Local food and thanks to farmers

Fresh garlic needing to be cleaned

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

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

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

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

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

This is about as big as my carrots ever get.

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

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

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

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

A visit home

A rainy June

A quick trip back to the Piedmont to take care of some garden things -- getting a dead white pine removed and mowing the grass -- as well as taking Woody to see our vet, found lush growth in the garden.

OK, it's good news that it's been rainy, and I was glad not to find a bunch of crispy plants. It was a bit daunting, however, to see HOW much pokeweed, Oxalis, Digitaria, Abutilon, and other weeds had popped up and grown in the vegetable beds in just a couple of weeks, not to mention volunteer redbud, sassafras, and black cherry seedlings elsewhere in the landscape. 

The front meadow is ridiculously exuberant, too;  the common milkweed, planted for monarch caterpillars, has thrived and is falling onto the driveway, and all of the other meadow plants (Solidago, Thermopsis, Helianthus hirsutus, Indian grass, etc. are huge).

Eggplant in container (surrounded by crabgrass!)

The Campsis radicans  on the trellises in front of the garage are thriving.  They were planted this spring, and have already reached the trellis tops.  Hopefully, we'll get some flowers later this summer.

But most rewarding (aside from making a start on the weeding) was harvesting new potatoes (yellow, red, and purple) and yellow and white onions from the satellite garden, along with some nice large leeks grown in a container, and ruby chard in the kitchen window block of the main vegetable garden (doing well in spite of previous problems with root-knot nematodes).

Chard (after harvesting dinner leaves)

Things are doing well in the main vegetable garden blocks following a couple of seasons of being fallow and (possibly) the beneficial nematode treatment, too.  A post later that summer after application suggested I wasn't very convinced.

Except for some fish (from the freezer), everything for dinner was harvested from the Piedmont garden this afternoon.  What fun!

And there are lots of blueberries to pick tomorrow.  And tomatoes to come here, too, as well as in the mountains.

I've added some photos to this post -- somehow, I got distracted yesterday by the weeding, and Woody's visit to the vet.  Happily, he received a clean bill of health, although he's slightly underweight -- masked by how furry he is.  He'll enjoy a bit more kibble.

Growing your own food

To grow everything you eat (or drink) would be (and is) a formidable task, and we've got centuries of world trade routes to underscore the interest in tea, coffee, sugar, and spices for centuries, as well as the currently active shipping of produce, meat, seafood, and frozen goods around the world, in a global marketplace.

Not to mention bananas, the cheapest fruit available in my supermarket today, but certainly not local or necessarily sustainably grown. 

But, my gardening companion enjoys having a banana each morning with his cereal, and it's hard to think of a reason (in the grand scheme of things) why I shouldn't indulge his habit.  OK, maybe I shouldn't support the small-scale (or big scale companies) that produce bananas throughout the tropical world, but ...

I had a delightful time at a Locavore potluck yesterday evening, but was amazed at how few folks had homegrown veggies in their dishes -- for example, lettuce, greens, or peas (or early strawberries) to offer as their dish to share. 

There was quite a bit of asparagus, which I hope (mostly) came from backyard beds, but one dish was labeled Chinese asparagus.  Hmm.  What I've seen in the markets lately has been from Mexico, before that Peru.

And it was a bit disappointing to see contributions of cantaloupe and blueberries and an attractive pepper, onion, and tomato salad --NOT local, or regional around here at this time of the year.

My vegetable garden (and the gardens I monitor) are overflowing with lettuces, mature purple mustards, overwintered chard, spinach, arugula, sugar snap peas, snow peas, newly sown chard, etc. 

Geez, I'm in a greens glut currently.  It's a good thing that they're good for you, and stir-fried with onions and garlic, are quite delicious.  And good as leftovers for breakfast (with local eggs) and with lunch, too!

My message was to start growing more veggies!  They're easy, delicious, and good to eat.

Easy vegetables and pricey produce

I'm just about finished revising a piece about vegetable gardening for beginners. 

This isn't a easy topic in 2500 words (my assignment).

Vegetable gardening IS easy, but...there are some basics - sun, good soil (created usually), plenty of water and nutrients, and a willingness to weed and harvest often.

So I enjoyed playing around with the Gardener's Supply Kitchen Gardening planner, to see how a 4' X 4' plot looked for a summer layout.  They're a great company, and I enjoy their e-newsletters and website, along with their products.

Gardener's Supply Kitchen Garden program result

This is what it looks like, but in the program, the names of the vegetables are shown -- very nice.

Another e-newsletter I received today from VegetableGardener.com had a story about Planting Pricey Produce.  Most vegetable gardeners can relate to this -- they want how much for a bunch of kale or red mustard in the farmer's market?  This is usually about when I'm tired of harvesting and eating kale from my own garden!  And hmm, my bunches of chard look pretty good, too.  And the baby beets last spring were excellent, too....

Now, I'm conveniently ignoring all the effort I've put into my soil, raised beds, watering, etc. as has the farmer, in addition to the expense of what I've added, in terms of soil amendments and organic fertilizers, not to mention the raised bed materials, etc. etc.

But, it definitely pays off over time to 'grow your own' --  in terms of cost, but more importantly in terms of tastiness, nutrition, and healthy produce.