Posts from — May 2007

We spent most of “today’s” 20 minutes shopping even though it took us a total of an hour start to finish. We left our house at 1 PM and strolled up to Downtown Home & Garden, our local garden store where we picked up a pound of full sun grass-seed, a pound of plow-down rye and a big bag of dried blood (also known as blood meal.)

Don’t let the sound of “dried blood” scare you off — I find it absolutely necessary. For one thing it’s great source of nitrogen that’s also organic but that’s not it’s major attraction. Blood meal TERRIFIES squirrels. I love all of God’s creatures but I admit few of them make me angrier than the common red squirrel. I suppose it doesn’t help matters that someone up the street from us feeds them peanuts and English walnuts like they were fluffy-tailed songbirds. More than a little of that squirrel-chow ends up buried in our yard, often in holes dug right dangerously close to garden plants. Furthermore, our neighborhood squirrels do things that seem either mean-spirited or just dumb. For instance, every year, we’ll lose a couple Italian eggplants just when they’re getting plump enough to make a nice parmesan. The little furry critters will pull them off the stem, take maybe three bites and and discard the ruined remains. I’d mind it far less if the squirrel just ate the whole thing; I certainly don’t mind sharing. I know this all sounds petty and, in my heart, I know it is. But a good sprinkling of blood meal every couple weeks will keep the squirrels and their hijinx out of my yard.

We also wandered up to the Farmer’s Market and got a few more seedlings:

• jalapeños (four for $1.50)
• Asian eggplant (four for $1.50)
• Italian eggplant (four for $1.50)
• acorn squash (four for $2)
• yellow crookneck squash (four for $2)
• an “Early Girl” tomato for our neighbor ($2)

And we also did a little browsing in a nice used bookstore that’s also on the way. We picked up a copy of Uprisings: the Whole Grain Baker’s Book. It’s a 20 year old collection of recipes from various collective bakeries, mostly in the Midwest. One of those bakeries was located here in Ann Arbor, right down the street from the Farmer’s Market we frequent and in fact, right next door to the place where this bookstore now is. Jan and I remember stopping in the bakery on Saturday mornings, not to buy bread because we made that ourselves at home, but for a slice of this incredible vegetable pizza they’d make every week. It was piled high with things that we didn’t normally expect to see on a pizza, like broccoli, sweet potato, zuccini… and was delicious! The book reminded us of the Wildflour Bakery and our smiles grew deeper when we noticed that one of the recipes in the book was for this wonderful pizza.

I’ve only come to appreciate spinach more fully in the last couple of years. Prior to that, I merely tolerated spinach’s raw presence in salads or cooked form in other dishes. I would avoid anything where spinach was the main ingredient in any form.

I guess my taste buds are still maturing because at some point I found out a culinary secret: spinach is pretty good. Moreover, spinach is enormously flexible and generous. Not only can spinach dress up a vegetable lasagna, an omelette or something florentine, spinach can stand on its own… with the right ingredients.

This is my new favorite way to make spinach and I do it in the solar cooker.

Start with 10 oz of frozen spinach. Defrost it in the microwave or however you like. Combine the spinach with 1 beaten egg, 4 ounces softened cream cheese, 1 tsp garlic powder, 4-6 ounces of a favorite cheese, like mozerella, cheddar, whatever, depending on your mood. Mix well and put into a pre-sprayed small pan. Bake it in the sun all day while you go to work or do your laundry or run errands.

When you return, when you are ready to eat, lovely creamy flavorful yet mild and light spinach bake will be waiting for you.

Today I planted the tomatoes. We usually grow a couple types of tomato:

One is some kind of “slicing” tomato - a big, juicy variety good for putting on a hamburger, serving with fresh mozzarella, making gazpacho or, heck, just eating like an apple while they’re still warm from the sun. Our slicing tomato of choice for the past few years has been a Red Brandywine. (We tried a pink Brandywine one year that didn’t have anything wrong with it… but we find ourselves planting the Red Brandywine.) Brandywine tomatoes are an “heirloom” variety which means they were in cultivation before widespread industrial hybridization developed all the new-fangled, modern varieties. One big drawback of industrial hybridization is that the characteristics that are attractive to industrial growers aren’t necessarily attractive to tomato eaters. For instance, if my livelihood depended on getting a field full of tomatoes to market, I’d plant varieties that produced uniform fruits that shipped well, not necessarily ones that tasted the best. A Brandywine is a great example of a holdover from before this process because it produces fruits that are strangely shaped and too large to ship and the skin on a Brandywine tomato is so tender that I have torn it just by applying the pressure needed to pick it off the stem! But boy are they flavorful. I know other heirloom enthusiasts have other favorites but since I don’t start my own seedlings anymore, I have to depend on what’s available at the farmer’s market. I can rely on several growers to sprout Brandywines. If I had to start my own, I might experiment more with other heirloom varieties.

We also plant a “sauce” style tomato - one that has a lot of meat, not too much juice and a relatively thin skin. The classic variety that pops to my mind is the Roma and that’s what we’re planting this year. We also often plant an heirloom variety called the Amish Paste Tomato. These are great for tomato sauce and for drying because there isn’t a lot of extra liquid to remove by cooking or drying.

The wedge shape of our beds allow three plants to fit quite naturally so I used a hoe to dig three shallow holes. I added a little water to moisten the soil, then tamped the soil down around the roots like I was tucking them into bed.

Interesting Note: Tomatoes will send out roots along their stems it the stems come in contact with the soil. This ability could be used to create a stronger root structure. The idea would be to lay the seedling on its side when planting. My dad used to us this technique, however whenever I’ve tried this technique, I haven’t been able to fit my cloches over the plants. Also, since our beds are relatively small, I try to encourage the plants to grow vertically; the lying on the side trick seems to suggest they sprawl around like lazy slug-a-beds <grin>
When they were planted I sprinkled a bit more water on them and sealed each plant under a cloche. The idea with the cloche is that the bottom lip has to press just a little bit into the soil to prevent a draft. If there was a place where air could get in at the base, the cloche would warm up the air and the warm air would exit through the top like a chimney thus sucking in more, colder air at the base. Don’t cram it too deeply, just enough to make bit of a seal.

I finished up by sprinkling a nice layer of grass clippings around the cloches. Yes, yes, yes - elsewhere on this blog I say why grass clippings aren’t perhaps the best mulch but, honestly, I’m also pretty pragmatic. I use what I have at hand. I’ve got other materials to put on once these clippings dissolve, as they will quite quickly, but I haven’t prepared these other materials yet.

That’s work for another day.

Our main garden bed is a circle that we divide up into 8 “wedge” shaped beds with another smaller circle in the middle. Jan bought tomato seedling this week at the farmer’s market so now it’s time to start considering the “tomato wedge.”

Yes of course it’s too early. There are weeks left until the official “last frost day” and tomatoes seedlings in particular are very tender and more, they will just sit and glare at you, refusing to grow at all until the soil warms up. But I still want them in the ground ready to go.

A trick we use to extend our growing season is to use “cloches” or personal sized greenhouses over our tender seedlings. The original idea of cloches, I think, dates to a style of gardening called “French intensive” gardening which is also similar to “Biodynamic” gardening. One resource for more information about these intriguing styles is: How to Grow More Vegetables in Less Space than you Though Imaginable by John Jeavons (Ten Speed Press). The first cloches were bell shaped domes of blown glass. I’ve actually seen such things for sale, but they struck me as expensive, fragile and bulky. I didn’t see what I’d do with them come fall, or honestly, how they’d survive intact ’til spring.

Instead, we have made our own very durable cloches from the 64 oz clear plastic containers that cranberry juice is often sold in simply by simply cutting off the bottom. We also have several of the 32 oz size for smaller seedlings like peppers and basil. To store them, we thread a length of rope through the necks, one by one like a string of beads. Then we tie off the ends and stow it out of the way until next year.

I have also seen a neighbor who used fishbowls! A yard full of inverted fishbowls was quite surreal.

One style of cloche that deeply intrigues me comes from the book Solar Gardening: growing Vegetables year-Round the American Intensive Way by Leandre and Gretchen Vogel Poisson. These cloches can easily be used at both ends of the harvest where mine, obviously would be too small to protect full grown plants. The “Solar Cone” as the Poisson’s call their design is also durable and furthermore, they appear to be stackable. Plus, they are elegant to look at where my recycled plastic ware most certainly is not. Some day when I have a chance I want to track down the materials to make a few.

It didn’t take me 20 minutes to get the “snake” of cloches down from the shed but I bet it’ll take a bit longer to get the tomatoes in the ground tomorrow so I’ll bank the extra minutes.

Do not be mistaken: gardening is work. Some gardening is even a workout.

I am not a specimen that could be described as being in “peak physical condition.” If I need to present evidence of this, let me submit the uncharacteristic aches and pains that I awoke with this morning.

Digging a new bed, for instance, is real work, obvious work, the kind of work where you crack a sweat, fill and refill a water glass, even rest with elbow on the handle of the spade from time to time to reflect on how much work you’ve accomplished… and how much more there is to be done. The style of gardening Jan and I do doesn’t call for much of this kind of work.

But even the casual work that Jan and I do requires physical exertion. There is stretching, reaching, pulling on muscles that perhaps haven’t been moved exactly like that since last year’s gardening. And that often results in these aches. It’s relatively pleasant, this kind of pain, since it’s an echo of good pleasant work.

Except when it isn’t.

If something hurts, really hurts, stop. In the least, rest up a couple days. When you start up again, go easily. If necessary, see a professional.

The weeds will still be there when you’re feeling better.