experiences with and knowledge of food.  It is these additions that make the book something that the reader will keep out in the kitchen year round, reading stories of tomatoes in the depth of winter, then turning to instructions on how to make marmalades from the organic citrus you find at your favorite bodega.  These recipes are almost enough to make me break my "eat local" pledge, at least long enough to get enough citrus so I have something to can in January.

Saving the Season on Amazon

Saving Pepper Seeds

Apologies for the erratic nature of the posts lately!  I'm always frustrated when the blogs I read can't stick to a publication schedule, yet here I am doing the same.  If it is any excuse, I am spending my blogging time putting up pickles.

In any event, this is a quick tip that most of you already know, but which would make the beginnings of a great new gardening project for you or a fabulous homeschool project for your kids:  saving seeds.

One of the great things about growing "heirloom" or "heritage" varieties of plants is that the plants are open pollinated, meaning you can save seeds from one generation to the next and expect the plant to breed true unless it has accidentally crossed with another plant.  So saving seeds is another easy sustainability skill that lets you become that much more independent in your food-growing efforts.

Some seeds, however, are more difficult to save than others.  Tomatoes famously like to go through a process similar to what they'd experience if the fruit fell from the plant and decomposed before the seeds will sprout (although I have fairly good luck with some varieties just rinsing and drying the seeds).  Carrot seeds must wait until the plant flowers in its second year.

Peppers, however, are a great beginner's seed to save.  Just pop the seed core from the pepper while you are cooking and lay it on a plate to dry.  In a few days, you can flake the seeds off, let them finish drying for another day or two, and then put them in a bottle or envelope for next year.  I keep mine in an old amber yeast jar so they are protected from exposure to light, and I store them in a cool place.

Other plants also save seeds easily, including beans and squashes.  What seeds will you save this year?

The Analysis
Fast:  Saving pepper seeds is as easy as drying them on a plate.  A few minutes total of your time, at most.

Cheap:  The whole purpose of saving seeds is saving money -- just a couple of peppers will give you more seeds that buying an entire pack for $3.50 or more.

Good:  This is another step to sustainability, or a great science project for the kids that will go all winter, starting now with seeds and progressing to starting them in February and planting the plants next spring.

In Praise of the Black Krim Tomato

If you grow your own tomatoes, you have the luxury of choosing varieties that would probably not make it to many farmers' markets, let alone to a supermarket.  Such is true of my favorite:  the Black Krim.

The Black Krim is my favorite so far of the entire family of "black" tomatoes.  As you can see in the picture, they aren't really black, but when they are peeled and sliced, they look kind of bruised and beaten.  Their flesh ranges from a deep purple through red and into a rather sickly green, making them one of the least attractive tomatoes to see on your plate.

To top it all off, they are not very satisfying to let ripen.  They have dark green shoulders that can take up as much as a third of the fruit, and these green shoulders never turn red -- or, at least, they never do for me.  Instead, that is where the tomato seems to hide all of its core, so that it is easier to just chop off everything green before you peel or slice.

But once you deal with this, they are a wonder to behold.  A perfectly ripe Black Krim has skin that slips from the fruit with the barest touch of a knife, making them perfect for people like me who like to peel their tomatoes before slicing.  They are extremely juicy while being extremely meaty, which means that they are a wonderful addition to sauces and juices.

The flavor, though, is what brings me back.  They are acidy, with a tingle on the tongue that reminds me of the old fashioned tomatoes my Grandma grew.  And they have a "dark" undertone to their flavor that is decidedly meaty, rather than hewing toward the "berry" flavors that some slicer tomatoes can have.  Make no mistake, this is a savory tomato, not a sweet one.

My garden critters love the Black Krims as much as I do, and since the plants tend to set fruit near the ground, I lose a certain percentage every year.  But the ones I get to eat are pure heaven, and I am not exaggerating to say that I have dreams of Black Krim tomatoes in the depths of winter.

What is your favorite tomato variety?

Esther Simpson's Tomato Juice

August is tomato month, and every time I can tomato juice, I think of my Aunt Esther.

Aunt Esther had a truly magical garden and canning operation.  If we visited her during the summer, she would say, "let's see what we can get ya" and take us out to the garden.  Most times, we would leave with a bag full of tomatoes, beans, and whatever else was ripe. If she happened to be getting ready to can beans when we arrived, we would sit on the porch and snap beans with her.  It is still one of my favorite things to do.  Her basement was a canning kitchen, filled with jars of finished products and cabinets full of spices where she could do her canning and keep a little cooler.  It was a great place to explore.

When I wanted to learn how to can, she sat down and wrote out my grandmother's bread and butter pickle recipe for me and her instructions for making tomato juice.  She sent us home to make our first quarts of juice with the loan of her ricer (which you may know as a food mill).

The recipe below is Esther's, and you will notice that it is dead simple.  Like the bread and butter pickle recipe, it was intended for open kettle canning, in which the hot juice is put into a hot jar and allowed to seal without further processing.  I've added the processing times to comply with current thoughts on canning.  I've also added the lemon juice; modern hybrid tomatoes are bred to be less acidic than traditional heirlooms, so this small bit of lemon juice keeps you on the safe side of acidity.

Further note:  the picture above is not the best, but I wanted new canners to see the way the tomato pulp sediment separates out from the liquid when the jar has been standing for a while.  This is normal.  It is easy to freak out a little when you see this the first time you put up tomato juice, because we are all so accustomed to the overly-processed stuff we get in the store or a restaurant.  Just shake the jar up before you drink.

Esther Simpson's Tomato Juice
Tomatoes (Seriously, just whatever you have -- the amount of juice depends a great deal on the size variety of tomatoes you've harvested.  Try to have at least 5 pounds or so to be sure you will get a quart.)
Lemon juice
Salt

Cut out cores, stem ends, green places, and bad spots.  Cut into quarters and place in a large pot. Use your hands to squeeze the tomatoes to make juice.

Let the tomatoes come to a boil, stirring throughout.  Let boil at least 5 minutes or until peels start to leave the pulp.  Run the pulp through a ricer to remove the seeds and peels, and return the juice to the pot.  Reheat to a full rolling boil.  Can in hot, sterilized jars to which lemon juice (1 t. for quarts, 1/2 t. for pints) and salt (1 t. for quarts, 1/2 t. for pints) has been added.

Process in a water bath canner for 35 minutes (for both quarts and pints).

Note:  If you are not a tomato juice fan but want some wonderful basic sauce, just continue to cook the juice until it boils down into sauce consistency.  Can the same way.

How Much Does a Garden Grow: July 2013

We're almost there!  By the end of July, the garden was very close to breaking even and moving into profitability!

The garden spreadsheet has gotten too large to share in its entirety on here, so I'll have to share some highlights with you:

• Expenditures held steady at $278.70.  It is very unlikely that we will make any more purchases, unless I pick up some lettuce seeds on clearance.  So, we have a stable target.
• The blueberries did much better this year than expected.  When I first looked at my one productive bush (along with two that set just a few berries), I predicted we would harvest 12-16 oz. of berries. Instead, we wound up with 26.5 oz. for a value of $11.93.
• Zucchini, of course, have been very productive.  Organic zucchini were $3.36 a pound here, and I brought in 440 oz. (27.5 pounds) through the end of July, for a value of $92.40.  We have eaten zucchini at nearly every meal, put up zucchini relish, and given several pounds away.
• Cucumbers, too, were $2.56 a pound, and we have brought in 607 oz. (37.9 pounds) through the end of July for a value of $97.99.  We are eating cucumbers at every meal too, plus turning lots of the cukes into bread and butter pickles.  For a couple of weeks now, I've been making pickles every other day.
• Corn in the store is $0.49 per ear, and we have harvested two ears.  The squirrels are fighting us for the rest.
• Likewise, organic apples are $0.89 a piece, and we have harvested one.
• Basil, as I mentioned before, is hideously expensive in the store, at the equivalent of $1.00 per ounce for fresh leaves.  I've brought in 7 ounces for cooking thus far.
• Organic tomatoes on the vine are $3.49 in the store, and I've brought in 5.6 pounds so far for a total of $19.80.  So far, the Burpee Super Sauce are the first to crop, so they are ahead in the production race.  However, there are lots of green tomatoes out there on all the plants, and the mild weather means that the plants continue to set fruit.

Overall, I'm pretty sure that the garden is already profitable as of this writing, or at least close.  It is a pretty good garden year, and I can't wait to see how much produce I can grow on a small suburban lot with fairly marginal soil.

How is your garden growing this year?

Lillian Rumsey's Bread and Butter Pickles

Some of my best memories of my grandmother come back to me in summertime.  My grandparents owned a farm, and, while I suspect some of my cousins have fond memories of the tractor and the animals, my favorite memories are of the gardens.  Grandma and I would go out to pick strawberries together, eating as many in the field as we brought into the house.  They were never so sweet inside as they were outside in the sunshine, giggling together about our berries.

When I started learning to preserve food, I "inherited" Grandma's bread and butter pickle recipe.  Although we never got to put up pickles together, making this recipe reminds me very strongly of her.  I can feel her with me while I'm out in the sun picking the cucumbers, and I can imagine her cutting her produce and turning it into pickles just as I do.  Nothing says summer happiness to me quite like Grandma's pickles.

Lillian Rumsey's Bread and Butter Pickles
(Note:  This recipe makes 4 quarts, but it is easy to quarter and just make a quart at a time if your garden is small.  That's what I do.)

12 cucumbers (6-7 inches long each)
8 small white onions
2 green peppers (I usually omit these because my peppers aren't ready at the same time as the cukes)
1/2 cup salt or enough to wilt the veggies
ice

Pickling Syrup:
5 cups sugar
5 cups cider vinegar
1/2 t. turmeric
1/2 t. ground cloves
1 t. celery seed
2 t. mustard seed

Wash cucumbers, peel, and slice thin.  Slice onions and green peppers.  Place in a bowl layered with salt. Weight the veggies down with another bowl filled with ice.  Let stand for 3 hours or until veggies are wilted.
Drain and rinse thoroughly.

Mix together pickling syrup and boil 5 minutes.  Add drained veggies and bring to a simmer.  Can in hot, sterile quart jars.  Process in water bath canner, 10 minutes for pints/15 minutes for quarts.

(Note:  The original recipe does not include the processing in the water bath canner, as this recipe was intended for "open kettle" canning, a type of canning that relies on the heat of the jar and the contents make the jar lid seal.  Pickles were often canned this way; dill pickles were often not canned at all, residing for their entire lives in a crock.  The pickling syrup or brine was usually enough to keep them preserved.  In deference to modern food safety norms, I have added the water bath canning step.)

Zucchini Relish

One of my favorite ways to use up the zucchini crop is to make zucchini relish.  This is a wonderful condiment that we eat all year on hot dogs.  I like to tease Mr. FC&G and credit him with the concept of mustard, ketchup, and relish on a hot dog, since he was the one that introduced me to the combo.  This is our favorite relish for this classic American treat.

I've adapted this recipe from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving.  I wilt my zucchini more than they call for, shred the zucchini instead of chopping it, and omit the peppers.

Zucchini Relish
About 2 cups shredded zucchini (3 medium or 2 large-ish zuchini)
1 cup chopped onion (about 1 medium to large)
1/3 cup salt
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 t. celery seed
1 t. mustard seed
1 cup cider vinegar

Shred the zucchini and chop the onions -- place in a non-metal bowl coated with the salt, and let wilt for at least 2 hours.  Drain and rinse the mixture.

Combine remaining ingredients and bring to a boil, then add vegetables.  Simmer for 10 minutes.  Pack into hot jars and process 10 minutes for half-pints, 15 minutes for pints.  Make 4 half-pints or 2 pints of relish.

The Analysis
Fast:  This relish actually comes together a bit faster than traditional cucumber relish, since you don't have to wilt as much water out of the zucchini as you do the cucumbers.

Cheap:  With zucchini coming in fast and furious from the garden, this is a great way to capture the bounty.

Good:  The taste of the celery seed and onion really comes through, with very little zucchini taste involved.

The Beauty of Vertical Gardening

If you are a suburban gardener like me, you know that your gardening space is finite.  This is especially true if, like me, you prefer to use a broadfork or other manual method to prepare your soil in the spring.  It is so much better for the soil, but you simply cannot manually plow acres and acres of land, even if you had them.  Kind of gives you an appreciation for ancient civilizations.

So, whether you are limited by available land or available muscle power, you want to get the biggest harvest possible out of your land.  And there is no better way of doing this than vertical gardening, or "growing up."

At the right, you can see my bean pole.  I planted beans in a circle around a decorative wrought-iron post, and they have been happily climbing all summer.  I was planning to string some twine from each plant up to the top of the post to give them something easier to climb, but they all "reached out" for the post, some covering as much as two feet to make contact and start twining.  I've even planted some beans in the hanging baskets you see, just to add to the fun.

On the left, you see a picture I took a few weeks ago of my cucumber trellis, which I love and which I have written about before.  It is still going strong and ensuring that I have great cucumber harvests.  Currently, my cucumber vines reach far above these trellises, making sort of a mountain of cucumber vines that I paw through twice a day to do my harvest.  Take that, everyone who has ever told me that cucumbers have to be well-spaced to do well in a garden!  There are probably 20 or more individual plants on each side of this trellis, and they are all bearing fruit.  The only trouble I have is reaching the carrots that are growing under the trellis, but hopefully this just means I have to keep my hands out of them until they are larger and cucumber season is at an end.

With all of the vertical gardening and then the tall plants like corn, walking into our garden is like entering into a magical tunnel.  Mr. FC&G says that it looks like a formal garden, and it does -- a formal garden that is cutting my food bill every time I harvest!

Gardening, Food Preservation, and the Freelance Life

I just got back from the farmers' market, where I bought 9 pints of fresh raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries.  While Mr. FC&G and I will certainly eat our fill from our "berry bowl" that we keep in the fridge, I will also be turning some of these into the yummiest of preserves and the best of frozen fruit.  We know that we'll enjoy them in winter.

While this is a step toward living sustainably, it is also a natural outgrowth of the fact that we are both small business owners.  Read any article on freelancing, and you almost certainly will see the advice to sock a chunk of your income away in savings to guard against the inevitable unevenness in workload.  But what most people don't tell you is that you also have to have mechanisms in place to lower your outflow of cash when times are rough.  For us, gardening and food preservation help bridge any gaps.

As you know from reading this blog, I keep a fairly obsessive tally of the retail value of my garden harvests. Even in the worst years, the garden more than pays for itself, giving us fresh, organically-grown produce that has a retail value far above our investment in seeds and plants.  Obviously, this decreases our food bill overall by that amount while we eat healthy, fresh food.

By preserving some of this bounty (and supplementing from the farmers' market), we are also guarding against income fluctuations in non-harvest months.  If neither of us are having a particularly productive February, for example, we know we can cut back our grocery budget and still eat well by relying on our stocks of tomato sauce, chili sauce, soup stock, jams and preserves, and relishes, all of which add nutrition and interest to very inexpensive meals.  Some of our preserved food, like my bread and butter pickles, are also popular gifts in our family.

It is unconventional advice, but I swear by it.  If you are contemplating a freelance/small business career, you simply must garden as much as your property allows and preserve food to the best of your abilities.  Your budget and your business will thank you.

In Praise of Basil

In These Happy Golden Years, the final "official" volume of the books from Laura Ingalls Wilder, there is a charming scene in which Laura and her new husband Almanzo are visiting another couple when they are caught in a hail storm.  Almanzo, always equally charming and annoying (or so I've always thought), tries to put a good spin on things by commenting that "the rich man gets his ice in the summer, but the poor man gets his in the winter."  He then suggests making ice cream.  I've always kind of hoped Laura gave him a good earful in the buggy ride home for that irresponsible comment.

Anyway, I always think of that when I harvest basil, but in reverse.  If you grow basil in your garden, you are simply awash in the stuff this time of year.  The bushes are huge, and if you take your fresh basil by pruning them right above where they fork, they will continue to spread and get bushier and bushier.  I eat as much basil as I like all summer long, and I freeze a good bit in oil for winter pesto.

Contrast this with the store-bought version.  On the one hand, I'm happy to see fresh basil leaves sold in grocery stores like Trader Joe's.  But I must say that one look at the price should send you straight to buy your own plant.  Fresh organic basil leaves are $2.99 for 2.5 ounces.  Yikes!  Of course, this must reflect the absolute difficulty of transporting a very fragile, temperature sensitive herb from where it is grown (Florida and Massachusetts by the label) to a Trader Joe's, then keeping it in any kind of condition until purchase.  I figure, based on my experience with basil leaves, that these are good for maybe a week from harvest to eating, even assuming modern packaging and transport.

I'll be using this price this year in "How Much Does a Garden Grow," although I'm going to cut it a bit to $1.00 per ounce to take into account that I bring my basil into the house on the stem, which weighs up a little.  Even so, I can easily eat $1.00 of basil a day for the entire summer, which makes it a luxury that would start to get pricey if I got my basil anywhere but my back yard.

I guess the rich can have their basil in the winter, but I have mine in the summer.

The Analysis
Fast:  Trimming basil from your own garden or container is way faster than going to the store.

Cheap:  Look at those prices!  You pay for a basil plant within 3-4 ounces of harvested basil; the rest is pure garden profit.

Good:  I can't imagine the store-bought kind will have the aroma and flavor of fresh-harvested, with the leaves full of their aromatic oils.  Yum.  Affordable luxury indeed.

Five Sustainable Ways to Live Healthier

As promised Wednesday, here is my "prescription" for fighting unhealthy obesity and living a healthier life. Please note that I am not a doctor, a dietician, or a Certified Diabetes Educator.  You should consult one or more of the above if you want to try an idea you think might conflict with an existing health condition, prescription, or lifestyle plan you already have in place.  This is what works for me, and I will certainly admit I don't check all of the boxes all the time!  Try these ideas and see if they work for you.

Five Ways to Live Healthier

1. Consider fruits and vegetables to be "free foods." You have to be responsible for anything you put on them -- salt, sugar, dressing -- but you can eat as much of the underlying fruit or veggie as you want without counting calories or feeling guilt.  Most are pretty low in calories anyway, especially compared to the nutrition they provide. I suppose it is theoretically possible to eat enough avocados to gain weight, but I honestly don't think anyone can sustain that level of consumption for very long. Too often, we hear advice such as that I once heard repeated that one should decrease one's consumption of yellow and orange vegetables because they lead to weight gain.  Even if I thought that was true, I'm going on the record to say that I don't think that excess consumption of carrots and squash are part of this country's obesity problem.
2. Avoid food with HFCS or preservatives; meat from animals who received growth hormones, prophylactic antibiotics, or an inappropriate diet (such as all corn for cattle, which are ruminants and eat grass); and plant foods that have been exposed to herbicides or pesticides.  Avoid food from GMOs, and try to cut your exposure to BPA in your food containers and other places in your environment.  Some of these will ultimately be proven to be absolutely safe.  Some of these will be thought safe until that is disproven some years in the future.  Some we are pretty darn sure right now are unsafe.  But all of these things raise caution flags, and cleaning up your diet in this way can't hurt.  Far better to eat three cookies made at home from unbleached flour, turbinado sugar, organic butter, and free range eggs than to have three cookies filled with HFCS and a bunch of stabilizers and preservatives.
3. Pick a hobby that requires you to move your body, and practice that hobby for its own sake, not for the exercise.  We dance, swim, and garden, but I am perfectly happy to recommend golf, shuffleboard, or darts-throwing if that is where your heart lies.  Just get up out of your chair and start doing something you want to get better at, and along the way you will move around a little or a lot. If you need to, treat yourself to the gear that goes with your hobby, like the proper equipment or a magazine dedicated to the subject.  Just watch out for your attitude.  If you find yourself saying "I've got to X tonight" about your hobby, you are not doing it for enjoyment, and you will quit.  Pick another hobby.
4. Build in some movement during the day, especially after meals.  This doesn't have to be a big thing, either.  Go out and walk around the yard after dinner, or walk to a sunny spot to eat your lunch rather than driving to a restaurant. Bike to a local errand, or swim a couple of laps in the pool when you take your family on the weekend.  I'm a big fan of the "non-smoking break," where you take 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon to get up from your desk and walk around outside, just as you would if you were taking a smoke break, but without the tobacco.  Make that an expectation at your place of business if you can.
5. Find a way to get in touch with your soul.  We practice yoga once a week at least, but you may like to build in some meditation or a religious service if you are so inclined.  Whatever helps you deal with stress and get back in tune with the moment is a great thing and can only help you live a healthier life.

What are your favorite healthy living tips?

Obesity, Disease, and Sustainability

I'm going to step outside my normal, self-imposed editorial guidelines here and get mildly political with you.  I don't do this lightly.  I have always tried to keep this site pretty neutral on hot button issues, because I think sustainable living is an important lifestyle choice that can be embraced by a wide rage of individuals with an equally wide variety of opinions on a number of issues.  I want everyone to feel comfortable here.  I know I'd get more hits on my blog and marginally increase the small amount of money I make from it by taking controversial stances and inviting contentious wars in the comments section, but frankly, I have enough anxiety in my life without inviting more of it here.

But this business of classifying obesity as a disease makes me a little nervous.

In case you haven't heard, the AMA recently declared obesity, widely defined as having a BMI (body mass index) of 30 or above, as a disease.  That means that the actual condition of obesity is considered a sickness, if you will, instead of just the conditions -- like diabetes, coronary heart disease, joint pain, etc. -- that can result wholly or partially from it.

Better commentators than I am have identified some of the obvious problems with this.  For one, BMI is a wildly inaccurate measure of health.  Since it is a number derived from your height and weight only, it has a tendency to produce some pretty bad results at either end of the curve.  Professional athletes with lots of heavy-for-their-size muscles tend to be declared obese, while fashion models starving themselves into anorexia might be declared simply "underweight."  Even if you eliminate these populations, there are perfectly healthy people whose bodies are simply tuned to carry more weight on them than others.  If you doubt me, you should visit any dance studio I've ever been in.  I'm in pretty good physical shape, and I regularly meet dancers who have a good 50 pounds or more on me (often without my height) who can keep up a technically perfect Viennese Waltz (note for non-dancers:  read that as "fast, spinning sprint of a dance") for round after round, while I'm winded in the corner.

(Digression #1:  One of my major concerns is that our society is more likely to consider overweight a problem than underweight.  It is very, very true that we have an obesity "epidemic" in this country, and marginal overweight probably causes more health problems than marginal underweight.  But I also think that we are far more likely to criticize someone with a BMI of 26 -- one point into "overweight," than we are a BMI of 17.5 -- one point into "underweight."  The first person will be asked, "how could you let your body get this way," while the second will more likely be told, "you look great, but you could use a sandwich."  The pressure to measure ourselves by numbers is a contributing problem to the health issues we have.  How can you stay inspired to keep taking care of your body if the feedback you get is overwhelmingly negative?)

I understand why some parts of the medical community are happy to have obesity be named a disease.  After all, if you are a primary care physician (and if you are, you are indeed a hero), you have maybe 15-20 minutes per patient visit, and it is hard to get insurance coverage and ultimately payment to counsel said patient about lifestyle choices that impact obesity.  Recognizing it as a disease would mean making this time for counseling and any resulting therapies something that the physician is less likely to have to do on a near-pro-bono basis.  And the last thing I want physicians to do is not be able to run their businesses and make a good living.  They are too important to us for that.

(Digression #2:  We are pressuring our primary care physicians way too much.  It is no wonder we project a shortage in that profession happening very soon.  My primary care doc is fabulous, but, knock wood, I'm a generally healthy person, so I see him once or twice a year.  It is hard for him, conscientious as he is, to amass a lot of background information about my life that would let him make good suggestions to me.  I would love to have the option to schedule 30 or 60 minutes where we just chat with no attempt to solve an underlying problem -- just talk about my lifestyle and my hobbies and my family and my worries and anything else that might impact my health.  Then, I'd like to walk out of that appointment and write a check for the value of that time to his practice.  I would be happy to pay out of pocket to give my doc information that could help him do his job better in a no-stress situation for us both.)

I'm over-simplifying here, but overall, our medical establishment is far more likely to pay for a prescription than a suggestion to visit the farmer's market.  And that's really the problem here.  Once you classify something as a disease and attach a handy-dandy numerical measure to it, the system starts rewarding an over-reliance on a single measurement.  Look at blood pressure.  Normal is 120/80.  Most primary care docs I know see this as a general target, not an absolute, but I have definitely talked to over-zealous physicians who would start to suggest prescriptions for 125/85 and pat you on the back for 115/75.  (Again, this is not all physicians, so if you are one and feel your hackles rising while reading, I seriously doubt if you are doing this.  I do a lot of medical writing, and I hear this kind of thing once in a while, so I know it is out there.  But I don't think it is representative of the profession as a whole.)

(Digression #3:  And where the money is, Big Pharma will follow.  Again, I have spoken to far more ultra-conscientious pharmacists and drug researchers that money-grubbing ones, but we are building a system that will reward the development of and the prescribing of drugs, because that's where insurance reimbursement will be.  I'm pretty sure that none of this will result in your health insurance reimbursing you for buying a bunch of carrots at the farmers' market or for paying your gym membership.)

And this is where I'm afraid we are headed with obesity, only our numerical measure is an inaccurate one.  So, more insurance coverage and ultimately more money for prescriptions and for surgeries and other therapeutic measures that all have their place.  But you can bet that money isn't going to go into addressing systemic issues, like whether there are enough bike paths and bike racks, why there are food deserts in this country, what impact HFCS and glyphosate (an herbicide used widely in preparations like Roundup) has on the human metabolism, and the like.  And it almost certainly won't be used consistently to differentiate the person who is healthy and obese from the many whose lifestyle has led first to obesity and eventually to life-shortening conditions.

So I'm not sure what to do to fix this, other than to say that identifying another disease to code in medical billing probably won't solve the problem and is probably unsustainable.  Obesity is a definite problem in this country, and it needs to be addressed.  Luckily, there is a lot that you, the individual, can do to impact your overall health and, consequently, your chances of developing obesity or remaining obese in an unhealthy way.  I'm just not sure whether more policy and procedure is the way to solve this problem.

(Next post will be my own tips for a healthier lifestyle, worth every penny I paid for my non-existent medical degree!)

Your thoughts?  (Keep it respectful  -- remember, different viewpoints are valuable and my anxiety level needs to stay low!)

How Much Does a Garden Grow: June 2013

Now the old spreadsheet is getting wide enough that I will have to split it in two parts next month!  But I think you can see some of the salient points for the harvest coming in for June.

• The cucumbers just started to come in at the end of the month.  I found a store-bought price of $0.99 per pound, which I reserve the right to change later if I find an organic equivalent.  They are cheap, but they weigh up quickly.
• The zucchini, of course, is practically a cash crop around here.  We have started to eat zucchini daily. 
• Blueberries have been a pleasant surprise, with the farmers' market equivalents coming in at $5.00 per pint volume, which weighs out to 11 ounces on my scale.  Our bushes gave 15 ounces of blueberries in June and, as of this writing, are still cropping.
• Radishes turned out to be a disappointment, bolting quickly before I could get very many to eat.  Sigh.  First real loss of the year. 
• Peas and strawberries are container crops that I don't try to grow a lot of.  Nonetheless, they made for some great snacking while gardening.
• Finally, the first harvests from my container potatoes brought in over a pound of fresh new potatoes, which were seriously yummy.  I currently have four containers growing and a number of volunteer potatoes in the garden.

There were no expenditures to report in June, so we are working off the initial investment and heading for some profit.  A total harvest of 4.75 pounds doesn't sound like much, but just you wait!  I have a good feeling about this gardening year!

Blueberry Preserves

With high gardening season upon us, it is time to start putting up some of the harvest for later months.  My three little blueberry bushes don't give enough for me to need to preserve the overage, but I picked up a few pints of blueberries at the farmers' market so I would have some to preserve.

I have found myself making more and more preserves in lieu of jam.  I have seen differing opinions on definitions, but for me, I consider jam to be whole or crushed fruit, sugar, and pectin.  What I call "preserves" is just whole or crushed fruit and sugar, with no pectin.  It is easier to make because you don't have the additional pectin step of the process, and it is more scalable because you don't have to have an exact amount of fruit to match up with a package of pectin.  (Note that you can buy bulk pectin that solves this problem too.)

Preserves will not be as thick as jam, which is fine with me because I can then use them in many different applications, from topping peanut butter to making smoothies to making desserts.  They will gel a little bit because of the natural pectin in the berries themselves.

One thing I like to do with my fruit preserves is pack my jars full of fruit, which often leaves me with a jar or more of plain syrup.  I can this syrup as well, and we use it in the winter as coffee flavoring or ice cream topping.

Blueberry Preserves
2 pints blueberries, washed and crushed
Equal amount sugar (you can get by with just a bit less, but sugar is essential to the preservation process)

Heat crushed berries and sugar until sugar dissolves, forming syrup.  Continue to heat until to a low boil.

Pack in hot, sterilized jars.  Seal with lids, and process in a water bath canner for 15 minutes for half pints.  As you can see, I got three half-pints of blueberry preserves, and one half-pint of syrup from my quart of berries, but your yield will depend on the juiciness and size of the berries.

The Analysis
Fast:  Making preserves is super-quick.  I have even been known to put up a couple of jars of preserves while I'm making dinner.

Cheap:  Surprisingly, making your own preserves is typically not a money-saver.  Generally, your finished product will come in about the same as store-bought gourmet preserves once you factor in fresh-picked berries and new jars.  (Reusing your jars season to season helps bring down the cost somewhat, so you really are only paying up when you want new jars for gifts.)

Good: Flavor and freshness are where it is at with the berry preserves.  I've never tasted a store-bought brand, even the gourmet varieties, that have that intense, cobbler-y flavor you can get when you make your own.

Zucchini Au Gratin

Zucchini season is finally here!  This weekend, we started taking the first small zucchini from our plants, which I think is one of the less celebrated joys of gardening:  you get immediate access to young, small vegetables that would sell at a premium as "fancy" baby varieties in a grocery or restaurant.

Anyway, the high summer veggies are some of our favorites, and I was really looking forward to trying this idea this year.  Zucchini au gratin is a great way to get some zucchini into your diet.  It tastes almost exactly like the cheesy flat bread you get from pizza delivery places, but obviously with fewer carbs and more fiber and vitamins.  Yum!

Zucchini Au Gratin
1-2 small young zucchini, sliced thin
mozzarella cheese to cover
Italian-flavored bread crumbs

Place sliced zucchini in a baking pan in a single layer or a slightly overlapped layer, depending on the size of your pan and the amount of zucchini you wish to use.  Cover with mozzarella cheese in a thin layer (slices work well for this), then sprinkle Italian-flavored bread crumbs over top.  (If you wish to make this even lower carb, you can omit the bread crumbs and sub in some Italian herbs, but it won't have quite the crunch.)

Bake at 350 until cheese is bubbly and brown, about 15-20 minutes.

The Analysis
Fast:  I've been making this along with our normal dinners, and it is a snap to assemble and bake beside something else you have in the oven.

Cheap:  Way cheaper than delivery cheesy flatbread, and much healthier.

Good:  Healthy and yummy.   Let the high gardening season begin!

Mulch, Part II

So last week I wrote a bit about using grass clippings for mulch in the garden, which I believe is going swimmingly.  My plants seem pretty happy, and the weeds are more or less under control.

One mulch project that has definitely worked is using pine needles around the blueberry bushes, something I've been doing for about three years with good results.

Blueberries are tough to grow in these parts, because the soil is not acidic enough for robust growth.  Pine needles, on the other hand, increase the acidity of the soil if you apply them at pretty great depths -- everything I've read suggests you have to pile them thicker than 3 inches in order to get any change to soil pH.  I mulch my blueberries to about 5-6 inches, spring and fall.  Sometimes, I put an additional layer on in the summer if I'm getting too many weeds popping through.

Since I've started doing this, our blueberry bushes are growing nicely.  Even better, they all survive the winter, which wasn't true before I started mulching.  And since I get my pine needles for free from under our pine trees, it is an easy project!

The Analysis:
Fast:  I have a small blueberry patch, so mulching doesn't take much time.

Cheap:  Free mulch from the pine trees means better blueberry growth.

Good:  I'm still buying blueberries to supplement our tiny harvest, but maybe one day I'll have enough bushes to give us all the berries we want!

The Longest Day of the Year

It is June 21, the longest day of the year.  Arguably, it is one of the days I wait for all year long.  I'm not the only one.  Papa FC&G starts counting down on December 21 each year, reminding me that "after this, the days start getting longer!"  We both wait for the day that we have the maximum available daylight available.

I promised myself I was going to write a nice long post for you today.  But it is 5 p.m. on the longest day of the year, and I have at least four more hours of daylight ahead of me.  I'm heading out into my garden, which you can see above, and top dress my tomatoes with freshly sifted compost, train cucumber vines up their trellises, and see how many fresh blueberries I can pick.

What are you doing in the garden this weekend?

A Mulch Experiment

I'm not a huge fan of mulching the garden paths, but in the years since we started using the broadfork, it has made more and more sense to put down some sort of mulch that will decompose into the soil, hopefully enriching it while holding in moisture and controlling weeds a bit.

For the last couple of years, I have put down paths of pine needles at a shallow depth (so as to not change the pH of the soil).  But this year, I'm trying grass clippings.

Another thing I'm not a big fan of:  mowing the grass.  But this year, there have been a number of weeks that the task has fallen to me because of Mr. FC&G's work schedule.  I can't mow the entire yard with the push reel mower, and I am allergic to grass particles to a certain extent, so it became a necessity for me to use the bagging attachment just to save me from a miserable night of sneezing.  So, I seem to have a great deal of grass clippings.

Since we don't chemically treat our lawn, I have felt pretty secure using the clippings to mulch the paths, or, in the case you see in the photo, around the raised beds.  My plants seem to be doing well, but time will tell if I can see any impact on the garden, positive or negative.

I'll hold off doing a Fast, Cheap, and Good analysis on this until I get results.  Until then, do you mulch your garden paths?  What do you use?

How Much Does a Garden Grow: May 2013

OK, really moving along here on the garden.  Of course, May is not a big production month for me, but you can see that we are starting to add some variety.  My greens that lived in the sun room, which I started in February (I think), finished up.  I got more than a grocery-sized bag of greens out of that small raised planter, so I'm happy with an extra eight ounces of greens in our diet.  I also got a few peas off the container vine that I planted, and a few strawberries off our largely-decorative container plants that flank the sun room doors.  None of the peas or strawberries even made it into the house, as I ate them while I worked.  There's some local eating for you!

In expenditures, I did spend some extra getting some plants that I either wanted for back up (like extra cucumbers) or some herbs and seeds for areas that I discovered remained unplanted even after the carefully-planned initial round went in the ground.  I would expect that I am done with expenditures for the year, give or take being tempted by some orphan plant on the shelf or some seeds for indoor greens.

So that leaves our tally for the month of May.  With just 19 ounces of garden produce harvested, I have saved a total of $8.22 over retail.  My balance stands at a loss of $270,49, which I do expect to recoup fairly rapidly.  If history is an indicator, I should break even some time around the Fourth of July, and August through October should be pure profit!

The Ten Best Things About Sustainable Summers

It's an odd time of year for the blog.  Most of the blog-able projects have either already occurred (winter and spring chores, garden prep) or are yet to come (food preservation, winter readiness, harvest glories).  But it is still my favorite time of the year.

I love the next three or so weeks.  The hardest garden chores are done, and most of what I am going to grow is in the ground, save a few fall and secondary plantings.  Now, whatever will be, will be.  (Cue "Que Sera, Sera")  Now I can just enjoy walking out into the garden every day, pulling a few weeds, sawing a few logs for the growing wood pile, and waiting anxiously for tomatoes and cucumbers.

With that, my top ten things I love about my sustainable summers:

1.  Bouquets from the cutting gardens, fresh on my kitchen counter.
2.  Laundry drying on the line.
3.  Dresses and skirts every day, with no tights or thigh-high socks.
4.  Bare shoulders and tan lines that grow darker all summer long.
5.  Answering the question "what's for dinner?" by walking outside.
6.  Wondering how many servings of fruits and vegetables a day are too many, rather than too few.
7.  Grabbing just flip flops and the bike lock key to run an errand.
8.  Tomato blossoms.
9.  Zucchini in everything -- pasta, bread, pizza crust, pies, etc.
10.  A tangible reminder of the kind of life I want, in a place where the temperature never dips to freezing and I can garden and salsa dance outside, all year round.

What are your favorite things about summer?

Surprise Potatoes

I love this.

Remember this guy?  This was my sanity-preserving potato plant, which I grew by shoving a sprouting potato into a hanging basket over the winter just to have something green I could look at during the gardening off-season.

Yesterday, I finally got around to hauling all of the furniture out of the sun room so I could sweep and steam clean the floors, wipe down the furniture, and generally repair the damage from planting season, and I emptied that pathetic hanging basket and its pathetic potato vine.

I found two small, new potatoes.  What fun!  You can bet I will slip those into my dinner tonight, and just enjoy one last chuckle at the potatoes that have kept me sane all winter and now have kicked off the potato harvest for the main crop part of the year.

Two Sisters Planting

There is a gardening technique called "three sisters" planting, which supposedly refers back to a technique the Pilgrims learned from the Native Americans in their first years in America.  Supposedly, you plant corn, squash, and beans in the same hole, and let them grow. The squash controls the weeds at the base of the corn, the beans use the corn stalk as a pole, and you get three crops in the same area you would use for one, not a small consideration when you are working your soil by hand (either as a Pilgrim or as a glutton-for-punishment microfarmer).

It's a great idea, and I'm sure someone can get it to work, but I never have.  If I plant all three crops at the same time, the squash shades the corn when it is young, the beans grow faster than the corn (knee high by the Fourth of July, and all that), and I wind up with a tangled mess.

Of course, one should always be wary of trying techniques that have been passed down in that sort of lore.  After all, the same type of story of the first Europeans in America also has the Native Americans giving the absolutely ridiculous advice to put not one but three whole fish in each corn-planting hole.  Now, I will readily believe that the Pilgrims were told to enrich their soil with fish heads, tails, and guts, as fish is one of the best soil amendments around, but if anyone ever said to put perfectly-edible fish in their corn rows, I hope they followed that suggestion with the words "April Fool!"

Anyway, since "three sisters" doesn't work for me, I thought I'd try "two sisters" this year.  I planted my rows of corn, using a new hybrid that is meant for small spaces and gardens, and then I planted butternut squash between the rows, not in the same holes.  So far, the two crops are getting along famously.  (This picture was taken about a week ago, so I'm further along than it looks.)  I might very well do a late planting of beans in July, once the corn passes that "knee high" point, but right now I'm hopeful that I will be able to get at least two crops in the space intended for one.

What traditional planting methods have you tried?  Have you had to alter them at all?

A Cautionary Tale

Over the years, I have avoided telling this story on my blog because it is pretty embarrassing.  But today I finally decided I should tell you all, in the interest of letting you learn from my mistakes.

About five years ago, I was out in our compost bins flipping and sifting compost on a fine May afternoon.  Our bins are open and free-standing, cordoned off into bays by garden fencing attached to garden fence posts and open on one of the four sides.  We have three such bays, so that we can always have one for very tough matter (like vines and fibrous things) that will take a while to break down, one that is actively working, and one that we can dig into for finished compost.

Anyway, I was reaching the bottom of the finished compost bay, scooping out the last of the good-smelling humus to sift and put on the garden, when I caught my shovel under a tree root I didn't know was there.  In my attempt to lift up, I unbalanced myself, and I threw myself sideways and was unable to get my footing back.

I landed right on the top of one of the fence posts, right on the edge of my ribs where my undergarments have an underwire.  If I had landed an inch forward, I could conceivably have impaled myself in a very tender spot.

Well, the U-shaped top of the metal fence post left a U-shaped cut surrounded by an angry purple U-shaped bruise that took a couple of weeks to heal.  I couldn't even look at it for a few days without freaking out a little, because of how close that cut and bruise were to such a sensitive area.

Did I mention that I did this less than a week before Mr. FC&G and I competed in our first ballroom dance competition?

Anyway, after the comp we came home and found a tube of old, dead tennis balls, slit them open, and used them to cover the ends of the garden posts so that any future falls would meet with a little bit of protection and padding.  Nothing has happened since, but I promise I will never again have a garden post shorter than I am that doesn't have a tennis ball protector on top, even if I have to go buy new tennis balls or other padding to do it.

Consider yourself warned.

The Time Warp Garden Bed

See those beautiful, meaty leeks?  I planted them by throwing some seeds into my cold framed raised bed in February.

LAST February.

Welcome to the raised bed that time forgot.  Without fail, this particular raised bed, which is the only one over which we erect a cold frame, takes two years to produce a crop of anything.  I generally use it to grow carrots and leeks (and radishes, which, thankfully, mature at normal time frames), and it typically takes many extra months for the produce to mature.

This really isn't much of a problem.  As soon as I harvest all of one crop (I generally divide the bed in two and plant two different crops on two different schedules), I reseed the bed, regardless of the time of year.  In this case, I harvested the last of the last crop of leeks in February 2012 and just threw some leek seeds in there and quickly covered them up (it was February; I was cold!) and closed up the cold frame.  We had small leeks to eat all last summer and winter, but we still have plenty on that side that are growing fat and happy.  I'll certainly enjoy eating them all summer, although I'll be darned if I know quite how they overwintered (twice) and why they are now getting their serious girth to become the big boys like you see in the stores.

I don't know.  Every time I think I understand gardening, something strange happens.  I guess that's why I love my hobby.

You're a Good Gardener!

I recently read a Facebook post, clearly a quote that I have not been able to track down, that attempts to reassure women that in spite different techniques and approaches to different issues, they are good moms.  Somehow, this hit home with me, joining up with the comment by another of my Facebook friends that I'm a good "plant mama."  The result is below, an homage to the original that I hope inspires you to get your hands dirty this spring, however you choose to do it.

You're a Good Gardener!

To the gardener who saves seeds and starts them in the dead of winter:  Isn't it amazing the way we can take a little piece of summer and save it for the time of year we need it the most, nurturing it til planting time again?  You're a good gardener!

To the gardener who picks up multi-packs of plants at the hardware or grocery store:  Good for you!  It's pretty cool that you can pick up something growing right where you shop and enjoy it for an entire season.  You're a good gardener!


To the gardener who composts all year round:  Something valuable from something wasteful.  You are ensuring that your garden is fertilized by something you've created yourself, over which you have complete control.  You're reducing waste and turning it into something beautiful.  You're a good gardener!

To the gardener who buys bags of manure at the store:  Who knew you could buy poop?  You've taken the time to go out and get a natural fertilizer for your garden, and you are willing to invest in your plants.  You're a good gardener!


To the gardener who grows only vegetables:  You're taking your time and your hard work and using it to directly nourish yourself and your family.  Better nutrition while saving on the grocery bill.  You're a good gardener!

To the gardener who grows only flowers:  The prettiest things in God's creation!  Isn't it wonderful that you care enough about beauty to nurture it and share it with others?  You're a good gardener!


To the gardener who uses a broadfork or spade and tills the ground by hand:  How mighty!  You are getting some serious exercise while cutting back on pollution and fossil fuel use.  You're a good gardener!

To the gardener who fires up the rototiller:  Way to get the job done!  You can deal with a larger area more quickly, and you are more likely to keep up your gardening hobby with a few power tools to help you along. You're a good gardener!


To the front yard rebel, who displays edibles for all to see:  Make a stand!  Let your neighbors see how beautiful and functional a front yard can be, and maybe they'll join you.  Imagine what a neighborhood full of front yard veggie gardens could grow!  You're a good gardener!

To the gardener who obeys all the HOA rules in a "gardening mullet:" business in the front and party in the back:  You keep going!  No reason to start a fight in the neighborhood or incur an unnecessary fine.  There's plenty of room for flowers in the front yard and veggies in the back, and you can have the best of both.  You're a good gardener!


Finally....
To the gardener whose garden is measured in acres
To the gardener whose garden is measured in square feet
To the gardener whose garden is in raised beds
To the gardener whose garden is in containers
To the gardener whose garden is on the windowsill

You are all contributing to growing something for your health, your pleasure, your taste buds, your eyes, or your sanity.  You have connected yourself to something bigger than you, all through nurturing a plant.  You're a good gardener!