Travelling with greens and using all those stems

This week you'll find a sun-tea bag in the shares with three types of mint and red clover. If you like a strong tea, add a couple bags of green or black tea with the contents of the bag to a quart jar and leave it in the direct sun for a couple hours. Use a larger jar for a more dilute flavor. Sweetened with honey, this makes for a delicious and refreshing drink on a hot day.


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 Lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce. Buttercrunch is really putting on a nice show this spring, and the colors are really starting to pop.






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The greens bunches are getting huge. We're eating them in everything, from scrambled eggs to pasta dishes.

I know a lot of you are traveling this summer. If you're wondering how to use the greens in a car-friendly dish, try making a nut butter salad:

Chop the greens up in fine ribbons, like in the Greens Crash Course. In a blender or food processor, combine raw cashews, a liberal amount of curry powder, healthy drizzle of apple cider vinegar (ACV), lemon juice, and some salt and pepper with enough water to form a thick sauce. Add more cumin if you feel like it. Toss with the chopped greens and let everything meld for an hour.

Other combinations to try:
cooked chickpeas, curry, garlic, onion, ACV, healthy oil (nut free)
peanut butter, soy sauce, ginger, honey or sorghum, ACV, healthy oil

These dishes are fine for a few hours without refrigeration. They make great summer potluck salads, in addition to healthy road food.
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What about all those colorful stems? Don't throw them in the compost bin just yet!

The stems are crunchy and have way more flavor than celery, so you can chop them up and use them anywhere you'd use raw celery:

deviled eggs
tuna, egg, chicken, pasta, potato, etc salad
inside wraps
sprinkled on top of green salads
baked into quiche or a fritatta
delivery vehicle for creamy herb dips
crou d'etat platters

Chopped up stems looks like confetti!

If you like spicy foods, try these Siracha fridge pickles.

Spring Color

For many people, the stars of the garden are of course the flashy tomatoes, rambling cucumbers, towering okra, and dazzling spectrum of flowers, but you don't have to wait until June for color and taste to come pouring out of your soil. 

Greens are often maligned as boring and bland, perhaps because many people have only ever encountered them out of a can, which is no way to meet any vegetable. The traditional method of cooking a mess of greens is to boil them for hours with pork fat. While sopping up potlickins with homemade cornbread is indeed delightful, greens are very versatile and can be used in a multitude of dishes.

Turnip greens, mustard greens, cabbage, and kale are the most commonly encountered greens in the grocery store. Kale has recently been enjoying celebrity status in foodie culture—with good reason. High in vitamins and minerals, kale and the other greens can be an important part of maintaining good health through healthy eating habits.

Swiss chard, closely related to and resembling beet greens, has also been featured in many cooking shows and blogs. The large glossy leaves are tender with a mild flavor. Use them raw in place of a tortilla in chicken or egg salad wraps. Chard stalks come in a stunning array of florescent colors. I finely chop the tender stalks to sprinkle over my deviled eggs or salad like edible confetti. 

Add a nutritional punch to almost any savory dish by throwing in some chopped greens. From scrambled eggs, quiche, and fritatta, to chicken, egg, and potato salad, soups, and stir fry, there is little for dinner or lunch that can't be improved by adding greens. 

Mild greens can be shredded or julienned and added raw. More pungent greens can be used in small amounts or cooked lightly to mellow their flavor. A big mess of mixed greens cooked for 15 minutes in just a little water and coconut oil, dressed with cider vinegar and a drizzle of honey, seasoned with salt and pepper, is a fine addition to rice and beans for an easy and nutritious simple meal.

Add sensational diversity to your bowl of lettuce and elevate the salad to a work of culinary art. Combine curly, frilly leaves that hold a dressing well with leaves that have a big crunchy stalk. Throw in speckled leaves, purple leaves, dark green spinach and the blanched chartreuse inner leaves of a head of romaine lettuce, and you'll forget that you're even working with “greens”. Top off the salad with slices of a white and pink 'Chioggia' beet and a 'Purple Dragon' carrot, and you'll have a creation worthy of the finest dining establishments.

Cold hardy and easy to grow, greens will heartily welcome spring to your garden and can even be grown in pots on a sunny porch. The kale and arugula I planted last week germinated in less than 24 hours! Sprinkle seeds over soil you've prepare for a seed bed and cover lightly with soil. We use lightweight row cover directly on the soil to speed germination. The plants will push up the row cover as they grow, and it will afford some protection from pests.

About the time the summer bugs start having their heyday with your greens, the cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes will be gearing up. Chard and kale left in the ground through the summer will rebound when fall's cool-off begins, so you can get two harvest seasons from one planting.

Wild Garden Seed is a small seed company that improves and develops varieties for direct-to-consumer growers, which includes home gardens. Their lettuce varieties 'Joker' and 'Freedom Mix' are the most stunning lettuces I have encountered. From 'Purple Peacock Sprouting Broccoli' to 'Scarlet Ohno' turnip, the color and taste of their varieties are superior to anything you've ever bought from the grocery store. A few of their varieties are offered through FedCo Seed Company, as well.

The world of greens is vastly more expansive than the shelves of Food Lion or Wal-Mart would lead you to believe. Grown without toxic sprays, harvested fresh, and prepared lovingly, these leaves can support good health while providing beauty to be appreciated around the table with family and friends.

Cusp of Spring

These teases of warm weather have gardeners and bees alike yearning for spring. It's a good time to reflect on the importance of the present moment. In a few weeks, we'll all be busy bees with too much to do to waste time wanting for what is not. Anyway, the daffodils, still hiding their cheerful yellow faces, are letting us know in no uncertain terms that spring will be later than it was last year.

This is actually a Snowberry Clearwing Moth

While the bees brave this cool weather to forage on blushing red maple buds and tiny purple henbit flowers, gardeners and farmers are powerless against the urge to awaken tender plants from their slumber, nestled inside lifeless-looking seeds. 

Some need soaking, some require scoring; others can just be scattered on the soil surface and lightly misted. Some will burst through the testa (seed coat) after only a day, whereas others will dally for weeks—which seems endless.

damping off from 'State by State Gardening'

Once the tiny plants start their journey toward the sun, they need tender, loving care. In a greenhouse or on your window sill, they must have bright light or they will be become lanky and weak, to ultimately flop over and shrivel. But don't let them get too warm or you risk the soil getting too hot and scorching their tender roots. The growing medium must retain adequate moisture, but don't over-water, which can cause damping-off, lanky growth, and mildew. 

Seedlings from seeds sown directly in the garden must fend for themselves from the beginning. Some lightweight row cover can help them along, but if you cover with plastic, be sure to remove it on sunny days—even cold sunny days—otherwise the plants will bake. 

Carrots, beets, and other hardy Viridiplantae babies seem to appreciate row cover directly on the soil after sowing. The thin air space between the soil surface and row cover creates a high-humidity buffer that is a little warmer than the air temperature, preventing soil crusting and encouraging strong germination. The plants will push the row cover up as they grow, and the row cover can provide protection from pests looking for a spring feast.

Intrepid growers already have some seed potatoes and onion sets out. Some just couldn't resist seeding a round of root crops and hardy greens, like arugula, lettuce, and kale. Many are chomping at the bit to start tomatoes. I'm holding off for another week or so. I definitely heard thunder in February, which, I've been told, means frost in May. I don't want to end up with giant, leggy tomato plants by the end of April, a situation which contributed to a lack-luster tomato harvest on our farm last year.

If you haven't turned your soil yet, or even bought your seeds, fret not. You have ample time.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is an independent seed company offering many unique varieties specifically suited to growing in the humid heat of Southern summers. 'Louisiana Purple Pod' pole beans are a favorite of mine—productive whether it's hot and dry or comparatively cool and wet, always a stunning purple with great crunch and sweet taste. This variety is also open-pollinated, so it's easy to save your own seeds. Just let some pods dry on the vine, harvest, clean, and store in a cool, dark, dry place.

FedCo is another fantastic source for GM-free seed. With low prices and a staggering inventory, they offer something for everyone. As a cooperative, they offer seeds from many independent producers, constantly working to improve their varieties and to create new varieties specifically for the home garden and direct-to-consumer growers. A huge proportion of our yearly seed order comes from FedCo.

For my tomato-obsessed compatriots, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Company has no comparison. With literally hundreds of open-pollinated and heirloom tomato varieties of every color, shape, and taste to peruse, you'll have a hard time putting down their eye-popping catalog. They also offer a large selection of unique vegetables, collected from around the world. 

The cusp of spring is a time tinged with reflection, yearning, grand optimism, and colorful seed catalogs. Surely, this will be a year with just enough, but not too much rain, no vine borers or imported cabbage worms, immaculate weedless rows, and no trace of early blight.

Week 4 CSA

Expect greens, greens, and more greens. And the last of the garlic scapes!

If you're like us, you've got more jars of jellies in your pantry than you know what to do with. Try combining the jelly with peanut butter (or cashew or almond butter), add a little water to loosen, apple cider vinegar and lemon to taste, add a couple good squirts of Bragg's amino acids, and a healthy drizzle of extra virgin olive oil in your blender and process it until it's smooth. It makes for a sweet, creamy dressing that will impress your friends and use up those homemade jellies!

You'll also be receiving a head of cabbage from Eddie Ray in Smithville. They're organically grown and a great size for a small family or couple. If you'd like to make kraut, let us know, and we'd be happy to provide you with beautiful cabbage from our farmer friends.

The season's first cabbages marks kraut making time! Homemade sauerkraut is nothing like the mushy stuff in a can from the store. Store-bought kraut has been heated to make it shelf stable, which completely destroys all the health benefits of this fermented food.

Fermentation, which makes nutrients easier to absorb during digestion, occurs when sugars in food are broken down, resulting in lactic acid, which lowers the pH (raising the acidity) of food below the growth range of dangerous bacteria, preserving the food and all its nutrients without refrigeration.

Lactic fermented foods add good bacteria to your stomach. An entire ecosystem of bacteria inside each of us is responsible for actually breaking down food we eat into forms that can be absorbed by our bodies.

Fermented foods help balance your body's pH. The good bacteria absolutely vital for digestive health cannot thrive in an acidified environment. A standard Westernized diet high in animal proteins, processed fats, and sugars leaves our bodies chronically acidified.

Fermentation can be carried out on your kitchen counter. All it requires is finely shredding your cabbage or other vegetables and packing them down with salt in a ceramic or glass vessel to release the juices, which mix with the salt to create a brine that covers the vegetables. Cover and let the vessel sit a few days to a few months, until it acquires the flavor you desire. 

Properly prepared, fermented foods are as delicious as they are nutritious. Local author, Sandor Katz, is internationally known for his fermentation skills and knowledge. His book, Wild Fermentation: the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture food, is a great introduction to fermentation. It's available at the Liberty Library in the old high school building in Liberty.

Week 3 shares

Salads, salads, and stir-fry! TWO heads of lettuce, in addition to the last of the Asian greens, some very spicy mustards bunched with the season's last watercress, leeks, onions, carrots, and GARLIC SCAPES! These succulent treats will probably only be around for another share or two, so be sure to get creative and savor them!





There are lots of recipes available online suggesting creative uses for scapes.


Here's one for Northern Bean and Garlic Scape Dip (and the website I lifted the picture from)

Garlic Scape Pesto

And a collection of recipes

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 Today we have a couple gluten-intolerant Wwoofers over, so I made a big bowl of egg salad and served it on top of the "farmer food" lettuce... which is what we call the stuff that's too ugly to put in your shares! It still makes a beautiful salad.

Don't forget to use the ribs from you greens to add a fun crunch to stuff like egg salad.

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 This is the first year we've harvested the tops of the bolting chard. I think I'm in love. They're so tender and delicious, and to boot, they cook up really quickly in a stir-fry.

When in doubt, chop it up, throw it in a pan with some rice, try some seasonings like soy, ginger, and garlic or cumin, coriander, and a little curry powder, and you've got yourself a quick, healthy, flavorful meal. Experiment with adding exotic ingredients like coconut milk simmered with lemongrass to keep it exciting!

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You'll find a variety of little edible flowers and herbs. The light purple poofs of small flowers are chive blossoms, the yellow are kale flowers, white flowers are arugula, and the dark purple is sage. Sprinkle them over a big pile of lettuce for a salad prettier than a picture!

Week 2 Shares

You'll find the same mix of fresh produce as last week, with the addition of some other goodies, like baby carrots and hardneck garlic scapes.


You can just chop up those greens, heat up some coconut or extra virgin olive oil, and toss everything in a saute pan. Add some grated or finely chopped fresh ginger, soy sauce, and a little black pepper for a simple, fast dish with lots of flavor. Serve with fast-cooking Basmati rice, quinoa, or pearl couscous to round out the meal and have dinner ready in under 30 minutes! (Take that Rachael Ray!)

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 One of my favorite things to do with chard is add it to tomato sauce. Add the chopped greens just a few minutes before serving. It pairs very well with the acidity and tang of the tomatoes.

I use chard and kale ribs in place of celery to add crunch in pretty much everything, from deviled eggs to tuna salad.

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A favorite go-to fast meal here on the farm is to make a giant salad for dinner. I'll top it with a couple boiled eggs, some chopped bacon, and dress it with a sweet lemon dressing. The dressing isn't terribly healthy; lemon juice to sugar at a 1:1 ration with a healthy drizzle of olive oil. But oh my GOODNESS it's delicious... and I figure if you're having salad for dinner, you can afford to splurge on the dressing. My mother taught me that recipe, and her mother taught her.


Part of the fun of CSA and seasonal eating is thoroughly enjoying produce when it's available. We just straight up refuse to buy lettuce in the store (SO inferior), so when it's not in the garden, we don't eat salads. But when the lettuce looks as beautiful as it does now, we eat it for lunch, snacks, and dinner, and sometimes even breakfast.

Soon enough it'll be 100 degrees and tomato season; the lettuce will have bolted and be bitter. Enjoy these beautiful greens while they're here! Experiment, and you never know when you'll taste your new favorite food!

1st Week Share

The first shares this year include lettuce, Asian greens, kale, chard, mustards, mint, fresh herbs, garlic scapes, leeks, and giant Egyptian Walking onions. Use the white part of the onion like you would a regular bulb onion and the green part like a scallion. The curly parts at the top are more spicy than the rest of the onion. Leeks are a little sweeter and less pungent. They're great in stirfry, eggs... and everything else, really. Garlic scapes are one of the joys of CSA eating, as you'll never find them in the grocery store. They have the flavor of raw garlic and the texture of a fresh green bean. Use them raw, in soups and stews, or in sautes and stirfry.



If you're not sure how to use all those greens, you can always just chop them up and toss them with your lettuce to make a robust, colorful salad. Or add them to a stirfry with the garlic scapes and onions, then season with ginger, a little honey, and some soy sauce.


One of CSA members asked us, "Where are all the holes in your greens?!" Well, you'll find them aplenty in the Asian greens.






 
 Here are some links about how to use fresh herbs: Oregano and Thyme, Mint, and this Guide to Fresh Herbs. Included this week are oregano, thyme, and a chive blossoms. Just sprinkle the blossoms over your fresh salads. They have a mildly sweet flavor followed by that familiar chive pungency.

Try putting a sprig of mint in your water glass for a light, refreshing flavor. By far though, my favorite way to use mint is in mojitos...


For more ideas and recipes, visit our Greens Guide. Experiment and enjoy!

Some delights of spring: chard, kale, and lettuce

If you haven't dropped by the farmers' market, located in Smithville behind Ace Hardware, this is the perfect weekend to come on down. We've got two vendors selling fresh produce, so you can get the season's first lettuce, cabbage, kale, chard, and spring onions. The early birds got the eggs and fried pies; they go quick. There are all kinds of baked goods, canned goods, handmade soaps and lotions, vegetable and herb plants, fresh and dried herbs, and the best barbecue, hot wings, and smoked meats you've ever put in your mouth.

Saturday, June 9th we'll really kick off the produce season with a “grand re-opening”, but there's plenty of good stuff to be had right now!

The fresh produce season starts off with a profusion of greens. I've encountered more people than I can count who have been turned off eating greens by a run-in with mushy, bitter greens. I can't emphasize enough that properly prepared greens are never mushy, never tough, and not bitter.

One of the leafy greens that's in season right now is Swiss chard. Swiss chard looks almost identical to beet greens because it's in the same family as beets. Chard leaves are rich in phytonutrients, which provide antioxidants with powerful anti-inflammatory benefits. One cup of cooked chard will supply you with more than your recommended daily allowance of vitamins K and A, in addition to a slough of other vitamins and minerals, including vitamins C, E, and B vitamins, and minerals including calcium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, iron, fiber, and protein. Believe it or not, that list isn't complete, but it serves to demonstrate what a nutrient-dense food chard is.

Since chard is rich in protein and fiber, it is an excellent addition to your diet if you're managing diabetes. Protein and fiber help regulate the speed at which carbohydrates are converted to simple sugars during the digestive process, which minimizes blood sugar spikes.

Fresh chard isn't tough; you can use both the leaves and the ribs. I am absolutely in love with the bright colored ribs produced by the Bright Lights chard we grow at our farm. The variety of colors of the ribs represents a variety of phytonutrients, so including as many colors on your plate as possible ensures a wide variety of nutritional benefits!

You can use chard raw to dress your green salads, but people with a sensitivity to oxalic acid should eat their chard cooked. Quickly boil the chard, but only for 3 minutes. Pour off the water and season with a touch of salt and pepper and a dash of your favorite vinegar. You can also lightly sauté a bunch of chopped chard in some heated olive or coconut oil and season it the same way. It only needs to be sautéed for 5-7 minutes over medium-high heat. The color should still be green when it's done cooking—never, never brown! Sautéed chard is a great side dish served with pork chops, steak, chicken breasts, fish fillets, or tempeh or tofu. 

Chard pairs remarkably well with tomato sauce, so when it's in season, I almost never make spaghetti without chard leaves in the sauce. I chop up the ribs and sauté them with the onions and garlic that start off my spaghetti sauce. About five minutes before the sauce is ready to eat, I throw in the uncooked, chopped chard leaves with a handful of fresh herbs. After just a few minutes of lightly simmering, the leaves are still bright green, and the herbs have infused the sauce. As an aside—did you know that six leaves of oregano have the same antioxidant content as an entire apple?

Another fantastic fresh green available right now is kale. If the only kale you've ever eaten was out of a can or that pre-chopped abomination in the grocery store, I implore you to give it one more try. 

Kale is a nutritional powerhouse. It contains vitamins K, A, and C, manganese, and fiber, in addition to having antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. Its nutritional profile also includes high concentrations of carotenoids and flavonoids which have powerful cancer preventative properties.

Any of the recipes listed above for chard work just as well for kale. In fact, kale and chard mixed together make an excellent combination. However, my very favorite way to enjoy kale is by eating an entire cookie sheet worth of baked kale chips.

Baking kale chips is the ultimate route to winning over new kale eaters. No kidding, it's as easy as this: Lightly toss the washed and dried leaves with a little olive oil. They shouldn't be drenched, just lightly dressed. Arrange the leaves in a single layer on a cookie sheet and season with a very small amount of sea salt and pepper; add some garlic powder if you're into that. If you're feeling fancy, sprinkle on a little freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Bake in a preheated 350º oven for 7-12 minutes, depending on your oven. You want the leaves crispy and dried but only barely browned. Before trying it, you can't conceive of how delicious this easy recipe really is.

Fresh salads are another delight of the spring season. Lettuce can shake off a light frost, and some varieties will hold out through some hot weather, but by the time the tomatoes are rolling in, the lettuce will be gone. Iceburg lettuce is popular and familiar, but the world of lettuce is vastly more exciting and aesthetically pleasing than those ubiquitous light green heads. You can grow varieties that are lime green with splashy red speckles, some with frilly, curled leaves, heads that grow a foot and a half tall, intense red frilly leaves, loose-head buttercrunch varieties with soft red speckles, iceburg style heads with pink speckles; the list goes on and on and on.

We've all tried the usual ranch, honey mustard, and French style dressings, but you shouldn't limit yourself to such a finite palate. Fresh dressings are infinitely variable and extremely easy to make. I usually make them in a canning jar so I can put a lid on and shake to emulsify (combine) the ingredients and store the leftover dressing in the fridge. 

Here are a few of our farm's favorite dressings:

For a simple vinaigrette dressing use a 1 to 3 ratio of vinegar to oil. Combine red wine, balsamic, or white wine vinegar with extra virgin olive oil. Add a dash of salt and pepper and maybe some dried herbs. Shake until emulsified and eat up! You can add freshly chopped garlic or garlic powder, use freshly chopped herbs instead of dried herbs, or try out grapeseed or sunflower oil instead of olive oil. You can't mess it up, so just experiment until you find a flavor combination that knocks your socks off. This style of simple vinaigrette goes great with a salad that's dressed up with feta cheese, green onions, and chopped kalamata or black olives.

To give your salad a more gourmet, exotic twist, try a ginger, peanut butter dressing. I know this combination of ingredients will sound a little strange, but I absolutely guarantee it'll blow you away. Combine about a tablespoon of peanut butter (the creamy, natural kind works best, but I've been known to make this with the regular crunchy kind, too), a teaspoon of soy sauce or Bragg's amino acids, a plop of honey, a half inch chunk of fresh ginger, grated, a dash of black pepper, a couple tablespoons of white wine or apple cider vinegar, and about a ¼ cup of olive oil. Shake, shake, shake until all the ingredients have combined, and give it a taste. Depending on your palate, you might want a little more tang, so add some more vinegar, or maybe a little sweeter, so add some more honey. I usually end up adding twice as much ginger because I just can't get enough of it. The recipe is just a guideline; play with it to suit your taste. We love this dressing so much, sometimes I'll make an enormous salad just as an excuse to make this dressing.

Since you've got ginger leftover from trying the peanut butter dressing, the next night you can try out a lemonade ginger dressing. Combine equal parts sugar and lemon juice, add as much freshly grated ginger as you want, a dash of salt to bring out the flavor, and top off with extra virgin olive oil at the same 1 to 3 ratio, using the lemon juice instead of vinegar. This sweet and tangy dressing pairs phenomenally well with a salad that's jazzed up with some chopped fruit, like apples, strawberries, or peaches.

Just because most of the fresh produce right now is green doesn't mean it has to be boring or bland. Part of the joy of seasonal eating is enjoying the changing palate throughout the year and becoming a more robust and creative cook. Experimentation is fun. There's literally no end to the number of dishes you can create utilizing fresh greens!

Planting those babies

Written by: Karley Thompson

for the DeKalb County Times

The market was bustling last week! If you want to try those chicken thighs and Boston butts everyone is talking about, you'll have to get there pretty early. Fried pies, baked goods, granola, soaps, lotions, salsa, pork rinds, fresh and dried herbs, early season lettuce, kale, and garlic scapes will all be available this week. You can also pick up herb, flowers, squash, and tomato plants.

The market will have a grand re-opening event on Saturday, June 9^th! Most of the produce vendors will have fresh veggies by then, and then we'll really get the 2012 season cranking. 

It's the perfect time for planting those veggie bedding plants. The soil is good and moist from this past weekend's rain, and unless it all peters out before it gets here, there's a chance for more rain the forecast. We usually plant in the late afternoon or early evening, after the heat of the day has passed and the garden is shady, or on cloudy days. It can be hard on the little plants if you put them out on a hot, bright sunny day. If that's the only time you can get out in the garden, you can ease the trauma by being very gentle with their roots, giving them a good drink, and maybe providing a little shade that first day.

Some plants are hardier than others, as far as how much abuse they'll tolerate and still give you good production. For example, plants in the cucurbitaceae family, like squash, melon, and cucumber, are extremely tender. They are particularly unappreciative of having their roots disturbed, and they don't perform very well after becoming root bound in pots. We do transplant some squash and cucumbers, but we are extremely gentle when handling their roots balls. We're also sure to get them in ground by the time they have their fourth set of true leaves. These plants practically grow before your eyes, and their roots grow even faster. That's why most people skip the delicate transplanting and just direct sow these crops.

The cucurbitaceae are nutrient hogs and will pretty much take as much compost as you can give them. These are often the volunteers that pop up from compost piles, or wherever the chickens drop the seeds. Since they grow in compost piles, it's probably not surprising that they'll grow in a hill of mounded compost. Most gardeners plant two or three seeds per hill and thin to the strongest plant. Cucumbers, vining squash, and even melons appreciate being trellised, but be sure to use sturdy materials. For the heavier fruit, you'll even need to make a sling.

Not all plants needs such tenderness, though. The tomato plant can take a lot, perk up, and then produce a lot. Last year we got way behind on our transplanting to-do list and ended up with dozens of tomato plants that were floppy, almost two feet tall, and still in their 4 inch containers. We picked off the suckers and leaves up about 75% of the stem, used a post hole digger to dig some massive holes, and laid the plants on their sides. Once we filled in the dirt, only about 25% of the plants were left above the soil. Those plants ended up being over 7 feet tall and continued producing through those two scorching months without rain and without irrigation. When we pulled the plants up at the end of the season, we could see that the entire buried stem had sprouted a 

serious root system. 

Peppers can also tolerate quite a bit of abuse, once temperatures are comfortably warm. Small pepper plants will sulk after cool nights and will just huddle down and not grow very quickly if the days aren't warm enough. Not to worry; the weather right now is perfect, so get those pepper plants outside. The stems of pepper plants will also sprout roots, so we also bury the peppers deeper than they are planted in their containers. 

We're experimenting with the peppers this year. We buried up to 75% of the stem of some of the peppers, and others we only buried about 25%. I'll report later in the season and let you know how the experiment is going. 

Peppers and tomatoes are heavy feeders, so they benefit from soils with a lot of organic matter. Both of these nightshade cousins may develop blossom end rot, drop their flowers, or produce cracked fruit with uneven watering, so we always use a thick layer of organic mulch to keep in the moisture. As I've mentioned before, we use old hay. Many gardeners prefer not to use hay because of the weed seeds, but it is locally available and provides drastic moisture retention and soil tilth improvement, so we deal with the weeds.

Many gardeners find that foliar feedings of an Epsom salt dilution are beneficial to pepper and tomato plants. Epsom salt contains magnesium and sulfur in a highly soluble form. Lime is a common garden amendment to the highly weathered, acidic clay soils in our region, since lime is composed of calcium carbonate, which is a base. In addition to raising the pH, lime adds calcium to the soil, but soil calcium and magnesium must be in the proper balance in order for the plants to be able to utilize the available calcium. Since the magnesium in Epsom salts is highly soluble, it provides a boost of nutrients to the plants. 

One tablespoon to a gallon is all you need for a good Epsom salt foliar feeding. Foliar feeding means fertilizing your plants by spraying a solution on their leaves. Very early morning is the best time for foliar feeding. You don't want to spray the solution during the heat of a sunny day because the plants need to be able to respire to tolerate the heat. Many gardening advice sources advise not to spray in the evenings, so as to not encourage mildew problems. That being said, we almost always spray in the evenings because that's when we get around to it. Thus far, we haven't had any mildew problems. 

If you're concerned or just curious about the nutrient levels in your soils, you can have your soil tested through the local extension office or a private lab. If you're not sure if your pepper and tomato plants would benefit from an Epsom salt feeding, you can always do an experiment and only spray one or two of your plants and compare their performance over a couple days or weeks.

Part of the fun of gardening is experimentation, and all the exercise you get from growing all that fresh, healthy produce is a great perk. Experimenting with new methods and unusual varieties keeps each year exciting and each iteration of your garden novel. Coming up with new trellising ideas, or garden layouts, or hypotheses as to why one plant out performed another or the beans were better last year than this year exercises your mind, and you can't help but do dozens of repetitions of glute, hamstring, and quadricept exercises out in your garden!

The interconnectedness of it all

Column for the DeKalb County Times
by Karley


Fried pies, fresh baked goods, fabulous barbecue, and the first tomato plants are all available at the DeKalb Farmers' Market. As I'm writing this we have frost on the ground down here in the back of the holler, so if you have tomato plants, you should be prepared to give them a little extra protection on these chilly spring-appropriate nights.

Our last average frost date for this USDA hardiness zone 7 growing area is April 15. Don't let that fool you, though. More important than your zone is your micro-climate, which can differ significantly from regional averages. Our farm is the last open area at the back of a hollow and is the highest part of the hollow's bottomland. In the evenings you can feel the cool air rolling down the hills and flowing down the slight elevation drop along the path of the creek. What this means for us is that our lows are consistently 7 to 10 degrees below the forecasted low.

That might not sound like much if you're not a gardener, but the difference between a low of 32 and 25 is the difference between a light frost that pretty much any spring crop can tolerate and a freeze that will damage leaves and potentially kill seedlings. In the late fall, that's the difference between tomatoes on the vine for another week and rushing to harvest the last of the unripe fruit. In the summer that's the difference between an uncomfortably warm night up on the plateau and it being cool enough to open the windows and turn off the air conditioner down in the holler.

One of the most rewarding and wonderful parts of gardening is the level of connection you develop with the land. This applies to people gardening in containers on their little concrete patios, too. They too must pay attention to where the sun sets and rises, how the sun moves North and South throughout the season, if it's been dry, wet, hot, or cold, and what bugs are breeding and eating.

Working in the garden we encounter little brown garden snakes, big black snakes, toads, firefly larvae, garden spiders and their hoards of babies, ants, frogs, and bees to name a few. I have never been bitten by the garden spiders or harassed by the snakes. I am grateful to see those predators in the garden because a healthy population of predators is an indicator of a healthy and balanced ecosystem. Toads can eat up to 1,000 bugs in one day, so I am always thrilled to find them nestled in the mulch.

We know there's a large flock of turkeys that frequents the forested part of the property. We've seen them alight in the tops of the trees on the ridge in a kerfuffle of noise and breaking branches. We hear them gobbling to each other in the evenings. We have a woodpecker that frequents the dying Box Elder on the bank of the creek, and sometimes there's a big heron who comes to gorge on the fish, tadpoles, and crawdads that get trapped in pools as our creek branch dries up through the summer.

When storm fronts move through the area, if you pay attention to the sensation of the wind on your skin, you can feel the cool and warm air mingling. I swear I felt the first fall breeze last year, and a welcomed breeze it was. I've been dreading the possibility of last month's unrelenting heat remaining unrelenting for the next five months, but now I have no idea what to expect. I asked a gardening friend if she thought we would even be able to get a good cabbage and broccoli harvest this spring, and her response was, “This week, or last week?”

After an intense bout with the Cabbageworms immediately upon transplanting our cabbage and broccoli into the garden, we are finally down to only finding two or three green worms a day. We had some casualties, but the survivors are now growing enthusiastically. It's somewhat of a mystery, why the bugs eat one plant and leave another. Maybe the victim was a plant whose roots got mangled during pricking out or transplanting, or maybe it was just a bad seed. In any case, we're filling in the holes with lettuce transplants.

Nature abhors mono-cultures. That's one reason why you'll just never achieve a weedless corn patch. The pigweed, bindweed, and lamb's quarter find gardens simply irresistible. The good thing is you can actually eat lamb's quarter as a potherb, and at least the bindweed has pretty blue flowers since it's in the morning glory family. Just try to pull it out before it goes to seed.

We have found that applying a layer several inches thick of mulch around our plants does a fantastic job smothering out the weeds. We use old hay, which has weed seeds in it. Some gardeners prefer not to use old hay as mulch because of those seeds, but since it seems like you end up with weeds in your garden no matter what you do here in the land of eight foot tall iron weed, for us the benefits outweigh the cost.

The old hay mulch also retains moisture and shades the surface of the soil, which supports earthworm activity in the upper layer of the soil. When we use a hand shovel to dig a hole for transplanting, it's not uncommon for us to encounter a dozen earthworms in a four inch hole. Those earthworms are improving the tilth of our heavy clay soil by adding organic matter, as well as providing us with nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, magnesium, and most importantly for our farm specifically, calcium. All this they do gleefully pro bono, as long as we shade them from sun and provide them a little protection from the frost. They also provide our resident garden toads with a protein rich snack when they get tired of hopping after bugs.

Our buzzing metropolis has also provided us with enough lady beetles to get our aphid population completely under control, and we never had a problem with having too few pollinators to pollinate our squash and cucumbers.

Spending time in the garden in quiet contemplation and rapt observation, I can scarcely help being overcome by the interconnectedness of all life on this planet. When our farm dog plops down in the sun and lets her head fall back to look at the sky, I can't help but wonder if she's sharing my elation.

Black snakes, lady beetles, and the abominable aphid

For the DeKalb County Times
by Karley

The market is starting to pick up with all this warm weather. Tomato plants and ornamentals are available, and you'll be able to get some fried pies early in the morning. They go quick, so don't dally! Barbecue and baked goods aplenty are there, too. It sounds like the makings of a fantastic weekend picnic.

Is anyone else wondering what happened to spring? The arugula and some mustards we planted came right up and promptly bolted, which tells us they think it's been way too hot. Our creek branch has already right up, leaving some slimy green algae where the cool, clear water was just a week ago. I've seen our resident banded water snake sunning itself on a rocky outcropping, and twice I've almost stepped on the big black snake that lives around the garden.

Last year that black snake got tangled in some netting we were using as a deer deterrent in the garden. The netting was cutting into the snake's skin, so we very carefully had to snip each little strand of plastic to free the snake. The netting left scars, so it's easy to identify that snake. We're now very conscious to not leave materials in the garden that might be harmful to our non-human neighbors.

Black snakes eat rodents, and we've been told that they'll keep poisonous snakes out of their territory. Black snakes are totally harmless and nonvenomous. If you find that you have a black snake sharing your yard with you, please don't kill it. They pose no threat to you, your family, or your pets, and they are far better mousers than most fat house cats.

The bugs are certainly out in summer numbers. I've already been bitten by ticks and mosquitoes. I refer to the hour and a half before the sun goes down as “bug thirty.” If I've got long sleeves and pants on, they bite my face and ears.

We've already had an outbreak of Imported Cabbageworms. That started a couple weeks ago, so we're fairly sure they just never died since the winter was so mild. After daily hand pickings and spraying with soap every other day, I think we've almost got a handle on them.

Another bug that pretty much anyone who has ever tried to grow a plant outside, whether ornamental or edible, is familiar with is the aphid, or plant lice. These teeny tiny little sap suckers come in all colors—green, white, black, and red. They congregate in masses on the underside of leaves and where leaves and stems join. They feed on plant juices by piercing the stem or leaf and sucking out the moisture. They excrete excess moisture as a sticky “dew,” which ants love. That's why you frequently find aphids and ants together.

Each variety of aphid produces both winged and wingless generations. The first generation of the spring hatch from eggs laid in the fall. This first generation consists entirely of female aphids. These females give birth to live young without being fertilized by males. As their numbers increase and the masses of aphids begin to crowd each other, a generation of winged females is produced, and these take flight to spread their siege. Those winged females produce many more generations of wingless females. As their population density increases and the temperature begins to drop later in the season, a generation of true females and true males is produced. These are the aphids that will mate and produce eggs to be hatched next spring.

Since aphids reproduce throughout the growing season, they are a garden pest that pose a constant challenge. Fortunately they are fairly easy to deal with, and gardeners get a hand from the aphid's many natural predators. Lady beetles are avid aphid eaters, as are lacewings and some flies. Lady beetles lay hard, very tiny yellow eggs on the underside of leaves. If you find them, leave them there to increase the population of your allies. It's worth looking up what the lady beetle larvae looks like, as it's not even remotely similar to the shiny black and red-to-orange small beetles we're all familiar with.

If you find an aphid infestation on your plants, as long as you get to work quickly, you probably won't sustain major crop losses. Hitting the aphids with a strong jet of water effectively knocks them off the plants. If you already have an appreciable number of the little suckers, knock them off with a soapy spray and then rinse the plant with fresh water. You can also add garlic and onion to your spray to deter further feasting. Keep up with your spraying for a couple days to get their numbers under control, and then check on your plants regularly.

Plants with curly leaves that provide the aphids places to hide can be more challenging to reclaim from the scourge. Be sure you check every nook and cranny. According to Rodale's Color Handbook of Garden Insects, if all the descendants of a single aphid lived and reproduced, there would be over 5 billion aphids by the end of summer.

Aphids are common pests in greenhouses too, so keep an eye out for them on your tomato and pepper seedlings. You can discourage aphid damage to curcurbits like squash and cucumbers by placing aluminum foil on the soil around the base of the plants.

Keep your eye out for those abominable aphids so they don't get the upper hand on your garden this growing season!

Mostly chard

For the DeKalb County Times
by Karley

The roadsides and hillsides are abuzz with spring. The dogwoods have spent their blooms and are leafing out, and the landscape looks like a watercolor right now with its splashes of exuberant greens. But that doesn't mean we should put away our sweaters just yet. Who knows what April will bring? Spring in Middle Tennessee is not to be trusted!

Keep your eye out for those patches of watercress. It's growing like mad right now. I harvested two pounds, and two days later I couldn't tell where I had cut it. There's actually a huge patch on the side of the road off highway 70 West just as you come into Liberty. There must be a spring near the sidewalk because the sidewalk is covered in watercress. Free gourmet food!

Between gardening friends I've spoken with and our own garden, right now you can have cabbage, beets, chard, broccoli, turnips, mustards, green onions, Asian greens, potatoes, lettuce, kale, arugula, and peas in the ground. Our greenhouse is filled with tiny tomato babies and lettuce starts. We'll start our eggplants and peppers today or tomorrow. There's no sense rushing those seedlings; last year we started them earlier and they just sulked until the heat really got cranking.

Eggplants can be challenging to grow in our area. In our garden and our immediate neighbors' gardens the flea beetles just demolish the plants as soon as they're set out. I've heard other growers say the potato beetles chewed up their eggplants. It takes skill and luck, probably in equal measure, to grow great eggplants here. So when you encounter locally grown eggplants at the farmers' market, you should be sure to load up and thank your farmer!

As challenging and persnickety as eggplants may be, chard is exactly the opposite. Chard is closely related to beets which is why the leaves look exactly like beet tops. As an aside—you do eat your beet greens, don't you?

Chard comes in many varieties, some with white ribs, others with florescent pink or yellow, and a few with streaked ribs. The greens are usually green, but a few varieties have reddish tinted leaves. The only kind I grow is Bright Lights chard because the rib colors come in a wild array of bright colors, and some of the plants have red leaves.

Chard leaves are succulent and tender. Grasp the stem at the cut end with one hand and with the other hand, run your fingers down the length of the leaf. This lets you pull all the greens off the rib. If you're going to make a sauté, just rough chop the greens, throw in some heated oil for only about two minutes, and dress up with garlic, soy sauce, ginger, pepper, butter, coconut oil, or anything else that sounds good. Be sure you remove the chard from the heat when it's still bright green. Don't pour off any liquid since many minerals and vitamins are in the juices that are released during cooking.

When the chard is really cranking the leaves can get huge—up to several inches across. If you cut the ribs off of the larger leaves, you can use each leaf as a wrap for chicken, egg, or tuna salad. Chop up the ribs and throw them in your salad of choice. The brightly colored ribs taste very similar to the leaves. When finely chopped the ribs make an absolutely delightful culinary confetti. You can turn your humdrum deviled eggs and green salads into tasty explosions of art.

As if its stunning beauty and culinary strengths aren't enough to convince you to grow chard, the ease with which you can have it pouring out of your garden should make it irresistible. The seeds are actually little fruits which contain up to half a dozen little seeds. Some people recommend soaking or scoring the seeds for faster germination, but it's not necessary. Throw the seeds in your dirt then when they're a couple inches tall, thin the seedlings so that you have a few inches between each plant. Be absolutely sure to eat the thinnings—because they're great.

Chard appreciates soil amended with organic matter, like the compost you make from your kitchen waste and backyard leaves, but it can make its living in leaner soil, too. At our farm we really haven't had any pest problems to speak of, except the blister beetles that got a little out of hand at the end of the summer last year. At that point our chickens were eating a lot of chard and beetle salads.

Chard will grow in full sun but will tolerate a little shade. It tolerates heat after the turnip greens have gone tough and bitter and is drought resistant, so if you leave your spring planting in place through the summer you can harvest from it again in the fall. Chard is a “cut and come again” crop, so don't take more than around a third of the leaves during any single harvest, being sure to leave the newest inner growth, and in a couple days you can come back and harvest more.

Chard takes light frost like a champ, so you can eat off one planting all season long. If you make some simple hoops and cover the chard with fabric or plastic, you can have fresh greens in your garden until the low temperature gets into the low 20s in the winter. If there's another winter like this year, you wouldn't have anything to worry about!

Chard also grow enthusiastically in containers, so don't feel limited by space. Even a six inch pot can hold enough chard to keep one eater supplied throughout the growing season.

Even if you've never grown chard before, make 2012 the last year you don't have chard in your garden!

Spring and other musings

For the DeKalb County Times
by Karley

With warm temperatures in the forecast for the foreseeable future, the gardening season and spring are officially on. People are tilling up their plots and throwing seeds in the ground. It's time for cutting up your seed potatoes and planting your onion starts. Now, this doesn't mean we won't get another frost. It thundered in February, so according to the old timers, we can expect frost in May.

We live tucked back in hollow (excuse me, holler), so our daffodils are a couple weeks behind the flowers up in Smithville. Last year we had frosts almost a full month after our friends who garden up on Short Mountain, and this year their daffodils show is already over.

We're already seeing butterflies and bees. I've already also found a tick embedded in my side and have been bitten by mosquitoes. The toads and frogs are busy every evening serenading the cool nights, so we have to drive very carefully in the evenings, so as to not to squish our amphibious neighbors.

There is a huge flock of wild turkeys who roost in the trees on the hillside near our house. Driving back to the farm just before dusk a few day ago I saw a gathering of at least eighty. Some of the huge males were displaying their tail feathers for the females, but none of the ladies seemed terribly impressed. When they all decided it was time to roost, it sounded like they were going to break all the branches as they hefted their large bodies into the tops of the trees. Turkeys make a great commotion when they're all congregated in a big group—remarkably like a big group of humans.

The turnips and mustards leftover from the fall planting are bolting and blooming right now. Those cheery little yellow flowers are edible, and they do a beautiful job dressing up salads and even chicken or fish dishes. The unopened flower heads look like broccoli sprouts, and you can very lightly sauté them for a spring tonic mess of greens. Heat up some olive or coconut oil in a pan and throw the sprouts on there for just two or three minutes, until lightly cooked. Toss them with some soy sauce and some fresh grated ginger for an ethic treat.

The wild, peppery watercress is growing like crazy right now. You can find it growing in clean, flowing spring water, which we have a lot of here. It's easiest to pick the leaves growing above the water. Those leaves are usually cleaner, and you're less likely to find hitchhiking snails. You can make pesto with the leaves or eat it raw as a salad green. Since watercress is extremely easy to identify, abundant, and edible raw, it's a fantastic, easy wild food to start out your foraging adventures.

Now is the time for starting tomato and pepper seeds, but be prepared to keep them warm if we get a cold snap in April—or that frost in May. You can transplant broccoli and cabbage into the garden and direct sow peas, spinach, mustards, turnips, lettuce, and kale.

You can also be scattering flower seeds to dress up your landscape. This past week we made flower bombs. We mixed about five parts clay to one part finished compost and then threw in dozens and dozens of packets of seeds I got on sale last year. We used all kinds of herbs and garden flowers—everything from dill, poppies, zinnias, and bachelors buttons to Scarlet Ohno turnips, fennel, and sunflowers. We just formed handfuls of the mixture into roundish balls and let them dry in the sun. Now as we're walking around the farm, we throw the flower bombs in areas where we just don't get around to mowing very regularly.

At our farm, that's most of the grass. I hate mowing because I hate loud, stinky mowers; that's my own personal crusade. However, a more broadly applicable reason for mowing infrequently is that small engines like those in weed eaters, leaf blowers, and even lawn mowers actually produce many times more emissions than an engine in even a large truck. A study published on insideline.com found that a two-stroke leaf blower generated 23 times more Carbon Monoxide (CO) and 300 times more non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) than a large pickup. To put that in perspective, you would have to drive that truck 3,887 miles, from Northern Texas to Anchorage, Alaska, to produce the same level of emissions as half an hour of yard work with that two-stroke blower.

We use our goats and horse and donkey to mow our grass. They're more than happy to oblige. Our head goat, Dolly the Despot, doesn't seem to mind being tied on a long line, which fairly reliably keeps the herd in a twenty to thirty foot radius. The horse and donkey are never opposed to face planting in lush green grass, but their services have to be more closely monitored, as their big feet can wreak destruction in zero seconds flat. In return they all leave us free fertilizer, which the chickens very enthusiastically spread out in their diligent search for anything that squirms.

And then I don't have to mow, which leaves more time for other things, like working up our beds with the broadfork, since I don't like tillers either. We also end up with a beautiful privacy screen that blooms purple (ironweed), yellow (goldenrod), with puffs of white and lavender mixed in between our garden and the road. This year we're hoping the flower bombs will add every shade and color you can imagine to our privacy screen and then go to seed for a repeat next year.

Having wild areas near your garden is a great way to attract lots of beneficial bugs, like the Soldier Beetle, who feeds on grasshopper eggs. They love goldenrod. Those red wasps that deliver such a wallop if you upset them are the same wasps whose larvae parasitize those huge green tomato hornworms. If you've ever found a hornworm with little white eggs attached to its back, it's those wasps that laid the eggs. And after the flower show is over, the migrating song birds love the tall dead weeds, which they dance and flit through all winter.

I might hate mowing, mowers, weed eaters, and tillers, but I love living here where the color palette changes with the season and my office has no walls or ceiling.

love

Words cannot describe how much I love this place. This morning I went for a ride with our friend, Alison. The day started with frost on the ground but warmed up to long T-shirt temperature by the time we got out. The sky is brilliant blue, and spring has the trees in red, orange, magenta, and neon green. The pastures are coming back alive, and the woods are filled with Mayapples. The dogwoods are finally blooming, and their blossoms turn upwards toward the sunlight, like little cups to catch every drop. We saw a turkey fly into the air and soar--literally soar--through the sky, riding the wind racing up the slope of the valley. We spent a morning caving and then washed the first layer of mud out of our clothes in the creek. Marie and I put legit hoops and row cover over our cabbages, kale, and lettuce, all which look beautiful and vibrant. You can practically watch the peas and garlic growing. I had some shallots that spent the entire summer, fall, and winter in a paper bag in a plastic drawer stashed in the barn. I opened the bag, and they were growing, so I threw them in the garden, and they are growing like crazy. The half of our onions planted in the bed that spent the winter under rotting hay is twice as big as the other half the planting that were put into freshly worked ground. Behold, the power of earthworms. The bees and butterflies are back. The barn was practically vibrating with the buzz of the carpenter bees during their mating frenzy a couple weeks ago. They drill holes in the poles they used to hang the tobacco from in our barn, so there are piles of sawdust all around. The spring is full of tadpoles and newts, frogs, watercress, and Mayflies, and the toads had an orgy in my parents' pond. We have found we didn't haul nearly enough manure this winter. The greenhouse is full of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos. The artichokes are outside and finally loving life. We hosted a work party, and our wonderful friends finished our house wiring, built us a custom art light fixture, cleared hundreds of Osage, locust, and cedar saplings from our pasture and barnyard, and finished the rock work around the greywater basin. How amazing is that? Kevin is working in a factory from 6pm to 6am, five to seven days a week right now. He doesn't seem to hate it as much as I thought. This is temporary--just to earn a little extra money to have around. We are slowly gathering customers, but not nearly as quickly as I hoped. So we're thinking of taking it easy on the CSA members and seeing how much demand the two restaurants have for us. Marie and I are serving as secretaries for the Dekalb Farmers Market association. Fancy that. See you at the market! AND I found an arrowhead in our garden yesterday. I can't think of a more beautiful place to be.