Instant Fall on The Outerbanks

I had to wear long pants and a sweatshirt to work this morning for the first time this season. Last night I ate my first batch of collard greens, and harvested what will be the last of my peppers and tomatoes. Fall happened in exactly one day. Well, truth be told, it was a little slower than that, but you've gotta be able to improvise when you don't have a real shoulder season.

Collard greens are traditionally a fall crop, particularly in the south, but they were available as seedling in early Sept. So, I planted them. Worms ate the hell out of about half of them, a problem that will go away with round two. Thankfully! So, just as I'm eating my first batch of them. I'm still harvesting some late season peppers, cayennes to be precise. They, like my tomatoes refuse to ripen, because of the shortness of days and lack of intense heat, but the plants were still healthy, and calories were still being produced. Far be it from me to kill a viable food factory. You don't have to be too creative to know what to do with mature, but green peppers. They are still hot, tempered a bit by cooler nights and more abundant rain. They made great pepper vinegar. Perfect for a winter's worth of collard greens.

The green tomatoes are another story. Fried green tomatoes of course. They are great, but, involved . . . or I'm lazy, and I'm tryin' to watch my figure. So, I chopped them up with some small but mature butternut squash that I also kept in late. Threw in an onion and stewed up some fresh speckled trout that have been pretty plentiful this year.

I used a chicken stock from a baked chicken that I got at the farmer's market, for the stew. The chicken was a creation of it's own. I used local honey, scavenged persimmons, and shallots from the garden as a glaze and baked it in the oven with a little curry and coriander to finish.

I kind of blew it with mixed greens and lettuce this fall, I think I missed my window. But cauliflower, broccoli, collards, cabbage and turnips have turned up. Beets, Radishes, more turnips and collards should go in this weekend.

Things move a little slower in the Fall and winter, so hopefully that will lead to more blog updates. Also, fall is a great time to forage. Locally we get persimmons, cactus fruit, yucca flowers and acorns, if you re really motivated. But the sky is the limit. Perhaps an entry on the soon...

Mid-summer update

I apologize for the delay in posting, but what can I say. My days are punctuated by morning watering, evening harvest, and evening watering. If anyone is still reading this irresponsibly updated blog, that's my excuse.

I have produced, or aided in the production, of some pretty serious water melon, the usual crop of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc. The cantaloupe is really my crowning achievement, considering my ant population.

Canning has proven to be pretty easy, just follow the directions. No one has died yet. Pickling firmer vegetables has been easy. However, I've failed to make actual pickles, that is pickled cucumbers. They get mushy. Maybe I'm over cooking them, but I really cannot say. If anyone has a fool proof system, let me know.

Thanks

Promised Photo

Finally! There's the barrier. Take the power back from the critters, extend your season, wow your neighbors.

Canning . . . Or not

I gotta can man! I cannot let this one go. I have more than one garden bed at the house. Actually, I've probably got almost a thousand square feet of really great soil in easily accessible raised beds. I do want to install rainwater irrigation. I do want to up my production. I'd eventually like to have a small time produce farm. But right now the one thing I need to do is effectively, tastily and safely is preserve the veggies and fruits I do grow and gather in the most environmentally responsible manner. I gotta can.

The only thing worse than force feeding yourself a surplus of veggies, is throwing it away. Or force feeding it to your brother, watching him bloat, and then stink up the living room . . . not necessarily in that order, and I don't know if you can blame all of that on the veggies . . . Preservation is self preservation, in this case. It also breaks your veggie stocks into bite sized flavorful snack packs for later in the year. It also makes you feel really secure when you see shelf after shelf of food while listening to Ben Bernanke tell you that your retirement is gone so just deal with it.

Canning and pickling, like smoking or freezing will use some energy. It seems to me though that it is the most versatile method available, and let's face it. I'm not looking forward to zucchini jerky, if that is even a possibility, which I hope it isn't! Freezing is nice and arguably the closest thing to fresh, but even a chest freezer is not all that efficient a user of electricity. So, I'm willing to buy some jars a pressure cooker, and burn a little propane, if I can eat the stuff I grow all winter long. Botulism be damned!!

So, I called up my friend Abby who will graduate from culinary school this summer, got the supplies in order, and geared up for my tutorial. Let me tell you. I learned a lot. The central truth about canning is this. Follow directions or you might die! Pickling a cucumber is not as easy as pickling your liver. I thought being good at one might help with the other. Not so.

In truth, on my first try I failed, but it wasn't my fault. Honestly, it wasn't. I ran out of propane. Could have been having the pressure cooker cranked to eleven for a couple of hours straight. Who knows? I did however learn how to sterilize my vessels and I'm all gassed up and ready for my next crop. Let me tell you, force feeding myself and my family the blanched radishes I was going to pickle did not go over so well, but at least I know they were clean. Sterile even.

So, I'm waiting on some strawberries, cantaloupe, zucchini and others to come due, and then there is no stopping me. I will preserve the daylights out of my produce and foist it on my friends and family throughout the year.

Please feel free to share any anecdotes, recipes, or experience that might aid me in my quest.

Bambi Blockers

Bunny Barriers. Dog Deterrents, Vermin Vengeance. By any name, we are onto something.....Or we've ripped off something great. Pictures will be forthcoming, but a brief description will suffice for now. Five 1/2" by 10' long pvc pipes, holes drilled in the top of your garden box rails, a bag of zip-ties, a roll and a half of plastic chicken webbing, and two supporting boards are all you need to eliminate pests larger than one inch square from your garden.

The pipes are inserted in the vertical holes to create a sweet covered wagon shape. Two wood slats weigh down the webbing as it is stretched over the frame. The ends are semi-permanent. The sixteen foot span of webbing is easily removed and replaced by one person. Genius! Best of all, you can add insect screen or plastic sheeting to create a three season green house!

Barriers can be installed for 170$. We are looking to perfect the design however. If anyone knows of a source for 16' X 10' lightweight webbing, that would eliminate the need for many zip-ties. And thus, the carbon footprint of the barrier.

In other news. Gardens are going in and inquiries continue. Our prototype garden at the house is full of fresh greens, and the summer plants are coming in nicely. We are however experiencing howling NE winds and chilly mid-fifty temps today. So I hope the peppers make it. We are hoping to host a bit of an open house/produce party in mid to late June. I'm trying to gauge interest, so please post a comment if you might be into that sort of thing. Fresh local produce prepared by us and our friends for you to try, great gardens to see, and of course, local beer.

Come See Me

I will be at the Outerbanks Brewing Station this Sunday 4/19. The Brewing Station is hosting and Earthday event. I will be there. The garden we recently installed will be there, and there will be beer! The event runs from 11 to 5pm. Hope to see you there.

An Update, Then I Get Preachy

Well, in the way of an update. The Kittyhawk Woods 10k went off without a hitch this weekend. That's good, because Sydney was responsible for it. So, now that she has helped to raise a bunch of money for the Coastal Estuarine Reserve Foundation, CERF for short, we will be building some gardens in the coming weeks. I took advantage of the weekend off to replace the brakes on the Exxon Valdez. It took a Saturday and a half. I'm not willing to give the Lord's day to that godforsaken truck, so, in my world, last Sunday didn't start 'till noon. I hope no one was inconvenienced.

And now, to brass tacks . . . what does that mean anyway.

We've been planting a lot lately. This is my favorite time to garden really. Mainly because I'm not tired of it yet! But in all seriousness, this is the time when it seems such a natural thing to do. The Sun is here, offering its energy, but not yet torching the daylights out of your plants. Rain is plentiful. Days are warm, nights are cool, and the seeds in the ground right now, radishes, turnips, greens, carrots etc. are hearty. In spite of all of this pleasantness, a nagging question enters my mind as one group of seeds germinates while another takes a couple extra days, or for some reason doesn't start at all. Why build gardens for people? Or better yet, the question those potential customers ask in so many different ways: What's the point? Why not just go to the Teeter?

As these thoughts first crept into my noggin, I began to panic, then I relaxed as I remembered what I've gotten out of gardening. Let me be clear, we at Grow Your Own, are facilitators. We cannot guarantee that you will grow enough food in our standard eighty square foot container to feed a family of five for six months. You could, and you may, but that takes a degree of skill that may only be acquired over time. To learn those skills one thing is essential: experience. We are here to get you started down that road. So, what are we offering besides a rectangle full of dirt? To put it as plainly and succinctly as possible, having a garden will make you a better person!

Here's how, in no particular order:

Food production is an essential human skill. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I have a lot of faith in humanity, but . . . The last year has taught us that it never hurts to be prepared. Knowing how to produce food is critical to our survival, obviously. You may be asking, how will I produce a significant amount of food in my backyard? If the economy completely craps out how will my backyard garden sustain me? Well, it probably won't in the first couple of seasons. Maybe never. Maybe it is just a hobby, your zen moment after a hard day's work. But it will change your consciousness. If you ever grow cauliflower, for example, and spend an afternoon wrapping the leaves around the cauliflower head and gently tie it up with string to keep it white and edible, you will remember that. Every piece of cauliflower you eat, from that day on will be special. Your consciousness of the effort it takes to produce food will change the way you think about food.

Every time you, or your landscaper if you are fortunate enough to have one, fertilize your lawn, you might begin to ask questions. If my kids are eating those tomatoes, is it cool to apply that chemical that close to my garden? Is there another way to help the grass grow? Do I even need to help the grass grow? Do I need grass?

And price? You will undoubtedly supplement your garden with purchased produce, or certainly meat. All of the sudden a banana, which I challenge anyone to produce in their yard, on the outer banks of North Carolina, seems a steal at sixty cents a pound. You couldn't pick them yourself and fly them back from Costa Rica for that price. What about asparagus in winter, or strawberries year around. Would you drive to California's central valley, apologize to every migrant worker there without a health plan, pick up your arugula in February and drive back to the Carolina for a dinner party? And then there's the ever pressing question: Should you?

Which leads us to seasons. With a garden in your yard you will become highly aware of the seasons. In the spring you eat roots and greens, in the bountiful summer fruits and berries, in the fall roots again and greens, and in the winter. . . Well unless you can survive February on collard greens, I hope you canned something. It can be done, it was done for centuries before the world became "developed." And now, I'm not suggesting that you build a garden and live off the grid in one summer. I'm simply suggesting that by growing some of your own vegetables you will become more conscious of what it takes to grow a meal.

That consciousness will make you a better person. And each person made better in this community makes this community a better place to be. Who knows what one thousand backyard gardens could mean? I know at least it means one thousand individuals will be a little more conscious of what it takes to make a meal. It won't instantly solve America's obesity problem, or sort out farm subsidies. It won't save the planet from chemical pesticides and fertilizers. But it might create a group of people really concerned and informed about those and one hundred other issues. And at their out-of-season-produce-free dinner gatherings they might discuss ways to make this community and it's food supply better. It will certainly mean there are a thousand people out there who get just as excited as I do when they pass a horse show. Think of all that free nitrogen!!!

This past week I didn't grow a ton of tomatoes in my yard, but I did hear in the news that the G-20 summit decided to give several trillion more dollars to the International Monetary Fund to aid developing countries during the economic crisis. I couldn't help but wonder if by "help" they meant money to impose western values and food production policies on agrarian cultures in the developing world. I wouldn't have wondered that if I didn't have a garden, I'm just not that thoughtful. Poverty is not sustainable, it always ends in civil unrest, sooner or later. Unfortunately empires don't tend to be sustainable either, they always end in collapse. Can a garden in our backyard show us the middle of the road? I can't say, but it is something we haven't tried yet, and there is a lot of good metaphore material in that five by sixteen foot box.

Big Hills, Big Weekend.

The Outerbanks is not a region synonymous with hills. However, in the quaint village of Duck, there are a few to be had. And this past weekend we conquered one particular hill. Syd and I had the pleasure of installing our first legitimate client's garden. By legitimate I mean that: They were not a member of our family. They were not coerced in any way, and they found out about us through our marketing material.

Because I'm pushing thirty (still scared of the interwebs), and because I still don't have a facebook account, and because it's not my yard, I will not divulge the particular hill--because that would be creepy. I will however say that the hill overlooks the sound. We had to park the Exxon Valdez (that's the garden truck) in the cull-de-sac because, well, it leaks oil like the Exxon Valdez. I understand that the fact that an organic garden installation business drives a gigantic diesel truck that leaks oil like it's its job is a little ironic, but we plan to run it on vegetable oil, and besides, that is another blog topic. The garden was located down by the water. I'd say it was a sixty or seventy foot drop--no descent--in about two hundred yards. A typical garden requires the removal of approximately ten wheelbarrow loads of sod, and the delivery of twelve to sixteen wheelbarrow loads of soil, along with about one hundred sixty pounds of peat moss. All I have to say is Suzanne Summers can keep her thigh master. I'm doing just fine gardening.

That was number one. Sunday brought two more gardens. not quite as strenuous, but fulfilling all the same. One of them, I don't mind mentioning is located at the Outerbanks Brewing Station. Feel free to go check it out. It has no plants yet, and is not completely filled, but if you want to know what a sweet rectangle looks like, have at it. After a few frosty brews, it could look like a trapezoid, which we are totally willing to build for you.

In short: One weekend, three gardens, one of which may serve as a great advertisement. Not bad!! The workout is a really nice upshot, but I won't dwell on it, accept to say that we have a new product in the works. It's a garden for which we bring the material and you build it. I'll stand there and drink a twelve pack while you tote the lumber, lug the soil, and clean up the mess. I might even throw in a few complimentary encouragements like, "that's not how I would do that," or "could you grab me another beer?," or what is this, your first rodeo?" In all seriousness, we really do like building gardens.

How The Bernie Madoff Scandal is Helping With Our Business Plan

....Or how efficiency might be worth some serious driving. We've had several requests for long distance garden installs. At first burning forty gallons of diesel fuel to install a garden seemed a little like a bad idea, and possibly immoral. But wait. Syd had to drive Pine Knoll Shores, about four hours away to install a garden for her mother. That's right we make exceptions for family. After several spirited phone conversations, one alternator, one near death high speed stall, and one ulcer's worth of worrying on my part, she made it. Installed the garden and brought back a sweet recliner to boot. She also scored a manual meat grinder (circa 1968) for processing our worm food.

So, in honor of Madoff's guilty plea, we've decided to start our own pyramid scheme. Here's how it works:

If you live less than three hours away, we will build you a garden if you can sell two to your friends or neighbors (preferably next door neighbors). You don't even have to throw in the recliner. We've already got one. You should feed us and bring out fresh squeezed lemonade while we work.

If you live over three hours away, but less than five, you gotta line up three more gardens, that's a total of four. You also have to let us sleep at your house. Make us coffee in the morning and give us beer, Tylenol, and bourbon at night, not necessarily in that order.

If you live five hours away, but less than ten, you will have to sell 10 gardens, put us up for the night, take us out to a really nice dinner, rub our feet, and tell us how great we look since the last time you saw us. You will also have to furnish a doctors note for our real jobs, pack us a lunch for the way home, get a pack of pig's ears for the dog (she loves those things), and we are going to need a recliner, or some sort of apparatus that our worms will enjoy.

If you live more than ten hours away, you have to line up forty five gardens. We will install one for you. That's the demo. Then we will furnish you with Grow Your Own t-shirts, brochures, and your very own blog, and you will be our first franchisee. We will collect a reasonable percentage of your first year's profits, and the sky is the limit from there.

In all long distance garden situations, you will have to find a topsoil source, we will bring the garden box, amendments, labor and the huge truck to haul it all around.

We look forward to seeing you in your neighborhood soon.

Little Babies, Proud Parents and Why I Love Garbage

Gardening is like parenting, or how I imagine parenting to be, as I only have experience with the former. I have received several phone calls this last week from an elated Sydney heralding the emergence of a new seedling. What's more, each call might have sounded exactly the same. "Marc, we've got a new baby ______ (insert vegetable's name here). " I'm not making fun of her either, because when I return home no more than three or four hours later, I cannot help but lift open the cover on every single tray and see what my little babies are doing. The beets are my favorite. So colorful right from the start.

The only difference I can see between parenting and gardening in these instances is that when one of my coworkers gets a call from their spouse regarding their children and closes the conversation out with something like, "sure I can pick her up from school..." Everyone around looks at them knowingly as if to say, parenting is the most noble of endeavors and construction of this house can wait until you've ironed out that detail of your afternoon. When I hang up the phone beaming with the pride of a new father, I get quizzical looks. It's common knowledge that my family consists of a dog, who is usually standing right there. I don't want to explain because it's kind of embarrassing.
"What was that all about?"
"Oh, I just got news about another baby beet."
.......Silence. I can't even begin to describe the look, but it definitely has some disbelief, disdain, and genuine concern thrown in there.

The baby plants are not even the half of it. The worms. At least they have a heart of sorts. We have several worm boxes in the garage. These worms are little warp speed composting factories, and their castings offer a highly concentrated well balance plant food. Yes I have a garage full of worms and I collect their poo. These boxes are also for sale. I know that is shameless, but that is kind of the point.

It's hard to even know where to start with the worms. Unlike the plants that I feel like I actually am raising from infancy, the worms were adopted All ten pounds of them. We are talking ten pounds of actual worm here, traveling in a composted sawdust medium. Two pounds of worms in each container. That's right a pick-up truck load of writhing "red wigglers." That is their species, not some nickname.

The worms have been an adventure from the beginning. From their first night home when we inadvertently sealed the container too tight, and almost killed them all, to the realization that a household of three people and one dog doesn't produce nearly enough vegetable scraps to feed ten pounds of red wigglers. Also worms prefer their scraps chopped up, don't particularly enjoy coffee grounds, or at least not our coffee grounds, and best of all can tell you when they are not happy. If there is not enough food, air, moisture, darkness, or too much, moisture, light, or you don't hold your mouth just right when you check on them, They try to leave. It's really just like a baby crying, except you have to listen really closely if you want to hear the worms crying.

It was touch and go there for a few days. Like any new parents we wanted to do well, and as I've mentioned we almost killed the poor things through gross negligence. So, we had some guilt to cope with like any self-respecting parents. The moments that really brought Syd and I together as parents though revolved around our evening check of the boxes. Did they eat the food? Are they wiggling like they should? Was it really a good idea to try to dress that one in a pink pajamas when we can never be sure of their gender? And most importantly, why are they trying to leave??? Don't they like us? Eventually we worked out the kinks and we have three happy boxes of worms. We've sold some and actually had to split one group into two smaller ones. Yes they are reproducing!! After one night of separation anxiety, they seem to be doing well. And now, we've enlisted the help of several neighbors and it's totally normal to come home to a bag of putrid veggie scraps on the doorstep. It takes a village!

Which brings me to my next point. Garbage, or compost to be more precise. You have to have it, and when you expect to share it, you have to have a lot of it. Spent grain from the Outerbanks Brewing Station, seaweed from some unsuspecting sound front beach, horse manure, etc. by the truck load. Hauling around trash is one thing, it's the getting it that is making me seem crazy even to myself. I will do or say just about anything to get my hands on some good garbage. Or, even worse, spot some discarded material in public and think to myself, the worms would really like that. I mean people will do anything for their kids right?

Spring

The gardening books are on the sale rack in the bookstoors. It was sixty five degrees Friday and they are calling for a high of thirty nine on Monday. Let the guessing game begin! When to start and what to start with. It's definitely time to have some seedlings going in the garage, and ponder that ominous question; what does, "after danger of heavy frost," really mean anyway. One of Grow Your Own's good friends Diana has offered the following helpful information:

What’s available now?
Potatoes:
Kennebec
Russet
ž If you’re going to grow potatoes in garden boxes, I would recommend establishing one box for potatoes only. Make sure your potatoes grow in full sun.
ž Soil should not be limed and go ahead and throw a bag of manure into the soil mix where you plan to grow your potatoes for extra nutrients.
žTo get started you should cut your potatoes into small pieces which have “eyes”, or sprouts growing.
ž Let these pieces dry out for 3 to 5 days. Once dried dig your trenches shallow 4” to 6” deep.
ž Place your sprouted potato pieces into the dirt 12” apart from each other and cover with dirt.
ž Once your potatoes have established themselves, make sure you “hill” your plants with surrounding dirt. (Pushing surrounding dirt up to the stems of the plant to assure the potatoes don’t poke out of the ground. If they do, this will cause the potatoes to green and become inedible.)
ž You could also use a straw mulch to keep the soil covered around the potatoes instead of “hilling”.
ž During growing season water potatoes every other day.

Sugar Snap Peas:
ž Grow these long vines onto trellis in full to partial shade.
ž During growing season water everyday.
ž When ready to harvest pick ripe beans, but don’t forget the old beans too. If you don’t pull off the old ones the plant with trigger itself a chemical that will cause the plant to stop growing beans. Leave the younger beans on the vine to finish ripening.
ž Once your beans are out of season it’s time to make room for your other vining plants. A breed of cherry tomatoes will do, or even cucumbers, but you have to train these species to the trellis (soft twine will work).

Onions:
Green Scallions
Red Onion
žGrow in full sun and in long rows. Limed soil is good.
ž Dig your trenches about 3” deep. Add manure or compost to soil mix.
ž Moisten the soil before laying down your bulbs.
ž Plant bulbs 2” apart and cover.
ž Green onions can be harvested once the tops are long, 8” to 10”.
ž Red onions can be harvested once the tops turn yellow and fall over.
ž Pull the ripe onions out of the dirt at this point and let them dry out in the sun.


If you've already got a garden going, this is great advice. If you need a garden, you know who to call.