A couple of New York Times Articles...

Ok, maybe they aren't the newest gardeners, but they are the highest profile gardening advocates lately. Check out this article from the NY Times about the Obama's garden on the White House lawn. Regardless of your political view, the embracing of gardening and eating locally and in-season by the President and his family is significant. Yay for growing what you eat and knowing where what you eat comes from!

Also from NY Times is this article by Mark Bittman (chef, cookbook author, one of the hosts of Spain:On the Road Again), summing up organic food choices vs. good food choices. It does well at talking about how the label "organic" is not the answer to all our nation's health problems.

(I hope the link opens--I am not sure how long they keep archived articles available for public viewing for free....Thanks to my mother-in-law for clipping the article on the White House Garden and sending it to me!)

Record Time!

This morning when I went out to water my freshly planted seeds, I was greeted with a surprise. Some of the seeds M, J, and I planted on Thursday (it could have been Wednesday, but I am pretty sure it was Thursday) morning had already broken the surface of the ground. I saw some bok choy, lettuce, and possibly spinach poking through. Yippee! I ignored the instructions of how far apart to plant the seeds, partly because I had the eager help of a 3 year old and a 19 month old. Once the plants get a couple of permanent leaves growing, I'll thin the plants out to a more reasonable distance apart. I am quite excited though. I wasn't sure what sort of success I would have this year because I shoveled half the garden myself and my shoveling skills leave much to be desired. (Curtis laughed at my shoveling. It took him 15 minutes to finish shoveling the other half of the garden when it took me 45 minutes for my sorry excuse for shoveling). We'll have greens this winter! (pictured is M helping to plant basil seeds last spring--a failed experiment unfortunately).

If you haven't planted any seeds or transplanted any plants, it is not late in this region. If you haven't done much before, transplanting herbs are a great place to start. The key to herbs is knowing how much sun and water they need. I learned quickly that while on the container, it may say full sun, it doesn't mean full Texas all day sun. (pictured are herbs from last June--mint, basil, and dill--all in full sun).

The following herbs do well with some afternoon shade, especially in the summer: oregano, mint, parsley, basil, and lemongrass. All are very fragrant and rather pretty so they could easily go in a bed in front of your house. All of the above except basil will also winter over in our mild TX winter. If the mint dies, give it a little time, it may just come back. Basil needs to be planted every year. Our mint typically looks like it dies each summer, but this time year, we see new plants coming up, just begging to be made into mint tea. The week long ice storm we had a couple of years ago couldn't even kill our oregano (we were hoping it would! That plant is huge!). The oregano is pictured to the right with lemongrass behind it. You get a bit of an idea of the size of the plant.

These herbs can survive with full sun, in fact like it just fine: rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and basil. Again, all but the basil will easily survive our mild winters.

There are a few herbs that do the best this time of year--dill and cilantro are the two that come to mind. Dill is used in a lot of Greek/Mediterranean food and is a nice seasoning for baked pot pie or soups. Cilantro is just super fabulous. The sad thing is, when cilantro is going strong there are no good tomatoes to be found any where.

If you haven't tried planting herbs before, now is the time to try. Use a flower bed or even just a pot on the back porch. Have a kid help transplant and water (it's important to water daily for a week or two after you transplant to help the plant get used to being in the new location). Wait a couple of weeks or so and enjoy a little extra seasoning to your meals!

A Composting Primer (or Confession)

We have two spaces for composting at our house.  At the back of our lot along the tree line we stacked concrete blocks to form a square.  We built that when we first moved into our house and for years have been throwing all kitchen scraps in there.  We never did anything noble with it, like turn it, water it, or use it in our garden.  It was just where fruits, vegetables, and coffee grounds went to quietly decompose.  

Our second space for composting is relatively new.  Last year for Christmas, Curtis gave me a compost tumbler (not your most romantic Christmas gift, but I was surprised, that's for sure!).  Out of a little bit of laziness on our part, it sits at the base of our back steps.  At times, especially during the summer, it is a little too close to the house for our liking, but by then it was already partially filled and too heavy to move.  It got to stay in it's current location.  The compost tumbler then was the new final resting place for kitchen scraps and bagged grass until we deemed it full enough.  At that point, we reverted back to using our original compost space to let the tumbler "cook."

A few basics about composting:  

What goes in it:  Food scraps---like vegetables, fruits, egg shells, coffee grounds, bread.  Meat and dairy isn't recommended, the best reason I've heard why is that those will attract unwanted varmints to your compost heap.  Both raw and cooked foods can be added.  These are the green.  Compost also likes brown:  dead leaves, dead grass.  With yard waste, avoid anything that may have gone to seed if you are planning on putting the compost in a garden.  The seeds will end up germinating in your garden and then you'll have who knows what in there.

How to get good compost for using in gardens:  In addition to decaying materials, compost needs heat, water, and preferably worms to adequately decompose the materials.  Some people also turn (or mix) their compost to speed up the process.  As I've said earlier, we are total composting slackers.  We just dump old food in our heap and let the process take it's good old time.  The big downfall to the compost tumbler we have is the lack of worms.  It sits off the ground and so there is no way for the worms to get in there and eat away at the scraps.  The final product is more clumped together and not quite as dirt like.  In the future, we think we are going to start the compost in the tumbler because it gets hot enough in there to kill any seeds (it's black so it absorbs a lot of sunlight) and then move it to the heap to finish it to allow the worms to do some work. 

Even if you have no intention of using compost for gardening, it's not a bad idea.  You use less trash bags and produce less waste every week if all kitchen scraps go to a heap tucked away somewhere quietly in the backyard.  In a trash bag in a landfill the decomposition process is hindered by that plastic bag...and if it does decompose, it's still stuck in the bag.  The heap in the back yard doesn't get big and unruly, it shrinks down as it decomposes.  Plus, it could be some cool science lessons for your kids---decomposition, what feeds the soil, worms, a myriad of bugs to look at, irreversible change (M's favorite science words these days), the whole exchange of energy within the food cycle---sun to plant to us to compost to plant again.

I still need to work our compost into our garden. I am trying to get up the motivation and energy to shovel up our entire 12 x 12 foot garden to mix in the compost and gypsum (which we add because our soil has a lot of clay in it which makes it more difficult for plants to have good root systems).  I need to do it soon because I am anxious to get in our seeds.   Just not so anxious to dig.

What I am Going to Do with Myself When the Cool Front Comes...

I am excited for cooler weather next week. It means the seasonal produce will be changing before too long. For me, it means time to finish weeding the garden, buying transplants, and planting seeds in our little 12 x 12 foot patch. I hope to transplant broccoli this year and plant seeds for leeks, carrots, spinach, and arugula. Mmmm....

If you don't have a garden, it is the perfect time to start, because the fall/winter is my favorite growing season of the year (especially after summer, in March, my opinion may have changed).

My friend, Kate, e-mailed me this great link to the Sustainable Food Center with a sample garden layout plan. The emphasis is how to get the most seeds in a small space my planting things together instead of in straight rows. (The small boxes are 1 square foot, the large boxes are 2 square feet). Curtis was really excited to see this...he is dreaming about peas. I think that can be his project.Our garden won't look exactly like this, we are working around 2 -3 of our existing tomato plants which will continue to produce until our first freeze in November-ish. We will also skip some of the greens and the cabbage...probably 4 broccoli plants, no radishes with more carrots in their place. We'll see how it goes!

Another great resource about how to get a garden started without a lot of digging was an article in this quarter's Edible Austin (you pick it up at Whole Foods/Central Market/any Austin Farmer's Market/and a bunch of other places. Unfortunately, the article isn't published online). The garden featured was a raised bed which had more cost than a start-up garden, but like I said earlier, a lot less digging.

If you are not ready to tackle a garden, flower beds are also good options. My arugula is going in a flower bed. For arugula and other greens, all you need is a bed with full sun. I just scrape a 1/2 inch of dirt off the top and sprinkle the seeds haphazardly. It grows like a bunch of tasty weeds.