Dear V,
Remember those beans you helped me plant when you were here? First we scratched up the dirt and mixed in the chicken manure. This was to make sure that when the seedlings started growing the dirt would be nice and soft for their little roots, and they would have good things to eat (the chicken poop).
Next we put the bamboo grid on the first garden bed. The grid had sixteen spaces, a square foot each. Into each space you put three rows of three seeds each. I followed behind you and poked each seed into the dirt with my planting stick. When we finished that bed we went on to the second one, and then the third.
The sun was hot, and we were sweating, and your back hurt from bending over for a long time, but we persevered.
Nine seeds x 16 squares x 3 garden beds = 432 seeds...and every one of them sprouted! Now each of those 432 plants is giving dozens of green beans, which contain the young seeds to make future plants grow. And every time I pick a bean, the plant thinks "I'd better hurry up and make more seeds before the weather turns cold!" So it puts out more flowers, which turn into more beans for me to pick.
We're having an avalanche, a hurricane, a tsunami of beans.
I wish you were here to help me deal with it.
Just think--all those bright and tender beans for us to eat from now until next summer, and to share with others (I'll bring you a big basketful when we come for your birthday). And all we did was stick a bunch of seeds into some dirt. We didn't have to put in chemical fertilizers to feed the plants, because the hen poop did that job, and we didn't have to spray herbicides because the plants grew so close together that the weeds couldn't get any sun, so they never sprouted.
I don't know whether you will want to grow your own vegetables when you are older. But I hope that you'll remember how generously the earth rewards us if we show her a little kindness. And I hope that you will always pay attention to your food, and to where and how and by whom it was grown.
Hugs,
Lili (Lali's nom de grandmere)
Showing posts with label organic gardening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organic gardening. Show all posts
Monday, August 27, 2012
Friday, November 11, 2011
Google In The Kitchen
I butchered my crop of seven pumpkins a few days ago. "Butcher" is the proper term for something that requires a strong stomach as well as strong muscles.
Mind you, my pumpkins are the medium-sized ones intended for eating rather than carving. But cutting them open, even with my razor-sharp Chinese chopper, is by far the most strenuous thing I do in the kitchen. It's kind of like sawing a tree: the minute I get the chopper blade a couple of inches into the pumpkin, it gets stuck in the crack. The only way to resolve this is to lift the chopper with the attached pumpkin as high as I can, and then crash it down onto the counter. Eventually I win, and the pumpkin splits raggedly in two.
Then comes the gross part. With my bare hands, I scoop out the innards--the slimy, sticky filaments, the flat, slippery seeds. The only way to get it all is to scrape the inner walls with my fingernails. Ugh.
I didn't have enough space in the oven to bake the fourteen pumpkin halves at once, so I had to make two batches. While the first batch was baking, I took the pumpkin guts out to the hens. I know, I know, I should have scrubbed those 1200 seeds clean, seasoned, and roasted them. But I had, as the French say, other cats to whip that day.
When the pumpkins were done, I scooped out their flesh and rushed the still-warm rinds to the chickens, who loved them at first but soon turned up their noses at them. I don't blame them: fourteen pumpkin rinds for eleven hens is a lot.
When the baking was over, I had several impressive mountains of orange pumpkin meat, which I divided into portions and froze. Then I had to figure out a way to use it. Sure, I could make pies, and if we ate a couple of pies a week we might empty our pumpkin stores by spring...by which time we'd be too obese to walk out the door to plant the new garden. I could make pumpkin bread, which has more redeeming nutritional value than pies, but seven pumpkins would probably yield forty-nine loaves, which we also don't need. I could make curried cream of pumpkin soup, which tastes great and would be good for us, but might lose its charm if we ate it every day.
Pies, bread and soup exhausted the resources of my modest cookbook library. What I needed were recipes for pumpkin main dishes--concoctions that would use a lot of pumpkin and no sugar and would even taste good. Can I sing enough praises of Google's recipe sites? Like a helpful grandmother, Google comes to the rescue whenever I have too much of anything from the garden.
Although 90% of the pumpkin recipes were for bread or desserts, I found quite a few for main dishes, and a lot of those seemed to be of Italian provenance. If they named green summer squashes zucchini (little pumpkins), Italians must grow a lot of zucca, and have come up with ways to use it. I found a recipe for pumpkin gnocchi; one for baked pumpkin, sausage and ziti; and one, which I decided to make right away because I had all the ingredients, for pumpkin polenta with cheese.
It met all my requirements: it used up a lot of pumpkin, was reasonably easy to make, and tasted good. I'll make the gnocchi next. Sure, one of these days I'll take out my 1977 Fannie Farmer and make a pie. But until then, thank you, Google!
Mind you, my pumpkins are the medium-sized ones intended for eating rather than carving. But cutting them open, even with my razor-sharp Chinese chopper, is by far the most strenuous thing I do in the kitchen. It's kind of like sawing a tree: the minute I get the chopper blade a couple of inches into the pumpkin, it gets stuck in the crack. The only way to resolve this is to lift the chopper with the attached pumpkin as high as I can, and then crash it down onto the counter. Eventually I win, and the pumpkin splits raggedly in two.
Then comes the gross part. With my bare hands, I scoop out the innards--the slimy, sticky filaments, the flat, slippery seeds. The only way to get it all is to scrape the inner walls with my fingernails. Ugh.
I didn't have enough space in the oven to bake the fourteen pumpkin halves at once, so I had to make two batches. While the first batch was baking, I took the pumpkin guts out to the hens. I know, I know, I should have scrubbed those 1200 seeds clean, seasoned, and roasted them. But I had, as the French say, other cats to whip that day.
When the pumpkins were done, I scooped out their flesh and rushed the still-warm rinds to the chickens, who loved them at first but soon turned up their noses at them. I don't blame them: fourteen pumpkin rinds for eleven hens is a lot.
When the baking was over, I had several impressive mountains of orange pumpkin meat, which I divided into portions and froze. Then I had to figure out a way to use it. Sure, I could make pies, and if we ate a couple of pies a week we might empty our pumpkin stores by spring...by which time we'd be too obese to walk out the door to plant the new garden. I could make pumpkin bread, which has more redeeming nutritional value than pies, but seven pumpkins would probably yield forty-nine loaves, which we also don't need. I could make curried cream of pumpkin soup, which tastes great and would be good for us, but might lose its charm if we ate it every day.
Pies, bread and soup exhausted the resources of my modest cookbook library. What I needed were recipes for pumpkin main dishes--concoctions that would use a lot of pumpkin and no sugar and would even taste good. Can I sing enough praises of Google's recipe sites? Like a helpful grandmother, Google comes to the rescue whenever I have too much of anything from the garden.
Although 90% of the pumpkin recipes were for bread or desserts, I found quite a few for main dishes, and a lot of those seemed to be of Italian provenance. If they named green summer squashes zucchini (little pumpkins), Italians must grow a lot of zucca, and have come up with ways to use it. I found a recipe for pumpkin gnocchi; one for baked pumpkin, sausage and ziti; and one, which I decided to make right away because I had all the ingredients, for pumpkin polenta with cheese.
It met all my requirements: it used up a lot of pumpkin, was reasonably easy to make, and tasted good. I'll make the gnocchi next. Sure, one of these days I'll take out my 1977 Fannie Farmer and make a pie. But until then, thank you, Google!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Requiem For A Squash Vine
My vegetable garden is going to hell in a hand basket. Well, not the whole garden, but the two beds in which I planted a delicata and a butternut squash vine respectively. The vines have fallen prey to that arch-enemy of cucurbits, the squash bug.
I have been growing vegetables off and on since 1975, and this is the first time I've had a problem with bugs. Sure, there were always a few Japanese beetles nibbling at the bean leaves, and cabbage butterflies laying eggs that would hatch into gray-green caterpillars in the broccoli, and slugs making holes in the lettuce. But I've never had bugs come anywhere near killing a plant.
The squash bugs have. Their first victim was the splendid delicata vine, which bore seven beautiful green-striped squashes and a dozen flowers promising more. One day I noticed a bunch of odd-looking orange-colored eggs on top of a leaf. The next time I looked, there were thousands of gray bugs of all different sizes hanging like bunches of grapes from the stems, the leaves, the fruit. In a week, the plant was dead.
I picked the seven squashes, which hadn't quite reached maturity, roasted and pureed them and put them in the freezer.
Having sucked all the nourishment out of the delicata vine, the bugs have now assaulted the butternut plant. It is full of glorious big squashes that are nowhere near ripe. I doubt that the vine will survive long enough for them to mature.
Short of blasting them with heavy-duty insecticides, there is not much you can do about squash bugs other than pick them by hand. I could spend the rest of the summer doing just that, but I would have to stop writing, drawing, reading, cooking, and living to dedicate myself exclusively to squashing squash bugs.
I thought that if I lived right and used plenty of compost, my vegetables would be invulnerable to pests and disease. But it turns out that in gardening, as in the rest of life, being righteous is no guarantee of anything. If there is any justice in the universe, when good gardeners die we will be given allotment plots in heaven where we can spend eternity growing organic veggies free from the scourges of mildew, bugs, drought, and untimely frosts.
I have been growing vegetables off and on since 1975, and this is the first time I've had a problem with bugs. Sure, there were always a few Japanese beetles nibbling at the bean leaves, and cabbage butterflies laying eggs that would hatch into gray-green caterpillars in the broccoli, and slugs making holes in the lettuce. But I've never had bugs come anywhere near killing a plant.
The squash bugs have. Their first victim was the splendid delicata vine, which bore seven beautiful green-striped squashes and a dozen flowers promising more. One day I noticed a bunch of odd-looking orange-colored eggs on top of a leaf. The next time I looked, there were thousands of gray bugs of all different sizes hanging like bunches of grapes from the stems, the leaves, the fruit. In a week, the plant was dead.
I picked the seven squashes, which hadn't quite reached maturity, roasted and pureed them and put them in the freezer.
Having sucked all the nourishment out of the delicata vine, the bugs have now assaulted the butternut plant. It is full of glorious big squashes that are nowhere near ripe. I doubt that the vine will survive long enough for them to mature.
Short of blasting them with heavy-duty insecticides, there is not much you can do about squash bugs other than pick them by hand. I could spend the rest of the summer doing just that, but I would have to stop writing, drawing, reading, cooking, and living to dedicate myself exclusively to squashing squash bugs.
I thought that if I lived right and used plenty of compost, my vegetables would be invulnerable to pests and disease. But it turns out that in gardening, as in the rest of life, being righteous is no guarantee of anything. If there is any justice in the universe, when good gardeners die we will be given allotment plots in heaven where we can spend eternity growing organic veggies free from the scourges of mildew, bugs, drought, and untimely frosts.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The Occasional Worm
Next week, if the forecasts are accurate, we will have five days of temperatures in the 90s. I'm trying not to think about how that will make me feel, but am focusing instead on the good things it will bring: ripe tomatoes, a significant boost to the little eggplants, a slowing down in the growth of the lawn grass. But the heat will also bring cabbage worms.
The pretty white cabbage butterflies have been flitting around my broccoli for a while now, laying their eggs, and the hot weather will result in the hatching of the inch-long caterpillars, which are of a bluish, grayish green that perfectly mimics the color of broccoli. That perfect mimicry means that you cannot see the cabbage worms...until they appear on your plate.
Mind you, I not only wash my broccoli before cooking it, I soak it for an hour in salty water. This is supposed to kill the worms and make them loosen their grip on the florets, and sometimes it works. But when I serve the washed, brined and cooked broccoli on our plates, the occasional worm (now cooked to a highly visible pale yellow) falls out.
Those are the easy ones. But there are some so tiny that I am sure we eat them. I can't say that I relish the thought of ingesting unintended proteins with my veggies, and the vast majority of the American public would find the idea perfectly revolting. Any purveyor of broccoli to the market had better make sure that his florets are free from even a homeopathic dose of cabbage worm, or face the rage of the buying public.
But I am not the buying public, at least where most of my food is concerned. I would rather chance the occasional encounter with a worm in the broccoli, or a speck of dirt splashed by the rain on my spinach, than eat food that has been purified and perfected by who knows what means, food that carries in it only a dim memory of the earth.
I believe that as a species we have evolved to consume a bit of grit with our lettuce (if chickens need grit, why shouldn't we?). That speck of soil in your salad probably carries important nutrients that you can't get in a bottled supplement. And as far as the occasional live stowaway, what better guarantee of freshness could there be?
The pretty white cabbage butterflies have been flitting around my broccoli for a while now, laying their eggs, and the hot weather will result in the hatching of the inch-long caterpillars, which are of a bluish, grayish green that perfectly mimics the color of broccoli. That perfect mimicry means that you cannot see the cabbage worms...until they appear on your plate.
Mind you, I not only wash my broccoli before cooking it, I soak it for an hour in salty water. This is supposed to kill the worms and make them loosen their grip on the florets, and sometimes it works. But when I serve the washed, brined and cooked broccoli on our plates, the occasional worm (now cooked to a highly visible pale yellow) falls out.
Those are the easy ones. But there are some so tiny that I am sure we eat them. I can't say that I relish the thought of ingesting unintended proteins with my veggies, and the vast majority of the American public would find the idea perfectly revolting. Any purveyor of broccoli to the market had better make sure that his florets are free from even a homeopathic dose of cabbage worm, or face the rage of the buying public.
But I am not the buying public, at least where most of my food is concerned. I would rather chance the occasional encounter with a worm in the broccoli, or a speck of dirt splashed by the rain on my spinach, than eat food that has been purified and perfected by who knows what means, food that carries in it only a dim memory of the earth.
I believe that as a species we have evolved to consume a bit of grit with our lettuce (if chickens need grit, why shouldn't we?). That speck of soil in your salad probably carries important nutrients that you can't get in a bottled supplement. And as far as the occasional live stowaway, what better guarantee of freshness could there be?
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Organic Gardener's Complaint Against Ground Ivy
Bane of my garden, fair April's evil gift,
Creeping green menace, Beelzebub's own weed.
Thou killest the seedlings upon which I would feed,
Like the Great Alexander, thou art cruel and swift.
Sprouting demurely at the birth of spring,
Thy blossom's deep blue to the gardener appeals,
But the stench of thy root thy true nature reveals
When onto the weed pile thy remains I fling.
Th'art a yin plant, ground ivy, and yieldest with ease
To my yankings and pullings and strivings to clear
My poor garden of pests such as thee. Yet I fear
That thou mockest my efforts, ground ivy, thou tease.
No chemical killers needs't thou fear from me,
But I have greener weapons: I will spit on thee!
Creeping green menace, Beelzebub's own weed.
Thou killest the seedlings upon which I would feed,
Like the Great Alexander, thou art cruel and swift.
Sprouting demurely at the birth of spring,
Thy blossom's deep blue to the gardener appeals,
But the stench of thy root thy true nature reveals
When onto the weed pile thy remains I fling.
Th'art a yin plant, ground ivy, and yieldest with ease
To my yankings and pullings and strivings to clear
My poor garden of pests such as thee. Yet I fear
That thou mockest my efforts, ground ivy, thou tease.
No chemical killers needs't thou fear from me,
But I have greener weapons: I will spit on thee!
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