Sprout

adam July 1st, 2009

It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m anticipating a trellising disaster. It’s begun with my peas. Though I meant to, I never provided a third stake between the other two, so the trellis now sags under the weight of the peas, which have grown to be more than six feet tall. They are falling into my chard, and though the plants are producing, it just annoys me and makes the garden less inviting.

That’s nothing compared to what’s coming. A three sisters garden is so elegant in theory but my three sisters will be nothing but inelegant. First, I planted the corn too close together. I was following instructions, but it’s clear to me now that six inches is too close. The stalks are bending backwards for breathing room.

Second, June’s rain, cold and lack of sunlight has stunted the corn; it’s growing slowly. This is a problem because their stalks are the poles for my pole beans, which I had to plant so they would mature before danger of frost (these beans have a particularly long growing time). Already the beans are nearly as big as the corn and soon they will be out of control without something to climb.

The corn should be much taller than these pole beans. In about a month they will be sprawling everywhere, totally out of control.

And third, the forecast predicts a bad storm today, and already my corn has proved to be flimsy in the rain – perhaps because they are transplants their taproots are sunk as deep as normal. (Also, so much rain discourages roots to dig deep for nutrients because they’re available in abundance, which is why you shouldn’t over water your plants.)

“Some of the storms could produce small hail, gusty winds, and heavy rain,” according to the National Weather Service. Chance of precipitation: 70 percent. This also bodes poorly for my newly erected pole-bean teepees, which I placed in my new garden plot (which I’ll discuss in my next post).

• Growing
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adam June 29th, 2009

I wrote a story for this week’s edition of TIMEOFF on the Mercer Automobile Company, a business founded by the legendary Roebling and Kuser families. Mercers, as their cars are called, were built by the people who built the Brooklyn Bridge and named after the county in which they were produced. One of those cars, the Raceabout, was highly prized in its day (the company existed from 1909-1925). Today it is much sought after by car enthusiasts.

Last summer my editor, Ilene Dube, wrote a story on the then prospective Roebling Museum (which opened this week) and recounted this tidbit about the town of Roebling from her story:

“Eastern Europeans had a tradition of piling garbage in their backyard, and so the town manager encouraged upkeep by awarding prizes for the best gardens. A tradition of gardening grew here, with many families having their own vegetable patch. Each had a different fruit tree for sharing, and there were grape arbors from which residents made their own wine.”

Who would win the prize for best garden in the Lawrence Community Gardens? There’s an abundance of creativity and skill to choose from.

• oh and by the way
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adam June 26th, 2009

My immigrant grandparents often asked my dad to go out and buy rye bread. Buying rye bread was part of his childhood routine and part of my grandparents’ Eastern European heritage. Instead of embracing that heritage, my dad wanted to eat white bread so he could be like the other American kids he knew.

In a recent column called Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms, The New York Times‘ Nicholas D. Kristof recounts a similar experience.

“Growing up on a farm near Yamhill, Ore., I quickly learned to appreciate the difference between fresh, home-grown foods and the commercial versions in the supermarket.

Store-bought lettuce was always lush, green and pristine, and thus vastly preferable to lettuce from my Mom’s vegetable garden (organic before we called it that). Her lettuce kept me on my toes, because a caterpillar might come crawling out of my salad.

We endured endless elk and venison — my Dad is still hunting at age 90 — or ate beef from steers raised on our own pasture, but “grass-fed” had no allure for me. I longed for delicious, wholesome food that my friends in town ate. Like hot dogs.”

Returning to homegrown foods is, ironically, a revolt against the way most of my generation were raised. Perhaps part of the appeal lies in that revolt, but I’ve never assessed growing and eating food that way. The idea of a food revolution is actually pretty silly to me - for most people this entire topic can be summarized or dismissed as no more than lunch. But the benefits of returning to homegrown, handmade food to the health of people and the environment appeals forcibly to my mind, and I can see it as no other way than a win-win-win situation for every generation.

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adam June 25th, 2009

Near the end of In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan writes that growing and cooking your own food has become an act of subversion. When I read it, the statement seemed a little absurd. But now, after recognizing how I felt when I arrived at work with dirty hands and two freshly picked zucchini, I think he’s right.

Tuesday morning I rolled up my chinos, strapped on my Tevas, and did some serious garden work before tucking in my shirt and going to the office. I hoed the entire garden, squished potato beetles and harvested zucchini. Dirt decorated my fingernails like eyeliner. Secretly I didn’t want to wash them, though I did before I began the duties of putting together a newspaper.

In the larger sense, Pollan is talking about subverting the entire industrial food chain by growing and cooking your own food. I don’t frame gardening like that, but I suppose it happens nonetheless, even if the degree is tiny. For example, every time I harvest a head of lettuce, I don’t buy one from the grocery store. Gardening engenders relationships, with people who grow and cook their own food (or eat yours), but maybe more importantly, gardening eliminates and reduces other relationships, with food corporations and bad restaurants.

If I identify with any feeling of subversion, though, it’s not in that particular sense. As a gardener (and especially a community gardener) I feel part of a group that is building something fun, healthy, and rewarding. Growing food is near the center of my life, and by emphasizing those American values of thrift, hard work, and self-reliance, I feel like I’m part of a long line of tradition that broke somewhere in the recent past. Those dirty hands are a tip off for who’s in the know.

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adam June 23rd, 2009

Montgomery Cinemas will be showing Food, Inc. beginning this Friday. I didn’t think it would show around here, so that’s exciting. Read Roger Ebert’s review here. He says the movie scared the bejesus out of him. Rotten Tomatoes rates the movie at 97 percent fresh. Their consensus: “An eye-opening expose of the modern food industry, ‘Food, Inc.’ is both fascinating and terrifying, and essential viewing for any health-conscious citizen.”

I don’t go to Montgomery Cinemas enough. They bring more independent movies to the area than anyone. Plus, the average ticket buyer is much older than the kids at AMC 24 in Hamilton, which is a great incentive for any movie lover. A disrespectful movie audience is one of my pet peeves. Also, I encourage everyone to go to the County Theater in Doylestown, Pa. TIMEOFF is running a story this week on their Hollywood Summer Night series, which is showing a slew of Hitchcock and Paul Newman movies, plus The Big Lebowski, His Girl Friday and City Lights. Pretty wonderful. Last week I took a trip to the County and saw The Godfather, Part II on the big screen. I loved every minute. I got a kick out of having an intermission, too.

• oh and by the way
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adam June 22nd, 2009

Forellenschuss lettuce, pictured above and below, is the only lettuce growing in my garden right now, and I like it much better than the Black Seeded Simpson I grew earlier in the season. According to Seed Savers Exchange, this lettuce is an Australian heirloom that “translates literally as ‘trout, self-enclosing’ meaning it’s a speckled romaine.” Trout, self enclosing = speckled Romaine. Got it.

Salads made of Forellenschuss lettuce standout. And they’re advertised to do well in the heat of summer, which is good because I don’t want to stop eating it.

Eight months after I harvested sweet potatoes I’m still enjoying them, at least in the form of sweet potato ravioli. I made these ravioli, below, from scratch and froze them. They were a great, quick meal during one of this month’s cool, wet days. (It has rained 18 of 22 days this June.) I dropped them in boiling water. Meanwhile I melted a tab of butter and then splashed just a bit of cream in a pan, adding the ravioli when they were done with just a pinch of salt, pepper and nutmeg. Making and freezing ravioli is something I’m definitely going to do again, probably this time with a mixture of cheeses and sugar snap peas.

Since I had the time and the inclination this week, I made a homemade spinach and chard lasagna, below. As you can see, I didn’t roll out the dough big enough, but that’s OK. It was still delicious. Handmade food isn’t perfect but it is unique. This was one of the more ambitious recipes I’ve tackled, and I was happy my mom was around to help orchestrate. I made my own pasta dough, tomato sauce and bechemel sauce. I don’t grow spinach so I went and bought some from Cherry Grove, mixing it with my Swiss chard. The result was a remarkably light - almost airy - meal, a startling fact considering its ingredients consisted of a milk-based sauce and layers of ricotta cheese.

In the future I can imagine using more store-bought ingredients but it was an adventure to make everything from scratch. I love making pasta by hand ever since I read Bill Buford’s Heat, a book about an editor falling in love with food and transforming his life. Buford’s account of taking a job in Mario Batali’s kitchen at Babbo, learning to make pasta from Italian grandmothers, and working in a Tuscan butcher shop is hilarious, passionate, and fascinating. I took Heat with me on vacation a couple years ago and read probably half the book out loud to my then girlfriend. I love Heat, I love making pasta, and I love this lasagna.

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adam June 16th, 2009

I ran into photographer Mark Czajkowski Monday afternoon, the first day of my week off from work. He was taking photos of the gardens for the Lawrence Ledger. No one was around except me and Bonnie, so Mark actually took a few pictures of me. I guess there’s no company policy about running photos of employees. In any case, I asked Mark to send me some of the photos the paper doesn’t use. I’ll post them when I return to work next week.

Not five minutes after Mark left, four or five gardeners showed up - Dee in her green bug, Juan on his bike, and a couple others I don’t know. I wished they would have arrived just earlier for Mark to photograph. He’s been taking pictures for the Packet for over 30 years and is a real asset.

I’m embarrassed to admit I felt excited when Mark said my picture might be in the Ledger. I’ve worked at the Packet for nearly two years, and though I’ve helped produce hundreds of stories, I’ve never been on the other side of the notebook, so to speak. Thinking about the future of newspapers, which as a newspaper employee is not avoidable, I have to think a person would be less excited to appear in the newspaper if the newspaper only published online. As it happens, my great good buddy Mikey Azzara was on the cover of Monday’s Trenton Times for a story on his produce distribution business called Zone 7. Farmer Matt showed it to me when I stopped by Cherry Grove and then my mom saw it and saved the paper for me. I doubt that kind of buzz would generate if he simply appeared on the paper’s Web site.

• oh and by the way
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adam June 12th, 2009

I want to share a couple items from today’s New York Times. Manhola Dargis called the new movie Food, Inc. an “informative, often infuriating activist documentary about the big business of feeding or, more to the political point, force-feeding, Americans all the junk that multinational corporate money can buy. You’ll shudder, shake and just possibly lose your genetically modified lunch.”

The movie opened in Manhattan, so I’ll probably wait for it to come to Netflix. Here’s the trailer, a link to the movie’s Website, and the full review.

Dwight Garner reviews Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter with praise. “Fresh, fearless and jagged around the edges, Ms. Carpenter’s book, an account of how she raised not only fruit and vegetables but also livestock on a small, scrubby abandoned lot in Oakland, puts me in mind of Julie Powell’s ‘Julie & Julia’ and Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’” he writes.

Check out Novella Carpenter’s blog.

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adam June 11th, 2009

So says Nathan Ballard, spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Today The New York Times reports that on Tuesday San Francisco passed mandatory composting rules. Residents will be issued a new green bin for compost and, beginning in 2011, issued a fine if they are found to repeatedly neglect the rule.

“The city already diverts 72 percent of the 2.1 million tons of waste its residents produce each year away from landfills and into recycling and composting programs. The new ordinance will help the city toward its goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2020, said Jared Blumenfeld, director of the city’s Department of the Environment,” according to the story.

Did you know the Princeton borough merchants don’t recycle? I know this because I’m friends with a few business owners. Looking over the ordinance that addresses this, it appears they should be recycling… unless the merchants aren’t “commercial, industrial or institutional establishments.”

Last year I wrote a story on The Environmental Film Festival at Princeton Public Library. I interviewed a woman from Princeton University’s Office of Sustainability. We talked about all sorts of interesting things like rooftop gardens and so on. It seemed a little absurd because I knew the borough doesn’t even recycle. I’m not talking about composting. They don’t recycle their Coke cans.

In today’s Times‘ story, Jared Blumenfeld, director of the San Franciso’s Department of the Environment, said, “When the nation is looking at complex solutions for climate-change reduction, we should not overlook the importance of simple things like increasing the recycling rate and composting.”

• Composting
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adam June 10th, 2009

This morning I was sitting at my kitchen table reading the newspaper. The Mets beat the Phillies, 6 to 5. Let’s go Mets! Then, a sight outside the window caught my eye. “What the?” I said out loud, to no one in particular since I was alone.

A squirrel was sitting in my fig tree pot, holding something between two paws and nibbling.

Earlier this season I had spread a handful of compost in the pot. A few seeds made it through the composting process unscathed and unopened. I think this squirrel was opening the seeds and eating them.

It didn’t hang around long, especially after I opened the backdoor. The squirrel jumped on the railing, scampered down and ran away.

• Growing , oh and by the way
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