Living art

Wow!  Art from nature is amazing.  Every once in a while I find something that I think would be great for designing an eco-friendly and highly artistic house - I've recently run into two of them.

The first came to me from friend and colleague Shirley.  It's a couple who creates art with living trees.  Not only is their art a growing, living plant - but their outdoor furniture is as well.  Find more images at pooktre.com.  They even have a tree made into a chair.  Thanks Shirley!

The next piece of nature art I found in Hobby Farms Magazine.  I have a subscription - love it.  But it's usually not about design, it's about chickens and goats and farm equipment.  This time I found this beautifully inspiring design for your home (if any of us could afford it - I'm sure I can't) - but it's beautiful none the less!

It's a beehive for your window.  Imagine.  I would love to be able to watch the bees and then harvest the honey.  You can find out more about their project here.

Figuring out when to start seeds

So yesterday I started broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower.  Next week I'll start other seeds, the next week others, etc...and I'm always hoping I get it right.  Last year I started seeds too early, it was such a cold spring and I estimated the seed starting dates wrong.  The cabbage and broccoli got weak and many died.  I also learned that I may have been starting them too early no matter what the spring was like.  I think this has been my biggest problem so far. 

I am keeping a calendar and writing in when I plant each seed, and this year I used "The Gardener's A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food."  This book has descriptions of many veggies and herbs, and in the description it gives you the first seed starting date by telling you how many days to start the seed before the last day of frost.  You do have to know which seeds you start from seed indoors and which you direct seed, but it has that information too if you don't already know it.  It helped me a lot, and it's all a big experiment anyway.  It also tells you the last date you can start seeds, so you can succession plant.  I'll probably try to succession plant this year - especially in the pea location because they're done so early in the season.

Back from vacation & spring planting

Yesterday I got back from vacation in Florida visiting my daughter, granddaughter and mom.  Wow how great to get away to a warm climate and see what's growing in my daughter's garden! It was so much fun.

Today I had skin cancer surgery.  It's something I've been dealing with for over 20 years - growing up in Southern California and Florida as a light skinned person with Irish and German heritage.  But it will NOT keep me from growing my own veggies, spending quality time in the gardens wherever I am. In Florida it is brutal sun all year 'round, but no matter where you are, the sun is strong when you are in the garden.  That's why I wear a large brimmed hat.  You should too.  Seriously.  And sun screen.  And see a dermatologist.  But whatever happens, don't let it stop you from being outside, in the garden, growing your own food.  That is what life is all about - being connected to the earth and keeping us all healthy and happy.

So today, after the surgery, I came home and started getting ready to go back into the garden.  In zone 5 it's time to start seeds indoors for kale, cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage.  That's what I did.  This is my planting table ready to start seeds.

I bought popsicle  sticks to write the name of the plants on - way cheaper than those plastic things you get from Home Depot!  Find them in a craft store and you can get 500 for less than $5.00.  Thanks to my garden plan (see previous post) I know how many of each kind of plant I will need, though I plant a couple extra of each just in case.  Here they are under the lights - the first spring plants!

OK, so you can't really see them - but they're there, on the left light stand, really. So it's time to start planning for spring my friends in cold climates!  And don't forget to wear your hat and sunscreen when you're in the garden!

Late nights at work and growing food

I just got home from work and finished watering the plants.  It's 8pm.  It's hard to be a hard-working professional and grow your own veggies and cook from scratch - it is, I'm not telling you that this is easy-breezy.  But it's worth it.  We eat well and it's organic.  There's a sense of purpose and "doing good" for the earth.  It's also cheaper than buying organic produce at the store.  Yes, even with the expense of purchasing grow lights, seed starting mix and seeds.  We're saving money, preserving the environment, and reducing our risk of cancer and other pesticide and herbicide induced diseases.  And it's not that we're fanatics about this - we still go out to eat as much as we did before we started growing our own veggies.  (OK, that's not often, we might dine out once a month on average, sometimes twice a month.)  But we never have to buy veggies at the grocery store, and after a long day at work there's something that calls to you to care for it, prepare it...and relax.

Getting ready for seed starting

If you haven't ordered your seeds and starting mix and you're in my climate zone (zone 5) you need to get it all ordered. In about 2 weeks we will begin the seed starting process. It goes quickly believe it or not, and you should have everything on hand. I'm getting very excited about starting the seeds. I highly recommend that you purchase from seed companies that preserve biodiversity instead of getting common seeds from big box stores. You will be able to introduce new types of veggies to your neighbors, and enjoy new flavors. My two favorite tomatoes are Black Krim and Amana Orange for example. And for small tomatoes Black Mauri and Violet Jasper, they were super productive last year in a really bad season.

Excellent Soup from Frozen Veggies

This weekend I made the best soup.  I usually have a hard time getting soup to have a good flavor - I keep adding herbs and adding herbs.  This weekend I think I found the right combination.  I used ground pork from Farmer Nick's LLC, my own home-made (and frozen for later use) chicken broth, and all of our own frozen veggies and herbs.

Here is the recipe I used, in true food saver fashion - there's no true measurements I can give you, just approximations.

Ingredients:
1 shallot, chopped
1/4 quart bag of frozen sliced carrots (thawed)
1/8 quart bag of frozen chopped celery (thawed)
1/2 pound ground pork
1 large garlic clove, chopped
1 ice cube of chopped arugula
2 ice cubes of chopped basil & garlic
1/8 quart bag of frozen chopped chives
4 cups chicken broth
1/2 quart bag of frozen haricots verts, chopped
1/4 quart bag of frozen summer squash
heavy whipping cream
salt to taste

Use a little olive oil in a soup pot and cook the shallot, carrots and celery until the shallot is translucent.  Add the port and garlic and cook until the pork is done.  Add chicken broth, and the 3 cubes of herbs.  Then add the haricots verts and summer squash.  Cook until everything is hot and salt to taste.  Then spoon out the veggies and put in the blender with some whipping cream.  Add back into the broth - heat more and serve.

I was amazed by how good this soup tasted, right away, without any additional fussing.

Here's how you make the basil and garlic ice cubes and the arugula ice cubes.  When you have your harvest of basil (late summer in IL) or your harvest of arugula (twice in IL - spring and fall), pick a bunch and store for winter by simply adding hand-fulls to the cuisineart along with a small portion of olive oil.  Add garlic if you want (I usually add garlic to the basil, it serves as a one-stop shop to defrost and serve on pizza or pasta that way) but you don't have to.  The key is not to add too much olive oil - just enough so the herbs chop up and stick together well.  Pack into ice cube trays, cover with foil and freeze overnight.  The next day, take the cubes out of the trays and put in plastic freezer bags and store.  Super easy, and you have the taste of fresh herbs all winter long.

Arugula and basil/garlic cubes:

Book review: Vegetable Gardener's Bible

So this is the time to start planning the garden bed for 2012 growing.  As you may have read, I create to-scale drawings of my main veggie and herb beds, and use those to visualize the gardens.  The hardest part is deciding what veggies should go where.  Some vegetables don't like other vegetables.  In the garden party that is your planting bed, most veggies have friends they prefer to be seated by, and others they could do without.  I'm very cautious of this because I want the largest harvest possible for the amount of space I have to plant.  If one plant is going to irritate another plant so much that it doesn't produce as well, I don't want to take the risk of having them next to each other.  Many of you may not really care about maximum harvest and may want to think more about eye appeal (I know this veggie always wears purple to the party, and this one yellow - they complement each other visually) and so you may want to disregard companion planting suggestions.  There is absolutely no harm in this, planting should be fun and rewarding - whatever you decide to do is the right thing for you!  But because I am trying to make sure we are self-sufficient in veggies, companion planting is one thing I haven't experimented with.  If I read that onions don't like legumes I don't follow legumes with onions and I don't plant them next to one another.  (Apparently a really bad party guest is fennel, it must have a bad attitude in veggie get-togethers because pretty much no veggie wants to be planted near fennel.  This is an exception - and I don't grow fennel for just that reason - but fennel is a beautiful plant so if you want to try it, try it!)

For my companion planting decisions I do not use what many gardeners would consider the ultimate authority: "Carrots Love Tomatoes" by Louise Riotte.  I have it, I've read it, and it's a very good book (at some point in all this I'm sure I'll review it), but it's not as easy for me to use as a reference as "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" by Edward Smith.

Smith's book was probably not intended to be used primarily as a companion planting guide to garden planning.  It's a book that has a clear message about how to get maximum veggie production using wide rows, organic methods, raised beds, and deep soil.  And it's excellent for that information!  It goes into depth about why these four methods of growing are truly useful, it helps you plan your garden, gives you information on crop rotation, and even helps you with seed starting.  It talks about watering, fertilizing, and storing the harvest.  Frankly, it's a pretty nice one-stop-shop if you're in the market for a great all-around book on growing your own food!  I definitely read it cover-to-cover and recommend that you do too, it gave me so much information about the overall process  of organic gardening that I consider it one of my absolute best beginning resources.

But now that I've been growing for a number of years, and have read many many books on organic gardening and maximizing my harvest, I don't often have to refer to books for general garden knowledge.  I've absorbed it.  I know that I keep my beans picked, and how to produce compost.  I know that you shouldn't step in your garden and so 4 feet between walkways is the max you should plan, and I know you need to rotate your crops.  But the one thing that I always have to look up is what plants are good and bad companions to other plants.  I just can't keep in my head that dill doesn't like carrots, but loves cabbage, or that kale doesn't like pole beans or tomatoes, but likes bush beans, beets, celery, cucumber, lettuce, onions and potatoes.

So every year, when I am planning my garden, I go back to The Vegetable Gardener's Bible.  It is one of the few books I have that makes it so easy for me to look up what plants are good companions and which are bad.  Starting on page 180 and going through 297, this book gives detailed information about Artichokes and ends with Turnips.  Each description includes what soil and watering methods the plant likes, how to sow the seeds, how to fertilize, and even how to harvest and store.  But the best part (at least for me because I've been doing this for a while now) - in a small clearly marked section it gives you the summary, including good companions and bad companions.  This is my go-to book for planning my garden.  I take my scale drawings, my seeds, and this book, and I sit down to plan what will go where in the spring.  If you are just starting out and want one book that will be easy to read, give you a ton of useful information, and will continue to be your garden resource for companion planting for years to come, this is the book I would recommend.