Springfield Locavore

Attack of the Killer (Brandywine) Tomatoes

Today's garden harvest: 19 pounds of Brandywine tomatoes.

Tomorrow's cooking activity: Making tomato sauce. Lots of tomato sauce!

I like tomatoes, but sheesh! Remember that book, The $64 Tomato? I think it's safe to say that our tomatoes are costing us far less than that!

Our Garden is 14 Pounds Lighter

Yesterday's garden harvest was 10 Brandywine tomatoes weighing a total of 9½ pounds (very good!), plus a zucchini weighing 4½ pounds and measuring over 18 inches long (not so good). The largest of the tomatoes weighed 1½ pounds!

After I got home from work and harvested all of that, Dawn decided to make a tomato soup. The recipe called for 5 pounds of tomatoes, so that sounded like a good way to quickly use up some of today's bounty!

Here's a summary of the recipe from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. It's called Summer Tomato Soup:

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup diced shallots (8-12)
• 5 pounds ripe, red, juicy tomatoes, rinsed and cut into big pieces
• Salt and freshly milled pepper

Over low heat, melt the butter in a soup pot, add the shallots. Prepare the tomatoes. Add the tomatoes, plus 1 teaspoon salt and a ½ cup of water. Cover and cook for 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally. Run through a food mill (to remove the skins). Add salt and pepper to taste. Makes one quart.

We didn't have any shallots, so she substituted an onion. We also don't have a food mill, so Dawn blanched the tomatoes for about 10 seconds, then removed the skins, before cooking began. With 3-4 hours of cook time, obviously this wasn't for that evening's dinner! (Instead, we had corn on the cob from Veenstra & Heck's CSA, plus a salad from the farmers' market and a donut peach for dessert.)

After cooking for about 3 hours, it smelled really good! I plan on having some of it for lunch today, so I'll let you know how it was!

How Quickly They Grow Up!

It seems like only yesterday that this was a small, unnotable zucchini in our garden. Wait... It was just yesterday! What the heck happened?! I know there are larger zucchini than this, but the speed with which it went from "That'll be ready to harvest soon" to "Yikes! Harvest that before it grows any more!" was quite surprising!

Day 9 - Parkay! Butter! Parkay! Butter! Parkay! Butter!

Breakfast

On Thursday, May 28, for breakfast I had my usual scrambled eggs and toast with honey. The eggs were from Bear Creek Farm & Ranch (Palmer, IL), the semi-local milk was from Oberweis Dairy, the bread mix was from Hodgon Mill (Effingham, IL), and the honey was from Vanderpool Apiary (Arenzville, IL). However, there was one difference....

Parkay! (Not Really)

The butter was local! Whoot! The Vincent Family Farm (Rochester, IL), where I pick up our weekly share from Veenstra & Heck's CSA, actually makes and sells butter! He did warn me that it would only be good for a couple of weeks after we thawed it out, but that's okay. It's local! We had used up the last of the non-local butter, so I was finally able to try it out on my toast. Nice!

One other difference is that, rather than being in quarter-pound sticks, this butter comes in a tub (naturally). That isn't a big deal, but it does mean that if a recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of butter, you won't be able to just cut off the proper length; you'll have to either actually measure 3 tablespoons or make a good guess!

Lunch

Lunch was local green beans (yum!), strawberries from Livesprings (YUM!), and a salad (lettuce and spring onions from the CSA), plus a non-local dressing.

Farmers' Market

The Illinois Products Farmers' Market was back to its normal location this week - the Commodities Pavilion behind the Grandstand on the Illinois State Fairgrounds. I picked up quite a bit of stuff:

• 2 dozen eggs from Lazy T
• 6 quarts of strawberries from Livesprings Berries & Produce (Chandlerville, IL)
• new potatoes from Dyer's Farm (Hillsboro, IL)
• radishes (German giants) from Split Rail Gardens (Riverton, IL)
• breakfast sausage patties from a farm in Madison County, IL
• spring onions from Odelehr's (Brussels, IL)
• zucchini (!) and snow peas from Buds & Blooms (Decatur, IL)

I got plenty of eggs, because I want to let a dozen of them sit for 2-3 weeks before I hard-boil them. Supposedly, it's easier to remove the shell from old eggs than from fresh eggs. It's a bit of a shame to let farm fresh eggs become old eggs, but I really don't like peeling hard-boiled eggs one tiny shell fragment at a time!

I picked up 6 quarts of strawberries because Dawn keeps wanting to freeze some and I keep eating them before she can! I figure 6 quarts will ensure that she gets to at least some of them before I do!

There seemed to be just a single quart of new potatoes in the entire farmers' market, and I got it! The Dyers said that it was the first quart that they had harvested, dug up the night before just to see whether things were ready. It will be nice to add some starches to my diet! You can only eat so much salad! We haven't yet decided what we'll do with them. Fried? Baked? Hmm...

It was also nice to see some zucchini there. I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, but Dawn likes it quite a bit. I primarily like it breaded and fried. Yum! I just picked up one zucchini, so I'll let Dawn decide what we'll do with it.

I'm on the lookout for ways to add variety to my breakfasts. Eggs are nice, but there can be too much of a good thing! The sign by the booth just said "family farm in Madison County". I was running out of time, so I didn't chat long enough to ask the name of the farm and where exactly they were in Madison County. He did say that he'll be back next week, so I'll ask him then. He had plenty of frozen meat products, but the thing that caught my eye was the breakfast sausage patties! Dawn's a vegetarian, so it adds no variety to her breakfasts, but I'll eat them!

Split Rail Gardens (Riverton, IL)

The radishes (German giants) were from Split Rail Gardens in Riverton. I talked to the owner for quite a few minutes about his garden and how he got into it. He said that back in the 1990s he had a U-pick strawberry operation, but that after several years business dropped off as people lost interest in picking their own strawberries. He got out of the business, but then about 10 years later became interested again. With the upsurge of interest in buying fresh, local food, he figured it was a good time to get back into the business. He now has 4 acres, planted with a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, including (from my memory) strawberries, onions, and radishes.

Dinner

Dawn made lasagna! She used non-local lasagna noodles and Wisconsin mozarella cheese, but everything else was local - spinach, kale, chard, green garlic, spring onions, hydroponic tomatoes, plus one special ingredient...

First Harvest

Basil from our garden! Okay, there's not much yet, but there was enough purple basil for Dawn to harvest a few leaves and immediately add them to the lasagna. It doesn't get much fresher than that!

Post #100 - Square Foot Garden Beds are Ready!

It is of no significance whatsoever, but this happens to be my 100th post on this blog! Hmm... One would think that I'd have written something of significance by now.

More importantly, last weekend I finally got the garden beds ready for planting. Here come the pictures!

I used peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and 4 varieties of compost to create "Mel's Mix", the planting mixture specified by Mel Bartholomew in "All New Square Foot Gardening". Actually, Mel specified that you use at least 5 varieties of compost, so that you can be sure of getting a little bit of everything, but I settled for 4. If the garden sucks, we can blame that as being the root of the problem.

Incidentally, coarse vermiculite is apparently somewhat difficult to locate. Lowe's, for example, doesn't carry it. I found it at Pleasant Nursery here in Springfield.

After opening the bags and dumping everything out on the tarp, here is what the peat moss (top left), coarse vermiculite (right), and 4 varieties of compost looked like. For a 4 foot by 4 foot by  6 inch bed, you'll need 8 cubic feet of stuff. That means 2 2/3 cubic feet each of peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and compost.

Peat moss comes in 3.8 cubic foot bales. However, that is 3.8 cubic feet compressed, which becomes 7.6 cubic feet uncompressed, so you really only need 1 1/3 cubic feet of compressed peat moss for each bed, which means about a third of a bale.

Coarse vermiculite comes in 4 cubic foot bales, so you'll need about 2/3 of a bale for each bed.

Each 40 pound bag of compost is about 1 cubic foot, so you'll need about 1/2 a bag from each of 5 bags (if you're doing 5 varieties of compost) for each bed.

It took a bit of effort, pulling the ends of the tarp back and forth to mix things up, but eventually the peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and compost was thoroughly mixed up (more or less). It's ready to add to one of the raised beds!

I made each 4 foot by 4 foot bed from 2-inch-by-6-inch cedar boards, screwed together with deck screws. I didn't remove the grass, but simply mowed it as short as I could, then covered it with weed fabric (overlapped by a foot on each side), with staples to hold everything in place so that I don't accidentally dig it up later! (I'll let you know if that turns out to have been a tragic blunder!) On the outside of the bed I spread cedar mulch in the aisles. Now it was time to add Mel's Mix to the bed!

I dragged the tarp partly onto the empty bed, then pushed, pulled, and lifted from all sides to dump Mel's Mix into the bed. I used the back side of a flat rake to do most of the smoothing, then finished up by hand.

Using 4 foot wood lath strips, I created the grid of 1 foot by 1 foot squares. (Thus the name "Square Foot Gardening".) Finally, the bed is ready for plants!

Square Foot Gardening might be easier than traditional gardening, but I was still tired!

Now, would you like to see what we planted? So would I! Unfortunately, we didn't get anything planted that weekend. I took a trip to Country Market on Tuesday to see how many plants they had in stock. (Answer: Lots!) I had hoped to get something planted on Wednesday, since I was taking the day off from work for other house-related stuff, but instead it decided to dump rain on us, so nothing went in the ground then!

We'll be out at the Illinois State Fairgrounds this Saturday at the annual Springfield Highland Games & Celtic Festival, but after that we should be able to finally get some stuff planted!

Garden Taking Shape More Literally

In the previous post I talked about planning to try a Square Foot Garden. The garden still doesn't exist, but it's a bit closer.

On Saturday I bought the lumber, 3 bales of peat moss (4 cu. ft. each), and most of the compost (2 cu. ft. each of cow manure, mushroom compost, and humus). My in-laws are vacationing in Europe for 2 months, so we have the use of the pickup truck. Nice! I doubt all of that would have fit in the trunk of our car!

On Sunday I built the frames for the 4 raised beds, each 4 feet by 4 feet. I need 2 more varieties compost, since Mel Bartholomew recommends using a mixture of at least 5 varieties (so that you're less likely to be missing some nutrients), and I need 3 bales of coarse vermiculite.

The latter is apparently somewhat difficult to find, but I made some phone calls on Monday and found that Pleasant Nursery carries it, so I'll run out there tomorrow to pick that up. (Surprisingly, Pleasant Nursery doesn't seem to have a web site. Get with the program, folks! I need something to link to!) After that, it's just a matter of mixing everything together and filling the raised beds!

Well, okay, I also need to closely mow down the grass where I'm going to put the raised beds, put down weed barrier, put down the raised beds, and mulch the pathways in between the raised beds.

Oh, and get some plants.

Did I mention that I got a very late start on this garden? *sigh*

Month From Hell Over; Garden Plans Take Shape!

Good grief, the last few weeks have been nuts!

Spring arrived on March 20 -- huzzah! Dawn and I immediately came down with a stomach flu. Ugh!

Then our computer sickened and died, quite definitively. Ugh! We have a new computer now, but it's still not 100% setup the way the other one was.

Then Dawn's parents traveled from out of state to visit, but her dad came down with the stomach flu and wound up in the emergency room from being so dehydrated. Ugh!

Then our 4-year-old son Orlando came down with the stomach flu! Diarrhea, vomiting, and high fever. Ugh!

Everyone seems to finally be well at last!

One side effect of Dawn's parents coming to visit is that we have temporary use of their pickup truck! They've left for a 2-month trip to Europe, so during that time we'll have their pickup truck available for hauling stuff. For example, stuff for the garden! Lumber for building raised beds; bags of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost; perhaps a better wheelbarrow! (In addition, we'll be picking up cork and bamboo flooring for the house, among other things.)

Garden Plans Finally Taking Shape!

It's already deep into April, and I still haven't made a start on a garden. Part of that was the previously mentioned weeks of sequential sickness, but there's also the simple fact of being paralyzed by indecision.

Although we have a full acre here, much of it has problems. The slope of the land in the backyard is all wrong, so large areas have standing water after a rain. Of the areas which drain well, a large portion of that is shaded. So that means I can't just put the garden anywhere. Plus there are several trees that need to come down, so I don't want to put the garden where it will be in the way when we're ready to have those taken out.

Then there's the question of which gardening method to use. Should I go with Edward C. Smith's W-O-R-D system (Wide rows, Organic methods, Raised beds, Deep soil), which he explains in The Vegetable Gardener's Bible? Or should I try Patricia Lanza's lasagna gardening, which she explains in Lasagna Gardening? Or should I go with Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening, which he explains in All New Square Foot Gardening?

For this year, I think I'll be going with Square Foot Gardening (SFG), primarily because it looks like it will require the least amount of preparation (which it's too late to do) and because it should be the most portable/temporary, since what I do next year (and where) might well be quite different.

In a way, Square Foot Gardening is container gardening on a very large scale. In this case, the containers are (typically) 4 foot by 4 foot beds, created by taking 2"x6" boards and fastening them together, with an optional plywood bottom to make the whole thing truly portable. Rather than improving the existing soil, you use 1/3 each of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost. According to Mel, all you need is a 6" deep bed, because the mixture is so dense in nutrients. We'll see.

The "Square Foot" part refers to laying a grid of 1'x1' squares over the whole thing, with each square foot then being its own planting area. That gives you 16 planting areas in each 4'x4' bed.

Anyway, no tilling or digging is required (unlike the W-O-R-D system) and no gathering together of compost materials is required, nor is there any expectation that you will be doing anything to improve the underlying soil (unlike lasagna gardening). I may well try one of the other methods next year (or incorporate bits and pieces), but because I'm getting a late start, will be plenty busy with the house (replacing every foot of flooring in the house, for one thing), am unsure about where my garden will be located next year, and am fairly new to gardening, I'm going to go with Square Foot Gardening because it looks like it will be the easiest and is explained in the most "paint-by-numbers" fashion.

That's the only kind of painting I ever learned!

Blizzard Saturday Night?

The National Weather Service says we might have up to 6 inches of heavy wet snow Saturday night. Yikes! Better now than later, I suppose. I'm still hoping to do some yard work this weekend.

White House Vegetable Garden Being Planted Today!

Remember the Eat the View campaign? (Scroll to the bottom of my post about Michael Pollan's open letter to the "Farmer in Chief" for some links and a video.) Well, it was successful! Here's an excerpt from the New York Times article about the Obamas' plans to plant a vegetable garden:

On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when obesity has become a national concern.

In an interview in her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”

Twenty-three fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington will help her dig up the soil for the 1,100-square-foot plot in a spot visible to passers-by on E Street. (It’s just below the Obama girls’ swing set.) Students from the school, which has had a garden since 2001, will also help plant, harvest and cook the vegetables, berries and herbs.

Almost the entire Obama family, including the president, will pull weeds, “whether they like it or not,” Mrs. Obama said laughing. “Now Grandma, my mom, I don’t know.” Her mother, she said, would probably sit back and say: “Isn’t that lovely. You missed a spot.”

Heh! I'm curious as to how much time the President will actually spend in the garden, but I love the idea!

The Folks at Food Not Lawns Will Be So Disappointed

I ordered a John Deere LA155 riding mower the other day. I have mixed feelings about it.

At our old place, we had a smallish lawn. Using our Black & Decker cordless electric mulching mower, I could mow the grass in about 45 minutes. It worked quite well, and handled our lawn with few problems. The only times I had problems were when I would either try to mow the grass while it was too wet or when I had let it grow too tall. On those occasions, it would run out of juice before I was 100% finished. If I had to do it over again, I think I would buy a corded version, primarily because it would be much lighter than pushing around the cordless version with its heavy battery. Generally, however, it worked quite well.

The main things I liked about it were (1) never having to drive to the gas station to buy gas for the mower, and (2) it was quiet! That's one thing that I find really annoying: The constant drone of gas-powered mowers every weekend -- and most weeknight evenings! Particularly in the spring, before the weather has grown so hot and humid, it's nice to sit outside and enjoy the nice, peaceful sounds of-- RRRRRooooaaarrrr!!! *sigh* Let's go inside where it's quieter.

If I had the money, I would buy all of my neighbors electric lawn mowers. Failing that, it would be nice if we could all agree to mower our lawns at the same time on the same 2 days of the week -- 2 hours of RRRRROOOOAAAAARRRR!!!! a week, rather than spread out continuously. Oh well.

Unfortunately, our new place sits on a 1 acre lot with lots of grass. We plan on reducing how much grass we have -- vegetable garden, wildflowers, decorative grasses, playground with mulch, perhaps someday a rock garden out front, etc. However, at the moment we've still got nearly an acre of grass to mow. And our 19" cordless electric mower just won't cut it -- literally.

I did try last fall, at the end of the growing season. The cordless made it through the front lawn without too many problems, taking about a full charge and 45 minutes to complete. The back lawn, however, is much larger and has a much tougher type of grass. It took several full charges to finally finish cutting it. During the spring growing season, when the grass needs to be mowed twice a week, there is just no way that I could keep up. (And if I tried, I wouldn't have any time left for, say, planting that garden that I've been talking about!)

So I began seeking a new lawn mower. Before turning to John Deere and gasoline, however, I poked about to see whether there was an electric riding mower. There is: The Electric Ox MP! It looks very cool, but with the mower kit, it runs about $10,000. Okay, not that cool.

Then I discovered that there are several electric robotic lawn mowers, including RoboMow, the Husqvarna Automower, and the Lawnbott. They are all extremely quiet, which I really like! Unfortunately, given the size of our lawn and the cost of the robotic mowers, I decided that they just weren't going to work for me, at least not yet.

So I settled on a rather traditional choice -- a big, loud, gasoline-powered riding mower. On the plus side, it has a 48" blade and a 22 hp engine, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to at least get the lawn mowed quickly, albeit not quietly. Plus, I'll be able to attach a snow blade to clear our somewhat steep and long driveway of snow in the winter, as well as perhaps add a utility trailer at some point for hauling stuff (soil, mulch, compost, plants) to and from the garden.

One nice thing about it: It has a 12-volt electrical outlet, along with an optional fan that I can mount on there to stay cool while I'm mowing in July. Ahh!