Dear Kitchen Gardener,

From times immemorial, gardeners throughout the world have endured hardships of all kinds: floods, droughts, blights, swarming locusts, and, in the case of Dutch growers, centuries of uncomfortable footwear.

As a New England gardener, I have my own share of climate-related challenges, for example trying to keep track of seasons that can change from one hour to the next. For those of you who haven’t been to Maine before, we just recently welcomed the arrival of our fifth season – mud season – which is sandwiched between winter and spring and which helps explain why babies here are born wearing miniature LL Bean boots instead of pink and blue booties. Spring here only starts around May 1st and usually wraps up around May 10th or 15th. For those of you who are curious, Maine’s summer officially starts with the arrival of the first mosquito or Massachusetts tourist, whichever comes first, and ends when all of them, tourists and stinging insects, have left.

In celebration of mud season, I am proposing that home growers finally catch a break. Not from bugs, weather, or clunky garden shoes, but from taxes. It’s not as silly an idea as it may sound. We provide fiscal incentives to people to encourage them to put hybrid cars in their garages and solar panels on their roofs, so why not offer incentives for solar-powered, healthy food production in their backyard? With wars still waging, food and oil costs rising, and paychecks stretching to the breaking point, now is the time for a home-grown revival. What better way to usher in this revolution than by marrying two great American traditions: vegetable gardening and tax cuts?

It wouldn’t be the first time that our country encouraged its citizens to grow some of their own food. The government’s wartime “Victory Garden” campaign was a success by every measure. By 1943, 20 million gardens were growing 8 million tons of food (an amount comparable to that of the nation’s farms) and Americans were eating more healthy fruits and vegetables than ever before.

More home gardens would offer us victory not only over rising food and healthcare costs, but also foreign oil dependency and climate change. Researcher estimate that locally-grown foods use up to 17 times less climate-warming, fossil fuels than foods from away. And when it comes to local foods, it doesn’t get any “localer” than one’s own yard.

There are different breaks that local, state and federal governments could offer home gardeners. Sales taxes on seeds, seedlings, fruit bushes and trees could be removed. Better still, an income tax break could be administered as is done with home offices where people measure and deduct the square footage of their houses used for business purposes. The bigger your garden, the better the tax break. Those with no yard could deduct the rental fee for a community garden plot.

Tax break or not, I’ll soon be outside fighting climate change, rising food prices, and mosquitoes in my own modest backyard. Last year, my family and I converted our $85 seed order into six months worth of delicious, fresh vegetables. This year, if we’re lucky, that should take us right into winter which in Maine starts in mid November, except for those years when it comes early.

Wishing you bountiful harvests and comfortable footwear this season,

Posted by at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Something is in the air these days and it's not just the musky, muddy smell of a Maine spring. 

I don't know what your senses are picking up, but I'm smelling the fragrant aroma of possibility.  Possibility not just for our own gardens, but for gardening in general.  A variety of forces - economic, social, culinary, environmental - are gathering and encouraging a new generation of eaters to get closer to and more involved with their food. 

I don't want to overstate it; we're not talking about a full-blown home gardening revolution, at least not yet.  Industrially-grown foods from afar are still the norm for most people in wealthy countries.  We are, however, seeing the first signs of a home-grown rebellion and - with oil hitting $110/barrell last week- it's not a moment too soon. 

I've been working hard this past month to spur the kitchen gardening movement along and want to encourage you to get more involved, both in KGI's community and in your own.  In the months and weeks ahead, I'm going to ask you to do different things. For now, though, I'm going to ask you to do just one. 

We're trying to build some energy around the idea of planting a kitchen garden in a highly visible and symbolic location: the White House Lawn!  As the Americans on our mailing list know all too well, it's election season and has been for the past two years.  While it's not always fun watching the slugfest that is American politics, the election season is also a season ripe with possibility. 

In addition to pitching an article on this topic which ultimately found its way on to the pages of the Washington Post, I've posted the idea on the website OnDayOne.org which brings together different ideas that we'd like the next President of the United States to undertake upon taking office.  Here's how I've phrased the recommendation:

"The next President should announce plans for a food garden on the White House lawn, making one of the White House's eight gardeners responsible for it, with part of produce going to the White House kitchen and the rest to a local food pantry. The White House is "America's House" and should set an example. The new President would not be breaking with tradition, but returning to it (the White House has had vegetable gardens before) and showing how we can meet global challenges such as climate change and food security."

By way of background information, this is not so much a new idea as a good old one worth recycling.  One of the first things President John Adams did upon moving into the White House in 1800 as its first resident was to plant a vegetable garden.  During WWI, President Wilson "hired" a herd of sheep to reduce the costs of maintaining the 18 acres of grounds surrounding the White House.  Thousands of dollars were raised for the Red Cross through the auctioning of wool. Years later, Eleanor Roosevelt grew a Victory Garden on the White House lawn, inspiring millions of others to do the same.

I don't know about you, but I think the idea of returning part of the White House lawn to its original, edible splendor is a reasonable request to make of the next "Landscaper-in-Chief".  If you agree, I'd like to ask for your vote.  All you need to do is go here: http://www.ondayone.org/node/661 and click on "rate this idea".  Unlike the important vote scheduled for November, anyone of any nationality can vote in this "election".  All we need are 270 more votes to put this idea in the top spot! 

While you're there, check out and vote for some of the other bright ideas being proposed for the next President and consider adding one of your own.   

Thanks for your ongoing interest in and support for our work,

Posted by at 8:27 AM | Permalink

 

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

My name is David Buchanan and I'm a KGI member as well as a member of its board.  Roger has been busy building our new community site the past few weeks and asked me if I'd be willing to help out by writing this month's newsletter. 

Despite my love of winter in New England, this past month I traded my snow shovel for a pickax and flew from Portland, Maine to the delta grasslands of Buenos Aires, Argentina. For the past three weeks I’ve been working with two schools on the outskirts of the city to design and build kitchen gardens funded through KGI's mini-grants program.

How much can I manage in a short time frame? I’ve focused most of my energy on a new school called La Providencia, located in a shantytown neighborhood in the town of Garin. Currently they squeeze 100 students into a modest bungalow with one barely functional bathroom. The teachers want a large kitchen garden for teaching purposes and to provide fresh vegetables for school lunches. They have a good growing site, but no other resources: no tools, hoses, watering cans, wheelbarrows, seeds, or money. Nothing but a couple of garden spades whose flat edges aren’t sharp enough to cut into the hard ground.

I threw myself into this with the understanding that nothing would likely go as planned. So it’s been no great surprise that from the day of my arrival, when the man who promised to make all my arrangements decided he had other things to do, I’ve been winging this. One day I find myself visiting farm implement dealers in a ’69 Ford with no air conditioning (not exactly a luxury when the temperature hits 103 degrees), and the next I’m sitting at a kitchen table in a colonial-era bungalow, drafting garden designs.

The people here have been wonderful. Warm, open, friendly, and concerned about my safety. Some have gone completely out of their way to help me, especially KGI member Vicky Sigwald and her husband Pablo, who’ve made this trip possible. It was especially gratifying to break ground last week with a group of a dozen students, parents, teachers and friends. With the addition of several cubic meters of compost and more pick and shovel work, we’ve turned roughly 1000 square feet of trash-filled, compacted soil into raised planting beds. Tomorrow we’ll return to plant vegetables and perennial herbs.

These gardens will continue to be worked by hand, so I wasn’t constrained by the rototiller to design square grids. The layout for one school includes a sort of cloverleaf with integrated plantings of herbs, flowers, berries, and fruit trees, and the other uses a pergola to join two oblique ovals. Everyone seems happy with the results and I think the designs will function well for access with large student groups. I’ll leave behind construction drawings and stay in touch to provide ongoing advice.

Here in Vicky and Pablo’s neighborhood of San Isidro, an elderly Italian man used to harvest fruits and berries from his garden every morning to make gelato for his shop. I believe that to be successful the local food movement needs to rediscover this kind of personal connection with the soil. Sometimes getting started can be as simple as providing tools, seeds and information. For me this trip creates a model for ongoing garden design and construction, and I intend to travel more in the future to turn neglected ground into gardens.

Thank you for supporting KGI and for helping kitchen gardens to flourish in your community.  Together, we're making a difference.

David Buchanan

PS: For more details about my trip and photos, please visit my website www.eatbydesign.org and go to the “travel” section.

About our new online community:  Here are some of the things you can do with our new online features: create your own profile page and blog, participate in a discussion, start up your own group (e.g. focusing on a particular issue or geographic area), share recipes and gardening tips, and meet kitchen gardeners from other part of the world.  Check it out: http://my.kitchengardeners.org

Posted by at 6:50 PM | Permalink

 

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

There are different ways of knowing whether winter has arrived.  If you're in Maine, the joke goes, you know because the driving actually improves as the potholes fill up with snow.  You can also tell the old fashioned way by looking at the thermometer. Mine read 8 wintry degrees (-14 C) this morning.  Consulting the calendar is another popular, albeit controversial, way.  Astonomically speaking, winter is due this Friday, but, meteorologically, the calendar says that winter already arrived the first week of December.  Hmmm.

As with other perplexing life questions, I like to turn to my compost pile for guidance.  Northern gardeners like to say that winter hasn't really arrived until your compost pile is frozen solid and hasn't really left until your pile has thawed completely.  Up until last week, my hot pile of leaves, grass clippings, and kitchen scraps was still chugging along nicely, melting its way through all the white stuff the sky has been dropping on us since late November.  Coincidentally, up until last week, we were also still harvesting salad greens from our cold frames, arguably the best-tasting greens of the year (but I admit that part of this is due to the "it's-winter-and-I-am-still-eating-from-my-garden!" factor which is one nature's best flavor enhancers.)

The past few days of snow, ice, and bitter cold, however, have changed things remarkably, putting my compost pile's soil bacteria and worms on the defensive. If you look closely at the photo above taken earlier today, you can see a bit of melting taking place, but I think it's safe for me to oil up my compost fork's handle and put it to bed for the winter. 

This winter was interesting in how suddenly it came upon us in my area.  One day, I was outside in a light sweater raking leaves and planting garlic, the next day I was all bundled up with a snow shovel in my hands.  A gardening article in the New York Times a few years back suggested that instead of talking about global warming, we should be using the term "global weirding".  While the trend is definitely toward warming, there'll be a lot of weirdness along the way.  Speaking of the New York Times, I've been following their coverage of local food issues these days and even managed to contribute 2 cents of my own to the debate through a letter to the editor published in last Sunday's edition. 

Another item in the "good news" category: I learned last month that I have been chosen as a "Food and Society Fellow" by the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute.  I'm pretty excited about this and I don't excite easily.  That award and your generous support will help me to keep KGI going and growing, even during the dark, cold days of winter.  

Don't worry, though, about the award going to my head, at least not this winter.  It will need to penetrate a thick wool hat first.   

Happy holidays,

PS: I'm busy making your holiday gift.  It's not so much a new gift, but a better version of an old one, a gift that will allow you to grow as gardener, learn new things, contribute your knowledge to the gardening commons, connect with and help new gardening friends, near and far.  Have you guessed yet?  It might be too late for the holidays, but will be just in time for those of you itching to talk about gardening before the ground and the weather allow you to do any. 

PPS: Stay tuned in January as a "special KGI correspondent" will be reporting from Argentina on a school garden project that we're helping to launch. 

Posted by at 4:32 PM | Permalink

To read the full newsletter online, please see: www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletternovember07.html

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Here’s a question for you: when a gardener in Geneva or Zurich grows chard is it called "Swiss Swiss chard", “Our chard”, “Swiss© chard ”, or something completely different?

I’ve always wondered about the origins of the name “Swiss chard”. Aside from Brussels sprouts, it’s rare that one region gets top billing for a whole species. What’s interesting is that North Americans seem to be the only ones calling chard Swiss these days. Like a James Bond of the vegetable world, this plant travels under many different identities in other parts of the world including silverbeet (UK and Australia), bietola (Italian), blettes (French) and acelga (Spanish).

As it turns out, Swiss chard is about as native to Switzerland as James Bond too. Botanists have traced its origins back by to Sicily. So, why don’t we call it Italian or Sicilian Chard?

There are multiple explanations depending on who you ask and how deep you are prepared to dig. I recently read a column by a chef who claimed that chard is referred to as Swiss “because of its extensive cultivation in Switzerland”. Hmmm. I’ve been to Switzerland before, a few times in fact, and cannot recall seeing it at all. Verdant valleys with dairy cows, yes. Snow-capped mountains, yes. Endless fields o’ chard, um, no.

Another interesting, though implausible, theory is that chard earned its moniker after a “great flee beetle epidemic” which made it resemble Swiss cheese. If that’s the case, I grow many varieties of Swiss spinach, Swiss radishes and Swiss arugula in my own garden each year. Swiss cabbage is one of my specialties.

The explanation that gets the most attention on the internet attributes the Swissness of chard to a Swiss botanist named Koch who is said to have named the plant first. But try finding information on this famed botanist and you’re almost back where you started. Some sources have Koch living in the 19th century whereas others say the 16th. And you thought Austin Powers was a man of mystery!

So, several inquiries and sentences later, the confusion surrounding chard’s name continues and maybe that’s not a bad thing. It’s often when we think we really know something, or someone for that matter, that we start losing interest.

If you’re lucky to have some chard still growing in your garden (mine got wiped out this past week by two consequentive nights of 20°F temperatures ), give it a fresh look and try preparing it in a new way. Similarly, if you’ve got an alternative theory on its name or some better information on our Mystery Man Koch, send it my way. Inquiring minds want to know.

Happy harvests and harvest feasts,

Posted by at 8:33 AM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

How do like them love apples?  Aren't they beauties!  Well, not beautiful in the conventional, airbrushed, Gourmet magazine kind of way.  The beauty, for me, is being able to enjoy my own reddish tomatoes in late October in Maine after the first light frost. 

True, they may not make the cut for tonight's starting salad team, but they'll do just fine simmered in a sauce or slow-roasted to bring out their latent sweetness.  They may well be our last sauce tomatoes of the year. 

It's been quite a run for us this year, tomato-wise.  I can't even guess how many cranks I've given on my food mill (my new favorite kitchen gadget) over the past 6 weeks.  All of this brings me in a round-about kind of way to the theme of this month's newsletter: one person' trash is another person's pleasure or, if you prefer, one person's waste is another person's taste.  Yes, I realize those may not be expressions you're accustomed to hearing, but they're ones deserving some consideration. 

Tomatoes like mine would end up in the waste bin if they dared infiltrating the ranks of the picture-perfect, red, round globes that grace the shelves at the local supermaket.  They would be deemed an eye-sore and most likely a health risk in our bacterophobic culture. For me, though, I see them and think "pasta al pomodoro" and "Superbowl Chili".  With nearly 20 bags of them in our chest freezer, we'll be thinking lots of different things right through the winter, all of them tasty.

In this month's round-up of articles and videos, we take a closer look at trash, treasure, waste, and taste.  Barbara Damrosch's latest article encourages us to go gleaning in our own gardens.  You might be surprised at what you'll find.  3000 miles away, in Portland, Oregon, a group of people from a nonprofit effort called The Portland Fruit Tree Project is thinking similar thoughts.  A short video follows them as they go on an urban fruit gleaning mission, something my family and I have been doing this month with our neighbor's apple trees.  Our neighbor sees apples with blemishes, we see apple sauces, crumbles, and pies.  In a world still very much in the grips of hunger and malnutrition, work like this should be taking place in every community where neglected fruit trees and underharvested crops can be found. 

You know this already, but I think that we, the organic kitchen gardeners of the world, have an important role to play in changing people's perceptions about food.  We know better than anyone else that there's really no such thing as trash when it comes to the garden.  What doesn't make the grade for the table is always a welcome addition to the compost pile where it awaits magical transformation into next year's pleasure.   

Warmly,

PS: 2008 has just been named the International Year of the Potato by the United Nations.  If you have a clever idea how KGI might celebrate potatoes next year, don't be shy in sharing it. 

PPS: And don't be shy in general.  I'd love to hear from you on what we're doing right or what we might do differently. You're also invited to comment on our articles and share some of your own knowledge or lack thereof, as the case may be.  That's what the comment form is for at the bottom of each page! 

Posted by at 2:19 PM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

I hope you're either enjoying or planning bumper harvests.  We harvested a great crop of participation and awareness raising at this year's Kitchen Garden Day celebration and have put together a short video to share some of what happened that day.

While it'd be nice to bask in the warm glow of those harvests, October is too busy a gardening month to kick back.  In Maine, there's pesto and sauerkraut to be made, squash to be cured, apples to be picked, and tomatoes to be canned or frozen.  October also offers some of the crispest, best-tasting salads of the year just ready to be cut, rinsed, and spun.  Garlic traditionally goes in the ground on or around Columbus Day, but that day seems to be slipping back a week or two in our brave new, globally-warmed world. 

October's also a month for adding new life to tired beds through the addition of compost.  For those of you who don't have a heaping pile of chocolate cake-like compost to dig into, autumn's a great time, the best time in fact, to start a new pile using all those vines and stems that have stopped delivering, fallen leaves, and the lush, nitrogen-rich grass clippings that suburban lawns so effortlessly produce in the fall. 

The fall is also the best time for planning and starting new garden projects.  Last week, I paid a visit to the French School of Maine to help them identify a site for a new "potager".  Monsieur le Directeur and a group of professeurs directed me to a rolling, field available for the school's use just a three minute's walk from the school.  I felt a bit envious glancing over the grassy expanse, doing quick math in my head at all the food that such a large plot could generate.  While the field was gorgeous and had very tall weeds (usually a reliable sign of soil fertility), I urged them to scope out a spot closer to the school.  What holds for home gardens holds for school gardens too: the closer to the kitchen, the better. 

We ultimately chose to site the new garden in a high profile and high traffic spot right in front of the school.  Not only is it the best spot in terms of sunlight and promixity, but it sends a strong message that health and good food are high on the school's agenda.  Once they've got their potager dug and their systems in place, they can consider turning the larger piece of land into a true farm capable of supplying their cafeteria. 

This experience and some others I've been a part of recently have got me thinking about where our schools' priorities are now and perhaps ought to be.  A few years back, Maine boasted being the first state to prepare its children for the "information age" by providing every 7th and 8th grade student and teacher with a laptop computer.  Several years into the program, it's amazing to see how comfortable and skilled Maine's young people have become with this important tool. 

This, of course, got me pondering new "firsts" for Maine and other forward-looking states or regions, in the US or abroad.  Which state or region will be the first to prepare its students for the coming "ecology age" by mandating that every primary or intermediate school in its area have an organic kitchen garden and age-appropriate garden curriculum?  Surely, there is no better way to teach health and healthy eating than to engage young people in the process of heathy food production. 

As with the laptop initative, such an idea would surely encounter resistance, but what revolutionary idea hasn't?

Wishing you a delicious October,

PS: It's still not too late to win your chance at over $1000 in prizes through our Grow-Off Show-Off Contest, but the clock is ticking.  As an added bonus, the first 50 entries automatically win a free subscription to Mother Earth News.  Deadline for entries is November 1st.  Note sure what you can enter, then see here.

Posted by at 6:48 AM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

I like to think I'm usually a modest person, but there are some moments in your gardening life when you just have to show off.  Take, for example, this plump, fuzzy peach growing in our frontyard.  When I say "take this peach", I don't mean that literally.  Someone recently confused our small, frontyard pumpkin patch with a pick-your-own farm by taking my son's giant pumpkin.  We're now referring to said person as the "Grinch Who Stole Halloween". 

But back to peaches.  My first concern about growing them was not who might take them (I had been warned by my gardening friend, Frank, about raccoons' voracious appetite for peaches), but whether we could grow them at all.  Maine is not exactly the world capital for stone fruit.  I hesitated between two cold-hardy varieties: the classic "Reliance" and the lesser known "Fingerlakes", opting in the end for the second one.  I remember reading the catalogue descriptions for Fingerlakes and being won over by certain phrases like "absolutely drips with peach flavor" and "bright red skin splashed with bursts of yellow." 

The American showman, P.T. Barnum, once famously said that "there's a sucker born every minute".  Although you might think he was talking about tomato plants in August, he was really referring to people who are easily taken in by what they hear and read.  I'll admit that I'm one of those suckers when it comes to seed and nursery catalogues.  Everything sounds good to me and I need to exercise restraint not only because of my financial limits, but also my geographic ones.  There's only so much I can do on a third of a chilly acre.

I'm a real believer, though, in doing "what I can with what I have" and - to the extent that it's possible  - getting others to do the same.  This is where showing off or, if you prefer, promotion comes in.  While P.T. Barnum is most known for the quote above, he also once quipped “without promotion, something terrible happens... nothing!” If the popularity of kitchen gardening has been waning steadily over the past 50 years in many parts of the world, it could be that we're not promoting it as much and as creatively as we could. 

This coming Sunday, August 26th, we have a chance to work together to promote kitchen gardening, a chance that only comes around once a year: International Kitchen Garden Day.  As I have said before, you're all welcome to drop by my place Sunday at 2pm for a walking tour of kitchen gardens.  You're can marvel at my peaches (if there are any left by then!), my Brussels sprouts and, hopefully, help me diagnose what's plaguing my apple tree.  

Better still, why not do some showing off of your own by inviting a few people into your garden or by organizing a spontaneous little food and garden-themed gathering?  While you're at, take a few photos or shoot a little bit of video and enter it into our Grow-Off Show-Off contest.  Someone is going to win our $500 grand prize. Why not you?

Thanks for doing what you can to promote kitchen gardening,

PS: In last month's newsletter, I promised to share more from my recent trip to France.  You've heard the expression "one person's trash is another's treasure", well here is Louise, a market gardener from the Cévennes, showing off her purslane which is either a common garden weed or a deliciously tart and crunchy salad green, depending on your opinion.  Louise started bringing bunches of it to market and was surprised to see how many people were interested in buying her "mauvaises herbes" (weeds).  She has since started pickling it. If you're looking for another purslane recommendation, it is very popular in India and said to have been Gandhi's favorite vegetable. 

Posted by at 7:33 AM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Walking through the well-known farmers' market in Uzès, France, as I recently had a chance to do, is a religious experience for food lovers.  The olive stands alone are worth the trip.  Add to that heaping tables of sun-drenched produce, artisan breads and cheeses, a mind-boggling choice of honeys, meats and seafood fished from the nearby Mediterranean Sea and you have all the makings of a memorable meal, if not several.

In fact, the quality and variety of the produce is so dazzling that you might be tempted to ask yourself why any area resident would bother growing some of his or her own.  Yet, despite the fresh bounty on offer twice a week at the Uzès market, the kitchen garden, or "potager" as the French call it, seemed much alive and well where I was staying. 

I had a chance to meet and speak with a few gardeners while I was there.  If they grow some of their own food, it's for the same reasons that you and I do: taste, variety, freshness, economics, concerns about the environment, and, most importantly, because they enjoy the process.   My trip reinforced what I already knew: kitchen gardening is a universal language with many different dialects.  What's different is that some of us have a better garden view out our back door than others!

I learned a lot while I was there.  Rather than try to share it all in one gush, I'll let the stories, pictures, and recipes trickle out over the course of the next several months.  In fact, if there's sufficient interest, we may at some stage even consider organizing a KGI trip for those of you interested in seeing and tasting the pleasures of Provence firsthand. 

I'll look forward to updating next month in the week leading up to Kitchen Garden Day.  I hope you'll find a way of recognizing the day in some small way.  We've got a lot to celebrate and share with others. 

Warm regards,

PS: Interested in starting a local kitchen garden group in your area?  Check out our new info page on gPods

Posted by at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

You are cordially invited to my house on August 26th to celebrate Kitchen Garden Day.  We'll be organizing a walking tour of some home gardens in my neighborhood, making a stop at the newly-planted kitchen garden at our local elementary school, and munching on some delicious food along the way.

Since I'm assuming that some of you will not be able to make it (for example, those of you from Argentina, South Africa and Australia!), I thought I'd give you a quick virtual tour of my June garden through the picture above.  I've left out a few identifying labels (e.g. garden hose, kale, onions, misplaced toys, etc.) for lack of space , but it gives you a feel for what's planted.  For those of you who are curious, that's not grass growing in between my beds, but fresh untreated grass clippings that I put down as a mulch...very soft under summer's bare feet. I've posted a high resolution picture of my garden here without the labels if you want to see it in its natural state. 

As you can see, it's been a busy month getting plants and seeds in the ground and quite a few greens out and into the family salad bowl.  It's also been a busy month at KGI "headquarters".  We harvested a bumper crop of public awareness raising this past month due to an Associated Press article that featured our efforts to bring about a kitchen garden revival.  The article appeared in over 30 papers across the US and has attracted a number of energized people to our effort.  Welcome newcomers!

Speaking about reaching out to new folks, I continue to brainstorm ideas for reaching out to people, some old, some new.  In the new category, I've recently posted a new short video to youtube,com  which hopefully will get people thinking and, ultimately, eating in a different way.  If nothing else, it's good for a chuckle.  Please pass on the link if you find it worthwhile.  We're also adding prizes to our "Grow-Off Show-Off" competition, too, so be sure to check that out.  Grand prize is $500 and all the international celebrity one gardener can handle.  

For those of you who can't make it to Scarborough, Maine for our celebration of Kitchen Garden Day, why not throw a little garden party of your own?  That's the best way I know to grow the number of home-growers: by bringing new people into kitchen gardens  - whether big, small, urban or rural - to show them the quantity, quality, and diversity of crops a small plot can produce.  

I know this works because I just recently helped some neighbors who attended our Kitchen Garden Day party last year plant their first garden.   They're delighted to be eating their first home-grown foods ever.  If that's not cause for celebration, I don't know what is. 

Happy summer,

PS: Next month, I'll report from southern France: ooh la la, good things ahead!

Posted by at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 www.growoffshowoff.org      

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Longtime readers of this newsletter know that when it comes to promoting home gardening and home-made foods, we'll pretty much try anything. We've appealed to people's "higher" emotions, their sense of reason, and their desire to create a better, healthier world for their children and grandkids. Now, we're trying something new: bribery.

Well, not really bribery and not really new. We're not actually paying off people to advertise their gardens and gardening passion, but encouraging them with the lure of international fame and fortune.

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Grow-Off Show-Off contest where the gardeners of the world have a chance to strut their organic stuff! One part Victory Garden, one part American Idol, the Grow-Off Show-Off pits gardeners against one another in a friendly, light-hearted creativity competition to see who can come up with the cleverest and most effective ways of singing the praises of home-grown foods. 

Junkfood and processed food companies spend billions of dollars a year pitching their products to us and our families.  While we can't outspend them, we can "outcreate" them and we can use something that they can't: the truth! 

We're tickled pink to have Mother Earth News as our co-sponsor.  They'll be kicking in our grand prize of $500 and helping us get the word out via their great magazine and website.  Other companies donating prizes include Mantis, Patagonia, Johnny's Selected Seeds and Neptune's Harvest, over a $1000 worth of prizes in all. 

As you'll see from the contest website, we're really open to just about any type of entry.  Whether you choose to paint your car with garden slogans, make a yard sign, direct your own YouTube video, or film yourself walking around in public with your buddies dressed as your favorite vegetable is entirely up to you. 

I'm hoping you'll have some fun with this and give it a try.  Anyone or group (a community garden, school garden, etc) may enter.  We welcome international entries and entries in other languages.  In the case of the latter, please include a an English translation (or transcript, in the case of a short online video). 

And remember: it's alright to show off a bit when you've got a good thing to show...and we do!

Until next month,

PS: This year's Kitchen Garden Day is Sunday, August 26th.  Please start bringing some gardeners together in your area to plan an event.  Let me know by e-mail how I can help you.  That's what I'm here for! 

Posted by at 8:24 AM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Finally, be sure to celebrate Earth Day this Sunday by getting your hands in some earth of your own!

Asparagus photo credit: Stieglitz

Posted by at 12:27 PM | Permalink

To read the full newsletter online, please go here: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletterfebruary07.html 

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Envy is not an evolved emotion, but I have to admit to feeling pangs of it at the sight of these plump, colorful potatoes.  They arrived in my e-mail inbox courtesy of New Zealand gardener, Rachel Knight, who grew them and is the subject of our latest kitchen gardener profile.

It's not that I don't have potatoes of my own.  We grew six varieties last season and still have a number of them left.  The problem is that mine look too much like what they are: tubers harvested in October stored until late February in less than optimal conditions.  My family and I are quite new to our current house, so we're still getting to know what works where, inside and out.  Our potatoes have held up surprisingly well in our cool basement with very little sprouting.  Within a couple of weeks, we will have made our way through all the large and medium ones and will be down to the nugget-sized ones, many of which will end up as seed potatoes. 

Seeing this photo and the different varieties it features made me think about just how undiscovered the potato is for many gardeners and cooks.  Sure, we all know what a potato is, may have grown some, and probably know a handful of recipes that call for them. That said, most us are probably still just scratching the surface of what this white-fleshed wonder can do.  This thought led me to take a quick inventory of my family's own potato usage. 

As some of you will know from previous newsletters, I live in a Belgo-American household, so potatoes are a staple in our cooking.  Here are some of the different ways that we've prepared ours over the course of the past year in no particular order: mashed, baked, boiled, oven-roasted, pan-fried, Belgian fries, potato soup, latkes, potato bread, Spanish potato tortilla, Flemish-style mashed potatoes (stoemp), potatoes au gratin, and various potato salads in the summer.  We, of course, use them in other ways too such as in soups and stews, but these are the dishes that came to mind where potatoes play the starring role. 

This list isn't bad, but it could be longer and more culturally diversified.  For example, I'd love to try my hand at making home-made potato gnocchi or spicy, potato-filled somosas .  For me, the joy of cooking is stepping out of the comfort zone to explore uncharted territory.  Occasionally, I find myself completely lost in the culinary wild with various burns and cuts, not to mention a bruised ego. 

More often than not, though, I find my way back to something that's not only palatable, but quite tasty.  And when I'm really good, my cooking manages to arouse a whole range of emotions in my eaters and dinner guests: pleasure, wonder, gratitude, and - who knows - maybe even a touch of envy. 

Hang in there until next month.  The days are getting longer, warmer, and brighter for most of us and more bountiful for others like Rachel whose summer season is reaching peak.

Posted by at 1:59 PM | Permalink

To read the full newsletter online, please go here

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Political scientists talk about the United States as a closely fought battle between red and blue.  From a climatologist's perspective, though, the red is clearly winning. 

The map above recently released by the National Arbor  Day Foundation shows changes in US Hardiness Zones over the course of the past 16 years.  While there are a few pockets of bluish gardeners who have actually lost a zone, the vast majority of the country has seen its climate slip into the red. 

I am located in the southern tip of coastal Maine which has gone from Zone 5 to a Zone 6.  I can't deny that there is a selfish and opportunistic side of me that fantasizes about what these few extra degrees will do for the grape vines and peach tree I planted last spring.  But then I wake up and remember that climate change is not simply a few extra vineyards here and a few less sugar maple groves there.  We are talking about an extreme global makeover, the impacts of which no one can accurately predict.  What is clear is that we all need to do what we can - as individuals, communities and countries - to reduce and offset our global warming causing activities. 

This will not come as much of a surprise, but I am convinced that we kitchen gardeners have an important role to play in this challenge.  The highly industrialized food and agriculture systems of North America, Europe and Japan do not run on compost, sweat and hope,  but on fossil fuels.  According to Richard Heinberg, author of the highly acclaimed book "Powerdown", over 400 gallons of oil equivalent are expended to feed each American each year.  Clearly, we can and must bring that number down by increasing the amount of food produced locally. 

Who is more qualified than we  - the "localest" eaters of all - to the lead the way towards this delicious new food system? 

Posted by at 9:29 AM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

You see a long line of parents and grandparents, over 500 people in all, waiting in line for something.  It's the holiday season and you ask yourself: "So which one are they waiting for: the new Sony Playstation 3 or the Nintendo Wii?"  If you are feeling cynical about humankind, you might even wonder: "Why aren't they fighting each other for better position like they usually do?"

Would you believe me if I told you that these peaceful-looking people aren't waiting in line for the latest electronic gift sensation, but for a free heirloom apple tree?

Welcome to Wanganui, New Zealand.  Some of us in the Northern Hemisphere may think of New Zealanders as an upside-down kind of people.  They drive on the left, their seasons are the opposite of ours, and they use funny names and words such as a "chilly-bin" (a cooler), "brekkie" (breakfast), and "kornies" (corn flakes).

While some of what they say and do may seem upside down to us, New Zealanders are some of the most upright and honest folks on the planet.  The global anti-corruption NGO "Transparency International" voted New Zealand tied for first place with Finland  as the least corrupt nation.   In case you're wondering, the UK ranks 11th, Australia 9th, Canada 14th, and the US 17th.  Chad tied with Bangladesh for last place at 158th.

Honest people like honest pleasures and what could be more honest than a  heirloom apple?  The idea for Wanganui's apple tree give away program came from Mark Christensen of the Central Districts Tree Crops Association who sees the project as being as much about public health as it home gardening.

The heritage variety being distributed is called "Monty's Surprise".  "There they go again with their funny names" you might be tempted to say, but there's nothing funny about cancer.  Of all the good eating apples tested by Christensen, Monty's Surprise had the highest level of cancer-fighting "procyanidin and quercetin flavonoid compounds", 4 times as many as other popular apples such as Red Delicious. 

Based on the public's response to the project, you'd think the organizers were handing out free drugs of a less wholesome sort.  In the end, Christensen gave away over 800 trees (including 200 to schools) and ended up having to turn hundreds of people away.   Local health officials were also stunned by the success of the launch.

“What blew us away more than anything was that people were prepared to give the time and energy for something that’s not for immediate benefit,” commented Anne Kauika of Wanganui's Public Health Center.

In an age that values instant gratification over patience, it's encouraging to see that there are still people who are prepared to take the slow and winding road (also known as the "scenic route") in life instead of the superhighway. 

Next year, Christensen is planning on giving away 4000 more trees and has started a similar research project to study which heirloom tomato varieties have the highest levels of the cancer-fighting antioxidant lycopene. 

I can already hear him at a future tree give-away: "Would you like a Brandywine with that Monty's Surprise?" 

Best holiday wishes,

PS: Thanks to all of you who contributed in some way to Kitchen Gardeners this past year.  We're bringing our 2006 funding appeal to an end and would appreciate whatever gesture of support you can offer, be it an online donation, a check, or something else you feel you can contribute.   We now have 2900 people from 60 countries on our mailing list.  Together, we can grow a better food system.

PPS: Mark Christensen has sent us a copy of the brochure (available here as a pdf file) handed out with each apple tree for anyone interested in exploring a tree or seedling give-away program in his or her community.  The free trees were distributed this year at a local nursery which apparently had its best day with many tree-takers staying on to do some shopping.

Posted by at 11:23 AM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

For many of us, this is the time of year for reflecting on, celebrating, and feeling thankful for the year's harvest.  If you are lucky, you not only enjoyed some of the best and most flavorful food that nature has to offer this past growing season, but are still enjoying it either through an extended season, a root cellar, or through whatever canning or preserving you might do. 

It should also be a time, however, for thinking about those who are not partaking of the feast, those who have been left out or marginalized, and others whose voice is too soft to be heard at society's dinner table.  This message hit home to me last month after sending out the October newsletter.  I received the following short, polite reply from the Rev. Renis Morian of Guyana, South America:

"Some people are doing this (kitchen gardening) for pleasure but here in Guyana, I have just launched a poverty reduction project to help 300 families.  Here it's not about fun, it's about human survival."

Rev. Morian went on to ask if KGI could help secure a seed donation for his project.  Well, as you can imagine, I felt called to duty by "higher powers".  As a start-up effort ourselves, we're not as well resourced as we'd like to be.  We are, though, rich in terms of our ideas and contacts.  A few days and e-mails later, KGI had secured $300 worth of donated seed from Territorial Seed Company which we will be sending down to our friends in Guyana later this week (thank you Josh and Lori at Territorial for making that happen!).

The more of this work I do, the more I see how much work there is to be done.  Some might feel discouraged by that realization, but the positive flipside is that there is no shortage of ways that we, together and as individuals, can have a positive influence on the food system, whether it's thousands of miles away or in our own backyard.

Much closer to home, I've recently seen all the good that can come when a group of people put their mind to something.  Earlier this year, I was talking with Deb McDonough who lives in my neighborhood, is a KGI member, and helped organize our neighborhood Kitchen Garden Day celebration this past year.  We're both "can do" type people, so much that we tend to take on so many things that we end up becoming "can't do" people.  In a "can do" moment, though, we put our heads together and agreed that it was time that our local elementary school had a kitchen garden. 

The problem was that neither of us felt we could afford to be the driving force behind yet another time-hungry project.  Still, we knew that it was the right thing to do and that, time or no time, we were probably as (un)qualified as anyone else to launch it.  What followed might aptly be called a pint-sized miracle.  While both of our us were bracing to push the bureaucratic equivalent of a boulder up a hill, we suddenly realized that it wasn't a boulder but a well-packed snowball and that, without knowing it, we were already on top of the hill!  All that was needed was to give the ball a push down. 

Within the first days of proposing the idea, we had found an enthusiastic and diplomatic teacher who offered to be the project's in-house champion.  Within a month, we had a group of over 20 families who were prepared to help out in some way either by volunteering time or contributing materials.  Within six weeks, we had organized two work parties for preparing the ground and building a raised-bed garden .  And within two months, the kids were out in their new garden spreading straw on the walkways, planting garlic (see photos above), and making plans for a garlic-bread feast.  If that isn't the snowball effect, I don't what is. 

Victor Hugo once wrote that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.  On its better days, I like to think that Kitchen Gardeners International is an organization whose time has come.  I'm hoping that you'll agree and find some way of joining us in the days, weeks, and months ahead. 

Together, we can bring more people to the table.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Posted by at 3:21 PM | Permalink

Posted by at 5:14 PM | Permalink

To read the full newsletter, please go here:
http://www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletterseptember06.htm

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Happy autumn or spring, depending on where you are in this big gardening world of ours. Today has a crisp ,fall-like feel to it in my neck of the woods with the temperature barely topping 60 degrees (16 C), if at all. Looking out my home office window towards my backyard, I see many of the telltale signs of a New England autumn: apples hanging from the tree, corn stalks, onions, pumpkins and winter squash curing in the sun, and the uppermost leaves of our white birch tree starting to change.

It is hard to believe that less than a month ago that same backyard space was filled Kitchen Garden Day (KGD) revelers thinking summer thoughts (to ward off the rain drops in our case) and enjoying the fragrant and juicy flavors of the season via a tomato tasting party. We had a good turnout of 30 people who toured 3 kitchen gardens in our neighborhood. Our celebration (see pictures here) was just one of many that took place. I want to share one KGD report I received by e-mail from Kirsty McKinnon of Norway (part of whose Kitchen Garden Day feast is captured in the photo above):

Kitchen Garden Day is over for this year. A great success according to ourselves! The weather was beautiful. More visitors than we had hoped for came and joined us to celebrate the Kitchen Garden. Everyone was delighted when invited to taste the various dishes we had prepared for the Kitchen Garden feast. We also displayed a family medicine chest made from ingredients from the garden and talked about medicinal herbs and their uses in our respective countries. Plants for vegetable dying were also exhibited. And of course we wandered in the garden and visitors were invited to collect seeds. We are very much inspired to continue the work and look forward to next year’s Kitchen Garden Day.

Well, Kirsty, your report and your beautiful photos have "inspired us back" to make next year's celebration even better. Please mark your calendars already for next year's party on August 26, 2007. My highly-biased opinion as a KGD event organizer is that the day offers a unique opportunity for local communities to gather around home-grown and home-made foods and that participants are delighted to peek into other people's gardens. As you may already know, we received some great press coverage this year and our sign campaign is off to a promising start. We're really making a difference in how people think about their food, so please keep it up and help us spread the word.

I had better wrap things up as my boys will soon be home from school and we'll need to start thinking about what's on the menu for dinner. Tonight is soccer night for my youngest son, so we'll need to come up with something fast and satisfying. We made up our yearly batch of freezer pesto a couple weeks back so that's always an option, but it seems a shame to tap into those winter reserves when there are fresh tomatoes and basil still coming out of the garden. Plus, we've got red peppers, zucchini and eggplant ready for harvesting so maybe it'll be ratatouille served over rice or couscous?

Anyway, I'll figure it out. This is one of those "good problems" we kitchen gardeners are happy to face.

All the best,

Posted by at 1:03 PM | Permalink

This month, Darrol Shillingburg of Las Cruces, New Mexico gets us thinking about what it means to be a "principled gardener".

To read the full newsletter, please go here:
http://www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletterjuly06.htm

Posted by at 6:52 PM | Permalink

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Meet Maxim and Sebastian, the unofficial poster boys for our new "We Grow Food" sign campaign and, more importantly, my two kitchen gardening sons. 

I love the graininess of this picture because it harks back to days when color photo processing was still touch and go and when kids grew up with gardens in their lives.  While this picture may offer an aesthetic wink to the past, it is all about the future and the type of food we'd like our children and our children's children to be eating. 

My sons, ages 8 and 6, have been fortunate in that they have always lived in close proximity to the production of food.  When my family and I lived in Brussels, Belgium, our boys spent their weekends at their Belgian grandparents' house in the country chasing after chickens and eating impromptu snacks from the garden. 

Now that we're in the US, Maxim and Sebastian spend their time in our yard chasing after each other (Chickens, you see, aren't allowed in my neighborhood. Large barking dogs, yes. Noisy lawnmowers, of course. Tire-screeching teenage drivers, you betcha.  But, please, no chickens...we're a civilized, upwardly mobile community!) and looking for something good to eat.  These days, for Maxim, it's strawberries and, for Sebastian, sweet peas. 

When they're not grazing, they are my first line of defense against potato beetles. I realize that my sons are not your typical American kids, unfortunately. These days, in my town, the average boy knows more about debugging a computer than he does debugging a garden.

Here's where you and our sign campaign come in.  Recently, members of KGI's advisory board had the clever idea that if kitchen gardens are not as popular with kids as SpongeBob sweetened cereal, maybe it's because we're not advertising them as much and as creatively as we should.  One person conjured up the slogan used by Paul Newman for his line of food products: "shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good."

So, here's how the KGI sign campaign works.  Anyone sufficiently shameless can participate.  All you need to do is create a sign that advertises kitchen gardens, gardening, food self-reliance, etc. in your own special way.  You decide on the slogan or jingle.  You choose the artwork.  If you want to include the web address igrowfood.com or wegrowfood.com as a way of connecting it to the campaign, that would be great, but it's not required. 

To spice it up a bit, we'll make it into a contest.  The makers of the best signs (as judged by the KGI advisory board) will win valuable prizes including:

• a copy of the famous "Ball Blue Book of Preserving"

• a Cobrahead Precision Weeder and Cultivator

• a $40 gift certificate to Johnny's Selected Seeds

• and 15 minutes of international fame through the KGI website

This package may not be as much as Kelloggs pays Spongebob for his advertising services, but you've got to start somewhere. 

Signs will be judged on the following criteria:

• Message (5 points): How well does it communicate the message of regular people growing food? Does the sign include the web address igrowfood.com or wegrowfood.com on it as a way of connecting new people with KGI?

• Creative expression (5 points): How creative is the sign in terms of shape, colors, artwork, etc?

• Visibility (5 points): Where is the sign located? How big is it? Who and how many people can see it? Has the sign received any local press?

• Overall effect (5 points): How well do the elements come together to form a harmonious and effective whole?

To enter, please send us two photos: one of your sign and one of you standing proudly with your sign.  If your sign is in a foreign language, please include an English language translation.  Deadline for entries is the end of the day Friday, July 21st.  Photos can be sent digitally via e-mail or by regular mail (to Kitchen Gardeners International, 7 Flintlock Drive, Scarborough, ME 04074). Please include your name and where you live. 

Thanks for having some fun with us via this new project. 

Remember: where will the next crop of kitchen gardeners come from if we don't plant them ourselves? 

Happy summer,

KGI Donation Request: 1 piece of paper, 5 drops of printer ink, and 10 minutes of your time

We have updated our flyer.  Could we ask you to print it out on your computer and post it in your community where you think gardeners and local food lovers might see it?  We've had good luck posting it on public bulletin boards in town halls, natural food stores, and libraries. Thanks!

Download the flyer here (Word document, virus-free!)

Posted by at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

To read the full newsletter, please go here: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/newslettermay06.html

Dear Kitchen Gardener,

Ahh, rhubarb.  She and I are once again back on good terms  It was only a few weeks ago that I had all but given up on the plant, chalking the relationship up as yet another case of unrequited garden love.  I loved her, but she didn't love back, or so I thought.

This story started over a year  ago when my gardening friend Frank gave me a couple small but healthy looking plants which I deftly managed to kill within two weeks of receiving them.  I shuddered at the thought of the story hitting the press and what it might do to my reputation.

ORGANIC GARDENING EXPERT ACCUSED OF KILLING RHUBARB PLANTS

(Ass