Fast Food: Roots and Shoots Program

Tonight our program was "Fast Food: From Seed to Table in Six Weeks". And we had a wonderful turnout of some local gardeners from three different counties - 42 participants in total, all ready to get out there and start digging and weeding and composting - in spite of the snow that was falling outside the French doors of the meeting room!

We discussed some alternatives for small and urban gardening spaces, including a wonderful video clip from www.sendacow.org.uk about making keyhole gardens in Lesotho. To see a group of beautiful, funny, hard-working and smart! children making two different types of garden, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjcjCCx3BWY

To give folks some ideas about what to do with some of the humble veggies we discussed (turnips, kohlrabi, beets, chard, and so forth) we tasted two dishes: Roasted Tamari Radishes and Kohlrabi-Chard Rainbow Slaw.

So here are the recipes:

Roasted Tamari Radishes

Clean, tail and quarter three bunches fresh radishes (about 45-50).
Slice 3 medium-sized leeks into 1/4" thick rounds.

Combine these two vegetables in roasting pan in a single layer. Drizzle with 3-4 T olive oil or grapeseed oil.

Sprinkle with 1 to 2 tablespoons coarse salt (table salt will do if that's all you have, but it's harder to control the saltiness of the dish - and use at most a scant single tablespoon of regular table salt).

Massage the radish-leek mix briefly but thoroughly until coated lightly with oil and salt. Sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of sesame seeds.

Place roasting pan in a preheated oven at 425 F. Check and stir every 5 to 10 minutes for 20 minutes. At this point, the radishes should be getting somewhat fork-tender when pierced, but are still resistant. Sprinkle with 2-3 tablespoons low-sodium tamari or soy sauce. The higher the quality of the tamari or soy, the better the radishes will be. Bragg's may be substituted for either.

Continue to roast for a few minutes - stir about every three minutes or so. When fork-tender, remove from oven and sprinkle while hot, hot, hot, with thinly sliced scallions.

Kohlrabi - Chard Rainbow Slaw

2 medium sized green or purple kohlrabi, peeled and cut into large chunks
4-6 slender fresh organic carrots, skins on
4-5 medium leaves of Bright Lights or other colored Swiss Chard, julienned with stems
1/3 cup walnuts
1/4 cup currants
4 scallions, chopped
1 cup fresh watercress, cleaned and chopped coarsely

Run the kohlrabi chunks and carrots through a food processor for your choice of slaw, or grate as for slaw. Combine kohlrabi and carrots with julienned chard, watercress, scallions, currants and walnuts in a large salad bowl. Toss until combined.

Mix together 2/3 cup real mayonnaise and 2 -3 tablespoons Nakano rice vinegar. Mayonnaise should be "pourable", like a thick creamy salad dressing. If still pudding-like, add a splash more rice vinegar. Add freshly ground black pepper to the dressing, and pour over the other ingredients. Toss again until all ingredients are evenly moistened.

Chill until serving. May be kept overnight or served immediately.

First Week of AppalSeeds: $212,606 Worth of Groceries!

This week three public libraries took part in the AppalSeeds program: Paris-Bourbon County, Cynthiana-Harrison County, and Berea-Madison County.

In three programs (one week) 168 potential gardeners participated. They took home 920 packets of tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds, and transplanted 252 Stupice tomatoes to take home.

Our Regional Library Consultant, Anne Van Willigen, asked me how many pounds of tomatoes the program produced in a year - and I'd never thought of it that way. So last night after the post-program seed count, I did the math.

If every one of the 168 participants from this week alone grew even 6 seeds from each packet to maturity (there are 15-40 seeds per packet), they would grow a total of 5,520 plants. 63% of the varieties chosen were tomatoes. A safe average produce for tomatoes would be 25 pounds per plant.

63% of 5,520 = 3,477 tomato plants producing 25 pounds of fruit, or
86,925 total pounds of tomatoes.

At a market cost of $2.00 per pound, this represents $173,850 in produce.37% of the seeds taken home by participants were peppers and eggplants, producing 2,042 plants. At 9 pounds of fruit per plant, these plants would produce another 18,378 pounds of fruit.

At $2.00 per pound, the potential market cost savings would be $36,756.

Final outcome? 168 participants now have the seeds, knowledge and ability to grow more than $210,606 worth of produce, for a total of $1,253.60 per person.

In addition to the savings at the market?

1. Nutritional benefits from home-grown food

2. Global environmental savings in shipping costs and use of petroleum products

3. Emotional and physical benefits from gardening

4. New community ties and friendships built by sharing gardening skills and information

5. Deepening plant genetic diversity by sharing seeds on the local level, thus preventing the loss of old or rare varieties

5. New skills and awareness of potential earnings from selling produce and plants

6. Historical value of saving heirloom varieties

7. Environmental benefits from recycling plastic, paper and wood food-grade waste products to produce plants and produce.

AppalSeeds at the Paris-Bourbon County Public Library

Last night was opening night for AppalSeeds 2009, with 53 Bourbon County folks in attendance. Participants took home 299 packets of tomato, pepper and eggplant seed and transplanted over 80 Stupice tomato seedlings.

It was a wonderful turnout and a gracious audience....and the folks there are always so warm and enthusiastic. In addition, there's always someone who brings seeds to share with me! This year one of our regular participants brought a beautiful pint jar of Goose heirloom pole beans...

The tomato you see here is a sample of Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag tomato, which was grown from a gift of seeds from Mrs. Sebastian at the Bourbon County Program in 2007. Mrs. Sebastian has grown her father's special variety of large, sweet tomato for many years, and it was a wonderful gift. This particular tomato was nearly 5.5" across when sliced, and weighed 26 ounces (over 1.5 pounds). The tomato has a solid high-quality flesh, very sweet, and holds up beautifully when canned. We had our own Bull Bag Bacon-Tomato Soup this week when the temperatures dropped below 10 degrees.

Raising by the Moon

All of us have heard at one time that plants are more productive, healthier, or more beautiful depending on the moon sign or moon phase in which they've been planted.

Many folks swear by it, some folks pooh-pooh it entirely. Regardless, raising a garden or farming according to the signs has been an agricultural tradition for centuries.

Join John Maruskin on Wednesday night, March 11 at 7:00 p.m. at the Clark County Public Library as he presents both the fascinating, complex history and the how-to of Raising by the Moon.

In addition to the somewhat controversial moon calendars, John also presents phenological sayings, such as "plant your corn when the oak leaves are as big as a squirrel's ear", or "fertilize your lawn when the forsythia blooms".

Although many people think of phenology as old wives' tales, biologists and botanists define it as a study of the times of naturally recurring phenomena. In other words, the oak trees in your front yard begin to leaf each year once the soil warms to a particular temperature, or after day length reaches a certain point in the season.

Indigenous plants respond to the climate around them rather than a date marked on our calendars, so planting your corn when oak leaves have developed to the length of a squirrel's ear (because the soil has warmed to the right depth and temperature) makes sound agricultural sense.

So we hope that you'll reserve your seat at Raising by the Moon by calling (859) 744-5661 today. The program is free - and all participants will receive a free packet of zinnias, sweet peas or four-o'clocks for their annual flower beds.

From Goose Beans to Greasies

Monday, March 09, 2009 ... not doing anything at 7:00 p.m.?

Sign yourself up at the Clark County Public Library- (859) 744-5661 - to join Bill Best, of the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in Berea. Dr. Best will be recounting the peculiar history and growing habits of one of Central Kentucky's historically favorite garden vegetables, the pole bean.

Dr. Best has collected more than 100 varieties of greasy bean alone, and hundreds more old-timey pole beans from the Southern Appalachians and Kentucky's seven regions. Many of these varieties were teetering on the volcanic brink of extinction, having dwindled from acres of that variety grown all over a county district fifty years in the past to a handful of carefully-guarded plants in a single elderly person's backyard garden plot.

Dr. Best has spent a good deal of his life seeking out these heirloom varieties, talking to the family members still growing them, collecting both beans and family stories, documenting the stories and growing out the seed to spread them to a wider audience of younger folks. The strings of these beans now weave gardeners together from all walks of life.

Before I met Dr. Best six years ago, I thought that there was only one kind of greasy bean, and that it was probably impossible to get hold of them any more. By that time, it had been over 20 years since my mother and I would buy greasies at local flea markets and roadside stands in Southeastern Kentucky.

For those of you who have not met the acquaintance of a "greasy bean", your life has been poorer. Greasies are so called because the outer pod of the bean lacks the botanical pubescence, or fuzziness, of a regular green pole bean. The greasy's pod is dark green and nearly slick, almost like a peapod. Greasies generally, but not always, yield a "cut-short" bean, a little bean that has the ends squared off because they grow so tightly packed in the pod.

A good greasy is usually a short-podded bean, and packed so full of seeds that each pod resembles the figure of a middle-aged man romantic enough to give his grown daughter's hand in marriage wearing the tuxedo that fit him at his own wedding thirty years ago. Greasies generally taste sweet and peanutty. Many varieties go so far as to taste a little smoky, even if you are cooking them up without the benefit of bacon.

Anyway, I hope I see you at the library on March 9th. Not only is attendance free --- but everyone gets a free packet of heirloom bean seed to take home, courtesy of Dr. Best. So come on down, and start dreaming about a big pot of snap beans served up with a side of homemade cornbread, fresh sliced tomatoes and a cool glass of iced sweet tea...

More About Roger's Moons

Moon's SuperBush was sown on Sunday, 02/22/09, and germinated on Friday, 02/27/09. Now, three days later, on Monday, 03/02/09, I have a veritable forest of little green tomato Martians. As Moon's is supposed a dwarf, I hope this bodes well for quick growth so that I'll have enough plants for the three programs scheduled in the third week of March:

Garrard County
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
1:00 p.m .

Fleming County
Thursday, March 19, 2009
6:30 p.m.

Anderson County
Saturday, March 21, 2009
1:00 p.m.

Hand-Me-Down Light Stand

Our friend Andy Gary gave us two really wonderful hand-me-down gifts over the course of the years, both of which have come in handy for library program preparation: the first was a vintage KitchenAid mixer with an indestructible engine, and the second was this fluorescent light stand. This little light stand is tucked into one corner of the office, and is responsible for churning out as many as 6,000 seedlings in a season.

Stupice Seedlings Ready to Leave Home

Here we have a bumper crop of Stupice (say "stoo-PEECH-ka") on Monday, 03/02/09, ready to leave home for the Bourbon County Public Library in Paris, Kentucky.