NAME:
Eshe Riviears, a.k.a. "the Herb Lady"
PROFESSION:
Herbalist
HOME:
Conyers, Georgia, USA
WEBSITE:
www.herbsistah.com
How long have you been kitchen gardening?
I have been kitchen gardening since I was 9 years old growing up in Michigan. I remember being put in charge of my 1st tomato plant. Those were the yummiest tomatoes in the world even up until now.
Continue reading "Kitchen Gardener Profile: Eshe Riviears" »
NAME:
Rachel Knight
PROFESSION:
Kitchen Gardener
HOME:
Wellington, New Zealand
WEBSITE:
www.thekitchengarden.co.nz
OTHER HOBBIES:
public speaking, cooking, re-planting
an area of wetland, reading.
Why do you keep a kitchen garden?
I love gardening. Growing things to eat gives me the most satisfaction. Having our own kitchen garden means we eat more vegetables and a wider variety of crops, and they are fresher than if we’d bought them. Nothing tastes better than things you’ve grown yourself – even the ones that aren’t as perfect as the ones in the supermarket. Some things you don’t see here very often either such as kale, unusual potatoes or purple beans.
How and when did you get started?
I started growing salad and herbs in a small raised bed just outside our back door in our house in the city so that we could have fresh ingredients for dinner. Reading Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening
Who or what has had an influence on you and your gardening?
I moved to New Zealand from the UK in 1996. I grew up in Chester in the North West of England. My Dad had a huge and prolific vegetable garden that fed our family and most of the neighbours. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t helping in the garden or helping my Mum bottle tomatoes or make jam.
The book I refer to most on vegetable gardening is Joy Larkcom’s Grow Your Own Vegetables
Tell us about your garden or gardens. How large are they? For whom do you grow food?
We live on a property about 25 minutes drive from Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. It’s 30 acres but the majority is steep, hill country leased to sheep grazing. The gardens cover about an acre but are mainly ornamental. The original kitchen garden was about 500 square feet of cultivated area in raised beds with grass paths. We’ve extended this over the last two years into an existing orchard area. This gives us an additional 1000 square feet of raised beds including a 26’ long polytunnel. We’ve added cordoned fruit trees around the garden and replaced some climbing roses over a pergola with vines so we can maximize the amount of edible crops. We have plenty of space to expand further, depending on whether we decide to take on some help.
We grow for ourselves (my husband and me) and last year set up a ‘box’ scheme during the summer season. We mainly sell to friends and neighbours but word of mouth has meant we’re getting enquiries without any advertising. The local farmers’ market is keen for me to sell there too but I won’t have enough produce to do that this year. This year I’ve sold tomato seedlings and free-range eggs. We keep chickens, bees and have established a wild pheasant population.
Box scheme farms, or CSA farms as they're called in the US, are really taking off in North America. How are they doing in New Zealand?
There are a number of schemes throughout the country but I suspect they sell a tiny proportion of the vegetables consumed in New Zealand. Farmers’ markets are a growing trend here as they are in the US, UK and Australia.
What are some of challenges you face with your garden, climate and soils?
Compared to many States in the US, New Zealand has a mild and temperate climate all year. Wellington in particular is never very hot or very cold, usually neither very wet nor dry. We typically get less than six frosts a year. However it is extremely windy – enough to blow the leaves off runner bean plants and although our garden is relatively sheltered, everything benefits from as much additional shelter as you can give it, particularly in the early stages. The soil is acid (pH 5.2) clay so the addition of lime and organic matter make a big difference.
Even the pests are relatively benign – bats are the only indigenous mammals in New Zealand. Unfortunately rats, mice, brush-tailed possums, hares and rabbits have been introduced so we trap and shoot as many as we can. The humble slugs and snails can be a challenge too – we play host a large population of blackbirds and thrushes as a result.
Tell us a bit about the state of home gardening and cooking in New Zealand. What do you think is needed to encourage more people to produce and/or buy more locally grown foods?
New Zealanders are following the worldwide trend of eating out more often and relying increasingly on pre-prepared fresh or frozen foods at home. Many kids leave home without adequate cooking skills to prepare a meal from raw ingredients, not having enjoyed regular home-prepared meals.
Having good local markets where people can enjoy the experience and buy excellent, competitively priced, seasonal produce attracts a wide range of people – everyone loves a shopping bargain. Vegetable growing is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. It does seem to be hereditary – most people pick it up again at some time in their lives if they were exposed to it as a child. Some schools are introducing a kitchen garden as part of their curriculum, which can only be good. I’ve even had a number of requests from adults wanting me to ‘teach’ them about it so clearly there’s a demand out there.
Do you preserve any food through canning, pickling, freezing, root cellaring, etc?
I made some delicious chutney and tomato ketchup this year. We have relatively mild winters so we can grow a reasonable number of crops for much of the year, which makes preserving less of an issue. We tend to eat leeks, carrots, kale, rocket (arugula) and silverbeet (swiss chard) in the winter and store garlic, onions and pumpkins.
If you could choose another place to visit and garden in, where would it be and why? What would you grow?
New Zealand is my ideal place to garden. I’d love to be able to grow really good capsicums, chilli peppers and eggplants, but it’s just not hot and sunny enough here. My friend in Sydney can, but she has to worry about drought and water restrictions. The grass isn’t always that much greener.
Rachel's Chutney
Chutney is an easy way to preserve not so perfect summer crops in pretty much any combination available. It makes a welcome gift in decorative jars and is a tasty addition to casseroles – particularly strong game meats such as pheasant and hare.
Ingredients
2lb marrows (squash) or pumpkin
2lb tomatoes (red or green) or 2lb plums
2lb apples or pears or tomatillos (or a mixture)
1lb onions
1lb sultanas (a type of white raisin, brown raisins may be substituted)
1lb raw sugar
1.25 pints cider vinegar
1 fresh red chilli, finely chopped
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
1 tsp ground mace
Procedure:
Chop the marrows into 1/2” cubes, skin and de-seed the pumpkin and chop into 1/2” cubes.
Scald the tomatoes in boiling water, peel and chop roughly. Stone and chop the plums.
Remove the cores from the apples and dice, skin and chop the onions.
Put everything into a really big, heavy-bottomed pan. Make a spice bag by tying one inch of grated ginger root, 10 whole cloves, 10 black peppercorns, one teaspoon coriander seeds in a 4” square of muslin. Push it into the middle of the mixture. Bring to the boil stirring and simmer for 2-3 hours uncovered. Stir regularly to prevent it sticking. Seal into sterilised jars while still warm.
NAME:
Gerard Bernard
PROFESSION:
Retired train enginneer
HOME:
Villers-les-Nancy, France
HOBBIES:
Painting and fishing
Every gardener is known for something. For one, it might be his plump and juicy tomatoes, for another her aromatic herbs. In the case of Frenchman Gerard Bernard, it's not what comes from his garden but what he does with it. Gerard takes humble extras of the fruit world - currants, cherries, pears, plums - and turns them into stars. Gerard , you see, is a master of a little-known artform: small-scale, artisinal fruit wines and liqueurs. Let's see how he earned his reputation.
Continue reading "Kitchen Gardener Profile: Gerard Bernard" »
NAME:
Jennifer Love
HOME:
Wilmore, KY, USA
PROFESSION:
I raise
miniature Jacob sheep, chinchillas and geese. Most of my time is dedicated to
raising and home-schooling my three sons, Zachary, Tristan, and Theodor.
INTERESTS:
Knitting,
reading, tole-painting, drumming, and cooking.
KGI: Why do you keep a kitchen garden?
JL: Primarily to feed my family fresh, organic foods that actually have
vitamins and flavor intact. It doesn’t hurt that the price of grocery store food
is getting so high that we’ve found garden food is actually less expensive too.
I’d love to grow most of our produce someday. And it’s even great exercise. Plus
my oldest son and I are allergic to gluten (a.k.a. wheat, barley, malt). So many
processed foods list wheat or gluten in them as fillers. We rely more heavily
than most Americans on vegetables and fruit rather than grains. An independent
streak and fond memories of gardening as a child in my father’s garden motivates
me too. I’m absolutely addicted to the calm satisfaction of watching plants
grow.
I want that
for my kids. I want them to know where food comes from and understand our
connection with nature.
Then there’s the environmental impact of having the store produce driven here
form Florida and California which makes me more responsible for pollution than
buying or growing locally. And if that wasn’t enough, now I’ve read that certain
companies are developing genes to make even non-hybrid plants produce infertile
seed so those companies can cash in further on gardeners. So I have become
concerned for the future of food production globally. I feel compelled to grow
many varieties of vegetables and now save seed.
KGI: How and when did you get started?
JL: As a toddler I would go out and watch what my dad was doing in our
garden. I loved helping water. We also had a mulberry tree and a cherry tree.
I’ve always known where vegetables and fruit came from and that fresh food
tastes the best. My grandparents grew a few tomatoes and rhubarb. All the
neighbors had gardens. I thought everyone grew food. I was in 4H for years and
took vine crops as a project. I even won second place at the county fair one
year. Through that I met many people who grew gardens.
KGI: Who or what has had an influence on you and your gardening?
JL:
Obviously my parents, grandparents and neighbors influenced me growing up. Both
my parents and grandparents grew up on farms though we didn’t when I was young,
but I head their stories and thought I was meant to live on a farm someday, too.
I went on to study biology in college and especially my Anthropology professors
influenced me by teaching the way people used to live. I learned about primitive
tribes gardening styles, and learned about my own western civilization’s
heritage. I realized in the grand scope of human history we haven’t been away
from subsistence farming for more than very few generations, and many people
still do. My husband also grew up with a backyard garden and fruit trees and is
very supportive of our having a big vegetable garden now, and he has plans for
planting an orchard starting this fall.
I have read
so many books on gardening I think I have literally read every one in the local
library. I’m sure many things I’ve read influenced me, but the ones that
motivated me to really grow so much and such variety as I do know would be:
My subscription to Countryside& Small Stock
Journal published by Dave Belanger The Encyclopedia of Country Living by, Carla
Emery Five Acres and Independence by M. G. Kains Lasagna Gardening by Patricia
Lanza has really helped me understand sheet composting. And even the Grapes of
Wrath by John Steinbeck – which showed me the major shift from family farms to
industrial farms that took place for my grandparents’ generation. I see how poor
with a farm is so much richer than poor with out. I’ve only traveled a bit
within this region of the US, but I always look to see how other’s gardens or
field crops are doing. My sons thinks commenting on the height and lushness of
corn we pass is normal travel conversation.
KGI: Tell us about your garden or gardens. How large
are they?
JL: We increased the vegetable garden greatly this year to 112 feet by 80
feet, but it is about half grass paths and half 5 foot wide rows tilled in a
spiral. So there’s approximately 4,500 square feet. I planted about 3, 500
square feet this year and the rest is where we put compost.
KGI: What fruits and vegetables did you grow this year?
JL: I plant
99% of it from seed right in the ground myself, with some help from the kids.
Nearly all varieties are heirloom type. This year I planted: white proso millet
(for grain for us), marigolds (for pest repellent), Alaska snow peas, spinach,
radishes, red beets, broccoli, Wando and Oregon Trail shell peas, Leafless-a
bush shell pea, black oil sunflowers (animal food, might try to get oil out),
black garbanzo beans, head and leaf lettuce, white and red and yellow onions
from sets, Danver half long carrots, Giant sunflowers (seed for our eating and
the animals), burgundy amaranth (for our grain), buckwheat, a bit of 6 row
barley, a bit of oats, Silver King and Kandy Korn hybrid sweet corn (doing
poorly due to lack of nitrogen in newly tilled soil), pink eyed peas, black eyed
peas, red beans, kidney beans, crimson sweet watermelon, scalloped summer
squash, Indian red flour corn, yellow wax beans, Brandywine and Early Girl, and
Better Boy red tomatoes, cherry bell peppers, leaf celery, Big Max pumpkins,
butternut squash, edamame soybeans, milo (a.k.a. grain sorghum) for our eating,
BlueLake bush greenbeans, bushel basket gourds (to grow more ‘baskets’ to carry
food in), California Wonder bell peppers, Black from Tula tomatoes, White
Parchment tomatoes, Zucchini, Roma and Yellow Pear paste tomatoes, a
mini-seedless watermelon, Purple Peruvian hot peppers, Love Lies Bleeding
Amaranth (also good for grain), True Platinum heirloom sweet corn and a few Lima
beans. I planted a few more varieties of peppers and beans, but a heavy rain
drowned them early on. And now the heat is taking it’s toll on the melons,
cucumbers and pumpkins.
I also have
a front raised flower bed with about 60 square feet for herbs. That has: basil,
oregano, just a few garlic, dill, sage, blue bread poppies for seeds, garlic
chives, pineapple sage, lemon balm, more amaranth and St John’s wort which I
heard was a good tea but haven’t tried yet. We also have two other flower beds,
but I keep planting extra seed in them and getting volunteers from seed in the
compost. So my other flowerbeds are growing more sunflowers, buckwheat and some
summer crookneck squash among the perennial flowers and hostas. I think
vegetables, grains and herbs are just as pretty as any flower.
And lastly, we have mulberry, elderberry and choke cheery trees and some wild blackberry vines. Other than eating the fresh fruit, I have made a bit of wine from the black berries and choke cherries. I dry the elderberries for tea and to add to other dishes. I made mulberry jam this year. I just used a blackberry recipe and added the extra step of putting the cooked berries through a food mill to remove the stems and part of the seeds before adding the sugar and finishing cooking. It did need pectin added, but turned out quite delicious.
KGI: When does your garden year start and stop?
JL: We till and start planting peas about March 1st. Then the fall frost
which kills is about October 15th .
KGI: What are some of challenges you face in your
garden?
JL: Much of it was new ground broken this spring. The slightly clayish
soil is in need of more organic matter. Fortunately here in "the horse capitol
of the world" finding horse farmers to give us manure has been easy. Sadly, the
family we bought our house and land (9 acres) from got away from farming in the
last two generations and used the land as an illegal dump. We have cleaned it up
so much in the five years we’ve owned it, but when we plowed we had to clear out
not just rocks but broken glass, soda cans and car parts.
Also
in our county, we can dig down 1-2 feet and hit solid limestone, so composting
and building up the soil if of paramount importance. The water drains out so
fast in the shallow spots. There’s a lack of honeybees, so my buckwheat is
poorly pollinated. Hand pollinating is often necessary for pumpkins and squash.
KGI: Do you preserve any food through canning,
pickling, freezing, root cellaring, etc?
JL: I’ve never pickled. I do remember seeing my mom can (jar) tomato sauce
when I was very little, but she never taught me as she got away from doing it
and started freezing. So I freeze just about everything. I blanch when necessary
and freeze individual foods, but I also cook spaghetti sauce and freeze it. And
I make large amounts of food when I cook certain dishes, like stews, soups, and
taco meat. Then I freeze some of these meals for winter and much of the
vegetables end up frozen that way, too. I dry most of the herbs, but I freeze
the leaf celery. Beans and peppers are dried. Butternut squash does well set in
the back of a cabinet for many months. Many things are eaten fresh and there’s
no leftovers. I need to plant more! The crawl space under our house may be just
the thing to put a root cellar in. I’d like to learn more about that and
canning. I need to put up much more than the freezer holds.
KGI: If you could choose another place to visit and
garden in, where would it be and why??
JL: I would go to Transylvania, Romania. Our church has a partner church
in the village of Nyomet. Others I know have visited on church business and
their minister recently came here. So I saw some pictures of how they live. But
I want to see their gardens! The communist regime went through and tore out the
people’s ancient grape vines and made all the men leave home and abandon their
personal gardens to work on community farms, giving them back very little.
Communism is gone now, but only for about 25 years. Now they are trying to
recover and they rely on their backyard gardens and some village grain fields
for all their crops. If I have a bad year for a crop, or if I don’t grow enough,
I can go to the grocery store. If they have a bad year for something, then they
just don’t get to eat it that year. If they don’t grow enough, they go hungry. I
long to go and see what it’s really like to be truly self reliant. They must
have many gardening tips and techniques out of necessity. They must have much to
teach.
KGI: Do have a favorite recipe you'd like to share
using a garden ingredient?
JL: We try to eat the vegetables as close to fresh as possible. Cucumbers
we just slice and top with shredded Monteray Jack cheese and add salt and olive
oil to taste. Also we eat corn on the cob, boiled, and served with butter, salt
and pepper to taste. These together is a common meal in summer. But the kids’
favorite is my taco recipe, much of which comes from our garden.
Name:
Paul Bennett Kelly
Profession:
Retired "seedsman"
Location:
Calne, England
Interests:
Walking, archaeology, reading (biographies, agricultural history, soil regeneration techniques, hydroponics, and particularly gardening knowledge of vegetable growing and forgotten methods).
KGI: Why do you keep a kitchen garden?
PK: To feed ourselves as much as possible from our own efforts in growing veg and fruit.
KGI: How and when did you get started? Who or what has had an influence on you and your gardening?
PK: From the time I was in a pram (American: baby carriage), my maternal grandmother took me into the garden with her while she worked at growing food for us during war time . All of my family gardened. It was down to a really genuine interest to having an array of different foods to make any meat or eggs go a bit further.
KGI: Tell us about your garden or gardens. How large are they? What are you growing this year?
PK: My garden at home (which has heavy blue clay soil) provides year round fruit, by permission of the freezer, including gooseberries, rhubarb, red currants, strawberries, loganberries, Williams and Conference pears, Bramley apple, Cox's apple, Victoria plum. Approximate size: 10*7metres
I
also maintain plots offsite in an allotment garden (American: community
garden). There, I'm growing swiss chard, runner beans, lettuce, leeks (for
transplanting), beetroot (long round), carrots, Mange Tout, Kelvedon wonder Pea,
spring onion (for salad, red and white), main crop large onion, broadbeans,
parsnips, shallots, strawberries, red cabbage for transplanting, new potatoes,
beetroot for pickling, main crop peas (for freezing), dwarf runner beans (a
potential failure this year!), french black long radish, winter hardy turnips, courgettes,
celeriac, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, white sprouting Broccoli, summer cabbage
(Primo and Greyhound), red cabbage for pickling, marrows (i.e. squash), pumpkin
(hundredweight), butternut squash, runner beans (white flowered), beef steak and
Money Maker tomatoes, French-style haricot beans and carrots.
KGI: Do have a favorite recipe you'd like to share using a garden ingredient?
PK: It's nothing fancy, but I really enjoy broadbeans in parsley sauce with crispy streaky bacon.
KGI: That sounds good. How do you make it?
PK: It's very simple. You steam your broadbeans and prepare a parsley sauce which is essentially a white sauce (or bechamel, if you prefer) to which finely chopped parsley is added. You can cook up the bacon and serve it on the side or crumble it on top.
