Author Archives: Hand in Hand Parenting

Inside A Seed

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Broad Bean Seed and Almond Nut

Broad Bean Seed and Almond Nut

Today in Open Garden time we dissected Broad Bean seeds and almonds to examine the structures you can find inside a seed. Here’s a quick rundown of the process for those of you who weren’t able to be with us today.

We used:

  • Several pods of Broad Beans
  • Almonds
  • Magnifers
  • Food dye
  • Towels for blotting dye
  • Tweezers

We first slit open the pods to examine the structures that hold and protect the seeds. You can see a picture of an almond “fruit” that would hold the almond “seed” you are familiar with here.

Inside a Broad Bean

Inside a Broad Bean

We examined the outer casing of the seed and the nut, called the “seed coat,” noting the differences, then carefully slit the seed coat on the long side of the seed or nut. That allowed us to carefully pry apart both the bean and the almond.

Here’s what we found inside the Broad Bean. One side came away clean and the other side has the plant embryo attached to it.

Embryonic Leaves Inside the Broad Bean Seed

Embryonic Leaves Inside the Broad Bean Seed

It wasn’t as easy to see things as we had hoped so we added a little bit of food dye to bring out the contrast. (Thanks for the tip, Mary!)

Look carefully. Can you see the tiny “seed leaves” folded up at the tip of the seed?

Embryonic Almond Bits

Embryonic Almond Bits

Here’s what the almond looked like.

Most of what you see is the cotyledon, the food stored inside the seed for the emerging plant to live on. That’s what makes seeds such nutritious food.

Which ones will you compare?

Which ones will you compare?

You can experiment at home with different kinds of seeds and see which ones give you the best view of their internal workings. If you’d like to share your results here on the blog, you can do that too.

Opening the Fall Program

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Squirrel o' Lantern

Squirrel o' Lantern

Today was the Open House for the new Fall 09 Dirt to Dinner program. We focused on three things. Getting to know one another and the garden. A chance to get more familiar with the different responsibilities we’ll each be taking on in the garden this session. And an exploration of some of the seeds that are available in the garden and that we will use this Fall to plant both here and at home.

During today’s Seed Hunt, kids spotted seeds in the garden including onion, celery, edamame, green bean, pumpkin, corn, grass, dandelion, lettuce, potato, lemon, cucumber, watermelon, tuscan melon, tomato, tomatillo, pepper, squash, pea, sunflower and “bird seed.” How many of them could you identify? We’ll be saving seed from many of these varieties to use again next year. I’ve already planted some of the celery seed we saved and hope to see it sprouting this week.

Many of the kids planted seeds to take home with them, made seed jars to watch sprout and tried several varieties of cucumber and melons–while noticing that their seeds all look very much the same. Sometimes it’s easier to tell which plants belong to the same family by looking at their seeds than it is by looking at the finished fruits.

Chard Seeds?

Chard Seeds?

One enterprising student matched up a number of the seeds by plant family and noticed that it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between seeds for chard and seeds for beets. In fact, Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking says “Chard is the name given to varieties of the beet, Beta vulgaris, that have been selected for thick, meaty leaf stalks (subspecies cicla) rather than their roots.”

One of my highlights of the day was hunting through the finished compost pile with one new young gardener intent on checking out the various bugs we found there. I was also impressed with the spontaneous way the kids joined in the potato harvest. We’ll be saving many of the potatoes they planted today through the winter to be used as seed potatoes in the early spring.

A Fresh Start for Fall

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Seeds-from-the-SunIt’s almost time for the Open House for the new and returning Dirt to Dinner families. There’s a lot of work still to do to get ready but I’m excited to be getting the Fall program going. This session we are expecting a dozen families. Half were in the Spring program and half are new. We’ll have a balanced group as far as boys and girls and the ages will range from five to eleven.

SpiderMelonIn between meetings we’ll communicate by email and our Google group again this session since it seemed to work well in the Spring. We’ll pass on the Ning this time but we are keeping the accounts with VoiceThread since I know I will use it and we hope more of the kids will be involved in making VoiceThreads this session.

We’ll be rotating each family through ten different areas of responsibilities to help the kids personally experience the interconnectedness of all the systems working in the garden. I predict Worm Wrangler will be a pretty popular one. I am also looking forward to seeing what the kids do when it’s their turn to be the Journalist.

Dried-BeansThe Open House will also include a scavenger hunt to find various kinds of seeds around the garden. I went through earlier today with a camera and came up with twenty different kinds visible on, in or around the plants, if you include the potatoes. It will surprise me if the kids find all the ones that I did, but it won’t surprise me if they come up with something I didn’t. New eyes are forever seeing things in the garden that I seem to miss looking at it every day.

I also have seeds on hand for the kids to plant if they would like. It’s always fun to start some seeds in the dirt at the beginning of the project. And I have a lot of seeds available for them to just explore, compare and add to seed starting jars to take home with them.

Fall Starts

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I started some new seedlings for the Dirt to Dinner participants to plant in their home gardens, if they are doing them this Fall. I started a mix of three different varieties of Broccoli and had a heck of a time getting any Early Dell Celery or Snowball Cauliflower to come up. But we went through a heat wave right after I planted, so that may have been the problem. It’s worth trying agin.

Tonight I started:

KaleA Japanese spinach called “Oriental Giant,”
“Bloomsdale” spinach,
“Orange Fantasia” chard, which came up beautifully in the Spring and was promptly devoured down to it’s last root by squirrels,
A specialty salad green called “Gala” mache (never tried this one, let me know if it does well for you),
Something the kids would call ‘Dinosaur’ kale that says “Covolo Laciniato Nero Di Toscana Precoce” which I think means “Curly black kale from Tuscany,” but that’s just a guess,
Some more standard looking kale called “True Siberian,”
More Snowball cauliflower,
And the rest of the seed I had for the “Early Dell” celery.

It was luxurious having fresh celery available all Winter long last year and I actually saved seed from the plants we grew. I tried starting some of that along with the Early Dell. I have no idea if it will do well. I found the plant label from last year and it just says “Celery” so no idea if it is a hybrid that might not breed true. Put that one under the category of Experiment! :-)

In the garden we have:

some carrots tucked here and there trying to hide from the creatures that come in the night and dig them up,
some peas just starting,
turnips that could really stand to be thinned,
drying beans for soups this Winter,
sunflowers waiting for us to dry and husk the heads,
onions that still need to be pulled,
blue potatoes that are about ready to come out,
melons, pumpkins and gourds that have been growing all summer
and still more tomatoes!

The Disappearing Tomatoes

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07 03 09_0069We love fresh tomatoes. Sliced onto a plate with a little salt over them; with mozzarella, a little basil and some balsamic vinegar (Yum!); with crushed crackers and some more balsamic vinegar—also delicious; sliced onto a grilled cheese sandwich before the grilling part—another treat.

But there are limits. And when we cannot face another heaping bowl of lovely, fresh tomatoes calling out to be eaten, we dig out the stock pot and make some catsup.

You can make 24 pounds of fresh tomatoes fit into three or maybe four pint jars this way! It may be an even better tomato disappearing trick than drying. (We’ll have to do an experiment to see how they really compare…hmmm…good thing the kids are back starting in September.)

After several batches and many opinions, here is the recipe we have settled on for delicious, homemade catsup. Or ketchup. Or however you spell it where you’re from.

Let us know how you like it!

Tomato Ketchup
(about 3 or 4 pint jars)

24 pounds ripe tomatoes
3 cups chopped onions
1 or 2 red peppers, on the hot side 
4 teaspoons whole cloves
2 sticks cinnamon, broken in pieces
1½ teaspoons whole allspice
3 tablespoons celery seeds
3 cups cider vinegar
1½ cups sugar
¼ cup pickling or kosher salt

Wash tomatoes. Quarter tomatoes into 4-gallon pot. Add onions and red peppers. Bring to boil and simmer 20 minutes, uncovered.

Combine spices in a spice bag. Place spices and vinegar in a 2-quart saucepan. Bring to boil. Cover, turn off heat and let stand for 20 minutes. Remove spice bag from the vinegar and add the vinegar to the tomato mixture. Boil about 30 minutes. Press boiled mixture through a food mill or sieve. Return to pot. Add sugar and salt and boil gently, stirring frequently until volume is reduced by one-half or until mixture rounds up on spoon without separation. Pour into hot pint jars, leaving 1/8-inch headspace. Wipe jar rims. Adjust lids. Process half-pints in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.