Fast and loose produce! Victory gardens in the 21st Century!

When times get tough (like now?) and you and yours are seeking a way to make the food budget stretch….

I say get down and dirty and grow it yourself! And right now, brothers and sisters, is a damn good time to start. You know, when vegetable prices are skyrocketing! (I just paid a dollar fifty for a green pepper)!

Home grown vegetables can cost just pennies a pound. Something your forefathers knew very well. (As a species, we’ve survived for millions of years by living off the earth and there’s no reason why we can’t in this day and age).

Back during the dark days of World War II, Americans answered the call when food was rationed for all as part of the war effort. Magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Life printed stories about victory gardens, and women's magazines gave instructions on how to grow and preserve garden produce. Families were encouraged to can their own vegetables to save commercial canned goods for the troops. In 1943, families bought 315,000 pressure cookers (used in the process of canning), compared to 66,000 in 1942. The government and businesses urged people to make the practice of gardening a family and community effort.

The result of victory gardening? The US Department of Agriculture estimated that more than 20 million victory gardens were planted. Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal to all commercial production of fresh vegetables. So, the program made a difference then and it can make a difference now!

Hey everyone, we’ve been there before and we can get through these tough times again by working together, sharing our resources and having a great faith in God.

Amazing Kale!

After surviving a pretty hard winter where temperatures did get below zero, I have to admit being simply amazed at the hardiness factor I’ve seen in one lone plant. A member of the cabbage family that not only came through in shining colors, but which has also provided me with a few good meals this spring.

The variety, according to the seed packet, is Dwarf Blue Kale. I picked it up at my local grocery store last year with the idea of seeing if I would even like the stuff. To my surprise, I loved steaming the leaves and eating them with a little butter, salt and pepper. While Burpee Seed is selling a packet on line for $3.25, I got mine for fifty nine cents from a company called American Seed. They sell seed under various names including the familiar NK label. It does pay to shop around!

What interested me the most, was the fact that the leaves, after stripping them from the stem and steaming for fourteen minutes, was really awesome! I would have thought they’d be a little bitter, but that was not the case!

One other point. Just a few plants can really produce a good harvest. Also, the leaves make a great garnish and companion to other meals. Sort of like parsley.

Spring lettuce seed starts!

While life has gotten in the way of my garden plans for this summer, I am still making an effort to begin a few plants to help ease what happening at the grocery stores. This year I am once again planting a variety called Little Caesar romaine lettuce that is offered by Burpee Seeds. Romaine’s cannot be beat for nutrition and taste!

I elected to start my plants, this season, in peat trays that can be purchased at local garden stores. They help make the process fast and simple. For a stating soil mix, I’m using Miracle Gro potting mix which is sterile and already has fertilizer in it.

In the first picture, I’ve planted single seeds, one per cell in to the soil mix which has been dampened prior to planting. The whole process takes maybe a half hour with most of that time spent waiting for the soil to get damp. The seeds are then covered with a simple plastic baggie ( I like to re-use old baggies this way) and placed under a two bulb grow light to await germination. This usually just take three or four day as you can see in the second picture here.

Step One – Planning your garden.

 Step One of my five step program blog.

The winter time is a great time to get your thoughts and plans about what you want to do for a garden that coming spring. It’s at that point in time that I make some decisions as to what I actually want to grow and why. I start by making a list of vegetables after looking through a seed catalog. Generally, this list is quite long. One year I remember listing a certain variety of squash only to remember later that I actually don’t like squash all that much. So, after you make your list, give it the ‘taste test’. Mark off any veggies that no one in the family is likely to eat. Next, I do the ‘savings test’. I figure, if I can purchase a particular vegetable cheaply during the growing season at the local market, I might want to consider not going to the trouble of growing it. An exception to this rule would be the fact that my garden is an organic garden. That is to say, I never use any harmful pesticides for fertilizers when growing my bounty. In the past, I’ve skipped growing iceberg types of lettuce in favor of the more expensive (and nutritious) romaine’s and Bibb varieties. (That may not stay true as a head of lettuce at the market where I shop was selling for close to two dollars a head). Finally, I like to give each item on my list the ‘happiness test’. This would include any plants that are either hard to grow or that do not do well in my locale. Cantaloupe fits into this category for me as they take up a lot of space, are routinely attacked by squirrels and have given me mixed results in terms of taste. Ergo, I buy mine at the store.Same goes for broccoli, Brussels sprouts and celery!

So, at the end of all this, I have whittled my list of candidate plants down to a relative handful. In general, I will end up with just a few varieties of romaine lettuce, bell peppers, beans, potatoes and other such items as strike my fancy that year. Next, I make a diagram of all the growing areas in my garden and indicate what will grow where. When doing this, I try and avoid planting the same crop in the same location from one year t the next. This is just a good practice so as to avoid allowing a disease that is unique to that plant from getting a foothold. For this part of the plan, I like to refer to books that show how I can grow the most vegetables from the smallest space. I learned this from people like Mel Bartholomew who published a book years ago call ‘Square Foot Gardening’. His method often employs small raised beds where the amount of weeding is kept to a minimum. After a while you will get a feeling for how much produce (and therefore space) you’ll need to feed yourself and other in your family. I’ve found that in good earth an through using intensive techniques, you can easily achieve anywhere from a half pound to a pound of edible produce per square foot. Some have boasted much larger figures than this, but I suspect that they use expensive apparatus to attain it.

My next move, in early spring, is to make sure that the beds are ready to receive transplants when they are ready to go in. Starting in March here in southwest Missouri, I work the soil, but only after it has dried out and can be turned without ending up with concrete. A cheap plastic tarp can come in handy when it rains if you cover your beds early on. Note that none of my beds are larger than four feet by eight feet. This size is easy to construct with lumber and everything is easy to reach from any side. In addition, during the early part of the growing season, I use a material called ‘reemay’ that does a great job protecting young seedlings from damage by insects and other pests.

While I’m doing all this, I like to keep a sort of diary. In it, I list what veggies are going where. How much they cost, the weather and what my end results were. I even go so far as to weigh my produce as it is harvested during the season. Information, like this, is valuable during successive seasons in helping me to plan. Overall cost is a big issue for me and many others. Over a five year period of time, much of the initial cost of tools, seeds and beds is spread out pretty well. At that point I can really begin to see some savings over the store bought produce. Also, I know that my food is pesticide free.

There! I’m now ready. I’ve got a plan, have some tools and lots of hope in my heart. Next stop, the garden center where I hope to score some good seeds at cheap prices. This is also a good time to hook up with a friend who has similar interest. That way you can both share the cost of seeds and tools. Then, later in the season, you can also trade produce!

My next topic will cover Step Two: Seed germination and growing techniques.

My five step program to growing success! An introduction.

At one time or another, I think anyone who has planted a vegetable garden has probably tried growing some of their crops from seed. The temptation to do this is easy to understand. Seeds are relatively cheap when compared to the cost of starter plants.

I can also remember thinking this years ago, while standing in a nursery looking at the full color pictures of giant cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers that adorned seed packets in a revolving turn style that gee. What could be so hard, I thought, about planting some a few seeds and then reaping a big harvest? I mean how hard could it be? Well, they do say that naivete is bliss, don’t they?

Since that day, long ago, I’ve learned some lessons. One of which was what I call my five step program to raising great vegetables without doing a heck of a lot of work. The five steps are:

Step 1 - Proper planning
Step 2 - Indoor germination and growth
Step 3 - Hardening off
Step 4 - Transplanting out
Step 5 -Controlling pests

Each of these steps is important in its own right. They are all designed to get a plant off to a great start whereby the gardener strives to prevent ‘checks’ to growth. A ‘check’ is anything that briefly interrupts the growing cycle of a plant. Interruptions in the smooth growth curve which can often lead to problems latter on in terms of over all health and productive capacity.

In step one, you might note that I do not spend any effort on addressing direct seeding. I’ll go into some reasons why in my segment on Step 1. Briefly, I will state that unless you are a commercial grade gardener, then as part of your planning you will want to control what when and how your crops are grown. Crops like beans which can be direct seeded are addressed here as are crops that will need all the help they can get early on. A plan, in other words, that is always keeping an eye on overall timing and production you have envisioned for you and yours.

In step two, I will be addressing the equipment you might want to consider for germination and early growth of seeds destined to go outdoors. You won’t need all that much, thankfully, as I like to keep an ever present eye on overall cost. It makes not sense to me to end up growing a head of lettuce that cost three dollars.

In step three, I will cover some concepts to hardening off a seedling prior to its being transplanted into the cold cruel world. This step is one that many of us, including myself, don’t perform properly and which results in the stunting of even death of your plants early on.

Step four is a fun step for me. This is the day that all my planning really pays off. The realization of a crop of whatever which will sometime soon grace my table with wonderful bounty. In this section, I cover some of the pitfalls and tips that I have discovered over time to either avoid or use.

Step five contains some of the not so pleasant realities of growing vegetables outside. It seems sometimes that just about every critter is out to destroy what you have worked so hard to create. There are entire books devoted to just this single topic and I don’t try and pretend I can do this area justice here wither. Rather, I will cover some really simple and stupid moves that can perhaps save you some grief as the season progresses.

So, that’s it. I will be adding these segments in no particular order as the spring progresses. I hope to have some readership and would be excited to hear any comments that my readers would care to make. Gardening is a great outdoor activity that is meant to be shared. It is also very rewarding when the day comes to make a harvest no matter how large or small.

Pepper seed germination test!

One of the ways to test seed you have from the previous season is to place a few on a damp paper towel that is placed into a plastic baggie. I did this with five Long Red Cayenne pepper seeds from peppers that were grown in my raised bed garden last year. The seeds took just as long to germinate as they would have in soil, but I had the benefit of watching them for germination every other day or so. As soon as a seed began to show a root, I would transfer that seed to a peat pot under lights.

In this experiment, I achieved germination of 4 out of 5 seeds. That, I felt was pretty good and plan to sow more as the growing season approaches. As you can see, after a month of growing, they are looking pretty darn good!

Moringa update for Feb 2011