The Food Gardener

After 50 years of basic organic food gardening, I have finally begun paying attention to the principles that guide my choices and actions - not that I have come to them easily, or all at once, or all alone. Sustained gardening is of necessity a journey for the gardener, one that can take them beyond award winning varieties, professionally formulated chemistries and magical soil additives. For many the journey becomes a portal into the nature of nature, the nature of food and even the nature of the gardener. For we all seek and find ourselves somewhere in the garden – as imperfect as it may be.

Over the last few years, my garden (usually preceded with some adjective like “food” or “kitchen”) has become more than a place to grow food and more than a way to beautify the yard. In fact, never would it delight the eye of a landscape architect or grace the pages of Gardening Magazine. However, there are patches of beauty throughout the year, mixed in with the heartbreak of withering leaves, brown spots, gnawed stems and chewed fruit. Seems all the players in my garden are focused on their own needs rather than mine.

I sometimes stand in the ragged tapestry of green beds and marvel at how little there is to eat. What is for dinner – often drives me to the store and yet the garden has had a profound impact on our diet. In part because of what has grown there (memory being a persistent aspect of eating) and in part because of the qualities that we had discovered in the food. Food from the garden has informed our taste, so that we now require the flavor and nutrient density found in the olden style, pre-industrialized, earthly grown fruits, vegetables, eggs and meats. Yes, they can be found here in Las Cruces. The garden also provides a space for seeing and observing as well as a trampoline for my intellectual exercises.

Most of my garden looks like the gardener is ignorant of the rules or at least fails to comply with the standards for clear cutting, tilling, timing, rotating and spacing. That is an accurate observation, which brings me to the principles that are ultimately responsible for the look and function of the garden.

Continue reading "The Principled Gardener" »

Posted by at 11:09 AM | Permalink

Greening the Spuds

Sounds like something you might do for a Saint Patty’s day meal, but its not, although the timing is about right for our region. Greening is about getting your potatoes off to a good growing start, the old fashioned way.

“Greening” also called “chitting” the seed potatoes is done by placing them in bright light, one layer deep for a couple of weeks – longer is necessary. The eyes will produce green sprouts that remain short as long as they are left in the light. Place the seed potatoes in the dark and they will grow into potato plants. Plant them 6-8 inches deep in well drained soil, keep them damp, but not soggy and in two to three weeks green plants will emerge.

Why Greening or Chitting?

You know that annoying persistency of potatoes to turn green in the light? Well, that’s part of the reason for Greening your spuds. Light stimulates the formation of alkaloids in the potatoes, which protect them from insects and some fungal diseases – not a bad thing to have if you are going to be stuck underground for a while. The green leaves also begin producing food for the developing plant. Do not remove the green sprouts before planting – waste of time and growing potential. How many eyes should the seed spud have - at least two, not more than five. If you are using large seed potatoes, cut them into pieces – 2-3 ounce pieces are as small as you should go. I prefer to plant small (about golf ball size) whole seed potatoes.

More on Potatoes in the home garden

till next time,

Darrol - The Food Gardener
Las Cruces, NM

Posted by at 12:54 PM | Permalink

11/07/2005

From the delightful French website L' Atelier Vert an article about the medlar in the garden, the kitchen and in Basque traditions. Over the years I have found this site an inspiring and delightful journey into the French Potager.

The medlar as metaphor

"Sometimes, I think of my potager as an act of defiance. With my feet firmly planted in its fat, dark loam, I can resist a whole horde of enemies. Not only tasteless, hormonally engorged foods, their natural, unique perfumes replaced by the uncertain whiff of chemicals, their appearance as uniformly unblemished and unvariable as a regiment of soldiers, but also the larger plan that they represent."

click through to read more

until next time,

Darrol, The Food Gardener
Las Cruces, NM

Posted by at 8:42 PM | Permalink

I've been reading "An Agricultural Testament" by Sir Albert Howard, published in 1943 in search of the old knowledge about those living systems in which we grow our food - kitchen gardens. Although much of the book deals with farm level agriculture, the principles are the principles and are very usefull knowledge to the kitchen gardener.

A quote from Chapter 11, "The Retreat of the Crop and the Animal before the Parasite"

Sir Albert Howard's Principles

1. Insects and fungi are not the real cause of plant diseases but only attack unsuitable varieties or crops imperfectly grown. Their true role is that of censors for pointing out the crops that are improperly nourished and so keeping our agriculture up to the mark. In other words, the pests must be looked upon as Nature's professors of agriculture: as an integral portion of any rational system of farming.

2. The policy of protecting crops from pests by means of sprays, powders, and so forth is unscientific and unsound as, even when successful, such procedure merely preserves the unfit and obscures the real problem -- how to grow healthy crops.

3. The burning of diseased plants seems to be the unnecessary destruction of organic matter as no such provision as this exists in Nature, in which insects and fungi after all live and work.

If you are interested in reading more of this classic agricultural text it is available on-line at The Journey to Forever website.

till next time,

Darrol - The Food Gardener
Las Cruces, NM

Posted by at 8:59 AM | Permalink

Three Sisters Gardens
Corn, beans, and squash have a unique symbiotic relationship in a Native American garden. Corn offers a structure for the beans to climb. The beans, in turn, help to replenish the soil with nutrients. And the large leaves of squash and pumpkin vines provide living mulch that conserves water and provides weed control. This ancient style of companion planting has played a key role in the survival of all people in North America. Grown together these crops are able to thrive and provide high-yield, high-quality crops with a minimal environmental impact.
Mardi Dodson - ATTRA

Started me to thinking about the place of Three Sisters Plantings in non-native gardens, which of course led me to exploring them in my kitchen garden. After two growing seasons, this exploration has yielded some answers and even more questions. My interest was in adapting the concept to my intensely organic, drip irrigated garden and integrating it into my own practice of inter-planting and rotation. The basic question is how could I adapt a native gardening practice to fit my own garden in a way that puts the food I like on the table?

So far my search of the “Three Sisters” literature has yielded little direct information about how, what, when and in what configuration to plant a “Modern Three Sisters” garden, except for some educational websites geared to classrooms, learning and teaching gardens and some research on inter-cropping those three varieties at the farm level. The ATTRA publication “Companion Planting: Basic Concepts and Resources” has a rather thorough description of the approaches to three sisters plantings developed by Native Americans in response to moisture, climate, soils and length of season. “The Wampanoag garden style works well east of the Mississippi. Hidatsa gardens were developed to thrive in the climate of the northern Plains, while the Zuni waffle garden was designed to conserve water in the arid Southwestern climate”. Not surprisingly, the three methods provide many clues, but none adapt directly to my garden configuration or gardening practices.

Continue reading "My Three Sisters" »

Posted by at 10:47 AM | Permalink

Knowing and Growing What You Eat.

How much is enough? That’s not “the sound of one hand clapping”, but rather something I often ask about our food and garden needs. It always begins with “how much of this will I eat”? Sounds dumb until you try it and then, “Aha”!

How many onions will we eat this year? How much space does it take to grow that many onions? How many potatoes will we eat this year? You get the idea by now. Querying our salad consumption is even more difficult. How many salads, what content, (we may have a dozen or more garden ingredients in one salad bowl) in what amount, during what season?

After three years of this inquiry, I still have more questions than answers. However, I do have some insights into patterns of food consumption and gardening.

There are some basic principles, but no formulas that will work for everyone.

Your gardening approach has a huge impact on productivity.

The varieties you select make a difference.

If you grow it, you will eat more of it – food gardening changes your eating patterns

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that none of this sounds like rocket science, but it points to the first decisions you need to make, over and over again, when creating and managing a kitchen garden.

What do I eat?

How much of it do I eat?

How much of what I eat do I want to grow?

How much space is required to grow it?

Once those basic queries are addressed garden planning can begin. As an example: I don’t grow okra, never have, and never will. My neighbor loves it and grows it every year. I have a variety of lettuces in the garden 10 months out of the year. My neighbor never grows it. I live for tarragon, while it never passes the lips of others. So you get the gist – your food garden is as personal as your culinary tastes, and can be defined by them. It’s also a place to explore growing and cooking new foods.

Continue reading "How Much Is Enough?" »

Posted by at 10:29 AM | Permalink

Message from the Executive Director of Native Seeds/SEARCH

Friends:

Native Seeds/SEARCH will be featured on NPR's Weekend Edition this Saturday, Dec. 10, in a segment that includes a search for wild chiles in southern Arizona. Check with your local PBS radio station for times of the show; in many locations the two-hour show is broadcast twice in the morning. After Saturday you should also be able to listen to it as an audio file available from their website: www.npr.org (select Weekend Edition Saturday).

Also, if you'd like to purchase wild chiles (chiltepines) or any other of our fine products, there is still time to order in time for the holidays. Please check out our foods, seeds, crafts, books (including our new cookbook "From Furrow to Fire"), etc. at: www.nativeseeds.org.

-Kevin

Kevin Dahl
Executive Director
Native Seeds/SEARCH
526 N. Fourth Avenue
Tucson, AZ 85705
(520) 622-5561, 850-4812 cell
www.nativeseeds.org
kdahl@nativeseeds.org

till next time,

Darrol - The Food Gardener
Las Cruces, NM

Posted by at 9:27 AM | Permalink