Tag Archives: full food systems

Starting Seeds – Take Two

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The Mary Washington asparagus crowns never did sprout. It’s been a long, wet, cold spring here. Maybe they are still down there thinking about it. Probably the ground was too cold and wet when I put them in and they have succumbed to rot. I will dig them up when the sweet potato slips arrive from Sand Hill Preservation and see. In the mean time, I am starting asparagus from seed. Italian seed, no less. The packet says, “Asparago Precoce d’Argentuil” which I am pretty sure means early asparagus and leaves a bit to be desired on the descriptive end. For $2.99 I figured it was worth a try. I’ve already lost this year’s growth since the 1-year-old crowns didn’t make it and I really want enough asparagus to pickle some eventually. I broke down and bought asparagus this year, planning to pickle some of it, but we devoured it.

And speaking of things being devoured. Where are my beautiful Appaloosa beans? I know I planted an entire 4′ x 4′ of them! OK, it was mid-April. And that same wet, cold rainy spring that I mentioned earlier. But still, they are in a raised bed against the house in a nice sunny spot. ONE bean came up–and something ate the top of it off. Ugh. Remind me to reseed that planter bed now that it is finally warming up. Where did I just read not to rush to plant your bean seeds because you will just end up wasting a lot of seeds? Sometimes I think I am just gardening to learn patience.

But then I have a week of eating like we just had. I have a big board in the kitchen and last weekend I wrote down everything in or from the garden that was ready for us to eat; shell peas and snap peas, potatoes, salad greens, spinach, chard, beets, green onions, strawberries, oregano, celery, chives, carrots and the last of the kale and parsnips. Then I set about eating or finding a way to preserve all of it. It was actually fun trying to ‘live off the land’ there for a little while. And the vegetable curry I prepared in the middle of the week made it all worth while.

Today I also started some of the Principe Borghese tomatoes that I love for drying. I know, it’s mid-May. But last year, I was wishing I had started a second round of them by the time the first group were finished and the tomatoes were all in the dryer. Assuming it ever warms up this year, I may want them again. I also started Bottle, Dipper and Corsican Hard-shelled gourds. It’s probably warm enough for them to sprout outside, the watermelons and pumpkins are coming up, but I figured, why torture the poor things? They can get started under the grow lights with the last of the peppers and go into the garden when it really is ready for them. Plus, I don’t know where I am going to put them yet. And there’s all those sweet potatoes yet to fit in.

And did I mention that I started 40 or so quinoa plants? I was thinking about experimenting with a quinoa and sunflower version of The Three Sisters. I got some nice looking Hopi sunflowers from Native Seeds to mix in with the quinoa. I started a couple varieties of pumpkins in the bin to shade the soil and keep the weeds down. And I’m wondering if I can grow some pole beans up the quinoa. I think the sunflowers will be strong enough. The quinoa part might be crazy. I’m still reading up on it.

Wednesdays – Education You Can Eat

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Where does our food come from? How does it grow?  How does the way we grow food affect us, and the world around us? What is sustainable farming? What can we grow ourselves? How do we cook it? And, especially, how does it taste?

Education You Can Eat is a garden-centered hands-on program about food, nature, life cycles, cooking and nutrition. The program encourages participants to explore full food systems (“seed-to-table”) through both individual and group learning such as compost chemistry, bee gardening, nature journaling, botany experiments and cooking and preserving the harvest. Click here for a tour of the garden.

The program will meet on Wednesdays from 10:00-1:00 in the garden in the Santa Clara/Cupertino area starting April 28th, with a possible field trip to Full Circle Farm or Veggielution by arrangement with the group. (A June 9th Olivera Egg Ranch Tour will also be a wonderful addition to what we will be learning.)

The lead instructor for the program is Mackenzie Price, with assistance from, Joanna, a UCSC intern, and Gardener Juli. Parent participation is welcome and encouraged.

We have five spots available in the Wednesday program for kids working around the 2nd-4th grade level in Science. Please let us know by email if you would like a spot for your child. Send your message to dirt2dinner at gmail dot com.

We look forward to seeing you in the garden!

Dark Days Dirt to Dinner Hunter’s Stew

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Everything But the Huntee

For some reason the holidays and all the local eating have brought out a craving for Hunter’s Stew. I originally intended to do it with venison, but had a hard time finding the cuts that I wanted and the buffalo I was offered instead admittedly looked fabulous. It may have come from just outside the 100 mile radius we’re shooting for, but the duck and the rabbit were both local, as were all the vegetables.

The stew started with Dirt to Dinner garden-grown onions, carrots, potatoes and pumpkin, seasoned with thyme, rosemary and parsley, also out of the yard. I planned to add in the shallots we grew, but forgot and used garlic instead. I would have happily added parsnips or celery, but neither of them are ready yet. The peas you see in the picture never made it into the kitchen. They were delicious straight out of the pods.

Garden Snack

The stew will be served with a turnip-rutabaga mash to soak up the delicious broth. It has eight hours in the crock pot to go, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it that long. I was worried that the duck would give the stew a greasy feel to it, so I only added the browned duck legs and it is smelling just right.

The Thankful Garden

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Rutabaga

I’m amazed at all the things still going strong in the Dirt to Dinner garden at this time of year. In the Midwest, where I grew up, all I had in my garden in late November was frost.

If you’d like to see all the ingredients we have available this year for a Thanksgiving feast, I made a VoiceThread to share them with you.

If you just want the short-list of what is growing, it goes something like this: Ancho peppers, artichokes, arugula, asparagus, basil, beans, beets, broccoli, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, chives, chicory, collards, ginger, gourds, Hungarian peppers, kale, Komatsu, luffa, mustard, onions, parsley, parsnips, potatoes, radishes, rutabagas, tomatoes, turnips, sage, shelling peas, snap peas, snow peas, spinach, strawberries and a lone watermelon.

Dark Days Dirt to Dinner Week 1

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Big Soup from the Garden

The Dark Days of Winter Eat Local Challenge began Sunday, November 15 and goes through March 31, 2010. Basically the idea is to make at least one meal each week with 90% local, sustainable, organic, ethical ingredients. I’m trying to cook as close to home as possible using ingredients that come straight out of the Dirt to Dinner garden.

Chinese CabbageThis weekend, to get warmed up, I took a few small liberties with Alice Water’s “Winter Minestrone with Turnips, Potatoes, and Cabbage” recipe from The Art of Simple Food. But I like to think that Alice would approve. It was fresh, organic and as local as the front yard after all. Some friends came down from San Francisco, and the enthusiastic audience set the tone.

I had to improvise right from the start with the soffritto because I don’t have celery ready yet. Our celery started from last year’s seed is still tiny. What we do have a bit of in the Dirt to Dinner garden is gorgeous ‘Rainbow’ chard. We fought the leaf miners long and hard this year to get that chard, so I’m making the best of it. Not only did we add it to the “Massaged Kale Salad” the last time the group met, I also used it for the soup. I took two long beet-red stalks of chard and chopped them as I would have the celery and tossed them in with one of the last “White Globe” onions and a variety of carrots ranging from ‘Yellowstone’ to ‘Purple Dragon’ which I snuck out of our carrot Fort Knox as thinnings. When the soffritto had colored nicely, I tossed in garlic, a handful of fresh thyme & some dried Italian parsley that we had growing all over in the spring.

Then I added a pound of ‘Tokyo Market’ turnips, with the greens, the leftover chard leaves, a handful of last tomatoes from a volunteer plant out back, a couple handfuls of our ‘All Blue’ potatoes and sliced up rings of two small leeks. The turnips have been growing in a low bed in the front garden for about six weeks now and they are wonderful. Germination rates have been amazing for this variety and they are small, sweet, tender turnips that even the kids eat happily. The leeks are slow growing and much thinner than I had hoped but they still taste good and the kids often prefer them to onions. The ‘All Blues’ are a story all their own!

The night before I had soaked some of the drying beans we grew this summer with kombu and toward the end of cooking, I added in about 3 cups of these along with the softened piece of kombu. All of this was topped off with a head of chopped Chinese Cabbage pulled from the garden and thoroughly rinsed to remove the slugs hiding in many of the leaf folds.

The bowls of soup were finished off with a splash of nice olive oil and a heaping spoonful of, admittedly not local, Parmesan. I could have finished them with homemade/homegrown pesto, but the cheese was a lovely addition. If you know how I can get some made within 100 miles, I’d love to try it.