Sprout

adam February 10th, 2010

This week I placed a large seed order from Johnny’s. On their Web site I found a company-made video explaining soil-block makers. Guess what soil-block makers do? They make soil blocks, which are a medium to start seeds in. Growers usually start seeds in plastic cell flats; soil blocks eliminate them from the process. Since eliminating plastic from gardening is highly desirable to me, I added a soil-block maker to my seed order. I had to have it.

The Medium 4 Soil Blocker.

Every seedling I plant in my garden has been started by either me or a local farmer. I’m very lucky to have a friend who allows me to start my seeds in his greenhouse. He has been very generous over the years, giving me old flats to use, watering my seedlings when he waters his seedlings, even providing me with his growing mix. (If you’re a new gardener and want a greater shot at success, latch onto a kind person who knows what he’s doing.) Each year I garden I try to become more independent, though, and I hope this soil block maker will be a step in that direction.

Soil-block makers come in a variety of sizes, for home and commercial growers. Basically they act as a mold that will create a freestanding square of soil, each with a dimple on top to plant the seed. A seedling growing in a soil block never becomes root bound, because once the roots have no more space to grow in, they stop growing instead of becoming twisted and tangled (i.e. root bound), which can stunt growth. Watch the video below to see how you can transfer seedlings from smaller soil blocks to larger ones as they await their final destination in the ground.

For $30 I bought the “medium 4 soil blocker,” which makes four 2-inch square blocks. I’m also interested in buying the large soil blocker that makes one 4-inch block, but it inexplicably costs $119. I’m going to do some Googling to try and find a cheaper alternative.

I’ve never seen anyone use these before but in theory they’re very appealing. The system is better for the plants and eliminates the use of the ubiquitous cell flat. This season will be a soil-block test.

More on soil blocks in the video below, which - bonus! - also features Martha discussing cow manure.

Also check out: www.pottingblocks.com

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adam January 23rd, 2010

I wanted to share a few more pizza-making tips and my dough recipe. I recently received a pizza stone and it has improved my pizza’s quality dramatically. The bottom is crispier and the top full of air bubbles, like naan. (In fact, I used some leftover dough to make something like naan, baked simply with garlic and olive oil brushed on top.)

This is the stone I bought. I didn’t really do research but I think it has done a terrific job. The superb quality of the pizza has made me interested in baking my own bread. Any good bread baking books I should know about?

I don’t have a peel but it will be my next purchase. I’ve improvised a way to slide the dough in and out of the oven, but it’s not a great method and I want the right tool for the job.

This was the first or second pie I made on my pizza stone - homemade sauce and pesto, and I even grew these onions (cipollinis). I made this for myself one night, and when I took it out of the oven, I said to no one in particular, “This is beautiful.”

Here is my dough recipe, cobbled together from a few different sources:

1 package active dry yeast
1 1/3 cup warm water (about 110 degrees F)
-combine in food processor and let dissolve (about 5 minutes)
Add:
3 to 3 1/4 cup unbleached white flour (start with 3 and add more as needed)
1 1/2 cup rye flour
2 tablespoons coarse kosher or sea salt
-switch food processor on, adding 2 tablespoons olive oil through the feed tube
-process until mixture forms a ball and is slightly sticky to touch (you should be able to work this dough without it being excessively sticky)
-turn dough onto a floured surface and kneed for about a minute to form a smooth round ball

Your best bet is to oil a bowl to put the dough in, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. In a pinch the dough can rise in a warm place for a couple hours and be ready to use. The longer the dough rises, the better it tastes, I’ve found. Sometimes I’ve kept the dough in the fridge for up to a week without a problem. No book I’ve ever read recommends this, so I might be poisoning myself. Don’t know.

This recipe makes about four 8-inch pizzas, enough for 4-6 people depending on how hungry they are. I eat almost an entire pie myself, not necessarily because I’m so hungry but because it’s so good.

To cook the pizza, take the dough from the fridge and divide into four sections. Kneed each section into a smooth ball or disc. Let it sit on a floured surface under a bowl for at least 10 minutes before you start stretching it.

You will know how to stretch the dough. It’s part of the collective unconscious, but in case you have trouble, this is what I do. I flatten the dough on the floured surface. Then I pick it up and, holding the top edge with two hands, turn the disc like a wheel, letting gravity stretch the dough. Or instead (or in combination) I stretch the disc with my fists, “punching” the dough from the center out. Sometimes I toss it in the air for kicks.

Turn your oven on as high as it can go and make sure it is hot as heck before you put the dough in. I usually bake the dough two or three minutes before taking it out and applying my ingredients. I put the cheese under the sauce so it doesn’t burn as easily. The pie should be done in less than ten minutes, but you’ll see the crust beginning to brown and know when to take it out.

This is what my experience has taught me so if you have better ideas or other tips, please share.

This pie was made without sauce. I brushed olive oil and chopped garlic on the top, added some sauted mushrooms and a smoked cow’s milk cheese. Exquisite.

Note: I just decided to make pizza one day. I certainly don’t have any special skills and the pizza that comes out of my oven is very good. I recommend trying it. I think it is incomparably better (and much cheaper) than almost any pizza you will buy, especially if you use a pizza stone. Happy cooking!

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adam January 4th, 2010

Homemade gnocchi, from homegrown potatoes.

It’s the new year, and I’m running out of food.

A few onions, a jar of dry beans, some beets. Frozen tomato sauce. Frozen peas and corn and pesto. That’s it. That’s all that’s left from my garden. But I’m making good use of it.

The long, cold nights of winter afford more time in the kitchen but the season offers next to no fresh food. The paradox kills me, and what’s worse — the township mowed the community garden plots last month, which is to say they mowed my leeks and kale and Brussels sprouts. Why? Because the gardening season was “over,” according to them.

That really killed me.

I can’t change this aspect of how the township runs the community gardens, but I can be mindful of what will keep throughout the winter when choosing what to grow next year. More potatoes and beans, winter squash, storage onions, parsnips, carrots. At home I’ve planted garlic, too, for next spring. The trick is learning how to store them, which I never feel I have a good grasp on. The potatoes are in the garage, everything else is in the fridge or freezer. I also have some dehydrated veggies, which I’ll pull out and begin experimenting with soon.

From the vegetables I have on hand, though, I’ve been able to make some wonderful food. Gnocchi, for instance. Gnocchi is easy to make and a terrific winter dinner. Trust me. Get some good Russets and make gnocchi this weekend for you and your sweetheart. Perfection. You can boil these potato dumplings like pasta, dress them in sauce and eat, but what I’ve recently done is boil them and then bake them in a bit of butter and Parmesan. Better than perfection.

When I chose to grow Russets this past season, the choice felt more than a little boring, but they are a great potato for simply baking and also for making gnocchi. If you do make gnocchi, use a baking potato — other potatoes don’t work as well (something to do with the starch content).

Over the past couple months I’ve also been modifying my pizza dough recipe. I started making pizza this summer, and I’ve come to a conclusion: buying pizza all the time is insane. It’s not hard to make and it’s much better and much cheaper than anything you’ll buy in the average pizzeria. It only requires a bit of forethought — dough made the night before and allowed to rise overnight tastes the best, I’ve found.

I received a pizza stone for Christmas but haven’t used it yet. Even without it, my pies have been very good, and getting better every time. I recently started incorporating rye flour into the dough, giving it extra bite and flavor. Homemade pizza is a terrific vehicle for the tomato sauce and pesto I stockpiled over the summer. Making a pizza entirely from scratch is an awesome thing to do. Try it. It’s fun. Pizza party.

Even with my homegrown food supply dwindling, I still manage to represent the garden in many winter meals. Winter, it can be said, offers the chance to clean the freezer and the pantry — to eat things that might otherwise go to waste. Now that the holiday season has come and gone, and the memory of Halloween’s already fading, I finally decided it was time for me to compost the one pumpkin I managed to grow this year. Before I tossed it, I harvested the seeds and roasted them in the oven. The pumpkin had become a mere ornament, sitting on my kitchen table for months. But it gave me one more good snack to eat between growing seasons.

Pepitas, from a Kakai pumpkin.

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adam November 16th, 2009

America is the land of fat cats and hungry mice.

The U.S. Agriculture Department reported today “that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, ‘had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.’ That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year,” according to nytimes.com.

These numbers are difficult to comprehend.  Almost 15 of every 100 households has trouble feeding their families? In America? In the richest country on the planet? This is almost beyond belief.

I’m wondering how many people at the Lawrence Community Gardens use their plots to truly supplement their diet. I certainly do. I’m not suggesting I could live off it, but I grow a tremendous amount of food that I eat daily for at least half the year.

The goal of Isles’ Community Gardening and Nutrition Education initiative is for low-income families to be able to gain greater food security, stretch their food budgets and obtain fresh and nutritious produce.

On their Web site Isles lists three specific benefits of the Community Gardening and Nutrition Education initiative.

• Providing access to fresh vegetables and improving nutrition. Isles’ community gardens provide access to fruits and vegetables that are low calorie and nutrient rich.
• Stretching food budgets. Studies report that every $1 invested in a community garden plot yields approximately $6 worth of vegetables. In a 2006 survey, Isles’ community gardeners reported an average savings of about $200 dollars per year, per gardener.
• Strengthening community fabric. Isles’ gardeners report that sharing food with friends, families and neighbors is one of the important reasons that they grow produce.

I’m wondering how the Lawrence Community Gardens could try and make a difference. I wonder how much space we would need to grow enough food to donate to an organization like Farmers Against Hunger or the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. I would love to plant all the unused plots and donate the food. If we organized ourselves well I bet we could grow a ton of food at minimal cost and give it to those who need it.

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adam October 16th, 2009

Next year I want to pay more attention to my garden’s design. I want to create a space that is not only productive but beautiful in and of itself. I’ve been reading Designing the New Kitchen Garden by Jennifer R. Bartley, and though our community gardens are located a distance from our kitchen, there’s a lot to learn from this book.

Here are some of my notes:

It is only natural to begin our study of potager gardens (aka kitchen gardens) in France, where vegetable gardening is an art form and the garden has always been intimately connected to the cuisine.

The garden is meant to be enjoyed in many ways…It is to be enjoyed internally, like any other ornamental garden, surrounding the visitor with the ambiance created from the walls and the plants. It is also to be enjoyed on a practical level, for the harvest and taste of the vegetables. Finally, the garden is to be enjoyed externally, as one would view a beautiful painting - by standing apart and looking at it.

A potager garden should be as diverse as possible. Rare varieties should be included to preserve the heritage of seed before it is lost.

Roses remind us that the utilitarian garden should also be enjoyed for its beauty and that the kitchen gardens can be places of meditation and solace as well as sources of food.

The potager garden should be as elegant as the specialty food that’s grown there.

Our gardens are grand experiments in climate, soil, pest control and combinations of color, height and texture. The workshop model suggests a process of change and intervention. The garden is never static…Our gardens, like the early monastery gardens, are experimental laboratories. Mistakes will be made and deemed acceptable because we are one lesson closer to our ideal.

Here’s a link to the Brookly Botanic Garden’s page on potagers:http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/kitchen/handbooks/kitchen/jones.html

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adam October 13th, 2009

I want to write a longer post about the heirloom beans I grew this season, but for now I just want to say that I ate them for the first time yesterday. Speckled cranberry. A low yield but so beautiful and tasty. I ate them with mushrooms and garlic. Total improvisation that hit the mark. Can’t imagine my future gardens without them. I see an opportunity for some New Jersey farmer to corner the market and become the Rancho Gordo of the Garden State.

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adam October 8th, 2009

60 Minutes is broadcasting a report by Scott Pelley on African wildebeest migration. He’s narrating how wildebeest, at a certain point in their migration, have to cross the Mara River full of 15-foot crocodiles. As the herd begins to cross, a croc catches the head of a wildebeest between its jaws. Soon three, four, five other crocs know what’s up. They latch on. They kill it by drowning it. I thought crocodiles would’ve killed a wildebeest by biting it, but they drown it. Then they eat him.

What a miserable world we live in. Sometimes I don’t want to even be a part of it. I’m going to become a vegetarian and remove myself from this circle, elevate myself. Aren’t human beings above nature? Part of it, yes, but aren’t we civilized? I’m going to only eat from my garden, and that will be that. I’ll live by eating lettuces and beans and vegetables from the garden. No fear, no death. Just rows of plants. Harmless plants for a harmless guy.

I turn off the TV and open the book I’m reading, Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web. Fascinating stuff. Fungi and bacteria are at the bottom of the soil food web, and plants absorb their wastes as nutrients. So much activity in the zone around a plant’s roots, called the rhizosphere. But nothing like the horribleness of wildebeest-eating crocodiles.

But what’s this? Fungi are even better killers than crocodiles? The fungus Arthrobotry dactyloides releases a chemical to attract nematodes, roundworms smaller than a human hair that live in the soil. A looped strand on the fungus, consisting of three cells, swells three-fold when touched, trapping and killing the worm in one-tenth of a second. The strand then pierces the nematode’s body and begins extracting nutrients. Those nutrients, after a series of predators eating prey, will eventually become mineralized, making them available to plants, making them available to me when I eat the plant.

A food web is a food web, no matter the scale. For better or worse, this is the inescapable system we’re a part of.

Fungus trapping a nematode.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

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adam October 2nd, 2009

This past Sunday afternoon I was sitting in a booth at Parc restaurant in Rittenhouse Square eating mushroom soup.

Midway through the waitress approached our table - I was with friends - and she said to me, “How is it?”

I looked up and told her, “I’ve loved every bite.”

I was telling the truth. The soup had such a rich flavor, I wanted to make each spoonful last as long as possible. I ate it slowly, passing it between friends to share the experience.

I had also ordered two poached eggs on top of polenta, roasted red peppers and broccoli raab. The dish was soft, comforting and lovingly prepared. We had been celebrating a friend’s wedding all weekend and were searching for a good meal to finish the experience. We found it at Parc, a big French bistro with fantastic outdoor seating. Though the food cost more than I wanted to spend, I was happy to pay the bill when it arrived because it was worth the price. It was a good value. The food was superb.

Most restaurants survive, and many even thrive, by offering only the value of convenience - that’s it. We should expect more from them. I hate paying for a meal I believe I could cook better than the restaurant did.

Not that I think I’m an exceptional cook. I’m a competent cook, but I’d like to master a couple dishes so that they’re extraordinary. I want to be able to make a mushroom soup that people love every bite of. I began thinking this way this summer, when I read Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France. I admired her devotion to excellence, to doing something as well as she could.

It made me think of my own cooking, and gardening as well, since gardening, cooking and eating are all intertwined in my mind. I want my garden to be exceptional, a productive and practical space, of course, but also something that affects the imagination.

I’m not there yet, but I’m enjoying my garden so much right now. It’s a simpler, less productive garden than during the summer. Abundance kills value, and summer is the season of abundance. What a treat to harvest a head of lettuce for dinner, to bake one of my potatoes, to deal with only one pest problem. Cabbageworms have attacked my broccoli and somehow found their way underneath the row cover to the Brussels sprouts. I’ve been handpicking them, though their green skin is a terrific camouflage.

But everything is manageable and there’s so much to look forward to: spinach, chard, kale, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, beets, arugula. Plus the beans, onions and potatoes I’ve stored away. I’ve also planted a cover crop of rye and vetch on every square inch of the garden that’s not growing food. It’s October 2nd and the garden is greener than ever. Too bad so many gardens here are abandoned now - this is a time of year when your own food becomes limited but much more valuable.

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adam September 30th, 2009

Three! Three pumpkins. I’ve picked three pumpkins from my pumpkin patch. And there won’t be anymore. Pretty pathetic. I had planted two varieties - a traditional Jack-’o-lantern and one that is supposed to have delicious seeds. Not one Jack-’o-lantern grew. I harvested three of the kakai variety, which are listed as producing two or three fruits per plant. I was growing nine plants. I haven’t tried roasting those seeds yet, but at one pumpkin per three plants, they are going to be the most valuable seeds in the history of gardening.

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adam September 23rd, 2009

This week a judge moved to ban farmers from growing a popular genetically modified sugar beet because its environmental impact has not been studied enough.

From The New York Times story:

The beets contain a bacterial gene licensed by Monsanto that renders them impervious to glyphosate, an herbicide that Monsanto sells as Roundup. That allows the herbicide to kill weeds without harming the crop.

For Monsanto, that’s an effective moneymaking strategy. Farmers must depend on them twice, for the poison and the medicine. Who’s benefiting from this? Farmers have embraced the technology. They’re certainly growing a lot of beets - about 1.1 million acres that provide half the nation’s sugar, according to The New York Times. But at what expense? They’re unable to do their job without corporate help. It’s actually illegal for farmers to save seed from these beets because Monsanto owns the gene inside of it.

Genetically engineered crops are a controversial issue - the ultimate question, for me, hinges on farmers being able to produce enough food for the world’s growing population, and I don’t know the answer. Right now I only want to point out what an enormous and dangerous complication these solutions are to the problem of weeds. The benefactors are rarely farmers or eaters but a corporation like Monsanto. For them, much like the health care industry, treating a problem is more profitable than preventing it.

This week the New Yorker published a poem by Wendell Berry, in which he says that it is wrong to falsify the land “By sciences of greed.”

Harvard has taken a cue from Berry and the writers and ecologists he mentions in the poem’s preface, Wes Jackson, Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe. Harvard recently expanded its one-acre organic test plot to 25 acres, The New York Times reports. The results have been so positive they want to expand to 80 acres within the next two years. This “new” way of doing things make so much sense, not only for the improved ecology, but for saving money and using resources efficiently. Harvard’s efforts have reduced irrigation use by 30 percent, saving two million gallons of water a year. They’ve saved $35,000 a year in fees by saving materials for compost instead of paying for them to be hauled away. And because they don’t have to pay for compost or fertilizers they’ve saved $10,000 on top of that.

I like that organic practices empower people. It requires skills and knowledge and work, but becoming a successful grower doesn’t depend on some product or intellectual property.

Eric T. Fleisher, who was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard when he teamed up with the school’s staff for the test plot, said, “This is not a product-based program, it’s knowledge-based.”

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