Q Is it difficult to start vegetable transplants from seed? What do I need?

A Growing your own vegetable transplants is relatively easy. You’ll need seed-starting mix, pots, and labels, along with the following:

Workspace essentials. You’ll need an indoor area where it’s okay for things to get a bit dirty and possibly wet. For starters, look for a cool but heated space where it doesn’t matter that there’s a bit of soil on the floor. You’ll need an old table or unused countertop for filling containers with soil and for growing seedlings. If you have a table that doesn’t have a waterproof top, cover it with a sheet of plastic or a tarp to avoid damaging it.

Good light. You don’t need to have a greenhouse to grow great transplants, but you do need a source of bright light. Without it, you will never be able to raise healthy, stocky transplants.

Heat for seeds and seedlings. You need to be able to regulate the temperature in your seed-starting area, but seedlings are happiest in fairly cool conditions. For cold-tolerant crops like cabbage and broccoli, temperatures between 50-60°F/10-15.5°C are fine. Keep seedlings of heat-loving plants between 65-75°F/18.3-23.8°C. Temperatures can be 10 degrees cooler at night.

Reprinted from The Veggie Gardener's Answer Book
Copyright 2008 by Barbara W. Ellis, with permission from Storey Publishing.
Creative Commons photo credit: Dulcie

Have you ever given yourself a standing ovation? By this, I don't mean quietly clapping for yourself somewhere off in a dark corner.  I mean getting up out of your seat, stretching a bit (to avoid injury) and applauding with the same passion and gusto as the Italians did in 2006 when their team won the World Cup. 

Admittedly, it's not the most modest thing to do and if other people happen to be in the room it could seem a bit odd (hint: you could always say that you were applauding them).  But we need to celebrate ourselves and our accomplishments every once in a while and, with 2009 coming to end, now is one of those times. 

You might be saying to yourself "Ok, I'm game, but what did I do to deserve this recognition?"  I suspect you did many good deeds, more things than you can probably recall, but the one thing I know you did is to take part in something larger than yourself: the growing home-grown movement.  For some of you, your deed was planting and tending your own garden which is already a heroic act in our busy, fast-food times.  For others, it was helping someone else plant his or her first garden, whether a neighbor, a school, or some other group in need.  If you managed to do a bit of both, you're a true star and deserve not only a standing ovation, but bouquets of home-grown flowers strewn at your feet. 

And for many of you, more than ever before, one of your good gardening deeds was to be involved in some way in KGI's work this past year.  It might not have seemed like much at the time: a $10 donation here, signing a petition there, forwarding a link to a friend, posting something on your blog or social network profile, helping someone solve a gardening problem online.  But when enough people get together to do the same small things, those seemingly inconsequential acts can add up to become powerful, world-changing forces.

As you'll see from the timetable of the year's highlights below (including a few personal highlights from my work and my garden), it was quite a year for kitchen gardens and KGI.  I want to thank you for being part of our work this past year and making these accomplishments possible. 

I'm really excited about the 2010 gardening year and want to invite you to play a more active role in KGI this coming year.  I'll be back in touch in the New Year with some new ideas about how you might get involved.

In the meanwhile, I wish you much holiday cheer, including the hearty one you give yourself!

Roger Doiron

KGI founding director

PS: If you're looking to make a tax-deductible donation before the end of 2009, we would greatly appreciate your support.  We're working hard to secure our operating budget for next year and every bit helps. You can donate securely online here or via check here.  If, by chance, you are interested making some other type of gift to KGI (securities, bequest, frequent flyer miles, etc.), please let me know. Many thanks.

January	KGI begins New Year with 12,000 people from over 100 countries in its network.
	KGI’s Eat the View White House garden campaign featured in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
	Eat the View wins Grand Prize in the United Nation’s Foundation’s “On Day One” contest as the most popular proposal for the new president and first family, beating out over 4000 other entries. With the help of the UN Foundation, thousands of e-mails are sent to the White House in support of the idea. KGI and the UN Foundation also partner in their media outreach in support of the idea.
	Belgian endives, forced from roots!
February	White House garden petition posted on Facebook and other places attracts over 100,000 signatures. KGI establishes contact with senior staffers in the White House to advocate for the idea.
March	KGI publishes results of “How Much is a Home Garden Worth?” article and statistics, attracting significant interest in the printed press and blogosphere.
	First Lady Michelle Obama breaks ground on the First Garden. The garden and KGI’s role in it attract massive international press coverage in outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, BBC, and Boston Globe.
April	Eat the View campaign recognized at “Heart of Green” awards in New York City.
May	Spring salads, asparagus, and wild-picked fiddleheads!
June	KGI begins new mini-campaign to rebrand July 4th as “Food Independence Day,” a national celebration of local foods and food self-reliance.
	Queen Elizabeth II announces that she, too, will "eat the view" and instructs her gardeners to replant an allotment garden at Buckingham Palace.
	Strawberries!
July	Food Independence Day receives coverage in the Washington Post, Associated Press and many other media outlets and secures the participation of nine first families and thousands of other families who pledge to source some of their July 4th meal ingredients locally. First Lady Karen Baldacci of Maine issues a press release in support of the campaign.
	Garlic!
August	Kitchen Garden Day is celebrated by people and groups around the world.
	KGI's partnership with the Organic Agriculture Centre of Kenya helps provide training to hundreds of gardeners and digs several new school gardens and home gardens at a time when Kenya is experiencing drought and worrisome levels of food insecurity.
September	KGI's Roger Doiron tours the White House kitchen garden and hand- delivers KGI's White House garden petition signatures in the form of a “Thank You” book for the First Lady and Chef Sam Kass. He requests that 500-page, 4-column, 8 pt font tome be ceremonially tossed onto the White House compost pile.
	More happy harvests!
	KGI's first global get-together in France expertly and deliciously organized by Ian Holden and Kate Flint.
October	KGI enters its "Crush Hunger" cause into America’s Giving Challenge, an online fundraising contest, and finishes in 25th place out of over 7000 nonprofit causes. KGI's work recognized with a "Garden Crusader" award by Gardener's Supply Co.
	KGI releases its "Gardeners Have the Power" video.
November	Brussels sprouts!
	United Nations and world leaders meeting at the World Summit on Food Security in Rome signal a shift in approach to fighting hunger, moving away from giving people food to “empowering people to feed themselves” (i.e. KGI’s mission statement!).
	Eat the View campaign voted one of top “Green Game Changers” of 2009 by the readers and editors of the Huffington Post in the good company of the Environmental Working Group, 350.org, and the Story of Stuff.
December	First Garden gets the First Hoophouse, allowing the White House to grow food year-round. (photo credit: obamafoodorama.com).
	KGI ends year with 19,000 people in its network with a new website, logo and activities on the way. Watch for their unveiling in January!	???

Chestnuts, while very common in Europe, are hard to come by these days in the US as the result of a massive blight that wiped out most chestnut trees here during the first half of the 1900s. Fortunately, the tree is making a comeback, largely due to the efforts of the American Chestnut Foundation. Still, if you happen to be the lucky holder of a pound or so of these beauties, don't miss the opportunity to enjoy them at their best...roasted over an open fire.

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh chestnuts in the shell
Water

Procedure:
Chestnuts are like popcorn kernels, with a tough shell that traps moisture. And like popcorn, chestnuts will explode if you don't slit their shells before roasting. Use the point of a paring knife to cut a large "X" into the flat side of the shell to let the steam escape. Be sure to cut through the skin. The cooking methods below yield about 2-1/2 cups, enough to serve four.

Note: Do not use a microwave oven. The chestnuts' texture is likely to turn gummy.

Fire-roasted:
For this method, it's best to use a chestnut roaster, a cagelike device with a long handle specially designed for use in the fireplace. After slitting X's in the chestnuts, place them in the roaster and hold it over hot coals. Roast chestnuts for 8 to 10 minutes, shaking the roaster from time to time.

Oven-roasted:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. After scoring them, place chestnuts in a single layer in a baking pan and sprinkle generously with water. Roast 17 to 20 minutes, or until the X-cut opens up and the shell begins to char. Continue to sprinkle water over chestnuts as they bake to prevent them from drying out. Stir occasionally.

Peel both the shell and the skin off the roasted chestnuts while they are still hot. (If they cool so much that the shell won't easily come off, reheat them briefly.)

Serve fresh from the oven because their flavor declines as they stand; they are always at their best when hot.

Pan-roasted:
Heat a heavy sauté pan for one minute. When it's hot, add chestnuts in a single layer, sprinkle with a small amount of water, and cover the pan. Medium-high heat works best. Shake the pan often and continue to sprinkle with water, until shells begin to char and the X-cut opens up. Cooking time: about 10 minutes. After chestnuts are cooked, remove them from the pan and wrap them in a tea towel to retain moisture. Peel and eat as soon as they are cool enough to handle.

Recipe source: Christian Science Monitor

Enjoy your power, but be sure to use it for the greater good!

Who says brussels sprouts are icky? Most likely someone who hasn't had them cooked properly. The trick to cooking brussels sprouts is walking the fine line between tender and mushy. Colors tell the story: tender = vibrant green, mushy = army green. Here's a simple way of preparing brussels sprouts and kale that keeps the flavor and color in tact.

Ingredients:
1 lb. brussels sprouts, halved or quartered, depending on size
pine nuts (raw or minimally roasted)
2 gloves garlic, crushed
1 tbs. olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
handful of chopped kale

Procedure:
Sautée all but pine nuts over medium heat until bright color develops. Add pine nuts, cook for another few minutes until sprouts are fork-tender.

Creative commons photo credit: Random Duck

Q: Our garden is in northern Pennsylvania, and the growing season ends far too soon! What can we do to extend the lettuce- and spinach-growing season?

A: As weather cools off in fall, lettuce, spinach, and other leafy crops mature more and more slowly, so you won’t have to rush to harvest the way you do when warm summer weather is on the horizon. The cool fall weather offers gardeners a big advantage, since the plants basically stop growing and you can plant a large crop all at once and then harvest over time. Instead of “going by” in a matter of days, as they do in spring and early summer, the plants last for 4 to 6 weeks in the garden, and you can harvest plants as you need them. Once temperatures drop into the low 30s/-1.1-.5C, plan on protecting plants by covering them with row covers or erecting a plastic tunnel over the rows. Be sure to remove covers on warm days and replace covers at night.

Reprinted from The Veggie Gardener's Answer Book
Copyright 2008 by Barbara W. Ellis, with permission from Storey Publishing.

Creative Commons photo credit: Del Fuego

An inspiring video about the White House kitchen garden produced by the White House press office. Enjoy the garden you helped to plant!

This video, just recently uploaded, is of the second report on the Eat the View campaign done by New England Cable News just a couple of days after ground was broken at the White House. If you missed the first one, you can watch it here.

Plants tell us a lot with their leaves. In the case of garlic, they tell us when the bulb is ready for harvest. Or do they?

Scanning some of the literature written by expert growers, we saw differing opinions on what harvest signs we should be looking for:

Garlic is mature when the tops fall over (mid July to early August).
-Eliot Coleman, Author of the Four Season Harvest

When half to three-quarters of the leaves turn yellow-brown, it's harvest time.
-Organic Gardening Magazine

Each green leaf above ground represents a papery sheath around the cloves. Once the leaf tips begin to yellow and die back, its time to dig the garlic. The lower six to eight leaves still being fully green indicate optimal harvest timing: This allots 5 to 7 protective wrappers around the bulb after curing. Our harvest here in northern New Hampshire begins the latter part of July and gets completed by the first week of August.
-Michael Phillips, Heartsong Farm

It's time to harvest garlic in the late summer when the bottom two or three leaves have turned yellow or the tops fall over.
-Ed Smith, author of the Vegetable Gardener's Bible

Harvest in summer when the bottom leaves are beginning to yellow and before more than one or two leaves turn brown (July through August).
-University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension

Fully green, yellow, or brown: so who's right? Well, in a way, you could say that all of them are. It depends on what your garlic goal is. The longer you wait, the larger the bulb. The danger in waiting too long is that the bulb will start to split apart into individual cloves. If Michael Phillips urges an earlier harvest when the plant is still upright and showing a lot of green, it's because he has a different goal: long term storage. An earlier harvest helps insure that the garlic cloves are "well-wrapped" for fall and winter feasts.

One surefire way of knowing whether your garlic is ready is to dig up a test bulb. If it's a decent size and seems well formed, then you can harvest the rest of your crop with confidence.

Q: How do I know when to harvest my tomatoloons and what's the best way of doing it?

A: One of the lesser-known vegetables of the kitchen garden world, tomatoloons offer all the rich taste of tomatoes with the lightness of, well, air. To tell when the fruit are ripe, give a gentle tug on their ribbon-like stems. If they float up again immediately, they are ready for harvesting. Fruit can be harvested with a pin as shown here. We recommend wearing protective clothing and having a receptacle ready for catching the pulp. Alternatively, the stems can be cut with scissors. Just be sure to place your hand over the fruit to prevent it from floating skyward.

Creative Commons credit: PhotoGraham

Here's an easy way to enjoy freshly-dug potatoes. Chop potatoes (Yukon Gold are pictured here, but other all purpose varieties will work fine) and toss them with olive oil and salt. Roast in a 425 degree oven about 40 minutes or until the edges are brown, turning from time to time. Prepare a vinaigrette with a minced basil, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, and a bigger drizzle of olive oil. Toss while the potatoes are hot out of the oven. They will absorb the dressing so there shouldn't be any left on the bottom of the bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Creative Commons photo and recipe credit: Michael Newman

Q Ugh! There are great big holes in the leaves of my plants! What do I do about them?

A Large holes in leaves – or leaves that have been eaten away altogether – are one of the most common signs of a pest invasion. Here are some of the possible culprits:

Slugs and snails
If you see slimy or shiny trails on the leaves, slugs or snails are the culprits. These pests hide under mulch, rocks, and other objects during the daytime and feed at night. They pose the biggest problem in wet weather.
Controls: Trap these pests under boards, cabbage leaves, flowerpots, or other objects, then scrape them into a bucket of soapy water to dispatch them. Or lure them to containers filled with stale beer: Set containers with the lip at soil level so that slugs and snails are lured in and drown. Surrounding plants with a band of wood ashes discourages them as well, as long as you renew it frequently. Attracting birds, toads, and other beneficial animals to the garden also helps control slugs. Organic slug and snail bait also is available. The active ingredient is iron phosphate and Sluggo is one brand name to look for.

Caterpillars
Various caterpillars feast on vegetable foliage, chewing large holes in leaves or devouring leaves completely.
Controls: All caterpillars can be controlled by handpicking or by spraying with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Attracting beneficial insects will decrease problems with caterpillars, and if you see any that seem to be sick (they’ll be sluggish or yellowish in color, or have ricelike cocoons on them), leave them alone and let the disease or the parasitic wasp spread to other caterpillars. Spinosad is also effective against caterpillars.

Cucumber beetles
If you see “/6.35 mm-long yellow and black beetles – either spotted or striped – cucumber beetles are eating your veggies. Both feed on a wide variety of vegetables, and both carry various diseases that cause plants to wilt and die suddenly.
Controls: Use floating row covers on seedlings, and hand-pollinate crops such as squash and melons that need it to produce fruit. Apply parasitic nematodes to the soil to control the beetles” larvae, and spray pyrethrin or rotenone to control the adults. Kaolin clay is also effective against cucumber beetles. Be sure to clean up the remains of crops and dispose of them in the trash, since these pests overwinter in them.

Animal pests
Various animal pests can also chew leaves and plant parts, so don’t overlook them. Deer may eat entire plants, but they also can browse off the tops of your vegetables. Crows have been known to pull up seedlings and consume them, and rabbits are eager to chomp away at all manner of vegetable plants.

Reprinted from The Veggie Gardener's Answer Book
Copyright 2008 by Barbara W. Ellis, with permission from Storey Publishing.
Creative Commons photo credit: J. Star