Garden update - July 25, 2010

Today we ate something from our garden. I reached deep into the beans, where I thought some greens would like the shade and the extra nitrogen, and broke of two 4" leaves of lettuce. They were tasty and too soon gone.

But they are a start. This was literally the first of the harvest, though there are signs of more to come. How soon?

The squash are in bud, with some female flowers emerging. The plants look awfully small to me. How can they have enough leaf area to grow a squash fruit of any size? We'll see.

Both tomato plants have blossoms, but I haven't seen any newly set fruits for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the three tomatoes that have appeared are still hard and green and in the case of the Early Girl, rather small.

The eggplant has no blooms, but it is growing leaves abundantly. I decided to move it to a section of the trellised area that is close to the house, so it gets reflected as well as direct sunlight now. That seems to have made all the difference.

Beets are making leaves, as are carrots and turnips. They are still tiny. Spinaches are growing but surely it will be a month before they will be eating size. Chard is finally emerging, and parsley is still not visible. I tucked in a few extra squash seeds of various types, and they are all growing smartly. It is impossible to believe they will have time to mature and grow fruit, though, unless we have many hot days.

Down in the yard, the baby jerusalem artichoke is growing taller each day. It is beginning to send forth its fourth set of leaves, as of this morning. I figure every leaf means more energy for the plant and yet faster growth. We figure the tubers will be ready in the winter, and will stay happily in the ground even after frost, so  right now the big deal is to get them to survive snails and deer. If they do, we'll have yummy tubers for months this winter.

Today the porch is registering over 80, so we'll get some good growth. I would feel better if the tomatoes were setting fruit - I would know I'm doing it right.

My take on vitamins - part 1

Foods have vitamins and real foods have real vitamins in abundance, or to put it more generally, they have nutrients.

The concept that foods have nutrients would be so trivial, under normal circumstances, that it would never be stated as if it were a fresh idea.

But now our food doesn't necessarily have nutrients, and I've been noticing ads that try to make us feel that the foods they are trying to sell don't have MANY nutrients, as if fewer were better. One of these downplayed nutrients is FAT (the stuff our brains and nervous systems are made of).

Foods are manufactured, today, to get rid of the "bad" nutrients, the ones the culture has determined are EVIL.

Hold on! How can a nutrient be evil? A nutrient is something that nourishes us, that gives our bodies something they need. We can't live without nutrients, the more the better on average.

But, you may argue, fat is bad because it makes us fat.

Actually, that's not true, as obvious as it sounds. Simple carbs that raise our blood sugar beyond what our activity level can use make us fat. Simple carbs are those that have been extracted from the food crops that grew them. They are broken, partial foods. They are not real foods. And they make us fat and unhealthy.

Kids are not getting fat from potato chips, they're getting fat with simple-carb sweetened sodas.

But I digress. Real foods have nutrients (and not-real foods have few if any nutrients). Real foods have the macros: carbs, fats, and proteins. And they have the micros: vitamins and minerals.

These thoughts are about vitamins. Real foods come with them. We don't need anything but what we get in real food. IF. Big IF.

We don't need to use vitamin supplementation IF:
1. We eat real food and no other food but real food.
2. We eat only fresh real food, no more than hours old when eaten or preserved.
3. We eat real food that was picked when it was ripe, but not over-mature.
4. We eat a variety of real foods.
5. The real foods we eat were grown in healthy, compost-fed soils.
6. The real foods we eat are in a digestible form (or converted into a digestible form through fermentation).
7. The real foods we eat are in season.

IF we can't meet all these standards with every bite we eat, we are getting fewer nutrients than we got when we all relied on growing our own. IF we can't meet these standards, supplementation with vitamins and minerals is essential.

Modern life essentially dictates vitamin/mineral supplementation. When in doubt, supplement. If you feel better, you'll know you were missing something.

More on picking a supplement later.

Our foggy-island garden

Our self-watering garden, on the porch to keep warm

Tomatoes (2), beans (25 or so of 3 kinds), a pepper, and our gravity-defying trellis system

8:30pm, the whole garden (contains 20+ varieties of veggies) watering itself 

A foggy morning - looking southeast through the tomatoes

Growing your own in no space at all

I just stumbled on this. It's fascinating. It's for people who live in apartments or otherwise want to grow their own food but have to garden inside.

Grow Your Own

Grammy Peg's Tablespoon Soup

In a soup pot or crockpot, place the following ingredients from your bulk storage:

1 T wheat
1 T rye (rinsed before adding)
1 T barley
1 T grinding corn
1 T brown rice
1 T lentils
1 T kidney beans
1 T black beans

You can use whatever you have, as long as there are 8 tablespoons. This is enough for 1 person, so multiply it by the number of servings you want to make. Tip: it gets better and better as it sits, so make some planned-overs.

Instead of measuring each tablespoon separately, you can add a little of each to a 1/2 cup measure. Once it is full, you will have enough for one serving.

Add 1/4 water or broth for each tablespoon used: for the 8 tablespoons shown, you would add 2 cups of water or broth.

If you want to add tomatoes, do it at the last minute, after the grains and beans are tender. See below for other options.

This soup will tolerate a quarter pound of meat for each 8 tablespoons. Add it when you start the cooking.

Instructions: Add all the ingredients except the tomatoes to the pot, cover, and cook over low until all the beans are tender. The time will vary depending on how fresh the beans are. In a slow cooker it may take 12 hours, on the stove more like 4-6. Keep an eye on them so they don't scorch and adjust the water accordingly. Salt to taste when the cooking is finished. Soy sauce makes a nice salty addition, either to the pot or on the table.

Optionally, add these or other vegetables in season with the grains and beans:

Potatoes cut in large chunks
Onions cut in large chunks
Green pepper cut in large chunks

Another tasty and nutritious option is to stir in fresh greens and chunks of cheese as you serve it. Spinach works well. Kale would need to be frizzled by stirring on high heat for a few minutes with some olive oil.

Serve the soup with a salad.

Slow Food Quote and Link

"It is normal, and it is right, for people to grow and produce food near where they live; near where they eat. Historically, vegetables, eggs, meat, and fruit have always been grown pretty much anywhere that there were people. It's only recently that we've allowed our food production to become distant, centralized, and impersonal."

So says Carol Havens, Slow Food Skagit River Salish Sea, http://slowfoodskagit.org.

Learning Food Independence

If words like "sustainable", "local", "organic", "fresh", "home-grown" touch you, you will enjoy (I think) reading through this calendar on the offerings for growing and eating local food in WA and OR.

http://www.tilthproducers.org/calendar.htm

It includes all sorts of events, including instruction in growing 'city goats', kiwis, ducks, bees... The main site also includes garden walks and much more. Very exciting...

Great News For WA Kids!

March 11, 2008 - Olympia, WA - "Today the state legislature passed theLocal Farms - Healthy Kids bill (SSB 6483). Votes were very much bi-partisan and essentially unanimous in both the House and Senate. A keybenefit of this legislation will make it easier for schools to buy locally grown food - providing markets for local farmers and nutritious, fresh local food for our children. As a package, this bill will become the most comprehensive local foods program in the nation."

YAY!

Supporting the farmers is good, feeding the kids fresh food is good, not driving food halfway across the country is good...

What about elsewhere? Post it here so we can keep track. PL

I'd rather incubate...

http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=35513

I think shipping is just too stressful for the poor chicks, personally. I think the initially higher expense is worth less waste!

Pygoras-- Fascinating Possibilities-- Eloise

I was looking at all kinds of small sheep and goats that produce spinning and felting fiber, when I came across the concept of a mini-sheep-- under 21 inches tall! As I was looking for more information about that, I found out that goat breeders have been grossing pygmy goats with angora goats-- making a great fiber animal with a great meat (apparently, I personally do NOT eat goats.)

The nice thing about this cross, is that they are small, feed efficient, yet can make cashmere-quality fiber. Talk about a great backyard pet with benefits!

Why Grow Our Own: Heirloom Animals: Quick Points...By Eloise

watering my desert garden

By Eloise

Just to open the discussion:

1) I feel that quality of life is an essential part of being a meat-consuming person. I know, that, If I raise my own animals, I can guarantee them a quality of life that I approve of. I honestly feel that how animals are raised affects what we get out of them-- happy animals equate to happy food.

2) Being able to make sure that no hormones or other useless unnatural products are added, which may be harmful to those that ingest them. We don't even know what some of the growth steroids and vaccinations are doing to us. We also cannot guarantee that we are not being exposed to diseases in our animals, as people do not follow the guidelines as set.

3) Animals are a renewable resource. I think it is essential that we all be able to survive if the world ended tomorrow and we were forced to live off the land. Goats, for example, can be used for fiber (for spinning), milk products (milk, cheese, butter, soap), and meat. These foods are better for us now, but could be life saving in a catastrophe, whether personal or universal.

Why "Heirloom" Animals?

Here's some factors...

Heirloom animals are generally healthier, as they have not been tampered with as the modern breeds have. Heirloom breeds tend to be smaller, creating more 'oomph' (product) per mouthful of feed-- this is true with chickens, ducks, cattle, and goats.

Heirloom animals tend to have more surviving instincts than those that have been over bred. This is important for a small, one-family, operation. Intelligent animals want to survive. (Think domestic turkeys looking up at the rain and drowning...)


My personal project right now has been researching ways to incorporate heirloom animals into a very small-size operation that anyone could do. My favorite renewable heirloom type animal right now are Muscovy Ducks. They eat bugs, trash, grow to large sizes, lay huge numbers of eggs, brood well (have a better success rate with turkey eggs than incubators do), and are good eating. SO... they are a very renewable source of eggs and meat. They also are a great incubator for other eggs, in case we have no power. I have them on my A+ list.

I also have interest in little 'pygoras' (angora/pygmy goats) and heirloom miniature sheep, who eat less and also provide fiber for clothing as well as meat, and possibly milk! More on that project later!