Just a quick post to share with you this hot, hot sun that was rising over our valley oak this morning. Today’s a record breaking day in terms of heat. And we’re packing to escape to the beach. Have a great long weekend friends. I’ll see you next week and we’ll talk all about late summer gardening.
Monthly Archives: August 2008
Have a good long weekend
Filed under Musings, Our Weekends
Inspiring Garden Links
There are so many great blogs out there and so much good information to read about. Here’s a small list of what’s inspired me of late. What’s inspiring you? Feel free to add your comments about your favorite blog posts and I’ll add them and your name to the list!
How to Start a Worm Farm by Down to Earth, a great Australian blog
Money Lessons Learned by Square Foot Gardening , by Frugal Dad. Who knew that Square Food Gardening could teach you so much about investing? Sinfonian, are you a good investor after doing SFG?
Looks like Canning is Making a Comeback Judging by the popularity of my canning lid labels, it looks like canning really is become popular again!
How to Make Rain Barrels We’ve been curious about doing this ourselves. Has anyone tried it?
Never Pay for Onions Again A unique way to start onions
Update: If you’d like to read about how I’m such a horrible mother, check out my guest blog post on One Green Generation.
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
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.
Filed under books, Leafy Greens, what we've learned
Summer Harvest Beef Stew
Beef stew isn’t really the first thing you think of having for dinner in summer. But when everything is in season, why not? I’ve been making this version of beef stew for about 10 years now and it is my absolute favorite. Maybe it’s because it’s completely devoid of peas and carrots (oh, I do hate cooked peas and carrots so) or maybe it’s the surprising plot twist at the end of the recipe, but I have yet to meet a better beef stew recipe.
Without further ado, my favorite beef stew recipe:
Summer Harvest Beef Stew
1.5lbs. stew meat
3 bell peppers, diced
1 onion, chopped
thyme, bay leaf & red pepper flakes
2 c. chopped tomatoes + 1 T. tomato paste (or 2c. tomato sauce)
2 cloves peeled garlic
1 c. really good red wine
1 c. chicken stock
Coat beef in flour and brown in a large hot pan. Take beef out and put aside. Add a bit of olive oil to pan and then add garlic, herbs, peppers, pepper flakes and onion. Saute until tender. Add meat back in the pan along with wine. Reduce wine by half. Add stock, tomatoes and tomato paste (or tomato sauce). Simmer for an hour covered and 30 minutes uncovered.
Surprise Ending
Heat 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar with 2 tablespoons sugar in small saucepan. When sugar is dissolved add into stew. Then add 1 t. unsweetened cocoa powder to stew. Stir well. Serve over roasted, quartered potatoes, egg noodles or rice.
Filed under 1, In the Kitchen, Recipes
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
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
I can’t tell you how much you need to read How to Grow More Vegetables
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 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
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
We are going to start a little mini-series on A Sonoma Garden this week about the book How to Grow More Vegetables
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.
After a day in Sebastopol
Tuesday was our oldest son’s fourth birthday. After a weekend of celebration, we spent his actual birthday with the BellaMadris clan in a little orchard in Sebastopol. It was lovely. And beautiful. This orchard, down a long quiet gravel road, is in a No Spray Zone and the owner isn’t a big fruit harvesting guy, so Julie has been given permission to pick all she wants. And this was part of the result of our harvest.
The boys ran wild, fueled by chocolate cupcakes and the prospects of sitting on this shiny red tractor.
A great day was had by all. Thanks Julie for bringing us there!
It made us both think, if we could actually live way out in the country. We (Julie and I) both like the convenience of living in town, not using our cars, but we also have a draw towards living out in a quiet open place in the country too. Melinda chose to give up country life for the city recently. Where do you live? Do you wish you lived closer to a town, or farther from it?
Filed under just picked, Musings
Ali Baba is the Best!
We’ve had a troublesome history with watermelons. It’s like us and watermelons never really jived. We started to think that maybe we just weren’t watermelon-growing kind of people. But this year things have been different. Maybe it’s because we planted two different kinds together. Or maybe the stars are just aligned like one big watermelon this year, but it’s been a good year for us and watermelons.
Sugar baby
We grew Sugar Babies and Ali Babas. The Sugar Babies, they were pretty good. Smallish and roundish with dark skin and a nice red center. But they were only mostly sweet and they were full of countless little black seeds. Which made for a lot of spitting. So much spitting that we barely got to taste the flesh.
Ali Baba
But the Ali Babas…. Now those are our kinds of melons. So sweet that you don’t even know what to do with yourself. So full of flavor. And the seeds are big and not so plentiful, so when you take a bite, it’s an easy ‘patooie’ to spit them out. And did I mention the flavor? Oh, we’re in watermelon heaven. It’s a good thing that it’s so incredible because so far we’ve harvested two and this one here is 14 pounds. The previous one wasn’t far from that weight. We’ve got a lot of melon eating to do.
The story behind these Ali Baba’s is pretty cool too. The seeds were given to Rare Seeds from a man who collected them from Iraq before the war started. Now its virtually impossible to get seeds from that country. “A rare genetic treasure” reads the description.
And look, it’s beautiful growing in the yard. You must all put this melon at the top of your list for growing next year. You won’t be disappointed.
Filed under Growing Challenge, just picked, notes for next year
Next up on the fruit horizon
The white peaches are just about ripe. They are tiny little peaches, apricot size really. But it’s a teeny, tiny little tree, so what do you expect, really? We keep having thoughts of taking the tree out, and maybe replacing it with an Oh Henry peach tree, but every August, once we have our first bite of fruit, we give it another year.
Our Fay Elberta tree is almost empty at this point. We froze a bunch of these peaches. Sliced them, layed them out on a cookie sheet and then into a ziplock. I can’t wait for a mid winter peach tart. I need to remember to make up some crisp topping too. We also made just a couple jars of freezer jam too.
Do you have any fruit trees in your garden? Are the peaches ripe in your yard too?
Filed under Fruit Trees
A Sonoma Garden 