Everyday Eden: Adventures in Edible Landscaping

Hazelnuts

2011-12-26T14:00:00.000-05:00

Just harvested hazelnuts (Oct. 2011)

Richard’s dad, Roy, was reminiscing yesterday about eating nuts on Christmas Day when he was growing up. So after some searching, we found the nutcracker that I was sure I had and dug into our first crop of filberts (or hazelnuts) after dinner last night.

The nuts were small, as we planted the species, rather than an “improved” variety, but delicious.

Other benefits: Filberts are easy to grow, requiring no maintenance other than occasionally cutting back some of the suckers from the base. The nuts mature in September, and by Oct., the leaves glow with striking shades of maroon, red and orange, making them high on my list of edible landscape crops. Some grow them as a small tree. We allow them to sucker – less work! – and grow as a large shrub.

Hazelnut leaves in October

We’ve been clearing out some of the pines behind the house this winter, opening up the woods edge, and plan to fill in with small nut trees and berry shrubs. More filberts will definitely be among them. But I’m counting on the squirrels and chipmunks to help repopulate this native plant throughout the area with the portion of their cache they neglect to dig up. All we’ll need to do is find them and share in the harvest.

Greening December

2011-12-24T13:25:00.004-05:00

One half of the mid-December hoop house

Now that I'm getting the hang of winter gardening, we have more greens than we need -- so I have my first customer, my next door neighbor Marlaine. She emailed recently: "You grow the best greens in Tompkins County. I am totally addicted. One bite and I'm in heaven."

Packaged to share

I'm still amazed at how few farmers and homeowners are producing winter greens, but I expect a completely different scenario within the decade. As the myth that we can't produce food in the Northeast during the coldest, darkest months is eroded by the evidence that we can, I know we'll see more of this.

Solstice Spinach (Dec. 21)

In fact, I initially wondered if the high tunnel was a novel luxury (the low-tunnels we used at first cost almost nothing to erect), but as we continue to harvest more than 3 pounds of greens each week for salads and braising, it's clear that it will more than pay for itself. And that doesn't account for the incomparable sweetness of winter-grown greens, picked moments before cooking them.

Spicy mustard greens (Dec. 16)

Lunch (Dec. 13)

Blue Hubbard

2011-12-12T19:20:00.004-05:00

Butternut, Blue Hubbard, pumpkin harvest (Oct. 2011)

I grew Blue Hubbard squash this year for the first time. My only previous encounter with this large winter squash was about 30 years ago, when a housemate in a vegetarian co-op I was living in at the time stuffed a Blue Hubbard squash instead of a turkey for Thanksgiving. My memory was of a huge, unattractive gourd that filled the center of the table and required a dozen people to consume.

Growing, growing, growing .... the blue-grey color comes only as the squash matures and the exterior hardens (Aug. 2011)

But I read in the Fedco seed catalog last winter that Blue Hubbards, grown around the perimeter of a squash bed, serves as a trap crop for squash beetles, protecting the plants on the interior. The beetles did seem to prefer the large Blue Hubbard blossoms, making it easier to hand-pick them. And huge they are. – both the vigorous plant which snaked it’s way across the yard, and its massive fruit. But I would continue to grow it regardless. The ugly exterior hides gorgeous orange flesh as sweet and tasty as Butternut.

And in terms of quantity of food for the winter, Blue Hubbard is a boon. I forgot to weigh the largest of the squashes before we cut it up and baked it, but we had 7 pounds of edible flesh when we were done. As for the dozen people I thought we’d need to eat it – we simply mashed and froze it in reasonable sized containers.

Arriving home

2011-12-10T14:11:00.006-05:00

Arriving home

Richard finished mulching in the hole he has been digging in the former driveway. After months of teasing him about trying to dig up the old driveway by hand, I have to admit, the new entrance to house is beautiful. The back part of the bed, formerly lawn and planted 2 years ago has a peach tree and quince, as well as mums, day lilies, and an evergreen juniper. The front part of the bed will be ready to plan in the spring. And the large stone at right: a piece of shale too large to move, levered onto its end. It serves as both a natural sculpture and a heat sink.

Digging holes and laying paths (June 2011)

Meanwhile, it's fun to compare the new entrance with a photo from 7 years ago. The former driveway is just visible in the lower right corner.

On lawns

2011-06-21T07:55:00.011-04:00

Our former front lawn

I like this dialogue (author anonymous) sent to me by a gardener I met when she came on a tour of our gardens last summer.

God said: "Frank, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to the dandelions, violets, milkweeds and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long-lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But, all I see are these green rectangles."

ST. FRANCIS: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. They started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

GOD: Grass? But, it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and sod worms. It's sensitive to temperatures. Do these humans really want all that grass growing there?

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

GOD: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make them happy.

ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it-sometimes twice a week.

GOD: They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay?

ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

ST. FRANCIS: No, Sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

GOD: Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And, when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

ST. FRANCIS: Yes, Sir.

GOD: These humans must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

ST. FRANCIS: You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it, so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

GOD: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn, they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. It's a natural cycle of life.

ST. FRANCIS: You better sit down, Lord. The humans have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

GOD: No!? What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter to keep the soil moist and loose?

ST. FRANCIS: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

GOD: And where do they get this mulch?

ST. FRANCIS: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.

GOD: Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore. St. Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?

ST. CATHERINE: 'Dumb and Dumber', Lord. It's a story about....

GOD: Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis.

Friends

2011-06-12T11:28:00.010-04:00

Bok choi and Tuscan ("dinosaur") kale in the hoop house

A rainy Sunday -- a good day for soaking the garden, working in the hoop house, and catching up on my blog.

The past two weeks have yielded large quantities of March-planted bok choi (a Chinese cabbage) and kale -- some crowed in the hoop house and some transplanted to more roomy quarters outside. I have 2 quarts of kim chee (Korean pickled cabbage) almost done fermenting and another two quarts started. We've acquired quite a taste for it, typically having a small serving along with our meals; we've missed it the past 2 months since finishing the last stored jar from the fall. Dinner typically also includes sizable servings of braised greens (a quick stir fry in some sesame oil, with some tamari added at the end), with left-overs for lunch the next day.

Harvested red kale from the hoop house

If I could only grow one kind of vegetable, it would be these members of the leafy green brassica family. They are reliable and prolific, require minimal fuss, can be harvested year-round, are easy to prepare, and delicious.

The other yields from the past two weeks are a collection of photos of garden friends. The diversity of life in our gardens continues to amaze us. The more "wild" -- that is, the more like a biologically diverse meadow or native woods -- our plantings become, the more life they support. It makes clear how much of a "desert" the typical lawn is. Here's some of what we've seen within 15 feet of our house in the past two weeks:

These gentle garden snakes are probably feasting on the numerous garden snails and slugs. Warm rock piles, like our small stone wall, make attractive nesting places
.

Harvester butterfly

According to my Pocket Naturalist Guide to New York State Butterflies and Moths, the Harvester is the only carnivorous North American butterfly, feeding primarily on aphids. We've been finding many in the hoop house, as well as the gardens. This one came to visit during my breakfast on the porch, landed on my finger, and then returned after I came back with the camera. It stayed for about 10 minutes. My friend Petula says that in her native Guyana they have a saying that butterfly visitors like this herald the arrival of money. Stay posted ...

A Monarch butterfly sipping nectar from (and pollinating)

the chive flowers.

Helpful pollinator: either a honey bee or a solitary bee;

I'm not sure which.

One of our infrequent sightings of one of pileated woodpeckers, on one of the pine trees at the edge of the woods, viewed from the living room window (early morning, early May).

Sleeping baby robin, under the eaves of the shed.

We've seen three robin's nests near the house -- one under the shed, one in the plum tree, and one in a dead pine tree at the edge of the woods. Apparently when the larger flock arrived early in March, they were so many remaining berries that a number of breeding pairs stayed. They are also voracious insect eaters, so we're happy to have them.

Of course, there are "pests" as well as friends. One of our apricot trees appears to have succumbed to a virus. I periodically pick asparagus beetles and their larvae off the leafy fronds. And the squash borer beetles and striped cucumber beetles arrived this week. I've procrastinated about putting floating row covers over the many squash, and now it's probably too late. I'll have to hope for the best -- along with a combination of hand-picking those beetles I see, a little help from my varied "friends" to keep pest populations in control, and (hopefully) healthy plants that can withstand some stress. When I find myself worrying, I try to remember that although yields may be reduced, we always harvest plenty of food.

While I don't consider deer to be garden friends, this fawn was outside the deer fencing. Richard came upon it while wandering in the woods at the end of May.

Fawn, snake, and Monarch butterfly photos by Richard Lansdowne.

Anticipation

2011-06-05T19:05:00.001-04:00

Our strawberries, planted in unimproved, thin soil at the edge of our beds or competing with larger perennials, have never done well. Still, we get a handful each day for some weeks -- enough to add to my morning smootie. Later this summer, I plan to build a proper strawberry bed elsewhere in the yard. Meanwhile, we'll supplement by visiting the U-pick Brookside Berry Farm in Dryden.

Baby peaches

Our first-ever pears

Weekend's harvest

2011-05-27T15:25:00.002-04:00

French Breakfast radishes

The French Breakfast radishes and Ruby Streaks mustard are at their peak this week. I planted them outside in late March, under plastic. Grown this densely, the mustard stay small; a pretty -- and tasty -- addition to salads.

Ruby Streaks frilly mustard

An unexpected find

2011-05-21T17:29:00.003-04:00

A few years ago, I put four native filberts (American hazelnuts) at the edge of the woods. They have grown into 6' tall shrubs, producing long male catkins for the past two years, but I've been waiting for them to fruit. Turns out they did, and we missed it! Richard found one nut on the ground a few days ago. Weeding under the shrubs, I found a few more today. One of my catalogs notes that the tiny red flowers open in mid-winter. We missed those as well.

We'll keep closer watch this fall. However, a chipmunk is apparently keeping watch as well, having built its burrow less than 2 feet from the trees. Perhaps there will be enough for all to share.

In the meantime, these made a lovely afternoon snack.

Chipmunk's view of the filbert grove (rear) from its burrow entrance.

Foreground: zucchini and bush beans. (Added 6/11/11)

Parade of Color

2011-05-13T08:35:00.001-04:00

Apricots are the first of the fruit trees to bloom

An edible landscape provides food not just for the body, but for the soul. The past two weeks have been a non-stop parade of color as the fruit trees and shrubs blossom. First the apricot and service berry bloom first, at the beginning of May, then the quince, clove current, plum, peach, pear and apples follow in quick succession bursting into flower with the exuberance that is spring. After the dormancy of winter, great joy.

The native Amalanchier can be pruned to shrub height

to keep the berries within reach

Amalanchier (serviceberry, Juneberry) is less well known than the other fruit trees. But they're easy to find this time of year, majestic trees in full bloom in woods that are still otherwise bare at the treetops. As a native tree, it requires almost no care. They can be pruned into sizeable shrubs, like this one in our yard, to keep the blueberry-size fruit within reach (assuming one can beat he birds to them!).

One of several quince shrubs in the yard.

Clove currant, like it's name suggests, emits a clove-like fragrance.

Later this summer, it will bear blue-black fruit.

Peach - gorgeous to look at; heavenly to eat.

Need anything more be said?

This is only the second year the pear trees have bloomed;

perhaps this year there will be fruit.

Free Food

2011-05-09T08:21:00.000-04:00

"Fiddleheads": Ostrich ferns, often grown in shade gardens as an ornamental, have edible young shoots that are an early spring delicacy.

Early spring offers an abundance of what I like to call "free food." Perennial vegetables, many of them native species of forest and field, are often the first plants to emerge in spring, coming back year after year with little work on our part other than to tend to ensuring a healthy ecosystem around them.

In general, perennials require much less work than the annual food plants American and European agriculture has focused on developing. With their well-established root systems, they don't need to be carefully watered, weeded, and protected from insects, unlike small annual seedlings just trying to get themselves established on open, bare ground. Many are woodland or meadow species, growing early, before other plants leaf out. They do, however, require that we nurture an ecosystem that fosters what appears to be a natural tendency toward abundance.

Wild onions are ready to harvest in early April

Unfortunately, the clear-cutting of native forests through the early 19th century means many of these perennial edibles are less widespread than they used to be. So we've been reintroducing them into our gardens and woods. The wild onions came from Richard's parents' land, the Solomon Seal from his mother's gardens, and the Ostrich fern from last year's Cooperative Extension plant sale (gardener unknown). I think I acquired the first of the Good King Henry (perennial spinach) plants from one of the vendors at the Ithaca's farmers market.

I am delighted that both the wild onions and Ostrich ferns -- both planted in the moist soil near the stream -- have begun to naturalize and spread. We've been digging small quantities of the former for the past two years, while waiting for the latter -- the source of delectable (and expensive) "fiddlehead" ferns found in gourmet groceries and upscale restaurants -- to create a more sizable colony. In the meantime, we tasted a few fiddleheads from my friend Alicia's gardens. Sauteed in some sesame oil, they were wonderful.

The Good King Henry, which like other wild spring edibles tolerates shade, is planted in the front gardens. I rarely get around to cutting off seed heads, so our crop has grown as it has seeded itself. Unlike domesticated spinach, Good King Henry requires little tending and continues to produce sizable leaves throughout the summer heat. While older leaves need to be briefly cooked (to remove the oxalic acid common to this family of plants), it freezes well and serves as a wonderful spinach substitute for winter soups and stews.

Good King Henry, a perennial spinach,

produces edible leaves through the summer heat

Solomon Seal, a common "ornamental" in many shade gardens, can be harvested as young shoots (before the leaves open) and cooked and eaten like asparagus. While it will never replace the tender, delicate taste of asparagus, it also doesn't need the fertilizing, mulching, watering, and general tending that asparagus requires. So we have and tend our asparagus patch, but we also appreciate the early Solomon Seal shoots.

Solomon Seal shoots can be cooked like asparagus

Asparagus shoots: one of the few "fussy" perennials

Of course, there are also the perennial salad and cooking "greens" that I have already been writing about: sorrel, Sweet Cicely, and the mints.

The ramps (wild leeks) are a new addition this year. Richard's dad dug them for us from his brother Dick's land, and Richard planted them in various locations throughout the woods. An early spring delicacy, the slow-to-mature wild leeks are also an indicator species, signaling the health of the surrounding forest. So we'll watch and hope they establish themselves, and do our part to dig them judiciously and help them spread.

Ramps (wild leeks) are a wonderful addition to early spring omelets.

Firsts and lasts

2011-04-25T22:27:00.005-04:00

This is the season of "firsts" and "lasts." Nearly every day, we have our first of something. Saturday, it was the first bitter dandelion greens and licorice-like sweet cicely in our 14-ingredient salad (along with the mustard, mache, claytonia, minutina, lettuce, spinach, arugula, radish, and beet leaves from the hoop house that we've been eating for months, and the primrose, viola flowers and chives from the garden that we began eating last week). We also shared the last jar of frozen peaches, which still tasted just like summer.

Sweet cicely: The edible leaves and seed pods of this

shade-happy perennial taste like licorice

Edible primrose flowers also love shade

The chives are coming up so fast we can almost see them grow

Tonight, dinner was a pureed potato-leek-chard-sorrel soup, a recipe I found in my "Healthy Slow Cooker" cookbook, and one worth making again. I had dug the last overwintered leeks from the garden (protected by straw) a few weeks ago. The chard was the last of leafy greens from the freezer. The vegetable stock was also the last jar. The sorrel, on the other hand, is just coming into its own in the herb bed outside the south-facing kitchen door. Each year, we have talked about using more of it; I was glad to find a simple recipe perfect for these still-chilly spring evenings that used fresh food at its peak. For dessert, we ate the last container of rhubarb-strawberry compote. I also finished the last handful of blueberries at breakfast.

Young lemony sorrel

The large chest freezer in our "mud room" is now almost empty; the last two bags of pole beans, packages of meat, and a few odds and ends all fit in the small kitchen freezer above the frig. There's something satisfying about finishing off the treats of last season, just as this year's crops are ready to pick. It signals a clear cycle that is often lost in what Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) called the U.S.'s "promiscuous, anything anytime" food culture. There will be more blueberries, strawberries, and peaches all in their time, and not too far off either. But first, we have the sorrel, and dandelion greens and sweet cicely to savor.

Gifts

2011-04-02T13:12:00.013-04:00

Spring green: moss growing on a log in the woods

This was a weekend of finding and sharing gifts. Richard and I wandered through the woods this morning, celebrating signs of spring growth and more evidence that the pileated woodpeckers (one breeding pair, more?) are here and apparently thriving.

Another pileated woodpecker hole

During these walks, Richard checks on the growth of the hickories, cherries and other trees that he is coming to know well. He points out to me those that have died, which he plans to turn into next winter's heating wood, and the live ones to be culled (also destined for heating wood) so that others nearby can flourish.

Fungi growing on a log

It is easy during these walks to be aware that we are part of a larger system, and that our health and well-being depends on its health and well-being. Food, heat, clothing, shelter -- all take time and labor to produce. But mostly, in our society, that time and labor is generally invisible to those of us who merely consume these products. That leaves us without the information that could help us more easily make sustainable choices about what and how much to consume. As I watch the time it takes for a tree to grow, and see the labor it takes to fell and split the wood, It is easier to remember what is required to enable us to warm the house in the coldest months. It is no longer invisible or taken for granted.

Last year's logs stocked to dry for next winter's heat.

So, too, with the growing of food. There is a different appreciation when I sit to eat a plate of braised greens that I've tended and helped to grow. There is abundance in our yard, but it is not abundance that I am drawn to overeat. That is reserved for products I merely consume, where the time, labor and "inputs" required to produce them remains invisible to me.

The food we produce ourselves seems to me always a gift, and like all gifts, it easiest to enjoy in moderate amounts, and when it is shared with others. By now, the hoop house salad greens are growing faster than we can eat them. Yesterday, I prepared a large salad to take to my synagogue yesterday for Shabbat lunch. This afternoon, I picked more of the hoop house bounty and walked up the road, dropping off bags of early spring salad greens with the neighbors. A chance to say "hello" and share these gifts.

Please, March ...

2011-03-26T14:25:00.011-04:00

Someone was feeling playful at Cornell this week. The marquee outside the student union, which usually spells out the names of films playing in the theater inside, read instead: "Please March go out like a lamb. Please."

In contrast to last year's early spring, winter's chill is lingering this year. The hardiest of the perennial foods are just pushing through the cold soil - the nearly neon red-orange knobs of rhubarb and the first needle-like spikes of chives.

Rhubarb knobs (future leaves) pushing through the ground

The first chive spears

Still, I mind the "lion" of this month less than I would have in the past, for the greens in the hoop house are growing ferociously. The scallions, dormant and only partially grown all winter, are filling out. The claytonia, arugala and mustard are nearly at their peak. The mizuna has begun to bolt, providing some mini broccoli-like florets and a burst of cheerful yellow (edible) flowers. The rosettes of mache leaves are elongating, warning that they, too, will soon bolt to seed.

Overwintered scallions are filling out

Arugala

Claytonia

"Green Wave" mustard - very hot!

The mizuna (an Asian green) is starting to bolt

As for the needed promise of spring, the lettuce, kale and other seeds I planted in mid-February are now seedlings.

Lettuce seedlings in hoop house

All this growth means some added work, as the beds now need to be watered regularly. With night-time temperatures still well below freezing, it's too cold to set up the hose, so we carry a large watering can back and forth. About six trips in all. Our reward for our labor: large servings of braised mizuna and sides of the tastiest salad leaves.

I Still Believe in Spring

2011-03-06T16:50:00.003-05:00

Wondering if they should return south?

The flock of robins is back in our yard this afternoon, devouring the remaining buckthorn berries and, I assume, trying to stay warm. I wonder if they are appalled as I am at yet more snow, arriving just after a series of warm, sunny days melted almost all of winter's white mounds.

Still, signs of the changing season continue to appear. Yesterday, Richard took me out to the large cottonwood at the end of our driveway. The base of the tree was surrounded by a substantial pile of relatively fresh wood chips.

Looking up ... way up, we saw the unmistakable large, deep, oval hole of a pileated woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in the northeast U.S.

A pileated woodpecker's work

We rarely see either of the dramatic, but shy, mates (or their offspring) that we assume still nest in our woods, but it is nice to find signs that they are still around.

Signs of Spring

2011-03-02T17:40:00.005-05:00

Snow still covers most of the ground, but the stones under the shoveled paths radiated enough warmth yesterday to delight us with the sight of bare ground ...

Bare ground begins to appear

Kat was delighted too!

Kat relishing sun-warmed stones

Today, I came home from work to find an enormous flock of robins in the yard, savoring the buckthorn berries and picking seeds from the beds nearest the southern wall of the house. I only managed to photograph one before they flew away. The buckthorn is an evasive weed tree, but I'm glad to see it used for a good purpose.

Sighting: the first robin of the year!

Fresh salad is a reality again, in more than small quantities. Mache and claytonia, two mild salad greens, are the stars of winter salad, not only surviving, but thriving in frigid temperatures (in the protected climate of the hoop house, of course).

Mache, in the hoop house, of course ....

and claytonia ("miners lettuce).

No cabin fever here!

2011-02-13T15:14:00.001-05:00

The snow continues to pile up and night time temperatures remain in the single digits, but we keep the path to the hoop house clear. By now, the growth of the daylight sensitive greens is unmistakable. Below: the rosettes of tatsoi, a mild Asian cooking green, have filled out.

Tatsoi, an Asian cooking green

The challenge this time of year is getting enough growth before the plants begin to "bolt." Once all their energy goes into producing seed, there are no more new leaves. So for lunch, tatsoi, the first to bolt, was on the menu. Baby greens, stir fried with just a bit of tamari; it tasted like spring.

Starting to bolt: the flower buds are in the center

Spring was also in my mind, if not the air, as I planted pac choi, rose radish, lettuce and red kale this morning. While they will germinate and grow more slowly in the cold, they should be fine. (Check back next month for an update.)

Richard used to tease when I insisted that spring had arrived in mid-March, just because it was sunny and above 50 degrees. Now I no longer need to wait until March to plant those first seeds. The solution for cabin fever! I'm cured!

Outside/Inside

2011-01-23T20:23:00.004-05:00

Outside ...

Inside

Things change more slowly this time of year. While some of the plants – like arugala and claytonia have been growing enough to harvest– even if only occasionally – through late December and January, the growth of other plants has been far less noticeable.

Arugala has been growing -- slowly -- all winter

Still, change is happening, even if in small ways. It is now light when I leave work in the late afternoon, the first reassurance that the sun has begun it’s arc toward what we call “spring.” Just as I’ve noticed the lengthening of the days, so too have the plants. New leaves have appeared on the kale and winter lettuce. The rosettes of the tatsoi, an Asian stir fry green, are growing in both size and number.

Winter lettuce with new growth

The overwintered kale has new leaves as well.

While these are typical signs of spring, we do not take them for granted in January. It regularly has been in the teens during the day and low single digits at night. As Ithaca’s new school superintendent, a transplant from Virginia, said he tells his mother, “Yes, that’s Fahrenheit, not Celsius.” Sunday night brought an unusual low of -10, without the wind chill factored in.

These new lows are distressing, possibly indications of the more extreme weather patterns caused by the overall warming of the planet (higher highs, lower lows, more floods in some places, more droughts in others). Still, when I went out to the hoop house this morning to check, the plants were chilled, but still very much alive. I’m heartened by the tangible evidence that it is possible to grow more of our food close by, even in the Northeast U.S., even in the winter.

On Saturday, when we had a rare day of blue skies and bright sun, the temperature rose to the high 60s in the hoop house, even though it was a mere 14 degrees outside. I enjoyed a mini-vacation surrounded by the sight and scent of growing greens. Richard and Kat joined me briefly (although Richard didn’t stay long enough to shed his winter coat).

Richard and Kat visiting in the hoop house

Wonder

2010-12-23T14:22:00.008-05:00

"As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation." -- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Ice patterns, Dec. 11 (photo: Richard Lansdowne)

Richard found these ice patterns on one of our cold frames when he went out to get wood early one morning. No matter how much science has explicated their formation, finding the image of a branching tree suddenly appearing on an ordinary piece of glass is wondrous. We spent a fair amount of time admiring it.

Equally amazing is the survival -- and even growth -- of green plants, protected only by a slim sheet of plastic, while temperatures have regularly gone into the teens and even single digits at night. A single day of sun two weeks ago, and they perked right up.

The view inside the hoop house, Dec. 11.

Close up of the arugula, one of the most cold hardy salad greens. Excellent in stir fries, too.

The new gardening season

2010-11-25T11:22:00.008-05:00

Unchronicled, the world has gone on just fine -- spring turned to summer, then to fall. The fruits and vegetables grew and ripened in their time, and were eaten and enjoyed, or pickled or frozen. Some flourished -- this was the year of the poles beans. Others, like the winter squash, didn't do as well. Still others, particularly the perennials like Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish, lingonberries, and fall-bearing raspberries -- produce with almost no attention at all. Five months of photos sit on my computer; I'll share some of my favorites soon. But consumed by other matters or not, we are always thankful for the abundance that surrounds us.

Lingonberries, native to Scandinavia, make a beautiful (and edible) ground cover under the taller blueberry bushes. A late fall treat.

Even as our part of the world transitions to late fall, our transition to year-round growing means that we witness new beginnings and new harvests. The salad greens planted from August through late September are our contribution to this year's Thanksgiving dinner: mesclun lettuce mix from the cold frames; arugula, spicy mustard greens, minutina, mache, claytonia, and beet leaves protected under plastic hoops. Beet, carrot, turnip and radish -- stored in the ground where they grew -- were shredded and tossed. Licorice flavored sweet cicely leaves, which I was surprised to find still surviving nestled under nearby branches, went in the salad as well.

Fresh-picked Thanksgiving salad.

After last year's encouraging experiment growing winter greens under low hoops (rickety ones at that, thrown together at the last moment), we put together a walk-in "high tunnel." Or as some local farmers more attractively (and perhaps more accurately) advertised, a "passive solar greenhouse." It will serve to grow a variety of semi-hardy greens (plus some transplanted dill and scallions) from now until spring, protecting them from snow and frost with a cover of plastic and warming them by trapping heat on sunny days.

The seeds went in a bit late (September, rather than August) so the semi-hardy, but day-light sensitive cooking greens are still small, but they should begin to grow rapidly in February, when the days noticeably lengthen. Here are some photos of the building process:

The hoop house starts to go up in the old driveway.

Framing the doors.

We found an old storm door at the local "reuse" center.

Richard investigates.

Margo and Kat taking a break. In the background, a "low hoop" covers mustard greens, cabbage, and beets.

The view from the front porch.

Cherries, berries and more

2010-06-20T14:41:00.007-04:00

Wild cherry, or Prunis avium ("bird cherry")

An avian frenzy earlier this week alerted me that the wild cherries growing not far from our deck were ripening. Since then, there has been a continuous parade of birds from early morning through dusk, and, seemingly, an equally continuous conversation as word spreads through the tree tops. Not surprising then, that the latin name for the tree, Prunis avium, translates as "bird cherry." However, the birds are not alone in their feasting. Grey and red squirrels scamper through the branches seeking their share, in their haste, knocking to the ground almost as many cherries as they eat. Last night, around 9:30 pm, an unusual rustling in the garden drew me out to investigate. About two-thirds of the way up one of the 50 foot cherry trees was a dark, furry shape, slightly bigger than a large cat. It was difficult to be sure in the fading light, but it appeared to be a possum getting in on the feast. Or perhaps a raccoon.

The Goumi berries are more within our reach

We hate to miss out, but have had to be satisfied with the handful of burgendy jewels Richard has pulled down with last summer’s invention – a very long pole to which he has taped a large fork. (No tree-climbing exploits for him this year.) On the other hand, we do have the strawberries, which are planted as a border along many of the perennial flower beds, and the goumi berries, which in their first full year are yielding a handful a day of scarlet-red, tart fruit.

A handful of goumi berries

Native to the Russian Far East, China and Japan, the tart but tasty goumis are a bit like pie cherries. Given the rapid growth of these shrubs, we will likely have 3-4 times that amount next year. So far, the birds have left them alone – because they are occupied by the cherries, or haven’t yet discovered this non-native fruit, or the still-small shrubs are too close to the ground (and our cats), I can’t say.

Woodland strawberries

This has also been a bumper year for the tiny woodland strawberry. Some opportune combination of rain, warm weather and, perhaps, Richard’s efforts to thin out the woods where they grow as groundcover. While it would take a lot of work to find and pick enough to fill a bowl, they are wonderful to nibble, with a flavor that is more “strawberry” than any of the domestic varieties bred for their larger fruit. Tidbit from Wikipedia: "Evidence from archaeological excavations suggests that Fragaria vesca has been consumed by humans since the Stone Age. The woodland strawberry was first cultivated in ancient Persia where farmers knew the fruit as Toot Farangi. Its seeds were later taken along the silk road towards the far East and to Europe it was widely cultivated until the 18th century, when it began to be replaced by the garden strawberry."

Snow peas are at their peak.

As for vegetables: mid-June, we are finally nearing the end of our overwintered and early-start greens; the last of that kale, mustard greens, and Asian stir-fry greens will probably be eaten by next weekend. But the snow peas – planted in mid-March, the day after I impatiently cleared the deep, insulating snow from one of the beds – are at their peak, and the sugar snap peas are not far behind. We’re harvesting the early carrots, beets and turnips as well.

Beets and turnips

The chard awaits. The cabbages are filling out...

.. the squash, beans and corn are up...

... and while weeding among mint, I startled a leopard frog, perhaps the same one I wrote about last summer. I was happy to find it, in part for its help on pest-patrol and in part, because it is an “indicator species” whose presence speaks to the health of its habitat. Once common, leopard frogs began declining in the 1970s and have not yet recovered.

Finally, out by the garlic and potato beds, the species roses are blooming. Simpler in form than the hybrid tea roses, they are far more fragrant and far, far less fussy, not prone to pest or disease and requiring little tending. They yield very large rose hips, which we'll harvest later in the summer for winter teas. They also remind me to stop weeding and smell the roses.

Beauty and Abundance

2010-06-05T11:51:00.007-04:00

Painted Lady butterfly on valerian flowers

Sometimes life takes over, and you just have to live it, attending to what must be attended to, and leaving the documentation of life for some other time. Such has been the case for the past several months. But the wonder of the world is that its wonders continue nonetheless. So even in difficult times (and perhaps even more so in difficult times), I'm taken by the beauty and abundance surrounding us.

Just last weekend, we saw half a dozen different butterflies and managed to photograph several. With the help of our small "Guide to New York State Butterflies," we were able to identify them.

White Admiral butterfly

Yellow Swallowtail butterfly on Dames Rocket (photo R. Lansdowne)

But for me, there's also wonder in abundance. Whether sitting on the porch or walking through the yard, one can't help but notice food everywhere. In the past month, the garden has produced more than we could eat, and already 5 pounds of chard and several pounds of spinach have been blanched and frozen, awaiting next winter's soups. 7 pounds of pac choi has been turned intokim chee (Korean pickled cabbage), with another several pounds to process next week. And we've eaten, and given away, uncounted pounds of salad.

Overwintered Tuscan ("dinosaur") kake

At this point, most of the overwintered greens, along with those planted in early March in the "warm frame" are done (or almost done) now, having bolted during the unusually warm temperatures we had in May. So stir-fried greens are on the menu every night that we're home for dinner.

Overwintered Siberian kale

The first of the earliest snow peas, sugar snap peas, turnips, and beets -- planted in mid-March -- are ready to eat, as are the carrot thinnings.

The first of the sugar snap peas, planted on March 17, the week the snow melted.

Harvest of mid-March-planted beets, peas, and carrot thinnings.

The potatoes, flanked by bush beans in front and garlic behind, have now been "hilled up" several times. There's some evidence that beans interplanted with potatoes inhibits damage to the potatoes. No one is certain why, but "companion" planting does seem to work. One of my favorite companions is mint, which I allow to freely grow throughout the garden, tearing it out only when it takes up too much space. I haven't seen it documented anywhere, but it does seem to offer protection from leaf-eating insects to other crops, perhaps because of its scented oils.

Hilled up potatoes, with just emerging bush beans in front and tall garlic greens in back.

The most well known companion planting is the Native American tradition of interplanting the Three Sisters: squash, beans and corn. In that combination, it appears that the beans, with their nitrogen-fixing rhizomes support the heavy feeding squash, while the sugars from the corn roots stimulate the nitrogen-fixing bacteria on the bean roots. The squash, with their large leaves, shade the ground, preserving moisture and inhibiting weeds.

Three Sisters (corn, bean & squash) bed, with a March planting of carrots in the middle. These will be harvested soon and another squash hill planted.

We planted those heat-loving crops last weekend, the traditional last frost date for this area, along with the tomato and basil seedings, and repeat plantings of beets, radishes, carrots, and turnips. They have germinated quickly with the much needed heavy rain several nights this week, interspersed with warm sunny days.

Pole beans a week after planting.

This year, we're also experimenting with straw-bale planting to increase the space available for winter squash and tomatoes without having to prepare new garden beds. We began lining our old driveway with the bales about 6 weeks ago, sprinkled them a bit of fertilizer, and watered them periodically to encourage the straw to begin to break down a little. Then we simply poked small holes for squash seeds and larger ones for the tomato seedlings, and added a bit of soil.

Our straw bale experiment

None of this speaks to the abundance of the perennial crops: fruit trees and shrubs, nuts, and perennial vegetables. But those will have to wait for another day, as its time to stop writing about life and get back to living it.

Today, and a year ago

2010-04-23T08:10:00.002-04:00

Part of the front yard, April 23, 2010

The combination of a season ahead of itself (by about 3 weeks) and the bounty from the overwintered greens has my sense of timing all mixed up. It's still April, but the garden looks like a combination of May and June. The perennial plants (center and top) are well beyond a typical April. At the same time, the overwintered greens (rectangle beds on right) are ready for harvest a month before I would normally would have begun planting, filling in what would have been barren earth with mature plants. These semi-hardy greens can withstand the frosts that are expected for another month. New seedlings (Asian greens, mustards, hardier lettuces, beets, and turnips) were planted early under the white floating row covers. With the warmth of the "blanket," they too will tolerate repeated frosts.

For comparison, here's April 23, 2009:

Interrupted slumbers

2010-04-05T08:27:00.000-04:00

I don't know who was more surprised -- the hibernating toad whose slumbers I interrupted yesterday afternoon, or me. I was digging a hole in the garden late in the day to move some of the overwintered kale plants from their low tunnel to this year's Brassica bed. I put in the shovel, lifted out the soil, and there, at the bottom of the hole was this groggy creature. It was starting to rouse by the time I returned with the camera, but I reburied it anyway, hoping the early wake-up wouldn't harm it.

I went to Wikipedia this morning to check whether this was toad or frog. The brown coloration (effective camouflage), wart-like glands on its back (also providing camouflage), and burrowing in winter (to protect their delicate skin) point to the former.

I hope it stays around. Like the leopard frog I wrote about here last July, toads help control unwanted pests in the garden.

The business of spring

2010-04-03T12:09:00.007-04:00

We took advantage of yesterday's unseasonably warm (80 degree) weather to sit out on the porch after dinner, listening to the incessant chorus of spring peepers looking to attract others of their kind. It always amazes me that such small creatures make such a loud sound.

This morning, I woke to the cooing of the mourning dove, the distant hammering of a woodpecker, some bird songs I can't yet identify, and a tapping at the living room window. Tap, tap, tap ... silence. Tap, tap, tap ... silence. Tap, tap, tap ... silence.

It wasn't Edgar Allen Poe's raven, but rather a territorial robin who spends his mornings warding off perceived intruders. Some days he's pecking at his reflection in the western windows. Others, he's attacking the side mirrors on one of the cars.

Richard managed to catch a shot of the robin tapping at the window.

After a short time, I took decided to interrupt his futile effort so he could spend his energy in more fruitful ways. I opened the window, and he flew away.

The territorial robin who comes a tap-tap-tapping at our windows.

Woodland wanderings

2010-04-02T08:41:00.001-04:00

Richard and I have spent the last several weekends wandering through the woods. Each year, we have been drawn into the forested areas (the majority of this land) more and more, learning how to become increasingly active caretakers. For me, that required abandoning my simplistic “it's best leave nature alone” mentality. Instead, I’ve come to realize that with caretaking, we can help nurture a healthier, more diverse forest providing greater sustenance for plants, wildlife, and ourselves. Edible landscapes do not end at the garden’s edge.

A large part of caretaking is seeing, understanding and appreciating what’s already there. As we note the changes from season to season, we can begin to think about what changes we will make. In that spirit, here’s some of what caught my attention during our walks.

Pileated woodpeckers dig these large oval holes in their search for insects.

Dead trees, or “snags” provide a buffet of insects and nesting sites for a variety of birds. So even as we cut down some dead trees for firewood, we leave others to become snags. These large oblong holes were likely created by the elusive pileated woodpeckers that I have seen only a few times over the past 20 years. The most recent was two years ago, when a young pileated woodpecker showed up at the massive week-long gathering of birds feasting on the ripe wild black cherries in our backyard. The largest of the northern woodpeckers, this spectacular bird is the size of a crow, with a flaming red crest on its head. Perhaps I’ll manage to see one this spring.

Not much further along, I found this hole high up in another dead tree. A bird’s nest? A hole now occupied by some other animal? Clearly, something has been pecking at the tree recently. For food? Shelter? I asked my friend Beth who knows a lot about birds. Her recommendation: sit and watch early one morning or late in the afternoon to see what enters or leaves. I'm not sure I have the patience to be a birder. But I will keep watching as we walk by.

On a subsequent walk, I noticed part of a honey comb caught in the crook of a branch, directly below the hole. Several other honey comb pieces lay on the ground at the base of the tree. Had some animal had pulled the comb from the tree? Was it connected to recently pecked holes, or had it come from the older knothole nearby?

Carpenter ant trails in a dead tree trunk

These holes I recognize. They were made by carpenter ants, eating out the center of a dead tree until Richard cut it down and blocked it up.

Anyone know who's home this is?

Nearby, five large entrances, about eight to ten inches in diameter, lead to a large, underground burrow. Beth said maybe a groundhog (which wouldn't thrill me; the deer fencing won't keep them out of the garden and I don't want to share my food) or a fox home. She recommended a good book on animal tracking; I’m waiting for it to arrive. I’m just beginning to learn to read the woods.

Shagbark hickory tree

A number of large shagbark hickory trees grow along the rock wall that marks the property line between what was originally two farm families’ fields. Richard’s dad first pointed the trees out to us several years ago. Given the height of the hickories, it’s questionable whether we will be able to harvest any of the nuts before the squirrels do. Perhaps in a “mast year,” when trees periodically produce a massive surplus to increase the odds that some will survive and grow into new trees. In the meantime, Richard found a nut still in good shape. We took it home to plant in a pot. We'll grow it into a seedling, then replant it in the woods.

Hickory nuts shells: squirrels probably dropped them at the base of the tree as they feasted on the nuts last fall.

Wild rose thickets are everywhere on the back part of the property. Beautiful for about two weeks in June when they flower, they are an invasive plant unfortunately distributed to homeowners decades ago. We have begun walking with pruning shears and a saw to clear paths to make walking here easier.

After cutting our way through one of the rose thickets, we came upon another nest, this one high up in a large white pine. Even with binoculars, it was hard to get a good luck at it. But it appeared to be a large, flat next of leaves and twigs. An owl? A hawk? There is much yet to learn.

Guesses on whose home this is?

As we walk, we talk about future plans – eyeing the dead, or almost dead trees that Richard will take down for firewood (while being sure to leave enough snags for the birds); noting the largest, healthiest and/or less common trees, and selecting the others nearby to cull. There is a rise in the woods at this point, making it relatively drier, and thus more habitable, to a variety of hardwood trees. There are the widespread elm, ash and cherry, but also beech, birch, maple, ironwood, hickory, the occasional oak, and even, we think two cucumber magnolias. We will eventually add Chinese chestnuts and butternuts as we open up space, along with some more understory trees with edible fruits, like hazelnuts, serviceberry and Juneberry to grow alongside the ubiquitous rose, honeysuckle and dogwood.

One of the few deciduous trees that holds its leaves all winer, beech is easy to find in the woods.

Oak leaves on the ground alerted us to look around for the tree that produced them.

The land drops again at this point, becoming dominated by vernal (spring) pools, natural depressions that fill with water this time of year. By summer, these pools will be dry, but before then, they will serve as vital breeding sites for salamanders, frogs, and other small amphibians

Vernal (spring) pools serve as important breeding grounds for small amphibians before they dry up in spring.

Matzah, horseradish and joy

2010-03-31T08:24:00.002-04:00

Fresh parsley and horseradish root for Passover

The more I grow food, the more interested I become in other people’s efforts to grow food. So I was happy to see this article – posted by my cousin Caroline on FaceBook – about two farmers in Vermont who have begun growing wheat and emmer (an ancient grain) to make handmade, wood-fire-baked matzah (marketed under the name Vermatzah) for Passover. The farmers, Doug Freilich and Julie Sperling, of Naga Bakehouse, said they wanted to show what was possible and help keep the land in their area in a productive state. Working with the Heritage Wheat Conservancy and University of Vermont Extension, they are reintroducing wheat varieties once grown in New England but now forgotten. They are also re-connecting traditions.

Such efforts to re-localize food production emphasize the “re-“, reminding people that the recent interest in “local food systems” is anything but recent. It brought to mind an article written by Anna Bender, a distant cousin of my great-grandmother Hannah (Anna) Kaplan Gabrielovich. Anna wrote:

In early March 1900, in the village of Chomsk, on the Polish-Russian border, a group of happy, excited relatives and friends gathered in the kitchen of one of their number whose oven was the largest and best of all the others. I was eight years old at the time, bursting with pride that I was to be a real part of the matzoth baking for the Passover holiday. It would be my task to sift and measure the flour, which had been reaped and ground from specially sown seed for this occasion. My badge of honor, when it was over, was to be covered from head to foot with a fine coating of that holiday flour … [T]he flour [was] taken from me to be mixed and rolled, shaped and baked. Since it was hand-made matzoth the shaping was imperfect, but the love that went into it can never be equaled by the perfectly measured product turned out by factories. ....

When the matzoh were ready they were taken from the oven and distributed equally. A new barrel that had never before been used was lined by Grandfather with straw made of new-mown hay and our family’s share of the matzoth was layered. When the careful packing was done, the barrel was covered with a handwoven, linen cloth. Then it was strapped to Grandfather’s back and he climbed the wooden ladder to the open attic where the matzoth were to be stored until the happy night a month away when the story of our liberation … would be celebrated. The hastily baked, unleavened bread which the Israelites took with them when they fled is called “the bread of our affliction,” but I know it only as the bread of my joy. … (Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 6, 1979.)

Fresh horseradish root

We don’t grow wheat (at least not yet), and we have no choice but to eat the “perfectly measured” factory product. But we do grow, grate and preserve our own horseradish. I started my horseradish plot with a piece of root from Caroline’s father Norman’s garden in western Massachusetts. (A “piece of root” is all you need to grow a sizeable crop of this rather aggressive plant.) Put it in an out-of-the way spot, and dig it up when you need some – especially early spring and late fall. We put some in our vegetable garden proper, knowing better, but we don’t much mind cutting back the large leaves when they threaten to overwhelm nearby plants and digging almost all of it out each year, knowing that the many “bits” of root left behind will grow again the next year. And I suspect that it acts as a deterrent to some soil-dwelling “pests.”

Making horseradish relish

Preparing horseradish relish is easy. Wash and peel the root. Grate (a food processor works fine). Salt if you wish. Scoop into small jars. Add enough white vinegar to saturate the mixture. The grated root will absorb some of the vinegar, so check back and add more if needed. The relish stores well in the frig for months, but it’s fieriest when it’s fresh.

Last night, we brought our homemade horseradish relish to my synagogue’s community sedar. The fiery, pungent mixture – along with surprised gasping, reddened faces, and lots of laughter – was a hit among the friends at our table, as we repeatedly downed “Hillel sandwiches” (sweet haroset and hot horseradish between two pieces of matzah.) The commercial variety provided in small bowls couldn’t compare. One couple at our table was moving into a new home this summer; we promised them a “piece of root” once they got settled.

As Anna Bender knew, there is both pride and joy in the preparing, as well as the eating and sharing, of special foods. Especially when family and friends are involved. I’m glad to see that tradition continue.

Horseradish photos, Nov. 2009.

Spring equinox salad

2010-03-27T22:49:00.001-04:00

Having so many greens growing in the yard has lulled me into a false sense of time. Yesterday’s thirty degree high and last night’s low in the teens reminded me that it is not yet the end of March. In the past, I would only be thinking about my spring garden at this point, with planting still at least six weeks away. Frosts are likely here through mid-May, with the possibility of frost extending through Memorial Day.

Mid-morning today, there was still ice on the water collecting in low spots in the yard.

So I was glad to curl up last night with some books Richard brought home from the Cornell libraries. I have been wanting to read Helen and Scott Nearings’ now classic Living the Good Life, describing their half century of homesteading in Vermont and Maine from the late 1920s though the 1970s. While looking for it, Richard also found another of their books, Building And Using Our Sun-Heated Greenhouse: Grow Vegetables All Year-Round (1977). In it, the Nearings describe how they achieved near self-sufficiency in growing vegetables, even in New England, where winters reach 40 degrees below zero. They cite other farmers, writing in the 1930s, who knew how to do the same thing. The “trick” is to select near-hardy greens (they focused on kale, chard, lettuce, escarole, parsley, celery, and leek) and then give them minimal protection.

Turnip greens. Protected by a low tunnel, they have been growing many tender new leaves.

The result is a spring equinox salad that rivals salads I used to be proud to harvest in June. With the spurt of new growth appearing in the overwintered plants in the low tunnels, I harvested a pound of greens this week. Mache and claytonia still make up the bulk of the salad. But there is now enough Tuscan kale, Asian savoy, fresh turnip leaves, spinach, red beet leaves, and mustard to add variety.

Baby tuscan ("dinosaur") kale leaves are great in salad.

Two viola plants (Johnny Jump-Ups) wound up near some straw this winter and have greeted the sporadic warm days with a profusion of purple blooms.

Semi-hardy violas (Johnny Jump-Ups) are one of the earliest of the edible flowers.

Nearby, I found some arugala that overwintered as well. Some greens are sufficiently hard -- think kale and arugula -- that they will overwinter without any protection beyond a blanket of snow, resuming growth as soon as temperatures climb above freezing.

Spicy arugula can survive winter with no more than a blanket of snow for protection from the cold.

Last weekend, we dug some wild onions Richard had planted near the stream. And today, the first edible primrose flowers opened.

Edible primrose flowers

I knew – before reading the Nearings’ work – that the knowledge of year-round vegetable production in temperate climates has been around even longer than the past half century. Maine farmer-researcher Elliot Coleman, whose experiments, example, and writings about four-season harvests builds upon the Nearings’ work – and have inspired our own efforts – has translated 18^th and 19^th century French texts that describe how Parisian market gardeners practiced intensive year-round gardening in greenhouses heated only by decomposing manure. They took their vegetables to market daily, filled their empty carts with horse manure from the city’s stables, and returned home. Farming 6% of the land area of Paris, they provided the city’s inhabitants with vegetables year-round in a latitude similar to our own.

Still, I found myself astounded and appalled at the extent to which direct evidence that vegetables could be grown year-round in the northeast U.S. had been marginalized, ignored, and even denied. For most people, it has long been common “knowledge” that the growing season here extends from Memorial Day to Labor Day. But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this kind of growing is suitable for home gardeners and small farmers, not agribusiness. There have not been large profits to be made in promoting it.

Low tunnel spinach

And yet, the salad greens I have been growing require minimal labor and few costs. I tossed some seeds in the ground in September. Richard cut some wire hoops. We threw some plastic on top and weighted it down with stones. There has been almost no weeding and, once the weather turned seriously cold, no watering. Also no pests. Cold fingers while picking greens has been a small trade-off for the absence of cabin fever. After all, when green plants are growing – and ready to harvest – in February and March, winter starts to feel like spring.

The honeybees arrive

2010-03-19T11:04:00.006-04:00

The landscape changes so quickly this time of year. Ten days ago, eighteen inches of snow covered the ground. Today, the snow is gone, except for a few isolated patches in the woods, and neighborhood honeybees have discovered the crocuses and winter aconites that seem to appear almost overnight.

In the tunnels, the overwintered spinach, kale and chard is growing rapidly. Next year, I think I’ll plant an entire bed of spinach late in the fall. These went in after the squash and beans succumbed to the first killing frost, too late to grow enough leaves for a fall or winter crop, but apparently perfect timing for establishing enough of a root system to be ready for an early spring growth spurt.

Spinach, wild onion and baby leek

The hardy greens – planted in the warm frame just under two weeks ago – are also doing well. The combination of the warmth from the composting manure, the heat from the driveway stones surrounding the box, and the fresh soil is paying off. The seedlings are are up more than a week ahead of those planted in one of the low tunnels at the same time.

Asian savoy, senposi, and arugula seedlings in "warm frame"

These longer days offer time for a walk after I get home from work. Yesterday, I tossed some rice into the rice cooker and went out to wander the woods and see what I could find. Not surprisingly, the stream is running full with melted snow.

The wild onions that Richard’s dad dug for us from his land a couple years ago are to dig. Richard planted several clumps on the rise above the stream bed. They have already begun to spread, and eventually they will likely form a large colony. Wild onions, along with their cousin, wild leek (or ramps), are in the small, but valuable, category of vegetables that grow in the shade. Wild onions come up in the damp deciduous forests they favor in early spring, taking advantage of the access to sunlight that exists before the trees and shrubs leaf out, shading the forest floor. These will make a delicious addition to a Sunday omelet or early spring salad.

Back in the garden, I found the rhubarb poking its magenta head above ground, the garlic beginning to grow, and the buds on all sorts of early flowering trees filling out.

I picked a small bowl of leaves from the overwintered kale and Asian greens to toss in the fried rice, along with one of the remaining bags of frozen snap peas from last spring. Dinner was on the table in short order, not hindered by my wandering at all.

Planting Time!

2010-03-13T11:59:00.008-05:00

No, this isn’t an early April Fool’s joke. It is, however, a sign of my compulsiveness. Day-light sensitive, winter hardy greens begin to regrow as soon as days are long enough, around mid-February. And I take seriously the directions on the seed packages that say “as soon as the ground can be worked.” Or maybe it’s just as Richard says, “the sun comes out for a few minutes and Margo thinks it’s spring!”

Our wonderful neighbors had plowed the driveway and shoveled out the path to the front door before we got home from North Carolina. And my Fedco seed order had arrived while we were gone. The anticipation was too much. So last Saturday, I decided to dig out one of the low tunnels. Richard helped.

Digging ...

Over the next few days, he dug out several more tunnels. As he asked, who’s the craziest, the one who leads, or the one who follows!

Digging ...

Dug! Next year, we'll definitely use PVC pipe instead of wire for hoops. Who knew this would really work?

Under the hoops, the greens were still doing fine, and the soil was warm. Some of the greens (like the claytonia, mâche and beet leaves) didn't look at all fazed by the cold.

Claytonia (miner's lettuce) barely looks stressed (March 6)

A salad of claytonia, mâche, beet leaves and radishes (March 6)

Others, like the overwintered kale, spinach, chard and Asian greens were already starting to grow new leaves. There were also still some radishes (which were still crispy) and turnips (which we haven’t eaten yet).

Overwintered under a hoop, the kale already shows significant new growth after only a few days on sun (March 13)

Asian savoy is growing well, too (March 13)

I also put together the cold frames in the old driveway. More snow to dig out to make a place! A phone call confirmed that our neighbors at Angel Tree Alpaca Farm had 7 buckets of manure sitting in the barn. I wish I had a picture of us hauling the buckets from the barn to the road with a plastic sled – 2 buckets at a time!

Warm frames: Manure composting on the bottom, planting mix on top. Once the seeds are in, old storm windows, free from a local re-use center, will go on top.

On Sunday, I planted a number of salad and cooking greens – spinach, a spicy mustard mix, pac choi, Asian savoy, senposi, mispoona, and more mâche – as well as scallions in the bare spots of the tunnels and in one of the cold frames.

Wednesday, before heading to work, it was the sugar snap and snow peas. Friday, beet and radish seeds went in. Today it’s rainy and chilly, so the second warm frame plantings are postponed until tomorrow.

Tasting newly uncovered arugula

Of course, the sensible way to do all this would have been to wait until this weekend, when most of the snow has now melted of its own accord. But I’m not very patient! And I love the challenge of seeing how far I can extend the growing season – pushing the ends both earlier and later until they almost meet. This year, the first seeds were planted a week earlier than last year and two weeks earlier than the year before. And the harvest, although minimal, continues. Fortunately, we still have a few jars of zucchini and pumpkin soups, several containers of berries, and more than a few bags of snow peas and beans left in the freezer.

Finding Spring II

2010-03-02T11:35:00.004-05:00

There's something very hopeful about a newly dug garden -- all that promise in your mind's eye of what's to come. Perhaps that is why spring is such a favored season. No weeds yet to pull. No insect damage to problem-solve. Just hope and promise. For me, it's especially fun to help someone dig a brand new garden. Each patch that's dug seems to inspire someone else to grap a shovel and start digging too. That's how change begins.

Yesterday was another sunny day, in the mid-50s. Rain and cooler temperatures were predicted for today (correctly as it turns out), with warmer temperatures returning by the weekend. Perfect planting weather. So we worked to finish the rabbit-proof fence ....

... and to get the seeds and cabbage and broccoli transplants in.

Early sugar snap peas will climb the outer garden fence (left). The center beds hold the Brassica tranplants, along with shallots, radishes, beets, and greens (arugula, mustard, turnip greens, and a mesclun mix). The carrots and lettuce will be planted in a couple of weeks.

While Richard and Ellen were hanging the gate, they agreed to let me dig one more bed, along the right fence-line, for summer squash and bush beans. As I said, each patch that's dug inspires another. Before that, though, they stopped for one last photo op.

Finding Spring

2010-02-28T15:19:00.001-05:00

Most years, I wait impatiently for spring to come to me. This year, I went and found spring instead. In North Carolina. Richard’s parents are here, and his youngest sister and her family. Southern North Carolina in late February has temperatures in the 50s, more or less. Some days in the 40s; others in the 60s. We saw a few flakes from the storm that dumped a foot of snow on Ithaca this week. But mostly, it's sunny here.

Last Sunday was one of those sunny days in the 60s. Ellen had been talking about wanting a small vegetable garden. I was eager to get my hands into soil. So I pulled out a spade and began to dig. She joined me. Very soon, we had a garden bed.

For gardeners from central New York, with our heavy clay soils and glacial-deposited rocks, digging in North Carolina is an unexpected treat. The soil here is mostly sand. We found two stones. In the entire plot.

One of the two stones

Monday, it rained. Tuesday, we drove around to Clicks Nursery to pick up 4 bags of composted cow manure and a bag of limestone, and dug that into the bed.

Wherever I am, I love visiting locally owned enterprises. You get to share stories, like laughing with the nursery owner about the differences between digging in North Carolina's sandy soil and the rocky, clay soils in our home in Ithaca, his hometown in southern Illinois, and his wife's hometown in Glen Falls, N.Y. (several hours east of us). You get helpful advice, like his recommendation to add limestone to counter the acidity of NC's sandy soils. And you're likely to find locally made products from other local businesses. In this case, that was Daddy Pete's Organic Cow Manure. They come with their own stories: Daddy Pete's, in Stony Point, N.C., is a family-owned farm and organic compost product business named for the Smith family's great-granddad, who began the farm over a 100 years ago. It is has been in continuous operation by the Smith family ever since. But buying local is about more than stories and human connections. It's about community security -- in this case, of part of our food system, and of our economy overall. Here's how: Earlier this week, we went into downtown Fayetteville to find a shoemaker. (That's another story: we found a small shop owned by a Vietnamese couple who left Saigon in the 1970s when the U.S. pulled out. They came to Fayetteville because of their relationship with an Army officer whose family lived here. Their son, now grown, repairs the shoes; his mother writes up the orders. We spent more time talking with her about families than about shoes.) On the way back to the car, we stumbled upon another locally-owned business, a lovely little coffee shop with the wonderful name, "Rude Awakenings." We got a cup of Fair Trade coffee (for Richard) and fresh blueberry muffins (for Ellen and me), and picked up a card describing the 3/50 Project.

Founded by Cinda Baxter, the project is simple: Pick three independently owned business you would miss if they disappeared. Stop in. Say hello. Buy something. It's implications, however, are profound: According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, every $100 spent in locally owned, independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures. When that same $100 is spent in national chains, only $43 returns to the community. When it is spent online, nothing returns. If half the employed people in this country spent $50/month in locally-owned independent businesses, it would generate more than $42.6 billion dollars in revenue. Hence 3/50. Pick three stores. Spend $50/month among them.

The choices we make -- whether to turn some (or all!) of our lawns into productive landscapes or to support the businesses owned and operated by our neighbors -- affect the futures we will have, individually and communally.

Today, Richard and Ellen are erecting a fence to keep the rabbits out of the garden. Planting cool weather seeds -- mustards, mesclun, arugula, radishes, and peas -- comes next.

In N.C., spring has arrived. Back home, I'll dig the hoop houses from under the snow, experiment with planting some cold hardy, day-light sensitive greens if the soil is workable, and wait for spring to arrive again.

February contradictions

2010-02-13T10:44:00.009-05:00

Grapevines

February is a month of contradictions. The world is turning toward spring: the days have lengthened noticeably. The sun, when it appears, is climbing higher in the sky. It is time to prune the fruit trees and vines this weekend, before they break dormancy. Under the plastic hoops, once again under snow, the daylight-sensitive hardy greens are readying to re-grow.

Inside, my seed order is almost complete. Last week, I spent a pleasant hour rummaging through the “seed exchange” drawers at the county cooperative extension office, then returning again with my friend, Jemila, who is just beginning to grow food. I was especially excited by the number of less common varieties of heirloom seeds and those from the Seed Savers Exchange. The names are wonderful: Winged Pea (a low-growing legume, not related to peas, that most likely originated in northwest Africa), Purple Vienna kohlrabi, whitloof chicory, Black Beauty summer squash, Wong Bok (Chinese cabbage), , Ruby Red swiss chard, Rapini broccoli raab, Sandwich Island salsify, Green Curled Ruffed endive.

February morning (Buckthorns outside living room windows)

And yet, when you look out the window, the most immediate appearance is still deep winter. Temperatures remain in the 20s during the day, and the low teens, or lower, at night. The freezer has gaping spaces between the remaining jars of zucchini and pumpkin soups and tubs of berries. Kat still prefers to spend most of her time in the mud room, venturing outside only when required, the rest of the time positioning herself by the inner door to the house so as to make a rapid dash past unsuspecting feet into the warm, forbidden territory.

Kat (photo by Beth Bannister)

This morning, I woke to the sound of the snow plow and a new dusting of powdery white.

Embrace (Buckthorns II)

Buckthorns are a weedy tree, but their relatively small size makes them useful at the wood's edge bordering the southern end of our gardens. These two are outside our living room windows. I love the way the two trunks have grown up around each other.

Waiting

View from the living room couch.

Under the snow

2010-01-20T07:07:00.006-05:00

The question: What's left under the hoops, under the snow, after two weeks of early January temperatures that barely made it out of the teens?

The answer:

Ta-da ...

Harvesting turnips (left row). The soil, unfrozen under the covered hoops, acted as an excellent "cool storage." More on the chard (right row) to come.

"Golden globe" turnips.

The carrots stored well too -- cold, crisp, and winter-sweetened. Without the snow cover, we would have had to mulch with straw to keep the ground from freezing during the frigid weeks, but Nature was on our side. Now that the evidence for year-round harvests is in, I'll make sure to plant a lot more next year.

The snow, which insulated the crops from the freezing temperatures, also collapsed our wire-held hoops. (PVC pipe would have been a more stable choice, but our last-minute laziness left us grabbing the wire already on hand.) So some of the chard leaves got a bit frozen. Still usable, though.

And some of the chard was nearly picture-perfect, as was the garden snail (top left) who presumably has been appreciating our efforts at altered climes.

These salad leaves (under another hoop) are even hardier than the chard: Asian savoy, mache, claytonia, "bull's blood" beets.

And yes, yet another salad picture. Greens, winter radishes, carrots, and kitchen-grown mung bean sprouts.

Thanks to Richard for grabbing the camera to document. All photos: Jan. 17.

"Never treat life casually"

2010-01-15T17:43:00.005-05:00

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually.”
– Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)

Most days during the past two weeks brought at least a coating – and often several inches – of the kind of light, powdery snow that falls when temperatures barely climb above teens. So each morning, the world outside looked newly draped. The pine trees along the new driveway (above) especially caught my eye on one of the few days that the sun appeared, the green needles and clean whiteness of the snow set against the bright blue sky. The plum and peach trees (below left and right, respectively) made nice silhouettes against the snow, but offered no hint of their summer grandeur, until a closer inspection showed the patient buds.

Along with the snow, the new year began with the company of good friends and an appreciation of human creativity. New Year’s Eve, we had dinner with our friends Jeff, Stephanie, Connor and Asa. We brought salad (greens and winter radishes) and a bag of cooking greens that I had picked a few days earlier, just before the snows began. They offered garlic bread, a beet salad, spaghetti with tomato sauce and pesto from their garden, and mead from a nearby farm.

Baby mustard greens grown under plastic covered "low tunnel" (Dec. 27)

After dinner and some urging, Jeff took us to see the cold storage he had dug some years back – a hobbit-size crawl space off one corner of the basement fronted by a beautiful thick wooden door. Originally built many decades ago for a walk-in freezer at Purity, an Ithaca-based ice-cream company, the door provided wonderful insulation from the warmer temperatures of the wood stove heated basement. The crawl space itself, lined with cinder blocks open to the cool, moist climate of the surrounding soil, was filled with potatoes, beets, carrots, turnips and other root vegetables from their garden. When we went home at 10 pm, having all agreed that it was midnight somewhere, we left behind the uneaten bag of cooking greens and took with us a bag of Stephanie’s beets.

Stephanie's beets, roasted and ready for eating

Saturday morning, we were soon on our way to Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks before dawn, to visit Matt and Maria, friends of Richard’s from college, their children, Max and Morgan, and Matt’s parents’ Mark and Mary. There, while most enjoyed the creativity of a variety of new board games, Mark showed me his lovely wood carvings, including a collection of “wood spirits” that appeared to more be found than created. When he said he could teach me to carve one in less than an hour, I jumped at the chance.

We worked with the bark of the cottonwood tree, an extremely thick, deeply ridged, and soft medium. Cottonwood trees, I learned, grow rings of outer bark each year, just as they do the rings of inner wood.

In reality, carving the wood spirit took three hours. But Mark is a patient teacher, and I, an eager student. He sent me home with a tool catalog and two more pieces of cottonwood bark.

My first wood spirit carving (Jan. 1, 2010)

Two cottonwood trees grow at the entrance to our new driveway. When I’m more confident and practiced, I may experiment with coaxing wood spirits to show themselves in the standing trees. For now, I’ll look for fallen branches and downed trees.

At mid-month, those new year celebrations seem some time ago. The days are now noticeably longer. Stephanie's beets were roasted and eaten, their natural winter sweetness requiring no additional effort. A mid-January thaw is imminent, with temperatures suddenly climbing to the nearly 40, and expected to remain there through the middle of next week. I will dig around the hoop tunnels this weekend to see what remains of our greens. I intentionally left them buried for the past two weeks so that the snow would act as additional insulation against the frigid temperatures. Who, but the hardiest of the garden snails, knows what lies below.

Catching On

2009-12-30T10:15:00.001-05:00

Winter growing is catching on in central New York. The Ithaca Journal recently ran a story about several local farms that have begun offering winter "shares" of root vegetables and hardy greens grown in unheated "hoop houses" (or "high tunnels"). And the Greenstar Cooperative Market newsletter noted that they will be carrying the first-ever crop of winter braising greens from the newly established Good life Farm in nearby Interlaken (just north of Ithaca).

In the mid-west, Driftless Farm and Forest reports on their "Log Blog" that they are experimenting with a winter "Greens Share" for the first time, using a passive solar greenhouse. And in Maine, the pioneering farmers at the Four Season Farm have been bringing vegetables to market year-round for years.

The growing experimentation with cold weather growing -- commercially and on the home scale -- makes me happy. So does a freshly picked salad (above) and the tubful of Jerusalem artichokes that I dug from beneath the snow last week.

Simple Pleasures

2009-12-27T09:24:00.005-05:00

This has been a difficult month for many people I love dearly. So I find myself taking comfort in simple things -- small kindnesses; the sun shining through the southern windows, warm on my shoulders as I type; the glistening of last night's ice as it melts, like thousands of crystals strung on the trees and plants outside; and the greens that continue to grow in the midst of winter. In the freezing cold, they become ever-more tender and sweet. It's good to remember that.

Here are some photos taken Christmas Day when I peaked under the plastic hoops to see how things were doing. From top to bottom: mache, claytonia (miner's lettuce), baby bok choi, turnips, a row of chard (right) and turnips, Asian savoy, and braised mixed greens.

Winter Solstice

2009-12-21T22:58:00.008-05:00

The small flames dance

at the edge of the dark night

coaxing the season's turn

the sun's return

miracle repeated.

May the new year bring warmth, light and joy.

Photo: Richard Lansdowne, 2007.

What's available

2009-12-16T09:50:00.019-05:00

As the winter solstice nears and today's weather report indicates a wind chill of about 0 degrees, the ground is starting to freeze. But it's still possible to dig, especially in beds that have been covered with the plastic tunnels. Last weekend, I took out the leeks and carrots that were still out in the open and some of the turnips. This morning, I dug about half the remaining winter radishes. We'll mulch the remainder of the root vegetables heavily. If we haven't waited too long to mulch, we might be able to keep digging the remaining root vegetables for another month. Otherwise, they'll remain in the ground until early spring.

This weekend was also time to eat the last acorn squash and turn the stored pumpkins into soup. The pumpkins had been left on the front porch which, not surprisingly, is too cold for squash this time of year. They should have been moved into our unheated entryway several weeks ago. In fact, I just read that winter squash keep better at warmer temperatures (about 50 degrees), unlike root vegetables, which prefer much cooler conditions. The slightly frozen pumpkins were fine to cook, but they had to be used immediately. Now, in the form of 3 gallons of curried pumpkin soup, they'll last for many months more. The seeds, which we toasted, were gone immediately.

It’s one thing to read claims that communities in the northeast U.S. could produce most, if not all, the produce they need locally. It’s another to see it in action. Here’s what we’re eating mid-December:

From the garden:

Leeks

Jerusalem artichokes

Garlic scallions

Salad greens (mâche, claytonia, beet leaves, mustards, spinach, arugala)

Five kinds of Asian greens (for salads and stir fry)

Kale

Chard

Radishes (French & Daikon)

Carrots

Parsley

Sorrell

Winter savory

Thyme

Sage

Growing in the kitchen

Parsley

Bean sprouts (for salads and stir fry)

Rosemary

From cool storage

(Cool room or frig)

Beets

Garlic

Cabbage

Carrots

Winter radishes

Pickles

Horseradish relish

Dill & coriander (cilantro) seeds

From the freezer

String beans

Sugar-snap peas

Chard

Zucchini & yellow squash (stored as soup)

Pumpkin (stored as soup)

Blueberries and strawberries (picked from local farms at their peak and frozen whole)

Black-cap raspberries (frozen whole)

Peach compote

Basil, mint & garlic pestos

Bought from the market (local)

Apples & pears

Potatoes

Onions

Yams

Canned tomatoes and a few bananas are the only non-local produce needed this month. Usually, tomatoes would be in the freezer, but this summer’s early arrival of late blight destroyed most of the local crop (including our own), and limited potato yields as well. It will be a couple more years until our pear trees bear fruit, and even longer for our own apples (since we haven’t planted them yet.) And we still don't grow enough onions, winter squash and other root vegetables to get through entire the winter. But fortunately, local farmers have this covered.

As the above list shows, year-round local produce doesn’t rely on any one solution – canning, freezing, storing, or growing fresh. Nor is it a question of growing it all oneself versus buying from commercial farmers. Rather, it is a combination of all of the above. Some food (i.e., summer vegetables and fruits) is best canned or frozen when in abundance. Other veggies can be grown through the winter under cover. And still others are fall crops that store well or that can be cooked up and frozen as time allows.

Each year, we grow what we are able – limited by time, weather, space, and skill, and we are thankful to the community’s commercial farmers for the rest. We are not aiming for “self-sufficiency,” but rather finding our place in a local, inter-dependent community food system that can – and will – provide enough sustenance for all.

25 degrees & still growing

2009-12-12T12:14:00.012-05:00

Memo to self: when picking greens in 25 degree weather, use a plastic bowl, not a metal one.

Winter growing has its challenges, like how numbingly cold wet fingers get picking small greens when the temperature’s below freezing, or the way bare skin sticks to a metal bowl. On the other hand, the greens are there to be picked. It’s quite amazing given that night-time temperatures have been in the teens, and far lower when the gusting wind chill is taken into account.

There was rain before the temperature dropped, so the rocks holding down the edges of the plastic were frozen to the ground. But once dislodged and the plastic lifted, the greens beneath looked chilly (or maybe it was just me who was chilly!) but absolutely fine.

I’ve read that as the air turns cold, some of these plants begin to produce compounds (including sucrose) that act as “antifreeze,” preventing the formation of ice crystals within the plant’s cells.

So they not only survive, but thrive, becoming sweeter, more tender and more flavorful in winter than summer. These winter salad leaves also have a welcome crispness that the summer versions never do and a pleasing mix of tastes.

By dinner time, frozen fingers seemed a small price to pay for the salad that awaited. Here’s what was in yesterday’s mix (clockwise, from top left):

Asian Savoy
Mâche and Claytonia (miners’ lettuce), the hardiest of the winter salad greens
Burgundy “Bulls’ Blood” beet leaves, added more for color than for its mild taste
Spicy “Red Giant” mustard
"Golden Frill mustard
Mizuna
Parsley
“Shunkyo Semi-Long,” a French radish that is both hot and sweet

Memo #2 to self: Start designing the walk-in solar greenhouse now, so there’ll be no digging under snowy, frozen plastic near year.

White and Greens

2009-12-05T11:45:00.004-05:00

We had our first dusting of snow earlier in the week. It’s gone now, of course, but a promise of what’s yet to come. Micro-farming has helped me appreciate the winter months more. I still don’t like the cold (which, in my mind, is anything below 60 degrees), but I’ve come to appreciate the seasonal changes in rhythm and focus. Now, instead of working in the garden until 8 or 9 pm, I sit by the woodstove and thumb through the seed and tree catalogs that have begun to arrive. Outside, I admire the neatly stacked wood pile, the result of Richard’s work through the summer and fall, cutting and splitting dead trees. There’s a cycle to the year, and it feels right.

What gardening there is these days is mostly harvesting. The leeks will be fine for a while, even with the snow. And the greens are protected by their plastic blankets. The hardiest, like kale, don’t need the cover to survive, but the added warmth is encouraging them to continue to produce new growth. Some days I remember to pick a bowlful of greens before going to work in the morning. Other days, I head out with a flashlight in the after-work darkness.

Yesterday, working at home, I made it out before dark, harvesting nearly a pound of kale for dinner. Most of it was “Red Russian,” smaller, but far more tender than other kale varieties. The “red” in the name refers to its purple stems and leaf veins; the leaves themselves are green. This crop remains, surprisingly, from a spring planting of a mesclun salad mix. Most of the other greens in the mix have long gone to seed and been pulled. But the kale is still producing, too large now for salad but perfect for braising.

I wasn’t a fan of kale until I learned to cook it well. Our favorite: sautéing a entire head of garlic in olive oil, then adding the kale leaves (stripped from the stem) with just the water remaining on the leaves after rinsing them; when they have cooked down, season with tamari and balsamic vinegar to taste. Now we can’t get enough. Last night, I added some cooked white beans at the very end and served it over pasta for a quick dinner-in-a-bowl. The pound of kale disappeared in a single sitting.

Late November

2009-11-25T08:20:00.023-05:00

As we reach the fourth week of November, we have so much abundance to be thankful for: an ever-growing circle of friends, families (perhaps further away than we’d wished, but there), a home filled with love. And then there’s the continuing abundance of food produced by the land on which we live.

Last Saturday, several friends came to dinner. We roasted one of the pumpkins, and served it mashed and sweetened with maple syrup, along with a fresh-picked salad. Stored potatoes, fresh dug carrots, and frozen green beans went into the pot roast. The toasted pumpkin seeds made a wonderful dessert (along with the chocolate that Alicia brought and the Girl Scout cookies I bought from Michelle and Nina).

Sunday, I dug some of the Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes) to bring to my sister. A member of the sunflower family, this late-blooming, spreading perennial bears its yellow flowers in late October. It’s knobby, homely looking tubers – sweeter after several frosts – can be cooked like potatoes.

Last night, I took out the horseradish roots I dug earlier in the fall. Like the sunchokes, they are not much to look at. But they make a wonderful grated horseradish preserve that my dad -- and we -- love. Richard scrubbed; I grated. We haven’t tasted it yet, but inhaling near the food processor sent a fiery rush through my nasal passages and tears to my eyes. And I was worried that holding them in the frig for so long had weakened their taste!

This morning, before we pack the car, I will pick fresh salad greens for my niece, Dori, and parsley, sage, winter savory and thyme for my mom.

Along with thankfulness, food, friends and family, however, late November brings Thanksgiving, a complicated holiday, made ever more complex as we continue to learn to separate the rosy myths that surround it from clearer-eyed looks at the arrival of the English colonists to this continent. One excellent version, 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving, offers a more complete look at this history. So does the "The Real Story of Thanksgiving."

The challenge is that what most people in the U.S. learned about Thanksgiving is a mix of both history and myth. The relationship between the Europeans and the Native people in fact included at least one shared feast and some ongoing diplomacy. The early English settlers first survived only because of the generosity and help from Native people knew how to live on this land. However relationship between the two groups also was characterized by European kidnappings of hundreds of Native people taken to Europe as “novelties” and slaves, the repeated stealing of Native food stores, the privatization of collectively-shared land, massacres, policies of genocide and forced removal. Many of the first "thanksgivings" observed by the English settlers were actually "victory" celebrations after massacres of the "heathen savages." Within a generation there was a state of ongoing war between the two peoples. It is a painful story that many of European descent struggle to attend to.

The part of New York State where we live was – and still is – home to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. So even as we love and tend this plot of land on which we live, we must grapple with the painful awareness of who else loved and tended it before us, what happened to them and why. There are no simple answers for rectifying historic wrongs. But there is the obligation to continue to question how those of us who live here now, enjoying the harvests of this place, are should respond to horrific injustices we didn’t create, but of whose histories we are now a part.

Creativity and Connection

2009-11-11T11:09:00.002-05:00

I love things that are simultaneously functional, beautiful, sustainable, and help remind us of our connection to the world around us (both human and natural). In fact, for me, an object's beauty usually comes from its intersection with those other three attributes. That's the basis for our foray into edible landscapes. Thus, I was thrilled when, late last week, Richard sent me an inspiring New York Times article (11/4/09) about Roald Gundersen, a Wisconsin forester, architect and builder who creates passive solar homes, greenhouses, commercial buildings, and other structures from whole trees, rather than from milled lumber.

I learned that building with a whole, unmilled tree is more frugal, more sustainable and can support 50 percent more weight than largest piece of lumber milled from the same tree. The brief online slide show accompanying the article led me to look up Gundersen's firm, Whole Trees Architecture and Construction, and blog (see The Log Blog, in blog list at right). Turns out that building with whole trees is also exquisitely beautiful, leading to human shelters that resonate with connections to the natural world. Gundersen's wife and business partner, Amelia Baxter, a former urban farmer, community organizer and co-owner of the firm, manages a community forest project modeled after community-supported agriculture. Members can harvest firewood, foods like mushrooms and watercress, and building trees from the woods in ways that sustain forests them as living resources, rather than as raw material to be extracted and used up.

The Whole Trees web site also offers a cool "tree word of the day." The day I looked it was "thigmomorphogenesis," which, I learned, refers to a tree's ability to strengthen in response to tactile stimuli (e.g., wind blowing against a trunk).

In the past two years, we have been more actively managing the 6 wooded acres surrounding our house, selectively culling some trees so that others have a better chance to grow. Gundersen's work has me looking at the dead elm, small-diameter ash, and occasional cherry trees we have been taking down in new ways, thinking about what we might build next.

A Warm Weekend

2009-11-09T08:22:00.016-05:00

I enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather this weekend, even as I know it can’t be good for the plants that are blooming out of season. There were several flowers on the primroses last week (above), and I saw a flower and many blossoms on one of the strawberries as well.

I used the sunny weather to advantage, however: mulching, dividing and moving some hostas, and working on the flagstone paths. Richard composted the horse and alpaca manure that our neighbors dropped off, worked on strengthening the deer fence and put markers along the edge of the new driveway.

Moving the driveway into the woods was partly practical; it will allow us to construct a large, walk-in hoop house next year on the straight stretch in front of the house – the area with the longest hours of winter sun – that was the previous driveway. But it’s lovely driving into the woods as we arrive home; and it’s wonderful to sit in the garden without looking at the cars (now hidden from view behind the wood pile).

A complete change in perspective, with only a few extra feet to walk between the cars and the front door.

After harvesting a large bowl of parsley (which went into a batch of tabouli for lunch), I dug up four parsley plants, potted them and brought them into the kitchen. Several small dill plants that started to grow late summer from the first crop’s seeds, will follow as soon as I get another bag of potting soil. Along with the rosemary, brought in before the first frosts, they will be right on hand to season soups and stews.

Finally, the warm weather meant that we opened up the low hoop houses, making it easy to admire the hardy greens that are continuing to grow, as well as to weed and harvest. Tonight’s salad included several mustards, savoy (an Asian green not unlike spinach, pictured left), Mizoona (another Asian green), magenta beet leaves, radish, carrot, calendula petals, and viola blossoms. I also pulled a leek and dug up some Jerusalem artichokes. They went into a frittata, along with some stored potatoes and the rest of the harvested parsley. Dinner was, Richard said, “gourmet.”

More fall colors

2009-11-01T19:35:00.000-05:00

One benefit of this summer's rain has been the particularly splendid show of colors this fall. For weeks now, the trees have been adorned in vibrant yellows, fiery reds and warm oranges that call out for attention in the midst of an over-busy life. They remind me to leave my desk and computer screen, even if only for short walks around the neighborhood outside my office.

This week, there are still trees to admire as I drive down into Ithaca. Out our way, though, most of the deciduous leaves have dropped, nearly all blown down by Friday night's strong winds. But last week's photos of the American filbert (above) and blueberry (right) -- both planted in the north beds we added this summer -- prolong the memory. These native shrubs would be worth growing just for the fruit and nuts they will eventually produce; in the meantime, we savor the color they add to the landscape.

The small plant with the red berries, behind the blueberry, is a lingonberry, an edible fruit-bearing evergreen ground cover native to Scandinavia. Cousin to the American cranberry, it favors the same acidic soil conditions as the blueberries, making for a wonderful pairing. I put in a dozen small plants this year; eventually they will spread to cover the ground between the blueberries bushes. Surprisingly, even as we pick the tart ripe berries, new flowers are continuing to bloom.

And then there are the mums and dwarf barberry right outside our front door. Just reaching their peak, they still welcome us -- outside and in -- with color on even the greyest of days.

New Rhythms

2009-10-31T12:00:00.017-04:00

The first frosts have come, and in the past several weeks, we have hurriedly gathered the last of the pole beans, basil, and some heirloom cherry tomatoes that proved surprisingly resistant to the late blight. We stored the squash, garlic and potatoes; replanted next season’s garlic; cleared debris from spent beds; and began to mulch the berries and fruit trees. We gauged the remaining chard, kale, and sorrel, whose leaves withstand even the early killing frosts; enjoyed the resurgence of arugala which has reseeded itself throughout the garden (and garden paths); and knew that the cabbage, leeks and carrots could be left in the ground to harvest as needed over the coming months. These are familiar rhythms to gardeners and farmers in the Northeast U.S.

But for us this year, some of the rhythms of this transitional season are new.

This fall, we are also evoking rituals of spring, tending young greens – planted in late August and early September – and watching them thrive in these cooler days. Some of the crops are familiar, others are as new as the rhythms of planting, weeding, and thinning at a time when most of the garden is heading toward dormancy. There’s spinach, beets, mâche, claytonia, radishes, mustards, raddichio, a mesclun mix, and a variety of Asian greens.

The photos (from top to bottom): late summer-planted Vitamin Green and Pac Choi surrounded by marigolds, before last week's killing frost; fall-planted Hon Tsai Tai, Savoy, and radishes; claytonia ("miners' lettuce"); self-seeded Asian "spoon greens"; and an early summer planting of spicy mustards that is continuing to produce new leaves. Some of those greens made a wonderful stir fry earlier in the week (along with some bright orange calendula petals) and a crisp, tangy salad last night.

Our goal is to eventually have freshly harvested greens throughout the entire year. Our guide: the writings of Eliot Coleman, an inspiring farmer, researcher, writer and local foods activist from Harborside, Maine. The author of (most recently) The Winter Harvest Handbook, Coleman profitably brings vegetables to market year-round from his zone 5 Four Season Farm using unheated, plastic-covered “hoop houses.” His success challenges the myth that we must ship food 3,000 miles across the U.S. because northeast winters preclude year-round vegetable production.

While “fall gardens” – vegetables planted in mid- to late-summer for fall harvest – are an old, if relatively lost, North American tradition, Coleman’s work opens the possibilities of extending that harvest into the frigid, snowy months by selecting cold-tolerant crops and providing minimal protection. One version of this protection, low “hoop houses” – plastic secured over small wire hoops – is quick and inexpensive to erect. We put them up a couple weeks ago when night-time temperatures began to frequently drop below freezing.

Next year, we will replace them with a “walk-in” structure – a hoop-framed greenhouse -- still unheated, but significantly larger and easier to access.

We’ve made only a small start this year, still acclimating ourselves to these unexpected rhythms. But we hope to have fresh salads and stir-fries into the new year. I’ll write more about what we’re growing and how it’s doing as this new gardening season unfolds.

A Blue-Spotted Salamander Visits

2009-10-06T08:00:00.013-04:00

Rock piles, logs, leaf litter and underbrush provide ideal shelter for a variety of insect-eating reptiles, our partners in pest control. I found this burrowing Blue-Spotted Salamander in our garden last week while extending one of the flagstone paths through the front gardens. Richard had left a small pile of flat stones for me, on top of what had been the potato bed. When I lifted the sun-warmed rocks to lay them on the path, he (or she) scurried out.

While these salamanders live on land, they rely on vernal (seasonal) pools that retain water into mid-summer for breeding. So they are primarily found in moist forests and swampy woodlands where shady depressions collect and hold water well after the spring melt. Given this summer's rain everywhere is moist and swampy. But our "muddle" -- the hole we've dug in heavy clay soil that will eventually be a small woodland pond, along with our shift from large expanses of lawn to a more diverse ecosystem -- is clearly attracting larger numbers of reptiles to take up residence in our garden.

Warm Oranges for Cooler Days

2009-10-04T17:01:00.012-04:00

Fortunately, my garden has not been as neglected as my blog. These fall days are busy – the late summer lull at work ends with a rush of new programming and grant deadlines. Meetings seem to sprout in my calendar as fast as weeds. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur -- the Jewish new year holidays -- are most welcome, interrupting the pace with time for reflection and appreciation, but they also fill several days. And then there are the garden projects: the shorter days remind us that whatever we hope to finish before winter needs to be done now.

Richard is chopping wood as I write. Earlier, we enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather as we worked on some new paths, moved a few shrubs, planted garlic, weeded and mulched, and got the plants still sitting in pots into the ground so they can settle before winter. In between tasks, there were still green beans, nasturtium blossoms, fall raspberries to nibble as we passed. Most years, we would have had a killing frost before the end of September, but the very rainy weather has kept night-time temperatures above freezing.

In the photos I have been taking, there are warm oranges everywhere: Red Gem marigolds (above) with their petite edible flowers, and calendula (right), whose petals can be added to rice, soups and salad, providing the color of saffron and a tangy, slightly sweet flavor, sprawl through the garden.

The Hopi squash is a rare heirloom that we grew for the first time this summer.

It is similar to pumpkin in texture and taste. Paired with some just-harvested onions, garlic and leeks, and roasted, it made a wonderful soup last week.

We ate it with a raw cabbage salad (a mini, tender "Caraflex" cabbage marinated in a olive oil and lemon juice), perfect for a cold, rainy evening.

The pumpkins, on the other hand, are still ripening; they should be ready in another few weeks. Earlier today, my mom asked for some roasted pumpkin soup for Thanksgiving so we’ll store them until then.

Noticing and Appreciating Labor

2009-09-07T19:22:00.008-04:00

When I was growing up on Long Island in the 1960s, our cul-de-sac of new ranch houses was bounded at its end by a potato field. In fact, our small, middle-class neighborhood – about 40 miles from New York City – was surrounded by farms at that time. But that potato field got particular attention because once the farmer had finished driving his mechanical harvester through the field, we neighborhood children were allowed to come walk the furrows, gathering up the potatoes too small for the machine into paper bags. We’d take them home, and our mothers would cook them up for dinner. It is one of my strongest memories of the end-of-summer weeks just before the start of school.

Earlier this summer, a buddy of mine asked a group of people, “What are some of the daily ‘small’ ways that you notice classism?” I thought of that potato field, and my memories of that large, fascinating harvester and the fun we had roaming the field collecting the small, half-buried tubers for our dinner. And I thought about the fact that the farmer was not part of those memories. I do not know his name; what he looked like, whether he had a family; what else he grew on the farm, if anything; what it was like making living as a farmer in those days on Long Island; or anything else about his life. Nor do I know how it was that he invited us to come gather up the potatoes that the harvester left behind, or where he went when the farm became another housing subdivision shortly before I began junior high. (It was the last of the farms surrounding my neighborhood to “disappear.”) I just know that our parents allowed us to go play in the potato fields during those last weeks of summer.

This, I think, is one of the ways that classism daily shows up our lives in the U.S. Most of us go to the supermarket and buy our food, thinking little about the people who worked hard to grow that food and knowing even less about who they are, where they live or what their lives are like. If we are part of the growing number who frequent local farmers’ markets, we may know the faces, and maybe even the names, of the some of those farmers, but we likely still know little about the everyday reality of their lives. (One of the benefits of community supported agriculture – CSAs – and campaigns to “buy local” is that consumers may build at least some relationship with the people who grow their food. But that remains far from the norm.)

This “invisibility” is not because we are intentionally rude or unappreciative, or are “bad” people, but because we live in a time and place where most people in the U.S. are separated from the production of the food we eat, and we are encouraged not to notice. If I hadn’t begun growing large quantities of fruits and vegetables, I doubt I would have thought of that neighboring potato farmer in response to my friend’s question.

One result of this rigid separation is some silly ideas, like the columnist in the New York Times earlier this summer who wrote that he looked at the prices of the organic vegetables he was buying and imagined the “upstate farmer” driving around in a BMW. Unlikely. Most farmers I know work second, and sometimes third, jobs just to make a frugal living. Then there’s the romantic “Plan B” that the Times repeatedly cites: urban professionals fired from their corporate jobs who want to move to a “simpler” farming life in the country.

But on a more basic note, this separation also means many people can sit down to a meal without thinking about or appreciating the extremely difficult work, frequent worry, precarious finances, and often, lack of health insurance of those who grow our food. So this Labor Day (and beyond), I invite you to join me in noticing, appreciating and learning about the people who bring food to our tables.

Photo: Daniel Hittleman/drhPHOTO

Playing around

2009-09-04T09:53:00.007-04:00

My dad has become a very good photographer since retiring. (See some of his photos at drhphoto.net). I only began regularly picking up a camera when I started this blog. But I find that I’ve learned from watching him capture patterns in nature.

Growing food – especially on the home scale – need not be purely utilitarian. Rather, it is an inherently creative act, adding to the beauty around us.

Sometimes that beauty comes from shaping whole landscapes, seamlessly blending form and function in a harmony that works with nature to delight our senses on many levels at once. In our yard, we see the multi-hued greens and vivid, changing colors as flowers bloom in sequence; smell the earth and moisture with their changing scents throughout the day; taste the tangy mustards, spicy nasturtiums, sweet raspberries, or sun-warmed tomatoes as we wander; hear the unmistakable whirr of a hummingbird’s wings as it flits among nectar-filled flowers; anticipate the flavors of the dinner that will be prepared from ripening zucchini, beans or beets; or sit beneath a grape and kiwi-covered arbor, sensing, on some level that's hard to name, being a part of this life-filled environment all around.

Other times, however, beauty comes from seeing on a smaller scale than usual, discovering new perspectives in a familiar sight – as in the fabric-like foldings of this cosmos flower starting to go to seed.

Top photo: Richard Lansdowne, taken during my parents’ visit in late May. Bottom: Margo Hittleman

Tipping toward fall

2009-09-02T07:14:00.010-04:00

The world around us is slowing tipping toward fall. Early mornings, like this one, are chilly, although the temperatures will climb into the high 70s later today. The goldenrods paint yellow along the woods edge. Overhead, we hear the first flocks of Canadian geese beginning to gather. Down the road at the Angeltree Alpaca Farm, the alpacas’ coats are thickening, and further on, hay bales dot the field; late in the day, golden and red apples glow like jewels on two old apple trees surrounding the hand-dug, stone foundation of a long-abandoned home.

In our own yard, Richard picked rose hips yesterday from the Rugosa roses at the edge of the planted gardens. Unlike their domesticated hybrid cousins, the “tea roses,” these “species” roses thrive and spread, requiring almost no care beyond digging out those that have spread further than we wish. They also produce large "hips" which are high in Vitamin C. Earlier in the summer, we enjoyed the scented flowers. Now that the weather is cooling off, the hips will make an excellent tea.

The fall-bearing raspberries are ripe, too. I pick a handful of berries each day, up from the one or two berries last year.

We hope for a sizable crop in another year or two, although I worry that the verticillium wilt – an incurable fungal disease that destroyed first the summer raspberries and this year, eliminated most of the wild “black cap” harvest – may get to the fall-bearing raspberries, too. Unfortunately, I ignored the problem for too many years, not knowing why the raspberry canes flourished each spring, only to have the berries remain small and hard, with the new growth dying back by mid-summer. The following spring, the cycle began again; untended, the wilt spread throughout the garden. I’ve learned the value of a good reference book, and now have several that I consult regularly! (See bookshelf for my favorites.) I’ve also learned the importance of prevention in the health of the organic garden. We may have to go for some years without raspberries until we can renew the soil where they were – raising the temperatures by “solarizing” with a cover of clear plastic in mid-summer, and adding enough fresh compost so that beneficial organisms might outcompete those that promote disease. In the meantime, we savor these seemingly “out-of-season” treats.

Finally, there is the promise of what is still to come: the grapes on the still-to-be-finished arbor over the deck are plumping, the cabbages are filling out, and cool-loving herbs like sorrel and sage (rear and front, respectively, in bottom photo) are thriving in the raised bed by the kitchen door. Our “volunteer” pumpkins – which we suspect may be a cross between a pumpkin and a zucchini – are flecked with orange, and we’ve begun digging the potatoes. (More on all of these soon.)

Finale

2009-08-31T07:19:00.008-04:00

Life has been unusually full, with little time to write. But there's always time to stop and enjoy a dramatic show. Richard took this photo yesterday from our deck just before 6:30 pm, when the sun came out after Hurricane Danny's final deluge. Danny, my dad, may have been let down listening to news reports that kept referring to "Danny" as "weak" and "petering out," but I say, "Go Danny!"

Peaches

2009-08-14T08:55:00.012-04:00

If I were a painter, perhaps I’d have ready language to describe the colors of the peach compote cooling in the glass jars on my kitchen counter. But all I can say is that I love the translucent shades of orange, the lighter chunks of fruit suspended against the deeper shades of thick liquid nectar.

The anticipation I wrote about earlier this spring -- as I admired the deep pink flowers in early May, counted the swelling buds that became small globes later that month, and saw the growing and ripening fruit time we entered or left our front door -- is over. Now the peaches are ripening all at once, and it's time to eat.

I came home Tuesday evening from five days away to find two or three dozen “drops” that Richard had sitting on the counter. These weren’t in the best shape, so I cut away the spoiled parts and simmered the rest into compote. Most of it went into the freezer to be spooned over vanilla yogurt or ice cream, or eaten as is, some time in late winter when 80 degree days seem a distant memory. Some we ate while it was still warm. The rest went into my breakfast smoothie the next day.

Last night, I picked several dozen more peaches. The best went into a bowl for eating – minus the one eaten right off the tree. It was perfect: sweet, juicy, and still warm from the heat of the day although it was already dusk. The rest of the harvest was simmered down into more compote and frozen. I use only a small amount of water (just enough to cover the bottom of the saucepan) and no additional sugar; tree-ripened peaches are sweet enough. 10-15 minutes of simmering, and it's done.

This process will be repeated over the next several days with the fruit remaining on the tree. By the end of the weekend, the peach tree will probably be empty, we’ll have eaten as many peaches as we could, and 6-8 quarts of peach compote will be waiting on the freezer shelf.

As the tree matures, the yield will increase. And then there’s the second peach tree we plan to plant comes fall. I figure we can never have too many reminders of warm August days to carry us through the long winter. After this year, though, I’ll likely turn to canning the peaches instead. And with the sealed Mason jars readily visible, perhaps I’ll find the language to adequately describe those lovely colors.

Mid-Summer Beauty

2009-08-06T15:35:00.008-04:00

Abundance is so apparent in early August. Many flowers. Much food. A lot to do. So it's worth a few moments of just appreciating the beauty all around. Here's what caught my eye this week.

Help is Everywhere

2009-08-04T08:36:00.004-04:00

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home

Your house is on fire, your children are gone.

I have no idea where this well-known children’s nursery rhyme originated, but we love having ladybugs hanging around our garden. They are voracious eaters of aphids and other soft-bodied insect pests. They lay their eggs in yellow egg masses on the bottom of leaves, and their children (larvae) eat aphids as voraciously as their parents.

This morning, Richard noticed a huge colony of aphids on the tips of the mustard stalks. I had been planning to cut out the mustard anyway. It had gone to seed, so it’s flowers no longer served to attract predator insects, and it was shading the small carrots growing beneath. I quickly grabbed my garden scissors, and tossed the aphid-laden stalks into a weak bleach-and-water solution. Aphids gone.

After doing so, I noticed the two lady bugs sitting on the mint and dill leaves nearby. They, too, had found the aphids. Lady beetles can consume hundreds of aphids per day. This makes them a popular biological control, not only in gardens, but in warm, humid greenhouses where aphids can be a particular problem. Growers who prefer not to continuously spray insecticides often purchase and release lady bugs to keep aphids, mealy bugs, mites and other pests under control. It’s not particularly effective to do that in a home garden; they will likely just fly away. Instead, we leave some flowering “weeds” such as Queen Anne’s Lace (wild carrot), dandelions and yarrow, along with the mint the dill, whose pollen-bearing flowers attract them to visit.

Those two lady beetles probably would have finished off the colony before we got home from work. I was sorry to have destroyed their meal, and I hope there are other aphid colonies that we haven’t yet found to keep them around. It was a good reminder that in a healthy ecosystem (like a healthy social system), help is everywhere, if we but think to notice.

Photos from Wikipedia.

Never too many zucchini

2009-08-01T13:31:00.011-04:00

The temperatures finally rose above 80 degrees F, and the summer squash has taken off. This past week, I worked late two evenings and forgot to keep close tabs. The inevitable happened. Thursday evening, I found two 2 lb. zucchinis.

Every food gardener knows the litany of jokes: the gardener who slips out in the dead of night to slip a zucchini or two into the passenger seat of parked cars, the rural town where people lock their houses and cars only during zucchini season. In her wonderful poem, "Attack of the Squash People," Marge Piercy writes, in part:

They're coming, they're on us

the long striped gourds ….

Recite fifty zucchini recipes!

Zucchini tempura; creamed soup;

sauté with olive oil and cumin,

tomatoes, onion; frittata;

casserole of lamb; baked

topped by cheese; marinated; stuffed; stewed; driven

through the heart like a stake. ....

Sneak out before dawn to drop

them in other people's gardens,

in baby buggies at church doors.

Shot, smuggling zucchini into

mailboxes, a federal offense. ....*

The old stand-by, zucchini bread, barely uses a cup of shredded squash, two at most.

Then I found a recipe for yellow squash soup in a magazine, adapted it to zucchini, and my problem was solved. It’s delicious, uses up LOTS of squash, can be served hot or chilled, and best of all, freezes well, without losing its texture or taste. Zucchini, at its summer peak, can lead to choruses of “not again.” Zucchini soup, during the cold, dark winter months, is deeply appreciated. We froze 12 quarts of zucchini soup last year, and it was gone long before the spring thaw, leaving us wishing for more.

Now we never have too many zucchini. That's good, since we have five zucchini plants this year, including a extremely healthy "volunteer" (at right; the zucchini is the bushy plant with the darkest green leaves, growing among the trailing winter squash and the climbing pole beans).

Here’s the recipe. Quantities are approximate as soups are very forgiving. I rarely measure and often substitute ingredients, depending on what I have available. Increase proportionately if you have more than 2 lbs. of zucchini.

Never-too-many zucchini soup

1-2 Tbsp olive oil

1 large onion (or equivalent scallions), chopped

3-4 cloves garlic (or garlic scapes in season), chopped

1 small leek, if available (otherwise omit, and increase onion)

Approx. 2 lbs of zucchini, coarsely chopped

Approx. 3-4 cups chicken broth

Thyme, several fresh sprigs, or 1-2 tsps dry

Lemon balm, handful of leaves, chopped (or some lemon zest)

Salt

Dash of red pepper

2-3 Tbsp lemon juice

Parmesan cheese

Pine nuts (or chopped walnuts)

In a good soup pot, heat the olive oil. Sauté the onions, garlic and leek, stirring, until onions are translucent. Add the zucchini and herbs, and sauté for another 5 minutes or so. Add enough chicken broth to just about cover the zucchini (less if you like your soup thicker, more if you like it thinner. Usually, I start on the side of “less” and add more broth at the end if I need.) Simmer, stirring, for 10-15 minutes, until the zucchini softens.

In a blender (with a tight cover), puree the soup in batches. Add the lemon juice. Add more chicken broth if you want a thinner soup.

If you’re saving the soup for winter, let cool and freeze. (I use plastic containers or 1 qt. zip-lock freezer bags.) Otherwise, reheat after pureeing or refrigerate to serve cold.

When you’re ready to serve, sprinkle about 1-2 Tbsp grated parmesan cheese and some pine nuts or walnuts on top (more or less depending on taste).

This soup is surprising filling. With some fresh bread, corn muffins, or pasta, it makes a light, but satisfying meal. As a main course, this recipe will serve 2-3 people. As a "first course" or side, it should serve 4-6.

The first two quarts of this soup just went into the freezer, leaving just enough for two bowls for lunch. I'm off to partake.

* Note: Marge Piercy's full poem can be found in the collection, The Moon is Always Female (1986).

The apricots are ripe!

2009-07-29T08:13:00.012-04:00

I came home late from work last night, around 8 pm, weary after a long day, and found that the apricots had ripened. Richard had picked three, and they were sitting on the kitchen counter. I wrote earlier this spring about anticipation. Now came the time of tasting.

There's a certain excitement the first time a new fruit or vegetable is ready to eat for the first time. That's especially true for tree fruit that requires 3-5 years of patient (or impatient) waiting for the first harvest. Last year was the first we had apricots, and we had only a few that made it to maturity. So I didn't remember just where they fit in the summer cycle. Each day, for a couple of weeks now, I've been out there checking. I picked two late last week, but they they weren't quite ripe yet.

These were perfect. Out of the forty or so fruit that formed from pollinated flowers in the spring, only about twenty will ripen. The others dropped -- probably because the tree was still too young to support that many. But my handy reference, The Backyard Orchardist, tells me that, if all goes well, we should eventually get 50 to 100 pounds of fruit from the tree.

Interestingly, although apricots look like small peaches enough that their "family" relationship is obvious, they are also closely related botanically to plums. My reference book tells me that some interesting crosses of the two -- called apriums and pluots -- are now becoming available.

Fruit trees -- carefully chosen for varieties suited to one's climate and least likely to have major pest or disease problems -- are a relatively low-maintenance way to begin to build an edible landscape. And there's a long, albeit no longer common, tradition of planting fruit trees in a home's yard. Down the road from me is an old, hand-dug and stone-lined foundation from an old farmhouse. A friend, on a walk one day, recognized its presence from the apple trees (and lilacs and day lilies) that still grow there. All were regularly planted in the yard.

This past weekend, my great-aunt Rita told me that her father grew fruit trees (pears, and others that she didn't remember) in their small, urban yard in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Like their neighbors, many of whom were also immigrants from rural Russia, they raised chickens and garden vegetables as well. A butcher by profession, my great-grandfather was a good gardener, she said.

In recent decades, fruiting trees have been supplanted by sterile "flowering" varieties in most home landscapes. There seemed to be some appeal to not having to "clean up" the dropped fruit from the yard, or sort through those that have been too damaged by insects to eat. And, of course, unsprayed fruit at home, while tastier than anything found in the store, does not have the blemish-free appearance that most U.S. consumers expect. Nor is it available year round. But as our "taste test" last night confirmed, a return to growing fruit in the yard -- and eating it fresh off the tree -- more than makes up for that.

An unexpected experiment

2009-07-19T20:05:00.010-04:00

I was surprised, earlier this spring, to notice that the “volunteer” squash – those growing from seeds remaining in the compost we added to the soil – were not only larger and greener than the squash I had transplanted, but, unlike their neighboring transplants, they had almost no yellow-and-black squash beetles crawling on them.

Impatient as I am, I have always bought transplants, believing I would get food sooner. This year, for the first time, I started my own seeds in small pots in our kitchen in late March. Mistake number one: squash grow quickly, and I started them far too early. By late-April, they were healthy and ready for transplant – a month before the weather outside would allow me to do so. By mid-May, they were “leggy,” turning yellow, and we were tripping over them. So I began again. Most of the second round of transplants (pumpkin, acorn squash, butternut squash, yellow squash, zucchini, and an heirloom Hopi squash) were ready when the last frost date rolled around (Memorial Day weekend here). I added a few Delicota transplants from a nearby nursery. I covered everything with a fabric row cover to give them some extra warmth and a “pest-free” head start.

I covered and left three of the “mystery” volunteers as well. Hence, the unexpected experiment. Within a few weeks, the small volunteers had outgrown the transplants; they were larger and their leaves were a deeper green (a sign of health). That wasn’t altogether surprising. Transplanting stresses plants, and, I later read, squash are particularly vulnerable to transplant stress. Over time, the volunteers (which turned out to be both pumpkin and zucchini) continued to outgrow the transplants.

But the real surprise came as I made my daily rounds to pick the squash beetles off the plants. While I picked dozens of beetles from the transplanted squash, I rarely found even one on the volunteer plants. I knew that stronger, healthier plants are better able to withstand the onslaught of pests and disease. But I had no idea that somehow (chemical changes leading to a difference in smell or taste?), they were less attractive to the pests as well. I’ve never seen mention of this in any of the organic pest control books I’ve read.

Growing food is a science, as well as an art, requiring close, constant observation and ongoing experimentation. As soon as I say “science,” many people think immediately of professional researchers, working in labs or “test fields,” conducting carefully designed, controlled experiments and putting out authoritative reports. But the most successful farmers – whether running commercial operations or just feeding their families – have always been scientists, developing a deep base of knowledge about the particular plants, environmental conditions, and micro-climates where they live.

Some of that knowledge has been passed down, like the Native American realization that corn, squash and beans – which they called the “Three Sisters – grown together will yield more food than any one of those crops grown separately. (Academic scientists, seeking to verify that knowledge, have concluded that the sugars in the corn roots nourish the specialized bacteria on the bean roots, which in turn, fix nitrogen that the heavy-feeding squash require. Finally, the squash, growing as a broad “ground cover” like the pumpkin below, shades out weeds that would otherwise compete with the taller beans and corn.)

Unfortunately much hard-won “local” knowledge has been dismissed, and then lost, by our society’s bias toward “professional” science. Personally, I like the definition of “science” used by a former teacher of mine, Davydd Greenwood, and his colleague, Morton Levin. “Scientific research,” they wrote, is "an investigative activity capable of discovering the world is or is not organized as our preconceptions lead us to expect and suggesting grounded ways of understanding and acting on it."

Growing food – like most other human endeavors – lends itself to that kind of science. There are the organized “experiments,” growing different varieties of a particular crop, for example, to see which do best in the soil and micro-climates in one’s field or yard. (Below, for example, is a rare heirloom Hopi squash that we are experimenting with to see how it fares in our gardens. It will turn a deep orange-red when mature and is reported to store well through the winter).

There are the careful observations of what is already growing and how it fares. We noticed, for example, that the daffodils near our home’s southern wall bloomed two to three weeks earlier than the daffodils in the bed 50 feet away, and that the last frost date close to the house was almost a month earlier in the spring (and a month later in the fall) than in other places in our yard. That led us to plant the vulnerable apricot tree right along the house's southern wall, in a micro-climate that is closer to “zone 6” than to our area’s general climate ranking as “zone 5.”

Finally, there are numerous unplanned experiments – like with my squash – that arise day-to-day. I don’t yet know why the squash beetles chose the transplants over the volunteers. Nor do I know what the beetles would do if no transplants were available. But I plan to keep close watch and compare notes with other growers. And next year, I’ll be poking squash seeds in the ground before the last freeze, experimenting with growing them like “volunteers.”

Midsummer

2009-07-17T10:45:00.008-04:00

We harvested the first yellow squash, zucchini, beans and cucumbers this week. They begin as a trickle, but soon comes the deluge. The monarda (also known as bee balm or bergamont, a flavoring for tea), black-eyed Susans, echinacea (purple cone flower) and potatoes are in bloom, and the Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance in nearby Trumansburg pulls us from the garden into the dance tent. It's mid-summer.

Photos (top by bottom): Black-eyed Susan, potatoes in flower, mid-summer harvest, Echinacea, Bee Balm

Pest control

2009-07-14T11:33:00.011-04:00

During the recent spell of rain, a leopard frog moved into our vegetable gardens. I was glad to see it, in part because I had never seen one before, and also because I knew it was dining on the ants, beetles, flies and other insects we want to keep under control. The frog hasn’t appeared since the return of hot, sunny days, but I assume it is still nearby.

I’ve since learned that leopard frogs are considered an “indicator species,” one that reflects the health (or lack of health) of the environment around it. Once quite common in North America, they began declining in the 1970s, most likely because of acid rain and other pollutants, and they have not yet recovered. So that makes me even happier to have seen it in our gardens.

Since we replaced the expanses of lawn with mixed plantings that more closely resemble the diversity of a meadow, the diversity of the animals, birds, reptiles and insects has also dramatically increased. That’s great for wildlife watching: working in the garden or sitting on the deck, I see 4-5 different kinds of butterflies on any given day. More importantly, it’s a spectacularly effective pest control strategy. In natural areas, no one species balloons in numbers (unless it’s an “exotic” introduction) because natural predators keep their prey under control. But large expanses of a single crop (including grass) don’t offer shelter, camouflage or breeding sites for the predators. Hence the need for repeated applications of chemical insecticides. Instead, we keep some broken clay pots half-buried in the gardens to provide hiding places for frogs, and we have a half-dug small pool that, even unfinished, seems to be drawing them closer. We call it a “muddle,” short for “mud-puddle.”

The leopard frog is joined by several garden snakes who make regular appearances. A particularly large one living under the shed spends a fair amount of time in the squash patch, hiding under the large leaves, and another who appears to be living in a cavity made by a warped board in one of the raised beds. They, too, eat insects and slugs, along with a variety of other prey (including frogs), and every so often, we find a recently shed snake skin to admire.

Tiny parasitic wasps, damsel flies, soldier beetles and other pest-eating insects are drawn to the gardens by the nectar available in the umbrella-like flowers we plant or leave. Queen Anne’s Lace (wild carrot), a “weed” we selectively leave; cilantro; dill, borage and the mustard are among their favorites. Except the first, all have edible flowers, and they all self-seed liberally so we leave many scattered throughout the garden after weeding out those we don't want. The number of spiders building webs in the garden has increased as well, and daddy-long-legs are everywhere, looking to me like silent sentinels patrolling among the snap pea, squash and bean leaves. There’s one particularly beautiful black-and-white-patterned daddy-long-legs that frequents the squash plants this summer.

Finally, we help the small predators, handpicking slugs, snails, and squash beetles often enough to give the plants a fighting start. Last year we bought ourselves an insect guide to learn to recognize the difference between the soldier beetles, which we want, and the squash vine borers, cucumber beetles and other squash bugs that that we don’t. Earlier this week, we managed to identify and kill two squash vine borers for the first time, hopefully before they had laid their eggs.

For the larger pests, we have Kat, who adopted us the summer we began this project. We had seen her in hiding in the woods for some months until she finally became too weak to hunt. Hunger overcame her fear of humans, and she cautiously ate the food we provided before running off again. Each time we came to the door with food, she flinched as if expecting a kick, but gradually she has relaxed, jumping on a lap to be petted and groomed whether invited or not. When Kat arrived, mouse were living in the attic and walls, rabbits had moved their warrens into the gardens, and voles were tunneling everywhere. It didn’t take long before those inhabitants were gone, and future ones discouraged or killed. It even seemed that Kat discouraged the deer for the first couple years. My friend, Beth, an environmental educator, says that’s quite possible, since bobcats, a natural predator of deer, are not much larger than Kat.

This entry wouldn’t be complete with a further comment on those voracious, uninvited eaters, since the most frequent question I’m asked by human visitors to the garden is, “How do you keep deer out?” The answer, like many others we give, is “by using diverse approaches simultaneously.” Until a few weeks ago, we combined Kat patrolling at night with caging for young fruit trees and shrubs and selectively sprinkling DeerScram (a very effective organic powder of ground-up deer parts that elicits an instinctive fear response) sprinkled around their favorite entries to the garden and their favorite plants at the times they most like eating them. Finally, we planted enough to “share” parts of the crop, no matter how frustrating that was. The “timing factor” seemed to work this spring, as the flowering pea plants (apparently a particularly tasty item for deer) remained untouched.

With our gardens expanding, however, it seemed more cost-effective to erect a deer fence. So this year, we invested in a 7.5’ high, plastic mesh fence, and Richard hung it on trees through the woods, encircling a little over an acre around the house and gardens.

Photo credits: Southern Leopard Frog, similar to its Northern cousin, and Garden Snake from Wikipedia. Cilantro in flower and Kat by Margo HIttleman

Hand-me-downs

2009-07-13T11:25:00.011-04:00

Some of my favorite plants are those that came to me from the gardens of family and friends. They make a walk through my gardens a walk among friends, reminding me of those treasured connections and the stories that go with them.

Most prominent because they are now in bloom, are the day lilies, from my mother’s suburban flower border on Long Island, and before that, from her parents’ postage stamp yard in Queens. In addition to adorning the yard, the edible flower petals make lovely additions to salads and stir fries.

The fall-bearing raspberries, irises and lily of the valley all came from the western Massachusetts gardens of my cousin Norman. The garlic had its start there too, some “garlic generations” back. It was in Norman and Eva’s house as a child, waking in my sleeping bag on the living room floor and looking at the Berkshire hills out their living room window, that I got my first taste of small town life. And each year, during their annual October “Ciderfest,” I get to visit and view the season’s remains of Norman’s labors.

The cheery sundrops, here hiding among the firepokers, were dug from my friend Randall’s fabulous gardens while he was living in nearby Danby, along with the lemon balm (whose leaves make a wonderful tea and salad addition) some unusual hostas, and a purple globe allium I have never found in a garden store. Randall -- now in London with, I’m sure, equally fabulous gardens that I have yet to see -- showed me how to use a chain saw and pointed out the chokecherries growing at the edge of our woods, sharing stories of the jam his mother used to make from them.

When I look at the sweet woodruff and pulmonaria (lungwart) growing along the gardens’ back edge and into the woods, I think of Betsy who passed away some years ago. The plants she dug for me from her gardens thrive, continuing to spread.

The Jerusalem artichokes, with their edible tubers and October-blooming flowers came from Frank’s family’s former farm, still his home, near Skaneateles Lake; the perennial sunflowers from Mary Kay’s yard in Ithaca (and before that, from her parents’ farm), and the pink rugosa rose, with its large rosehips for tea, from Margot’s extensive gardens on Ithaca’s West Hill.

Each of these plants has now been handed-down from my gardens to others, in some cases, many others. My mother has some of Randall’s lemon balm, allium and sun drops in her foundation beds on Long Island; my friend Neisha, some of my mother’s and grandfather’s day lilies at her new home in nearby Groton. My cousin Michael planted some of Frank’s Jerusalem artichokes at his western Massachusetts home. Thus, the links, and hopefully, some part of the stories, continue on.

Photo credit: Garlic by Dan Hittleman.

An ode to soil

2009-07-09T14:47:00.004-04:00

I never used to pay much attention to soil. Dirt was ... well, dirt. Whatever the gardening books said about the importance of improving the soil, I just made do with what was there. My plants grew, but slowly.

Now, nothing makes me happier than to find a huge pile of fully composted wood chips at the Town Barns, free for the taking. We were there Monday evening with Josue and Amarina; they had kindly offered to help us out with their pick-up truck. The decayed wood chips in the center of a mountainous pile, towering far above us, was charred black from the heat generated in the composting process, and still warm to the touch. Richard climbed up, and began digging into the pile, knocking it down. Josue and I stood below, shoveling it into the back of his pick-up truck. We only had three shovels, so Amarina cheered us on. When we got home and unloaded it, my ecstasy was so apparent, they offered to make a second trip.

I read somewhere that scientists have documented a connection between micro-organisms in soil and the release of neurotransmitters in human brains. Digging in the soil, they concluded, really does make people happier.

Lots of organic matter in the soil also makes plants happier. I can see, from the year to year, the difference in the plants growing in the beds where the most composted material was most recently added.

So in appreciation to the soil, today I post some recent pictures from the garden. From downed tree limbs, to soil, to green plants to food. Amazing.

Photos (top to bottom): Yellow squash; Winter squash; Wild blackcap raspberries; Unripe peaches; Zucchini and cilantro; Dill flowers; Garlic scapes; Cucumber; Arugula in bloom; Early morning asparagus fronds;

Cooking Seasonally and Predictably

2009-07-07T19:16:00.006-04:00

At the public library last week, I stumbled across cookbook by a well-known chef whose promise of “fabulous flavor from simple ingredients” caught my eye. Since we started growing a lot of food, I’m always looking for new ways to prepare our harvest. I took it home.

Sure enough, there were some wonderful-sounding recipes, especially the maple-roasted butternut squash and curried roasted butternut squash soup that I look forward to trying in the fall. But I was also surprised by a comment in the introduction. The author was writing about her time in France, where, she notes, cooking seasonally is not only the norm, but “the only option.” While extolling the flavor and quality of seasonal ingredients, she went on to say that “coming from the U.S., I found this kind of spontaneous menu planning hard….”

I wasn’t surprised that changing how one thinks about menu planning can be challenging, but the juxtaposition of cooking seasonally and “spontaneously” surprised me. In fact, seasonal cooking is nothing if not predictable. Just as crocuses in March are followed by daffodils in April, tulips in May, and peonies in June, so too are early spring’s salad greens and radishes followed by snap peas, strawberries and chard in late spring, and raspberries, beets, garlic scapes, and carrots in early summer. From that perspective, menu-planning that involves anything you want, any time you want it (what author Barbara Kingsolver has called the U.S.’s “promiscuous food culture”) is what seems spontaneous to me.

But as my new friend, Amarina, reminded me as we were preparing dinner last night, as a nation, we’re so disconnected from where our food comes from. Even when, she added, speaking of herself, you’re only a generation or two removed from people who farmed.

I have to stop and remember that it wasn’t so long ago that I, too, might have found cooking seasonally to be “spontaneous”; growing food, the sequence and timing of various foods quickly becomes second nature. Certainly, one year there are more snap peas than I know what to do with; the next year, there may be few peas, but lots of something else. And depending on the weather, the first harvest of any given vegetable may vary by a week or so. But each food ripens at its prescribed time, in a regular sequence. And you see it coming. That’s why my 3-ringed notebook of collected recipes is organized by month, not by meal categories. The butternut squash recipes will go in the “November/December” section.

Here’s a sample of this week’s “predictable” early-summer menu here in central New York State:

Breakfasts

Omelets with garlic scapes, herbs, feta cheese and some baby summer squash

Yogurt smoothies with strawberries or raspberries

Lunch

Tabouli with lots of parsley, spearmint, garlic scapes, radish and early carrots (plus chick peas and feta cheese)

Snap peas with mint, in a vinaigrette

Green salad, with chick peas and feta cheese, topped with olive oil and an herbal vinaigrette

Snap peas right off the vine!

Dinner

Stir-fried rice with garlic scapes, scallions, spicy mustard greens, chard stems, carrots, and snap peas (plus scrambled eggs and tofu)

Roasted beets

Beet greens with vinegar

Pasta with spearmint pesto

Grape leaves stuffed with rice and chopped beef

Quinoa risotto with arugula and carrots

More snap peas right off the vine!

Dessert

Strawberries and/or raspberries – on their own, in yogurt, over vanilla ice cream, or topped with whipped heavy cream

Wild black cherries

Lemon balm, spearmint and/or peppermint tea

And coming soon: bush (string) beans

Life is a Bowl of Cherries

2009-07-04T19:10:00.001-04:00

“All the really ripe ones are just out of reach,” complained Richard, from half-way up the smallest of the mature black cherry trees at the edge of our woods.

We love “found” food – those native plants that we harvest with little or no work required. We didn’t plant them. Some we tend minimally. More commonly, we simply cheer them on and eat the gleanings with gratitude for the world’s abundance. Most notable in this category are the wild black cap raspberries, just starting to ripen. Wild grape leaves, too, for stuffing with seasoned rice and meat, and on my “to do” list for the next week or two.

But there’s nothing quite like a perfectly ripe cherry. Unfortunately for us, the trees are 50-60 feet tall, the cherries far from reach. Growing as they did in a crowded woods, most have no lower branches.

Usually, we resign ourselves to watching enviously as a multitude of birds feasted on the sweet black spheres. I joke about cutting down the trees to harvest the tantalizing crop. Last year, Richard tried hitting the branches of the smallest tree -- the only one with branches low enough -- with a long pole to knock the fruit to the ground. It didn’t work. He was able to reach three or four cherries with a ladder. But that simply whet our appetite for more.

Yesterday, Richard was determined to have some.

Out came the step ladder. It barely reached the one low-hanging branch. Out came the more serious ladder. He was on the top of that when he called that most of the ripe cherries were still out of reach.

I thought about Icarus and his determined creation of a set of wax wings. Richard is more practical. He decided to duct-tape a large-tonged serving fork to a very long pole. With a little practice – and a lot of patience – he coaxed a small bowlful of black fruit from the tree.

The taste was sublime.

This morning, we woke to a raucous symphony of chirps, and cheeps, and squawks and caws. The local avian population had found the cherries, and the message was traveling far and wide. With my binoculars, I could see hundreds of shiny ripe cherries filling the tallest of the trees.

For the next three days, there will be a non-stop pilgrimage of birds as they pick the tree clean. Some come in noisy flocks. Others arrive on their own. Envious as I might be, I think we’ll have to simply enjoy the show. But then, after Richard took his turn with the binoculars, I heard him murmur something about climbing trees.

On peas, summer storms, and me

2009-06-20T10:52:00.009-04:00

When it comes to growing food, one has to give up rigid standards of perfection. Just a few days ago, I was proudly boasting about my towering 7’ tall sugar snap pea plants. While I was waiting for my camera batteries to charge so I could document that achievement, the first summer storm blew in, with two days of high winds along with the rain. The pea stalks bent, and many are now lying along the ground. We’ll tie them back up when the plants dry, but that “perfect” photo remains only in my imagination.

Fortunately, though, even with bent stems, the peas are still producing – about a pound per day. That’s more than enough to feed us, and our friends as well. Snap peas turn us into “browsers,” as well as gatherers. A fair number get eaten right in the garden. But plenty still make it into the house.

For those, my favorite recipe is to steam them for about a minute, then marinate in a mix of tamari (soy sauce), balsamic vinegar, sesame oil, and a splash of white wine vinegar as well. I use a ratio of about 5 Tbs: 4 Tbs: 1 Tbs respectively for about 1.5 pounds of peas. A generous handful of chopped spearmint, and another handful of chopped dill, and they’re done.

Still, the pea crop is just starting, so I went looking for some additional options this morning. I found a recipe for pickled sugar snap peas and another for an Indonesian-inspired stir-fried beef with snap peas and peanut sauce. I look forward to trying them soon.

Snap peas are one of spring’s great treats. And because they grow vertically, they take very little room for the amount of food they produce. A row of snap peas will fit in the back of almost any sunny flower border, alongside the sunny side of a shed, or in a foundation planting, growing up on a temporary wire trellis.

Commonly, people think they need a lot of space to produce any significant quantity of food. Friends who visit are often surprised at how much food and flowers we support in an area no bigger than many suburban lawns. Some days, I’m surprised too. But I’m also learning that we could do it with even less space if we had to. Or, in our case, that we could still increase the amount of food we are producing, feeding not only ourselves, but some of our friends besides.

Part of that is building up the soil enough to support dense plantings. Part is improving my timing at succession planting – pulling out plants that are past their prime and immediately starting the next crop in the same space. Or even overlapping crops. This morning, I pulled out the spinach plants that were starting to bolt. Some weeks ago, I planted string beans (a bushy variety) between some of the spinach and early lettuces. The beans are starting to really leaf out just as the spinach and lettuces are starting to bolt; with the latter greens gone, they will have all the room they need. Once the rains stop, I’ll plant something else – perhaps more carrots – in the rows where the remaining spinach was.

Similarly, for now, the snap peas are towering (or falling!) over the tomato plants in one bed and the zucchini and yellow squash in another. But by mid-July, when the summer veggies really need the extra room, the peas will be done. And I’m hoping the nitrogen-fixing pea roots will have given the heavy feeding tomatoes and summer squash an extra boost.

Finally, the almost-ready-to-bolt spinach I pulled? It went into this morning’s breakfast: spinach and garlic scallion scrambled eggs from the chickens our neighbors raise down the road, fresh strawberries, and, of course, some sugar snap peas.

Salad Stroll

2009-06-13T11:15:00.006-04:00

When my nephews, Joel and Garret, and niece, Dori, came to visit with their parents during Memorial Day weekend, the first thing they did was head for the gardens, looking for what was edible. In May, that mostly means salad. I followed, pointing as they tasted. Each leaf differed from the one before: lemony sorrel and lemon balm, licorice-flavored Sweet Cicely, a spicy hot mustard. Tangy arugala. Chrunchy chard. Spearmint. Dill. Garlic greens. Several different lettuces.

If I had space to grow only a few things, salad greens would be at the top of the list. With greens, fresh makes a huge difference, as does variety. They take up little room, and do just as well in containers as in the ground.

We’ve been learning to extend the harvesting season beyond central New York’s short Memorial Day-to-Labor Day “frost free” months. In early April, I built two wooden boxes covered with old window frames garnered from the “Free Fridays” at Significant Elements, our local salvage and re-use operation. They joined the raised bed with clear plastic thrown over some low hoops.

As a result, we’ve been well into salad season for weeks now. Some days, rushed and late to work, I simply grab whatever greens are closest at hand, throw in some chick peas and feta cheese, and head out the door. But I much prefer what I’ve come to call my daily “salad stroll.” Dori became quite expert at it.

The “stroll” begins at the kitchen door. Close to the house, surrounded by a low brick wall and an open southern exposure, are the earliest lettuce, mustard, and baby kale greens, started under a cover of plastic in mid-March, weeks before the last snows fell.

Next come the “rays” of the sun patio, where we pick edible leaves from the perennial plants: lemon balm and fern-like Sweet Cicely in the shadiest “ray”; chives and garlic scallions on the sunnier side. Through May, violets (both leaves and flowers) and young celery-flavored lovage stalks – now past their prime – join the mix. All are reliable perennial crops, needing minimal care.

Then it’s on to several annual vegetable beds to snip a mix of greens: lettuces, mustard, spearmint, Asian “spoon” greens and Mizoona, spinach leaves, arugala, and chard. A few beet greens occasionally make it into the mix. Plus a couple of leaves from an overwintered hot mustard. Somehow I missed replanting the hot mustard seeds until a few weeks ago; so for now, it appears only sparingly in the salad mix.

The small flower buds from the mustards and kales (florettes that look and taste like miniature versions of their close cousin, broccoli), go in, along with some of the already opened yellow flowers. And then there are the “volunteer” greens around the edges of all the beds, self-seeded from last year’s plants, that look like a mustard-chard cross.

The dill is in the front beds. Last year’s few gangly dill plants self-seeded themselves profusely, so some always goes in the salad these days. Each year, something grows taller, fruits more prolifically, or self-seeds more profusely than expected. Two years ago, it was the cherry tomatoes, which grew to about 7 feet before they fell over. Last year, it was the kale, which seemed to pop up everywhere. We ate kale several times a week, and had kale to spare. This year seems to be the Year of the Dill.

Next come the just-emerging snow peas and snap peas, scattered liberally through the yard. The Johnny-Jump-Ups’ edible flowers go in last.

When I’m not driven by the clock, the “salad stroll” is about more than fixing lunch or dinner. It’s a chance to look things over, check in on later maturing plantings, admire the lupine or peonies (or whatever else is in bloom), pull a few weeds, and notice the profusion of growing, growing, growing all around.

Photos -- Top: greens on May 8; middle: chives and arugula in bloom; bottom: ready to serve.