Flying Tomato Farms

I actually managed to get a little ahead on prepping and packing to leave for the MOSES organic conference this afternoon.  We were going to head out tomorrow, but the weather starts looking nasty after midnight tonight.

So, I thought I’d share a few images that I and H took yesterday on the first day I’ve gotten out to actually work in the gardens (instead of wandering wistfully, waiting for the snow to melt).

Box Elder Bugs emerging

These little guys certainly sensed the warm-up, and joined the newly-active lady bugs in crawling over every nook and cranny on the sun-warmed surfaces.

I started a new compost pile out in the gardens as well.  It’s not much of a pile yet–mostly all dead brown stuff, with a few shovels from the tiny little lump that was last year’s makeshift pile.

All was not completely brown in the gardens, though.  There were a few early weeds poking through, and the green onions are re-emerging, too.

It was so gorgeous and warm and perfect, I couldn’t help but take the hand cultivator out and do a little scratching.  It’s probably a good thing I didn’t have any seeds with me, or I would’ve been tempted to plant a little too early–after all, it’s supposed to get pretty cold over the next few days.

The frost was still down there: in some places, my cultivator tines were going pretty deep; in other places, they were hitting icy soil at an inch or two.

Still, it was a lovely first day out actually doing something of value–pulling down the old tomato and bean vines, lopping off the old broccoli stalks.  I quit after only a couple hours though, recognizing I hadn’t used that particular set of muscles in some time.  Still, it was most happy-making and wonderful…

Image by HL Scholten

…and Vega, though she still won’t come down to the garden, for fear of the electric fence-monster, had a pretty good time, too.

Image by HL Scholten

I won’t be posting much in the next several days, as I am getting ready to attend the MOSES* organic conference in Lacrosse.  We’re leaving Thursday, which means I have three days to get about forty to fifty more essays critiqued, pay my monthly bills, finish and send out the Market Grower Grant, and pack.

Oh, and I have to find a light timer that works, so H. will not be responsible (on top of the dog and the worms I’m hoping will get here Wednesday) for the leeks and onions getting enough light when I’m gone.  They’re not up yet, but I’ve turned on the lights during the day to encourage the sprouting seeds to break through and head towards the light.

Once we hit the road to the conference, I’ll try to send tweets from the road and the conference itself.  You can follow me on Twitter by clicking on the left side of the screen, or you can just follow the updates as they appear here on my blog feed.

*MOSES=Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service.  Their organic conference is the BIG ONE in the region.  Sounds like a couple thousand people will be there this year.

I and a couple of my fellow marketeers will be heading up to Brookings at a way-too-early hour tomorrow for the South Dakota Farmers Market Workshop in the land of the Jacks (Jackrabbits, for those who never got to see the infamous basketball games between USD and State–complete with dead bunnies and coyotes).

You can still sign up!  Registration at the door is a whopping thirty bucks, and includes lunch and snacks and materials.  It’s at the Biostress Lab on the SDSU campus from 9-4:30.

See you there!

One of the current VAAC Board members (yes, we are all getting along much better now, thank you) mentioned the possibility of constructing a straw bale building on the Community Garden site that could function as the toolshed we’ve been wanting.

Those who have been involved in the garden these last couple years may know how we attempted to purchase and move an old chicken house into town to serve as our shed.

We paid half the cost and secured funds for the other half, went out to the site and cleaned out the building, and disassembled the old chicken wire and frame coop from the front, and got the thing ready to move.  It was a lot of hard, dirty work.

But then our various schemes for actually getting the building into town all fell through.  Well, we didn’t actually do the “three chicks in low-cut shirts seducing farmers with implement trailers down at Toby’s” scheme.

We also didn’t approach the University football team for a Gladiator-type running-of-the-chicken-house (I still think that would’ve been awesome publicity).  But believe me, those ideas and more were discussed more than once out of sheer desperation.

So, we have been without a toolshed these last two seasons, and that has been kind of a pain.  I have a wheelbarrow I would very much like to donate, but it doesn’t seem a good idea if we can’t lock it up. It would also be nice to have a couple watering cans on site, and a few tools for gardeners who want to just bike or walk over without lugging a bunch of stuff.

I was thinking perhaps if we could locate a person with straw bale building expertise here in town (and I know there are at least a couple), we might hold some sort of straw bale building clinic, with registrants paying a fee for the weekend learning experience that could pay the instructor(s) and pay for the materials as well.

This is only in the idea stage thusfar, but I thought I’d throw it out there as a possibility, so those who might be interested in the building or the learning could give a holler in the comments below.

Maybe we could get the football team to run the materials into town along a makeshift parade route?

The Running of the Bales!

When we had our first Community Garden meeting the other night (after the Seed Swap), it occurred to me that people need more information on early garden planning.  Sometimes it’s hard to gauge what people need just starting out when you’ve been immersed in the thing for years.

For one, if you’re in this area (Zone 5–the Southern Paradise of the Dakotas, that is), you should be thinking about starting long-season crops indoors now.  You can do it under lights, or you can start a few plants in a sunny window.  Leeks and onions and parsley are the first crops I start, at about ten to twelve weeks from the frost-free date (which I’m saying is about May 10).

At 8-10 weeks out, start perennial/biennial herbs and plants (foxgloves, campanula, whatever says 8-10 weeks before last frost on its seed pack).  Also start peppers and eggplant.  These guys can take awhile to germinate, so don’t despair if they don’t pop right up.

Six to eight weeks out is when I start tomatoes.  While my tomato plants aren’t usually as big as the ones in commercial greenhouses when I set them out, that’s actually a good thing.  If a tomato or pepper plant starts making flowers when it’s still in the pot, that can reduce your overall yield.  If you get a plant like that, pinch off the blooms.

I actually wait until a week or two after our supposed “frost-free” date to set out tomato and pepper plants–just to make sure the weather is settled enough for the plants to survive.  I try to get all my tomatoes and peppers in by June 1st at the latest, but some years there are a few stragglers.

Even in the height of the season, I may still be starting plants indoors to give them a little coddling, create even spacing when I transplant, or make sure they get good water (it’s easier to water a flat of seedlings than a row of them).  Some crops–roots in particular–don’t like being transplanted.  Some don’t mind but are hardly ever started indoors anyway–like corn.  Some are a toss-up–some people transplant squash; some just direct-seed in the garden.

This isn’t to say that you can’t start your garden until May 10th–far from it.  There are a lot of veggies whose packets say something like, “as soon as the ground can be worked” or “plant in early spring.”  I start direct-seeding, or planting those crops directly in the garden in late March–when the ground can be worked.  I’ve planted peas as early as March 24th.

Peas and spinach do not mind the cold, or even a little snow.  What they do mind is heat, and if you don’t get them in early enough, your harvest window before the spinach “bolts” to seed and your peas succumb to powdery mildew will be very short.

I also seed early crops of radishes, carrots and beets, turnips, broccoli raab, lettuce (and mesclun/salad mix), arugula, and other cool-season crops in late March or early April.  Potatoes can be planted then, too. Some crops I give a little bit of protection (floating row cover), but most will be just fine.  They might grow a little slowly at first, but those little seedlings are generally pretty cold-tolerant.

There are a lot of folks in this area who don’t even think about planting until May or even June.  That’s a mistake in my mind–that’s a good couple of months of harvest you’re not getting, and you’re also not getting those first greens and roots of the season that our bodies crave so much.

Too, if you plant early (and often!), you will still be able to use the cool-season crop space for another crop later in the summer, when that first crop has gone by.  It’s a good way to get more out of a smaller garden area.

You can also transplant baby plants you’ve started indoors between maturing things–say tomato plants amongst your pea vines.  By the time the tomatoes really start taking off, the peas will be done, and the nitrogen the peas fixed in the soil will nurture those tomato plants.

So check your seed packs and start sorting them into seeds for starting indoors and seeds for direct-seeding.  Read the information on the back of the packets and sort into cooler-season and warmer-season crops.  Many of the cool-season crops can also be grown in the fall, so it might be helpful to think of the garden season as three seasons in one–a hot season surrounded by two cooler ones.

So, I’ve been thinking about building a worm composting bin for my basement this season.  I was even looking up plans to do so.  And then I got the latest Gardens Alive catalog with the $25 coupon, and they have a really swank 100% recycled plastic one in there for a hundred bucks.  It even has a spigot for tapping off the wormy-licious tea for houseplant watering.

Last year I bought a couple bags of worm castings to amend my potting mix.  This year, looking at the price and the cost of shipping, I only bought one.  And all the while I’m thinking, why am I buying this when I could have a little factory to make it myself right in my basement?

Nevermind that it’d be a nice way to have active composting going on through the winter months, when outdoor compost tends to be more like frozen hunks of kitchen waste that makes the neighbors raise their eyebrows.

So, I’m considering making this purchase and setting up my new compost-making “pets” in their own little home in the basement.  I wonder if readers would chime in here and let me know if they have a worm bin like this, and how they like it.  I’d also like some advice on where to buy or get redworms–while the bin is a good price in Gardens Alive, the worms themselves are pretty spendy.

This was really easy and it tastes really good.

I took one of the aforementioned fresh, unwaxed, thin-skinned lemons and cut off its naughty bits (that is, both ends).

Then I sliced it thinly, preserving all the juice–dumping it in a bowl and removing the seeds.  Then I chopped all those thin slices.  Threw all the juice and chopped-up bits in a saucepot with about a cup of white sugar (yeah, it’s a lot).

Simmered it down ’til it was thick, and added a capful of vanilla extract (real, of course–don’t let me even hear of you using the fake stuff) and a grating of fresh nutmeg.  Scalded a half-pint jar, dried it, and dumped in the contents.  Put the lid and cap on and let it cool on the counter.

It’s not officially “canned,” of course–I didn’t give it a boiling water bath or anything.  The lid pinged as it cooled, but we all know that’s not good enough and it has to live in the fridge.  Still, it’s a pretty, tasty thing.  And yet another jar of yummy homemade stuff in the fridge.

I really need to have a brunch soon…

Lovely Lemons

H scored these beauties last night at Raziel’s.  The owner had been in California and brought a bunch back from her friend’s tree.  They are fragrant, thin-skinned, unwaxed–nothing like the gnarly, sour, slightly greenish relatives they sell at the local supermarket.

As of right now, I have no idea what I’m going to do with them.  OK–that’s not true–I have too many ideas of what I could do with them.

I’m imagining slicing a couple of them very thin and preserving them in a light sugar syrup.  I’m imagining some sort of lemon chicken dish.  I’m imagining custard and/or ice cream.  But there are only four, and they’re fresh, so I’d better figure out something within the next day or so.  Something that utilizes not just the pulp, but the thin, tender rind as well.

I’m open for suggestions, readers.  Here in South Dakota, we don’t get a chance at four fresh lemons every day (or almost any day), so I want to make something as special as the occasion.  What would you do with four lovely fresh lemons to capture all their sweet, lemony goodness?

The Seed Swap last night was a success–not a huge turnout, but a good one, and we got a few folks signed up for community garden plots as well.  Good conversation, too, and it reminded me that we should try to get a seed starting clinic set up for the next month or so.  I wonder if there are any Master Gardeners out there who need to fulfill their service hours?

Today I’m going to get a couple more flats started–”Talon” yellow onions and a new variety of flatleaf parsley I got from Pinetree called Prezzemolo Gigante D’Italia.  That’ll have to be after I go downtown and meet with our new farmers market insurance agent, whose company is saving us over five hundred bucks on our liability costs.  We’re not tickled by the politics of their company, but they’ve waived the membership fee for us, so we’re jumping on board.

Stopped down at the Civic Council this morning and picked up a couple new (to me) long-sleeve, long-tailed linen shirts.  They’re pretty, and for a couple months I’ll probably wear them as “nice” clothes–but when the sun really starts to beat down in the gardens, there’s nothing like a long-sleeve linen shirt for garden work.

As much as I adore being sun-kissed, sometimes I get a little too infatuated and let the sun go a little too far with me.  The linen is cool and breathable but still protects from the harsh rays (I often get a bit of a “half-moon” tan on my lower back from shorter t-shirts).   And, although I’m not one to care too much about how I look in the gardens–you gotta admit almost anyone looks good in linen–even when they’re sweaty and covered with dirt.

Come to the Seed Swap tonight, 7:15pm at the Vermillion Public Library Community Room.

Bring any extra seeds you have, extra seed catalogs, or just yourself.  Absolute beginners are most welcome, and refreshments will be provided.

We’ll be having a community garden meeting following the swap, and you’ll be able to reserve your plot for the 2009 garden season!  A 4′ x 8′ plot is $15 for the season.