"What if we ingeniously enriched that vacant land with waste wood products, waste food products and had a rich farm, employed local people to produce the healthy foods that community needs?" - Ken Dunn, founder of Resource Center and City FarmCity Farm is doing all of that and more! City Farm subsidizes their direct sales to the public by contracting with local restaurants wanting fresh, local produce on their menus. City Farm then picks up the restaurant's food waste to be recycled into compost to feed the rich soil that will grow more food.The images in this video capture the beauty of this little agricultural oasis against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline:For a more in depth look at how City Farm is diverting urban waste to create fresh, sustainable food for the local community:In December, City Farm began moving from it's location at 1204 N Clybourn to a new lot one block to the west. Each summer I attend a conference in Chicago for a few days in August and I can't wait to see the new farm when I am there!
The Expat Starter Garden
A dear friend is moving south of the border to live on the shores of Lake Chapala, said to have the second best climate on earth, behind only Atenas, Costa Rica. She wants to start a small garden there and was looking for suggestions.All of these suggestions do very well in both containers (both patio and raised bed) and in rich garden soil, making them versatile, low maintenance choices for a first time gardener.If you are only going to grow one thing, I think basil is a great place to start. It is easy to grow, abundantly productive and can be added to almost every meal you make or have for takeout. I prefer the sweet genovese varieties.If you are only going to grow two things, then basil and cilantro are my choices. Again, easy, abundant and can add a bright taste to any dish, homemade or otherwise. For warmer climates (mine included) try a slo bolt variety.Oregano and rosemary are also low maintenance but useful and abundant herbs for a first time gardener and experienced cook.If she wants to expand beyond herbs, spinach is a great choice for novices. Leaves can be taken as needed allowing the plant to continue growing, many fresh or cooked uses and easy to grow. Again, with warmer climates, a slo bolt variety would be best.After spinach, the chili pepper of your preferred spiciness range. I favor serranos. They are very abundant producers, impart a great flavor in addition to the heat they add to dishes and can be picked green or red depending on your heat preferences. Roasting ripe ones each time you grill and freezing them means delicious roasted peppers on hand year round.And then every gardener's pride and joy, tomatoes. For many of the same reasons, I would recommend cherry type tomatoes for the small scale gardener. They produce much more abundantly than slicing tomato varieties and due to their size can be dried or roasted and frozen for year round additions to meals.With just these 7 items, incorporating bounty fresh from the garden (or preserved from the garden) year round is easy and will work into everyone's favorite dishes.
Countdown to Garden 2016
Even before presents are unwrapped, the countdown is on with less than a month to go before indoor starts of cabbage, leeks and rosemary get going in the first part of January with peppers (hot and bell) just behind.So I've been making my list and checking it twice this week to see what varieties will make it into my 219 square foot of garden space for 2016.I am making heavy use of containers for herbs (and one lettuce I just couldn't resist) and also using two composted trenches in the yard to grow The Three Sisters: corn, blackeyed peas and decorative squash. I currently have 8 1x1 boxes for cucurbits, but will be adding in 3 more before spring to hold all the zucchini, squash and cucumbers on my list.
Despite planning 52 different varieties of annuals for next year, my 2016 seed order (including shipping) came in under $42. This economy was mostly due to saving more of my own seed this year than ever before and having plenty of unused 2015 seed for most of what I plan to grow next year - Square Foot Gardening makes better use of individual seeds than row gardening so more seeds are conserved for future use.
One of my splurge purchases for this year was the Slo-Bolt Cilantro. I am still drawing down the huge supply of cilantro/coriander seeds saved from my 2012 garden. They still have a high germination rate so I have been using them for both outdoor garden and microgreen plantings since then. If the slo-bolt lives up to its name, my 2012 cilantro has had its last reproductive cycle and will be only for microgreens and I will switch to saving the slo-bolt seed.Next I will start plotting out the placement of these plantings on my garden map. 2015 was my first full garden cycle in Raleigh and the biggest lesson was that maximizing light has to be a priority for north facing gardens further complicated by some tree shade. To that end, I added a height column with each plant ranked Short, Medium or Tall to plan my garden for next year. Tallest plants in to the north and shortest plants to the south has always been the rule of thumb but is now a requirement for my future garden plans which will make crop rotations a little more challenging.It is damp, but in the low-mid 70's this weekend, so I will also spend some time putting in new grids into my raised beds. I have been using kitchen string for the past few years but the cottony string only lasts one year before stretching, breaking and needing to be replaced. This year I am going to try a white nylon string that is made for outdoor use and hope it holds up better.Here's to a wonderful close to 2015 and a bright start to 2016! Happy Holidays!
A New Old Fashioned Barn Raising
I was researching a local farm that I am interested in purchasing from and ran across an article about their recent BarnRaiser.us campaign to improve the sustainability and profitability of their livelihood. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about BarnRaiser.There are so many things to love about this artisanal food crowdfunding site:
- The name is wonderfully evocative of the end goal, a community coming together to support the needs of farmers and food artisans
- The admirable mission statement is "To put a billion dollars into the hands of food innovators as they reshape a healthy food world."
- BarnRaiser fees are based solely on fully funded goals. No goal = no fee for trying
- And like the other crowdfunding sites, the farmers and artisans looking to get funded offer up little goodies for supporting them at different levels
- Projects seeking funding are listed in a gallery format with name and photo, a status bar showing how much money has been pledged and how much money and how many days are left to fund the project and, last but not least, location for the project
- According to the FAQ, Project Creators are subject to some level of identity verification
- The site is great exposure for the farmers and food artisans whether they reach their funding goals or not
Let's go raise some barns!
Following In Their Footsteps
I am fascinated with our collective "firsts" in agriculture, our earliest cultivars, our earliest domestications, our earliest preservation techniques. These first forays into plant and animal husbandry are what allowed humans to go forth and multiply, they are the stuff of our religious stories, myths and legends and their long tenure as our companions as well as their historic significance are worth honoring.My first fruit trees were figs because they are believed to be the first plants cultivated by humans and also, by no coincidence whatsoever, they are also the first recognizable tree in the Hebrew Bible (after the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge).While I haven't yet turned my entire lawn from the suburban ornamental grasses that neighbors expect to see into the historic grasses and grain plants the are the root of many of our grain foods (you're welcome HOA), my fascination with the origins of ancient grains has ticked up a notch lately. To that end, I ran across this great tour of historic grains from around the world by Bob's Red Mill that was both illuminating and educational onto some know and unknown grains:
December Morning on the (Urban) Farm
Some keep the Sabbath going to the ChurchI keep it, staying at HomeWith a Bobolink for a ChoristerAnd an Orchard, for a Dome
Some keep the Sabbath in SurpliceI just wear my WingsAnd instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,Our little Sexton sings.
God preaches, a noted ClergymanAnd the sermon is never long,So instead of getting to Heaven, at lastI’m going, all along. ~ Emily Dickinson
Mornings like this never fail to bring the words this poem that I loved since I was a young girl to mind. The beauty of the rising sun was rivaled by the sunset colors of the blueberry leaves all decked out in their fall colors.
And the tender green leaves of the Tom Thumb lettuce growing in a container on my deck made the morning feel more like a late spring day than a warm winter one.
Now, if I just had that orchard dome...
Trench Composting for Corn
I have never really wanted to grow corn since the small amounts I desire for home cooking are readily available at the farmer's market in season, it takes up a lot of valuable space in an already tight garden plan and it is an environmentally costly plant to grow. Corn is greedy. Really greedy.Then I promised my 8 year old that he could grow anything he wanted next year and flipping through a seed catalog he picked Strawberry Popcorn. I dutifully ordered the seeds and we were researching growing, harvesting and drying the variety online when we ran across our first glimpses of Glass Gem Corn. We marveled at the photos and videos of this varietal and were both smitten by its beautiful colors. When it appeared on the Baker Creek Heirloom cover a couple of weeks ago, I found myself suddenly preparing for two varieties of corn in spring 2016 but still didn't want corn in my garden proper.My suburban lawn is in its second year of organic management (no herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers are used) so the conundrum of what to do with the corn made me consider planting directly in the yard as a solution to the space requirements and soil depletion problems of corn. But although I don't use chemicals on the soil, that is not the same thing as having good, rich soil for growing anything. I had seen information on trench composting some time ago and decided to dig back in and learn a bit more.There are a lot of variations on trench composting from the fill it as you go style to the much more elaborate hugelkultur style installations. I opted for something closer to the style in the video below.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1XmP9-RpmYI started with a trench and filled in a layer of browns. These are leaves and pine needles that have been composting for a year now. The leaves have already broken down into a rich soil structure but the pine needles take a bit longer.
I followed the layer of browns with some rich, dark, nearly done compost from my two tumbling composters.
I topped the compost with another layer of the browns.
And finished it off by replacing a top layer of soil, mounding it up a bit since it will settle as the layers of browns and compost continue to biodegrade and compact.
The Glass Gem Corn will be planted on either side of this trench in spring and I will need to do the same elsewhere in my yard for the Strawberry Popcorn. I hope to have a staggered planting system in years ahead where I grow on top of a trench a year and a half after it is filled with rich, organic matter that has had time to be broken down by microbial and worm activity.
Store Bought Reboot - Regrowing Veggies
Here at NearlyHomeGrown, food scraps usually end up being frozen for future vegetable and/or chicken stocks or composted to feed the next generation of growing food. But I have been interested in the regrowing veggies craze and finally had the perfect reason to try it.The latest shiitake flush resulted in 7.7 oz of fresh mushrooms and they have been going into almost every meal in one way or another, but especially into homemade ramen noodle soup where they are a headliner ingredient.
One of the other ingredients, the scallions, have been something of a philosophical splurge for this autumnal meal. They are store bought, out-of-season produce that I could live without but really didn't want to because of the flavor and color they add to the dish...and voila! The perfect vegetable to try regrowing!
The green onion ends were pulled from the cooking scrap pile destined for stock making and put into a clear jar with fresh water and placed in a sunny window. The water will need to be changed every other day between now and spring when I will try planting them in my outdoor garden. In the meantime I can continue to steal the green tops for ramen soup and other dishes while keeping the root alive and growing.
Glass Gem Corn
It's not often that a packet of seeds is so exciting that I cannot wait until spring to open the flap and take a peek inside. Glass Gem corn is a clear exception!The Glass Gem heirloom corn variety hit the homegrown stage a few years ago and has been offered only on a wait-list basis from very limited outlets until now. So when I saw the cover of the 2016 Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog I assumed they were just highlighting a very photogenic variety for the cover. When I discovered they were actually carrying the seed, I didn't hesitate and am now planning where to plant the star of my 2016 garden!
Growing Sustainability - Part 2
In Growing Sustainability - Part 1 I lauded the War Commission Gardens and Victory Gardens for what they grew, a lot of food and a more self-sufficient citizenry. At their height, over 20,000,000 Victory Gardens dotted the American landscape and in 1944, they were producing 40% of all the vegetables grown in the US. These small scale but widespread gardens and orchards contributed to the food landscape in many subtle ways beyond just the food produced on them. A diversity of growers and a diversity of what is grown seems to go hand-in-hand.This startling illustration by the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA depicts the realities of our dwindling agricultural biodiversity with a sampling of the commercially available varieties of 10 commonly grown vegetable seeds from seed houses in 1903 at the top of the chart and the dramatic reduction in varieties of those same vegetables at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation just 80 years later.
And it is not just the 1o varieties shown above that are at risk - this article by National Geographic puts the estimated diversity loss of all historic fruits and vegetables for the US at 90% while this Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations article puts the total global decrease of plant diversity at 75% in the last century.But there is good news in the What's For Dinner in 2025 discussion as well. Recessions spur backyard growing in a big way because growing your own food is cheaper than buying it. And this last recession happened in the age of the internet! How to plant, grow and harvest videos populate YouTube and sites like Garden Girl TV. Online seed houses for heirloom and open pollinated seeds have exploded in number and serve to connect the growers to a growing variety of available seeds. Two of my favorites are Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange. Countless rural and urban farmers have blogs and vlogs, sharing their successes and failures and creating online communities that are (excuse the pun) growing.Whether the online/rural/suburban/urban agricultural movement of people growing food where ever they live will be able to sustain itself over the long haul is anyone's guess. So a further bit of good news for future agricultural diversity is that Cary Fowler, along with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) created the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to serve as a salt mine style back up of seeds from gene banks all over the world.Every minute of Cary's charming, engaging, sometimes scary* and ultimately uplifting 2009 TED Talk is worth watching!* At the 8:30 mark he talks about the the extremely limited time (2 breeding cycles) that plant breeders have to get corn ready for the climate of 2030. In the context of today's GMO headlines, it is easy to forget that injecting genes into a food crop does not make "food". It makes a plant organism that still has to grow to sexual maturity, be crossed with another plant to even get the first round of seed to test.
To Buy or Not To Buy, That is the Question (Dal Fry)
Each year between September and January the question of "what to grow" must be asked and answered by growers everywhere. This is the time of year when seeds are carefully saved, seed catalogs are perused and garden plans begin to be sketched out for the following year.Asking and answering the question of what to grow necessarily means also answering the question of what not to grow, i.e. "what to buy" the following year with the answer being - everything else.Wendell Berry spoke eloquently on the consumer side of agriculture with his often cited quote, "Eaters must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." So this answer to "what to buy" is in many ways, just as important as what we chose grow.Consumers are considering this question of the provenance of our food more often today and answering it from a variety of perspectives such as the locally-seasonally available movements to reduce food miles like the 100 Mile Diet (and its many variations), the Fair Trade movement and the certified organic movement. We are setting personal standards and restrictions on what we can and will purchase.Though it doesn't have a name or a label, another way to look at growing vs. purchasing locally from other growers vs. purchasing locally after being transported from across the globe is to consider the water content. Fruits and vegetables in particular have incredibly high water content and shipping this water across the world with fossil fuels comes at enormous environmental impact.Foods that are high in water content are highly perishable so the varieties grown are selected for their ability to withstand the journey, not for their flavor or nutrition. The perpetual summer these commercially grown and shipped varieties create in our grocery stores crowds out consumer demand for locally grown produce when it is in season, impacting the number of US family farmers that can make a living growing food.So which foods make a great planned buying list? Outside of locally grown fruits and vegetables, purchased from local farmers when they are in season, buying dried foods which are light and unlikely to be damaged in transport compared to high-water foods helps keep local farmers farming and reduces the need to ship water from one part of the globe to another. Rice, wheat, oats and other grains as well as beans, lentils and pasta are all high in nutrition, lightweight compared to water heavy fruits and vegetables, have a long shelf-life and the water gets added by you when you are ready to use them.A few months ago I wanted to try making a dal fry (a Punjabi lentil dish) and found this great crock pot recipe for toovar dal fry over at The Novice Housewife which I made with only one modification - I added the tomatoes at the end of cooking the dish, not the beginning.The dal fry was fantastic and I wanted to investigate growing lentils myself. I quickly learned that the lentils used in the dish cannot be grown in my humid area so were not a candidate for future garden plans, but since they are a dried and nutritious food as well as being delicious, dal fry will remain on my menu.
Cooking with Wilbur Scoville
My 3 serrano plants have produced so abundantly this year that even after freezing enough raw and roasted peppers to last until next year's harvest, giving away dozens more to friends and co-workers and drying many more to save seed, I am still drowning in the spicy, delicious peppers.I first learned the distinctive flavor and heat of these peppers back in 2010 after searching and trying one of those 'top secret restaurant recipes revealed' sites for the Chipotle guacamole recipe*. As soon as knife met serrano the unmistakable scent that I associated with Chipotle guac filled the air and I was sold on serranos and I have been growing them since.Serranos are a type of chili pepper that fits on the Scoville scale between between the less spicy jalapenos and the more spicy cayenne peppers. The Scoville chart has its shortcomings, but it is the closest thing to an authoritative ranking of spiciness of chiles that is in culinary use.What I like about serranos is that they have a taste, not just heat, so they add an actual flavor layer to dishes made with them, not just spiciness. I have not been able to find a chart on chili peppers and umami but my taste buds tell me serranos have it.
So as much as I love serranos, the still going bumper crop of this year's harvest has presented the challenge of what to do with all of these serranos!Drying ripe, red chiles to save seed made me wonder what the ubiquitous crushed red pepper flakes in my spice jars were made of. A bit of research later and I found that crushed (or dried) red pepper flakes are the result of red chiles, but can be made of a blend or different types and are usually not labeled with the type(s) of chiles inside and are generally blends of several types of peppers.Back in September I decided to gamble some of my over abundance on an experiment and dried about 10 fully red serranos and popped them into the food processor, seeds and all. The seeds are generally believed to convey even more heat to the dishes they are added to than the fruit body so most recipes specify that the seeds should be removed. But the crushed red pepper flakes I have seen always have visible seeds so I left them in.
The experiment in making my own crushed red pepper flakes was a huge success! They definitely add the spicy kick that I am accustomed to with the store bought spice and my serrrano-only version is also adding the flavor and body that I associate with serranos.I am drying a second round of serranos to grind into spice mostly because I have to do something with them and I am beginning to think they might make spicy stocking stuffers :)*Interesting side note - the "official" recipe on the Chipotle website calls for jalapenos and is a possible red herring so that the made-at-home version does not taste quite as good as the restaurant version.
The Race Is On
October green tomatoes.
Temps dipping into the mid 30s this weekend.
Haystack of Needles
It has been raining two things since Thursday night. Raindrops and pine needles.
Going into my second fall as a North Carolina gardener, I have started calling them Piedmont sand because they are a pain to clean up and get into absolutely everything!Last year I made a leaf composting bin to reduce yard waste and build soil with all the sweet gumball leaves that fall into my backyard. With each infusion of leaves, pine needles inevitably found their way into the bin also and they take much longer to break down. After a year of compositing and being filled to the brim with leaves no less than 4 times, I am left with a small pile of garden gold mixed in with a small haystack of needles.
There is conflicting information on whether pine needles add a significant amount of acidity to the soil as they break down or not so to be safe, this mixture will be used to compost around my acidity loving blueberry bushes.I am reasonably certain that the 8 pine trees in my backyard are Pinus taeda, the loblolly pine. They will shed needles almost continuously from now until spring. This year's needles will be used to mulch around the magnolia tree, which also likes a bit of acidity, after being broken down a bit with a weed wacker to speed up the decomposition.I hope to find a happy balance between the amount of needles the trees can produce in a two year span and the amount of pine needle compost/mulch I can use.
Farming the Burbs
Two of my great passions collided earlier this week when a colleague forwarded a recent REALTOR® Magazine, July/August 2015 issue article about the "emerging real estate niche" of backyard agriculture. My day job that I absolutely love is in the real estate industry where we like distinct categories for types of real estate. Properties are classified as either Residential or Farm, but never as Residential Farm. The effect of these categories makes it appear that houses are only incidental on farm land and that land (and its growing capacity) is only incidental to residential properties.
It warmed my heart to see REALTOR® Magazine run such an excellent, in-depth article on urban agriculture. The Rise of the Backyard Farm is both extremely well written and very timely. It is time for these two passions to collide - in real estate we talk about how owning property helps grow wealth over time, but when real estate and suburban agriculture meet additional dividends are paid seasonally.
Growing Sustainability - Part 1
I have three 24 x 36 cork boards in my home office, devoted to helping me organize my garden. They are filled with seasonal planting guides for Zone 7, my own garden plans for seasonal and succession plantings, companion planting charts and the listings of vegetables by family that make sense of them.Interspersed between these work-a-day printouts are some of my favorite images of the WWI National War Garden Commission (1910-1920) and WWII Victory Garden (1930-1950) posters. I have long been a fan of these nostalgic images for what they represented at the time and what they represent to me* today.The images, although quaint and nostalgic now, when they were produced were part of a bold initiative that is difficult to imagine ever repeating itself in the light of 21st century politics. The world leaders at that time asked of their people to be a little more self-sufficient for a while, to do a little more for themselves and consume less, not for any immediate personal benefit for those making the sacrifices of growing and preserving their own food, but for "the greater good". They also represent a generally accepted, society endorsed back to the land movement long before the Foxfire books of the 1970s solidified in the public mind that unless you are a farmer by trade, growing a significant portion of your own food is a hallmark of an alternative lifestyle.With the War Gardens of WWI and later the Victory Gardens of WWII, ordinary households economized during rationing. They grew, ate, canned and preserved some of their own produce to nourish their families and to help the war efforts by using less of the nation's production and transportation resources so those resources would be available elsewhere.It was a time of lofty and aspirational ideals and pulling together for a purpose larger than ourselves. Some of the growing ideas and solutions promulgated during that period, particularly of WWII were a mix of good and pretty bad, but the overall concept was a good one - a decentralized food system, self-sufficient citizens and a government system that supported the bootstraps mentality that has become a hallmark of those generations.
*Results may vary
Seeding the Future
One of my goals for my 2015 garden is to save more seed. Previously I had saved only cilantro/coriander and some flower seeds, but I am turning a corner in 2015 and saving as many seeds from the varieties I grow as possible. The corner of my home office has become the space for drying seeds to be saved for next year's planting.Some of the seeds I am saving are edible as seed, like the Titan Sunflowers I am growing this year in honor of my years in Kansas. These (and the other Titans) will be split between seeds for planting and snacks.
But most are seeds for planting's sake, saving the best and brightest from this year to plan(t) for next year.
Right now I have some serrano peppers, 3 varieties of sunflowers, spaghetti squash, balsams and candy tufts seeds drying. I will be adding golden acorn squash and oregano to my corner soon.By saving seed from the plants that did best this year, I am selecting those that are most likely to do best in my specific micro-climate again next year, preserving genetic diversity (always a good idea), saving a bit of money in my garden plan for next year and creating a greater level of sustainability for my little acreage and those that want to share in the surplus of seeds.Not a bad way to start the weekend :)
Making Hay While The Sun Shines - Part 3
The wonderful thing about being taken under the wing of a traditional southern food mentor is that in addition to the lesson at hand, there are other tantalizing tidbits sprinkled throughout the lessons like breadcrumbs, just waiting for me to pick up the trail.During my green bean pressure canning lesson, the utensil drawer was opened to look for some other object and the Norpro Wood Corn Cutter and Creamer made its debut into my life. My mentor explained that device is used to cream corn, which she does annually with Silver Queen, her favorite hybrid variety. The tool was dropped back into the drawer and the green bean lesson continued.That night I began researching the tool and process of making and preserving creamed corn. My mentor uses the "Another way" method described at the bottom of this link over at the National Center for Home Food Preservation (the online bible for how to safely preserve food). The creamer tool was so inexpensive and the corn so abundant at the NC State Farmers Market, I had to give it a try!My whopping 45.5 lbs of corn had 65 ears in it and sold for only $25 - one of the many great reasons to grow or buy abundantly in season and preserve in wholesome ways for the off season.
I enlisted help from the cutest and most enthusiastic corn shucker imaginable to get through the pile.
Once shucked, the corn was washed, trimmed of any ear worm damage and ready to be creamed. It took a little experimentation to get the cutters to the right height for the chunkiness I desired. I found compromise by setting it on a creamier height and using knife cut corn once every 8 or so ears to get nice big kernels.
Following the instructions from my mentor and the National Center for Home Food Preservation the creamed corn was cooked in two double boilers for about 10 minutes.
Once thickened it the pots were set in an ice bath to stop the cooking process.
Once cooled, it was ladled into the freezer bags that work with my vacuumsealer at serving sizes of roughly 15.5oz each. They were frozen flat to take up less space then vacuumsealed.
All in all, my 45.5lbs of corn ended up being 15.5lbs of creamed corn with much of the difference being the cobs that were cut up and added to compost so they were a gain for next year's soil also. The entire process took about 4 hours from shucking to the last batch being put in the freezer and finished with a total of 16 servings. I froze 15 of them for the months to come and made one fresh that night. I knew the project was a success (and one likely to be repeated before the end of corn season) when my little shucker took his first bite of our homemade creamed corn and asked if there was enough for seconds.
Making Hay While The Sun Shines - Part 2
Even before the surprise bounty of figs arrived on my doorstep Saturday morning, I had a hefty agenda for my first full weekend back home in my garden in 3 weeks.Serranos - picking them at both the green and red stages, sharing some with friends and preserving the rest. My favorite methods for enjoying serranos in the off season are vacuum packing them fresh and whole and freezing or else sliced in half, seeded, roasted on the grill and then vacuum packed.
(roasted, vacuum sealed and frozen)
Cucurbits - I needed to put out 8 new 1'x1' boxes for the fall planting of cucumbers and summer and winter squashes to keep them from shading their neighbors in the garden as well as giving them a bit more room to spread out as well.
I will be making an A-frame trellis out of bamboo poles and chicken wire this weekend to provide a climbing structure for the back/north-most row that will have cucumbers and spaghetti squash. I am planting 4 varieties of zucchini on the front, south-most row which include 3 new variates in addition to the Black Beauty that have done well despite the invasion of squash vine borers.
I also removed the herbs from the middle garden bed in the above shot to make room to double my strawberry patch into a second box for next year with the prolific runners from this year's plants that I have been rooting in containers.
The most handsome specimens of rosemary, sage, parsley and thyme were put into terracotta containers and the rest were dried in the inaugural run of my food dehydrator, crushed and stored in spice jars.
To me, the expression 'making hay while the sun shines' means thinking about where the food on my table in January will come from when I am drowning in the abundance of summer.
Saving Seed - Tomatoes
One of my goals for this year's garden is to save more of my own seeds for varieties I know I will be planting year after year. Saving my own seed moves my garden a little closer to being self-sufficient and maybe more importantly, by picking the best of the crop to save seed from year after year, I will be naturalizing the seeds to the place where they are grown instead of having seeds ideally suited to growing somewhere else.It is important to note that while the seeds of hybrid varieties can be saved, what grows from those seeds will likely have little resemblance to the previous year's plants. With the heirloom varieties I grow, I should be able to save seeds with reasonably reliable results but with normal variations.I am familiar with the fermenting method of saving tomato seeds but wanted to research my options to see if another method would work. I ran across this video that shows how to save tomato seeds on a paper towel.Fermenting definitely has benefits, the fermenting process helps break down the outer coating on tomato seeds, improving germination rates the following year, but increases the amount of seed handling and well...comes with a stinky, moldy cup hanging around for a week or two.I went with the paper towel method because it is easier, cleaner and has the added bonus that the bits of paper towel that will be torn off with the seeds next year will help hold moisture next to the seeds as they start to germinate.These Roma tomatoes will be popped in the freezer until I have enough to make a big batch of sauce to can or freeze.
Selecting only the best specimens to save seed from and making sure to save from more than one plant to maintain genetic diversity. Each paper towel of seeds is from one tomato.
I have also been saving seed from the Amana Orange Beefsteak tomatoes.
The seeds have been drying on wire shelving for a little over a week and are ready to be packaged, labeled and tucked into my seed box for next year.
I plan to test the germination rate in late winter when there is still time to order and start seeds if this method does not prove viable. If it does work well, I will be looking to use something similar to paper towels again next year, but with recycled material that has not been bleached. Kaizen!