Something for a Rainy Day

Even I am hesitant about gardening in the rain.  I think it's the cat in me, but I really hate getting wet (unless it's on purpose and I'm in the pool!)  There's nothing I love better on a nice rainy day than curling up with a good book, so I'd like to recommend one to read for those all-too-frequent Pittsburgh Spring Showers!  Although I've been known to read books about gardening cover-to-cover, it's not a gardening book I'd like to recommend right now.  But it is a book about eating and our current food supply, and I hope it will give you even MORE incentive to grow your own food.  The book is Harvest for Hope:  A Guide for Mindful Eating, by Jane Goodall.  

Jane Goodall has been a hero of mine since I was a kid watching National Geographic nature specials on TV.  She's that gentle, unassuming former secretary of Louis Leakey whose discoveries about chimpanzee behavior redefined our concept of what it is to be human.  Her studies showed (to the chagrin of many) that we are not as far removed from our primate relatives as we'd once thought.  Perhaps even more importantly they also helped us to realize that we are not separate from all the other creatures that inhabit this planet, but are indeed part of this whole fragile ecosystem that we share.  It's not surprising that after decades of devoting herself to the study of chimpanzees, Jane Goodall has become a humanist. She realized that to save her beloved chimps she needed to be attentive to the humans who share their environment.  This book is an extension of that attention, and in her gentle, unassuming way, she raises issues that we should all be aware of about our current food problems, and provides some simple, and very do-able things that each and every one of us can do to help solve them.  

Want to learn more about the food we eat?  Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food.  Read Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser.  And have a listen to Deconstructing Dinner, a weekly podcast from Canada.  It's about time we reconnected with the thing we have our most intimate relationship with . . . our food.

Free Pickin's!

It's a bit early for any real harvests from the garden yet.  I've snitched a few baby chard leaves and the tops of my fava bean seedlings for a salad, but that's about all my garden has produced so far this season.  But there's a free harvest out there waiting in the wings of our community garden. . . knotweed! The garden is surrounded by groves of Japanese knotweed, an invasive weed that was brought in (like so many other invasive weeds) as an ornamental.  Unfortunately it has done so well here that it's crowding out native plants and is considered to be one of the world's worst invasive species.  What can we do about it?  Eat it!  Yes, Japanese knotweed is edible, but only for a very short time, and that time is now.  It's only the new, tender spring shoots that are edible--in a few short weeks this fast-growing weed will be much too woody to eat.  

Japanese knotweed shoots are similar in appearance and speed of growth to asparagus, but in flavor they're very similar to rhubarb.  Pick nice fat shoots when they're a foot tall or less, strip off any leaves, and use it as you would rhubarb.  Today I'm making a knotweed crumble. Knotweed shoots are hollow, so use a bit more per recipe than you would rhubarb since it shrinks down more as it cooks.  It's also slightly less tart than rhubarb, so I like to add a little lemon juice.  I first learned about eating knotweed from "Wildman" Steve Brill's website, which includes lots of recipes and great information about the plant (along with lots of other great foraging advice).

So, do your civic duty and harvest some knotweed shoots, and get a free meal in the bargain!

Pretty with a Purpose

I love having flowers in amongst the vegetables.  They're like little surprises, splashes of beauty in the beds, and make me smile every time I visit the garden. But the flowers aren't there just for my enjoyment.  They have an important job to do, namely, to attract beneficial insects to the garden.  Anyone who's grown anything worth eating knows that there are hoards of other critters who'd be plenty willing to eat it!  It's amazing how the aphids find the fava beans every year, or how the bean beetles appear on the poor bean plants so fast that it seems like they just come with them! It's enough to make you want to reach for the industrial pesticides!  Well, . . . almost.  After all, isn't it those same nasty pesticides you're trying to avoid by growing your own veg? Before you start spraying, remember this: for each one of those insect pests munching on your vegetables there's another creature that wants to eat IT!  I remember last year I nearly reached for the pyrethrin spray to deal with the hundreds of aphids munching away on the fava beans. I'm glad I didn't because within a few days the lady bugs had moved in and made short work of the aphids.  And we had an amazing (and delicious) harvest of fava beans, no chemicals necessary! 

Nature is all about balance, and if your plants are healthy (from growing in good fertile soil) they can tolerate a few munches from the pests until the predators arrive.  The insect predators need more than just their prey insects as food however.  They also need pollen and nectar, which they get from flowers, and a water source. That's not a bird bath I have in the garden, it's a bug bath!  The stones are there so that the little guys can drink without falling in and drowning.  There are a couple of wonderful articles here and here that list many types of beneficial insects and the flowers that attract them. The flowers that I routinely add to my garden are lobelia (this is one of my absolute favorites flowers anyway), calendula (which are not only pretty, but edible!), marigolds (natural source of pyrethrin and great companion plant for tomatoes), poached egg plant, fennel, agastache, nasturtiums (also edible), gilia, and cosmos.  And the next time you reach down to pull out that dandelion, don't! Dandelions are really great early nectar sources for all kinds of insect friends, including honey bees!  There really is quite a selection of beautiful flowers you can grow in your garden to attract beneficial insects, so find a little bit of extra space in your vegetable plot for them.  You and your vegetables will be glad you did!  

Raised Beds Rock!

Before

After

Last Sunday the weather was beautiful, (well, beautiful for March in Pittsburgh, anyway!), and I finished prepping the garden for early spring planting.  Did I spend hours behind a fume and noise-spewing rototiller? Nope!!  I spent about 10 minutes pulling out a few tiny weed sprouts, then spreading some nice organic fertilizer, lime, and compost onto the bed for my early cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.  No digging necessary!  (OK, I did use a hand trowel to dig in the lime and the fertilizer before I put the compost on top.)  So why is it that I'm not battling weeds and working up a sweat with power tools (or at the very least getting my back into it with a spade)???  Did we luck out and inherit some magical plot that was totally weed-free or discover some great new herbicide??  Nope!!  It's because we put in raised beds when we got this plot about 5 years ago. Just check out the "before and after" pictures of our garden. Although the "before" picture was taken in March before the weeds got a real upper hand (root?), believe me, it was full of the thistles, mug wort, and other nasties that run rampant throughout this community garden. (Not to mention the fact that there were still tons of good old Pennsylvania clay in this plot.  Not the best medium for growing much of anything!) There are other benefits to doing raised beds than just getting the upper hand on weeds too.  Since you basically divide your garden into separate, designated planting spaces and walking spaces you avoid compacting the soil in your growing space (as long as you don't go strolling around in your raised beds!)  That means that once you have the soil prepped initially, you shouldn't have to till the soil again, EVER! (Yep, no heavy digging, with or without power tools!)  And with raised beds you can really enrich you soil and plant things closer together than you might do in a "regular" garden.  There's a great book called Square Foot Gardening that talks about this in depth, and gives great ideas on how big your raised beds should be, when to plant what, and how much space to give various vegetables--it's really a great book!  

So, how do you get started?  First, decide where your raised beds will be, and where you want your paths to be.  We made our paths about 3-4 feet wide, which seems like a lot of "wasted" space, but believe me, it's really nice to have this space to maneuver around the beds.  Next, prep the soil in each of the raised bed areas by double-digging.  While you dig your bed remove any roots from perennial weeds, rocks, and lumps of clay.  Once you have the beds dug you can install the frame of the raised beds.  We made ours 6' X 4'.  This is relatively convenient because the lumber is generally sold as 10' X 6" X 2" sizes.  (You'd get 2 sides out of one of these pieces.)  The 6" depth means that you can bury the sides of the raised beds about an inch or two down, and still have a decent amount above ground as the raised part.  Burying the sides of the beds gives more of a weed barrier than just putting them on top of the ground, and also prevents the soil inside the bed from migrating out through any space in the bottom.  And it gives more stability to your bed.  At this point you'll probably need to add more soil to your beds.  We scraped the path areas (shaving off and removing the tops of weeds there, and then sifting any nice soil into our raised beds.)  If necessary you can purchase top soil to add to your beds, and of course add lots of nice aged compost.  

To make your path areas weed-free, lay down either landscape fabric, or corrugated cardboard as a barrier, and then cover it all with a generous layer of wood mulch.   This should keep your paths weed-free for at least a couple of years.  When the mulch breaks down and the weeds start creeping in, just put down more cardboard and mulch.    

This sounds like a lot of work, (and initially it is), but believe me, it's well worth the effort!  The time you take putting in your raised beds in the beginning will be made up for by the easy spring plantings you'll have in your future!

I'll Get it Right This Year! (I Think)

I will NOT start the tomatoes yet.  I will NOT start the tomatoes yet.  I will NOT start the tomatoes yet. . .  I really need to repeat this mantra until the end of the month because EVERY year I wind up with tomato plants that are overflowing their pots and my shelves weeks before they can go in the ground.  Why?  Because I get a whiff of spring in the air and I think "Start those tomatoes!"  In fact one year I could swear I started them in January. Do NOT try this !! (Unless you want 4-foot high tomato plants taking over every window in your house in March--this is not a pretty sight!)  So THIS year I'm going to get it right!  (I hope.)  

Last year I actually made a planting schedule for myself as part of my garden journal.  And I was smart enough to include notes about what to do better the next year, which included a stern warning not to start tomatoes until the END of March.  I promise I will listen this year! So, here's my summer plant seed-starting plans:

• March 8:  Start fava beans. These are actually spring plants that can go in the ground in April, and they grow really fast, so they only need a couple of weeks of growing inside. Start Swiss Chard for early plants.
• March 14:  Start peppers, ground cherries (like tomatillos but smaller and sweet), basil, lobelia, poached egg flower, Gilia flower (these are some flowers that attract beneficial insects to your garden.)  
• March 21:  Plant sugar snap and shell peas direct in the garden.  Transplant cabbage, kale, leeks,  broccoli and cauliflower seedlings to garden.  Plant radish, beets, lettuce and salsify seeds directly in garden.
• March 27:  Start tomato and squash plants, along with calendula, marigolds, nemophila flowers (more companion plants).  

Of course many of these plans are contingent upon Mother Nature.  I recall having to come out in the snow to cover up my new transplants in years past!  But that's all part of the gardening game.  Mother Nature has veto power over any of my plans!

Springtime Under Lights

Spring is here!  Well, at least under the lights in my basement it is! The first seedlings of the season are up and thriving! Here's what's growing:

4 types of Leeks (Giant Musselburg, Lancelot, Blue Solaize, and Prizetaker)

Romanesco Cauliflower, Veronica 

Heirloom Italian Sprouting Broccoli DiCiccio

Gonzalas, Early Spring Cabbage 

Tuscan Black Kale

Red Russian Kale

I'm hoping these guys will be ready to go in the ground around Saint Patrick's Day--that's the best time to plant peas too!  It's hard to believe it'll be planting time soon.  As I write this it's snowing sideways! Starting plants under lights lets you get a spring fix even in the winter!

It's really easy to start plants from seeds, and you don't need to spend a fortune on a fancy set-up.  Mine is just a set of wire shelves from Ikea with each shelf about 14" apart, and shop-lights that hang from the shelf above on chains.  You want to be able to keep the light source about 2-3" above your plants.  As the seedlings grow you shorten the chains to raise the lights up.  I find that, as far as the bulbs go, the real grow lights give the best results, although I've used regular fluorescent shop light bulbs in the past.  The grow lights cost a bit more, but the seedlings really do seem to do better with them, so I think they're worth the extra buck or two.  I have the lights on a timer so I don't have to remember to turn them on and off.  I give my seedlings about 14 hours of light each day.  On gray, wintery days like today I find lots of excuses to go and check on the seedlings so I can get a bit of that springtime light therapy too!  

I Must Be Crazy

Meet Burt.  He's a cabbage white butterfly.  In the summertime you see these little guys happily flitting around the garden.  Unfortunately many of them flit on over to my cabbage patch and their voracious, green prodigy munch their little caterpillar hearts out.  So what's with Burt? Well, he must have hitched a ride on some of my veggies last fall as a chubby green caterpillar. I don't have the heart to squish the caterpillars I find on the leaves, I just put them in the bag with the compost destined to go out, and figure they can fend for themselves there.  Well, this one must have escaped, and found a place in my kitchen to do what caterpillars do over the winter. How else can I explain the fact that I came home from work one day recently to find this little guy flying around the kitchen?   He certainly didn't come from the great outdoors since our January temperatures, especially this year, aren't really ideal for butterflies! Bummer Burt!  Not the best time for you to venture out of your cocoon!  (Or I guess, technically, your chrysalis, since you're a butterfly, not a moth.)  Anyway, despite Burt's poor sense of timing I suppose he picked a pretty good house in which to reside.   Currently he is hanging out in my basement with a catnip plant I have under lights (along with some of our potted herbs we over-winter and my lettuces).  Amazingly, the catnip's actually blooming!  And being the overly kind-hearted (aka eccentric??) soul I've also been putting out some butterfly food (1 tsp sugar dissolved in 1/2 cup of water) for old Burt.  Luckily (for me, not for Burt) there's no Bertha around, so I won't be seeing green caterpillars on my soon-to-be started cabbage and broccoli seedlings!  But I'm hoping that my Burt care-taking might win me some cabbage-white brownie points, and maybe they'll leave my cabbages alone this year!