Long Island is entering the 4th week of Work From Home orders during the pandemic and "home" has suddenly become the center of many people's lives in a way it has not been for a few generations.
I am looking out over the closest thing to my own Eden that I have ever found. One half acre of a southern facing backyard that backs to a canal of the Connetquot River. It was the productive capacity of this backyard as much as anything else that drew me to this home. From what I saw at the home and garden store yesterday, carefully socially distanced of course, many people are thinking about the productive capacities of their yards right now as well.
My first step in setting up my LI garden is starting a container garden for my herbs. The planters left by the previous owners added with my own should give me an full herb garden close to my back door. The containers a fairly large, but the first winter will be a test to see who overwinters and who does not.
Read MoreThis year, in particular, is full of new beginnings. I welcomed the New Year in with a toast and a cheer from my home in Apex, NC. Just a few months later, this native midwesterner calls Long Island, NY home.
The question I was asked most often about the move was, "Are you going to take your garden with you to New York?". I had 11 individual 4'x4' beds for annuals that constituted the main garden. Separately I had 3 individual 4'x4' beds that were permaculture consisting of asparagus in one, strawberries in another and herb garden in the third. The family that is buying my house in a few weeks will inherit these three boxes. The other 11 beds are disassembled and stored in the basement of the house I am renting for a bit.
The second most common question was, "Will you be able to grow anything in the cold up there?". This question was a curious one to me. I had check the Hardiness Zone Map and both Apex and most of Long Island are Zone 7b, but no one could believe that Long Island and Raleigh are roughly the same growing climate. Despite the incredulity of the south, I should be able to grow roughly the same varieties and seasons in NY as I did in NC.
For the first year while I rent, my growing will be restricted to hydroponics and containers. I am looking forward to a year from now, buying some asparagus crowns and a backyard to put them in!
Read MoreI started my journey into the wild a few months ago when I became curious about wild rice because it checks all the boxes for something to put on the planned buying list; lightweight, non-perishable, high nutrition and delicious.I quickly learned that this little grain is not a rice at all and that most of the wild rice on the market is cultivated, so it isn't really very wild either. Instead, wild rice is an aquatic grass with 3 varieties native to different parts of North America and bonus fact, wild rice is North America's only native cereal grain.Nearly all of the commercially available wild rice on the market is the cultivated variety with a tougher, glossier sheath. It is grown in man-made paddies that are first flooded and later drained for mechanical harvesting. But there is some wild rice on the market that is truly wild, self seeding and hand harvested from natural lakes as it has been for at a couple thousand years in Lake Superior area of Minnesota. Currently this truly wild rice sells for around three times the price of the farmed varieties.I found many examples of both cultivated and truly wild rice online and because of the price difference, wanted to do a comparison. Before purchasing though, I took advantage of a local foodie connection and reached out to a friend in northern Minnesota to see which brands she trusted only to learn she buys local and direct, getting her supply of truly wild rice from the hand-harvester. While she had no advice to offer on commercially available brands, she did generously offer to share some of hers*.I ended up purchasing a 1 lb. bag of each to try and as far as cooking goes, the truly wild version cooks in about 1/2 the time (30 mins) of the cultivated variety. They have both been prepared in plain water and water+chicken broth. Both were delicious when served hot with a little butter, reheated and served cold, tossed in salads and fajitas for extra protein and fiber. Since it is so flexible, I make double and triple batches to have cooked rice on hand throughout the week.The first few times I made it I used the standard stove top method. But then I tried the Anson Mills technique and the results were beyond compare. This involves straining the rice just before it is done, spreading out in a shallow pan and placing in a warm oven to dry for 5 minutes then patting with butter and serving.Whether truly wild or cultivated wild, I think this grass grain is on my table to stay!* The wild rice pictured at the top of this post is some of the truly wild rice my northern Minnesota friend shared from her personal stash with me. The sheath is not the uniform mahogany of the cultivated variety and gives away its grassy nature. I am not sure which method was used to dry/parch this wild rice versus the varieties I have purchased, but that may have played into the cooked result. My 11 year old who knows nothing of the provenance of any of the wild rice that has been a staple on our table for the past few months declared this wild rice to be the best we have made.
Read MoreIt is the end of an unusually quiet summer here at NHG. A late, hard frost wiped out much of the spring plantings as well as this year's harvest of blueberries and asparagus. The figs and asparagus were late and modest. Only the herbs were undaunted by the hard freezes and have flourished their second year in their permanent bed. They have flowered and dropped seed which I hope will refresh the herb bed regularly by being able to remove the mother plants every year and allowing the next generation to take a turn.So today I began closing summer, deadheading the spent flowers and trimming back the herbs for drying.I also began the opening of fall today. Planting beds with radishes, spinach and cilantro then lightly recovering the seeds with the pine needle mulch that is a naturally occurring phenomena in my garden.Here's to a fruitful autumn!
Read MoreTo create your own permaculture summer:
Start with a good variety of fruits, berries and herbs that pretty much take care of themselves year after year.
Add to that background of growth, some tender green leaves (lettuce and spinach will do nicely) and one hungry rabbit.
Voila! You are back to your permaculture staple of fruits, berries and herbs with no pesky greens to worry about.
This, in a nutshell, is my summer.The herbs bolted and are setting seed now. The strawberries are producing well but I haven't covered the bed so the birds are beating me to many of the berries.The tower of asparagus is holding up very nicely under the accumulating mass of growth and the asparagus themselves are inexplicably sending up sporadic spears (3 in the pic below).The figs are plentiful and beginning to ripen. The birds also beat me to the first fig of the year but they don't seem to have seen the one on the other side yet.The blackberries are ripening by the handful daily and the blueberries are plentiful, but stubbornly green.The rabbit problem appears to be solved so now I am just patiently waiting for August when I can plant more greens for fall.
Read MoreAfter an early, false spring in February that fooled blueberries and peaches into blooming followed by the rest of a perfectly normal winter that felt like it lasted forever, spring finally did come and then go in a flash and we are now fully into summer in Zone 7b.My asparagus harvest was light this year, which I attribute to the early burst in February, with many spears freezing at the end of the false spring. I don't know if the freeze affected the crowns or if it was just a coincidence. An interesting side note, for each of the last two years I have had a second burst of spears in fall when nighttime temps dip into the 40s. It will be interesting to see if I do and how much it produces this year.In the meantime, each of the crowns has a few spears that have been allowed to grow tall and fern-like. Every summer I try something a little different to contain all this greenery that feeds the crown for next year's harvest and each year the greenery either slowly or not so slowly overtakes my supports. I think I may have won this year with this 4 pole support, similar to what I have used for snap peas on a larger scale. Currently the asparagus are around 5 1/2 feet tall and being easily supported.The herbs that overwintered are in full flower, some so prodigiously that I trimmed them back to allow everyone a little sun and space.While I wait for the blackberries and blue berries to ripen, my favorite summer treat this year is free-stone peaches halved and grilled for 4 minutes per side. They are a perfect addition anything you are serving up!
Read MoreThe average last frost date for this area passed on April 4th but it has been an unusual spring with early season warming trends in February that encouraged strawberries and blueberries to bloom early followed by unsurprising freezes in early March that played havoc with the plants.My strawberry blooms mostly survived the hard freezes in March and these June Bearers are already showing off green fruits.The permaculture herb garden did very well over the winter, only dill and tarragon did not survive. The thyme is already blooming and the sage is just a step behind.Several asparagus spears were harvested in February then several more killed by one of the hard freezes, but they are loving the current weather and I am harvesting 5-7 spears every 2 days right now.I lost some blueberry blooms with the freezes, but they also seem to have rebounded more or less with new blooms coming in, though I anticipate a diminished harvest this year over last.Spring seems to be here to stay at last so it is time to start planting some annuals too!
Read MoreThis post comes after more than a year of researching every way I can think of and completely failing to find anything related to the matter at hand. The matter at hand is the second growth of asparagus spears in the early fall, long after the asparagus crowns have been allowed to grow the long, bushy fronds they need in order to feed the crown for next year's growth and more specifically, whether or not a small portion of the second growth can be harvested.Unable to find any information either for or against sneaking a few of these late season spears, I have had to reason this out for myself for the past two years and while the result is probably entirely predictable (Garden fresh asparagus in fall? Yes please!), I like to think my reasoning well rooted in a layman's pseudo-botany. The rationale goes something like this: the individual asparagus crowns have been photosynthesizing since May, and of the new spears coming up in September/October I am only taking about 1 out of every 3 of the new growth spears and then only off of crowns that already have more than 3 stems that have fully grown out and are working hard to supply nourishment to the crown to take it through winter and make a stronger growth next year.With 16 crowns all together (8 Jersey Knight and 8 Purple Passion) all of which are enjoying a youthful resurgence right now, this equals out to around 4-5 spears per week that are coming indoors and leading to some interesting, not-normally-on-the-same-plate combinations. This afternoon for lunch, I sauteed some asparagus picked 30 minutes earlier along with some Italian kale harvested at the same time.But my favorite has been adding asparagus to my Whatever Is Fresh Scrambles!This one featured rehydrated morels, 4 spears of asparagus, 4 cherry tomatoes and 2 red serrano peppers - all from the garden except for the morels. I saute all ingredients except the more delicate tomatoes in butter with a little olive oil until the asparagus is just shy of done.When the asparagus has softened, add scrambled eggs to the mix then fold in the quartered cherry tomatoes.When the eggs have finished cooking, plate with a little shredded cheese of your choosing - I have used both colby-jack and mozzarella and both have worked wonderfully. Top with your choice of fresh herb (I alternate between basil and dill) and voila - delicious and nutritious meal in just a few minutes!
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