Spring Harvest

Yesterday may have been the first day of Summer, but in our garden the harvest still sings of Spring.

There has been a TON of rain this Spring in Illinois. As a result, Tom and I have not gotten out to the garden as much as we'd like to and the weeds have really thrived. Yesterday we played some serious catch up and weeded our little butts off. Thankfully, we were rewarded with a beautiful spring harvest of beets, greens, peas, chives, basil, fennel, oregano, lemongrass, and marigolds. We're still waiting on the broccoli and cabbage, and unfortunately our spinach was completely ravaged by little caterpillars. We'll be using a row cover on the spinach we plant for the fall harvest. The damage those little pests did was incredible!


The real superstars right now are the beets. We chose to grow Detroit Dark Red which turned out just beautifully. We've been munching on the greens for the past few weeks, and yesterday we harvested a huge bundle of plump, juicy, beet roots. Tom immediately roasted them up for us when we got home, and they came out so good that we've already eaten them all up!

We also had a lot of fun both harvesting and shelling the peas. You wouldn't think shelling peas would be such a great time, but when it's peas from your own garden, it's actually quite satisfying. However, despite the fact that we planted loads of plants, we still only ended up with half a tupperware full of the little guys. We'll definitely plant a whole lot more when we try for a fall harvest.

The broccoli is being quite frustrating having produced no heads yet. The plants are beautifully lush with big green leaves and they don't seem to show any signs of bolting. Yet, we still don't have any heads. We'll wait a bit longer to see if we get any. Otherwise, we'll have to resign ourselves to just the stems.

The cabbage is doing well, just coming along slowly. It's finally starting to head up which is great. Both the tomato and pepper plants have flowered which is always exciting! So far the only loss is the spinach, and we get another shot at that in the fall. I'd say the garden is going very well as we enter into summertime.

Morel and Asparagus Hunting!

Several weeks ago, I went morel hunting with my parents in the woods behind their house, who live in an undisclosed Midwestern state. You see, as a morel huntsman, I must keep my hunting grounds secret, for fear you will find it and eat all of them.


Morels are an incredibly delicious (and pricey) mushroom. They pop up in mid-spring and can be found in woods across the country and beyond. They are popular in Illinois and several nearby states. There are all sorts of tips on where you can find them with varying degrees of usefulness. I've had success looking near dead or dying elm trees. This year, a pile of dead trees was the most plentiful spot.

This was my second year hunting. It was fun, but there didn't seem to be as many as last year. There's an exhilaration to wandering around the woods searching for the evening's meal. There aren't really any poisonous mushrooms that look much like morels, but a few look close enough so please confirm any finds. Since I waited so long to post this, you'll have to wait until next year for morels. Morels are very identifiable and delicious so I highly recommend trying to hunt them yourself!

For guidance, I used the new book "Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois & Surrounding States." One of the authors, Joe McFarland, was at the Urbana Farmer's Market a few weeks ago. He signed my copy with a threat to stay off his morel patch. The book mentions several other tasty looking mushrooms, which I'll have to keep my eye out for.

In the book Omnivore's Dillema, Michael Pollan has an excellent section on morel hunting, so I recommend checking it out! You should actually read the entire book while you're at it.

I fried some morels with an experimental batter, but it didn't turn out good enough to post. I brought some home to Susan who fried them deliciously. She will follow up on that one!

My parents and I also stopped by a local farm to hunt some asparagus. Since it was in a field of asparagus, it was much easier to find than the morels. I still can't get over how asparagus looks while it grows. It just sticks out of the ground! Hilarious! Asparagus takes several years to establish itself, so we don't get the joy of growing it ourselves since we garden in a rented plot at a community park. However, as soon as we have our own spot of land we will definitely grow this awesomely delicious veggie.

garden's first bounty: delicious baby greens

Last week Tom and I harvested our first bounty of the season from our garden. We were able to remove a ton of baby greens from the garden including buttercrunch, spinach and mesclun mix. Additionally, we needed to thin out the beet seedlings which turned into a wonderful addition to our baby greens salad mix.

On Saturday the farmer's market really kicked it up a notch with loads of strawberries, green onions, greens, and asparagus. As a result, I decided to make a delicious and %100 local salad highlighting some of our purchases during this early part of the growing season.

Baby Greens Salad with Honey-Strawberry Dressing

Ingredients

For Salad
Around 4 cups of Baby Greens
2 Cups Strawberries sliced
6 Green Onions chopped

For Dressing
2 tbs Honey
1 cup Strawberries
1 tbs Rosemary

Blend strawberries and honey for dressing. Toss with salad ingredients. Eat up!

All ingredients were purchased at the market or harvested from our garden!

book review: animal, vegetable, miracle by barbara kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (AVM) is Barbara Kingsolver's non-fiction memoir which follows her family's decision to eat only locally produced food for an entire year. They commit to eating only the food they grow and raise themselves, or food produced from within the county they live. The novel is largely Kingsolver's story as she breaks the chapters into a month by month journey of food life. However, her husband and daughter supplement the book with recipes and essays which compliment Kingsolver's narrative. The novel is a comprehensive look at what goes into living a life of local food with in-depth observations on small-scale farming, cheese making, home gardens, raising animals for food, foraging, eating locally while traveling, and much much more.

I read AVM in February, the perfect time of the year to dive into this novel. As Kingsolver notes, February is "the hungry month" where there is little if any local food available. However, by the end of February and into March it's time to start planning for the next growing season by starting seedlings and ordering garden equipment. When I read AVM I knew I'd be gardening again, but it was the success and joys presented by Kingsolver which really inspired me to become better prepared for this year's growing season. She inspired me to consider the plants I chose for this year not just for their immediate rewards, but for those that will preserve well as a source of local food through the winter. The novel presents how it is possible to eat locally through the entire year, but makes it clear that it is important to prepare for the winter all through harvest-time. As a result, Tom and I will be investing in a food saver for freezing and canning equipment for preserving. Before reading this novel I did not feel fully committed to the local food diet, but Kingsolver has won me over. I highly recommend the novel for anyone interested in local eating, especially those trying to raise a family in this grossly industrial food society.

One of my favorite parts of the novel is when Kingsolver and her husband travel to Italy. Their travels across the Italian countryside were inspiring and show that eating responsibly and respectfully is absolutely possible when on vacation. I've never considered myself a huge fan of Italian food, but after reading this novel I feel inspired to travel there and learn what real Italian food culture is all about. Somehow I don't think we've quite got it down here in Illinois.

I was surprised to read Kingsolver's arguments against vegetarianism. Although I was not entirely convinced, I found her novel to include the most compelling argument against vegetarianism I have ever read. However, I must emphasize that her arguments against not eating meat do not translate to an argument for eating meat in the way the majority of meat eating happens in this country. Rather, it is an argument for respecting and understanding the process and animals which go into the production of meat for food. More importantly, she argues for bringing the production of meat into the hands of the people eating the food. Knowing where the animal was bred, raised, and how it was fed are just as important as respecting the life taken. The chapter provides a new perspective on meat eating and I would urge all vegetarians to read the book before passing judgment on my poor efforts at restating her beliefs. That being said, I could personally never pluck a chicken or slaughter a lamb and have no intention of changing my mind when it comes to the decision whether or not to eat a dead animal.

A,V,M is an inspiring story, beautifully written and wonderfully educational. Ideally, everyone would read this novel, but I recommend it most highly to all those interested in local eating, home gardening, and the slow food movement.

To learn more about the book and Kingsolver's family visit: http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

hardening off the seedlings

Happy seedlings enjoy a short trip to the balcony. After about a week they'll be ready for the garden.

It's finally time to start planting all our wonderful tomato, pepper, and herb plants out in the garden! It's very exciting and I can't wait to get all the little guys and girls out in the dirt where the belong. Since February they have been nurtured, cared for and loved. Now it's time for them to grow up and venture out into the big, sunny, and nutrient filled garden plot. However, there is one last step required before the little plants are ready for the big life. The process is called "hardening off" and it will greatly improve the plants chances for successful growth outdoors.

For 7-10 days before planting your seedlings out in the garden you should start setting plants out during the day and bringing them in at night. Set the plants outside for most of the day in order to transition them into living under harsher conditions than the cozy countertop or windowsill they enjoyed indoors.

Start by placing them out in a semi-shady area for the first couple days; somewhere that gets a few hours of full sunlight, but not an entire day. After a few days, start positioning the plants where they'll get more and more sun. If there is a hard rain or a particularly windy day make sure to keep the plants indoors.

Near the end of the week they should be able to comfortably sit under full sun for the whole day. Make sure they stay well watered during this process. If after a week the plants are not showing any signs of stress, you're ready to plant them out in the garden.

Some ways in which you can start the "hardening off" process are as follows:

• as soon as your seedlings start to present themselves begin the practice of "petting." Gently, sweep your hands across the tops of the plants, or agitate them a bit by shaking their containers. In this way you'll promote stronger stem growth.
• a few weeks into the seedling growth process set a fan to low and allow to it blow on the seedlings a few hours a day.
• on nice days keep windows open in the room the seedlings are living in order to promote air circulation (make sure the temperature is warm enough first!).

Unfortunately for Tom and I, our balcony never really gets full sun for more than half the day. However, even this much is enough to improve the success of our seedlings in the garden.

By this weekend these guys will be ready to go! Check out some more pics of our seedlings enjoying the balcony and getting a taste for the outdoors:

the time to garden is now

Our first sprout of the season was a little Calabrese Broccoli we named Charlie because he appeared on Darwin's 200th birthday.

The gardening season is starting to ramp up! The average last frost date for central IL has passed (although you wouldn't think so from today's chilly weather) and we're steadily approaching the frost free date of May 12th. This means it's time to start planning your garden!

This is our second year gardening at a rented space in Meadowbrook park in Urbana, IL. Our plot is 17x30 and cost an affordable 60 dollars for the season. Last year we purchased most of our plants from the farmer's market and various plant sales in addition to direct sowing certain seeds. However, this year we've taken it to the next step by starting our seeds indoors. This method will save us a ton of money in the long run when you consider most seedlings go for at least two dollars at the market and seed packets, anywhere from 10 to 100 seeds, cost four dollars or less (usually less!).

But it's not the money that has inspired us to start our seedlings indoors; rather, the satisfaction of watching a plant grow from a tiny little seed into something beautiful and delicious is a profoundly fulfilling experience the majority of people today don't even realize they're missing. Nurturing my seedlings, watching them grow bit by bit everyday, figuring out what they need, and developing a relationship with them (yes I have a relationship with my plants) is a wonderfully, poetic experience which has improved my life. As a result, I want it to be known to all that growing your plants, from seed, is utterly and completely worth every ounce of energy required.

Oh and one more thing: growing plants from seeds is easy! People may think it takes a lot of skill or knowledge to grow a garden. Honestly, the most important factor is commitment. Yes, I read up on different methods and follow gardening websites, but if all you do is read the back of the seed packet you've still got enough information to grow your own food.

It's not too late to get started with your garden. There are lots of great resources out there for all levels of gardeners such as the Illinois Extension website (perfect for midwestern gardeners!), Garden.org, and organicgardening.com.

Here is a picture of our seedlings and the light stand Tom built for them:



This light stand has proved invaluable for our little seedlings. It has been perfect for starting our plants early when the sun outside was out for too short a time for our little guys and girls to thrive. Now we are happy to show off seedlings with strength to their stems and color in their leaves.

Click here for directions on how to build this stand.

Seedling love:











Pictured are a variety of seedlings including tomatoes, peppers, marigolds, basil, parsley, and more.

I look forward to sharing recipes with you all that will be inspired and created from the vegetables these plants produce.