We are very happy to share an editorial that Stephen wrote for the Spring 2014 issue of Small Farmer’s Journal. SFJ, as it’s known, has had a large influence on us for a very long time. It is one of those jewels of a publication, wrapped up in its plain brown paper cover, but holding viewpoints and articles that expand one’s mind, or perfectly sum up thoughts on a subject, or inspire or educate on something that you hadn’t really thought about before.
We’ve contributed articles before, but were very honored when Lynn Miller asked for an editorial. He didn’t specify the subject, so we went with what was most in front of us at the time, drawn from a number of conversations with customers from all across the country, along with material from a couple of recent presentations. We hope you enjoy it!
Our perspective is somewhat unique, based as it is on contact with home gardeners and small scale growers across the US and Canada, along with a number of other countries. Our phone and email conversations are filled with happenings from all over, from cities with community gardens, church and school gardens, to chefs working with growers to bring fresh, sustainable and locally sourced food to the forefront of their cooking, to prison systems that are going back to raising some of their own food for the lower costs, higher quality food and better rehabilitation that a working garden provides.
Canning classes are oversubscribed, seed starting and planting lectures are full and ordinary people are beginning to ask about how to grow food without using so many chemicals, pesticides and herbicides because of their concern about what they are eating. It is no longer unusual to get an email asking if we are connected in any way to the bio-tech companies, if we use herbicides in growing our seeds or if our seeds come from China.
We are seeing many small, quiet but positive indications that give us hope and encouragement in what we, and those like us, are doing. While multinational industrial food companies continue to march in lockstep with the commercial biochemical industry to control the federal regulatory agencies tasked with keeping them in check, many individuals are rejecting the rhetoric, shrill hype and slick marketing to regain their own choices. As Wendell Berry wrote –
“We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to governments, corporations, and specialists, and put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and household and neighborhoods.”
This is exactly what we are seeing, in many small ways, in every corner of our cities, towns and countryside across our nation. It encourages us and motivates us. These ripples have a cumulative effect, much like the 100th Monkey Principle, where a small group of primates were taught to peel their bananas from the bottom instead of the stem end. They were isolated and out of sight from the mainland, with no identifiable method of communication. Once a critical number of monkeys on the island were consistently peeling their bananas from the bottom, researchers noted that monkeys on the mainland started to do the same. Thus the term – 100th Monkey Principle – where populations change how they do things seemingly spontaneously.
We have no way of knowing where these ripples will end up, who they will affect or how. We do know that they create positive results that continue long after the initial effort or influence.
An excellent example is the Humboldt Elementary school garden in the small Arizona town of the same name. Started by a now-retired teacher almost 20 years ago that was abandoned for a number of years, then re-started last year by a new teacher, it has positively affected kids, parents and teachers already. The local paper has featured it, kids are actively engaged and eagerly look forward to their time in the garden each day, and the growing space is being expanded to grow more.
Whether the influence is simply an appreciation and preference for fresh, local food or extends to the choice to become a grower, rancher or farmer that is biologically friendly, we’ll never know and don’t really need to. Sometimes knowing that we’ve made our corner of the world a little better through our actions is enough. That knowing helps us keep moving on, continuing the work and sharing our knowledge, experience and passion with those who will listen and join with us. As the kid who was told that he couldn’t save all of the starfish washed up on the beach, he replied as he threw another one back, “It made a difference for that one!”
I heard or read the old phrase, “If you want to change the world, plant a garden” when I was much younger. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, as I strongly disliked being forced to work in our large garden when I had much better things to do with my free time!
After I grew up, left the Navy and the big cities and made the conscious choice to move back to a small town, those words began to make more sense. The world-changing part wasn’t the garden or the food that it grew, not even the world that it was supposed to change. Obviously, one small garden can’t change or feed the world by itself.
What one small garden can do is share.
It can share its food, the knowledge of how that food was grown, why it tastes as wonderful, rich and delicious as it does and the excitement and contentment that only comes from food you’ve grown. The term “local food” becomes something entirely different and ceases to be a carelessly used sound-bite. That one small garden can become a few, then several, then many across a town, a city, a county and a nation. That small garden becomes a metaphor, an idea and a movement.
It can become the embodiment of how we as individuals can reclaim our decisions from the proxies of government, corporations and stockholders and make it a personal choice to grow our own food and share it with our family, friends and neighbors, improving everyone’s lives that we share. After all, we are only talking about the third most important ingredient in life, after air and water! Food, as with soil, has been denigrated and degraded into a commodity that is not worth our attention, respect and devotion. We are slowly waking up to this fallacy.
Something as simple as showing someone the distances between home-grown and store-bought food through the flavor and nutrition can open their eyes to a new world of food.
Sharing our abundance from the field or garden with a friend or neighbor is a powerful way to start a ripple. For us it costs next to nothing as it is surplus, but is worth a lot to the receiver. They want to reciprocate the sharing as a way to say thanks. This creates a very powerful, positive ripple effect that used to be common in rural and agricultural communities and is becoming more widespread once again.
This occasional sharing becomes something much greater when the surplus is planned, such as an extra row that is planted exclusively to give away or share with others. This creates a very positive upward spiral in the community, as well as strengthening it and making it more resilient and self-supporting.
Others follow the example, as they want to contribute and participate in the abundance. Soon the immediate neighborhood begins to look a lot like Switzerland, where neighbors plan their backyard gardens together to maximize the amount of food grown in their area, and then share the crop together. What is surplus then goes out to the larger neighborhood or community; a perfect demonstration of how to get away from the insidious influence of the industrial petro-chemical agri-business that seems bent on controlling our food supply today. The most deadly effective way to loosen their grasp is by making them completely un-necessary in our lives.
Looking at the marketing machines of mass media backed by billion dollar multi-national corporations and aided by the federal government, many everyday people question the continued existence of individual choice and responsibility today and whether it has any application in our lives. It is a valid question, but the answer won’t come from looking at the usual answers.
Look instead at some of the results that have happened from individual’s choices and actions. How rBGH was pushed out of milk in grocery stores due to mothers continually asking for milk without that synthetic hormone, and asserting that they wouldn’t buy any milk that had it. Enough dairy managers heard the questions, passed it up the line and the management board saw that enough market share and dollars were being lost that they made the business decision to remove it. It is estimated that 7 – 10% of the population of moms made this happen, not a majority in a voting situation, but a large impact on the company’s profits that made the choice clear.
Look also at how hard the processed food industry, helped by the bio-tech industry has fought to defeat GMO labeling initiatives in California and Washington states. The commercial, industrial Ag industry has called these “defeats”, but was forced to spend tens of millions to achieve those victories. Their behind the scenes efforts have been exposed to the public, their “Natural” label subsidiaries that helped fund the anti-labeling efforts have been hit hard and repeatedly, feeling the effects of public outrage as more individuals learn of the corporate shell game being played at the expense of their health and money.
From our perspective, we see much to be proud of, yet much to be very concerned with.
The local, sustainable food movement has seen great growth and increase in popularity and acceptance that has been beneficial to small farmers, growers and communities; at the same time there is more rhetoric being lobbed at the “opposition” from both sides than ever before.
Civil discussion is becoming increasingly more difficult with catch-phrases and sound-bites being deployed instead of rational, thoughtful and open discourse where everyone doesn’t have to agree, but can still get along. Shrilly shouting down the other party with emotional, highly charged word bombs or character assassination is the order of the day. It seems that more folk are content with term-slinging that makes them feel good or righteous, instead of actually understanding what those terms mean or describe.
We see more need for resiliency today than ever before, but for entirely different reasons. Resiliency once was used somewhat interchangeably with self-sufficiency, and it still applies in that respect.
I once heard a great example of resiliency – that of a cabin boy taking a cup of coffee to the captain on the bridge. As the ship is pulling out of port in calm waters, it is an easy task – cup of coffee on the tray, don’t run into anyone, be careful going through the doors and all is well.
Everything changes when he has to do the same thing in 8 – 10 foot seas with a storm moving in with the ship anything but still and calm. Every move, every step must be planned, visualized and then executed with confidence. Elbows, knees and shoulders are used to brace against bulkheads, crossing from one side of the passageway and from one wall to the other as the ship rolls is now normal. Waiting until the top or bottom of a swell before going through a door and bracing himself all the while is what is needed.
The same task or plan under different circumstances makes doing that task completely different.
As Allan Savory taught in holistic management – the very last question of any planning is to ask, “What if we are wrong, what are the early signs that things aren’t working?” Don’t assume that everything will go as planned, and that we have all the answers at the beginning. Don’t assume we are always right.
Our country does not have the resiliency that is needed in so many areas today. Look at recent weather events, with people stranded on the freeways in Atlanta, unable to get home, staying at big box hardware stores overnight, running out of fuel on the freeways. Our stubborn insistence on depending on someone else to provide for us will eventually get us into real trouble.
Another example we should have learned from long ago, but were re-taught during the economic meltdown and ensuing political madness of “The Great Recession” that crashed around us in 2008 was the fallacy of infinite growth, as if the financial markets were not a closed system and existed outside of the realities of the world.
I’ve often said that we will wind up in a sustainable economy with a sustainable agriculture – either by force or by choice. We will either make the choices and changes needed to be able to grow enough of our own food to feed ourselves, or we will suffer until we do learn how to when times get tough. We might be seeing the arrival of those times with food starting this summer, with California in a state of emergency due to severe drought and an estimated 50% of US-grown combination of fruits, nuts and vegetables from there. California grows 70% of the national production of fresh vegetables, according to the CA Dept. of Food and Agriculture for 2012.
For a real-world example of resiliency in action, look at Russian Dacha gardening. This is backyard gardening on a national scale that prevented a famine after the USSR collapsed, taking with it commercial, industrial, subsidized agriculture. They produce 47% of their national food supply on 3% of the land, from home gardens and they’ve done this for hundreds of years with hand tools and human labor. According to official government statistics in 2000, over 35 million families (approximately 105 million people or 71% of the population) were engaged in dacha gardening. These gardens provide 92% of Russia’s potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of the berries and fruit, 59% of its meat and 49% of the milk produced nationally, in a nation that has an average of just less than 100 days of growing season a year. So tell me again, please, exactly how small scale agriculture doesn’t work?
Would we in the US fare as well if the cost of diesel fuel doubled or water scarcity significantly increased food costs? Or would we go the way of the Cubans, where a significant portion of the population died of starvation and everyone else lost 30lbs until they figured out how to grow food in the cities; using every available scrap of soil, planters, lawns, parks, flower beds and spots from curb to sidewalks to grow enough food to feed themselves.
So, what can we do as individuals? Can we truly make a difference? These questions always, inevitably arise in these discussions. The answer is – of course we can make a difference, we already do each and every day that we share our knowledge and abundance, that we create those positive ripples, sending them out into the world to reinforce other ripples from unknown people just like us.
This isn’t just some socially responsive, feel-good response. Looking around us and seeing the unprecedented growth of Farmer’s Markets, community supported agriculture (CSAs), food hubs, community gardens, school gardens and backyard gardens shows us something that terrifies the conglomerates – people are becoming interested in their food once again, and are tired of being lied and marketed to by the industrial food corporations and their lackeys in the government.
It is a radical thought in today’s world where the health care industry pays no attention to food while the food industry pays no attention to the health of their products that improving and healing the soil in our gardens and farms and growing some of our own food will noticeably improve our own health without the costs, paperwork or side effects.
Looking at it from that perspective, it really feels good to be a radical, doesn’t it? After all, if you aren’t on some sort of government watch list these days, you really aren’t trying hard enough!
Improve Lettuce Seed Germination
Grow Lettuce Longer Into the Warm Season
When lettuce is mentioned, many think of the standard iceberg lettuce found in supermarkets and restaurant salads. That is changing with the growth in popularity of the different types of lettuces from Romaine to head and leaf-type lettuces, mainly due to the flavors and colors that they offer from deep red to almost white and noticeably sweet to tangy and slightly bitter. Iceberg lettuce, originally bred as a hybrid, is now offered as an open pollinated variety and has been around long enough to be considered by some as an “heirloom”!
We have come to expect lettuce year-round, mainly due to being educated by the supermarkets as to what our vegetables should look like, taste like and when they should be available. Many are surprised to find that lettuce is a cool season crop and will bolt or go to seed readily during late spring and summer months. It is best planted early in spring and then again in late summer or early fall when the temperatures start to cool off.
Saint Anne’s Slow Bolting Lettuce
Ideal Conditions for Lettuce Seed Germination
Lettuce seeds won’t sprout when soil temperatures are above 80°F but they will start to germinate as low as 40°F, making it ideal for early and late season planting. A plant hormone is produced under warm conditions that stop the germination process, called “thermo-inhibition”. This is a carryover from wild lettuce that originated in the Mediterranean Middle East, where summers are hot with little moisture. If the lettuce seeds were to sprout under these conditions, they would soon die out and the species would go extinct.
Thanks to traditional plant breeding and selection of heat tolerant characteristics over a number of years, there are several varieties of lettuce that are more heat tolerant and are open-pollinated – meaning you can save seeds from year to year. Some examples are Saint Anne’s Slow Bolting, Summertime, Black Seeded Simpson and Jericho. Just because these are heat tolerant doesn’t mean that they will grow through the summer, only that they won’t bolt or turn bitter quite as quickly.
Thanks to ongoing research on lettuce traits, there are some techniques to extend the sprouting for lettuce seeds into the warmer months that home gardeners can use. The optimum soil temperature for most lettuce seeds is 68°F, with some varieties sprouting in the 40 – 75°F range. The temperature of the soil must be taken, not just the air temperature which can be several degrees different.
Jericho Lettuce
Sprouting Lettuce Seed in Warm Weather
In warmer temperatures, imbibing or soaking the seeds in water for at least 16 hours before planting in a well-lit area will increase the germination percentages greatly. Red light has been found to be the best color, but many home gardeners won’t have access to a non-heating red light and sunlight or full-spectrum light was found to be almost as good. Soaking the seeds in the dark in warmer conditions decreased their germination rates. Another technique that has shown to be successful is to soak the seeds in cool water in a well-lit area for 16 – 24 hours. This approach has increased the germination rate up to 97% when planted in warmer conditions. Soaking for less than 16 hours has little to no positive effect on germination. For a closer look at what happens when a seed goes through germination, read our article “Starting Seeds at Home – a Deeper Look”.
Other successful methods of extending the season for lettuce in the garden include laying a thick mulch of straw or wood chips on the ground of at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches. This insulates the soil from becoming too hot and drying out too fast and helps to preserve moisture in the soil. Shading the lettuce plants can give enough of a temperature drop to keep them from bolting, sometimes up to 3 – 5 weeks. Shade can be from a shade cloth on a row cover or hoop type structure or companion planting of tall wide leafed plants such as some types of pumpkin.
The traditional rule of thumb of “plant early and plant often” for lettuce can also be said as “plant late and plant often”, but some of the more heat tolerant varieties, along with soaking in the light and providing some mulch and shade can greatly extend your lettuce season in the garden this year.
Acres USA Feature: Soil to Seed
Family Company Fosters Seed Freedom
Want to learn more about what makes Terroir Seeds different? We are excited to be featured in the January 2015 issue of Acres USA magazine, the voice of eco-agriculture for over 40 years. This will give you great insight into what makes Terroir Seeds so unique in today’s seed world.
These varieties are featured in the article – Zapotec Tomato, Chile de Agua, Kentucky Wonder Pole Bean, and Rosemary.
Click the photo to read the article!
Acres USA Soil to Seed Article
Future of Food: Dictatorship or Democracy?
Food is something that many of us in the US, quite literally, take for granted. We have reached the point where we simply don’t think about it much anymore. This has become both a blessing and a curse.
For most of us, food is always available, never in short supply and the choices can be staggering. Do we want Asian, Italian, Mexican or American tonight? Easy enough. For some, we can drill down much deeper to regional cuisines of the world available for the price of a phone call or a short drive. The selection at the supermarket or grocery store has exploded, with even the most mundane supermarket in small towns offering aisles of international food that have never been seen before in history.
Of course, any discussion of food is by definition a complex one, and the acknowledgment must be made of the less fortunate that live in “food deserts” where the only available food within 30 minutes is at a convenience store; and those that are euphemistically classified as “food insecure” – meaning hungry. Yes, here in America where we are constantly being told that we must “feed the world” with industrial agriculture, we have a dirty little open secret – 1 in 7 or 49 million of our own people don’t have enough to eat, or don’t know where their next meal will come from.
Today we will look at a slightly different picture, that of food as it relates to civilization and how it can affect all of our lives in positive or negative ways. Food can support or topple governments, as vividly demonstrated by the fairly recent events of the “Arab Spring” uprising in the Middle East where food prices and availability brought down established governments in a matter of weeks.
Henry Kissinger’s famous quip from the 1970s rings as chillingly true today as it did then, “If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.”
In light of that, let’s look at some excerpts from Dr. Vandana Shiva’s lecture we attended at Arizona State University’s Global School of Sustainability on October 30, 2014. Her lecture was titled “Future of Food: Dictatorship or Democracy?” For those not familiar with Dr. Shiva, she is a physicist, environmental activist, speaker and author. Her newest book is Making Peace with the Earth.
How true this is! In our everyday lives, we often forget that we continue to be here thanks to about 6 inches of soil that feeds us multiple times a day, every week, all year long throughout our lifetimes. 2015 is designated as the International Year of Soils by the UN General Assembly, in recognition of the overlooked importance soil plays in all of our lives.
Food is more important in our daily lives than we probably realize on a regular basis. Not only does it feed and nourish us, it brings us together socially at mealtimes, holidays and festivities as well as having a major impact in our political system and our national policies, both at home and abroad. The Farm Bill and international trade agreements are just two examples of this importance.
When Dr. Shiva was doing research in the Punjab region of India for her 1992 book “The Violence of the Green Revolution”, she realized that
When she said this, it immediately brought to mind the situations of some of our farmers, especially the contracted chicken and pig producers, as well as commodity crop growers who are locked into multi-year contracts that specify everything – the seed, chicks or piglets to be used, what feed or fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides will be applied, the length of time until harvest and what price will be paid by the buyer after harvest. There are often punitive clauses that penalize the grower or farmer if conditions or quotas aren’t met. Some large operations, corporations themselves, do well in these contracts, but family farmers do not often find them beneficial in the long run.
This is a very important point that is not addressed much in today’s food system discussions; the very beginning of the entire food chain comes down to a seed. We have seen the incredible consolidation of almost an entire industry in a little more than a decade. From dozens of companies, we now have 6 that control 80% of the commercial seed supply worldwide.
In decades past, land grant universities bred new open pollinated varieties and shared them with growers in their state. Those growers further selected for the best traits and passed them along, partly sharing and selling. The USDA had a large breeding and research section that would send seed home with Senators and Congressmen when they went back home on the train. Farmers and growers could subscribe to the USDA’s publication, read about new varieties they were interested in and write for samples of seed to try. Bear in mind, these weren’t “Free” seeds; they were paid for by taxes and funded through the agricultural programs of the USDA. The growers and farmers didn’t pay out of pocket for them, but paid via their taxes.
Now, there are very few public universities doing seed research and breeding that are releasing them to the public. The notable exception was in April of 2014 when the University of Wisconsin, Madison ‘Open Source Seed Initiative’ project released 29 new varieties of seed for 14 different crops. Because this type of program was so unknown, many articles and Facebook posts erroneously trumpeted the “Free Seed Initiative”, creating confusion as to what this breeding program was trying to do. The aim of this project is to get new open pollinated seed varieties into growers hands so that they can become available for the public.
This is what seed democracy and by extension, food democracy, looks like. This is what is happening with every small, independent heirloom seed company that works to bring overlooked heirloom seed varieties to market. It is also what is happening with the explosion of Farmer’s Markets across the US, as well as the sustained double-digit growth in the resurgence of the home based backyard garden. Local food hubs and food production systems are being re-thought, re-engineered and re-designed like never before. Farmers and growers who used to see themselves as ‘competitors’ are now beginning to view each other as ‘collaborators’ or ‘co-creators’ in new ventures, with an improved local food system as the result.
Something like 70% of the food we eat worldwide is still grown today by small farmers. This has been true for centuries in places like Russia with its ‘Dacha gardening’ system growing close to 50% of the fresh food by the people, for the people. Food democracy can exist, even under the strictest non-democratic governments!
This is big-picture thinking, but on many scales it makes sense in many ways. Voluntary, participatory and evolutionary seed breeding projects that are not corporately involved can be very strong food security and food democracy measures today. In times of changing climactic conditions, the plants must be allowed and encouraged to adapt to the current agricultural conditions. Farmers have done this for centuries, evolving salt tolerant or arid varieties that continue to produce food during changing times.
A perfect example of this was after the 2004 Tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia. Dr. Shiva’s foundation, Navdanya, a participatory agricultural research program – gifted 2 truckloads of salt tolerant seeds to the farmers, who had been told that no agriculture was possible for 5 years by their government agricultural resources. The seeds didn’t just survive; they did extremely well and have been saved and shared all across the region. Seeds are hope, the hope for our future. They are the real diversity, the real insurance for the future, whether it is climate change, to create democracy or deal with pest and diseases.
What is your role in creating a food democracy instead of a food dictatorship? Do what you can – grow a garden or expand it, help others garden, grow a row for the hungry and donate it to your local food pantry, buy at the Farmer’s Market, buy a CSA share from a local grower, and choose the closest grown produce at the supermarket. Each of us individually may not be able to influence farm policy, but we can make a change in our daily food, and that is where real, lasting change starts.
Blue and Yellow Cornmeal Polenta
Making polenta takes a bit of time, care, attention and love but the results are delicious and will become highly valued by friends and family. It is a peasant dish, a close relative to cornmeal mush that has been refined and is no longer just a starvation staple of poor subsistence farmers. Polenta is featured in highbrow restaurants with exotic ingredients anchored to the cornmeal base. Done the traditional way, polenta takes work – about an hour straight of constant stirring – but there is another method that is simply delicious without all of the work. There is still some stirring and a good timer is needed, but you won’t be chained to the stove the entire time.
Northern Italy is where polenta is a staple, made from corn brought over from the New World and grown ever since the mid-1500s. As with many Italian dishes, there are many regional variances from a light Venetian recipe to the Lombardy buckwheat and corn tradition that is mixed with garlic and aged cheese.
Being invited to a home in Northern Italy and having polenta is an honor, a sign that you are not simply a guest but are considered as one of the family as polenta is home cooking and not for “company”. Part of it is the work involved to make it in the traditional way; the other is that until recently polenta was looked down upon as food for the poor and not to be served to honored guests. Now that those same Northern Italian areas have achieved wealth and status, polenta is eaten for enjoyment, to remember and as a comfort food.
I’ve been a fan of Marcella Hazan for years. It was in one of her earlier cookbooks that I learned the simple method of successfully making homemade noodles. It isn’t difficult, but I found out that I was rushing the process and not allowing the noodles to relax between rolling them out. After reading her process where she walks through the process and explains why things need to be done in a certain way and at a certain time, I made the most delicious fresh noodles and became a fan of her writing. I was never able to take one of her cooking classes, but her books have always had that way of explaining why things are done the way they are, helping me to be a better cook and capture the essence of those flavors.
Marcella has developed an easier method of making polenta that tastes like the traditional way. It still takes about an hour to make, but you can walk away from the stove for sections of time, going back to stir and monitor the process. You will see the cornmeal mixture turn silky and soft from coarse and grainy about half way through!
In the spirit of cooking with more locally sourced ingredients, we’ve changed this recipe from corn and buckwheat flour to yellow and blue cornmeal with homemade smoked chicken broth instead of just water. Growing your own corn just for polenta will make complete sense during the very first bite! The flavors cannot be compared to any cornmeal that is store-bought. They will be richer, bolder, earthy and sweet with a substantial feeling after tasting. Making extra takes no more work and will give you extras for the next few days to use as an appetizer, side dish, breakfast foundation or snack.
Polenta is extremely versatile - grilled, pan-fried, with eggs for breakfast or warmed and drizzled with olive oil and Balsamic vinegar for an appetizer.
Adapted from Marcella Cucina
Amazing flavors come from such simple ingredients! A closer look at the main ingredients.
This is how you should add the cornmeal – trickle it in slowly enough to see the individual grains of cornmeal.
The mixture will begin to get thicker at the end of adding the cornmeal, so you might have to change your grip on the whisk! I changed to the long spoon just after adding the rest of the cornmeal to make it easier to stir.
This was at about 40 – 45 minutes. I added the cheese and gave it a good stir for about a minute. You may or may not be able to see that it has turned silky and creamy at this point. I turned off the heat, covered it and let it sit for about 5 minutes after stirring the cheese in.
The finished result, accompanied by roasted beet and feta cheese salad dressed with olive oil and Balsamic vinegar.
Honey Lemon Ginger Turmeric Cold Killer
What happens when you combine the traditional honey and lemon juice sore throat or cold remedy with the powerful benefits of ginger and turmeric? You get an easy to make and highly effective cold killer! Stephen shows how to make it in just a few minutes:
This is the basis of a very flexible recipe. You can add chile powder for sinus issues and to boost the cold and flu fighting power or garlic for more benefits.
Seed Quality from Two Perspectives
Seed quality matters, whether you are a home gardener, small-scale grower or large farmer; whether you buy all of your seeds, save some for next season or a combination, this information can help you be better informed, make better choices and buy more wisely.
The marriage of the concepts of heirloom seeds and seed saving is not new by any means, but rather one that has been growing and gaining ground in the past several years. For some, this is a welcome return to a more traditional method of agriculture, while others use heirlooms for their flavor and diversity to improve the breadth of their products and offerings to the public.
Cindy and I have been home gardeners for 18 years and involved with soil restoration and rangeland improvement projects with local ranchers for 20 years. Our interest in food, especially good food, goes back a bit further than that! Our appreciation for seed quality and seed saving came from both our work with soils and interest and enjoyment of good food. Tasting the flavors of our garden produce sparked the interest of how to keep those characteristics that the seed produced for the future, to be able to enjoy them and share with others. Thus our seed saving education began.
Several years after taking over, refining and expanding an established family owned heirloom seed company of 20 years, we’ve gained knowledge from the differences and similarities in seed quality, production and seed saving from these two different perspectives. We want to share some of these with you; along with lessons we’ve learned along the way that can help improve everyone’s seed quality.
We will work from a point-to-point framework, showing the goals, concerns, differences, and similarities in both types of seed production and preservation approaches.
The foundational goal is the same for both the home gardener and seed company – having a sufficient quantity of high-quality seed stock of each variety needed for next year that is pure and true to type. This sounds simple enough, but in practice is not always easy to accomplish for either one.
We are approaching this from a seed quality standpoint, not just a seed saving one. Saving seed is fairly simple to do, but the results from planting those seeds can be very mixed; without a basis of understanding of seed quality, people can be disappointed and confused as to why they got the results they did. Both the home gardener and the seed company must understand seed quality to be successful in their respective endeavors.
Goals
Antique Hand-Cranked Seed Cleaner
Let’s look at the goals and concerns from both points of view:
The home gardener might state the reason for saving seeds as, “Enough seeds for next year’s planting, reduce the amount of seeds needed to buy, take advantage of selection and adaptation to achieve better production in our local climate.” These reasons are the very roots of why home scale seed production is important on a local and regional scale. A diversity of varieties are kept alive that are simply not possible on a national scale, as some regional adaptation can only happen in a small geographical area and won’t be applicable to a larger audience, but are no less important for the local people in that area.
As a seed company, our goals might be, “Produce a sufficient quantity of enough varieties and volume of seed to sell next season, introduce several new varieties, provide a wider selection for gardeners than they can produce themselves and provide a high-quality standard that maintains our reputation.” This reflects how the seed industry started, by offering varieties that were new, unusual or were not available in an area and offering a professional standard of germination and production that benefitted the gardener and grower.
These are similar goals, but on completely different scales and for different results. Their achievement and success depends on how the concerns or challenges are recognized and approached. We have economies of scale as a seed company with our network of growers, but the home gardener has some advantages that we would have a hard time taking advantage of, like keeping a locally adapted regional variety alive.
There are no one-size-fits-all best solutions to the availability of quality seed. A resilient, robust and diverse seed and food economy require home gardeners, regional and national seed exchange programs to participate alongside independent seed companies to contribute all of their unique advantages and skills. Only in this way can the full expression of the diversity and adaptability of open-pollinated seeds be realized and utilized. This might be considered the definition of seed quality!
An obstacle for the home gardener used to be the lack of access to solid, proven and reliable seed saving information and resources. There were lots of introductory articles, booklets, and classes on seed saving, but little in the way of intermediate or advanced classes, books, forums or articles for the home gardener. Thankfully, this is not the case anymore, as the internet has given the home gardener access to more detailed and advanced information.
Antique Seed Cleaner Screens
A few examples are Seed Savers Exchange, an excellent resource for the home gardener to learn from and exchange seed stock with. There are also online resources usually used by seed professionals but accessible by anyone such as GRIN, the Germplasm Resources Information Network of the USDA and PFAF, Plants for a Future. There are several books available that are excellent in their education of producing seeds; one is “Seed to Seed” by Suzanne Ashworth that has been one of the standards for seed production and saving for over 20 years. Another newer one is “The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds” by Robert Gough & Cheryl Moore-Gough, which covers flowers, trees, and shrubs.
In addition to the above-mentioned resources, as a seed company, we have access to our growers and other professionals – a group of experienced food and seed producers who have learned through years of training, experience and trial-and-error how to produce the best seeds to continue the traits and characteristics of each variety they grow. These resources are closely guarded, as a highly experienced seed grower is a very valuable resource for any seed company.
Challenges
When looking at the challenges of producing high-quality, viable seed in enough quantities for next year, both the home gardener and seed company face similar concerns. Seed quality should be the primary concern for both. Without high quality, true seed there would be too much variability in all aspects of agriculture, from seed germination, growth, health, pest and disease resistance, food production and the harvesting of more seed. The quality is achieved through proper management, isolation, harvesting, and testing ensuring the viability, vigor and growing true to type of next year’s seed crop.
Management methods
Management for the home gardener starts with the decision of how many plants to use for seed production as opposed to food production, which can be quite different. Ripe vegetables often have immature seeds, while mature seeds are normally found in inedible, overripe or almost rotting vegetables. Some varieties can produce both food and seed by simply letting chosen specimens ripen and mature their seeds on the vine or bush, while the rest are harvested for food, such as a perfect tomato tagged to let ripen for its seeds. Others will need to be kept solely for producing seed, such as a lettuce plant that needs to be allowed to bolt to set seeds.
Minimum Viable Population
A sufficient number of plants, called a minimum viable population, should be used to avoid a genetic bottleneck or the loss of genetic adaptability and diversity that inevitably occurs over time. Sometimes this is hard for the home gardener to do, as often there isn’t enough space for the population needed while allowing for other vegetables to be grown. Our tomato example serves here, as the minimum viable population is 100 plants, way too many for most home gardeners. The rule of thumb is that outcrossing varieties such as tomatoes need 100 plants as a minimum genetic population, while inbreeding ones like peppers need 20 plants. So what is a home gardener to do?
Even modest home garden seed production often results in much more seed than one gardener will use in several years. One very effective solution is participation in member to member seed exchanges either locally, regionally or nationally. This has the dual benefit of introducing a greater amount of genetic diversity to overcome a smaller plant population from any one garden while dispensing extra seed.
As a seed company, this concern is overcome by the number of plants needed to produce the quantity of seed for next year’s sales, and most seed growers who are also food producers have separate fields for seed production, so there is no conflict with seed vs. food growing.
Isolation and Selection
Isolation Cages
To keep seed quality high, isolation and selection are both used as part of quality management. Isolation simply means keeping two similar varieties, such as peppers, from cross-pollinating. Selection chooses the most desirable characteristics to save seed from or removes undesired characteristics from the seed producing population.
Isolation methods can be time, distance or physical. The time method is simply planting two cross-pollinating varieties at different times so that they aren’t flowering at the same time. Distance isolation involves planting far enough apart so that the pollen or pollinators cannot reach each other. Physical barriers prevent the spread of pollen from one plant population to another by cages, pollen sacks or socks, a thorough but time and labor-intensive approach.
Home gardeners often use time isolation by either planting at different times during a growing season, or only planting one variety each season. Distance isolation can become a challenge, depending on the size of the garden or property. Usually, only very dedicated seed savers will use physical barriers.
Our seed company utilizes a network of seed growers to solve the different seed crop isolation requirements. Time isolation is used by those with longer growing seasons while larger growers use the distance approach, having the needed space on their properties. Another solution is several growers producing different seed varieties at the same time. Physical isolation is used extensively when correcting undesirable traits in a variety, during grow-outs to re-introduce a new or rare variety or for traditional seed breeding and stabilization.
Selection is another aspect of quality management in seed production, with two approaches – negative and positive. Negative selection, or rogueing, removes undesirable aspects, characteristics or traits from the seed producing population to maintain the established variety. An example of this is a potato-leaved tomato. Any regular-leaved tomatoes growing in the row would be removed as undesirable for that particular tomato’s characteristics. Another might be the color of the flowers of a vegetable – the purple ones would be removed, as yellow is the color of the correct characteristics. Positive selection involves saving seed with desirable aspects, characteristics or traits such as a large, sweet, striped, early paste tomato. Positive selection over a period of a few years is how local adaptation can be enhanced for the home gardener, and new varieties brought onto the market for seed companies.
Both the home gardener and seed company grower would over-plant slightly to account for selection losses, and perform the selection process as part of their daily gardening and inspection activities.
Germination Testing and Trialing
Seed Germination Testing
Two final aspects of quality seed management are germination testing and trialing or grow-outs, which give proof of the seed sprouting quickly with lots of vigor and growth energy, growing true to type with weather tolerance, disease resistance and good production amount. This becomes “the proof in the pudding”, as it shows any weaknesses and confirms the desired characteristics of the variety being produced.
The home gardener can easily test the germination of the current crop of seed early in the winter, as most seed needs to dry completely and age a few weeks before showing the best germination. For most crops a moist paper towel in a sealed plastic bag works very well to test germination. The grow-out can be as a food crop next year so that the production and garden space are not wasted.
We as a seed company will either have the germination tests performed by the grower so that any issues can be addressed before the seed is shipped to us, or we will perform them once we receive the seed from our smaller growers. Either way, all of our seed is tested for germination prior to being sold to our customers. Next spring’s grow-out will be done either by us or the grower, depending on the grower, the seed variety and seed volume.
There are those that would argue that the heirlooms we have today are the result of families saving their seeds and passing them down from generation to generation. This is partly true, but only partly. We have the abundance of heirlooms today thanks to the families that saved them, the local and regional seed exchanges that helped keep them alive and the seed companies that grew them out, advertised them to a wider audience and sold them across the country.
Aunt Ruby’s German Green tomato is a perfect example – grown in northern TN for over 200 years, passed to a great-grandniece, they would have been lost if they hadn’t been passed to Bill Minkey who donated them to Seed Savers Exchange. They grew the seeds out, told their story and they survive today because of that collaboration. Another excellent example is that of the Concho chile from northeastern Arizona. It was grown in the tiny town of Concho, AZ for several hundred years after being traded by the Espejo expedition in 1563 to the local Hopi Indians. Around 2000 it was almost extinct with only a couple of families continuing to grow it. A local lavender farm resurrected it and shared the seeds with us, and we have helped it to reach all across North America and several other countries.
It took the effort of everyone – the gardener, the seed exchange and the seed company to keep these and many other heirlooms alive; one alone wouldn’t have been able to do it. This is the circle of life of the seed, along with those who care for the seed.
Late Season Pest and Disease Prevention
Pest and Disease Prevention Before Treatment
Pest and disease prevention is a major topic for many gardeners and for good reason. We spend countless hours in planning, planting, tending and harvesting our gardens only to sometimes have a disease or insect bring much of our efforts crashing down.
What many gardeners don’t know or fully realize is the powerful benefits of a systematic, thoughtful and determined effort in cleaning up the garden, tools and debris that remains after the season ends. Properly done, this can significantly reduce the occurrence and damage done by pests and diseases, increasing the enjoyment and production of the garden.
Let’s take a top to bottom look at things that you can do in the very late fall and early winter after the garden is dormant to give your garden a much better head start next season.
Food and Shelter – Two Big Keys in Pest and Disease Prevention
The biggest reasons for cleaning up the garden, removing dead materials and weeds and thoroughly cleaning and treating your gardening tools is to remove the food and shelter that is the foundation of pest and disease prevention. The first steps are sanitation in the colder season, and then preventing their introduction into the garden next growing season.
Pests and diseases don’t just magically show up out of nowhere, though they may seem to! Pests especially need a place to survive the winter and food to keep them alive. Diseases can be a bit more involved to treat, but with some forethought and understanding, it isn’t difficult.
Removing dead plants, weeds, and debris from the garden after it is finished growing is essential in preventing pests from having a convenient winter “home” where they wait for the new season’s growth to show up. Potato beetles, squash bugs, squash vine borers and certain species of aphids are very destructive examples of pests that will overwinter in the garden bed if their shelter isn’t removed. The perfect environment is shown in the lead photo.
We found this out to our detriment with squash bugs, as we use wood chips for our walkways in the trial garden – the perfect winter housing for them! We now only grow squash and pumpkins in the garden every third or fourth year, using straw bale raised beds outside the garden other years. This starves them of a yearly, reliable food source and keeps their population under control.
Another example is the fungus responsible for damping off in young seedlings. The fungus will survive in dead organic matter, often producing spores that can survive over the summer in unwashed and sterilized seedling flats and coming back with a vengeance when new seedlings are planted.
Once the housing is removed, next we need to look at the food sources for pest and disease prevention. Weeds are not only a nuisance, but they are very important sources of food and housing for both pests and diseases, often with the diseases piggy-backing on the pests to get into the garden. One example is cucumber mosaic virus overwintering in chickweed and groundsel, and then coming in next spring. Others are pigweed that harbor grasshoppers, flea beetles and aphids; annual grasses that aren’t grazed or mowed housing cutworms, armyworms, flea beetles, grubs, several species of aphids and the Colorado potato beetle; Russian thistle (tumbleweeds) is an especially good example as it harbors the sugar beet leafhopper, which in turn is a common host for the curly top virus that decimates many garden crops like tomatoes, beets, green beans, squash, cantaloupes, and spinach.
Removing the housing often removes a major food source at the same time, and vice versa, so you don’t often need to do twice the work to be effective in sanitation and prevention. Removal and control of weeds and unmanaged grasses is very important for pest and disease control, not only in the garden but adjacent to it as well.
Clean and Sanitize – Prevention and Treatment
Cleaning a Hori-Hori Knife
We now have a good handle on taking care of the food and housing for pests and diseases, so what next? One of the biggest culprits for the introduction of pests and diseases is from them being carried in, either from contaminated plants bought at big box stores or garden centers, from insects that overwinter in firewood, smokers spreading tobacco mosaic virus throughout the garden, or from contaminated tools spreading diseases to other plants and trees.
For smokers, the tobacco mosaic virus can easily stick to the fingers or clothing and be spread to plants in the garden. After smoking, wash hands thoroughly with warm soapy water and ideally wear a different shirt or over-shirt than the one smoked in.
Pruning shears and tools can inadvertently be the cause of a disease spreading, as it picks up and distributes the virus or fungus from one branch and tree or shrub to another. If you are working on cankers or other diseased portions of a tree or shrub, sanitize the tools after each cut to prevent spreading the disease to other parts of the tree with a simple spray or dip of rubbing alcohol or commercially available sanitizing solution. Wiping with antibacterial wipes is also very effective. Do not use bleach or bleach solutions as it will cause accelerated corrosion of metals. If you are fighting an outbreak of disease in your garden it is very prudent to sanitize your tools and gloves after each use in the affected area, especially before using them in other, disease-free parts of the garden.
Sanitizing Pruners with and Alcohol Spray
Sanitizing all of your garden tools – hand tools, shears, pruners, rakes, shovels, wheelbarrows (including tires) is always a good practice at the end of the season, especially if you have had an attack of disease during the season or have an ongoing issue. Many plant diseases only need one single pathway into the garden, and we often unknowingly bring it in season after season; working against ourselves.
Shovels, rakes and larger tools can be cleaned by scraping away any residual mud or dirt, then plunging them in and out of a bucket of sand to remove rust and small amounts of dirt before spraying with alcohol to sanitize before putting away for the winter. Smaller hand tools like pruners and trowels can be wire brushed to clean and remove rust, then alcohol sprayed as well. The bucket of sand treatment might work with some tools. Wheelbarrows should be cleaned inside and out, dirt removed and wire brushed or sanded before spraying with alcohol or sanitizing solution. Don’t forget the tires and handles!
Cleaning Gardening Tools with Sand
With these proactive techniques, you will find that dealing with pest and disease issues will become much easier as you close the door to easy entry. A side benefit of doing these procedures will show you different ways that pests and diseases gain entry, making it that much easier and effective to stop them early on.
Roasted Pumpkin Puree
Pumpkin is an essential part of the fall season in my humble opinion, but it is much more than the trendy “Pumpkin Spice” everything that suddenly jumps into our lives in the cooler weather. Real, home-grown pumpkin has a rich sweetness that is just plain lacking in almost all of the commercially available pumpkin products today. Let’s take that one step further and slow-roast that incredible goodness of a pumpkin and now you’ve got something that resembles that canned pumpkin as much as a brand new truck does a 100 year old buckboard!
The type of pumpkin does matter, so think about it before you dive in. Don’t fret about not growing your own – buy one this year from your local Farmer’s Market, local grower or CSA share, and then plant your own patch next spring. The smaller pumpkins tend to be sweeter, especially the ones called “pie pumpkins” like our New England Sugar Pie pumpkin have been selected and refined for their rich sweetness along with their smaller, easy to handle size. Larger pumpkins will not be as sweet, but have their own flavors so don’t discount them. Plan on using 2 to 3 of the smaller pumpkins to put up a goodly supply of puree, or one of the larger ones. You will want to put up more than you think you will use, as once your family and friends taste some of the deliciousness, it will go much faster than you initially think! Keep in mind that the commercially grown “Jack-O-Lantern” pumpkins are hybrids, grown specifically for carving and usually have absolutely no flavor at all!
The process is extremely simple and doesn’t require your presence in the kitchen, so this is a great thing to do when you are home but have other projects. Set the timer to keep you on track and you’ll do fine.
Let’s get into it!
Aurora and the Pumpkin
We are using the Connecticut Field Pumpkin for this, as we were shooting photos and had it available to roast. It has a mildly sweet flavor and is large enough to keep us in pumpkin puree for awhile. Aurora had to help, of course – inspecting and being part of the process!
Connecticut Field Pumpkin
The tools needed are pretty simple – a knife, cutting board, large spoon or spatula to scrape out the seeds and a colander if you want to keep the seeds for roasting and eating or saving and planting.
Pumpkin cut open
Cut the pumpkin open in half. This pumpkin weighed about 15 – 20 pounds, and you can see how thick the walls are, giving lots of pumpkin for cooking!
De-seeding
Use the large spoon or spatula to remove the seeds and as much of the pulpy connective tissue as possible.
Cleaning the Seeds
Use the colander with a warm water spray to clean the seeds and remove the connective tissue. Then they are ready for roasting or drying and saving to plant next year.
Roasting the Pumpkins
Ready for roasting! I wanted the slow roasted flavors that make the sugars caramelize a bit, so heated the oven to 300°F and roasted this one for about 2 hours, maybe a little more. I checked it every half hour or so with a toothpick – when it goes all the way in with very little resistance, the pumpkin is properly roasted.
If you need to roast it faster, you can – just use 350 – 400°F and peel the pumpkin, then cut it into 1 – 2 inch chunks or cubes. It will roast in about 30 – 45 minutes, you’ll need to check it every 15 minutes to make sure you don’t over-do it. It won’t have quite the slow-roasted flavors, but will be much better than the store-bought version nonetheless.
Peeling Roasted Pumpkin
Next is peeling the pumpkin after it has cooled. You can see the darker spots, don’t worry, it isn’t burned – just well-roasted!
Chunks Ready to Puree
Cut the pumpkin into chunks after peeling. Cut them into manageable sizes for your food processor, blender or whatever you will use to puree it. Keep the juices from the roasting pan, as you’ll add them to the puree later on.
Puree Time
Into the food processor next! This shows the first batch and was a bit too full as it took a long time to work the pumpkin down and puree it. I added much less pumpkin to subsequent batches, and they processed a lot faster.
Transferring the Puree
After pureeing, scoop it into a bowl large enough to hold all of the puree. You will need a bowl that is a bit larger than what holds the sliced chunks.
Stirring the Puree
Remember the juices in the roasting pan? Add them to the puree and stir them in for added flavor.
Jars of Roasted Pureed Pumpkin
Here’s what we wound up with from one large pumpkin – 3 quarts and 9 pints of slow-roasted, pureed home-grown pumpkin! What is that worth at the store? We’ll use the quarts for soups and stews, with the pints going for pancakes, bread, muffins and cornbread.
We left about an inch of head room in the jars so we can freeze them without the jars breaking. Freezing is the preferred method, as canning is no longer recommended for pumpkin.
Painter’s Tape for Labels
Here’s a bonus tip: Use painter’s tape for labels that will go into the freezer. We use name brand such as 3M, as the store brand doesn’t stay on as well. Using it as labels is very inexpensive as a roll will last for several months, sometimes almost a year. The tape stays on in the freezer, but comes off afterward with no sticky, gummy residue.
Clean Tape Removal
Garden Tool Cleanup
Fall and early winter is a great time to clean up the garden tools, do any needed repairs and see if there is any other tools needed for next year.
This includes:
Last but not least, enjoy the bounty of your harvest all winter and curl up with a good book!
Classic Pan-Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Brussels sprouts were not my friends when I was a kid. They always showed up unexpectedly, unannounced and taking up way too much space on the dinner plate with their hateful ultimatum – “No leaving the table until your plate is clean.” The worst part was the soggy, slightly slimy texture combined with the sulfurous, earthy, somewhat metallic taste from steaming.
Fast forward 30 odd years and after learning to cook, garden and eat healthy and tasty foods I’ve started to warm up to Brussels sprouts a bit more. I’m not having them twice a week or anything, but I’ve learned how to cook them a couple of ways that make them surprisingly tasty. This recipe is the first one that I tried where I really liked them, the other is Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Maple-Dijon Dressing which is completely unexpected but thoroughly delicious. That is a more sophisticated approach, this is rustic, simple and hugely satisfying. I’ve used this recipe to re-introduce others to an entirely different Brussels sprout than we all knew and hated as kids.
Take the time to properly roast the Brussels sprouts – in a cast-iron deep skillet is the absolute best way as the even heat caramelizes the sprouts, making them nutty, rich and very flavorful. Roasting opens up the flavors that are otherwise locked away and missed.
A good caramelization will have some dark spots on the Brussels sprouts, but don't worry - it adds to the flavor!
Pan Roasting Brussels Sprouts
The hardest part of this dish is caramelizing the Brussels sprouts – which isn’t that difficult, just requiring a bit of patience. Allow time to let them slowly brown. Here’s what the caramelizing looks like… no they aren’t burned, but you don’t want to go much darker than this! The slow caramelizing adds an unexpected nuttiness and depth of flavor.
Caramelized Brussels Sprouts Closeup
A closer view of what they look like when almost done. They will be slightly firm but not crunchy, yet a long way from limp and slimy!
Plated Roasted Brussels Sprouts
On to the plate and ready for a feast!
Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Maple-Dijon Dressing
The much-maligned Brussels sprouts can be made into dishes that will win over almost everyone. The key is to roast them, bringing out their sweetness by caramelizing and tenderizing them. Their rich, nutty flavor can then come out. This unusual recipe combines the roasting with a delicious twist – a Maple-Dijon dressing that really sets these humble brassicas apart!
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – Brussels Sprouts!
You can use other cool season veggies to add a different note to this dish. We had some left-over sugar snap peas that we added for a sweet crunch!
Adapted from Mary Janes Farm Oct-Nov 2014 issue
Slicing Brussels Sprouts
After we whipped the Maple-Dijon dressing together and put it into the refrigerator, we started on the slicing. In just a few seconds we went from these…
Sliced Brussels Sprouts
… to this – ready for the pan! Slicing the Brussels sprouts made them much easier and faster to roast.
Ready for the pan!
From there it was short work to dice the apples and chop the sugar snow peas. We added them because they were handy and weren’t tagged for another recipe.
Sauteing vegetables
Once the Brussels sprouts had roasted for a few minutes and started to caramelize, the apples and peas were added.
Adding Maple-Dijon Dressing
A few minutes later, the dressing was added and stirred in.
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Ready to serve! The combination of flavors – rich and nutty from the sprouts to the sweet and light of the apples and peas, to the sweet/savory of the maple and mustard – all worked really well together.
Controlling Aphids Naturally
Aphids and Nitrogen
Aphids are one of the perennial pests that gardeners deal with, often with very mixed results. What works one year seems to fall flat on its face the next, with the reverse also being true. Aphids are tiny, soft bodied insects that have piercing, sucking mouthparts to feed on plant saps. They live in colonies, most often the underside of leaves and where the tender young growth is on a plant.
By themselves, aphids rarely outright kill a plant but they can inflict serious damage to both its flowers and fruit. It only takes a few aphids sucking on a young flower or fruit to weaken it or damage it beyond being edible. The sap they extract weakens the plant, stunting its growth and food production. The aphids can also be carriers or vectors of diseases or viruses, which they infect the plant with as they pierce the cell walls and extract the plant sap. Just a few seconds is all it takes for a virus to transfer from the mouth of an aphid to the plant.
Aphids will often arrive in a garden or on a plant by flying in. A small number will arrive and leave their wingless young who feed on the plant and immediately lay eggs, increasing the population quickly. The adults will then fly off and repeat this several times. This is why gardeners will often complain that the aphids overwhelmed the garden “overnight”. Each adult aphid can produce up to 80 offspring every week!
So what can be done about these insects? There are several methods of dealing with them, broken down into two main approaches – prevention and treatment. The prevention phase happens in the fall and early winter with soil testing and amendments that set the stage for success the next growing season. Treatment is just that – what to do when those pesky insects show up uninvited in your garden!
Aphids Love Nitrogen
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Nitrogen is a big, big player in the aphid dance. Aphids love nitrogen, plain and simple. They are attracted to the soft growing parts of a plant that are high in nitrogen, as it is a major factor in plant growth. Aphids are also really attracted to young seedlings, since everything on a seedling is growing and there is lots of nitrogen to be had.
Nitrogen plays a very important part in a plants growth as well as the content of its sap. Soils with excessively high nitrogen create very fast growing plants. This leads to rapid cell wall growth, which are elongated, thinner and much easier for the piercing mouth-parts of an aphid to penetrate than normal. The plant sap will also be high in nitrogen and will be especially attractive for the aphid. It is very important to understand that high nitrogen sap will be lower in overall sugar content – also known as brix – because nitrogen forms amino acids and proteins – such as chlorophyll – but specifically needs magnesium, phosphorus and carbon to form sugars. This can’t happen if there is excess nitrogen, as there aren’t enough of the other elements to form those sugars. Once the soil is amended with the correct nutrients, the plant will increase the brix/sugar levels and the aphids will die from sucking high sugar content plant sap as it is deadly – aphids can’t digest the sugars with no pancreas and thus die.
What all this means is that using high doses of chemical fertilizers will encourage aphids to call your garden home! Almost all commercial fertilizers are high in nitrogen and release their nutrients much faster than compost or other soil amendments, making aphid pressures much worse than they would normally be. They also contribute to lots of flowers with little fruit production or stunted and smaller than normal sized fruit.
It is interesting to note with soybean studies at Penn State University naturally occurring nitrogen-fixing bacteria – called rhizobia – provided a better form of naturally occurring nitrogen than the laboratory bred inoculated strains did. Plants growing in the naturally occurring rhizobia soils had markedly fewer aphids and stress than the inoculated ones. The amount of nitrogen provided by the lab developed rhizobia and the naturally occurring strains were the same, with the natural rhizobia having much lower aphid populations on the plants. They are continuing the study to see why this happens.
There is a concept at work here that we need to briefly discuss so that you can understand where we are going from here. The “Law of the Minimum” shows how interrelated many nutrients and elements are to healthy plants, not just the N,P and K that are listed on fertilizer bags.
The Law of the Minimum states,
Prevention and Preparation
The preventative method is to have a complete, comprehensive soil analysis done by a professional lab. I’ve mentioned these before, but they bear another – Crop Services International and Texas Plant and Soil Lab are great labs. They are thorough, friendly and will give you the info you need at a reasonable price. From this analysis, you will know exactly what soil nutrients, amendments and trace minerals are needed to eliminate a high nitrogen condition in your soil and plants, and by extension reducing the population and attraction of aphids.
Another, very simple method is to stop using commercially available chemical fertilizers! Without naming names, these come in a bag and sometimes have the word “miracle” attached to them. There are a number of brands that can be bought at any garden center or big box store in their garden section. Well-aged and decomposed compost – especially if you’ve worked with it how we discuss in our articles on compost – will give you a continuous supply of “soil food” to apply to your garden twice a year, in the early spring and again in the late fall. This compost with the amendments will slowly release the nutrients that the garden needs, along with attracting the biological elements in the soil that do the real work – earthworms, pillbugs, beneficial nematodes, fungi and all sorts of other hard-working critters that seriously improve the soil on a continuous basis.
Another aspect of prevention is cultural control, or removing the suitable environments where aphids can overwinter or establish an initial population to then swarm your garden. Standing weeds can be harbors of aphids, so remove them and remove dead plants from the garden in the fall. Don’t wait until the springtime to clean up the garden, as this can provide the perfect habitat for aphid eggs to be sheltered under. Inspect trees and bushes for aphid eggs in the fall, remove them by hand, vacuum or with a strong blast of water.
Treatment Options
Now that you’ve got the prevention and preparation covered, what can be done if and when the nasty aphids arrive? This is where the treatment portion comes in, and it would be wise to prepare for this as well. Early detection is very important for successful treatment, as if the aphids get a toe-hold, it will be much more difficult to rid your plants of several sizable populations instead of just one or two small ones. The incoming flights of adult aphids are random, so consistent inspection is best. This is very easy, just flip over the top, youngest leaves of several plants and look for the clusters of small aphids on the underside. Look around bud areas as well. If you see any aphids, they will be in small clusters or colonies and can be easily dealt with at this stage. Crush them by hand or prune the leaves or buds to remove them. Once you see the first small populations, go back and be very thorough with the rest of your plants, taking the time to examine them well. Trust me on this, the time spent now will save you much heartache, back ache, time and frustration in the very near future!
Aphids will excrete “honeydew” – a sweet, sticky substance – and is sometimes fed on by ants. This isn’t always the case; but in your inspections look for travel pathways of ants up and down the plant where the aphid colonies are. Sometimes the ants will lead you to the aphids that you would have otherwise missed.
Anytime you see any aphids, it is a good practice to set out yellow sticky traps. Aphids are highly attracted to the color yellow, which lures these little monsters into the traps. They are available at most garden centers and will be in squares or strips. Place several of them in the area where you find the aphids, and put out a few more than you might think. They are good inexpensive insurance.
If the aphids have colonized more than about 5% of the bud and young leaves of a plant, or are on more than that amount of your total garden plants, then it’s time for the next round of action.
Beyond physically removing the aphids, there are two approaches to treatment – biological and chemical controls. Biological controls use biology – predatory insects – to eat and control the aphids. Chemical controls are just what they sound like – using sprays of varying toxicity to reduce the aphids’ population.
Using the biological approach first combined with a non-toxic soapy spray is often the knockout punch needed for smaller aphid infestations. Releasing parasitic wasps that lay their eggs inside the aphids, ladybugs, lacewings, soldier beetles and the syrphid fly larvae are all highly effective if done in time, before the aphids’ population explodes. One of the best resources for biological controls is Arbico Organics. They will help you decide what species will work best for your garden situation, how many to release and how many times. Keep in mind that the goal is not to completely eliminate every single aphid, as then the beneficial and predatory insects won’t have a food source. The goal is to keep the aphids controlled, where they aren’t damaging the plants.
Remember, weather can be on your side when dealing with aphids. Heat and high humidity can really knock them back as they are fairly fragile and die off in droves when temperatures are over 90°F.
Soap sprays work by smothering the aphids by coating their skins. Start with a completely harmless soapy water spray like Dr. Bronner’s – using a tablespoon per half gallon in a hand sprayer. Make sure to apply the spray when beneficial insects aren’t around, as they will also be affected. From there, work up to an insecticidal soap like Safer Brand or horticultural oil such as neem oil. With both of these approaches, make sure to cover the underside of the infested leaves well for the smothering effect to work. These are contact controls, and depend on contact with the aphids to work, so they will need to be re-applied as often as needed until you’ve gotten control of the situation. This could mean once a day for a few days, then twice a week for a week or so, then tapering down to once a week. It might well take 2 – 3 weeks to really get a handle on persistent outbreaks, so be patient but persistent!
Moving up the toxicity ladder, multi part sprays such as our Home Garden Bug Solution work very well, but need to be used carefully as they do have a high level of insect toxicity even though they are made with no petrochemical ingredients. If you do need to bring out these big guns, test in a small area to see the effects before spraying your entire garden!
Hopefully you now see that there are a number of ways to reduce and control the pesky aphids in your garden. It all starts with prevention and preparation with improving the soil and balancing the nutrients it needs. From there you now have several new tools in your “pest control” toolbox to help you manage aphids in your garden next growing season.
Terra Madre from Our View
We were asked to write about our experiences as Slow Food USA delegates to the 2012 Terra Madre conference in Turin, Italy as information and details for the 2014 delegates. Here’s our story!
Terra Madre for the First Time
The Terra Madre gathering was something Cindy and I had heard of several times during our decade long Slow Food membership, most often at Slow Food events in Flagstaff or Phoenix, AZ. Our formal introduction was a presentation by a college student who attended the 2010 event with her family who are farmers from Oregon. The photos and descriptions were sensual and alluring, drawing us into a different world where food is revered and the producers and chefs are celebrated. The young woman was at a loss for words a number of times during the slide presentation and we attributed it to nervousness or lack of public speaking experience. Later on, we would come to realize that there really are no words to describe the entire experience; only bits and pieces, thoughts, ideas, flavors, aromas and sights. Even two years later it is difficult to capture many of the sights, sounds, flavors and aromas with words.
Map of Terra Madre
Once our applications were in, we fervently hoped that we would be chosen as the experiences would be a keystone in our lives, both personally and professionally. You see, we are not only serious foodies, but have an heirloom garden seed business named Terroir Seeds that focuses on why the quality of the soil influences the resulting flavors from the garden so much. We felt that attending Terra Madre, meeting the growers, producers and chefs along with the sights, textures, tastes and scents would better our understanding of food and why its origins are important.
Opening Ceremony Stadium
When the email arrived announcing our selection as Delegates, we began reviewing the events, conference topics and taste workshops along with the International Congress schedule. We had been selected as Congress delegates as well as Terra Madre ones, so had an extra schedule of meetings and presentations from 130 countries around the world. The sheer number of things to do, see and taste was overwhelming! Fortunately, we were able to attend a “Pre-Terra Madre” event hosted by Slow Food Phoenix with other new delegates along with experienced attendees that gave us some very valuable and useful information that made our trip more enjoyable.
Korean Delegate at Opening Ceremony
Probably the single most important tip was that we would be on “Italian time” and not to worry. Things might not seem to be progressing like they would in America, but it would all turn out well in the end. They were right, we did get where we were supposed to be even though there were thousands of people from all around the world speaking many different languages. The logistics must have been a nightmare, but everyone was polite and friendly.
The other great tip was to expect the first day to be very long, exciting and exhausting. We landed in Milan mid-morning and didn’t get to our hotel until after midnight, after a trans-Atlantic flight starting in Phoenix, AZ at 7AM the previous morning. Our schedule didn’t allow us to arrive a day earlier, but if you can it will help to have a full night’s sleep before starting the marathon that is Terra Madre!
Oval Lingotto Building
Another tip that is not immediately obvious, but will prove to be invaluable as time goes on is to take lots and lots of high-quality photos. Documenting the experiences will revive memories that fade shockingly fast. Looking at a single photo, I can still vividly remember the Provolone cheese being opened up early on the second morning. The indescribably delicious and powerful aroma, along with the complex and lasting flavors were an eye-opening experience, showing us that we hadn’t tasted anything close to this in the US.
Handmade Provolone Cheese
When we landed at the airport in Milan, we were with a large group from the USA, along with people from several European, African and Asian countries. The bus ride to Turin was spent getting to know others, finding out what they did for work as well as what things they were doing in their area that related to Slow Food. It was a real eye opener to see how many creative, passionate and dedicated people there were in every conceivable situation all over the world working to make food more accessible, better and healthier for everyone. We felt like we were re-discovering a tribe we belonged to but hadn’t known we had lost. It was a homecoming of sorts, a place the heart knew well but the eye hadn’t yet seen.
Meat Counter at Eataly
After checking in at the Oval Olympic Arena, also known as the Oval Lingotto, we stashed our luggage and wandered over to Eataly for cappuccino and snacks. It was a great introduction to the event, as it seemed to be a Slow Food superstore! Every area in Italy and from other regions of the world was represented, with signs and cards explaining where the food was from and why they were special. We had been advised to eat often the first day and get a cappuccino whenever we started to feel a bit tired. Italian cappuccinos are much smaller than we are used to, so they were the perfect pick-me-up during the entire event.
French Cheeses
Once we had fueled up, we wandered back through the Lingotto Fiere as the booths were finishing set-up. The event is held in part of the repurposed Fiat factory, and is huge. The stroll through the vast building really wet our appetite for the next few days! Several of us made notes on specific booths and stages we wanted to come back to visit. Even after spending most of 3 days in there, we missed seeing a lot. The sheer size is vast, much bigger than the entire Las Vegas convention center or other convention centers we’ve visited, and they are filled with food!
1st Cappuccini
The opening ceremonies were held at the Palasport Olimpico – also known as the Palaisozaki after the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki – where we were bussed and re-deposited our luggage at a baggage claim area. As the arena started to fill up, we talked to more people and snacked on fresh made sandwiches and more cappuccino. The opening ceremony was impressive with a warm welcome from the officials from Turin, along with an incredible flag procession from each country attending. Afterwards, we walked to our group of buses for the ride to the hotel.
1,000 Gardens in Africa Display
The next 4 days were a whirlwind of food tasting, cooking demonstrations, learning the history of a regionally famous food and bumping into all sorts of people, like Alice Waters, Vandana Shiva and the ever-delightful Carlo Petrini. We were continually impressed with how friendly, helpful and engaging the artisans were, eager to share their knowledge and experience of their particular food, along with delicious samples. It was great to spend a little time at a booth, talking with the family that produced the food and learning more about their lives and how much work or experience went into each taste we had.
Alice Waters at Terra Madre
They were equally interested about our lives in America, with most being fascinated when we said we were from Arizona. Many Italians want to see the Grand Canyon, and a surprising number had been there or in other parts of the southwest. They always wanted to compare food notes, what we ate, what we raised or grew and what we considered to be our “traditional” foods. That was difficult, as the USA is truly the melting pot! They were fascinated at the variety of foods we ate on a regular basis and were impressed that we didn’t live off of McDonalds or other fast foods. Yes, American commercialism at its best!
LaVazza Cappuccini
On the other hand, we received a valuable lesson in viewpoint when we were at the La Vazza booth sampling regional coffees paired with a traditional treat. The young woman guiding us through the selections was a student at UniSG – the University of Gastronomic Sciences that is part of Slow Food in Italy. When we remarked on how wonderful it is to have an event like Terra Madre celebrating traditional foodways, she commented that what we were seeing was indeed special, but everyday Italians were much more like Americans in the respect of wanting convenience and “progress” in their food choices, so traditional ways were declining. We were surprised, mainly because of the image of Italy as a bastion of traditional, honored food systems and regions. During our conversation, we learned that there was a very strong movement in Italy to continue the local and regional foods that had become more sustained and successful. Part of this was due to the influence of Slow Food in Italy!
Pizza Workshop
In talking to the growers or vendors about their foods, taste and flavor were always one of the first things to be mentioned or demonstrated. Those were the primary concern, with everything else being secondary. What a refreshing change for us, where we are used to flavor being heavily advertised but rarely well represented! When we would talk about wanting to bring seeds back and introduce those varieties to the American public, the very first comment – always – was, “It won’t taste the same!” They were right, of course, but we were looking to introduce flavors and different varieties of traditional vegetables that are unknown here. After some discussion, several growers understood what we were trying to do, but always came back to the flavor being different. They were happy to see that we were trying to spread the word about the uniqueness of their foods, however.
Genovese Pesto Demonstration
With all of the centuries of traditional food production, some with defined methods dating back 300 to 400 years in an unbroken line, there were definitely creative twists and experimentation represented. Several craft breweries were showcasing their approach to small batch, handmade beer with unusual herbs and spices, all of which were completely different than what craft brewing is in America, but completely delicious. One family of cheese makers from southern Italy stand out in our memory, as the son was telling us that he had been in the international banking business but had returned to making cheese after the economic downturn. He showed us several of the traditional aged cheeses his family had been making for over 100 years. Then, with a bit of awkwardness, he introduced us to his own creative twists – aging cheese in the local winery’s grape must, or crushed grapes, for a completely different approach and beautiful flavor for his goat cheeses. He said that the local area thought him crazy at first, but were starting to come around after several years of tasting his new cheeses.
Lazio Region Cheesemaker
If one story can sum up our experiences at Terra Madre, it would be this: during the International Congress presentations, just before lunch, a young Palestinian woman spoke about the hardships and challenges her community faced in finding land and enough water to grow fresh food for their villages CSA or community supported agriculture program. As she started speaking, the entire room grew quiet and charged with anticipation, waiting to hear what she had to say. Their village was split by the dividing walls, and her talk was charged with emotion and passion. Despite the incredible challenges, she talked about the successes they had gained, growing more and more food to feed themselves and gain a measure of self-respect and resiliency. We broke for lunch after her presentation.
Chile and Garlic Bouquet
Soon after the break a young Israeli man got up to speak, and the room once again became silent and charged with anticipation. After he introduced himself, he stated that not all Israelis supported the current program, nor were all antagonistic against the Palestinian situation. He then described his village’s challenges in obtaining enough land and clean water to grow fresh, healthy food for his community, which was also close to the dividing wall. After a couple of years, they were able to grow more and more food, gaining some independence from the food trucks that so many were living off of.
Both young people exemplified what we saw time and time again at Terra Madre – individuals in all kinds of situations and conditions all around the world working diligently day to day to make a positive difference where they lived, no matter the beginning challenges. It really gave us hope that what Slow Food stands for – good, clean and fair food – is a powerful, positive change in itself.
Salone del Gusto
While we may not agree on many things – religion, politics, race, nationality and economics – we can agree on the foundational importance of food and our need to eat and eat well. Maybe, just maybe, food is that place where we can meet, eat and begin to find more common ground to agree on.
History of Beets
Ellen shares her research on the history of beets today. Did you know that beets weren’t always the deep red we are familiar with, but that characteristic was selected for and bred into them in the 1700’s? Lighter red existed much earlier than that, but not in the blood-red shades we know today.
Make sure to visit our Beet department and grow your own tasty varieties! Don’t forget to try both recipes at the end of today’s article.
Fermented Chile Paste
Fermented chile paste is one of my favorite toppings or condiments: I use it on eggs, sandwiches, in soups, stews and of course stir-frys. Most of the chile pastes found in Asian markets will be fermented to some degree, with those made in America less so. Fermenting your own puts you in the driver’s seat, as you get to choose what flavors go into the process and how hot or mild the result is. After you’ve made a batch or two, you’ll reach for your ‘special sauce’ before anything else!
We’ve just made a different type of fermented chile paste and wanted to share the process with you. This is completely different than our other chile fermentation recipe – Fermented Pepper Sauce. This method is still a lacto-fermentation, but instead of depending on the natural lactobacillus bacteria on the chiles, it uses organic whole milk yogurt to jump-start the fermentation process. What we’ve found is that this method really adds to the complexity and roundness of the flavors while decreasing the heat considerably. This is so delicious that a small dollop goes well on top of real vanilla ice cream!
This is a very quick recipe – our fermented chile paste was finished in just about 4 – 5 days, instead of a couple of weeks to a month for the more traditional lacto-fermentation. We hardly saw any bubbling in the air pockets, with none on top. Because of the yogurt culture providing the fermentation engine, we didn’t need to cover the chile mixture with water and then strain it out later.
The chiles we used were heirloom Anaheim and Serrano chiles, with only about 10% being Serranos. I used the Anaheims for the mildness and well-rounded flavors, with the Serranos, providing a different flavor dimension and some good heat. I just cut the stems off of the Anaheims, but seeded, de-veined and de-stemmed the Serranos and the initial mixture was still pretty shockingly hot! The heat was an immediate, front-of-the-tongue heat which is typical for Serranos. The initial odor was unmistakably sharp fresh chiles and garlic, but after one day it smoothed out and had a very pleasant odor. After two days it started to smell very mellow with sauerkraut overtones and the chile/garlic combination fading. When it was finished the two odors were pretty well balanced, with the flavor being remarkably smooth, rich and long lasting. The heat had really mellowed, to a very moderate background that never intruded or was uncomfortable, only adding to the experience.
Note – to peel garlic painlessly, watch our short video Peel Garlic in 10 Seconds!
When the flavors are to your liking, it is done. If left alone, the fermentation will continue for a month or more, so don't feel you have to wait on it.
Make sure that you have at least one full inch of headspace between the top of the chile paste and the lid, otherwise it can bubble over and make a mess.
Ripe Chiles for Fermented Chile Paste
We started with fully ripe heirloom Anaheim and Serrano chiles – the Anaheims for flavor with the Serranos providing a nice heat.
Removing Seeds and Veins from Chiles
The next step was to remove the ‘heat’ from the Serrano chiles by removing the veins and seeds. These contain the capsaicin which is a yellow oil in the seeds and along the veins.
Deseeding Chiles
A butter knife worked well to slip into the chile and remove seeds and veins all at once. Note the disposable gloves to protect my hands now and eyes later!
Chile Paste Ready for Fermenting
After the chiles and garlic were chopped up in the food processor, the yogurt and salt were added, then pulsed to mix in well. Be careful when pushing the chile mixture down to keep your face away from the opening, as it can be quite pungent, depending on your chile selection!
Transferring Chile Paste to Jar
After the yogurt and salt are added, the chile mixture is transferred to the fermenting jar. We started with the quart jar, but it was too full so we transferred to a half gallon to give it enough space.
Fermented Chile Paste
After about 5 days, the fermented chile paste was ready to go. It started to mellow in the aroma after the 2nd day, and by the 4th it had a sauerkraut odor with undertones of chile – surprisingly delicious! We transferred the paste back into a quart jar to store in the refrigerator.
Homemade Fermented Chile Paste
The final product glamour shot!
Blossom End Rot – What To Do
Blossom end rot affects mainly tomatoes and peppers, but can affect other fruiting crops such as eggplant, watermelon and summer squash. This is a perennial problem, meaning that as a gardener, you will deal with this yearly in your garden. There are two approaches to working with blossom end rot – prevention and reaction, or a primary and secondary solution. Unfortunately, most gardeners only realize they have a problem when the fruit are showing black spots on the end. This is the acute phase – once there are problems – and immediate action is needed to prevent further damage to fruit that is just beginning to set.
We will look at the underlying causes of blossom end rot, along with what happens and what can be done about it in the prevention as well as the acute phase.
As mentioned, blossom end rot will affect more than just tomatoes and peppers, but we will focus mainly on those as this is what most gardeners’ experience. Just tuck the other varieties into the back of your mind, and you’ll have a jump start if you see it strike them. In reality, the prevention will most likely have a beneficial effect for everything as you will be creating an environment that won’t support the cause of the problem!
Blossom end rot is caused by a lack of enough available calcium in the fruit at the blossom end. What most often alerts us is a black spot or patch at the blossom end of the tomato or chile, opposite of the stem. This black spot is a secondary issue caused by a fungus attacking the weakened fruit. Contrary to what many think, we aren’t aiming for the eradication of the fungus and resulting black patch, but fixing and preventing the cause of the problem. Correcting the underlying issues that lead to the weakened fruit will automatically prevent the fungus from being able to attack.
Let’s start with the problem and work backwards, to better understand what is needed for both an acute fix and a preventative approach for blossom end rot. Calcium is a very important part of the growth process for plants and the proper development of high quality, tasty fruit as it contributes to healthy cell wall growth, insect resistance and helps to regulate many cell processes. Calcium is non-mobile in the plant once it is imported, meaning the plant can’t move it from one part of itself into the fruit, or from one part of the fruit to another. Thus, the tomato or chile plant needs a continuous supply of calcium as it grows, flowers and produce fruit all through the season.
Blossom end rot usually occurs early in the season with the first or second flush of fruit. It happens just when the plant is at maximum growth and is putting on the first fruit, with a second set of flowers on the way. It is in high gear and needs all of its nutrients available to be healthy, resist pests and disease, as well as grow lots of delicious tomatoes and peppers. The key to preventing blossom end rot is to supply a sufficient, steady amount of calcium to the plant so it can be transported into the fruit continuously. Problem solved!
Not so fast, just how can we make sure that the plant has a steady supply of calcium?
Early Blossom End Rot
Here is where we branch off into the two approaches – the primary and the secondary. The primary, preventative approach is to have enough calcium in the soil that feeds the roots and is transported to the fruit throughout the growing season. That calcium in the soil must be ‘available’ meaning that the roots can actually absorb it and transport it where it is needed. Available means that it isn’t tied up by another mineral or a pH level that won’t ‘let go’ of it. There is more to the story than just adding a calcium amendment to the garden bed!
A very good example of this is where we live in central AZ, there is a decent amount of calcium in the soil that plates out on faucets and glassware as a calcium deposit. Conventional wisdom says not to worry about calcium because it is everywhere. That’s true, but the challenge we have is the pH of the soil is fairly alkaline at 8+ on the pH scale, so the calcium is ‘tied up’, or not available to the plants. This is proven by the weed populations we typically see that only grow in calcium deficient soils.
So what can be done? A comprehensive soil test is one of the best, first steps to take. This is much more than the simple NPK type of test done by university extension offices or the do-it-yourself test kits bought at the local garden center. A complete soil analysis is one that is collected and sent off to a recognized, professional lab that sends back a report on every mineral found along with recommendations on what direction to go and what nutrients to add in what form. They will usually cost from $25 to $75 range, depending on what analysis and information you need. There are several of these labs in the US; the two that we’ve worked with and are familiar with are Crop Services International and Texas Plant and Soil Lab. From this, you will have a very good indication of where to go next.
Fall is a great time to get your soil tested and amended in preparation for next spring’s season for a few reasons – the soil testing labs are generally not as busy, so results are quicker; and soil amendments will need some time to become integrated and available into the soil nutrients, so fall gives you the needed time, and it is easily incorporated into the traditional fall garden cleanup and prep.
Calcium is closely tied with magnesium, and this will be indicated on the soil analysis. More acidic soils, such as those generally found in the eastern states, will benefit from lime or calcium carbonate, while the more alkaline soils in the western states will need gypsum or calcium sulfate. Lime tends to raise the pH, while gypsum tends to lower it.
Water plays an often overlooked, but equally important, role in the blossom end rot saga. Inconsistent levels and rates of water will greatly vary the amount of calcium and other nutrients available to the plant, increasing the chance of diseases attacking the fruit like blossom end rot. This is one of the reasons we talk a lot about a drip system on a timer – it really helps even out the moisture levels in the soil and greatly reduces the stress on the entire garden, with the happy result of lowered amounts of nutrient and stress related problems. Of course, the weather can also play havoc with all of our carefully laid plans, as heavy and sudden rainfall can cause blossom end rot and splitting of tomatoes, along with a noticeable ‘wash-out’ of flavor and taste.
This is where the acute or secondary approach is needed. Calcium carbonate tablets, or anti-acid tablets (Tums or the equivalent) work great when a couple of them are inserted at the base of a tomato or chile plant, where they will dissolve and make the calcium available to the plant in just a few hours, saving this flush of fruit if done right after the rains, or the next set if done when blossom end rot is first noticed.
Another approach is to feed calcium directly to the roots through the drip system as a liquid fertilizer, usually with calcium chloride or calcium nitrate. This approach works very well in offsetting one of the most overlooked causes of blossom end rot – great weather. That’s right – excellent weather with moderate temperatures and lots of sunshine put the plants into overdrive, and their rapid growth can often simply outstrip the amount of available calcium in the soil, even if you have been proactive last fall. The calcium just cannot be taken up out of the soil fast enough, so feeding through the drip system can be a big bonus during these times. The secondary approach will always be needed, even if you’ve done your homework and amended the soil the previous fall.
Calcium isn’t absorbed very well by the leaves of a plant, especially older leaves. The roots are much better at absorption, plus they can transport the calcium faster than through a foliar approach. For these reasons, stay away from trying a foliar spray to supply calcium to your tomatoes.
Blossom end rot won’t ever quite go away, because of the reasons you’ve seen here. With some knowledge and practice, you can easily create a much better environment in the soil that supports the plants much more fully and then use the supplemental approach to keeping the calcium levels high enough to minimize blossom end rot and keep more of your hard work for your dining table instead of as scraps for the chickens or compost pile!
Argentine Beef Roast with Fettuccine
Peceto Asado con Tallerines (Argentine Beef Roast with Fettuccine)
Argentina is world-famous for the beef they raise on the open grassland plains of the Pampas. It isn’t surprising to see how creative they are with using beef in so many different ways, much like the Italians have finely crafted the myriad uses of pork in their cuisine.
To expand my cuisine beyond the beloved Mexican and Central American dishes that I’ve grown up with, I wanted to try something a little different but delicious. This beef roast is the first result of our experimentation, and it turned out as succulent and mouthwatering as the photos show. There was a breadth and depth to the flavors that was hard to describe – the roast was tender, juicy and had a number of flavor combinations that kept hitting the tongue, then the tomato sauce balanced the roast out beautifully.
We used a large roast to give us some for an easy, creative dinner or two during the week. Scroll past the recipe for more photos and commentary!
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – Tomato, Onion, Bell Pepper and Rosemary!
This is a great way to cook a large portion of roast for a scrumptious Sunday dinner to have the basis of several outstanding meals during the week.
Here is what dinner started with. The beef is locally grown, semi-grassfed from a neighbor. I call it semi-grassfed as we simply don’t have enough grass in central Arizona on smaller acreage to completely feed a large animal like a beef cow. We do know exactly how this beef was raised and the processor is local as well. This beef traveled less than 20 miles from hoof to plate!
After just over an hour, this is the beauty that emerged from our Kamado, a Japanese charcoal smoker/cooker. The deep red is from the mesquite smoke, and the taste test that I cut off is apparent. Delicious!
The tuco sauce close-up. It was a different experience making a non-Italian tomato sauce! It was rich, flavorful and a perfect counter to the intense flavors of the roasted beef.
Just after plating, the first glamor shot!
Resiliency and the Ripple Effect
We are very happy to share an editorial that Stephen wrote for the Spring 2014 issue of Small Farmer’s Journal. SFJ, as it’s known, has had a large influence on us for a very long time. It is one of those jewels of a publication, wrapped up in its plain brown paper cover, but holding viewpoints and articles that expand one’s mind, or perfectly sum up thoughts on a subject, or inspire or educate on something that you hadn’t really thought about before.
We’ve contributed articles before, but were very honored when Lynn Miller asked for an editorial. He didn’t specify the subject, so we went with what was most in front of us at the time, drawn from a number of conversations with customers from all across the country, along with material from a couple of recent presentations. We hope you enjoy it!
Milkweed Seed Germination Procedures
Milkweed Cold Stratification
Our friends at Painted Lady Vineyard and The Xerces Society have provided these detailed instructions to cold soak and stratify your milkweed seeds to get better and faster germination!
Slow soaking and rinsing milkweed seeds removes a naturally occurring chemical from the seed surface to enable quick germination. In nature, this chemical prevents premature sprouting during extreme conditions such as prolonged drought or extreme cold.The stratification process mimics environmental conditions for the seeds that would naturally germinate at the end of a long wet winter.
A sterile, clean environment is required to prevent mold from growing in the stratification process. Mold destroys the seeds. Handle seeds and vermiculite in sterile conditions. Rubber, non-latex, gloves should be used. Use sterile water, containers, and tools.
Note: It is best to read through the entire process once or twice to familiarize yourself with the process, then assemble the tools needed before starting.
Procedure
1. Pre-chill one gallon of distilled water. If more than one species of seed is being germinated keep species separate–label the jars, one for each species. Mix each species with one cup of pre-chilled distilled water. Soak for 24 hours in the refrigerator. By keeping species separate throughout process, site specific planting will be an option and plant identification is made easy.
2. After 24 hours, pour seeds into a clean strainer. Wearing sterile gloves, rinse with distilled water. Drain excess water.
3. Add one cup vermiculite into the sterile containers with lids. Slowly add approximately 1/3 cup distilled water to each container of vermiculite until just moist but not dripping. Mix rinsed seeds into vermiculite using your gloved hands. Seal container and label accordingly. Store in refrigerator for 30 days.
4. Plant entire mixture of seeds and vermiculite or sift seeds out. Plant at 1/4″ depth in prepared seed bed when soil temps are warm (70°F+). These temperatures usually occur when the daytime air temperature reaches around 80 degrees. When nighttime temperatures are 65 – 70 °F your soil temps should be very close to the same temperature. Water the newly planted seeds often until germination becomes evident. Keep up with your watering until plants are established.
Increase the amount of water per application to achieve greater soaking depths for development of healthy tap roots. Alternate soil moisture from good deep soakings to moderately dry in between watering. Roots need a balance of oxygen. Reduce frequency of watering over time as plants become established. Supplemental water may be discontinued as seasonal rains return.
Encourage and enjoy! By doing this you are playing an important role in life on earth. And watch your milkweed patch for monarchs, their eggs, the caterpillars and then …. the butterfly again!
NOTE: Please do NOT use pesticides on milkweeds. Monarch caterpillars must munch on milkweed leaves in their natural lifecycle. Established perennial milkweeds grow back year after year from same roots.
Thanks to Native American Seed for these instructions which have been modified only slightly to suit the seeds grown here.
Many thanks to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation for their support of this milkweed seed production program, and to Painted Lady Vineyard for growing the Spider Milkweed for seed.
What Happened To My Seed Germination?
Seed Germination – Challenges and Rewards
Seed germination issues happen every spring and challenge many new and experienced gardeners and growers. Over the years we have found a lot of commonality in why our customers have problems with seed germination. The four biggest issues are soil temperature, moisture levels, knowledge or experience and patience. We’ve put this guide together to help everyone learn where the problems lie and make changes to become more successful.
We have a vested interest in you being successful both in starting seeds and in your gardening efforts. After all, we put our name and reputation on each and every one of the seed packets we send out. If you fail, we also fail; so we really want to help you succeed!
We know our seed quality and spend a lot of time, energy and effort to make sure you get the best possible seeds. When you have problems with seed germination, if we simply send you replacement seeds without helping to correct the issues, you will get the same results and no one will be happy! We aren’t asking these questions to make things difficult, but to help you. Also, if you learn some of these critical skills and steps, you will be much more successful overall.
Seeds are amazing; they have everything needed to continue their species stored right inside their seed coats. From their accumulated travels they have all the adaptations, the environmental and seasonal conditions they have encountered and grown through encoded into their DNA. Everything they need to sprout when the time is right is built right inside their shells. Within that hard seed coat is enough food energy to help them break dormancy and carry them into their first several days as seedlings. All the enzymes they need to convert the stored energy into food is there as well; they have the fats, carbohydrates, protein, enzymes and hormones needed to get the seed off to a great start. As home gardeners and small scale growers, our job is to provide the proper conditions, ensuring maximum germination into strong and healthy seedlings ready to be transplanted into the garden when the conditions are right.
Seed Germination Basics – What You Need To Know
Not all seeds are alike; likewise, many of them need somewhat different conditions to germinate. Some seeds are simply more difficult to germinate and require patience, attention to detail and time to be successful with. Pay attention to the seed packet directions – if it says, “Outdoor sowing recommended,” there is a reason! You will have a much harder time getting them to start inside, regardless of the professional greenhouse set-up you might have. Corn, melons and cucumbers are great examples.
Other seeds really need to be planted in the fall, lightly covered with soil and left alone – like most herbs and flowers. Duplicate the natural systems of seeds scattering in the fall and overwintering in the soil, then sprouting in the spring, and you will have less work and worry with a better, more vibrant garden.
Very few varieties of seed will have 100% germination. Under carefully controlled conditions, we might see 97% germination rate for tomatoes, but you might see 90% in your home. This doesn’t mean the seeds you get are weaker, just that your conditions are most likely different than what we used in our germination tests. We always beat the Federal Germination Standards!
This is why we pack more seeds in a packet for some varieties; it reflects the Federal germination rate. For instance, the standard germination rate for Okra is 50% – which is why we give you around 100 seeds – there is plenty of seed to ensure an abundant harvest. The minimum germination rate for peppers is 55% – we will stop selling it long before it drops to 70% in our tests. This is one of the reasons we pack 40 seeds per packet for peppers, as not all will germinate. We pack our seeds to give you the best germination rate possible, combined with our knowledge of how that variety grows to ensure a great crop in your garden; another reason to wonder what results you will get with 10 seeds per packet from other companies.
What Happened To My Seed Germination?
Have none of the seeds germinated? If this is the case, there is one of two potential answers. The more likely answer is an environmental condition is preventing the seeds from sprouting. We will look at those below. The second cause is that the seeds are old, leftover from several years ago, forgotten in a box or cupboard or stored in extreme temperatures that have destroyed the seed germination potential. Extremes of heat can kill seeds in a short time, which is why we recommend storing them in a cool, temperature and moisture stable environment.
If only a few of the seeds germinate, it is most likely from being impatient or planting older seeds that have less viability. Most garden seeds have a high germination rate for the first 2 – 3 years, with the exception of hulless pumpkins, leeks and onions. Once the germination drops to about 75%, their ability to sprout will drop considerably faster. Of course, when you see the first few pepper seeds pop up in 3 – 4 days, then nothing for another day or so and you give up, you lose out on the rest of the seeds emerging at the end of the week! Have a bit of patience, observe the seeds progress each day and check our Germination Guide or the back of the seed packet to see how long they really should take. Many times a couple more days makes all the difference in germination rates.
Other conditions such as improper soil temperature and moisture, or a combination of the two, are the majority of the reasons that seeds don’t germinate in a timely manner. Planting too early, too deep, watering too much or too little are common mistakes made. Other factors include soil preparation, birds and/or rodents stealing the seeds.
If you are in doubt as to the viability of seeds, whether they are an unknown seed that was given or traded to you, or you’ve “discovered” them in a closet or back shelf, do a paper towel seed germination test.
Wet a paper towel and wring most of the moisture out of it. Fold it in half and then lay it open. Arrange the test seeds – usually 10 or so – along the fold, then re-fold the towel over the seeds. Roll the folded towel into a tube, then seal it into a zip-lock type of clear plastic bag. Put the bag of seeds in a constant, very warm temperature location – such as the top of a refrigerator, freezer or in the oven that has a pilot light. You need about 85 – 90°F. Record the date started and check the progress daily, opening the bag to check the moisture level. You should see water droplets on the inside of the bag, add a little more water when you don’t. Check the germination rate and amount of days needed against our Germination Guide. If the seeds germinate well, you can plant them directly by cutting them out of the paper towel, and then you know they are viable.
Moisture – A dormant seed only contains about 10 – 15% moisture, so it must draw water from the soil that surrounds it. As the moisture is absorbed from the soil or seed starting media through the seed coat, enzymes are activated that convert the stored nutrition reserves and softens the seed shell, allowing oxygen to penetrate the seed coat, starting the process of growing. The moisture levels are critical at this early stage – they must remain constant for the sprouting process to continue and for the seedling to survive.
Uneven moisture levels can seriously delay sprouting of a seed, and even a few minutes lack of moisture as a seedling can kill it, as it has no method of storing water like a mature plant does. During the germination process, a seed needs much more moisture in the soil than when it has sprouted, so be aware and decrease the moisture levels as young seedlings emerge and mature.
Temperature – Germination will only occur in a specific range of maximum and minimum temperatures for each variety. Our Germination Guide lists these, along with the optimum temperature each one needs. The temperature we are talking about is the soil temperature, not the air temperature above the seed tray or garden row. Slightly cooler temperatures can double or triple the time needed for germination – even as little as 5°F cooler can be the difference between a 7 day or a 14 day seedling emergence!
When starting seeds inside, a bottom heat such as a seed sprouting heating mat on a thermostat is invaluable. In the garden, double check the soil temperature with a soil thermometer before spending the time and effort in carefully planting your seeds and being disappointed later.
Air – Seed germination requires large amounts of oxygen to activate the metabolic process of converting the stored nutrients into energy. Oxygen that is dissolved in water and from the air contained in the soil is used. If soil conditions are too wet, an anaerobic condition can be created and seeds may not be able to germinate due to lack of oxygen.
Light – Some seeds need light for germination, while some other seed varieties are hindered by light. Most wild species of flowers and herbs need darkness for germination and should be planted slightly deeper in the soil while most modern vegetable crops prefer light or are not affected by it, and are planted shallowly to allow small amounts of light to filter through the soil.
Soil – It is the medium for successful seed germination. In the germination tray, it may be absorbent paper (blotting paper, towel or tissue paper), soil, sand or a mixed media made specifically for seed germination. The substratum absorbs water and supplies it to the germinating seeds. It should be free from toxic substances and should not act as a medium for the growth of micro-organisms. It needs to be loose, allowing the moisture to easily reach the seed and for the seed to move as it grows without spending lots of energy in moving the soil to reach the surface.
A few things to consider –
1. Keep seed packets in a cool dry place. Do not store in your garage, potting shed or near a heat source such as a heater or appliance.
2. Review the seed packets individual instructions and develop a planting schedule based on your local weather and growing season.
3. Re-seal any seed packets that you are starting indoors, such as pepper, eggplant, and tomatoes. This will allow you to start more seeds later if you want to stagger your plantings, etc.
4. It may be better to over plant and then share plant starts with neighbor and friends, than to under plant and be caught short.
5. Download the Terroir Seeds Garden Journal to get a jump start on tracking your garden this year.
Questions to Answer
And finally, a few questions to answer to help us help you in determining what went wrong and how to correct it:
Did you follow the germination instructions on the seed packet? Go back and read them again; we sometime spend hours in researching and experimenting to find the best methods, temperatures, etc.
What was the soil temperature? Not the air temperature, but the soil temperature? Were there fluctuations? If so, how much? Not knowing this is a critical error that is a major cause of seed germination failure.
How moist/damp was the soil? For seed starting, the soil needs to be damp to the touch. You should be able to see a small pad of moisture on your fingertip after you lightly touch the soil. It shouldn’t be a drop of water, but an easily observed spot of dampness. Was it too dry/too wet? Did it get dry during the day/night, or was there constant moisture?
What seed starting mix are you using – a complete soil, Miracle-Gro mix. sterile seed starting mix, home-grown or something else?
Are the seeds still physically in the ground? If you don’t know, dig a few up to check. Are birds, squirrels, rodents eating/stealing the seeds or seedlings? Many times we have heard that our seeds aren’t germinating, when they have been eaten! You may need to use a paper cup with the bottom cut off to protect the seedling from birds/rodents until it is more mature.
Once you have answered these questions, we can help you determine what has prevented your seeds from germinating. More often than not you will know what to change just from reading this.
Thoughts on Selected Wendell Berry Quotes
Wendell Berry – Poet, Author, Farmer, Philosopher
Let’s start this conversation off with one of Wendell Berry’s quotes that has had a profound impact on me and what has become Terroir Seeds:
“We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to governments, corporations, and specialists, and put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and household and neighborhoods.”~ Wendell Berry
I heard or read the old phrase, “If you want to change the world, plant a garden,” when I was much younger. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, as I strongly disliked being forced to work in our large garden when I had much better things to do with my free time!
I do remember the planting time during spring – readying the rows, digging the small irrigation ditches, making sure that the water would flow all the way to the end of the row. Then the planting of the seeds and transplanting seedlings into their places. We watered our 1/4 acre garden with a gas powered well pump from an old abandoned well that we had cleared up and found water in.
Neither of my parents came from farming or ranching backgrounds. My father wanted to grow our own food because of his concern about the health of grocery store produce in our small town and the proliferation of commercially prepared foods. This was the late 1970s and early 1980s. Most of the knowledge that we used came from our Mother Earth News subscription, along with the advice of a couple of older family friends. Looking back, I see that there was a distinct lack of knowledge and experience even then, but there was a desire to do something different. For all of his faults, my father had it right this time.
Ours was a typical “spring and summer” garden. We planted as soon as we could in the spring and then watered, weeded and waited until the garden came alive and threw way too much produce at us. Then it was cooking, canning and drying seemingly non-stop until the garden sputtered to a stop, usually after the first couple of hard frosts. After that we cleared the dead plants away and waited until the next spring to try again. I remember the dreaded summer break routine of hoeing and weeding after breakfast until it got hot, then again in the late afternoon into early evening. We were gardening in soil that had been fallow for decades, so the seed bank of weeds was tremendous. We didn’t really understand how to manage soil fertility, so we hoed and pulled weeds constantly.
After High School I joined the Navy and left the small town behind just as soon as possible. Six years later – after lots of travel, some growing up and the Gulf War, I left the Navy, the big cities and a failed marriage behind and made the conscious choice to move back to a small town. That was when those words about a garden began to make more sense. I began to realize the world-changing part wasn’t the garden or the food that it grew, not even the world that it was supposed to change. Obviously, one small garden can’t change or feed the world by itself.
I learned the magic of what one small garden can do is share.
It can share its food, the knowledge and experience of how that food was grown, why it tastes as wonderful, rich and delicious as it does and the excitement and contentment that only comes from food you’ve grown. The term “local food” metamorphoses into something entirely different, ceasing to be a carelessly used sound-bite and growing into many delicious food bites that nourish us – body and soul.
That one small garden becomes a few, then several, then many across a town, a city, a county and a nation. That small garden becomes a metaphor, an idea and a movement. That small humble garden becomes a much-needed, deep seated sense of security in a world where very little has the feel of permanence or security today, regardless of social status or financial standing. It gives us grounding and a sense of place, of belonging to and being part of something much bigger, older and better than us.
That small backyard home garden becomes the embodiment of how we as individuals can reclaim our decisions from the proxies of government, corporations and stockholders and make it a personal choice to grow our own food and share it with our family, friends and neighbors, improving everyone’s lives that we share. After all, we are only talking about the third most important ingredient for life, after air and water! Food, as with soil, has been denigrated and degraded into a commodity that is not worth our attention, respect and devotion. We are slowly waking up to this fallacy.
“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”~ Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
When we garden, we take an active part in the production of our food and quit passively waiting for it to be grown, processed and delivered to us on our whim. As Joel Salatin said in Folks, This Ain’t Normal, “The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else’s responsibility until I’m ready to eat it.” Even the smallest container garden starts the reconnection process for that person. They learn and observe what it takes to grow even the smallest amount of food, whether it is a single plant of leaf lettuce or a handful of kitchen herbs. Through success and failure, they begin to realize that food doesn’t just pop into existence at the grocery store regardless of seasonality or weather conditions.
The very act of gardening on any scale forces us to pay attention to the world around us, to observe what is happening and learn more about the interconnected nature of all things. We become aware – perhaps for the very first time- of the enormous complexity of our world, and the realization of the folly of simplistic, reductionist, single solution thinking when applied to complex systems, even such a small one as a garden.
That awakening can be the most beautiful, wondrous experience or one of the most frightful of our lives, depending on how we react and adapt to change. For those who come to see the beauty in growing food, their lives will never be the same. They will acquire a quiet sense of accomplishment, of progress and resiliency that is almost impossible to describe or talk about, but is implicitly understood by another who has made the same journey, whether as a child in a farming or ranching family or one who has made the conscience decision to take the road less traveled.
Our tech driven, always on, instant gratification society is shown to be artificial when we learn that we absolutely cannot plant carrot seeds the day before we want to serve carrot salad to our dinner guests. Everything takes its own time and there are things in life that absolutely cannot be rushed, “right sized”, or optimized to serve our timeline and agenda. As advanced a society as we are today, with as much progress as we’ve made, we are still human beings in a world that is larger than us, that doesn’t march to our drumbeat.
When we begin to garden, we begin to heal our part of the world starting with our own space and lives. As we gain knowledge, experience and success we can start to apply those lessons learned in the garden to other areas of our lives and offer our hard-won experiences to others so that they can hopefully learn from our mistakes. We come to re-connect with the idea that we belong in the world and to the world; we are not separate from and should not be disconnected from it. The idea that human kind shouldn’t be in the wilderness or nature is fully revealed as folly as we learn that not only are we part of the world, we are inseparable from it, no matter how hard some of us try. Rachel Carson said it so well, “Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
To look at it from a different angle, I leave you with this thought that brings us full circle to the beginning of our conversation:
“Until we understand what the land is, we are at odds with everything we touch. And to come to that understanding it is necessary, even now, to leave the regions of our conquest – the cleared fields, the towns and cities, the highways – and re-enter the woods. For only there can a man encounter the silence and the darkness of his own absence. Only in this silence and darkness can he recover the sense of the world’s longevity, of its ability to thrive without him, of his inferiority to it and his dependence on it. Perhaps then, having heard that silence and seen that darkness, he will grow humble before the place and begin to take it in – to learn from it what it is. As its sounds come into his hearing, and its lights and colors come into his vision, and its odors come into his nostrils, then he may come into its presence as he never has before, and he will arrive in his place and will want to remain. His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them – neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them – and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again. ~Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Heirloom Peas: Sugar, Snap and Snow
Sugar, Snap or Snow Peas
There is nothing quite as graceful as trellised pea plants in full swing. And nothing quite as tasty as a crunchy sugar snap pea eaten straight off the vine. And nothing that so captures the essence of spring as peas–all kinds of peas.
Peas love cool, wet weather, and so are often only in season for a few weeks, when you will find local farmers bringing in the irresistible sugar snap pea, the Chinese or snow pea, and the good old fashioned shell (or English) peas.
Snow Peas – Healthy and Cosmopolitan
Snow peas are long, thin, early flat pea pods, with teensy proto-peas inside. But you’re not after the peas in this case; it’s the tender pod itself you’ll love. Traditionally found in Chinese and other Asian cuisines, they now appear in all sorts of dishes from salads to pastas to stir-fries.
Some say the name snow pea comes from the slight whitish tint reflected from the pods in bright sunlight. Others say it’s because they are a cool weather crop–best in the early spring or late fall, when they just might be covered with light frost or even snow. But no matter the name, or where it comes from, snow peas are sweet and crisp and delicious– and an excellent source of fiber, iron, potassium, and vitamins A and C. Snow peas are also among the most venerable of vegetables, with evidence of their cultivation going back more than 12,000 years along the Thai-Burma border.
Sweet Sugar Snap Back Story
Way on the other end of the pea timeline, one of the newest pea cultivars is the sugar snap pea. Calvin Lamborn of Twin Falls, Idaho began crossing snow peas with shell peas in the 1960s. He was going after a pea that would have the edible, non-fibrous pod of the snow pea, plus the full-size interior peas of English peas. His hybrid was finally perfected in 1979, and has become a favorite of gardeners and market farmers ever since.
Both the pod and the peas are plump, succulent, and sweetly irresistible. The French call them mange-tout, which tells you what to do, “eat the whole thing,” preferably on the way home from market for maximum nutrition and enjoyment. As with all legumes, peas host beneficial bacteria in their root nodules, which make nitrogen in the air available as a fertilizer in the soil for themselves and whatever crop is planted there next. They are one of the true heroes of our fields and tables–so enjoy!
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – Peas and Parsley!
Quick Snow Peas with Lemon Herb Butter from Farm Fresh Now!
Snow Peas and Sugar Snap Peas can be used interchangeably in just about any recipe.
Sugar Snaps are also great raw as part of a vegetable tray or a box lunch.
Serves four as a side dish.
The best way to enjoy healthy, seasonal produce is to buy it from your local community farmer.
To locate the farmers’ market or CSA nearest you, visit Local Harvest.
Farm Fresh Now! is a project of The Land Connection, an educational nonprofit that preserves
farmland, trains new farmers, and connects people with great locally-grown foods. This series is
made possible with generous support from the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
Baked Yogurt Tart
Sometimes the simplest things are the most elegant and satisfying. This almost-custard yogurt tart is one example. Strained yogurt, a little sugar, vanilla and some eggs are all there is to it, but the resulting marriage of the rich egg and yogurt flavors along with the sweetness of the sugar, all tied up in the aroma and taste of high quality vanilla is captivating.
Everyone expresses their approval with lots of “mmmm” sounds, not wanting to waste time or attention in talking. That’s when you know you’ve got something special!
Fresh eggs from your backyard chickens, ducks or geese will really make this memorable!
Make sure to use the highest quality vanilla extract, as it really will make this dessert! We have used and have fallen in love with Nielsen-Massey pure vanilla bean paste from King Arthur Flour. It is absolutely scrumptious with a great aroma and delicate flavor that is wonderful.
If you are pressed for time, substitute a prepared pie crust. Then the time needed to make this is about 10 minutes of prep and the 20 minutes of baking.
Adapted from Saveur Magazine #163
The goose egg will fill my hand, while I can hold 3 or 4 of the chicken eggs!
Since I had the Kamado grill going, I just baked the tart on the grill with a heat diffuser underneath. The tart is almost ready here! It had just finished rising and had about 5 minutes to finish firming up.
After it sat for about 30 minutes, this is what greeted us:
And of course, the final glamor shot – ready to wow guests and birthday wife!
Smoked Yogurt Marinated Beef Roast
This smoked, yogurt marinated beef roast was served for Cindy’s birthday dinner, where I wanted to do something very tasty, a bit unusual and didn’t require hovering over the stove in the kitchen for a long time, as we were busy with catching up in the office after two successive weekends presenting at gardening shows.
We are fortunate to have some locally raised beef that is delicious in its own right, so that made a perfect base on which to build. I was perusing one of the newer issues of Saveur magazine and came across the dessert idea – a baked yogurt tart – and saw the recipe for grilled yogurt marinated lamb chops. This is our version, slow roasted and smoked over mesquite charcoal in a Kamado, or Japanese ceramic grill. I roasted this at about 300°F for just a bit over 2 hours, as grass-fed beef shouldn’t be cooked as long as conventionally raised beef roast.
The results were fabulous – the beef roast had a rich, smoky beef flavor that is missing in store bought beef, followed by the tangy, complex flavors of the marinade. Prepare this in the morning and roast it in the afternoon, planning about 2 – 3 hours for the roasting, depending on the size of your roast.
This is the perfect centerpiece for an impressive and delicious dinner that won’t take all of your day to prepare!
Scroll down after the recipe for photos showing the process.
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – Onion and Cumin, along with garlic you’ve grown!
Grass-fed beef will be tough and chewy if cooked to the usual USDA temperatures most of us are used to. The USDA recommends the beef be cooked to 145 - 170°F, while 120 - 140°F is best for pastured or grass-fed beef. Shannon Hayes at www.grassfedcooking.com has taught me the most about bringing the rich and delicious flavors from these meats!
Adapted from Saveur Magazine #163
We assembled all of the ingredients to start.
A close-up view of the spices. I actually didn’t use all of them, but had gathered them when doing the brainstorming and adaptation of the original recipe.
I prefer to hand grind my spices when I have the time, the flavor is much better, more defined and richer than with a blender or mechanical spice grinder. The crushing and twisting motion really does make a difference. We also found this applies to the flavors of pesto!
There is green cardamom, star anise, caraway and cumin seeds in there.
During the grinding process, the most amazing aromas drift up. Cindy had come in and commented on how wonderful it smelled already, and I was only grinding the spices! I ground the cardamom pods whole to begin with, then pulled the shells out after crushing them a bit to release their flavors.
Next up was the garlic. I used the “Peel Garlic in 10 Seconds” trick, this time for the whole head. It still only took me maybe 15 seconds! The reason for grinding it instead of dicing or chopping it is to release the oils and flavors that only crushing or grinding will achieve.
After mixing the marinade and butterflying the roast into about an inch thick roll, I applied the marinade and wrapped it back up.
After liberally spooning the marinade on the inside and rolling it back up, I tied it with butcher’s twine, spooned the remainder of the marinade on the outside, put it into a bowl and then into the refrigerator for 4 – 5 hours to do it’s magic!
That afternoon I fired the Kamado up and once the temperature stabilized, the roast went on. I had spread the coals to the outside and put a small round cast iron griddle underneath to divert the heat to be more indirect. Once the internal temperature was 125°F in the center, it was ready to let rest and then slice. Beautiful and mouthwateringly aromatic!
It was hard to walk down wind of the smoker without popping the lid every time to check on it!
Once it had rested for 5 – 10 minutes, I sliced it and we dug in. Of the 4 – 6 pound roast, 3 of us ate only about 1/4 of it, so there will be a number of other tasty dishes that result from this one.
Spinach Salad with Sesame and Ginger
Here’s our adaptation of several classic Asian wilted spinach dishes, usually served either before or alongside the main meal. This is easy to make, downright delicious but with an unusual twist in the flavors that will make it memorable for your guests. Enjoy the flush of spinach, because it is a short-lived season!
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – Spinach, Chiles and Sesame seeds!
History of Spinach
After Ellen’s article about “Alternative Spinach Greens” she now tells us more about the original spinach. Grown in the cooler season in a rich soil, spinach is delicious – juicy with a nice crunch to it; a mildly sweet flavor and no bitterness. Sort of like a bolder leaf lettuce.
Peel Garlic in 10 Seconds
Can you peel garlic in 10 seconds? Not just one clove, but a handful or even a whole head? Can you do 5 or 10 in a row?
Sure you can, we show you how in our very short video! Extremely simple, works every time and completely eliminates the mess, fuss and frustration of peeling garlic.
A couple of tips- if the garlic isn’t quite as peeled as you need, simply shake it a little bit more. If it comes out looking a little crushed, just shake a little less next time. With just a couple of minutes of practice, you’ll be peeling garlic like a pro and will never hesitate to use fresh garlic in your cooking again.
Szechuan Button and Mango Sorbet
Taste one of these little bright yellow jewels and you’ll immediately discover why they’ve gained a loyal following and a number of equally colorful names. They initially give a strong burst of citrus-like tang, quickly followed by a curious, tingly jolt of electricity sensation that spreads from your tongue to fill your whole mouth that ends in a numb feeling. This all repeats itself for about 15 minutes.
They have become very popular with restaurants that use the buds finely diced in fresh salads, with sliced chiles and lime as a condiment, lightly pickled or candied with desserts. Here is a unique, complex and attention-grabbing sorbet that will intrigue and delight your friends or a dinner party!
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – Chile and Szechuan Buttons!
The chile should add intrigue and a dimension of flavor, not stand on it's own heat. Start conservatively, then add as flavor is needed.
The overall flavor should be one of sweet, then fruity, then slightly sour, then the chile flavor (not heat) and "buzz" of the Szechuan buttons should arrive together, raising eyebrows!
Adapted from Homegrown Revolution
Pickled Cucamelon with Dill and Mint
A Cucamelon is a tiny watermelon lookalike originally from Central America that is enjoying its spot in the limelight. Home gardeners are captivated by the look of these jewel-like melons and then often fall completely in love with their crisp, crunchy, cucumber-tinged-with-lime flavor.
After you’ve gotten your fill of fresh cucamelon in salads, salsas, appetizers in bowls of assorted olives, and as garnishes for high-brow Martinis, save some for the winter months with this delightful pickled cucamelon recipe!
Pick enough cucamelons to make several jars of pickles, as you will go through one jar very quickly once people get a taste of them!
Makes a most impressive and unusual gift, especially once the weather is cold. Your recipient will remember this gift for a long time!
Adapted from Homegrown Revolution
Seed Saving for Quality Interview
Stephen recently did an interview on seed saving with an emphasis on quality on The Survival Podcast with Jack Spirko. He does a different kind of podcast, what I call a “thinking persons preparedness” show. There is much more of the everyday, common sense preparedness approach; that of being ready for a severe weather event, a loss of power for a short period of time or a traffic tie-up on the freeway and how to get through them with less drama and a higher level of comfort and security.
One major item for rational preparedness folks is gardening, as being able to provide food for yourself and your family or neighbors is a big thing. Not only in a disaster event, but if the power goes out or if there is some reason that the supermarket near you can’t be stocked for a few days, being able to enjoy good food is very powerful. Sure, a person can survive on MREs (officially known as Meals Ready to Eat, but we knew them as Meals, Rarely Edible in the Navy), but that is a very short term “survival” approach as you can’t grow them and they aren’t very healthy for extended periods of time. They were designed as combat rations where a person was getting maybe 1 – 2 hours of sleep a night, moving constantly with a lot of equipment on them and under the continual stress of combat. In these conditions, you really do need each and every one of those 3,750 calories that 3 MREs provide. Many of the folks I knew would eat 4 – 5 a day while in active combat conditions!
Seed saving is very popular today, but there are some gaping holes in much of the information and knowledge today. The techniques of seed saving are being addressed, with little attention given to the foundational quality of those seeds. Saving seed is fairly simple to do, but the results from planting those seeds can be very mixed; without a basis of understanding of seed quality, people can be disappointed and confused as to why they got the results they did.
I show why there are no one-size-fits-all best solutions to the availability of quality seed. A resilient, robust and diverse seed and food economy requires home gardeners, regional and national seed exchange programs to participate alongside independent seed companies to contribute all of their unique advantages and skills. Only in this way can the full expression of the diversity and adaptability of open pollinated seeds be realized and utilized.
Listen to the Seed Saving for Quality Interview for the full story! Jack does an introduction that is about 14 minutes long, if you want to skip directly to the show. This was originally an article in Acres USA January 2014 edition, and has been developed into a presentation and will be taught as a class later this summer.
Heat-Tolerant Greens to Reimagine Your Summer Table
Elevate your summer meals with the crisp freshness of heat-tolerant greens. From Red Orach to Red Aztec Spinach, these greens will transform your dishes.
Humboldt Elementary School Garden
Today we have a wonderful story that was sent to us by one of our customers who spearheaded the rehabilitation of an elementary school garden in a small Arizona town.
What this story means to me are the far reaching impacts of positive ripples. Small actions that are taken thoughtfully and with full intention can have far reaching and amazing results, most of which won’t be seen by the person starting those ripples.
When we consider the potential results and implications from this small school garden, we can see effects on the young students, the parents and the faculty and staff. From something as simple as the garden brightening the day of a student or teacher; the crunch of a freshly dug carrot enlightening a parent on what good food should taste like, to the foundational change of a student’s life to pursue agriculture as a result of the experiences, tastes and memories of their first school garden, we cannot imagine the number of possibilities or the cumulative effects that they can have.
This is the perfect example of what we talk about in many different ways – that of personal choice, taking responsibility for our own actions, and helping to create a more positive, better and more healthy world through our daily lives, even if it is small things.
Bart wanted to make sure that we mentioned that all garden work takes place during recess, not instructional time, and that all expenses are paid from donations and not school funds. Here’s Bart’s story about Humboldt Elementary and their school garden!
How about the choreography of those two pickaxers? They’re digging up a bed for pole beans next spring, at the base of this 15′ retaining wall, which has a chain link fence on top, so that allows for a 20′ trellis altogether. How high will beanstalks grow?
Red Risotto with Radicchio
Radicchio is a member of the chicory family – along with Endive and Escarole – and is part of the dandelion group. Chicories are thought to help with digestion of rich foods and are often served as sides to hearty winter fare in Europe.
Many folks are familiar with radicchio, endive and chicory as a fall and winter vegetable, but their cool season tolerance makes them ideal for early spring planting as well, either starting the seedlings inside and transplanting once soil temperatures are above 45 – 50°F, or just direct sowing when the soil is above 50°F. They can also be planted in the fall and overwintered in a cold frame or heavy row cover and harvested early next spring.
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – Thyme, Radicchio and Romano beans!
A little sautéed diced pancetta is also delicious in this dish. Cook it and remove prior to adding the shallot. Top the finished dish with the pancetta and cheese.
Adapted from La Cucina Stagionale
Rhubarb’s Story
Ellen shares her research and experiences with rhubarb, that unusual but loved garden vegetable.
A deep red stalk is more popular among consumers, but often has poor growth and yield. Green varieties are often much more productive. People often assume red stemmed rhubarb is sweeter than other colors but color and sweetness are not necessarily related. The Victoria variety, which is probably the greenest variety, often produce some very sweet stems.
It is interesting to note that the Victoria variety, also known as Large Victoria is easily raised from seed, but the best flavor is often the second year or later. Pull the plant when the flavor starts to diminish and replant. It has juicy, medium sized greenish to red leaf stalks, is a heavy producer and is excellent for farmer’s markets or market gardeners.
Pie should keep for up to three days at room temperature but I have never, ever seen one last that long!
Sour Cream Biscuits
Sour cream biscuits are a delicious use of extra sour cream, for a special occasion or just for the fun of it. Using extra sour cream or sour milk to make biscuits or pancakes is an old technique that dates back to farm house days when there would be extra milk or cream from milking the cow. Organic sour cream will give a noticeably richer flavor.
This recipe comes to us via “Chile, Corn and Croissants” by Joan Stromquist who traveled all across New Mexico visiting inns to compile the favorite recipes of the innkeepers and owners. She shares almost 400 dishes, from spicy Southwestern standards to old favorites. Casita Chamisa, run by Arnold Seargeant, is in Albuquerque and sits on an ancient Pueblo ruins dating from around 720 BC to the mid 1600s AD. This is an old recipe and has been updated for today’s cuisine.
These keep very well for a couple of days. It's doubtful that they will last longer than this!
You can also use Greek strained yogurt in place of the sour cream.
Adapted from Chile, Corn and Croissants
These are really easy and quick to make, taking about 10 – 15 minutes to mix, knead, roll and punch out.
I rolled the dough out to about 1/2″ thick…
Then punched out the biscuits.
The recipe made exactly 24 biscuits, after re-rolling the dough from the scraps left over after cutting the biscuits out. Ready to go into the oven.
Fresh baked biscuits, fresh from the oven! The description is very accurate, they are light and fluffy with a great flavor.
Seed Orientation and Depth: Keys to Successful Germination
Discover the secret to successful seed planting. Learn how the orientation of seeds can significantly impact their germination and growth.
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
Roasted Butternut squash is the mainstay in many delicious cold season soups, with good reason. They are satisfying, slightly sweet and lend themselves to many savory seasonings without being overwhelmed. Here’s an unusual take on the classic with a slightly sweet twist thanks to maple syrup! It is very easy to make and works equally well as a cold weather soup served hot or a surprising spring soup served chilled.
Here’s what could come out of your garden for this recipe – carrots, onions, parsley and butternut squash!
The soup can be made up to serving, then refrigerated up to 3 days to allow flavors to mingle and reheated on stove top. It can also be frozen for up to 2 months.
Reheat soup on stove top before serving, then add cream and garnish.
Compost – What We’ve Learned
We are sharing an article that we’ve written for magazine publication and has been in the October 2013 issue of Acres USA as well as the Fall 2013 edition of Small Farmer’s Journal. Compost is one of the foundational cornerstones of any successful garden, but has been over-thought and made much too complex by people wanting to make it “faster” or sell you some piece of equipment or machinery to make it “better”. It really is simple to make and doesn’t take any equipment, only needing time to accomplish. After all, who turns and works the compost in nature?
This is about our experiences and what we’ve learned from about 15 years of composting. Enjoy!
Are We At The Peak of Industrial Agriculture?
What if we are seeing the peak of industrial agriculture, sort of like Peak Oil? What if this is as good as commercial, chemical, industrial and corporate agriculture gets? There are some early signs that this may, in fact, be true. Yes, the USDA shows that all agriculture added around $444 billion to our economy in 2012, but that doesn’t mean we are growing more food to feed more people, unlike the mantra of corporate ag of “feeding the world.” Industrial, commercial agriculture is growing more commodity crops – like #2 field corn that is not eaten directly, but pulled apart in labs and re-synthesized to make over 600 ingredients in packaged foods – for ethanol, for export or to feed animals in confined feedlots.Surprisingly, the American Farm Bureau Federation was the one saying to their constituent farmers to get ready for a slowdown, or even a pull-back from the high water mark of today. Several reasons go into this prediction; less demand for corn ethanol in gasoline, less imports of commodity crops of soybeans and corn from China and increasing restrictions on GMO crops of corn, soybeans and cotton in more countries around the world. Bob Young, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s top economist told a group at the annual meeting in Billings, MT that,”You’d almost have to view this period as ‘This is the best of times.’ I’d also tell you that whatever goes up like that, sooner or later, more than likely, one has to expect, one has to think about getting ready for it to go the other way.”
I’ve said many times that we will wind up in a sustainable economy with sustainable agriculture, either by choice or by force. Either we will figure out how to grow enough food to feed ourselves without stripping the soil of its nutrients and wrecking the planet or we will be thrown off that cliff and find ourselves at the bottom, picking ourselves up and trying to figure out how to feed those that remain. The same goes for the economy, we will learn to live within our means or face the consequences.
I, for one, want to be able to choose how we move forward; to learn how to grow enough food to feed ourselves in an intelligent manner, eliminating the horrible 40% of food that is wasted in today’s systems.
The bright spot in all of this is that local, sustainable agriculture is taking off like never before, with no signs of slowing down. From younger people with no farming experience getting into growing, returning veterans taking up farming and growing both for food production and to heal themselves, urban agriculture plots and micro-farms forming CSAs or Community Supported Agriculture shares, to ever-increasing numbers of people switching to eating more organic produce and the double digit growth of Farmer’s Markets across the country, sustainable agriculture is really beginning to hit its stride.
All of this is the result of independent, de-centralized, non-governement directed, led or supported efforts of people all across the country who are working to make their own lives better and in the process, making those around them better as well. As Richard McCarthy, Executive Director for Slow Food USA says, “We need to celebrate those who are working to make a better food system, wherever they are.”
Move Over, Big Ag: Sustainability’s Moment Is Here
Agriculture poised for a decline, economist says
A Short History of Beans
Ellen has been busy learning about what a family run seed company is like with packing seeds, pulling orders and helping us prepare for “seed season.” She has also been engaged in learning and writing about the varied history of several varieties of seeds and their uses.
Today we share her article about beans with a unique twist, in how a bean features prominently in a treasured family tradition and makes the day for a lucky person. Enjoy!
Hate Black Friday? Don’t Participate!
There’s a popular info-graphic floating around Facebook that says, “Black Friday: Because only in America, people trample others for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.” Sounds a bit ironic, doesn’t it? Sadly, it is all too true.
This year we don’t have to wait until the next day for the sport of standing in line, pushing, shoving and trampling others that get in our way of that penultimate prize, the super-sale item that is so hot right now. We can start the festivities on Thanksgiving Day, while we are still full of cheer from our festive meal!
So why do we, as otherwise intelligent and thinking people, engage in this idiotic behavior? A large part of the reason is founded in our modern culture of consumerism. This culture was largely founded by the partnership of mainstream media and corporate marketing and says that in order to be happy, we must buy stuff. It doesn’t really matter what we buy, only that we must buy or we simply cannot be happy. Or successful. Or whatever else is important in our lives. This is the sum of our economic system today: buy things. This is the foundation of the ridiculousness that is Black Friday.
Compounding this is the marketing messages we are subjected to: buy things at this wonderful sale or you will lose out. If you aren’t in line at 11pm Thanksgiving night for the midnight opening, you won’t ever be able to buy at this price again. Never mind that you just might not need what is being sold; you will be a loser if you’re not there. Ignore that fact that the sale is false – 60% off of a 300% markup on something that will be broken, out of date or out of fashion in 3 – 6 months, if not sooner.
What to do about this conundrum? Very simple; don’t participate. Yes, I know, how in the world will you live another moment knowing that you weren’t one of the first in line for half off Blu-Ray players, or buy one get one free cargo shorts? After all, it very well might bankrupt you to pay regular sales prices the very next day! Abstaining from participating in the madness might do a few things for you. It might give you some time to sleep in, have a relaxing breakfast and spend some time with your family or friends. You know, those people that you text, instant message, Pin to their boards with recipes and ideas for the bathroom, along with “like” and comment on their walls. Those people.
Another option that has been ignored until lately is shopping locally. If you absolutely just have to get out there the day after Thanksgiving and spend money, then go see your friendly neighborhood Mom and Pop store. They will most likely also have some sales on things that can’t be found at the big box stores, along with a smile and a warm welcome.
The online world will also be patiently waiting with no lines, shoving or trampling. There might be the same junk on sale, but there are also some jewels to be found. Sure, you might not be able to take your plunder home right now, but you won’t have cost some employee their holiday, and you will get to enjoy your treasures twice; once when you buy them and again when they arrive at your door in a few days, with no lost sleep or black eyes.
Staying away from the malls and Wal-Marts will give you the smug satisfaction that you haven’t been instrumental in forcing someone to give up their holiday in order to ring up the must-have worthless material purchases that are killer deals for today only. It validates the idea that there are some things that are more important than consumerism and material stuff, things, toys and gadgets. Opting out of Black Friday may give you more than just a few more hours to enjoy some quiet time with your family. It just might give you a little more humanity.
Black Friday
Leeks: Not Just for Stews
Leeks are thought of (when they are thought of at all) as a base for winter soups and stews. But they deserve far more attention than a bit player in a winter’s tale. Although the leek is a member of the onion family, the flavor is more subtle and refined than the standard onion.
An Ancient Delicacy
Leeks have been around, and enjoyed, for a very long time. They were part of the diet of the workers who built the Egyptian pyramids, and the ancient Romans were particularly fond of them. In fact, the first century Roman Cookery of Apicius includes seventeen recipes for leeks. Among them are mouthwatering recipes such as leeks stewed with shell beans in white wine, leek sauce with pepper for braised meats, fish fillets with leeks and coriander, and leeks with truffles.
Leeks Around the World
The Roman tradition continues all over Europe and the Middle East, where nearly every shopper’s market basket contains a pound or more of leeks – slender ones in spring and summer, and nice big fat ones in fall and winter. Even the biggest, scariest leeks become tender and mild after a brief cooking, so don’t let big leeks – or the dirt often found in them – put you off.
They are excellent in sauces, vegetable dishes, soups, casseroles, and stir-fries. And they are naturally low in calories and an excellent source of Vitamin C, iron, and fiber.
Simple, Hearty and Delicious
The best way to enjoy healthy, seasonal produce is to buy it from your local community farmer. To locate the farmers’ market or CSA nearest you, visit www.localharvest.org.
Farm Fresh Now! is a project of The Land Connection, an educational nonprofit that preserves farmland, trains new farmers, and connects people with great locally-grown foods. This series is made possible with generous support from the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
Aged Italian Balsamic Vinegar
Italian Balsamic vinegar is pretty amazing, as even the “everyday” variety is highly tasty. Surprisingly, the traditional balsamic vinegar isn’t “true” vinegar in the classic sense of a fermented product that is removed from the fermentation after a specific period of time such as apple cider, wine or rice vinegar. Balsamic vinegar remains in the fermentation vessels for the entire time it is aging. It has been made in the Modena and Reggio Emilia regions since the Middle Ages, being mentioned as an established and highly regarded product in documents from 1046.
Traditional balsamic vinegar is produced by reducing pressed Trebbiano and Lambrusco grapes over low heat until the desired syrupy consistency is reached, called mosto cotto in Italian. This syrup, called a “must” is then aged for a minimum of 12 years in a series of seven barrels of successively smaller sizes. The barrels or casks are made of different woods such as chestnut, acacia, cherry, oak, mulberry, ash, and in the past, juniper. The results of this aging is a thick liquid that is a rich, glossy deep brown with complex flavors and aromas from the grapes and different woods that they’ve absorbed over time. The typical time for aging is 12, 18, 25, 50 and up to 100 years in those assorted wooden casks. No sampling is allowed until the aging is finished, and then a unique method of production is put into motion. A small amount of finished balsamic vinegar is drawn from the smallest and oldest cask, with each cask being topped off from the next largest and youngest cask. This happens once a year and is called “in perpetuum”. This is one of the reasons that certified traditionally produced balsamic vinegar can cost upwards of $150 – $400 for a 100ml bottle!
While we were at the Slow Food Terra Madre event in Turino, Italy last October, we were fortunate enough to be invited to sample several traditional balsamic vinegars produced in the Modena region, and certified as traditionally made. It seems that being tall, from Arizona and wearing my Australian Akubra hat gave us an open invitation with many of the food vendors that were eager to talk about the American West and share their culture!
This is what we were greeted with when he motioned us over to sample his treasures! There were some empty jam jars in front, followed by an apple and pear vinegar, made very similarly to how traditional balsamic vinegar is made, but not aged nearly as long – only 3 – 5 years. Very light, intensely fruity and delicious. We never knew that these kinds of vinegar existed.
Next he started sampling the aged balsamic vinegars. The 12 year bottle was the first one, much like what we are used to seeing in the United States in consistency, but darker and much more aromatic as he poured the small sample out onto our spoons. Even at almost arms length, we could immediately smell the complex aromas of wood cask aged balsamic. Our mouths were watering before ever tasting the first sample!
This is what the presentation or shipping box looks like for the 18 year old balsamic. You’ll notice the price – 47 Euros, which translates to about $63.00 in late 2013. That sounds expensive until you look online at what DOP certified balsamic vinegar produced in Modena sells for in the US. We didn’t taste this one, as there wasn’t an open bottle.
Next up was the 25 year old variety. Noticeably thicker in consistency, almost syrup-like. It moved slower out of the bottle and clung to the walls for longer. The aroma was much more complex and intense. The flavors really popped on the tongue with 4 or 5 flavors readily identified, then others showing up that surprised us. The flavors lasted for a long time, showing us how a tiny bit could be used for a powerful intrigue in dressings or sauces.
The presentation box for the 25 year balsamic, with pricing. 75 Euros is $100. It takes some dedication and patience to take a quarter of a century for a $100 bottle of vinegar!
We were then treated to a 50 year old balsamic vinegar. This was much thicker than the others, the gentleman had to shake the bottle a bit to get a few drops onto our spoons. It was different in that it didn’t have as much of an immediate aroma, but really lit off some fireworks of flavors in our mouths! As soon as it warmed up on our tongues, our sinuses were filled with multiple scents that continued to surprise us, coming from what was originally grape juice! The flavors didn’t just linger, they dominated our palates for a couple of minutes – to the point where we couldn’t smell anything other than this vinegar. After a couple of minutes lost in wonder at the craftsmanship and experience that created such a wonder, we took some swigs of water to prepare us for the Holy Grail of aged balsamic vinegars.
100 years of aging for this balsamic vinegar. He showed it to us, and I was very impressed that he would share such an expensive and precious delicacy with a complete stranger. I had read about these ancient balsamics, but had not expected to come across one or be invited to taste it. These highly aged balsamics are so valued that there are families that pass a bottle like this down from one generation to another.
All through this process, there were a number of people visiting his booth and a number of people were curious to see what we were sampling, but no one else joined us during the tasting. The proprietor explained in his limited English what we were tasting and the ages of the different samples. One of the impressive things that we experienced was the continuation of the flavors from the youngest to the oldest. There was a clear connection between all of them, with each successive taste getting stronger, more complex and more intriguing. It was like walking into a hall with a few doors, opening one to see hundreds more doors, then opening another to see thousands. That was what each taste was like!
The presentation box for the 100 year old balsamic is hand made of wood, with a satin lining to cushion the bottle. There was no price tag, but when we asked were told that it was “around 450 Euros” or $605 in 2013 dollars. It has been made this way since 1850 by the Malpighi family in Modena. They are truly connected with the land and the craft of making artisan balsamic vinegar.
It was an education and an honor to be invited to sample such flavors and aromas that take time and dedication to produce. It was another reminder of why food is truly important, why the quality matters and why care and dedication to craftsmanship remains a valuable part of our food pathways even in today’s ever-connected and busy world.
Oaxacan Chicken in Poblano Sauce
Pechugas in Salsa de Poblano Gratinadas
This Mexican poblano chicken dish from the Oaxacan region is another one of our family’s favorite dishes, partially because it is easy to make, is absolutely delicious and makes fantastic leftovers for lunch the next day or so. The flavors combine the mild richness of the roasted poblano chiles with the smooth creaminess of the cream and cheese in typical Oaxacan style. Add into this the smoky, roasted and seasoned chicken and you’ve got a memorable dish! We usually serve this on a bed of Mexican rice with a salad on the side. It never fails to impress our guests, with most asking for the recipe or for a second serving.
You can make this ahead of time, either in stages or in full to be served when it is convenient for your schedule. The sauce can be made up to 2 days ahead of time and the chicken can be roasted the day before, so all that is needed is to add the sauce to the chicken and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes or until everything is hot. This is best when roasted on the grill outside for that incomparable smoky flavor, but is very good when done entirely inside with the chicken browned in a heavy bottomed pot first.
Oaxacan Chicken in Poblano Sauce
Ingredients
1 lb. chicken parts cut up – can use breasts or thighs
3 – 5 large poblano chiles
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 1/2 cup half and half
1/4 lb. grated Monterey Jack cheese
Freshly ground salt and pepper
Seasoning for the chicken
1 Tbs. ground cumin
2 Tsp. ground coriander
1 Tsp. garlic powder
1 Tbs. dried Mexican oregano, crushed
1 Tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 Tsp. sea salt
Mix the chicken seasonings well and then sprinkle onto chicken pieces, covering moderately. Grill on a medium heat for 5 – 7 minutes a side, to cook about 1/2 way or more. Remove from grill.
Grill onion and poblano peppers for 7 Р10 minutes or until starting to soften. Remove from grill and remove the stem, seeds and membranes from the peppers, then dice into medium sized pieces. Alternately, saut̩ in a heavy bottomed pot for 7 -10 minutes after cutting up peppers.
Puree pepper and onion mixture in a blender with half and half. The texture can be smooth or slightly chunky, depending on your preference. Pour poblano sauce into a heavy pot, and then add chicken pieces one at a time, coating them well with the sauce.
Either bake in preheated oven at 350F for 20 – 25 minutes or until sauce is bubbly, or simmer on stovetop. Once sauce is bubbling, turn off heat and add grated cheese. Let sit for 3 – 5 minutes to melt cheese, then serve hot.
Serves 4 – 6
We did a photo essay for you to see how easy it is!
Alice Berner’s Cornbread
When we were looking for a classic sweet cornbread recipe to make in our Kamado, or ceramic charcoal-fired barbeque, we came across this one that is perfect for homegrown heirloom corn and White Sonora wheat and uses honey for the sweetener, instead of sugar.
This recipe comes from Alice Berner, who farms wheat in northern Montana without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Alice developed this recipe using their local honey and the wheat that they farm. Even without white flour, this cornbread is light, moist and very flavorful with a sweetness that is warm and inviting. It is great with a roasted chicken like our Herb and Vegetable Roasted Chicken!
The Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herrmann Loomis supplies this recipe and is a treasure of simple, honest, delicious and yet surprisingly sophisticated recipes from farms all across America.
Recipe notes: We adapted this to our cast-iron cooking by preheating a round cast-iron deep frying pan in the oven before starting the recipe. Let the batter sit for a few minutes to thicken and mix a final time before pouring into the hot cast iron. You will get a wonderful crispy crust that just isn’t possible with standard baking pans.
Ingredients
Directions
Makes 8 – 10 servings.
White Sonora Wheat – Perfect Grain for the Home Gardener
History
White Sonora Wheat is enjoying a resurgence of popularity today all across the country, thanks to restoration efforts in Arizona and South Carolina. Introduced in the early 1700s by Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino to the Sonoran region of Mexico and Southern Arizona, White Sonora Wheat was the staple wheat for the western United States for almost 200 years, from the early 1700s to the 1900s. Starting in the early 1800s, California planted Sonoran wheat almost exclusively.
Its popularity was partly due to its resistance to Fusarium fungus, drought tolerance and its exceptionally sweet flavor for baking. It was also prized as a brewing grain, again for its flavor it gave the beer. During the Civil War, much Sonoran wheat was exported from Arizona and California to the eastern states making up for lost production due to the war.
Several factors contributed to its demise as the staple variety of wheat, from expanded cattle ranching in Mexico, the droughts and loss of water as a power source in the 1950s, the closing of many flour mills in Sonora in the mid-1960s, the Green Revolution with its hybridized wheat varieties and the switch from wheat production to vegetables as dams closed off the rivers in northern Mexico. By about 1975, there were no more commercial sources of White Sonora Wheat available.
Modern Interest
A lot of attention is being paid to wheat today, mainly due to the rise of gluten intolerance or celiac disease in which a person cannot digest the gluten part of wheat in their diet. For a more in-depth look at this issue, read my article “What’s Wrong with Our Wheat?”.
This is one of several areas where White Sonora Wheat really shines, as it is lower in gluten and higher in protein than today’s super-hybridized dwarf varieties. White Sonora Wheat is an extremely flavorful semi-hard white spring wheat that can be used for whole wheat flour in breads, cakes, pancakes, tortillas, and more. By many accounts this is the best flour for cakes, breads and tortillas ever. Because it is a white wheat, not a hard red wheat, it makes lighter products that have a sweeter and lighter flavor than those typically associated with whole wheat. The berries can also be boiled and used like rice or sprouted for wheat grass.
Another advantage the White Sonora Wheat has is a thinner, more paper-like husk, unlike other ancient cereal grains that require a mill to remove the husk and then can be ground. When we recently visited our grower, we were shown a large bag of the wheat that had just been harvested, with no other cleaning or sorting. You can see the video below, and see the weed seeds among the wheat, but also the very few seed heads that have any husks on them. The husks are removed by the mechanical action of the harvester, with the remaining ones rubbed off easily with a couple of fingers.
Processing and Cleaning
For the home gardener or small scale grower, this can be done fairly easily with some hand or kitchen tools. Depending on how much wheat you have to process, a kitchen food processor such as a Cuisinart fitted with the plastic dough blade can separate the husks from the grains. Pulse the blade to prevent from breaking too many of the grains and making it harder to separate the wheat from the husks or chaff. Fill the bowl up about 1/2 to 2/3 full and work in batches.
Another method is to use a 5 gallon bucket with a paint mixer attachment on a hand power drill, either the spiral or traditional cross or paddle type. Use a moderate speed and move the mixer around the bucket to create the friction that loosens the husks. You will need to stop and check the progress, but will quickly get a feel for how long to use the mixer.
White Sonora Wheat has a root structure much like a perennial prairie grass with long taproots and a web of smaller feeder roots, unlike the simple and shallow hybrid roots of today’s wheat. These longer taproots bring water and nutrients from deeper in the soils, making the plant less susceptible to moisture fluctuations. It also helps to open up the soil when the wheat is harvested as the root system decays, leaving behind a network of air and water passages. The wheat can thrive on marginal soils and actually produces better flavor on these soils, though production volume is lower than modern ones.
With all of its advantages, flavor and nutrition, ease of growth and harvest, along with being adapted to dry climates and improving the soil, it is easy to see why White Sonora Wheat is regaining its rightful popularity! It is usually planted as winter wheat in areas with mild winters and as spring wheat everywhere else.
Customer Processing Method
One of our customers graciously sent some photos showing how he processed the wheat after harvesting it. He started with 3 oz. and the end results are pretty impressive! Thanks to Paul from California for sharing these with us!
He starts with dumping the uncleaned wheat into a sack or heavy pillowcase – heads, chaff and remainder of stems – all of it.
Then using a large, lightweight wooden mallet, he applies physical friction to the bag and wheat, loosening the hulls. This isn’t a pounding action, and he tries not to hit through to the bottom of the sack, only gently thumping the top and going down about halfway into the wheat.
After a few minutes of friction, this is what the wheat berries look like – very much the same as what comes out of the combine, but with some stalks and stems in the mix.
Next is winnowing the wheat, or separating it from the husks or chaff. The basics of this process haven’t changed since it was written about in the Bible – use a breeze to blow the lighter chaff off of the heavier wheat berries. Paul said he had to repeat this step a couple of times, but got a really clean batch of wheat.
Here are the results! Pretty good harvest from a 3 oz. start. This is fairly typical return with wheat, it should be in the range of about 40:1, meaning if you plant 1 oz. your harvest should be around 40 oz.
Farm to School Program – Local Food for Our Schools
We are constantly talking about and promoting local, sustainable agriculture and the power of an individual’s choice. Many of the things that are going right in our world of agriculture, food, nutrition and health are the direct result of the intersection of local agriculture and an individual’s choice. One such example is the local Yavapai County Farm to School program that is in the beginning stages as a result of Paradigm Permaculture Coalition’s work.
Here is the press release for their work and first fundraiser, to be held this October 18th and 19th. We are pleased to share this with everyone as an invitation to help this particular program, but also to be inspired and invited to work within your local community to create something similar!
All About Basil
For the absolute best aroma and flavor, basil must be used fresh – the fresher the better. Luckily for us, it can be preserved through several different methods and brought out in the depths of winter to remind us of what summer was.
The easiest way is to freeze or dry the leaves. To freeze, just puree the leaves with a little water to a thick consistency and put into ice cube trays. When completely frozen, pop out into a gallon sized Zip-lock bag and store in the freezer until ready to use. They will brighten up soups, sauces and can be used to make a very tasty tapenade. Drying the leaves reduces the fresh aroma, but keeps most of the flavors for soups, stews and sauces. Make sure that they are dried to a brittle stage to avoid any moisture that can spoil the leaves in storage. Use sparingly when dried, as they rehydrate and can overpower milder sauces.
Yet another method to preserve those delicious summer-fresh flavors is to make pesto and freeze it, either in ice cube trays or in 6 – 8 ounce containers. It won’t have quite all of the punch of fresh pesto, but is mighty close when you are longing for the fresh flavors of summer! Read further for a traditional Pesto alla Genoves recipe, along with a video demonstration from Slow Food Terra Madre last October in Turin, Italy.
When you are absolutely overrun with basil, consider making herb-infused vinegar with basil, rosemary, thyme, marjoram or any combination for beautiful, thoughtful and highly tasty gifts. Just half fill a one gallon glass jar with air-dried herbs (leaves and stems, everything but the roots) and fill with almost boiling vinegar. High quality vinegar will give a better flavor; consider using apple cider or rice vinegar for great flavors. Cover loosely with a lid and let the herbs steep for at least one month or more. Taste occasionally to see when the flavors have developed to your taste, then strain the vinegar through cheesecloth and fill a decorative bottle.
Mention basil and immediately pesto comes to mind. Exactly when the combination of basil, cheese, garlic and pine nuts came to be is uncertain, but we do know that the Romans ate a paste of crushed cheese, garlic and herbs that was called moretum. The first recipe that we know of is from 1863 in La Cuciniera Genovese written by Giovanni Battista Ratto, so this delicacy has captivated us for quite some time!
Here is the classic Pesto alla Genovese followed by a video demonstration that we filmed at Slow Food Terra Madre in Turin, Italy in late October 2012.
Pesto alla Genovese – Classic Pesto
Directions:
With a pestle and mortar:
This is the time honored, traditional method that really does yield a superior flavor, if you have the mortar and pestle and the time.
With a food processor:
Purists will cry foul at this, but with care a food processor can give you very good results. It may take some experimenting to create a truly memorable pesto, but it is worth it.
Serves 4 – 6
To see how pesto is made in the traditional, handmade method, watch this video we shot at Slow Food Terra Madre last October.
The following best-practice rules and delicious recipe are courtesy of Farm Fresh Now!, a project of The Land Connection, an educational nonprofit that preserves farmland, trains new farmers, and connects people with great locally-grown foods. This series is made possible with generous support from the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
The best way to enjoy healthy, seasonal produce is to buy it from your local community farmer. To locate the farmers’ market or CSA nearest you, visit Local Harvest.
Basil Rules
Ahhh, basil! Even the word carries a whiff of its invigorating scent.
But it’s the aromatic leaves themselves that contain dozens of volatile essential oils. Their relative concentration is the difference between “regular” Genovese basil, Thai basil, Lemon basil, Holy Basil, Cinnamon Basil, African Basil and all the other basils you’ll find your local farmer growing.
There are a few rules to remember when buying and using basil.
Rule #1: Use only the freshest basil. The fresher it is, the better it is. The fragrance of basil is never as seductive as when it is first plucked from a live plant and eaten raw, as quickly as possible after plucking. This is why you should think about having a pot of basil of your own – on the kitchen window sill or in your back yard. The next best thing is to get basil from a local farmer at a Farmer’s Market or through a CSA.
Rule #2: Don’t cook basil – don’t even heat it up if you can help it. When adding basil to a pasta sauce or a pizza, do so only at the last minute, while tossing with the pasta or after the pizza has emerged from the oven. Basil pesto too, should always be used raw, never warmed up or cooked.
Rule #3: Stay away from knives. The cut edges of basil will blacken and the overall flavor will be diminished. Instead, simply use whole leaves or tear large leaves into small pieces with your hands before scattering them over a tomato salad, mashing them into a basil butter for corn on the cob, sprinkling on green bean salads, or roasted eggplant, zucchini, or peppers. For more summer fun, experiment with the many scented and colored basils that farmers are now bringing to market, including lemon, anise, Thai, cinnamon, and purple basils.
Rule #4: Use basil only in the summer. This relates back to Rule #1, bringing us full circle. Basil is the ultimate summer herb. Its rich perfume evokes warm sunny days and mouthwatering combinations with other summer vegetables – tomatoes, zucchini, peppers. Sure, you can get it year-round in the grocery store, but like tomatoes, basil tends to be insipid when grown in a greenhouse or flown in from California. Some things in life are definitely worth the wait. Basil is one of them.
Basil Caprese Salad
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Ingredients
Instructions
Seasonal Cook’s Notes:
Makes about 4 individual salads
Secrets of a Seasonal Cook
Article © Terra Brockman
Photo © Cara Cummings
Harvesting Dill
Homegrown dill is delicious, easy to grow and easy to harvest. We’ll show you how! One thing to remember – you want to harvest almost mature dill seeds, not the green ones or the completely dry ones. The green ones won’t have the flavor you are looking for and the dry ones will have already dropped most of their seeds, giving you much less seed than you bargained for!
Next, you might want to consider some accessories! Puppies make the job much more fun!
Seriously, though, harvesting the dill seeds couldn’t be much simpler, even with puppy assistance. What you are looking for is almost-dry seeds like this:
Simply snip off the almost-mature seed stalk,
and drop it into the box you’ve brought. Some of the more mature and dried seeds are on the bottom, having fallen off when the seed head or umbel hit the bottom of the box.
This is what the seeds and one of the smaller umbels look like:
Once you’ve collected all of the dill seed, store the box in a room where it can finish drying for a couple of weeks. Then bounce the seed heads on the bottom of the box a few times to get the rest of the seeds to drop, empty the box into a storage container and you have dill seed for the winter and next year!
Where Does That Plant Come From? Botany 101
As a seed company we get a lot of plant related questions over the course of the year. Many of these questions are from customers looking for varieties that do not normally grow from seed. To help you understand more about the different type of plants and how they reproduce, we want to give you a quick botany lesson.
Corms, bulbs, rhizomes, tubers, and tuberous roots are the primary food storage organs for the plants which grow from them, as well as the reproductive parts which can be divided or separated.
Here are a few examples-
Bulbs – Amaryllis, Iris, Tulip, Garlic
Corms – Crocus, Gladiolus
Tubers and Tuberous Roots – Cyclamen, Dahlia, Potatoes, Yams, Horseradish
Rhizomes – Canna, Mint, Rhubarb, Hops
Many of these examples are propagated or reproduced by dividing and/or cuttings. This requires the actual shipment of plant material, not seeds. Many varieties will produce seed but are usually grown by dividing or cuttings because it is faster and easier. Garlic can and will produce seed but is a very tedious process. Rosemary and Lavender will also grow from seed but are usually propagated by cuttings for quicker results. Potatoes are always propagated by planting whole or cut tubers, “the eyes” of the potato. They can and will produce potato seed balls but almost never grow true to type. The one famous exception is that of Luther Burbank, where he collected a potato seed ball, planted the seeds and got lucky with a viable new variety of potato, known today as the Burbank or Russet potato.
When you think about fruit trees and grape vines, they are hardly ever started from seed. Many varieties, like the apple, just don’t grow true to form from seed. If you planted all of the seeds from an apple, you would get as many different varieties of new apples as there were seeds that germinated! Thus the fine art of grafting was developed.
Asexual reproduction is the propagation of a plant by cuttings, division, layers, grafts or other vegetative means, rather than by seeds. This process is used to produce plants that will be identical to their parent. This is different than a Biennial plant that takes two growing seasons to complete its life cycle. They bloom and produce seeds in the second season of growth. Almost all Brassicas fall into this category like cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower as well as onions.
So, if you are looking for a specific plant and can’t seem to find seed anywhere for it, than it probably falls into the category of asexual reproduction. To learn more about how and why asexual reproduction is used and the importance of planting breeding over the ages, study many of the early plant breeders.
To learn more about the botany of seeds and plant reproduction we highly recommend Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth. This book will walk you thru each botanical classification and how and if seed is produced, as well as regional planting tips, what needs each species and variety has for vegetable and seed production, germination details and a whole lot more.