Garlic and carrots

carrots from the deep raised bed

My deep raised bed has actually produced some pretty big carrots, in spite of my fussing about not being able to grow good carrots.  These are big, and tasty, too, especially when cooked.

Apparently in the mountains, I can start sowing carrots for fall in mid-July.  I think I'll do that!  Maybe they'll be extra sweet after a bit of fall frost.

A quick trip down to the Piedmont meant harvesting a block of potatoes and a lot of green tomatoes (I didn't like the idea of leaving them for the resident woodchuck).

Hopefully the tomatoes will ripen and be decently tasty, for cooking at least.

fresh garlic ready to use

I've 'processed' plenty of garlic; it's all cleaned and ready to use.

I'll probably use it up more rapidly this year, as curing conditions weren't so good for long-term storage.

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Local food and thanks to farmers

Fresh garlic needing to be cleaned

I've been cleaning a lot of garlic, potatoes, and onions lately.

Much is destined for fresh use in the next couple of weeks, rather than storage, but preparing vegetables for either requires work - removing dirt, extra foliage and roots, sorting out for drying, taking all of the clippings out to the compost pile, etc.

I'm quite certain I didn't appreciate the effort required in producing a bag of onions in the grocery store before I started growing them myself.

Maybe they bounce down a river of clean water in industrial agriculture, but someone still needs to trim their roots and stems and remove their tops (maybe this is a subject for a web search-- Hmm... check out this article about onion cleaning procedures on a small farm).

Fresh onions are totally delicious, of course, being juicy and succulent when cooked.  Quite a different vegetable than the cured ones for long-term storage.  Ditto with garlic.  And fresh potatoes are exceptionally tasty, too.  But, it's worth considering what it takes to have a bag of red potatoes at the grocery perfectly cleaned and ready to take home. 

This is about as big as my carrots ever get.

I'm not complaining, really, but am glad for the experiences which remind me how fresh food, grown locally (or far away), ultimately depends on the folks who grow, harvest, clean, and package fruits and vegetables.

And whether we buy at a tailgate market or at a supermarket, it's well worth thinking about who grew those vegetables and how, and what it took for you to be able to put them in your shopping basket.

Cleaning a couple of bushels of small onions has reminded me to be (more) grateful for folks who grow our food.

(Here were some previous thoughts along the same subject, but focusing on greens).

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Raised beds

The raised beds in front (of our house in the mountains) are looking good.

The last sugar snap peas are giving way to tomatoes and pole beans (greasy cut beans - an Southern Appalachian heirloom bean and yard-long beans - the Asian version (twining) of our southern cowpea -- but much better in my opinion.

I harvested bunches of beets, carrots, and onions from the raised beds this afternoon -- they'll be tasty roasted for tomorrow's dinner.  (And I'm thinking I need to head down to our Piedmont vegetable garden to harvest the rest of the garlic, maybe most of the onions, and check the potatoes.)

A new red potato popped up when I was checking some "leftover" plants that I'd stuck in a corner here in the mountains. What fun!

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Family Farm Tour (ASAP)

The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project's Family Farm Tour in Western North Carolina included a diverse mix of small local farms in the counties surrounding Asheville.  The farms range from CSA and market garden producers such as Flying Cloud Farm, small homestead farms like Elk Knob and Sunswept Farm Conservancy, and dairy goat operations (Round Mountain Creamery), which were among the farms that we visited over the weekend (there were 26 on the tour).

Growing fall vegetables for transplant at Flying Cloud Farm in Fairview, North Carolina

These folks are willing to invite us 'farm tourists' to see what they're doing and ask (sometimes) naive questions about raising animals, processing milk, and packing vegetables (but isn't that the point?)

Organic cherries at Elk Knob Farm

Flying Cloud Farm produce packing shed (note washing sinks and cooler)

Produce cart at Flying Cloud Farm

The tour helps interested consumers understand a bit better about local small farms, and encourages us to support them at local farmer's markets and at the farm.

We finished the tour with a fresh awareness of the day-to-day work that it takes to raise livestock and grow fruits and vegetables.

I have an appreciation of the produce side of things, but actually thinking about what's required in a small-scale dairy goat operation to keep sanitation standards required by USDA for commercial operations -- it's definitely more involved.

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Growing beets

I've been delighted to have robust-looking beets growing in my raised beds in the mountains.  I definitely haven't been successful growing beets before. 

They need neutral soil, a deep bed for the roots to develop, and plenty of moisture, not always easy to provide in the acidic soils of the Piedmont, where I've been growing most of our vegetables.

So, I'm happy to have harvested a few 'first' beets, two 'regular' and one golden.

They were delicious!

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Growing vegetables in containers

I like to think the soil in my garden beds is excellent (hmm), but often lettuce, greens, and mustards grown in flats or containers filled with planting mix and organic fertilizer do far better than when directly sown.

I'm quite sure it's because of extra nutrients and 'fluffier' soil; it does question the idea that healthy soil webs and organic-rich soil is the only way to grow vegetables, at least in my mind.  There's a reason that vegetables grown hydroponically flourish in solutions of water-soluble major- and micro-nutrients.  But remember my challenges in the fertilizer department, too!

Even' star mustards

So, I wasn't surprised to have a lovely harvest of mustards from this small container recently.  Quite tasty!

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Raised beds for vegetables

We'll be building new beds this weekend on some unused driveway space up in the mountains.

I know I'll be a happier gardener to be tending more vegetables and herbs, away from my main spaces, which will benefit from a break, especially the main vegetable garden, which needs to be fallow, to reduce root-knot nematodes.

But there are gardening activities here to be done, too. The major task is freeing many mulched beds from their cloak of (weedy) winter annuals. Uh, and my gardening companion has yet to get the lawn mower out; I'm not a lawn person, but what's out there is getting pretty sizeable. He's had other distractions, certainly, but hopefully he'll crank up the riding mower soon.

I'm afraid I've only mowed a lawn a couple of times in my gardening life, and that with a push gasoline-powered mower back in Statesboro, GA in our first house and garden, in the last summer there, after my gardening companion (AKA my husband Tim) had already relocated to Clemson, SC.

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Vegetable gardening successes and failures

Every year is different. Some vegetables (and varieties) do well some years, and others are challenged.

I've had lots of tomatoes this year, thanks to abundant spring rains, but largely of a few varieties. Thank goodness for sturdy hybrids that happily produce faced with the usual tomato diseases.

My second round of plantings (from tip cuttings) are doing well, too, along with heirloom tomato plants growing in pots (in nice disease-free soil, of course). The second round of squash is flourishing, too, although between squash vine borers and woodchuck herbivory, the early plantings are just about gone.

I've left the winter squash and tromboncino squash growing in the satellite garden (maybe they'll outgrow the woodchucks?). The tomatoes look good, maybe the eggplants will produce some non-bitter fruits (some of them have been truly nasty), and maybe the yard-long beans will shake off the aphids, which have been a major garden pest this year.

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Growing your own vegetables

Happily, what I do at work and my home gardening and nature observation efforts overlap quite a bit.

Last Saturday's event at the Garden (Garden Fest) promoting growing your own vegetables and building community was a wonderful gathering centered on one of my favorite gardening passions.

All of the folks that we brought together as volunteer staff helped create a wonderful synergy of enthusiasm, combined with an unexpectedly large turnout.

Here's a link to my post on our unofficial 'What's Happening at the Garden' blog.

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Starting a vegetable garden

Ed, from Slow Cook, asked bloggers to post about starting a vegetable garden recently, in a post forwarded to me by a gardening friend (CEN).

This is a topic I'm totally keen on. At the Garden where I work, we're having an event next weekend to promote vegetable gardening, with the tagline of 'Building Community, Growing Vegetables.' Those of us who enjoy growing vegetables know the joy of harvesting and eating from the garden, whether it's a couple of tomato plants or a series of raised beds or an expansive 'kitchen garden' -- and we're keen on promoting it to others.

The first season in my 'main' vegetable garden

My first vegetable garden as an 'adult' was modest. We'd just put in a fence (for our old boy, our dog Chessie), who wasn't prone to roam, anyway, but we sprung for picket fence in the most visible areas.

I planted snow peas -- and this was just the beginning.

My previous forays involved trying to plant onions in the caliche soil of the Texas Hill Country as a teenager, taking on WAY too much space as a young researcher in a field station community garden (and being overwhelmed by weeds), and planting apple, peach, and nectarine trees in a shady Southeast Georgia backyard (I harvested some tasty Golden Delicious apples in the last summer we spent there).

But, our soil here is clayey, but our older house has many years' worth of thatch-rich soil below the scruffy lawn, so it's not too bad, with continuous amending.

I started small and used Square-Foot gardening and intensive gardening methods as my inspiration. Some years later, I'm talking about vegetable gardening to groups.

So, what's my advice about starting a vegetable garden?

First: Start small.

Second: Make it close to the house.

Third: Place your beds close to a water source (within reasonable hose length).

Fourth: Grow what you (and your family) like to eat (and don't plant too much).

Fifth: Garden through the year (as much as you can). Spring, summer, fall (and winter) work for us in the SE US.

Sixth: Remember vegetables are pampered annuals (nutrient and water hogs) and need both rich soil with added (preferably) organic fertilizer and water to be optimally productive.

Seventh: Harvest frequently (daily in prime season for beans, tomatoes, etc.).

Eighth: Keep it fun!

Here are a few kitchen gardening tips from a short video clip (where I somehow was the featured weekly blogger on a local TV station recently).

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Gardening and cooking

Rainbow carrots from my garden

I was struck by a comment CEN made in response to a recent post: Growing Vegetables.

Among other interesting points, she wrote:
'It's hard to work up much of an interest in vegetable gardening if people don't cook or enjoy a variety of foods or have a curiosity about them-- economic reasons or no. If all people know is to microwave packaged stuff, what's the point of growing vegetables?'

Hmm, of course, she's right. But how could you resist these rainbow carrots?

Why spend any time growing vegetables unless you enjoy eating them, first and foremost?

Sharing and preserving the harvest, as well as the pleasure in gardening itself -- those things are nice, but vegetables and fruits almost nudge you towards harvesting them, no matter how much you might be enjoying their appearance.

Thomas Jefferson reportedly took great pleasure in his vegetable garden from an eater's perspective, focusing on vegetables as the primary part of his diet and waiting for the early peas, growing sesame for oil for his salads, planting fruit trees, etc. (My Esopus Spitzenburg apple sapling from Monticello's Center for Historic Plants is now planted in a sunny spot in the NC mountains, BTW).

A basic vegetable gardening 'rule' is: grow what you and your family like to eat.

I was a cook before I was a gardener, although I have fond childhood memories of picking wild blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and salmon berries. As a grad student in California, the abundance and diversity of produce available in local produce markets (eg. the Monterey Market) was eye-opening -- fresh mushrooms were a revelation to me at the time (late 70's, early 80's). Another revelation were the wonderful Hunan and Szechuan dishes produced by local restaurants.

My parents were neither cooks or gardeners, although they certainly were interested in fitness and health.

But I remember buying a book in those graduate school years about 'Growing Vegetables the Chinese Way' which showed beautiful raised beds of attractive well-maintained vegetables, similar to the one we saw many years later near Hoi An, Vietnam. This gardener was pleased to show us the results of his effort.


And I also bought a book by Rosalind Creasey, called 'Cooking from the Garden' -- a fabulous book describing different sorts of food gardens and the kind of vegetables that were grown in each. I still have both books. Creasey's books were instrumental in launching an edible gardening trend (micro as it may have been). And there are many more since then.

I read a recent piece in Eating Well by Ellen Ecker Ogden about how she founded Cook's Garden Seeds some years ago (which she sold recently to Ball Seed Company), and how she started providing recipes to encourage customers to try something new.

And a comment by a keen vegetable gardener who isn't the primary cook in his family has got me thinking about this, too. He said he'd like to learn to be a better cook so he could use more of what he grew.

There's a total connection between what I cook for dinner and what's in the garden in the primary growing season. Fresh brussel sprouts were the vegetable for today (thanks to Kathy and the walled veggie garden next to the visitor center). Fabulous.

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Growing vegetables

I had an interesting conversation today with a very experienced vegetable gardener. She grew up in a rural community in NC where seeds were saved and shared, vegetable gardening was a regular activity, and putting up vegetables was part of summer life. Her journeys have taken her to European cities (where she saw lots of vegetable gardening first-hand), to Detroit, where she helped organize a community garden, and now to Clemson as part of the Sustainable Ag Initiative and the Student Organic Farm. We share a love of vegetable gardening, clearly.

She was surprised to hear that SC Master Gardeners are now becoming enthusiastic about the idea of growing vegetables (when I started at the Garden 15 years ago, there were maybe 5 MG's in our local group of 60+ that I knew who grew vegetables). She thought that that was the point of the MG program (I wish!)

I've done several programs over the last year to different MG organizations in SC with a 'Creative Vegetable Gardening' theme. It's been definitely a 'new' interest. But I'm thinking this is only the beginning. I sent off a revised piece about vegetable gardening today for the SC Nursery and Landscape Association's publication -- the editor replied it was a 'hot topic'-- hooray!

I'm planning to be more focused on producing and storing vegetables for later use (I'm totally inspired by fellow gardening bloggers like Rob and Kathy), rather than just current consumption. It's sounding like fun at the moment, as well as tasty and nutritious.

Organizing the programmatic part of our Garden Fest in April this year, for the first time, I'm feeling a strong sense of community and interest in vegetable gardening, which is most welcome.

I didn't grow up in a family of gardeners, by any means, being a city kid, but my maternal grandmother was an excellent and keen gardener (by early necessity), and I was entranced by her berry patches, stores of home-canned beans and tomatoes, and preserves. And one set of my paternal grandparents were farmers, too, and a visit to their farm was a wonderful experience when I was maybe 8 years old.

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