Book Giveaway

The Winner of Wild Fermentation is Megan & the winner of Root Cellaring is Brittney! Congratulations! I’ll be emailing you both shortly.

I thought since I’m going to kick off 30 Days to a Better Garden next week, it would be fun to start off with a giveaway. I have two books that I hope you’ll be in desperate need of after we spend this summer improving our gardens. Both are about food preservation, Wild Fermentation & Root Cellaring. After experimenting with kimchi this past winter, both Erin and, well, Amazon recommended that I try Wild Fermentation. It’s a fun book and makes me feel a little bit like a mad scientist in the kitchen. The book explains in detail what fermentation is and give plenty of great recipes to try out. And Root Cellaring is probably the most comprehensive book out there on the subject. Not only does it cover how to build a root cellar, but also how to find sneaky spots in your house or apartment that you could turn into root cellars. Plus it lists pretty much every single vegetable imaginable and explains all the different ways on how you can cellar it to last longer.

All you have to do to win is to leave me a comment and let me know what garden tips you’d like to learn more about over the month of June and I’ll pick a random number next Friday, June 5th. Good luck! Oh, and come back next week to take part in 30 Days to a Better Garden!

Free Subscription to Organic Gardening Magazine

I just wanted to drop in quickly to let you know about this great freebie:

Organic Gardening magazine is one of our favorite gardening magazines. Along with good gardening advice there are always plenty of drool worthy garden pictures.

If you don’t already have a subscription go get a FREE one courtesy of Stonyfield Farms. All you have to do is join the Stoneyfield Farm community here and then go here to sign up for your free subscription!

(via Money Saving Mom)

Winter Harvest & Early Spring Planting

It’s that time of year between winter and spring, here in Sonoma. We have been getting ‘in like a lion’ rain/hail storms (thankfully) and yet the cherry plum trees are in bloom and daffodils are beginning to make there appearance throughout town.

Last Saturday was a sunny day, a rare day for us lately, so we decided to harvest most of the cabbage, the bolting kale and a few of the brussel sprouts which have been growing all winter. Because we’ve had more than our fair share of kale lately, I decided to break out the ol’ FoodSavervacuum and use it to vacuum seal blanched portions of kale to freeze for a later date. Have you used a FoodSaver before? We received one when we got married 6.5 years ago and we really like it. It keeps things fresher for much longer in the freezer. We originally used it for vaccum sealing the salmon that Scott used to catch. But we also use it for freezing large Costco sizes of meat and now for veggies too. A worthy investment if you freeze a lot of food.

Into the garden went the potatoes: Red Gold, Russet Norkotah, Rose Finn Apples (Potato Garden is where we get our seed potatoes). Old German shallots and Red Wethersfield onions (for green onions), our newly aquired spinach, daikon, and carrot seeds, and lastly peas.

We took out our favorite How to Grow More Vegetables book for some spring planting inspiration this past weekend because they lay it all out for you of exactly how many seeds you should be planting of what vegetables for this time of year for a family of four, isn’t that convenient? Anyway, they listed a rather reasonable amount of seeds for each item, but when it came to peas? It suggests you plant 1800 pea seeds! One thousand and eight hundred! We looked at our measly one packet of seeds and laughed. So I suppose we’ll be about 1775 seeds short of what we should be planting this year. Since I’m not a fan of cooked peas anyway, I’m not too worried. How many pea seeds do you usually plant?

Oh, I also wanted to point out that I added a bookstore link up above, do you see it? I’ve added only books that either we own or that we have read and have liked, I’d never suggest something to you that we haven’t tried ourselves.

I hope your last week of winter is going smoothly! Oh and go here to find out when your last frost date is.

An Intro into Fermentation : How to Make Kimchi

When we were in Kauai, we stopped for breakfast at the Ono Family Restaurant one morning in Kapa’a. In some sort of weak attempt to look like a local, I ordered the Local Girl Omelet. The Local Girl Omelet is not your ordinary omlet, for one it was filled with brown fried rice, but to top it off it was also filled with kimchi. I had never tasted kimchi but I’d heard a lot about it, so of course I had to try it. Kimchi, in case you haven’t heard of it is basically a type of Korean Sauerkraut. But as I found out kimchi is oh, so much more than sauerkraut. The omlet combination was fantastic. I’m not a huge omlet fan. They always are greasy and leave me feeling too full and icky feeling afterwards. But this omlet didn’t leave me feeling that way at all. Maybe we can attribute that to the kimchi. I don’t know. But I do know that that taste of the kimchi…that sweet, spicy, salty, crunchy taste haunted me for weeks afterwards. I wanted more!

Before we had left on our trip I received a copy of Nourishing Traditions from the library, so when we got home I started browsing through it. You can only imagine how happy I was to see a recipe for kimchi in the book and it was so easy to make! And lucky for us, Napa Cabbage everywhere in the Farmers Market right now, so we grabbed head and set home to give this kimchi recipe a go.

If you are used to canning, making kimchi is really going to throw you. Kimchi is made by a process of fermentation. A process that goes so against the process of sterilized canning that it will make you wince a little bit, as did we. You don’t sterilize the jar at all. You don’t boil anything, you don’t use a virgin can lid, you don’t wait for the top to pop. You just put a bunch of cabbage and other vegetables in a jar with some salt and some whey*, pound it down with a spoon handle and let it sit….at room temperature…for days. Are you scared yet? And it may bubble, but that’s okay. And some white film may form at the top (ours didn’t however) and that too is okay. After three days of sitting on your shelf you are ready to eat it and put it in the fridge. I won’t be ashamed to admit that we were a bit scared for our safety to try it. But try it we did and we’ve been adding it to everything now.

Lucky for us we came upon this recipe first because when you really start to research about how kimchi is actually made by the Koreans, the process becomes a lot more involved. So involved that we probably wouldn’t even have attempted it.  But since we haven’t had much kimchi in its pure form, we are happy with our simplified method. What we did learn though that kimchi is one of the most healthy foods in the world! No really, many different people claim that.

The reason it is so good for you is because of all of the good bacteria (lactobacilli) that proliferate when it is fermented. These lactobacilli are found on the surface of all living things but they are especially prolific on the leaves and roots of plants growing in or near the ground. The by product of these lactobacilli is lactic acid which not only preserves vegetables and fruit perfectly, but also promotes the growth of healthy flora in the intestines. Kind of like yogurt.

Back through history most cultures used some sort of fermentation to preserve their food. In fact anything that you hear of today as being pickled used to actually be a fermented item before mass production. Once industrialization took place and fermentation started to happen on a grand scale, they found that the results often varied. So they went in and used vinegar instead of letting the fermentation happen naturally and they also had to pasturize it, which like milk, kills all of the beneficial lactic-acid producing bacteria.

Luckily fermentation is really easy and fun to do at home. Basically you just put a bunch of vegetables or fruit in a jar, pound them for a few minutes, add in any herbs or spices you like and salt. Salt will preserve the produce until the lactic acid starts to get produced. If you add whey it will just guarantee your results.

So here is the recipe we used, again from Nourishing Traditions. It calls for Napa Cabbage, but I think on this next go around we might use regular cabbage since we have it growing. I’ll let you know how it goes. And I’m excited to learn about this fermentation method. In fact I might try more fermented or pickled veggies to preserve the summer harvest this year. In fact I might have to add this book to our bookshelf: Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

Easy Kimchi
(makes 2 quarts)

1 head Napa cabbage, cored and shredded
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
1 cup carrots, grated
1/2 cup daidon radish, grated
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon dried chili flakes
1 tablespoon sea salt
4 tablespoons whey* (or use additional 1 T salt instead)

Place vegetables, ginger, red chili flakes, salt and whey in a bowl and pound it with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer to release juices. Place them in two quart sized glass jars and press down firmly until all the juices come up to the top and cover the vegetables. The top of the vegetables should be at least an inch from the top of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days at which time you can put it in the fridge or cold storage.

*You can get whey by draining a quart of yogurt (make sure it contains the good bacteria-we use Pavels) through a clean dishtowel for a few hours. If you do this overnight you’ll end up with more than 4 tablespoons, but it will keep in the fridge for up to 6 months. And you’ll also end up with yogurt cheese as a by product, which is delicious and makes a great alternative to cream cheese.

Are you a kimchi fan? Have you ever fermented anything? Do you have any tips for me and my new obsession?

More Edible Weeds

We had a good rain storm in December that brought us some much needed water. And then we had this really freak 80 degree weather in January for about a week. So you can only imagine what that has done to the weeds. They are thriving and ready to take over. So while the far northern half of the country is maybe taking a snowy winters break from working in the garden to admire the many seed catalogs that have been arriving, we have been doing all that we can to avoid being covered alive in weeds. Sometimes it seems like there is no rest here!

Many years ago, Scott and I bought a book called Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West. We were inspired to get it after a Labor Day weekend camping trip where we discovered wild huckleberries growing near our campsite. Each morning we had huckleberry pancakes. Ever since we’ve had fun finding new, wild edible plants.

This year we’ve discovered a few more edible weeds in our yard that I’d like to show you.

Chickweed is a scrawny stemmed annual weed. It falls over when it gets to tall and reroots at the leave joints….You an only imagine how quickly this spreads! Anyway, its very pretty and delicate looking with a dainty white five petaled flower at the top. Chickweed is easily distinguished by a single row of teeny-tiny little hairs that grow along the stem. At each leaf joint the row of hairs switch sides.

Chickweed is known as one of the tastiest salad greens in existance! Isn’t that bold thing to say? I’ve tried it and it is, in fact, pretty tasty. The entire plant is edible, stems and all and makes a great addition to salads. Which is fortunate because at this point it looks like we could provide all of Sonoma with a weeks supply.

Filaree is another new discovery. We’ve had it growing in our yard all along, but just now identified it. To be honest, it doesn’t look like something you want to eat. It grows right in the middle of our lawn (along with in the veggie garden). As the stems grow they become really hairy. The kind of hairy that you really don’t want to put in your mouth. But luckily you don’t eat the stems, you eat the tender new leaves. Filaree has small five petaled flowers that are a pinkish-purple color.

If picked young, the leaves have a parsley like flavor to them which add a nice flavor to salads.

If you like to hike and camp, this is a fun book to have. Even though the title says that it is for the West, it says that at least 50 percent of the plants shown in it appear all over the States and 75% appear from in the northern half the states from California to New England. I’d recommend adding Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West to your collection.

How Do You View Food?

fennel & orange salad
Is food comfort to you? Is it a way of nourishing you? Is food art to you? Do you relish in stockpiling what you grow? Do you play at being frugal in how you feed your family? Has food become your outlet in fighting the world’s ills? Chances are you might consider all of these things when you think of food. But have you ever thought of food as medicine?

For as long as I remember, I’ve had an interest in food. As the years progressed so has my interest. My interest in food and eating took a rapid step up after spending time in Italy. How can half a year there not change your interest in food, really? To me, at that point, it was mostly about taste. And about community. And interests of growing food started to take a higher interest. I would spend my quiet days between art classes walking through our University’s Urban Farm thinking and dreaming of a future that I luckily live today. I started taking cooking classes and would attempt to translate Italian cookbooks into evening meals.

waiting for dinner with a gin & tonic…the ultimate health beverage…right?

During my single days in Larkspur, I lived over a French restaurant. While the sounds and smells of french dining filtered up into my windows I set out to perfect the perfect pork chop and apple tart. I had no real interest in viewing food as a way to save money (although I was always near broke at the time), or a way to save the world. I thought it neat to buy things local from the farmers market, but I didn’t make it priority. I didn’t even have so much as a window sill to grow things, so growing food was just a hope for the future. I just wanted things to taste good. I knew nothing about pasture fed animals and ‘free-range’ turkeys seemed like an outrageously expensive indulgence.

Then I met Scott and my simple interest in food was dwarfed by his devoted passion for it. Little did I know that he was busy cooking down in that same French restaurant. He already had a thriving vegetable garden and would shower me with homegrown succulent fare. But again, for us it was all about the freshest, best tasting food we could find and grow. And sharing food with others was always an important element.

Fast forward to just over a year ago. At that point, I had just read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food and we realized that pasture fed, free range animals weren’t a frivolous thing to eat, but they were important to our health. We learned that buying our produce local and seasonally wasn’t just a ‘neat’ thing to do, but that it made such a difference in our world’s future when we didn’t. So food became a little bit more about health as well as a bit more about foods impact for our environment.

the evil (yet helpful) asthma medication
At the same time our oldest son at age 3 was diagnosed with asthma. I don’t know if your children have asthma or if you know anyone with childhood asthma, but it is a scary thing to face as a parent. We were faced with having to give him regular inhilations of steroids through this very intimidating face mask. He would cry bloody murder out of fear of that mask anytime we approached him with it. Which only made me even more unsettled about what we had to go through. So I did as any mom searching for a better solution would do and I ordered the book, Natural Relief for Your Child’s Asthma: A Guide to Controlling Symptoms & Reducing Your Child’s Dependence on Drugs. And that made me think about food in an entirely new light. Food really could heal you. We’ve made small changes in his diet and environment that have helped control his asthma enough that we’ve been off the daily Flovent since the beginning of last summer.

You may remember my post on raw milk last month. That post was inspired by my recent reading as well as the reading I’ve done about asthma, allergies and excema. I’ve been doing some additional reading that talks about food as medicine which I can’t wait to share. But before I do, what is your take on food? How do you view food? If thinking about this provides enough fodder for your own blog post, add your link to the comments and I’ll add your link up here so we can all read it.

The Usefulness of Cilantro

Cilantro is a mainstay of our cooler season garden. We love having it in meals and it also provides a pretty green spot in our garden. But besides eating the leaves, did you know about all the other parts you can eat? And did you know that it’s thought to be an aphrodisiac? And helps with digestion? And is the oldest herb mentioned in literature? Who knew?

We typically grow cilantro from seed in late winter and fall and it always grows healthy and large. We put it in full sun and provide it with moist soil and it grows to about a foot tall. During the times when we’re really on top of it, we’ll plant a handful of seeds every few weeks so we have a constant supply of it. But once we have had our fill and the season starts to change, it sends up these beautiful white flowers.

After the flowers come, they develop little round seed pods that when dried are commonly called coriander in America. In other countries both the leaves as well as the seedpods can be called coriander, so make sure to read your recipes carefully to find out what part of the plant they mean. Dried coriander seeds are commonly used in Indian curries. We’ve tied ours upside down until they fully dry. We’re looking forward to some delicious curries this winter.

While I knew about eating the leaves and seeds, I just found out that you can also eat the roots. I read about that in Ruth Reichl’s book, Comfort Me With Apples(which is a fantastic read). On her trip to Thailand, she discovers them making stir fries with cilantro root. We haven’t tried this yet, has anyone else? At first glance, they don’t look especially appetizing, but we should give it a try one of these days.

The taste of cilantro is pretty distinct. Do you like it? Or do you hate cilantro? You might not if you are of European heritage. It’s been said that those of European descent don’t care for it, and thinking of it, cilantro or coriander has never been a big hit in Europe. My mom can’t stand the stuff, but me, oh I really enjoy it. What do you think of it?

Update: If you are having troubles with your cilantro bolting, you may want to try this Slow Bolt Cilantro variety.

How to Grow More Vegetables…Part Three

As promised, today I’ll explain about how this Grow Biointensive way of planting as explained in How to Grow More Vegetables can improve your garden. As I mentioned this style of gardening has been rediscovered and studied for over thirty years by Ecology Action, up in Northern California. But it’s originally the ancient 4,000 year old Chinese Biointensive way of farming which is patterned after nature’s own intensive biological plantings.

Scott and I figure, if its worked for the Chinese for all those years, it might just in fact make our garden a better place. And while we don’t follow the method exactly, we add a little bit more of the method’s theologies every year. And it has improved our garden greatly. The man who initially brought this method to attention in the States, Alan Chadwick, wisely said, “Just grow one small area, do it well. Then, once you have got it right, grow more!” So, let’s learn this method already, okay?

Here are the components:
Deep Soil Preparation. This is the most important part. Loose soil structure enables the roots to grow deep down in the soil and a steady stream of nutrients can flow into the stem and leaves. Double digging your soil is admittedly back breaking, but it can be done is small steps and the benefits last for years and are certainly worth the effort.

Composting. “In nature, living things die, and their death allows life to be reborn.” (See, Compost really is proof that there is life after death!) Composting is an important way to return carbon, nitrogen, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, phosophorus, potash, and trace minerals back to the earth. These elements are all necessary to maintain the biological cycles of life that naturally exist. So ahead make that compost pile, it’s easy!

Close Plant Spacing. Nature doesn’t grow it’s plants in long, spaced out rows, why should we? We waste a lot of space growing things so far apart.

Companion Planting. This is a fascinating subject to explore. It’s one of our favorite garden explorations. Basically, you want to grow things together that will enhance each other, such as beans and cucumbers.

Plant Carbon-Efficient Crops. Planting your garden in about 60% of the growing area with seed and grain crops will produce large amounts of carbonaceous materials for compost and provide significant amounts of dietary calories. Have you ever thought about growing crops for not only your consumption, but also to return back to the soil? That’s a new one, isn’t it? But a great one.

Plant Calorie-Efficient Crops. Remember, this methodology is taught to show people how to grow their entire diet in one 4,000 square foot plot (a vegan diet of course). So thinking of planting the most calorie rich vegetables is important. You want to plant about 30% of your garden to potatoes, burdock, garlic, and parsnips which produce a large amount of calories for your diet.

Open-Pollinated Seeds. Use these to preserve genetic diversity.

A Whole, Interrelated Farming System. This Grow Biointensive food-raising method is a whole system and it’s components, when used all together create high yields that nourish not only yourself but the earth.

Cool system, isn’t it? What I’ve written about is only a taste of what you find in the actual book, How to Grow More Vegetables. Its full of incredible information on starting from seed planting with lunar cycles, charts like you wouldn’t believe, and diagrams of how to lay out your garden. Step by step illustrations on how to start small and eventually grow a plot into a 4,000 sq. foot self sufficient garden of Eden, or Garden of Eatin’ as it were.

I can’t tell you how much you need to read How to Grow More Vegetables. Add it to your Amazon wish list or check it out at your local library. You’ll love it too!

Read Part One & Part Two.

Grow More Vegetables… Part Two

I hope I didn’t scare you yesterday with that doom and gloom about the future of agriculture. I’m sure if I tried I could round up links to a ton more stories of fear, but I like to keep things positive here, so let’s hurry up and talk about how we can improve things, okay?

The challenges of world hunger, soil depletion, and diminishing resources is overwhelming. And many people tend to look for big solutions, such as mass distribution, miracle high-yield crops, mass producing fertilizer. But all of these solutions, really are harmful and create long-term dependency. How to Grow More Vegetables, the Grow Biointensive way of farming, teaches the world to become self sufficient. To nurture the soil, and to view the ecosystem as a whole, so we can continue to farm generation after generation.

The benefits for this Grow Biointensive way of growing are a:

67% to 88% reduction in water consumption per unit of production
50+% reduction in the amount of purchased fertilizer required per unit of production
99% reduction in the amount of energy used per unit of production
100+% increase in soil fertility
200% to 400% increase in caloric production per unit of area
100+% increase in income per unit of area.

Fantastic, right? Why hasn’t the world already adopted these practices? Well, they have. This type of farming was done in China as far back as 4000 years ago. The Europeans and Latin Americans adopted it long, long ago. But since the invention of mechanized and chemical agriculture, much of these practices have been destroyed. Ecology Action is working to reteach these methods world wide.

But how does this apply to your garden? What is this book going to do to make your garden better? Well, stick around for tomorrow’s post on what How to Grow More Vegetables will benefit you directly.

As for now, I’ll leave you with this quote:

Up to 6 billion microbial life-forms can live in one 5-gram amount of cured compost, about the size of a quarter. Life makes more life, and we have the opportunity to work together with this powerful force to expand our own vitality and that of this planet.

Read Part One & Part Three.

How to Grow More Vegetables… Part One

…than you ever thought possible on less land that you can imagine.

Did you know that at some point during the years 2014 to 2021, there probably is not going to be enough land to provide the nutrition needed for most of the world’s population using todays current agricultural standards? Scary, isn’t it? Currently, we need about 7,000 to 36,000 square feet of farmable land to keep up with the worlds eating habits. And most people only have access to 9,000 square feet. You do the math.

And most of that land is used for growing only food, which doesn’t produce enough soil-nurturing humus needed to ensure the development of healthy soil. So the land gets stripped of it’s nutrients and becomes un-usable. Again, to keep a garden alive and thriving means to take care of the most basic of elements, the soil. (Here’s a list of 7 Things To Improve Your Soil today)

Regardless of how much soil we have in the world to grow on, we also need to consider the water to irrigate the crops. Many countries, as early as 1992, had only enough water to irrigate 4,000 square feet per person. Far from enough water to keep up with today’s farming practices.

It’s not all doom and gloom, there is a way to change these practices, and that’s what I’m going to talk about this week. This method described in How to Grow More Vegetables shows you how to grow all the food needed for one’s own nutrition, as well as nutrition for the soil on as little as 4,000 square feet.

We are going to start a little mini-series on A Sonoma Garden this week about the book How to Grow More Vegetables written by John Jeavons, the director of Ecology Action. This book features the Grow Biointensive method of mini-farming which has been adopted by UNICEF, Save the Children and the Peace Corps. This book is indispensible for anyone who is interested in food and farming activism and growing. The first part of the book is devoted to explaining the current status of the farming situation in the world as well as a look into the future. The majority of the book, however, explains this Grow Biointensive Method in great detail so you can easily adopt it into your gardening routine.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the benefits of Grow Biointensive.

Go to Part Two.

If you like this post and would like to have the rest of the series e-mailed to you click here.