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Grow Your Own
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One of the best ways to expand our locally-grown diets is to "grow our own," and the popularity of pea patches, community gardens and home-grown vegetables is on the rise. Learn about what's working -- and not working -- in gardens around our area, and share your tips and thoughts by posting comments or contributing an article at
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What is enough? A neglected garden's lessons |
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Written by Cathy Nickum
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Tuesday, 25 November 2008 10:22 |
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 In her book, In the French Kitchen Garden, Georgeanne Brennan describes the time-honored notion of the French potager, or small family vegetable plot, which provides "something for the pot" (thus potager) on a daily basis, year-round. The intention of this small kitchen garden, traditionally incorporated into the already-crowded front or back yard of the average French home, is to produce a steady flow of fresh vegetables which, whether plentiful or sparse, is always enough for the soup pot.
Compared to our American method of grand-scale agriculture, the French potager seems a humble endeavor, going straight to the heart of the question, "What is enough?" Is it possible for us, as Americans accustomed to choosing from hundreds of items in grocery store produce departments, to consider eating from small potagers? Wouldn't we feel deprived? What if there wasn't "enough" in the garden? For me, the very idea of browsing a small garden instead of vast stretches of produce bins can bring up all sorts of "enough"-related anxieties. Can I really create an appetizing meal from a few plants? What about all those crazy variables, like weather and pests? I'd always thought of my home-grown veggies as more treats than staples. Even as a relatively experienced gardener, I never imagined that my own vegetables could be a significant part of my diet. |
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Above ground potato storage for the Northwest |
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Written by Kathy Morse
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Sunday, 23 November 2008 12:46 |
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We are fortunate here in the Northwest that it doesn’t get too cold in the winter so storing home grown produce in a cold garage/basement is a wonderful option. One method I developed for storing my potatoes works very well.
- Buy a traditional plastic garbage bin. It works better if it has wheels as it can get heavy depending on how many potatoes you store.
- Using a drill, put small holes all around the bin at several levels for air circulation.
- Put about 4-6 inches of sand in the bottom of the bin and then lay a piece of grating or a frame made of wood with some hardware cloth over the sand. This keeps the potatoes out of contact with the sand.
- When getting ready to store your potatoes, wet the sand to provide humidity to the potatoes throughout the winter.
- Put your potatoes in either a mesh or paper bag, label them with the variety and set them in the bin and put the lid on tight to make sure you do not have a rodent problem.
I have been using this method of a number of years with no problem with rot. Of course, you want to make sure the potatoes are firm and do not have any bad spots when you store them. Do not wash them but do brush most of the dirt off them before storing. Around March/April you will noticeany you have left are starting to sprout as the weather warms. I always save some seed potatoes that I want to grow the following year in a separate bag so that I don’t eat them by mistake. |
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Herb Notes from Barb: Herbs you won't find in the Supermarket |
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Written by Barbara Fay
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Wednesday, 13 August 2008 17:04 |
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When I first moved to Fairbanks, way back in 1967 about the only fresh herb that as (sometimes) available in the supermarket was parsley and occasionally in the spring, a clump of chives. As the years passed and the discovery that fresh herbs make wonderful additions to culinary endeavors, more and more fresh herbs were added to the parsley in the produce section, though the quality still left much to be desired. Nowadays there is a wide array and most common herbs are readily available. With modern methods of packaging and shipping, their quality, for the most part, is very good.
However, there are many culinary herbs that you cannot buy in the supermarket, either because they are not well known and would not sell well, or because they do not ship well. So unless you grow them yourself or can beg them from a friend who grows them, you will never know; the joy and heady aroma that comes up from a hot broiled steak or roast enthroned on a bed of lovage leaves; the beauty and flavor of cold cucumber soup garnished with borage or nasturtium blossoms; the enticing flavor of lemon thyme or lemon balm mixed in with potatoes, and vegetables or sprinkled over broiled fish. You will miss the fun and flavor of sipping tomato juice or Bloody Marys through lovage straws or lemonade through sweet cicely straws made from the hollow stems. You will never experience the delightful aroma of sweet cicely and sweet woodruff or the sweet candy like flavor of anise hyssop blossoms.
Following is a list of some of these less common herbs that you probably will not find in the supermarket and a few suggestions of how you might use them.
Anise Hyssop’s (Agastache foeniculum) purple flowers have a sweet licorice flavor, the leaves a more muted flavor. The florets, eaten “as is” taste like licorice candy, the flowers make a beautiful purple garnish. Fresh flowers and leaves can be used as an herb tea or for flavoring herb teas. In asian dishes they can act as an intriguing substitute for star anise. They can be chopped and added to cakes, muffins or cookies or steeped in the liquid used to make custards, puddings and pie fillings.
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First Trashcan Potato Harvest Update |
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Written by Julie
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Tuesday, 29 July 2008 22:19 |
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Dedicated Sound Food readers may remember my earlier post about trashcan potato gardening. I am proud to announce that last weekend, my first three potatoes were successfully harvested from their snug little beds in my compost-filled ex-trash can. My 2-year-old son helped me harvest them. Three white, smallish, fairly regularly shaped potatoes emerged,after some prodding, and were met with considerable celebration.
(I had noticed one of my potato plants had blossomed a few weeks ago, but I wasn't entirely sure whether or not that meant I could dig around and look for some evidence that all my watering hadn't been in vain. I decided that it was time to check on the little spuds, and I was triply rewarded for my investigation.)
Each person in my house got to eat one potato, which was boiled and sprinkled with a bit of sea salt, and eaten warm. They were deemed delicious (and went along well with my raw kale salad...see more on this in the recipe blog section). I'll try to post photos of our first potato harvest in the coming days. Right now, I'm not anticipating a harvest large enough to share with our Sound Food readers, but my fingers are crossed.
Now, can anyone tell me if I can keep rooting around and digging these up, or if it will interfere with their growth?
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Harmony Acres Farm puts worms to work |
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Written by Sallie Maron
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Wednesday, 21 May 2008 01:56 |
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Mary Harmon is trying something new this year at Harmony Acres Farm. She’s adding worm castings to enrich her garden soil and feed her vegetables. A long-time organic gardener, Mary was searching for a source for bulk compost when she discovered Kitsap E-Z Earth last year.
This innovative business enterprise is a program of the non-profit Peninsula Services, which is dedicated to finding meaningful employment for people with disabilities. At the Kitsap County facility, employees run a worm growing operation. They care for thousands of red worms ( Eisenia fetida) that eat their way through tons of garbage and recycled shredded paper. The result of all this natural activity is worm castings, a rich organic fertilizer that is called vermicompost. |
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