Saturday, April 12, 2008

snow......

As I write it is still snowing...
It began last night, innocently enough, a few flakes here, another couple there. All night, this morning waking to several inches piled on the car, waiting to be scraped off.
Spring seems very far away.
The seedlings are looking great, the container of beans are blossoming, as are some of the hollyhock plants. The mesclun and the lettuces has been harvested several times, and lots of customers have bought seeds to grow some of their own crops inside.
So there, snow! Even if outside is not cooperating, the containers and pots inside show promise

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Recipe - potato pancakes

Potato pancakes

1 pound of potatoes, peeled
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp flour
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
oil for frying

Grate the peeled raw potatoes, place in a bowl. Add the flour, beaten eggs and salt and pepper, set aside. Heat oil in frying pan, when warm place a dollop of potato mixture into oil, spread out. When the bottom side of pancake is crispy brown, flip it over to cook on other side. When down to a crisp golden brown on each side, remove from pan. These pancakes are very good as is, or with a little bit of ketchup. I know some people also enjoy this with applesauce, but I haven't quite gotten used to that. This is really excellent for brunch or as a light lunch.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Potager Garden

“Find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, the hands, and the mouth."
-Lanza Del Vasto

Potager gardens differ in some respects from harvest gardens, which are typically planted in early spring and harvested in fall, with the majority being stored by freezing or canning. In a kitchen garden, harvesting and planting is ongoing. Its purpose is to supply the kitchen with fruits and vegetables harvested at their peak. Replanting can supply the kitchen with additional food, or can nurture the soil with green manure. Certainly there is reason to grow enough to feed the family, share with others and also put some by for winter, but ahh, to taste a vegetable at its peak is sheer ecstasy.
A potager is also a very visual garden, where thought is put into placement, and allows for leaf texture contrast as well. For example, growing purple pod beans adds color contrast, and they are delicious. Rainbow chard is lovely, the stalks are all different very vibrant colors, and the crinkly texture of the leaves make it a real knockout. Edging the garden with red tinged lettuces makes a fantastic edible border that contrasts nicely with the other plants nearby.
Potager gardeners love food, at its juicy succulent best. Not just a good tomato, but a true tomato, picked warm and juicy from the vine at the peak of its ripeness. The enjoyment is a complete one because it is entwined with the memory of the plant in its various stages of development. It’s not only the taste, but also the care and honest labor that went into making it. This is a kitchen garden at its best, when a gardener has nurtured a plant from a tiny seed or seedling to the time when it is harvested at its peak of freshness.
Here are some suggestions that will help you create a potager garden outside your own back door.
• Consider how the site chosen fits. Think about the effects of wind and hours of sunshine, but also consider the overall setting: Will it be in ground or in containers nearby?
• What veggies, fruits, herbs and flowers do you love? Those are the ones to plant. That might sound odd, but consider if you would like to be serving more salads, with unique flavor, then searching out interesting looking lettuces will be very important. If you prefer to can spaghetti sauce for the winter months, a few extra tomato plants, some onions, peppers and basil will be prominent. This is your garden, and your tastes and needs. If you grow what you love, it will be terrific.
• Next, consider the overall design. This will depend primarily on how you plan to cultivate the garden—by hand or by machine (and what kind of machine), which will determine not only the garden's shape but also how wide the paths need to be. Any pattern is possible—spiral, checkerboard, wagon wheel. As the season progresses and plants grow, the outlines of your beds will evolve. In the informal country style, there is rarely bare earth or much space between rows; the beds are quickly filled in with companion plants, mulch, green manures, or self-sown volunteers. This saves an incredible amount of time, as bare earth will bring weeds that need to be pulled.
• A good design includes vertical accents. These can be temporary (a stand of corn, tomato towers, bean tepees), or permanent (berry bushes, a small apple tree).
• Potagers are essentially tapestries of myriad colors and shapes. The intermingling of herbs, flowers, and fruits with vegetables requires careful placement of perennials so that they do not interfere with the growth of seasonal crops. For example, if you choose to add rhubarb to your garden, place it near the edge so it will not cause difficulty in cleaning up the garden in autumn. Aggressive herbs like mint or tansy need to be contained. They will run rampant and try to take over the garden. All the annuals mix well with vegetables, and may even serve as beneficial companion plants—for example, planting coriander among carrots, said to deter the carrot fly.
• Also keep in mind that a kitchen garden can be grown in containers. A patio that is in the sun can host pots of herbs and vegetables, and the pots can also be brought inside to a sunny window before freeze. Nearly anything can be grown in containers. Root vegetables such as potatoes can be grown in large whiskey barrels, tomato plants in an 18’ pot or larger, and you will have ease of harvest and a decorative element as well.
• Edge plots with contrasting plants, including herbs and flowers, which will mask bare spots as the season progresses. Choose varieties in keeping with the scale of the garden. Keep free-ranging perennials in bounds with buried strips of metal or plastic.
• After harvesting, use fast fillers such as chervil or cut-and-come-again salad greens. Many will self-sow and can be moved easily to fill gaps when required.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Co Op America list of 16 ways to heal your home

Theres a fantastic new article at Co Op America's site that is titled 16 Ways to Help heal your home. On this site it has past articles on how to choose least toxic paint, how to create your own cleansers, choosing sheets and comforters for your bedroom, tips for the kitchen and so much more.
Co Op America is a not for profit membership that helps stop unjust practices (unsafe conditions, sweatshops) and works to improve environment and promote fair trade and organics. If you google Co Op America, you'll find tons of articles on social investing, how to be a smart, responsible shopper, green eco tips, saving energy, the list goes on and on. Check Co Op America's website out, its great!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Veggie Garden list 2008

For this years veggie garden, I plan on planting:
*Yukon Gold potatoes
*Lots of tomatoes...Brandywine, Roma, San Marzano, Mortgage Lifter, Bloody Butcher several plants of each variety
*Celeriac
*Shallots, French Grey
*green beans
*carrots, Scarlet Nantes
*Brussels Sprouts
*Spinach
*Zucchini
*yellow summer squash
*pumpkins Rouge D' Etamps
*Lettuces, mesclun and 4 seasons
*Sweet corn
*Watercress (in a container)
*Peppers, sweet green, red, yellow, purple, orange.
*Peppers, hot, cayenne for chili and salsa
Maybe some chard, last year we couldn't keep up with it and it nourished the compost pile

I also want to plant asparagus roots, more rhubarb (for wine!!) and Red Lake currants. If I can, I would like to replace the Montmorency cherry tree that died last year and also plant an heirloom apple or two. That will take up most of the available space, since we do need to keep some lawn for badminton.

lasagna gardening, spreading compost, making the garden bigger...

Yesterday was fantastic! Warm weather (60 degrees!) abundant sunshine and lots of yard work, what a wonderful day! The blue scilla (Siberian Squill) that grow near the house are already blooming and as I raked away leaves, I could see lots of perennials already starting to poke through. I moved lots of the leaves into the compost area but left some on the gardens. I want to go gradual.
I'm making the veggie garden lots bigger this year, so I am creating a "lasagna" garden to kill off the grass organically. What that means is I am not using chemicals, but instead, excluding the sunlight and smothering off the grass where I would like the future garden to be. Very low impact, I don't need to rototill and it kind of mimics what happens in woods and forests, where leaves fall down and eventually rot into the ground, making a very fertile area. This method works for any kind of garden, vegetable, flower, herb, mixed.
First I lay down cardboard or several inches thick newspaper. This is a great way to make sure the cardboard or newspaper doesn't end up in the landfill, another huge benefit. Then over the top of the cardboard/newspaper layer I put compost, grass clippings, well rotted manure to help amend the soil. since no sunlight is reaching the grass, it eventually dies, and decays, also adding to the nutrients in the garden. If I am antsy, I can just push aside the top layer, cut a hole into the decomposing cardboard or newspaper layer and plant the seedlings. This is a fast and easy way to make a large garden, and also put more nutrients into the soil as well. Its not an exact science, I use what is on hand and what could be used as compost material. Things that cannot go in are bones, animal fats, meat scraps or pet manure. In the fall I have an abundance of maple leaves, and also clippings from the garden. During the winter, I have been bringing home buckets of "green", clippings, stems and petals from the flowers used at Kindred Spirits Organics, plus the coffee grounds from Harmony Cafe.
This method is how I started the perennial gardens and paths, just by layering organic material. What fun! We also found someone who was giving away poultry manure on freecycle so we were able to get a few buckets to add to the garden. I'm keeping my fingers crossed the woman who advertised on freecycle that she had well rotted horse manure gives us a call too, our garden and my two sons gardens could benefit from that as well. Gardening is just so cool. I got filthy dirty and exhausted yesterday schlepping around all the compost and raking for hours, and I couldn't have felt better!