Whipping Cream, Whipping Gardens

Whipping gardens back into shape, that is. I was on a tear yesterday and got so much done, and it felt so good! My energy levels have been kinda low lately between my allergies and cold of some sort I think, though it all just blended together. It felt great to really accomplish a lot.

My day started around 5:45 am with coffee, morning news reading, email and facebook play. Before going out to milk I got 3 pounds of butter made and kneaded bread dough for its first rise. I even got the kitchen mostly cleaned up. Then I went out to milk and feed the animals. Came back in to process the milk.

The rest of the day was spent trying to catch up on garden work that's been put off because of all the rain we were having. The ground finally dried out enough this weekend to get a tiller in the gardens and take care of some of the weeds and prep the soil for new plantings where I ripped out old.

Knowing the rain was coming again, I was a planting fool! We have another week of rain in the forecast, so I got as much in as possible. I planted the Amish paste tomatoes that had been languishing in seed flats. I don't know how they'll do at this point, but they've gotta be happier in the ground than in the seed tray. Here's the final tally:

• around 75 Amish paste tomatoes
  
• around 15 or so nasturtium plants
• half a row each of parsley, basil, and dill seedlings
• seeded half a row of cilantro
  
• 2 rows of edamame
  
• 3rd and final planting of sweet corn
• several rows of dent corn
• ~40 lbs of seed potatoes, the last yukon golds
• scattered amaranth seeds
• scattered insectary herb seeds
• 1 row of moon and stars watermelon
• 1 row of strawberry watermelon
• 1 row of Hale's best muskmelon
• 1 row of edisto muskmelon
• half a row of calendula
• half row of sunflowers
• oh, and the sweet potato slips—forgot those
  

Along with planting, I got most of the garden weeded. (We won't speak of the onions and carrots.) I was out there in my bathing suit, trying to get rid of this silly farmer's tan I'm sporting at the moment where I have tan stripes on my legs between the tops of my tall boots and bottoms of my shorts, belting out songs from my i-pod shuffle. It was the perfect day for working. Overcast, not too hot or muggy. Once I really started weeding and working up a sweat, the bugs were irritating, but that kinda goes without saying around here in the growing season.

I was too busy to take pictures, but I'll try to get some today if I can. Right now, I'm pleased as punch watching the rain come down and water all that in. A week of rain right now with moderate temperatures seems like a blessing for the garden and all the remaining lettuces. There was, of course, still more to be done before I collapsed in the shower at around 7:30 last night, but there's always more to be done. All work and no play makes Danielle a very cranky girl.

And the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down....

What three weeks of rain will do to a garden....



and to the weeds...



The onions are in there somewhere. Yes, I'm whingeing about the weather. We've had so much rain that the ground is completely saturated and unworkable. I can't plant, cultivate, till or weed. I have a cover crop that I wanted to till in before it went to seed, but that's looking like it may not happen. I have loads of stuff that needs to go in the ground and more stuff that I really need to direct seed. I have a late planting of potatoes that desperately needs planting. Not to mention the incredibly favorable conditions for disease. Ugh. With dry one can at least irrigate; with rain, there's nothing to be done but float away.

Grow Your Own

I'd venture to guess that most folks reading this blog have a pretty good grasp of why buying local food is good for the earth, good for your health, and good for the local economy. Many probably even buy into the whole food security issue. Now, here's one more good reason to grow your own.

California is dealing with serious drought conditions. If it continues to worsen, food availability across the nation may be affected, considering that California supplies about half of the nation's produce. The governor declared a state of emergency in February, as three years of low rain and snow fall have produced one of the state's most severe droughts on record. 600,000 acres have been taken out of production in Orange Cove, California, alone, where the unemployment rate is at 25%. In the Westlands Water District that includes Fresno and Kings County officials estimate that 300,000 acres of lettuce, tomatoes and other crops will not be planted this year due to drought. Some experts predict that the total acreage left unplanted this year may go even higher than 850,000.

A recent release of federal water supply to ease drought conditions has brought the area water allowance up to around 30% of its typical allowed water usage under existing contracts, up from the 10% it was getting before federal intervention. Still too little, too late to help most farms in the region, which could seriously affect pricing and availability of produce and other products like orange juice or wine.

To read more, check out California's Department of Water Resources and this article in the New York Times. I'll be following this story closely. Seems Great Depression 2.0 also has a ready-made Dust Bowl 2.0 in the making.

It's not too late to start a garden for those who haven't gotten around to ordering and starting seeds. Buying vegetable seedlings from the nearest garden center is a great way to go, especially when just starting out, as it frees you from starting those seeds in the depths of winter when few folks are thinking about gardening at all. Most of the garden centers around here are watching their vegetable starts fly off shelves, as more people turn to gardening as a way of easing grocery bills. Turns out, the summer garden may be a good plan in terms of availability as well.

Bustin' Sod

More than a year after making my front garden plans, we've finally broken ground. Below is my sketch, which is not drawn remotely to scale. It's more of a vision than an actual plan, and I've already made several changes, but hopefully this will give you a sense of what I'm going for with the herbs and edibles. Our front yard is fairly shallow, sloped, and close to the street, making it relatively useless as yard space. My goal is to eliminate as much of the turf as possible, but I'll be leaving all the paths in grass.



Jim brought the tiller around to break up the bigger areas, but the spiral paths require quite a bit of hand work. We tilled several bales of peat moss into the bed closest to the porch to lower the ph for the blueberries and cranberries. I planted five blueberry bushes there this weekend that I purchased locally—Sunshine blue and Bluehaven, varieties that will stay more compact than most, topping out at around 4 feet. We already have six bushes that I planted along our property line when we moved, so hopefully we'll have plenty of blueberries! I've also started to transplant strawberries for ground cover, and I have four hop vines on order for training up the patio pillars. Up towards the house in between the Hollywood juniper and mugo pine, I planted two ground cherries, pretty flowering shrubs that produce a profusion of sour cherries.

In the bed toward the street, I divided and transplanted several lavender plants, and I ordered some rosa rugosas to fill the area between them. I miss my roses from the old house, and I'm so excited to have some again. I ordered one "new dawn" climber for against the house; two gallicas—"apothecary's rose" and "rosa mundi"; and three "jens munk" rugosas.

We transplanted three of our grapevines that weren't performing well in the kitchen garden out to the front and set in some oregano for ground cover. We'll also be transplanting lots of raspberries and blackberries to create a hedge along the property line. The center of the spirals will feature a sage bush, and I have several starts from last year that I can transplant once I get the soil conditioned. I'll also be spending most of today and tomorrow seeding flats for out front. Tree-wise, I planted a witch hazel this weekend, and I have a weeping mulberry and a dwarf patio peach on order, as well as three varieties of filbert to anchor the front left corner of the yard.

Should keep me busy this year, huh?

So Long High Tunnels

We got the high tunnels down this weekend in between rain storms, and I have the plastic drying on the driveway as I type. As you'll see, we didn't get it down soon enough to avoid the bok choi or the tatsoi bolting, but everything else seems to be doing well. The February planting of turnips, radishes, kale and beets are doing well, and everything else is green and growing.

Early spring here in Maryland is a tricky season. We can be 70° F one day and 42° the next with night time temps still dipping into the 20s° occasionally. Cold season crops don't like high tunnels in hot weather, and that's one of the drawbacks of our homemade tunnels: the sides don't roll up, and the end venting is inadequate at best on warm, sunny days. (I need to get me one of those cool thermometers that El has.)

You can see the tunnel skeletons in the background of the picture above, but that's our neighbor's house in the photo, not ours. This is our house, looking pretty barren at the moment. It sits directly in front of the barn, and it's a nice, short walk out there for winter chores. Soon, we'll be moving all the animals back out onto our rotational pastures.

You can see the tunnel frames in the foreground. These lean against the side of the barn until they're needed again. The advantage to taking the plastic down, besides prolonging its life just a bit is that it helps prevent salt build up in the soil by allowing the natural rains to thoroughly flush it. Our tunnels are up between November and March. Plus, our summers get so hot that without being able to roll up the sides, we'd be hard pressed to grow much of anything in there. I'll be using the new tunnel again with shade cloth to try to grow lettuces through the summer.

My plan with the tunnel to the right, our first one, is to plant a buckwheat cover crop, till it in, solarize the soil, and have it ready for planting late fall/ winter crops by August. I've been dealing with some pest and lettuce disease issues in parts of it, so I'm hoping this will eliminate much of that non-chemically while also improving the soil. I'll till in the buckwheat, and the solarizing will help break down the organic matter, making its nutrients more available for the plants. Buckwheat is a fast growing crop, so it suits my needs particularly well here, in addition to being good at taking up phosphorous in the soil, one of the problems with Maryland soil in general, and mine in particular. So, it'll satisfy those fellas in charge of nutrient management planning.

I thought I'd post a photo of our set up for folks to see. If you click on the photo, you'll be able to see the captions I photoshopped in:


Our lot is shaped like a giant L: you're looking at the short part of the L and the long part extends out to the left past the market garden. I would guesstimate that the house, barn, and two winter pastures take up about 1.75- 2 acres; the rest we use for the market garden and summer rotations. Here's a picture of the kids and the dogs running through those pastures back in December:


That's the mobile chicken coop off to the right side looking like a solar panel.

And here are some parting shots of the tunnel plantings:

Food Security, Part IV

Time to get into the nitty-gritty of food security: seed saving. I'm still working on a steep learning curve with this one, but each year I'm able to take another step in the right direction. I've come to believe that seed saving is the very foundation of food security. Even for those who grow their own food, myself included, dependence upon seed companies could quickly create a large hole in our food security should seed sources dry up for whatever reason. Demand outstripping supply, crop failure, bankruptcy, and worse, all could play havoc with our ability to grow food for our families. Making time now to learn seed saving techniques while the supplies and time are still available is valuable insurance against an uncertain future.

By saving seeds, you'll also be helping to preserve biodiversity, a worthy goal all its own. Seed saving is something our ancestors practiced not only because it was frugal but also because it was practical and the only real way to guarantee that they'd have the seed they needed for next year's growing season. Without these seed savers so many of our heirloom varieties would have been lost, yet this threatens to become a lost art. If younger generations do not step up, learn these techniques, and preserve the knowledge along with the seeds, we may literally find ourselves relying on single hybrids susceptible to mass die-out, not unlike the great potato famine.

How could this be, you may ask? As Monsanto and GMOs march (and drift!) on, small seed savers become more and more crucial to maintaining species diversity because many are lucky enough to live in pockets isolated from larger growers and the cross pollination that can result. More and more heirloom varieties are being lost because commercial hybrid seeds dominate growing fields, resulting in both cross pollination and decreased demand for heirlooms. While there's nothing wrong with non-gmo hybrids, most will not reproduce true—some can be stabilized over a few generations—or are completely sterile, rendering a gardener dependent upon the seed supplier. Large market growers and agribusiness turn toward hybrids that will work for their conditions of production—pest and disease resistance, travel, storage, uniformity, machine harvest, etc.—and as long as consumer demand supports these conditions, heirloom seeds will continue to be under threat. Often, too, taste and nutrient density are sacrificed for market qualities because so many heirlooms can't stand up to the demands of shipping and storage.

Besides protecting heritage and diversity, seed saving also builds a seed store adapted to a particular climate, meaning that saved seed likely has a better chance of thriving in its environment than shipped seed. This kind of adaptation takes generations of seed, but perhaps in the face of climate change such efforts will prove invaluable. Grand seed saving projects like the Seed Vault in Iceland are terrific efforts for governments to undertake, but I don't think they should be the only efforts, nor should they absolve each of us from doing what we can to help as well. At the very least, they fall prey to political whims, at worst, they could fail entirely, so they shouldn't replace individual seed savers by any means.

Seed purity can be tricky business, however, and I strongly suggest getting a good book like Suzanne Ashworth's Seed to Seed as a reference guide. If you're anything like me, this book will become a go-to guide, as I'm inevitably forgetting things and having to look them up all over again just to be sure: which plants require pollinators, which can be left under row covers, that kind of thing. Maybe some day all this will become second nature, but for now, this is my seed saving bible. There are also several good organizations like Seed Savers Exchange that offer information and support. In my blog sidebar, I list several sources for heirloom seeds from different regions of the US. I personally order the majority of my seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a small, mid-Atlantic company based in Virginia, and I've been very pleased with them; however, I've heard lots of wonderful things about the other companies listed as well.

The many different available resources cover ways to ensure seed purity from insect and wind pollination, including isolation distances, maturation time, and day-caging, but they can make it all seem pretty daunting at first with all the information and conditions. Getting started seed saving, however, really is as simple as ordering a variety of open pollinated seeds from an heirloom seed source. (Open pollinated simply means that plants will reliably reproduce the same variety from seed, and this is essential for saving your own seed.) I try to grow at least one open pollinated variety of every vegetable I grow even if I'm growing hybrids for other reasons. I'm not saving seed from all of them each year, but ordering the seed at least ensures that demand for o. p. seeds remains steady. This way, too, I'm able to try out different varieties to see how they perform in my garden conditions. I also try to hold back a few seeds from each of the o.p. varieties, so I will have them for the following year if I can't get them.

For the first year of actually saving seeds, I'd recommend starting with something easy like beans and then branching out from there. The more you do it, the easier it will seem to take the next step. Beans are good first plants because they're perfect and self-pollinating with relatively low isolation distances, meaning that they don't need to be miles away from the nearest planting of beans to ensure purity. Choosing a distinct-looking bean, too, can be an easy visual cue. When planning to save seed, it can make good sense to plant only that variety for the season just to minimize any chances of cross pollinating. Row covers can also help reduce the chances of cross-pollination by insects with bush varieties. Because beans are self-pollinating, the row cover can be left on except to harvest, and this has the added benefit of protecting plants from bean beetles.

Moving further into my own seed saving journey, I've found that learning the different plant families for seed saving is just an extension of knowing them for good garden rotation to minimize pests and diseases. It's all part of the same whole. Because plants within the same family can often cross with others in the same family, knowing which plants are related starts to become really important, and it's not always obvious. I'm not going to go into very much detail about the hows here—it would take up too much space, and I'm no where near as knowledgeable as a good book on the subject, but there are some simple tricks that I've found helpful.

One easy way around cross pollination in the home garden is to simply save seeds from one variety one year, and another the next, being sure not to let the off year plants go to flower. This year, for instance, I was able to save seeds from over-wintered chard in the spring, pull those, and save the seed; next year, I'll save the beet seeds. It's also possible to stagger plantings chronologically within the same season, but this requires a bit more planning ahead. These methods require a close eye, and they're certainly more demanding than just throwing a few seeds into the ground willy-nilly, but they can integrate really well with an intensive planting rotation. Simply pull the plants as they start to bolt, and plant something else in their place that won't cross pollinate.

So far, I've been able to save my own beans, tomatoes, chard, endive, gourdseed corn, popcorn, spinach, sorrel, dill, cilantro, sunflowers, okra (thanks to Pam G. for the original seed), lettuce, chives, leeks, and green onions. I've also saved potatoes and garlic, but not from seed. I'm hoping to get some turnip and beet seed from over wintered plants next spring, but the turnips can be tricky, as they'll cross with any bolting Chinese cabbages and broccoli raab, meaning I'll need to be on top of things to make it work. I'm considering venturing into day-caging, depending upon how much energy I have at the time. Still, it's possible to get a decent seed store going without all the hoopla. I've had some failures along the way, too—carrots, michihli, and quinoa, for instance—because I wasn't careful enough. In the case of the carrots and quinoa, I had wild species growing too close that were impossible to eradicate, so those may be something I'll have too much trouble saving to make it worthwhile.

As you can see, used egg cartons hold a lot of my seeds. Not necessarily the most sanitary method, but it's what I often have on hand while collecting or sorting the dried seed. Other recycled containers work well, too, for large quantities of seed. For small amounts of seed, envelopes are good, and they can be easily labeled and traded. The key is to keep seed cool and dry to avoid any mold formation. Silica gel works well in sparing amounts because the seeds need a small amount (around 3-5%) of moisture for proper germination. For long-term storage the freezer works best, but be sure to allow the storage container to come to room temperature before opening so the seeds don't collect condensation. I keep back up seeds vacuum packed in my freezer as a minor insurance policy. They take up very little space and may prove quite useful down the road. Then again, maybe my kids will be cleaning out my freezers one day wondering why the heck I have all these vacuum packed seeds. Ahhh, better to be safe than sorry, especially if it's easy enough.

I'm by no means self-sustaining in terms of seed saving, but I hope to keep improving on that front. Right now, I'm too much of a variety-addict to limit myself to my own saved seeds, but if something were to happen, I'd have a pretty decent garden all on my own, and I hope to keep improving. Seed ordering the way I do is a luxury, but at $2 or $3 a packet, it's a luxury I'll continue to indulge. I've already placed my '09 seed order, not wanting to put it off too long. Even ordering before the holidays, I encountered several back orders, my onion seed among them unfortunately. Neither onion nor corn do well saving beyond a year, so they need to be ordered or saved fresh every year. Luckily, many other seeds will save for years under the right conditions.

My 2009 Seed Order: modest compared to previous years, but that's due as much to leftover seed as to my own seed saving efforts. At this point my goals are still to try different varieties as well as to have a wide variety, though not a great quantity, of seed in cold storage. The asterisk indicates hybrids.

bean, louisiana purple pole

Beet:
bull's blood
chioggia

Buckwheat (cover crop for high tunnel)

Carrot:
purple dragon

corn, super sweet*

Cucumber:
straight eights
edmonson pickling

edamame, asmara

Eggplant:
listada di gandia
ping tung long

Greens:
bok choi
purple mizuna
red giant mustard

Kale:
lacinato
red russian

Lettuce:
Thai oakleaf
red salad bowl
salad bowl
rouge d'hiver
drunken woman
winter density

Melons:
moon and stars watermelon
strawberry watermelon
hale's best muskmelon
edisto muskmelon

Onions:
copra*
ruby ring*

Peppers:
Serrano*
Sahuaro anaheim*
Gourmet*
Red Knight*

Potatoes:
Yukon gold
red nordland

cherry belle radish

Squash, summer:
yellow crookneck
early white scallop
costata romanesca
golden bush scallop

Squash, winter:
table queen acorn
Cornell's bush delicata
waltham butternut
marinia di chioggia
blue ballet
confection*
Galeux d'Eysines
Cinderella pumpkin

Tomatoes:
sungold*
gold nugget
striped German
green zebra
sweet olive*
brandywine

Food Security, Part III

What's in your yard?

Think of it as a new commercial: replace the tired image of a barbarian asking what's in your wallet with a perky—even sprightly—elf asking what's in your yard.

Could you eat off your land? What if you couldn't get to the grocery store... what if the trucks couldn't get to the grocery? Would you and your family have fresh food?

We all know there are no guarantees in life. Jobs are lost, freak storms happen, and much worse. Nita, the matron of husbandry from Throwback at Trapper Creek, demonstrates the hard way that not even the best laid plans can thwart mother nature. The trick is to cover several fronts at a time. In diversity there is security. Or, don't put all your eggs in one basket. (Going back to the land, so many cliches come clear.)

One of the reasons I wanted to break this topic into a series, besides just keeping it manageable, was to demonstrate the different facets of food security and the ways each complements the other. If all your food is coming from one place, then that should be a major red flag. And by "one place" I don't mean the Piggly Wiggly versus Super Wal-Mart. Sure, that's obvious to most of us, but maybe not so to others. Look around for a minute and assess how many others will be turning toward the same food sources in an emergency. Population density as well as the severity of the emergency will dictate how secure your food sources are. That's the advantage of the pantry: you're likely to be the only one shopping there. But the pantry is by no means your only resource.

Insulation from emergencies or hard times rests upon reducing dependence on outside systems. Not eliminating it, necessarily, which I riffed on in the self-reliance series, but reducing it as much as possible. But insulation also comes through having multiple resources that back each other up, the whole being stronger than the part. The freezer backs up the pantry which backs up the yard. Fall back and redundancy are key.

The yard provides valuable fresh food and can do so year round in many, many places in countless ways, but you'll need to how to take advantage of them. For instance, did you know that fir and pine needles contain loads of vitamin C and that the bark has medicinal properties? Can you identify which evergreens are nourishing and which are poisonous? Do you know what a yew looks like and why to avoid it? Don't just take my word for it; do the research. The point is that yards can nourish us in more ways than one, and while gardens are an obvious resource, landscaping can be just as important, as can weeds. Dandelion leaves are often available long into winter for a nourishing salad where I live. Common purslane and chickweed appear in the spring and provide whopping nutrition for their size, rich in vitamins, minerals, and even protein!

So, what's in your yard?

Beginning with just that simple question opens up so many possibilities for food security before ever even planting a garden. Assess what's already growing and stop applying herbicides if you haven't already—they're bad for the earth, bad for the bugs, and they're ridding your yard of valuable food both for you and the bees, among other creatures. Look at all tiers of your yard from trees to shrubs to weeds and try to envision an integrated and holistic system working at multiple levels, with the vegetable garden as just one part. Look into edible landscaping and forest gardening for starters. Then consider wildcrafting and herbal medicine thrown in for good measure.

A large yard isn't a necessity. Once you begin thinking of outside space as an extension of food security rather than strictly ornamental curb appeal, play space, or just wasted space, the number of options available even in the tiniest of yards multiply. Even apartment dwellers with access to the outside or renters can create container gardens that offer at least some food sources, and even a large sunny window presents the opportunity for an indoor herb garden. Of course, larger properties offer nearly infinite possibilities, and it may be helpful to separate bigger parcels into zones to make projects more manageable. That's one of the beauties of the forest garden: it can take quite a bit of work to set up an ecosystem, but the goal is a self-sustaining copy of nature's methods, allowing that system to do most of the work.

The Usserys of Boxwood, a 2.5 acre homestead in Virginia, offer one of the best examples online of forest gardening with limited space. If you haven't already encountered Harvey Ussery's articles in one of several publications, you'll be delighted to get to know him through his website, which is incredibly informative. Another excellent example of how much can be done in a really small space is the Dervaes family, homesteading on 1/5th of an acre in urban California. I've recommended both these sites before and have links to each in my sidebar resources in case you're looking for them later. They're the two best sites I know of for homesteading in small spaces, but please feel free to share other resources in the comments section.

Here at Touch the Earth farm, we have less than an acre in actual garden production, and I'm working to transform our 5.25 acres into a more integrated whole, an ongoing project that will take years. When we bought the property it was a horse farm, with a lovely 3-stall barn and several acres of pasture in dire need of renovation and shade. The first thing I did when we moved in was to plant some fruit trees close to the house because they take so long to get established. I planted 3 dwarf varieties of apple, 2 dwarf pear, 1 plum, 1 cherry, 1 fig, 1 peach, and 6 blueberries, making sure that the single varieties were self-fruiting. I got the majority of my stock from Edible Landscaping in Afton, Virginia, an excellent little company whose catalog is worth getting for the info and ideas alone. Last year I planted 50 saplings to provide shade for the pastures, food for the bees, and potentially, firewood for us.

Planning 10 or 20 years down the road can be difficult, especially in our nomadic culture, but true food security depends upon it. On the one hand, a person with large financial resources could certainly plant trees on a grand scale by simply purchasing them all at once. I, on the other hand, have opted to buy seed stock and gradually expand our plantings myself, requiring an even longer term point of view. I've been dividing and expanding my berries for the past two years, hoping to let them naturalize in different parts of the homestead. The first year I lost most of the plants to a severe summer drought, but I think last year's transplants took pretty well—about 350 strawberry plants and 50 raspberries. This year, I'm hoping to focus on grafting some of our fruit trees to begin creating a small orchard in one of the upper pastures, and we'll continue to divide our berries, planting on different parts of the property. (Matron of husbandry has an excellent post on grafting that's well worth checking out.)


Luckily, not all projects are so long term, and there are many gratifying ones that offer short-term returns. The most obvious is the summer vegetable garden. Lots of folks are already comfortable with growing a summer garden, so a great way to expand upon that is to consider adding an herb garden, a spring/ fall garden, and even a winter garden. Finding ways to grow fresh produce year round will make a huge difference both for the wallet and the environment, not to mention health since the fresher the produce, the more nutrients it has. While fresh, raw produce is nearly always preferable from a nutritional standpoint over preserved, growing your own also has the added security of knowing exactly what goes into the soil and onto the produce—no added chemicals, colors, waxes, etc. I've gotten so spoiled by fresh produce year round that I don't bother preserving certain things like green beans that never taste so great anyway. I spend my time preserving other things that offer both nutrition and taste satisfaction.

We built our first high tunnel for winter gardening in 2007 and just added a second in fall of 2008. After making the plunge, I won't be without some form of winter garden as long as I'm able. I'm still fine-tuning my winter growing, but having a dedicated space has helped tremendously because I'm not stuck waiting for summer plantings to give up the ghost before I can get winter crops started, many of which need to be in as early as July to really get growing before the days shorten. Some, like leeks and parsnips have such a long growing season that they need to be started even earlier to be ready by fall and winter. Starting plants in seed trays helps get a jump on the season if there are still things in the ground, and I've also found even with the crops I direct sow that having a back up seed tray allows me to fill in any gaps that may occur for whatever reason. The two photos above show our high tunnels after having endured temps in the teens this month. The bare looking areas have small lettuces that will do little growing over the winter, but will have a real jump on the spring season as the days get longer.

Growing cold-tolerant crops is key, and in our zone 6 climate I find I don't really need a double layer of protection for most of the crops I grow. Currently, I'm growing tatsoi, kale, chard, bok choi, spinach, several varieties of endive and lettuce, arugula, green onions, turnip greens, beet greens, thyme, citrus thyme, rosemary, cilantro, flat leaf and curly parsley, oregano, sorrel, chervil, carrots, and radishes. Outside the tunnel, I have broccoli, more kale, and several cabbages, and I just harvested the last rows of turnips, carrots, and leeks to bring into the garage. Winter produce often won't be quite as pristine as that grown in milder weather, but most blemishes can be cut out or worked around.

Gardening itself can be a steep learning curve, but so can learning to eat seasonally, which is truly the only way to eat locally. I've found food tastes so much better fresh that limiting myself to seasonal eating isn't very difficult at all. The hardest part for me was broadening my cooking repertoire, and a few choice cookbooks really helped on that front. Pretty much anything by Alice Waters will be invaluable because of her focus on vegetarian dishes; same goes for the Moosewood cookbooks. There are also several farmer's market cookbooks out now, which focus on seasonally available produce and the meals that can be built around it. Committing to trying a new dish at least once a week can quickly offer experience and familiarity with new vegetables. I've found that doing this during the summer when life naturally slows a bit makes it more manageable and less stressful.

I'm including some of my favorite books below. Please offer your own recommendations in the comments section—the more the merrier!



Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman, the winter gardening bible, this is a definite must have if you're considering growing year round. He has loads of useful info, tables, varieties, etc.










Fresh From the Farmer's Market by Jane Fletcher.












Local Flavors by Deborah Madison.











The Farmer's Market Cookbook by Richard Ruben.

One Local Summer: Week 3

Can you tell couscous is my go-to grain for busy days? It's really just the most excellent fast food, and I'm coming to rely on it for CSA nights when we have pick-ups between 6 and 8 pm, which can make it tough to pull together a family dinner at the same time. If only I could locally source it, I'd be a happy girl.

This evening we enjoyed pork tenderloin medallions from Tamworth pigs, a heritage breed raised here at Touch the Earth Farm that were tender and delicious. These were accompanied by a just picked salad with fresh, tender young lettuces, spinach, green onions, hakurei turnip and home-made chevre. The couscous is flavored with chevre, garlic, and green onions. Of course, there's the requisite ciabatta bread on the side.

Everything was zero mile but for the flour, couscous, garlic, and vinaigrette ingredients.

And since I'm talking about food, I had to include this photo of our first artichokes. We cooked these up for a lovely local meal for father's day, and they looked absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately, they sucked.

*laughing*

Seriously, while they smelled delicious and produced a very tasty sauce, the chokes themselves were woody. I grew them from seed, which is a rather tricky thing apparently, as only 60% or so of artichokes grown from seed are tasty and edible. Ahhh well, it was a good experiment and the plants themselves are so striking that it may be worth growing them as ornamentals.

After a bit of reading on the subject, planting offsets of a known plant is apparently the way to go. I guess I could just keep trying until I get a good plant, but thank goodness I didn't try to foist these onto my CSA members.

This week's CSA Share

Since the new CSA season started at the beginning of this month, I figured it was time for another share photo. This week's large share, minus the dozen eggs:


The share includes bull's blood beets, green onions, hakurei turnips, d'avignon radishes, vates kale, mixed greens (bloomsdale spinach, green salad bowl lettuce and buttercrunch lettuce), the last of the red salad bowl head lettuce, thyme, citrus thyme, rosemary, dill and cilantro.

The incredible heat we've had for the past week has shot the head lettuces in the high tunnel, and I'm doing what I can to keep the younger lettuces going in the market garden. This past weekend I cut up a bunch of shade cloth for cover to give them a fighting chance. The spinach is already bolting, the radishes are turning pithy, the endive is long gone, and the hot summer stuff is still growin'. Next week should be interesting. I need to nurse these greens along until I have tomatoes, peppers, and squash!

All Work and No Play...

We've been busy, busy, busy around here, and we've gotten so much done.

Over the past week we've been building the beehives so we can have them all set up by the time our nucs arrive in mid-May. "Nuc" is short for nucleus, and it's one way to order bees. It's called a nucleus because it is basically a small, working hive that will create the nucleus of the colony. Nucs are more expensive than packaged bees because they're already established mini-hives—the queen has already been accepted and begun laying eggs, giving a jump start to the colony. I have 2 coming.

I ordered my hives from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm in N.C. and I opted to go with the standard deep 10 frame hive, though I'd seriously considering going with a medium hive because of the weight involved. A hive body full of brood and honey can weigh as much as 100 lbs., so I was hesitant to go with something I might not be able to handle by myself. (Yes, this was a rare moment of trying to spare Jim from being dragged into yet another one of my projects, but as you can see, that was merely a fleeting thought.) Our hives are mostly finished, and I'm hoping to stain them today with a water-based stain. Once finished, I'll set them up out in our hedgerow between the market garden and the berry garden.

Speaking of which, this past week the kids and I transplanted around 350 strawberry plants from the kitchen garden out to the berry garden along with about 50 raspberries. Last year I transplanted around 100 raspberries, most of which got crushed in the drought since we don't have irrigation up there. 15 or so survived, and this year I plan to use woven polymulch to help retain moisture and reduce weed pressure, hopefully given these plants a fighting chance.

The kids are amazing workers, especially Julia, who's happy to spend hours out working with me or Jim. I'm consistently amazed that they're so eager to help as often as they are—they truly enjoy being outside and working because it's their choice. They can work as much or as little as they want, and sometimes they do as much playing as working, but they just like being out with us. When they're really working on the farm, they do get paid, and they all earned quite a bit of money with the transplanting. We never had an allowance for inside work, so it was a bit weird for me to consider how we could integrate them into the farm finances, but I wanted for them to have a chance to earn money when they wanted to. So far, the system has worked out beautifully because it still has free-choice at its foundation, along with the premise that the work is, ultimately, the parent's responsibility, so there's no guilt or pressure—just opportunity.

I also managed to get 50 lbs. of red nordland seed potatoes cut up for planting. We've been letting them chit, or eye out, in the garage for the past week, and the nordlands were ready to go in. The banana fingerlings are just about ready as well, but our yukon golds still need more time. This will work out well because it will allow us to get an early crop and a later crop, making for better storage. I can't wait to have our own potatoes again, especially after last year's poor performance with the drought. I will never be without potatoes again if there's anything to be done about it! There is just no comparison—as with so many things—between home grown potatoes and store bought.

Yesterday, I got 50 trees planted, and Jim and Jules got all those seed potatoes in the ground, which I'm sure he'll post about soon. I planted 25 tulip poplars, a native Eastern poplar that is fast growing and super for wildlife and bees. I planted two groves of 11 poplars on the western border of our pastures to provide afternoon shade for our animals. The remaining 3 I planted in front of where I plan to locate the bee hives to eventually provide some afternoon shade for them as well. Our land has very little shade and nearly all of it is along the eastern boundary, meaning morning shade, leaving the animals exposed to the harshest rays of the day. I'm hoping to rectify that a bit with these poplars.

I also planted 25 hybrid willows down in a low, seasonally boggy spot of our barnyard. My plan is to use this both for shade and coppicing for use around the farm and firewood. Willow is great for everything from baskets to trellis to fencing to furniture, not to mention the fact that it's also fast growing and an excellent pollen source for bees. Next spring I may add some black locust to the hedgerow as well, though it can be poisonous to livestock, so I'll need to think carefully about placement. We have some wild cherry out there now, which is also poisonous, so I'll probably try to work it into those areas. At any rate, I'm just babbling now, so I'll sign off and just enjoy all the rain we're getting that's watering in all our hard work.

Garden Napoleon

We managed to knock several things off our to do list this weekend, including the plowing of two new garden areas, which means we'll finally be able to get the potatoes and the oats in the ground. Jim finished the last of the perimeter fencing last weekend, freeing him to plow, and luckily the weather cooperated.

Jim was able to rig a plow borrowed from a neighbor to fit the tractor, letting him create the beginnings of two new gardens for me. We're doubling the size of the market garden this year, and we had the pigs doing much of the clearing work for us all last year. They removed all the turf and plowed a bit for us, but still the new ground is pretty compacted and really needed a good, deep turning over. I'm hoping to move away from till and plow as the gardens improve, but for the near future, anyway, we're just not there yet in the lower gardens. The kitchen garden has been showing dramatic improvements with the compost, however, so I'm hopeful.

We have good soil—silty loam—with pretty good nutrient levels though with quite a bit of shale. (That unplowed portion is home to a couple rows of carrots.) I'm due for soil tests again in the spring, so I'll have a better sense of what these new gardens will do by then. My previous soil tests in these areas were for the pasture as a whole because I hadn't gone all Napoleon yet. Now that I've taken over more and more land, I'll need to redo the soil tests. I'll be doing compost testing as well this year, which should give me a better idea of what's going on with my soil and where it needs amendments, as I continue to figure out how best to work land and animals and plants together. This is our largest garden at about 1/3 of an acre; it's the main market garden and will be comprised mostly of row crops, corn, and potatoes. The kitchen garden is only about 50' x 50' or less than 1/16 of an acre, and it will be used nearly exclusively as a winter garden and summer greens garden with shadecloth over the hoops.

I've added another garden this year as a test plot for grains: hulless oats, quinoa, and amaranth. This is where the pigs were penned in the barnyard this past winter and will likely be a permanent rotation with them. I'm hoping to eek in a cover crop of beets after the grains and before moving the pigs in for the winter, which will provide some self-harvested food for them. This particular soil is quite compacted because of overuse and under-improvement. It's basically been the sacrifice area for our own animals and the horses that lived here for about 20 years before we bought the place and was covered mostly with plantain, medic, and other beneficial weeds, but unfortunately to the exclusion of grasses. This area is roughly 60' x 100' or about 1/8 of an acre. We also have a berry garden, which expands yearly with transplants but is still pretty small, and we'll be adding a medicinal garden in the front yard as well. All in all, I still have under an acre in production.

Jim still needs to disc, and once he's done that, my plan is to put the chickens on the plot for a few days to help with pest control. Of course, this is easier said than done, and I'm sure Jim will be shaking his head upon reading of these plans. The chickens, geese, and Maya and her piglets are all that's left in the barnyard, and we'll be moving them out into pasture rotation within the next month as soon as we work out the rest of the paddock fencing. With the plowing of the grain plot, the piggies got some fresh barnyard, which we'll overseed with a pasture mix in the next couple of weeks, hoping to get in on some last spring rains and begin to improve the condition of the pasture for winter grazing. The chickens and geese should go out very soon. With the piggies, the plan is that Maya will be moved out first, to begin the weaning process and to give us space to cull a couple of the boar piglets for roasting before moving the remaining feeder pigs into a separate paddock.

Early Spring Harvest

I've been so spoiled this year in terms of four-season harvesting, and (God's forgive the hubris) I hope to be even more spoiled next year since I'll be able to plant the tunnels so much earlier. This past year we had tomatoes in the kitchen garden into October, and though I started several lettuces and cold crops in seed trays, I still didn't get them in soon enough. That means that I spent much of this winter epitomizing the impatient gardener, waiting for the seedlings to grow into something while they spent most of the winter hunkered down and near-dormant waiting for some sunshine. Still, we managed to enjoy lots of really delicious mixed baby green harvests throughout even the darkest days of winter. Those frozen green beans I put up at the end of summer have gone nearly untouched because as good as they are fresh, they're not nearly as good frozen and just don't cut it next to real, fresh produce. Truly, I've been so amazed at how easy it is to eat seasonally when one is used to that fresh-out-of-the-garden taste. It's just not worth eating the other stuff!

This was our dinner harvest the other evening. The first tender asparagus shoots, d'Avignon radishes, and purly chives, along with a medley of lettuce greens—red and green salad bowl, speckled bibb, and black seeded simpson—which are growing like crazy now that the sunshine is back, rewarding all my forced patience over the winter twofold. The lettuces look absolutely gorgeous, and the spinach is coming in beautifully. Unfortunately, the recent warm weather is continuing to cause bolting in the high tunnel despite the fact that we got the plastic down last weekend. The brand new tatsoi seedlings and some radishes are already sending up flower shoots. (pouty face here) The arugula, turnips and sorrel are all wanting to flower, as is the michihli and kohlrabi. I keep pinching them out, but it's a losing battle, and I'll probably pull the turnips this weekend to make room for another sowing of something.

The dark-days challenge is officially over, but that doesn't mean that I'll stop regaling folks with fine dining photos. I just like food way too much not to share it! And let's face it, a love of food is the reason we do what we do here at the farm; it informs every decision, every seed, every shovel. So... onto the menu: this evening we enjoyed a delicious zero mile salad topped with a balsamic vinaigrette, bleu cheese, and pasta, along with steamed, tender asparagus that was the sweetest, juiciest asparagus I've ever tasted, and our favorite standby—ciabatta bread. What my plate doesn't show is my husband's carnivorous last minute addition of a flank steak from local grass-fed beef. My motto may be "don't forget the cheese," but his is most definitely "don't forget the meat!"

Farm Happenings

We've been cool and rainy, making it hard to motivate myself to get outside and work. Still, we've managed to keep up with a fair bit of farm work.

Jenny and her daughter were out visiting over the weekend, and while we ate and drank a lot, we apparently didn't get enough work done for Jenny's taste. I kept assuring her that we got all the necessary stuff done, but she said I didn't work her hard enough. (Note to self: next time she comes, work her like a dog and maybe she'll stay warm.) We were able to take the plastic down from the high tunnel, which went really well. We'll leave the hoops up to support shade cloth this summer, hopefully enabling us to grow lettuce through the season.

Everything inside the tunnel is growing beautifully, but the plastic was making the days much too warm for the cool season crops inside, causing many to bolt too soon. Although our last frost date isn't until early May, these crops should do fine, and the cool, overcast days have enabled them to acclimate to life outside the plastic quite well. We're supposed to get rain tomorrow, so I'll hold off a bit on watering in case. That's another advantage to removing the plastic, as it will hopefully help prevent salt build-up in the soil from constant irrigation and no rainfall to flush the soil.

We got the boar and the goats out on pasture this weekend, which went incredibly smoothly. It was great to have a third set of hands moving our boar, Big Boy, and Jenny was unflappable with her professional zoology background—big, unpredictable animals are apparently no big deal. She's a useful person to have around, let me tell you! Of course, the goaties didn't go nearly as smoothly as Big Boy. Oh, they're happy to go out, for sure; it's just that they don't stay put. Our little Nigerian Dwarf doe, Latte, insisted upon jumping the 35" electric net fence, so I put her into the 42" poultry net. She insisted upon jumping again. I spent some time trying to train her to the fence, but the problem is that she already knows she can escape. Now, fyi, the smaller netting kept them contained nearly all of last year, until she got it into her head that she could escape. So, now it's back to the drawing board as we figure out what to do with the goats. Jim's all for selling them, but I figure once we fence in the market garden, we can just let them roam about the pasture. Of course, that cuts into our managed grazing plan, but the best laid plans of mice and men...

We also got all my tomato and pepper seeds planted, and I got my mobile seed greenhouse put together. Sheer brilliance on my part, this will enable me to easily start seeds, moving them in and out of the garage for nighttime protection. The great thing about the cart is that it obviously means I don't have to give up precious tunnel space for seed starting, and I can take advantage of the heatsink that is our driveway. You can see that the cart will fit two 50 pod seed trays per shelf lengthwise, but I can also fit four across the short way with negligible overlap, allowing for a boatload of seed starting! I used some of the more tattered edges of plastic salvaged from one of the winter low tunnels to make the plastic covering, and I simply used clamps to secure it to the bottom of the cart. The wheels lock in place to prevent the cart from rolling down the driveway and into the road, though Jim's taking bets on whether it will go rolling one day anyway. He has no faith.

Over the past couple weeks I've gotten several rows planted down in the market garden. Peas were the first crop to go in and are already popping. After that, I put in broccoli, red and yellow onions, purple bunching onions, radishes, michihli, bok choi, white kohlrabi, beets, turnips, leeks, carrots, and spinach. I'm hoping to get another sowing of peas, radishes, beets, and turnips in tonight as well as parsley, lettuces, celery, colored carrots, and raab.

Signs of Spring!

After about 2 weeks of impatiently scanning the ground, I finally saw it just the other day. The asparagus is here!

Now, you might think I'm excited simply because it's spring or because it's finally asparagus season, and you'd be right, of course. But the important bit of information you'd be missing is that this is our first asparagus season. That's right, this year officially marks the asparagus crowns' 3rd season, which means that we can harvest with abandon this year. Look out asparagus cuz here we come!

The high tunnel has been a huge success this year. So successful in fact that we'll be constructing another one this fall right next to this one, giving over the entire kitchen garden to winter growing. Funny, what started out as a huge garden when we first moved in, now looks to be about the right size for the season most people least associate with fresh foods. Look how amazing that looks!

This high tunnel isn't elegant, but it's simple, relatively inexpensive, easy, and durable. The most expensive part of this project was the plastic. I went with 4 year/ 6 mil greenhouse plastic, which has withstood even our highest winds. For the hoops we used 4' rebar and 10' pvc electrical tubing with the flared ends; the end panels are just 2" x 4"s. We trenched the sides and buried the plastic, using the frozen earth to help hold the plastic in place. (In retrospect, I wonder if this affords some protection from vole penetration, though they certainly could figure out how to tunnel further under.) You can read more about the construction here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Really, this is so simple and affordable that pretty much anyone could have greens year round. Areas with heavy snowfall would need to figure out how to shore up the hoops to avoid collapse. Where we are in Maryland, I simply go out and knock the snow off periodically during a storm. We'll soon be taking the plastic down, but leaving the hoops up to support shade cloth during the high summer season, hopefully enabling us to grow lettuces successfully year round.