Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Gardening

Lessons From the Garden

By

“Can we plant the pumpkins this day?”

“Let’s go see if the peas are growing!”

“Mom, the chickens are in the garden again.”

Oh yes, those are the sounds of spring around here. It’s our fifth year growing vegetables in our backyard. It’s amazing how much easier it is than that first April, when seven months pregnant, I dragged my husband out to help me dig a garden bed in our brand-new backyard. I wish I’d heeded the wisdom of permaculturists, who recommend observing and analyzing a site for an entire year before planting a single seed … and also the wisdom of my body, which wasn’t happy about my grand gardening visions.

Those are just two of the hard-earned lessons I’ve learned from five years of gardening. Except for one summer of gardening in Colorado several years ago, my husband and I are gardening newbies. My dad planted a vegetable garden for one season when I was a kid, and it was one of the most thrilling summers of my life. I couldn’t wait to go outside every morning to see what was growing. I knew I would be a vegetable gardener someday, and during the many years my husband and I spent renting and moving around, I longed to get my hands in the soil.

I wasn’t a natural.

Those first few years, I labored over my garden plans for hours while studying Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades. I’m thankful for all I’ve learned from that book, and from others. I still refer to books. But even for a word lover like me, gardening is one of those things you learn by doing. And, oh, how I’ve learned.

My first big lesson: I’m not really in charge.

Yes, I can plant at a certain time and mix the fertilizer. I can water or not water. I can fence the chickens away from the first tender sprouts. But I’m collaborating with the weather, the rain, the soil, the wildlife, bugs, insects, and bees. There’s a certain amount of surrender involved.

Over the years I’ve surrendered to stunted squash, wilted cabbage, and unripe tomatoes. To chickens shredding the lettuce, bugs eating the spinach, kids eating the cherry tomatoes.

I’ve learned to let go of perfection.

My next big lesson: gardens have healing powers.

For a couple of seasons, gardening became a chore. Work. I’d trudge out and dutifully plant the seeds and water. I’d mix my fertilizer and mindlessly sprinkle the soil with it.

I believed in growing my own food. I wanted to harvest vegetables from my back yard. But I’m not sure I loved the actual gardening part.

Last spring, overwhelmed with caring for a three-year-old and an infant, I wasn’t sure if I’d plant a garden at all.

“Maybe it’s a good year to let our plots lay fallow,” I announced in March.

But, at the end of April, I got a great deal on a bunch of starts and planted.

Then my dad died.

I spent much of June in Colorado. And when I came back, it was incredibly uplifting to see the peas twisting up their trellises and the lettuce, rainbow chard, spinach, carrots, and heirloom tomatoes crowding their beds, reaching for the sun.

I spent so many hours with those plants over the next few months, watering and weeding, watching and listening, sitting.

I was surprised a few weeks ago when I pulled out my gardening journal. Every season I meticulously record what I plant, what’s growing and what’s not, when I fertilize, etc. Last year, I didn’t jot down a single note after April 29.

And yet, I learned more from gardening than ever before.

The garden is the perfect place to grieve. Quiet, buzzing with bees, bursting with life. The plants have so much to tell us about life and death, about patience, about just being.

Now, as I embark on my fifth growing season, I feel no sense of duty. No obligation. I only feel grateful and excited.

What lessons have you learned from your garden? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Save

Save

The Most Powerful Thing in the World

By

It’s March, and as I write this, it couldn’t be lovelier here. (March does have a way of surprising us, doesn’t it?) In these parts it came in with sunshine, daffodils, and birdsong.

Last week I received my copy of the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine, which includes my review of Janisse Ray’s The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food. Ray’s book is about seed saving, and it’s part memoir, part poetic manifesto, and part how-to.

Ray presents a bleak scenario about seeds. Ninety-four percent of vintage, open-pollinated seed varieties have been lost forever since the turn of the 20th Century. “Goodbye, cool seeds,” she writes. “Goodbye, history of civilization. Goodbye, food.”

Nonetheless, The Seed Underground is an upbeat read. Ray calls seeds “the most hopeful thing in the world,” and she profiles a handful of “quiet, under-the-radar revolutionaries” who are collecting and exchanging seeds in a quest to preserve our food heritage against enormous odds.

The Seed Underground inspired me to learn more about seed saving and got me excited about experimenting more in my garden this spring. I hope you’ll check out my review if you see a copy of YES! Magazine. I’ll be sure to post it here once it’s available online.

In other news, we survived our long stretch of sniffly, sneezy, fevered February days inside, helped greatly by … a pack of construction paper. Valentines. Glider planes. Homemade kites. Crowns. Cards. Envelopes. Shapes. Handcrafted books. Oh yes, we are making the most of this $5 pack of colored paper. What a fantastic reminder that kids don’t really need expensive toys to have a great time. And often the most basic supplies inspire the most creativity.

I hope you’re also enjoying some good weather, or some creative afternoons inside, or some combination of those, as we are.

Save

The Number One Fertilizer?

By

I’m acutely aware that my son’s childhood is passing rapidly. Soon he won’t fit in my arms. He’ll stop running around the house squealing, “I love you, Mama.” Hair will sprout on his toes. So birthdays and milestones can be bittersweet.

Except potty training.

Saying goodbye to diapers has brought only joy, exultation, and delight to our household.

I dreaded it. I kept hearing about different methods, videos, tutorials, and entire books dedicated to the subject. It sounded complex and a little terrifying.

My husband and I procrastinated and braced ourselves for battle. Then a few months ago, Ezra started using the potty … and the whole transition was sort of, well, anticlimactic.

What was your method, you may be wondering. What was his incentive to trade in his trusty old diapers for the porcelain throne? M & M’s? Chocolate chips? Ice cream cones? Well, not exactly, but we did strike a bargain of sorts.

I remembered “Let it Mellow”, a hilarious essay by Melissa Hart, where she relates stumbling upon her “85-year- old great-grandmother hunkered down bare-bottomed under the rosebushes.”

“Pee makes the roses bloom bigger,” she told me when I commented that other octogenarians did their business in the toilet. “Why throw away something useful when it can do good in the world?”

That’s right, we told Ezra that he could use his pee to feed our new cherry tree. He loved the idea, and for months he dutifully marched out with his potty day after day to “feed the tree”. He tired of the activity at some point, and I didn’t think much about it again … until I was out watering the other day.

The grass under this tree is at least five inches taller than the rest of the lawn, and it’s a vibrant shade of emerald. The tree itself is also strikingly healthy, vigorous … robust.

It got me thinking, why aren’t we, like Melissa Hart’s plucky great-grandmother, making use of all of this free fertilizer? So I decided to check in with Google to find out if urinating on the garden is really a good idea.

“Every time we pee, we’re flushing away a valuable source of nitrogen that we could use to fertilize our gardens,” Emma Cooper writes on Green Thumb Articles:

Urine is a sustainable source of nitrogen for gardeners. When it’s fresh, it contains very low levels of pathogens, although it can be acidic and quite salty. It needs to be diluted for use as a liquid fertilizer – at least 5 parts water to 1 part urine, and up to 10 parts water can be used.

Every adult produces between 1 to 3 liters of urine per day – enough to fertilizer around 300 square meters of plants. But if you don’t want to use it directly on plants, then add it to the compost heap – the nitrogen works as a compost activator, speeding up the composting process while adding nutrients to the compost.

The golden rules of using pee in the garden are to make sure it’s fresh. In any case, if you try to store urine the nitrogen gets converted into ammonia gas – making for a nasty smell, as well as letting valuable nitrogen escape.

Josh Peterson also explains on planetgreen.com that, “Urinating outside can save, on average, three gallons of water per water-closet visit.”

So there you have it. Apparently Ezra should have been diluting his homemade fertilizer, but the cherry tree didn’t seem to mind.

Don’t worry, you won’t stumble upon us bare-bottomed in the rose bushes any time soon, but we’ll probably encourage Ezra to continue feeding the trees and flowers. And I think I might have stumbled upon a new potty training “method”. Maybe I should create a tutorial … make a video … write a book.

I’m curious, do you (or would you) use pee to fertilize your garden or supplement your compost pile?

Save

Dandelion Season

By

It’s spring again … the perfect time to rerun this post from last March…

It’s spring, which means some people are stocking up on Round Up and Weed-B-Gon to prepare themselves for battle against my favorite flower – the humble dandelion. If you’re not as big a fan as I am of these yellow-headed “weeds”, which grow in lawns and sunny open spaces throughout the world, I know of a great way to get rid of them. Eat them.

Every part of the dandelion is edible – leaves, roots, and flowers. And they are nutritional power-houses. They’re rich in beta-carotene, fiber, potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, B vitamins, and protein.

Over the years, dandelions have been used as cures for countless conditions including:

  • kidney stones
  • acne
  • high blood pressure
  • obesity
  • diarrhea
  • high cholesterol
  • anemia
  • cancer
  • diabetes
  • stomach pain
  • hepatitis

“There is probably no existing condition that would not benefit from regularly consuming dandelions,” Joyce A Wardwell writes in The Herbal Home Remedy Book.

She also says that dandelion is “one herb to allow yourself the full range of freedom to explore,” because it has “no known cautionary drug interactions, cumulative toxic effects, or contraindications for use.”

So why not harvest the dandelions in your yard this spring? And I’m sure your neighbors wouldn’t mind if you uprooted some of theirs too. (But you probably want to avoid harvesting near streets or from lawns where herbicides or fertilizers are used.)

The leaves

Dandelion leaves have more beta-carotene than carrots and more iron and calcium than spinach. The best time to harvest them is early spring, before the flowers appear, because that’s when they’re the least bitter.

How can you eat dandelion leaves?

  • Toss them in salads
  • Steam them
  • Saute them with garlic, onions, and olive oil
  • Infuse them with boiling water to make a tea
  • Dry them to use for tea

The flowers

Dandelion flowers are a rich source of the nutrient lecithin. The best time to harvest them is mid-spring, when they’re usually the most abundant. If you cut off the green base, the flowers aren’t bitter.

How can you eat dandelion flowers?

The roots

Dandelion roots are full of vitamins and minerals. They are also in rich in a substance called inulin, which may help diabetics to regulate blood sugar. Dandelion roots are often used to treat liver disorders. They’re also a safe natural diuretic, because they’re rich in potassium. The best time to harvest dandelion roots is early spring and late fall.

How can you eat dandelion roots?

  • Boil them for 20 minutes to make a tea
  • Chop, dry, and roast them to make a tasty coffee substitute.
  • Add them to soup stock or miso
  • Steam them with other vegetables

As most gardeners know, dandelions are virile (some say pernicious) plants. Why not treat them as allies, rather than enemies, this spring?

Interested in reading more about herbs or home remedies? Check out these posts:

Do you eat dandelions? Do you have a favorite dandelion recipe?

Save

From Farm to Table

By

“Where do you get your wheat?” I was about to ask.

My husband and I were out for a rare dinner alone at a nice restaurant, which advertises itself as exclusively local and organic. Next to us, a floor-to-ceiling board announced the night’s specials next to a list of farms where the food was grown.

I had just interviewed a local wheat farmer for an article and heard about a number of farmers in the Valley, who are switching from growing conventional grass seed, long the main crop in this part of the world, to growing organic grains for local markets. I was curious if this restaurant bought its wheat from one of the farmers I’d heard about.

But just as the waiter leaned in, and the question was about to leave my lips, I thought of this spoof of Portland, Oregon from the new show Portlandia, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

It’s true – Oregon is in the midst of a farm-to-table restaurant boom. I’ve been to three restaurants in the last few months with boards listing local farms. One is decorated with a mural of the rolling hills where the restaurant’s produce is grown, and the menu includes photos of the smiling farmers who grow the food.

Of course, farm-to-table restaurants are not new. Alice Waters has been serving up local, organic fare at Chez Pannise in San Francisco for decades. What is new about the locavore restaurants opening in this area is that more and more of them are affordable. One of the restaurants I ate in is a brew-pub and another serves “healthy fast food”, with all dishes under $10.

Moreover, just as the clip of Portlandia suggests, local restaurateurs (as well as grocers and bakers) seem to be forging closer relationships than ever with local farmers – and all parties are coming out ahead.

“It became a heck of a lot more fun to farm,” the wheat farmer I interviewed told me about his farm’s switch to growing food for local markets. “It’s infinitely more rewarding than just growing a product for a guy that you never know.”

We consumers might be the biggest winners. I’m a huge advocate of growing a garden, shopping at farmers’ markets, and cooking from scratch, but the reality is, Americans eat out a lot. In a 2006 survey, the average American family spent 42 percent of their food budget in restaurants.

When restaurants buy from local farms, our meals are more nutritious and taste better, since the food hasn’t made the 1500-mile road trip most produce takes before consumption in the U.S. And just think about all of the pollution and carbon not spewing into our air, and all of the money staying within our communities.

Besides, as a consumer, you can always put down the menu, ask the waiter to save your seats, and go meet the farmer who grew your wheat.

Are farm-to-table restaurants cropping up in your area? What do you think of the trend? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Save

Wildlife-Friendly Food

By

“Eating is an agricultural act.” – Wendell Berry

As you fly over the Midwest, you can look down on the seemingly endless patchwork of plots that make up much of our country. From the air, it’s striking how organized, clean, and antiseptic the nation’s farms look – almost more like factories than farmlands.

Humans have been farming for 10,000 years, but few of us have to think much about agriculture these days. Ninety percent of colonial Americans made their living in agriculture. Today less than two percent of us are farmers. Thus many people don’t think much about how farming has changed in the last 200 years.

For most of human history, farmers had no choice but to care for the health of the soil and ecosystems to some extent. Compost, manure, conservative tilling practices, crop rotation, beneficiary insects, and other natural allies were farmers’ only ways of ensuring healthy crops. But in the last century, petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides enabled farmers to buy fertility in bottles.

Today many consumers are concerned about the dangers of fertilizers and pesticides to human health. But one factor is often ignored: they and the “sterile” farming methods they’ve engendered have been disastrous to wildlife and ecosystems.

Today agriculture is the single biggest cause of habitat loss and endangered species. In the last century farmers across the nation have ripped out vegetation, cut down forests, eradicated insects, shot and killed predators, and filled in wetlands and streams. Wilderness is something increasingly contained in designated areas, not something tolerated on the farms and ranches that make up 40 percent of our nation.

Does it have to be this way? Can we protect the health of ecosystems and grow enough food to feed the world? Can we combine the unpredictable, fertile disorder of the wilderness with our craving for predictable, high-yield agriculture? Can farms be wilder?

I’ve been grappling with these questions for an article assignment over the last month, and in the process learning much about conservation and agriculture. I’ve gotten to talk to many interesting people on the subject and have been pouring over the writings of Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold, and other thinkers, who’ve challenged notions of wild and tame.

I’ll share more about my article after it’s published. In the meantime, I thought you may like to know how you can support farmers who are protecting ecosystems, wildlife, and natural areas. A handful of eco-labels help consumers purchase food grown on farms that protect biodiversity. Some people call these labels “beyond organic”. If you don’t see them at your grocery store, consider asking the owner or manager to stock food certified by these organizations.

The Food Alliance

The Food Alliance launched its certification program in 1998 to designate producers and processors dedicated to social and environmental responsibility. To gain certification, farmers and ranchers must:

  • Conserve soil and water resources
  • Protect biodiversity and wildlife habitat
  • Provide safe and fair working conditions
  • Practice integrated pest management to minimize pesticide use and toxicity
  • Continually improve practices

To find Food Alliance Certified farms, ranches, processors, and distributors in your area, click here.

Salmon Safe

Salmon Safe certifies vineyards, ranches, and farms on the West Coast that are protecting endangered wild salmon and steelhead habitat. They require growers to:

  • Restore and protect waterways and wetlands
  • Prevent stream bank erosion and control sediment
  • Minimize the use of pesticides and contaminants
  • Keep livestock out of waterways

You can find out about some of the farms Salmon Safe has certified here and find a Salmon Safe wine here.

Demeter Biodynamic

Rudolf Steiner developed the concept of Biodynamic agriculture in 1924 in Germany, envisioning the farm as “a self-contained and self-sustaining organism”. In 1928 Demeter was formed in Europe to codify Steiner’s farming principles. Demeter requires farms and ranches to:

  • Avoid chemical pesticides and fertilizers
  • Utilize compost and cover crops
  • Set aside a minimum of 10% of total acreage for biodiversity

You can find a list of some Biodynamic farms here.

There are also a handful of excellent eco-labels that designate non-U.S. growers protecting wildlife and natural areas, including Bird Friendly, Fair Trade, and Rainforest Alliance.

You can find out more about all of these eco-labels and look up any that you see in the grocery store to make sure you can trust their claims at Consumer Reports’ greenerchoices.org.

Save