Posts from — January 2008

People tend to think of composting as a summer activity, if they think of composting at all. In our 20 minute garden, we are thoroughly committed to composting year ‘round, and it’s among the easiest resolutions to make— far easier than promises to exercise daily or eliminate a bad habit.

Here are my top three reasons for composting:

Caring for the earth. Maybe that sounds a little hokey, but, seriously, every bit of kitchen waste that we compost goes back into the dirt as opposed to into a plastic bag for a couple thousand years. The more we compost, the smaller our weekly garbage output. Composting is just the next simple step up from recycling.
Focusing on nature. One thing I truly appreciate about gardening is that it keeps me in touch with all things green and growing out in our yard during spring, summer, and fall. In stark contrast, winter in Michigan is a very nice time to spend indoors. Composting keeps the life cycle fresh in my mind.
Free fertilizer. Finished compost is an excellent substance to add to your soil. At no cost, you can enrich your soil, making clay soil lighter and light soil richer over time. You can give your seeds and plant sets a head-start.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how very easy it is to begin composting.

It’s been a blustery, snowy winter so far in Michigan. We’ve had more than one picturesque snowfall. The newly-painted barn looks particularly lovely and sturdy!

The snow on January 1st was the wonderful sticky kind that piled up on and coated every surface, including the famed 100 year old lilac.

How can we continue to call it a garden, with so much snow, you might wonder? Does a garden imply green growing things, not piles of white fluff? It’s still a garden because of our memories of growing seasons past and our hopes of sunshine and seasons to come. We know what lies under the snow so it’s still a garden. Oh, and because of this:

All hail, King Kale! Snow-defying edible wonder! We marvel at your hardiness and welcome you to the dinner table still.

Growing beans sprouts all year long is easy. The only challenge is remembering how easy it is to grown your own sprouts. We especially like to grow sprouts during the winter time.

The requirements are very simple. You’ll need a wide-mouth quart-size canning jar, a ring that fits, a piece of cheese cloth and a tablespoon of mung beans. Put the mung beans in the jar, cover with the cheese cloth and twist on the ring. (I bought a nifty little round piece of screen that works well in place of the cheese cloth.) Rinse the seeds thoroughly with cool water. Drain them well. And set them aside for 8 to 12 hours. Repeat the rinsing and draining process. That’s pretty much all you need to do. The indirect light of a kitchen window provides enough sunshine for the soon-growing seeds.

Small sprouts will emerge usually within 24 hours. We usually let ours grow for 6 to 8 days in order to generate enough sprouts for a delicious meal of Egg Foo Yung.

Egg Foo Yung, basic recipe

• 2 cups of bean sprouts, rinsed and chopped a bit
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 6 eggs, well beaten

Combine the bean sprouts, salt and eggs in a bowl. Heat 2 Tablespoons of oil in a skillet. Fry by 1/4 cupfuls. Keep patties in shape by pushing egg back into the patty with pancake turner. When set and brown on one side, turn and brown other side. Serve hot with rice and sauce.

Variations

There are many easy variations on the basic Egg Foo Yung recipe. What we have on hand determines what else goes in. We also enjoy adding one or more of the following:

• 1/2 cup finely chopped onions or scallions
• 1/4 cup finely diced celery
• 1/2 pound of left-over ground beef, pork, chicken or shrimp. If raw, saute first and add to the egg mixture.

Sauce

We don’t care for the gravy traditionally served with Egg Foo Yung at many Chinese restaurants in the US. Instead we mix equal amounts of soy sauce, mirin, and rice wine vinegar to make a thin sauce that’s also good for dipping dumplings.

We sometimes get out of the habit of sprouting seeds. Getting back on track with sprouting beans is very easy however. It’s a great activity to do with children too because the results are very quick and pretty amazing actually. Sprouting seeds is an easy and fun way to eat something fresh and homegrown, even in winter.

In the dead of winter, when nothing green is showing in the yard, seed catalogs provide hope and ideas. They remind you of the promise of spring, the unfrozen ground, the warmth of the sun—just when you are in great need of having those memories kindled. They provide a bit of gardening inspiration in what we have to admit is only the middle of winter.

A few years ago, we managed to get on too many mailing lists. From January 1 onward, we received a catalog or three per week. We didn’t purchase from enough catalogs, I guess, for a couple years because the deliveries have decreased to a reasonable amount.

This year, I went looking online for some of the catalogs we like and I found some others that were new to me. Many companies make it super simple for you to request their catalogs online. Here are a few I contacted today:

Seeds of Change, certified organic
Park Seed Company, certified organic
Burpee, mostly conventional, some organic

I was very impressed by the 16 varieties of Black Tomatoes available from the Tomato Growers Supply Company. Who knew there were that many kinds of black tomatoes available?

Another fun site I discovered today was Golden Harvest Organics. Their site is full of organic gardening tips and encouragement on topics like animal control and companion planting, in addition to a wide variety of non-GMO seeds.

We don’t grow everything in our garden from seed, in part because we are able to get very reasonably priced organic plant sets from our local farmers’ market. We also have begun to save some of our own seeds, especially sunflowers and pole beans, and there’s tremendous satisfaction from doing that. Still, seed catalogs provide us with inspiration and ideas, even if we don’t buy anything from them. They remind us too that, in the grand scheme of things, spring isn’t so far away.

We brainstormed up a list of what we’d like to grow in the garden this summer. Here’s the start of it:

• Blueberries, new addition
• Rosa rugosa, new addition
• Basil
• Perfecta Detroit beets
• Brocolli
• Pole beans
• Edamame
• Melon of some sort maybe
• Eggplant, 2 kinds
• Pickling cucumbers, perhaps
• Mesclun
• Greens, maybe Swiss Chard
• Kale
• Sugar peas
• Red peppers of the sweet variety
• Ancho peppers
• Pumpkins, sweet
• Yellow squash
• Zucchini
• Winter squash, acorn or butternut
• Tomatoes, including Amish paste and Brandywine
• Sunflowers

The above would be in addition to the already established black raspberries, asparagus, mint, oregano, thyme, and rhubarb.

Yes, the list looks like a lot, but it’s actually about how much variety we usually grow. I’m excited about the prospect of trying to grow more of our own food. What are we forgetting?