Front Yard Veggies
You can’t grow everything you eat, but you can eat everything you grow…Carrots and lunch
Well, yesterday was a fantastic Easter, and in the midst of the clean-up and gearing up for the upcoming week, I came across a sprouting onion in our kitchen that my mom had given us in case we could use it. I thought, well now is the time to use it for something. I realized I could use it a bag of lentil soup mix that also came from her. (I think!) Along with a frozen ham bone from some holiday meal a while back. I needed carrots and remembered that I had a whole patch of them out front!!! I threw in some of the last of the shallots and voila, I had a cheap, garden-filled meal that will work for at least a couple lunches, is super healthy and cost me nearly nothing:
Here is the soup at lunch today. Yuuhhuummm!
So this is something of a milestone for me, though it sounds absurd. This might be the first time that I have cooked with mine own carrots. So, whooppee! Usually I just eat them straight from the ground. These ones were good fresh as well, though maybe a little overgrown.
White House Garden Update Update
Yes, they did have the planting day, and it was with the same kids who helped dig up the patch of lawn a couple weeks ago. Apparently, they will have them return yet again and cook some of the food and eat it together. That is cool. A few notes:
- The emphasis that Michelle is putting on the symbolism of the kids’ participation is simply fantastic along with the connection to eating the food they grow.
- Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, was present for the planting. That is really a big deal, because the Dept. of Ag. has largely been focused on the politics of food growers, whereas his presence at this event emphasizes the politics of food consumers.
I love this last little picture, because it captures what I have striven for in my garden and the garden at my daughter’s elementary school. Grow things that are visceral: good taste, good smell and visually appealing, because that is what gets embedded in a kid’s mind and becomes the memory and guidepost for the adult in later years.
- Uh, it is nice to see Mrs. Obama wearing something more akin to grubby clothes for the gardening. Turning over the sod in her black dress last time was just not right.
White House Gardening Update
Apparently, today is the day! I will update as I find out anything!
Thursday, April 9: The First Lady will host an event in the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn of the White House to plant the garden. She will be joined by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and students from Bancroft Elementary, the school that participated in the groundbreaking of the Garden on March 20th. Students from the school will return later this year for harvesting and cooking with the food grown.
Ask FYV – Pests: Pill Bugs
A friend writes:
do you think Pill Bugs are bad for the garden. I have quite a few; found this snippet on internet and wondered if you agreed:Pill bugs (or roly poly’s as I have always called them) feed primarily on decaying matter. I have observed them in my garden for long periods of time, and done a little research, just to figure out what they are doing (I obviously have no life (but am afterall, a geeky scientist)). In my garden, they are certainly prolific, but appear to chow down on the remnants of my compost pile that hadn’t completely broken down. These observations have put my mind at rest, and confirmed that these crustaceans are actually beneficial to the health of my garden. However, I might also point out that my small garden consists only of peppers, corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lettuce–that is to say, they may have an appetite for other plant varieties and thus could potentially wipe out a garden of other plant species (although I think this is rare and unlikely). Most crustaceans in this world (be them terrestrial or aquatic) are primarily scavengers–they are the “garbage men” of the microcosmic insect world. They eat fungus, molds, and other dead things and play a beneficial role in the cycle of nutrients. If you have vegetative plants that are dying, it is likely the cause of some other perpetrator–likely one that you cannot see with the bare eye. Roly-poly’s in your garden, in my opinion, are a sign of a healthy nutrient exchange. Look in to other likely pests such as aphids, parasites, or even vegetative diseases.
yeah, still want to be a farmer someday
things like this don’t help the itch. cool website too.
organic oreos – still bad for you – but better for farmers!
I was alerted to the existence of these:
by this post at the internet food association. It raises, especially in the comments the entire issue of the “paradox” of organic junk food.
Michael Pollan has discussed this at length as well, using hypothetical “organic Coke” as an example. He concludes that there will be positives and negatives. Likewise, I think that at one level, organic oreos are great! A ll those wheat and corn fields that will no longer have nitrogen and pesticide runoff really do translate into improvements for farmworkers and ecosystems. They will still be unhealthy as ever except perhaps the absence of some barely detectable levels of residual pesticides. And they are still bad for your health. However, it’s not as though organic Oreos are going to spark a sudden increase in the amount of junk food eaten.
I think the problem is that ultimately organic is a word that we think means “wholesome and good for the consumer”, when in reality it is a word that refers to a relatively dry list of technical regulations about how various foods must be grown. These regs have some implications for health of consumers, but in reality they have much more to do with the impacts of agriculture on those who do the growing.
Healthy eating really is largely a distinct issue from sustainable agriculture. People who care about the latter almost certainly care about the former, but the reverse is much less true. A lot of confusion comes from that relationship.
Eat *less* Red Meat
A new study shows a pretty startling correlation between eating red meat and dying!
Apparently eating ~1/4 lb of red meat per day increased the chances of dying by 30% over the course of the 10 years of the study. My wife and I got to talking about this, and we realized that we have gotten to the point where we are only eating red meat 2-4 times a month at most. That was a conscious shift over a number of years to some degree, but it actually shocked me that we eat so little when I counted it up, so clearly it has become completely unconscious. Other than In-n-Out, and an occasional steak, there is not a lot of red meat that I am dying to have. We just don’t think about it much, so yeah for us.
Of course there are a tremendous number of environmental reasons to not eat meat to consider.
Lastly, for those of you who want to know whether it is all the fats, methods of preparation, or whatnot that makes red meat unhealthy, read this book.
P.S. Chicken and Fish are just fine to eat!
notes on White House Veggie Garden Layout
I think that it is instructive to look at what the layout of the WHVG (White House Veggie Garden) tells us about how it will be used. This is probably interesting from a political standpoint, but I am much more interested in it from a kitchen gardener’s standpoint. Here is the layout as provided to the NY Times
As you can see, they are planting just a few types of veggies:
lettuces
spinach
chard, kale & collards
snap peas/shell peas
herbs
shallots & onions
fennel
rhubarb, radishes & carrots
Interestingly, the “tender greens”, lettuce and spinach compose like 50% of the planting with another 20% given to “hard” greens like chard, kale and collards. Interesting for two reasons. First, if you have read “In Defense of Food” as you should have, you will know that eating greens is one of the most healthy things that you can do for your diet. Second, fresh lettuce and arugula has been an absolute revelation to me about why one should have a kitchen garden. With a relatively small amount of attention, one can grow lettuce that is absolutely far and away superior to anything that you can buy. I will post shortly on how I like growing lettuces. The short version is that scattering seeds for baby lettuce is much easier and tastier than growing lettuce to full head maturity, especially in drier climates like So. Cal.
Lots of fresh peas as well, and certainly I find that snap peas are a favorite of mine and my kids in the garden. It provides a quick, sweet, clean vegetable flavor that I can enjoy anytime I go out there. I think of it as the “gateway” vegetable for kids. It doesn’t need to be washed and it is so darn sweet.
Lastly, there is quite a large section reserved for fennel and for herbs. I can’t say a lot about fennel, so I won’t. But as I have made clear before, havning an abundant supply of fresh herbs is the first thing that anyone who wants to improve the flavor of their cooking should do, hands down.
So, I think that the emphasis on soft greens, peas and herbs reflects the thinking of someone who really knows what a kitchen garden is really good at providing.
Ask FYG – First Time Gardener Edition
I was thinking about writing a couple ideas for first time gardeners, when a friend of mine thinking of getting started on a veggie garden this year sent out a Facebook SOS. She had gone to a gardening class and became completely overwhelmed as the lecture devolved into details about testing pH levels in her soil (a reasonable thing) and watching for the waxing and waning of the moon (umm… a little less reasonable for first timers, though I find myself curious about it…)
I think that her friend actually posted the best advice of all so I will (without permission) reprint it here:
Oh, it’s easy. You put stuff in the dirt, you water it, and hope it doesn’t die. If it does die, no big cuz you didn’t spend much money on it.
So true. But let me expound on this a bit. To make it my own, if nothing else.
oh, how I wish I had space like that
First, I would start by figuring out what do you really want out of this first experience. Let me just tell you what you want. You want some stuff that you can eat and that tastes good to grow out of the ground. Now you might think that what you want is: corn, tomatoes, carrots, beans, cucumbers, melons, peas, lettuce, zucchini, squash, pumpkins, a scarecrow, etc. You might dream about constant meals out of the garden all summer long. I would say keep your expectations and planning simple this first time around and stick with the plants that are easy to maintain, and easy to harvest.
So, I am going to make a prioritized list of what you should grow based on my own personal experience with bang/buck
tomatoes - among the easiest plants, the most useful and tastiest. start here alway. Better boy, carmello, sweet 100, sungold are great varieties
zucchini - just so easy. lots of bang for the buck. freeze shredded excess for zucchini bread in winter.
lettuce/arugula – Lettuce and especially arugula has been one of my favorite discoveries. Lettuce can be scattered in a bed densely so that you can clip bowlfuls of baby lettuce or grown as a head. Definitely do arugula in the baby form. Arugula is THE. BEST. EVER. Good lettuce variety to try is marveille de quatre saison, flashy troutback, lots of romaine varieties.
cucumbers – These are quite easy as well, and should be trellised like pole beans. keeps the bugs and rot away. my favorite is lemon cucumbers
snap peas – Easy and sweet. They need to be trellised, and are best grown first thing in the season. Go ahead and plant them before you have the trellis, because they won’t need that for some time.
jalapeno or bell pepper – These are easy in So. Cal. where we always have enough hot weather, but they can be trickier in cooler climates (so I hear), but they stay ripe on plant for a good length of time and can be used whenever you need heat. best variety is jalapeno
corn
basil - easy to grow. pesto. marinara sauce. need I say more. varieties: just stick with the good old green kind.
carrots - a little hard to get started for me, but the results are so sweet compared to store bought. Lots of fun for the kids.
green beans – These grow like crazy and are fun to snack on in the garden. Pole beans will give beans on a steady basis which is good for snacking, not as good for harvesting a bunch at once. Bush beans tend to mature at once. Blue Lake is the gold standard variety.
Second, preparation of the ground. Again, keep this simple to some degree. Yes, it would be nice to know the pH of your soil and that can have an impact on your results if there are some particularly out-of-range conditions, but usually, it’s not going to be a killer for first time. Basically, removing existing growth, adding “compost” or bagged manure, or some sort of cheap soil amendment (possibly splurge on some bone meal), and then tilling that up is enough to get you started. I have raised beds, and I am pretty fussy about my soil, but not important on your first go round. (Seriously, though. if you are really pressed for time, skip everything but clearing the ground).
Third, it’s time for planting. You have turned the soil so that it is loose and can be planted. Do you just go buy seed packets or plants, or heirloom plants, what varieties?????? In some cases, plants are easiest, and in others seeds are better. From my list of plants above I would recommend the following way to purchase your plants.
plants:
tomatoes,zucchini, peppers, basil, other herbs
seeds:
lettuce, corn, green beans, cucumbers (if you are planting a lot or want specific varieties), snap peas, carrots
Where do you get them and what varieties? Well, I would recommend going to your local nursery, and tell them what you want and they will gladly sell you the right varieties for your area. If you can, avoid mega-retailers, Home Depot, Walmart, etc. because typically, their varieties are the wrong kind for your area. They buy plants by the millions and distribute them across the country. A local nursery is almost always better.
Ok, I hope that helps. I tried to keep things simple without leaving out the stuff that people who are actually going to plant need to know.
man, I need to get planting myself!!
P.S. I would wear different clothes than Mrs. Obama did today:
