Our Edible Garden, Part Deux

As predictable as a change in the weather, a little time off, an inspiring vacation and a good read -- these things will generate some new project in my world.

Project?  Back Up the Truck!

The books I pick up usually are in some way tied into my vacation destination.  Logical or not, I feel like I'm eeking a little bit more out of my travel experience if I'm taking in someone else's perspective too.

French Dirt, by Richard Goodman, was just that book on this last trip.  Actually, John read it first and couldn't stop talking about what "we" could do to expand our own kitchen garden.  The next thing I knew, a grand plan was being hatched for a chunk of our backyard.  I better get reading!

John's working on our ambitious plans

Goodman and his girlfriend Iggy rented a 200 year old stone house in the South of France for a year.  The town being tiny, Goodman endeavored to connect with the locals.  After multiple attempts to strike up a meaningful conversation and running low on money, he offers to trade his labor on a farm for firewood.  As he begins to mix with the locals, he witnessed every one's very plentiful vegetable gardens.  So inspired by others, he talks one of his new village friends into loaning him a plot of land for a season.  His readers can't help but share in his trials and tribulations with ultimately gratifying results of having a cultivated patch of his own.

I've always loved gardening, and in the last couple of years amped up my gardening focus on edibles.  Some of you may remember what motivated me do so in my post, Supersize Me... My Way.



Our first edible garden...now producing turnips, snow peas, carrots, lettuce
 and garlic

Enjoying our successes and having taken a Permaculture class last year, I already concluded our yard had so much more potential to be productive.  Hey...we could even save a few grocery dollars over the long run if we did more.  It didn't take too much prodding to get me on board for the next generation of kitchen gardening at the Avey homestead.

No time wasted!  Our first free day off together after our vacation we targeted the spot for our new garden, visualized, debated and removed plants which weren't working anyway.  Later that evening John said, "I can't wait to start digging."  Yes, digging!  Anyone who knows John well knows he doesn't like digging.

But Sammi likes to dig

To the man who uttered those words, I asked, "what have you done with my husband?"  A smile with a glimmer in his eye told me enough.  He is a man on a mission.

Both of us are aiming for a bigger and better vegetable plot than the last one we created.  But, like Goodman, we hadn't calculated the potential issues or consequences that laid before us.  Oops, I meant to say "opportunities."

First "opportunity:"  we no longer have a truck to get wood home.  Delivery?  Delivery costs exceeded the cost of the material!  John went to Lowes early one morning to snag the one and only first come first serve rental truck ... only to have it rented out from under him just 5 minutes before.  Grrr.  Lowe's Delivery guys feel John's pain and they give him delivery for the price of the rental truck.  Woo-hoo and a tip o' the hat, Lowes!

Second brain stumper:  should we or should we not dig out the grass where the future plot will lie?
   

No!  We laid down landscape fabric in the bed blocking grass and weeds before dropping dirt in the raised bed.

Water the plot?  How to get water to the area without reworking the whole sprinkler system?

We installed a portable hose to connect to a soaker hose.  A soaker hose is more efficient and less troublesome to plant leaves.

We needed lots and lots of good soil.  But soil is a very expensive proposition if you buy it buy the bag to fill 120 cubic feet.  Neither of us realized we would have to budget over $600 if we had to buy bags...ouch!  No matter what, dirt had to be delivered to us. 

To overcome the pricey bag option, we ended up buying soil in bulk; it came in less than half the cost and no waste.  Overwhelming when delivered?  Oh yeah!

It became even more overwhelming when we had to manually shovel it in a wheel barrel and then dump it in the new bed.  My sore muscles reminded me of just how much dirt we moved.

It's all been worth it though.  Our raised bed is built and ready for planting all those edibles.

Now the fun part for me.

I'm studying my Edible French Garden book a girlfriend gave me several years back.  It's loaded with tips, plants, guides and recipes.

In the meantime, John's at our favorite nursery, Sperling's in Calabasas.

Remember I said there were unanticipated consequences?   John's incessant talk of our new edible garden inspired his work buddies to jointly build one of their own.  And John being the generous guy he is has volunteered "us" to help them build it!  Oh my little arms....

An Heirloom Tomato That Keeps on Giving, With Love

Guest Blogger, Barbara Schwartz

My husband has been telling me for years that in order to be a culinary success, I must cook with love.  It has taken a long time to fully buy into this theory, but alas, he is right.  Use great ingredients and cook from scratch.  That is why there is a large pot on the stove at this moment softly bubbling with precious ingredients of spaghetti sauce, the cooking base of which started from seed.  Literally.  Learning to grow a garden with love occurred long before learning to cook with love.

A year ago I discovered heirloom tomatoes may be grown from seed as the tomatoes grow true, reproducing the exact same fruit, unlike a hybrid variety.  I learned this from watching an employee at Trader Joe's saving tomato seeds on a paper towel as a worker chopped up an heirloom at their cooking station.  So saving seeds from my favorite jumbo red and yellow-red I simply threw them in the garden, wet, fresh out of the tomatoes.  And they grew.  All of them.  Perhaps 50 plants.  Amazing!  I put them in large planter pots away from the garden, where the squirrels would hopefully not discover them.  Tomatoes are autogamous plants.  This means pollination of a flower is by its own pollen and cross-pollination is not needed for fruit production.  No bees required!  A gentle shake of the stem will spur pollination.  It turned out to be a good thing having so many plants, as heirlooms have a low yield as well as a long maturation period.

At the end of last summer's growing season I again saved seeds from the fruit, but this time dried them on paper towels and planted them this past spring, thus arriving at today's pot on the stove of some 50-plus heirloom tomatoes stewing away with all of the ingredients of Italian spaghetti sauce.  Tomorrow will be pasta-making day, a lesson learned from good friends Sylvia and John who showed my husband and me the wonders of fabulous homemade pasta.  And I shall make Italian bread.  Nothing compares to fresh bread, straight out of the oven.  The sauce will mellow overnight and be better in 24 hours' time.

Oh, one more note about the heirloom tomato plants.  Having given my sister approximately 25 of the thrown-in-the-garden tomato plants in spring of 2010, she re-potted them into an enormous planter pot and then never rid herself of the remaining plants when the fruit season concluded.  As a result my sister had tomatoes in mid-spring this year, having started the growing season with mature plants.  She was basking in tomatoes as I was still watching my second-season-from-seed plants mature, months away from bearing fruit.  Lesson learned.  I can save the plants!

Designing a Kitchen Garden, An Alternative Way of Thinking

Welcome to my newly designed blog.  What gave me inspiration to change it up?  A class I attended at the LA Arboretum.

My normal weekend companion (my husband) had an unusually heavy travel schedule for work this summer.  Taking advantage of my new free time I ended up taking weekend cooking classes.  Many, many cooking classes.  I think I overdosed on cooking classes!  I needed something different; I needed a new twist. 

On a whim and suggestion from an acquaintance a couple of months back, I looked up horticultural classes since gardening is also a passion of mine.  Our local arboretum offered an introductory class on Permaculture.  I had never heard the term before.  The outline described learning how to create a sustainable food forest in my own backyard, identifying why growing my own vegetables can be so difficult, and learning how to work with nature, not against it.  Class cost:  $25.  Sold!

I have written before about preconceived notions.  Here I go down the rabbit hole again!  The class I walked into was not a "how to" gardening course.  It was something completely different and absolutely fascinating.  In fact, it wasn't really about gardening at all but rather a study in connecting with your house, community and natural areas as it relates to designing a perennial food garden.

So what is the definition of Permaculture?  According to Bill Mollison, a researcher, scientist, teacher, naturalist and father/co-developer of Permaculture:

Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted & thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all of their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system. 

If you think about it, fruits and vegetables don't naturally grow in neat rows.  Think of a forest or jungle!




Diagram courtesy: Graham Burnett



The design approach Bill and his partner David Homgren developed in the mid 1970's was an outcome of analyzing the growing dependence on industrial-agriculture methods resulting in the poisoning of land and water while removing topsoil from previously fertile land due to the reduction of biodiversity.  Their solution was published in their book "Permaculture One" in 1978.  Since then, the concept broadened from agricultural design to designing sustainable human habits.  There are even Permaculture Design Courses (PDC).

Design starts with examining one's normal, everyday patterns.  When you go home, do you pull into the driveway and walk straight to the front door?  Or do you daily linger through all parts of the front yard?  My guess is it's likely you make a bee-line to the front door.  Does that mean you hardly ever visit the far reaches of your backyard where most people plant their vegetable gardens?  How likely is it you'll care for your vegetable patch if it isn't under your nose?  Why not plant an herb garden in the flower beds along the walk way instead?  You'll smell them every time you brush by.  This is just one example of rethinking where you plant your annual vegies.  And why does it need to be in neat rows?  Get creative!



Courtesy: Lyons, CO Permaculture Design Course


To take the concept further, there is an emphasis in perennial edibles (trees, bushes, vines, etc.), native to the area while analyzing where the perennial should be placed for maximum benefit and synergy.  By going native, there is less labor involved.  I love that idea!

Being a complete newbie to this idea, I encourage you to Google "permaculture" for further understanding.  In the meantime, what has this meant to me?


Tangerine Tree

I look at my existing yard and realize I am already lucky in that we inherited a lovely, heavy producing tangerine tree when we bought our house.  With our abundance, we can barter our fruit with our neighbor who has an over producing lemon tree.  And now, when I think about what else I can grow for ourselves, I aim for a perennial such as the starter Blackberry bushes I purchased last weekend.  Come May, we should have enough to cover us through July.


Young Blackberry Bush

 Conceptually, this has caused me to reexamine other things in my life that may need redesigning.  This blog was one of them.  The template I had been using was okay, but wasn't necessarily me or user friendly.  This one I designed from the ground up.  I hope you find it a nice place to visit as much as I enjoy playing in it.

The Bay Leaf Budget

I'm not a cheapskate.  Really!  I'm willing to pay a premium for clean, sustainable food especially if I can't harvest it myself.  But when we ran out of Turkish bay leaves, my husband John purchased a new bottle to restock our supply for ..... $7.99!  No, he did not purchase an organic variety which could command an extreme price.  In fact, he is an expert at scouting out the best cost per volume on spices at the grocery store. He is the one who showed me to look beyond the usual display on the spices rack the top brands prefer you purchase and to check out the ethnic and bulk sections in the same store to figure out the best buy.  If your market is anything like ours, these spice packaging choices could be in several different locations in the store.

Does $7.99 not sound expensive to you for what I counted was 25 leaves to the bottle?

Being an account's daughter I have this crazy knack for itemizing the cost of things.  That can be a good thing if I'm trying to justify the purchase of a cute pair of shoes, let's just say.  But it can also be a curse depending on your perspective.  By my calculation each of those purchased leaves has a value of 32 cents a piece.  Those leaves had better release the best essence ever, but my guess is their performance will only be average.

Several years ago, my next door neighbor who I was just getting to know invited me to pluck a few  bay leaves off her potted California Bay Laurel plant.  Before seeing her plant, I hadn't given much thought about the plant in which they came from.  Her leaves were just as useful as the bottled kind, however with this regional variety it has a stronger, eucalyptus flavor.

Remembering the experience with my neighbor, I headed to the nursery and inquired about buying my own Bay Laurel plant.  Surely, the cost of the plant would more than pay for itself for years to come.  The nurseryman walked me over to a gorgeous hedge of leaves...no exaggeration!  The bushy plant has the capability of growing to the size of a privacy fence if given the right environment.  Realizing the promise of one plant producing so many leaves only reinforced my desire to outwit my previous bottled supplier. 



"I'll buy one please."  I purchased a small starter bush for.....$7.99.  And yes, I have counted how many leaves it has on its lovely branches.  There are over 80!  I'm already ahead of the game.  Since we don't go through bay leaves all that quickly, my plan is to pot the plant as my neighbor has to limit its potential size.

I wasn't looking for this challenge.  But then again who does?  Sometimes it takes something to get under your skin to prompt a solution or change.  Overpaying for bay leaves was mine.

Super Size Me ... My Way

If you asked me 10 years ago where my food came from, I would have naturally answered, “The grocery store!” Duh.  My selections were made based on the grocery store’s ability to provide a nice, sanitized presentation whether it be packaging or handsome looking produce.  Most people of my generation, growing up in an urban setting, would have answered much the same.  Aw…simpler times.

Ask me that question today and my answer takes about 20 minutes! This change in my response didn’t happen overnight.  It has been a personal evolution and revelation in the making.

A pre-Katrina visit to the Gallier House Museum in the French Quarter of New Orleans planted a seed in me for further contemplation. The docent who led our tour eloquently described daily life for a prosperous family, post Civil War. What resonated with me was the full-time effort it took for the lady of the household to plan meals for her family based on food availability.  Just think what it took to do this in a time before refrigeration and automobiles. Turning a mirror on myself, I remember thinking how easy I had it today. Trips to historical places like Gallier's, Boston's old town and even San Simeon here in California allow a chance to, just briefly, wear another persons shoes -- even if the person is long gone.

Around the same time, my mom, in an effort to provide the best possible nutrition for my dad’s health, had been seeking better food choices for her household.  She and I share the gene of inquiry! We would compare notes, but she was much better informed than I.  She’s the first person I knew to look to alternatives to prescription pills, but not excluding medical advice for better living. Her best piece of advice, read labels and understand what they mean.

So, I started reading labels.  Then I had to study what some of those strange things they were putting in my food were actually for.  And, what those strange things actually did to me.  Then I watched Fast Food Nation, Food Inc., Super Size Me and read Eating Well, Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman and Barbara Kingsolver among others.  In our collective effort to advance through the industrialized and communication eras, we, by silent majority, have allowed our food barn door to open wide. I feel like we've been taken advantage of while we've been slaving away at our jobs to pay for our food.  Doomsday?

I don’t see it that way.  The more information I have, the more empowered I feel. All but Fast Food Nation, provide a path to food salvation if you look for it.  Clearly, I’m a girl who views life as a glass half full.

Before long there was a wholesale clearing of our pantry.  High fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, names of ingredients I can’t pronounce …all of it, gone from our diet.  We are now at the point that if a canned or prepared item has more than five ingredients in it, we will not buy it. We also won’t buy anything in it with ingredients we don’t recognize.

Lately, the food news has been anything but positive. While it can be discouraging, the way I try to ground myself is to ask, “but what can I do?”  The only answer I’ve come up with is taking responsibility for myself.  It’s the only thing I can control.  I can’t get more local than that!

So what have I done?  For the last couple of years, I’ve concentrated on getting all my produce from our local farmer’s market and have been greatly rewarded with better tasting food.  Added benefit…it actually is less expensive then the grocery store!  I’ve also dabbled in growing my own. Since moving back to California, the climate makes gardening a joy but I was clearly a novice at growing vegetables. No one told me I had to pick a zucchini the moment I observed it’s growth.  Nor did I have the where with all to know I should rotate my crops every year (one year I had a great tomato harvest and the next only two sorry looking globes).  How quickly a generation or two loses the ability to know how to grow their own food.  In my family tree, it was only two generations ago they led an agrarian lifestyle.  It’s a good thing I didn’t have to rely on my farming skills to feed myself.



Perhaps I should have picked the zucchini a day earlier

This last summer however, I was clearly getting better at my gardening craft by making soil improvements and generated the most glorious tomato vines that just kept on giving. Yes! The more I researched to improve my skills, the better the pay off. I’ve now taken it to the next level with my winter vegetable garden.

After this weekend, my patch is now a raised vegetable garden with a removable covering to protect the plantings from our California heat.  I enlisted my husband’s help and researched the plans.  After two days of power tools, much digging, assistance from our dog Sammi and 90 degree heat we have a 50 square-foot redwood plot with spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, Swiss chard and herbs seedlings thriving in their new environment.  I’m already planning my winter meals around them.

 
Taking responsibility for myself has now become my hobby… not only am I’m loving it, I'm all the healthier for it!

If you want to build your own raised bed, these instructions were easy to follow and I'm pleased with the outcome:  http://www.sunset.com/garden/perfect-raised-bed-00400000039550/