Seed Saving 101

Onion seed head

If you ever wanted to know the ins and outs of how to save seed from your favorite varieties and crops, the difference between monocots and dicots, if your region’s climate gives you a step-up on any crops, how to store seeds and how long their shelf life is or even how to plant with seed saving in mind, then “Seed Saving for Farmers and Gardeners” is the class for you.

Developed and put on by the Organic Seed Alliance (OSA), and presented by Micaela Colley, this was the class that answered all my questions and got me over my fears about when, how, where and even why to save seed.

A pollination explanation started us out and addressed open-pollinated varieties as opposed to hybrids: with open-pollinated crops the pollen is carried by the wind, insects, birds or other external method; hybrids – known in seed catalogs as F1’s – are crosses of open-pollinated lines of the same species, but they don’t breed true to seed themselves and will separate back out to their parents’ individual traits.  She also addressed Genetically Modified seeds (it’s illegal to save them, but I don’t know anybody that wants to) and other patented varieties (even on non-GMOs), and the standard 17-year PVP (Plant Variety Protection) that exists for some specifically bred traits.

Head lettuce

After a thorough but quick discussion of basic plant botany covering perfect flowers (those that have both male and female parts in the same flower), imperfect flowers (each flower has either a male anther or female stamen), monoecious plants (separate plants have either male or female flowers), and dioecious plants (the same plant has both male flowers and female flowers), and the difference between dicot seeds and monocot seeds (dicots are things like beans and grains and produce 2 cotyledons; monocots like corn produce only one cotyledon), we moved on to the annual, biennial or perennial natures of crops.

A foot-peddled Amish style thresher

Biennials are the most intriguing to me; they require what’s called a vernalization period, which is a time of cooler weather and ideally higher humidity in order to fulfill their life cycle and decide to bolt and go to seed.  The thing is, depending on your region’s climate or the type of year you’re having, vernalization could happen in only one year (as opposed to the 2 years you normally think of with a bi-ennial) thus lending your crop to an annual life cycle.  Now, when you’re a plant breeder yourself you might consider this an advantage depending on the crop; if the fruit of the plant is harvested an earlier ripening date may be preferred, but if the vegetative parts of the plant are what you eat then holding it off for the longest amount of time before it bolts would be ideal.  Seed saving and plant breeding are starting to become something of an interest and a playground, aren’t they?

From there we learned about the amount of spacing between bodies of crops you’ll need if you want to save seed that is true to this year’s crop: as little as 3ft for peas and lettuce, but up to 2 miles might be required for things like brassicas, squash or corn whose pollen travels the farthest.  Also – having at least 50 individuals in one planting seems to be the magic number for optimal pollination.

When growing for seed it’s important to remember your bases:

These beets definitely need this trellis

1-Timing; you have a much smaller window for planting to go to seed than for mature harvesting.
2-Spacing; as just discussed, you’ll probably need more plot space for a body of seed-saving crop (also, it’s best to plant in blocks rather than rows for seed crops.)
3-Staking; bolted plants get HUGE, taller than people in a lot of cases, and they’ll need support and air flow. Have trellising in mind.
4-Irrigation; You definitely don’t want an overhead watering system, since you want the fully formed seed heads to dry out as much as possible before harvesting. Drip is the way to go.
5-Fertility; your soil is going to need more and longer sustained nutrients since the seed growing process takes a bit longer.
6-Weed management; DO NOT LET THE WEEDS GO TO SEED. Nobody wants tainted seeds.
7-Pest management; the case I’ve seen involved trying to keep hungry deer away from fully ripe plants, they can destroy a season of waiting for seed head maturity in one night.

Fanning: pouring off the seeds in front a full-speed fan; the heavy, mature seeds fall off into the 1st bin, the lighter chaff into the 2nd

 

In the case of seed from edible vegetation crops (things like carrots, kale, cabbage, lettuce; anything that isn’t a fruit of the plant) you’ll want to let the seed head get fully dry before processing the chaff and debris off.  Drying on the stalk is one way, but even after that you want your moisture level to be as low as 6%, so further drying, like on a tarp or ground cloth in a well-ventilated space helps a lot. You can then thresh the seed off the heads and sift and/or fan (winnow) off the rest of the debris until you have clean, dry seeds ready for storing or selling.

Bin 1 with seed; bin 2 with chaff

Seeds obtained from fruits (tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers) have to be cleaned and then dried, and in the case of tomatoes, a slight fermentation period is necessary. Just cut open the fruit, scoop out the seeds and sieve out the pulp.  Let the seeds sit in their juice for about 3 days, uncovered at room temperature.  If a white mold develops it’s ok, it just means the seeds are ready.  Pour off the tomato juice but not any of the seeds, then add water to the bucket or bowl and pour that off, reserving the seeds in the bottom; a few times and the seeds are cleaned of their residue and juice and you have clean seeds ready to be laid out and dried.

Using a sieve to separate big debris off the seed pods

When the seeds are completely clean and completely dry storage is the next step.  As stated before 6% moisture is the target percentage and a rule of thumb is that if the number of temperature degrees plus the number of the percentage of humidity equal less than 100, you’re in the clear and your seeds should store fine.  Envelopes, jars, rubbermaids, tupperware and ziploc bags are a few of the best options for storage, and these are best when kept at a constant, cool temperature.  Stored well, seeds can retain their viability for 4-5 years.

And so my comfort level in seed saving savvy has progressed beyond garlic cloves and potato eyes.  And with countless traits just begging to be reigned in and bred out in future generations, I have renewed hope for our contemporary food revival and the broad scope that stewarding the earth entails.

As Time Goes By

And so it’s finally fall. The first day of the season and I’m wondering, as I do this time every year, where did the summer go? It flew by.  Especially when I’m working in the great outdoors and with the ground everyday, I’ve become hyper-sensitive to the variances in temperature, the path the sun travels as it lights the sky in the morning and casts creamy peach and blueberry streaks as it makes its exit in the evening, the rainy days, the windy days, the perfect days and then suddenly – the first day I see entire flocks of colored leaves carpeting the ground beneath me. And I know the year has entered its exiting stage. 

April

 

he has made everything beautiful in its time.  he has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what god has done from beginning to end”   ecc 3:11 

Where did the time go? Where does time go, and how?  Surprisingly, there are different ways to measure even passing time. 

May

 

Plants measure it in degree days: plants will only develop and grow when the temperature rises above a certain threshold and stays below a certain threshold, says 50F base temperature and 90F max temperature, and for a determined length of sunlight.  Anywhere outside this arbitrary range and the plants’ development ceases.  In fact, when you buy your seed packets and the back of the envelope says: “Will mature in 65-70 days,” it means that according the day length and temperature fluctuations in the area where the grower produced his seed crop, the average of all the crops’ maturity came in at 65-70 days. This is not a hard and fast rule and can vary extremely from place to place, climate to climate and your latitudinal placement. 

June

 

As a transient and a traveller I have started measuring my time in relation to places: the last place I built a fire was in Kansas (April); the last time it snowed was in Colorado (May); the last time I got a haircut I was still living in North Carolina (March); it was in Canada that had my first truly hot, hot summer day (July); I had already lived in 6 different places by the time the first strawberries were ripe this year (August, for me); before the farmers markets opened I was in both Kansas and Colorado (April and May); it was Colorado when the asparagus began to come on; when I was in love it was Kansas, Colorado and Montana; when I was brokenhearted it was Canada and Washington.  

when the times are good, be happy; but when the times are bad, consider: god has made the one as well as the other                 ecc 7:14 

July

Sometimes I remember different times in books, I remember different emotions and situations I was working out in my head during the time I was reading certain books and authors.  Often I measure time in friendships and relationships: back when my sister and I fought a lot, then when we started getting along and were going out on date nights together; that period when I felt really popular in middle school; when I grew apart from all of my friends ( that was the last year of highschool); when my relationship with my parents finally started righting itself (not too long after I left home the first time); when I went through that really long period of just wanting to be autonomous and on my own for everything. 

encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness                                   heb 3:13 

August

 

A period can feel like a fleeting moment when you can look back on it as a passing stage or a few steps along the path to who you are now. 

jesus christ is the same yesterday, today and forever         heb 13:8 

Maybe summer always seems to pass by so quickly because of the higher temperatures.  They do everything from making your hair and nails grow faster to speeding up your body’s metabolism.  And the longer hours of sunlight can give you reason and ability to pack more things into your days, and how busy-ness makes time fly!  Maybe we feel invincible in the summer because the weather is going our way, school is out and the harvest is plentiful with abounding choices.  Then when fall puts its foot down we’re awakened to the fact that the earth, seasons and time continue to march on – whether the pace be steady, hurried or paused. 

September

 

….a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak…..  ecc 3 

Whether you want to measure time in tree rings, variegated rock faces, digital numbers or second hands, don’t forget to look beyond and above those things, to where you’re standing now.  What’s happening with the weather outside right now? What are your best friends doing today? How can you most experience what you’ve been given today?  Appreciate these things.  Not living in the past and not living for what might happen can be hard, painful or scary, but if the peace and satisfaction that comes with living where you are and what you are right now can be tapped, it’s a tribute to your faith. And believe me, building a strong faith takes time.

Life is Like a Bed of Beets

One of the hardest thing for people to do in the garden is to thin a crop. This is most common with beets and carrots, though any crop sown too thickly will need thinning; lettuce, arugula, and Brussel’s sprouts are some other crops I’ve thinned.

What people find so difficult about it is the fact that you have to uproot and kill perfectly viable plants, robbing them of a long, happy, vegetable life in the garden bed. But this is entirely necessary for the good health of the entire bed. To thin out a crop requires diligence, a steady eye and selective hands.

Thickly sowing a crop like beets helps the seedlings to overcome weed growth and get to a good, healthy stage with 2 sets of true leaves; this is the time when you can start to thin them. If not thinned, the beets will grow their bulbous taproots round and end up smooshing their neighboring beets, competing both for nutrients in the soil and light with their leaves. A good thinning at an early (2 sets of true leaves) stage – to about 2″ between beets – will get the beets to a good standing for salad slicing or whole-roasting size; thinning out at this stage to about 5″ allows the beets that are left an even better home and situation to grow exponentially better to a good sliced grilling or beet-chocolate cake size. But if the beets never get thinned, just left there for fear of killing a few, then the whole bed will suffer – stunted and crowded, not producing as hefty or thriving of a crop as the potential it held.

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed….But God gives it a body as He has determined.
– 1 Cor 15: 36-38

The beauty in the cycles of nature includes death in a very big way; seeds have to die to their forms in order to become stems and leaves and fully reach their potential as plants – from a sprig of thyme to a 100-foot tall Eastern White Pine. Compost, caterpillars and sunlight are all things that have to die to their current forms in order to offer regeneration and new life to another.

“Now you come so close to Jesus on the cross that he is kissing you….Suffering is a gift of God, a gift that makes us most Christlike.” – Mother Theresa

 

So it is with our own life’s cycles; we must die to our little hang-ups, ego-embracers and sometimes our seemingly truest desires in order to cultivate integrity, character and wisdom – or simply to focus and grow the better (and most needed and essential) parts of ourselves that we may have been neglecting by trying to save all the little pieces. To be the fullest, best and most formed person we were created to be, we will be asked to choose between what’s easy or seems to make sense, and what’s life-affirming and sustaining. Without diligence, a steady eye and selective hands we may find ourselves stretched too thin along the surface, instead of being able to thin out and away those things that would keep us from tapping into a depth of nurture and nutrients. I’ve found that each hard decision I’ve had to make has been built upon previous struggles in a way that has matured my conscience, my awareness and my compassion. This is the sustainable life; giving up and letting go that which would hinder us from growth and new life. Growth and change will happen; sustainable is not stagnant.

I die every day – I mean that. -1 Cor 15:31

 

Beet Chocolate Cake!

But just as we can witness a bed of beets sincerely thrive and prosper when tended to with thinning and weeding, so we are assured that our choice to die to ourselves and the little hindrances will bring to fruition both depth and meaning in our lives. The act itself might be painful and smart for a while but just as beets grow more vigorously with a little root disturbance (see previous post: Of Weeding Ways and Summer Soaks) so our characters and personalities can be twice as strong with the mending.

Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with Him.

– 2 Tim 2:11

So don’t fret over thinning out that bed of crowded beets, they will thank you for it with a harvest of abundance. You’ll get to enjoy the harvest it produces at multiple stages of its growth. Same goes for your garden of life.

A Curry of a Life

As I finish my westward journey it hits me that I’m half-way through my intended trip. Though I’ve placed no sincere agenda on my time of traveling (could be one year, could be one season, could be 3) I’ve made it to the northwest tip of the United States; I’ve driven across the country. I’ve been through 11 states and one province to get to where I am. That’s a good accomplishment to look back on (rolling over to 226000 miles on the car isn’t a bad reminder itself.) And the friends and network of contacts I’ve made along the way from St. Louis to Lawrence to Canon City to Castle Rock to Hamilton to Sorrento (and even far off in Connecticut and New York!) have been both God-sends and a good stream of people with which to keep in touch and call in a pinch if need be.

All this is extremely affirming and an exciting endeavor for a young will-be farmer amid the paradigm shift of her generation coming back to the land. So many farmers become locked down to their land, and WWOOFing is a wonderful way to keep a working network among a hard-working, ingenious, resourceful and intuitive group with similar problems, different solutions and a variance of microclimates that couldn’t be more diverse. In fact, the one thing I’ve heard from almost every farmer I’ve stayed with so far is that they really wish they could WWOOF.

But I have to admit, that I’m finally getting tired. A little road-weary. A bit nostalgic for my own bed, in one location, for more than a few weeks. I’m craving familiarity to yin the yang of newness all of the time. There’s a lot to be said for making friends in lots of places, but if you can’t have your one place of lots of friends it’s easy to feel adrift at times.

“If variety is the spice of life, mine is a curry.”   -From My Life in France, by Julia Child

And at this particular time, it’s proven helpful to sit down and re-evaluate my intentions and goals for this season of traveling and farm-hopping. So I have rewritten my info page and hope with that to maintain a clear focus on this time of my life where youth and transience and a sponge-complex aid living and learning.

Though time (and money) is one thing, experiencing, tasting, handling and feeling are things one can’t get merely from reading a book (or even a blog, sadly.) And that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing – to fully interact with my passion and interest in a very educational, hands-on way. Be it compost piles, potato beetles, sheep, horses, goats, chickens, herbs, flowers, squash, broccoli, peaches, apples, pears, hoes, shovels, wheelbarrows, hay balers, 100degree markets, 20degree markets, potlucks or honor-system roadside stands.

I will always remember the fertility of the Kansas soil and how to herd a sheep from behind; the feel of the grit on my knees of the rocky, sandy garden in Montana; making compost tea in Colorado; weeding beets with knives in B.C., and; that the perfect trellising system for peas has yet to be invented.

The Fruit Basket of BC

The other day me and the other farm gals hopped in the car to make the 2 hour drive to a friend’s orchard for black cherry picking.  Hundreds of trees (plums, apples, peaches, pears and cherries) graced the gently sloping hillside just back of said friend’s produce stand/market in Kelowna, BC.

Picking buckets in tow (strapped to belts hanging over the shoulder or from the waist makes it easy to pick any small fruit/berry as it frees up both hands) we were given directions to strip the trees as much as we could and take as much as we wanted.

Coco - one of the other farm gals

70lbs of  cherries later (plus 5lbs of sour cherries for a pie) we headed back up to the stand and were told we could pay whatever we thought fair, something less than $2/lb was all the suggestion we got.  So emptying our collective pocket of $60 we transfered the fruit to the lugs we brought from the farm with visions of pies, jams, dried cherries and infused drinks dancing in our heads.

British Columbia has one of the longest and most reputable sweet cherry breeding programs around.  Van, the variety we picked, was introduced in 1944 at a station in Summerland BC, which has produced 22 other varieties as well, some for earlier ripening, some self-fertile (meaning you don’t have to buy 2 of the same variety of tree just to get cherries to fruit) some for later-frost hardiness.  The Van cherries are deep red, full-season cherries that can cross-pollinate lots of other varieties and since the trees themselves produce such a heavy abundance of fruit, each cherry is just a bit smaller than other trees that put all their efforts into bigger, but less cherries.

Pitted perfection!

Since they’ve come home with us, some have already been freezer jammed with Pomona’s Universal Pectin (a unique type of natural pectin that has you use calcium water to help in the setting which makes it possible for you to use less sugar or honey in the recipe, check it out!) some have been pitted and frozen and some have made it to the dehydrator.  I’m promised pie tomorrow by one other pie-smart farm gal and my share will be acompanying me in dried state for ease of toting around.

Of Weeding Ways and Summer Soaks

Finding myself in Canada now, I find it interesting to note the slight differences in cultural speak. Certain intonations of words, slightly different pronunciations and posing questions in the form of statements with an added, “Eh?” to the end perk up my ears and remind me to stick a few “y’alls” into my sentence structures every now and then; just to keep them on their toes.

Certain words really stick out: pronouncing ‘produce’ with a ‘prod’ to the first syllable instead of a ‘pro,’ and utilizing every letter in the word ‘herb’ instead of ignoring the ‘h’ like most Americans do.

Flower transplants for the herb garden

And a lovely herb garden we have here at Notch Hill Organics indeed! Lemon balm, mojito mint, rue, sage, horehound, chamomile, feverfew, parsley, thyme, oregano and mugwort (and quite a few volunteer thistles!) along with a lovely array of bouquet flowers: calendula, poppies, lupines, shasta daisies, pansies, petunias and bachelor’s buttons to name a few.

Move on to the next field away from the house and you’d find well established brassica transplants; cabbages, kohlrabi, broccoli and kale. These are shared by 6 rows of potatoes and an odd lettuce bed.

Just to the left and the furthest to the west, you’d find mixed direct-seeded beds; beets, carrots, raddichio, poppies, salad mix, garlic, Swiss chard, kale and arugula. The next closest field contains earlier plantings of most of the previous, with a higher concentration of beets and carrots. Spinach is the name of the game in the next field east; planted on the outer rows along the beds, it shields 2 beds each of parsnips and salsify (interesting note: Sue does NOT weed around the spinach plants, only hoes the open spaces between rows – having a bit of weed bulk around the plants keeps it from bolting too soon.) Salad turnips, more carrots and beets as well as radishes and shelling peas live here too.

Looking West

And finally we get to the easternmost field which contains various crops for seed saving (yup, this is where the zucchini’s live; Black Beauties to be precise,) a smattering of first year strawberry plants, basil and lettuces as well as borage, summer squash, onions and some flowers.

On the way back up to the farm house (built in 1906) you’d pass by the rhubarb patch and small orchard with a couple of apple trees, a cherry and some apricots. And if you were to bypass the house and head down the hill to the greenhouse, you’d find a carpet design of in-ground basil for seed saving sharing space with trellised tomatoes, turnips, and even more carrots and beets. Do you have a guess at what the hot sellers at market might be? I hadn’t even considered the super abundance of beet and carrot plantings we have here until writing this.

But how could I not notice when the whole crew is out hand-weeding 400ft long beds of beet seedlings – with all 6 of us it still takes up to a couple of hours. Sue’s beet-weeding technique is another unique approach: we weed them with knives to get the roots of the weeds up and over as well as to loosen the soil right around the base of the beets. Beets apparently love to have their roots and the surrounding soil stimulated, it draws in nitrogen from the air and kicks their growth rate into high gear. So, being careful not to actually nic a beetroot, slashing the soil around them makes them happy as a pig in the mud.

And for the first time since I’ve been here, we have no mud! Sunny and hot days are all that’s ahead of us now in the forecast and we’ve been sweating away in 30+ degree weather (85-95F,) and frequent visits to nearby Shuswap Lake have heightened morale and lowered body temperatures (quite considerably.)

Pest control

60 is the new 40

In kilometers per hour that is. That’s right…I’m in Canada! Sorrento, BC to be exact. About 5 hours north of the border of eastern Washington. 5 hours of driving by fruit stands, farm markets, cabins tucked away in the hillsides above the river, $1.06 per liter gas, the “houseboat capitol of Canada” which is Sicamouse, a couple metropolises and one good sized rainstorm before pulling into the drive of Notch Hill Organics Farm.

Immediately greeted by Sue (owner/farmer) I was taken inside to meet the other full season interns – 4 in all – and given the option of a small camper just outside in the yard or a small walk-in-closet sized room in the house, I opted for the closet. I’ve been in standalone structures the past 2 places I’ve lived and I’m ready to feel I’m not the only one under my roof for a while. And a wise choice it was indeed! The view out my back window is a span of the acres (14) in cultivated fields, the scenic mountain range and……..the train that comes by every half hour – all 48 of them. Thankfully Lawrence, KS, got me used to the rushing and piping of a constant train, so I slept well and full the first night to rise early to a breakfast of farm eggs and homemade granola before venturing out on our first task of the day: covering the female flowers of the zucchini bed in the seed-saving field.

Keeping the F flower from being cross-pollinated

Zucchini (in the Cucurbiteae family) is insect-pollinated and contains both male and female flowers on the same plant. It is relatively easy to recognize the female flowers of the zucchini plant as they are the ones

Male flower

with a little fruit of a zucchini itself forming (the ovary) while the male flowers merely extend off of a short stem coming off the main stem. The trick is to eyeball the F flower just before it ‘pops’ and promptly place a paper bag over it to keep the M flowers’ pollen (of other varieties in the same family) from cross-pollinating into it. Cucurbits, if insect-pollinated are never true to seed because of the mixing of pollen sources. So, in saving seeds true to name the only way to make sure of the variety is to cover the female flowers; too early in formation and the flower might not develop properly, too late and you risk cross-pollination. To maintain seed purity, we pollinate these plants by hand; if space weren’t an issue, isolation planting away from other varieties of the same species could be done as well.

Female flower; see the little zuke?

Hand-pollinating is an easy, breezy, quick and dirty one-flower stand. You take the M flower (it’s easiest to rip off the petals down to the base so the anther is better exposed) and simply rub the pollen-laden anther against the stigma of the F flower which has bloomed in the meanwhile in the bag and readily accepts the donation. Cover it back up with a bag, dispose of the M flower, and in about 2-3 days the fertilization should have taken place and zucchini can go about their normal life.

Hand pollinating

These fruits will be harvested for their seeds and along with an assortment of other seed-saver veggies and plants (beets, onions, borage and basil to name a few) will be sold to the local, organic seed-savers company down the road.

In the Kitchen:

A loaf of sourdough turned crusty and hard made it here with me in the car trip up. What was I to do with one huge crouton? Make Panzanella of course!

A wonderful way to use up stale bread is to cut it up into bite-sized chunks, slice up some tomatoes, herbs like basil, cilantro or dill and any other veggie you might have on hand (cucumbers, peppers, cauliflower, etc) add a dash of olive oil along with salt and pepper. Let this soak in the fridge overnight and the next day for lunch, voila! You have a wonderful, moist and flavorful bread salad. You could even add lettuce at the last minute and maybe some balsamic for an added flavor boost. But it’s just as refreshing and satisfying as is. (Strata and bread pudding are some other great options for stale bread too.)

And the scapes are in! Loads of garlic scapes have sprouted and are curling their tails in signal that they are ready to be harvested!  3 handfuls came back into the house with me yesterday afternoon, and along with some bolting cilantro became delicous scape-cilantro pesto. Need I say more?

Of Local Burgers and Strawberry Dreams

So for the first time I think, a local meal was prepared in the restaurant’s kitchen yesterday.  By yours truly.  A yummy, juicy and flavorful buffalo burger (from the Missoula market,) homemade gluten-free bread, carrot thinnings from the garden and a Swiss chard saute with cranberries and walnuts (the last 2 ingredients admittedly were not local :)  It was simple, satisfying, local and nourishing.

In addition to making that lunch for Paul (the hired gardener) and myself, I’ve finally had some kitchen time; when the chef’s aren’t busy roasting garlic, preparing marinara sauce, marinading all sorts of meats and fixins, baking tarts, pies, cakes and bars galore and generally using every inch of counter and oven space I could try to squeeze a cutting board or cookie sheet onto. 

Baking therapy! I had started a sourdough culture a week before so that was ready to get mixed and rise, and a loaf of banana-cherry bread with walnuts and chocolate chips sprang into my mind and wouldn’t leave til it had manifested itself on my plate.  It was an especially nice breakfast treat.

To pair with the sourdough bread (one loaf of which found itself at a potluck last night) we had some extra cilantro and spinach from the garden and voila! Pesto it was! Funny enough, I think this was the first pesto I’ve actually used pine nuts (the traditional pesto nut) for; granted, cilantro-spinach isn’t exactly ‘traditional pesto,’ but I’m all about innovation and substitution and general creativity anyway.  Coriander and a pinch of cumin rounded out the flavor and made for a great addition to today’s lunch of balck beans, salsa, tortilla chips and garden greens.

Cilantro-Spinach Pesto:
2c cilantro
4c spinach
3-4 garlic cloves
some salt
1/4 c pine nuts
1/4 c olive oil
a quarter of a lime (peeled, but the wedge itself thrown in)
about a teaspoon and a half of coriander
a pinch of cumin

Blend everything in a food processor, maybe adding some water depending on the consistency you like.  Enjoy!

It seems like we’ve been waiting ages for crops to reach maturity in the garden and greenhouse, the peppers seem stunted, the eggplants are having a slow-go at it and keeping lots of rows under Remay cover outside kept us waiting on kale, chard, broccoli and cabbage.  Though the cabbage is still in the process of forming solid heads, we harvested today from the garden:

Zucchini and squash
Basil tops
Broccoli! (This is one crop, along with carrots,that just tastes so incredibly different when grown yourself as opposed to buying at the store)
Cilantro
Green Onions
Kale
Swiss chard

So I’m left wondering if even one strawberry will be ripe by the time I leave in a couple days (it’s their second season in the ground – typically means a smaller harvest.)  But I’ve seen some starting to turn rosy now that the sun has decided to show itself more! (I even dreamed of picking strawberries on Flying Cloud Farm, where I interned last year.)  Hopefully this will NOT be the Year Without Strawberries! Back home, they’ve had them for a good month now!

Pea trellises; we even got to munch on some early snow peas!

Cukes, tomatoes, peppers, basil, green onions, eggplant, squash, chard and kale!

El Spinach loves El Nino

Unseasonably wet weather has been my constant companion since moving on to Montana. (Locally attributed to the final phase of an El Nino ’09-’10 winter.) What’s normally a very hot, dry and arid beginning of summer, has instead lolled around as a decidedly wet, cool and lingering spring. Forest fire danger is usually very high this time of year, but Smokey the Bear has been silenced this season.

So has much of our crop growth. Even settled in the center of this cove known as Sleeping Child where our fields get the minimum and more of 6 hours of sunlight per day (it’s actually light here by 6am and just getting dark by 10pm,) with as overcast as drizzly as it has almost constantly been, the plants are apparently choosing to be unresponsive to their innate instinct to just grow! Now, some growth IS happening; the pea shoots are slowly but steadily climbing their way up the trellising, the chard and kale in the high tunnel are broadening and enlarging their leaves, and the eggplants have shot up a considerable 6 inches at least since my arrival. But the peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce mix, herbs and even most of the weeds stand resistant.

But one of the great things about growing a diversity of crops, is that each one has its own preferences and ideal growing conditions; this damp season really highlights the spinach.

Spinach loves cool soil and daytime temperatures that don’t get far above 65F. It also likes a steady soil moisture content and shorter days. Everything from too warm temperatures, longer days and fluctuating soil moisture can cause spinach to give up and bolt. But the spinach this year in Montana is steady, productive and even thriving. On its 4th harvest now, only the relative lack of soil nutrients is causing it to be anything less than a shining star (due to a paler green complexion of the outer leaves) on the salad plates of diners at the Farm Table Restaurant.

When planting your own spinach, it’s best to start sowing when soil temperatures reach an average of 45F in the spring, thin to 4-6 inches apart once the seedlings show 2 true leaves (it hates to be crowded and will reward you with larger, fuller greens,) keep the soil evenly moist throughout the growing period and try to make successive plantings every couple of weeks for optimal harvesting. Once the days get to be longer than 16 hours, spinach will generally go ahead and bolt, but varieties like “Bloomsdale,” “Tyee,” or “Space” are known for being more bolt-resistant.

Sustainability…….

……..is not mowing every 4 days because dandelions are popping up therefore, making the place look unkempt.  This in an attempt to maintain the appearance of the front of the property where all the customers and diners come in; everything from parties of 20 red-hatters, to couples enjoying a Sunday brunch, to private parties of 70 Montana scientists socializing together over drinks and a garden view.

Ahh, so the “Eco-Sustainable B&B” and “Farm-Table Restaurant” don’t quite fit the description.  While they are serving spinach and salad greens and pea shoots from the garden behind the restaurant, everything else is coming on the SYSCO truck. 

View of the restaurant from my cabin

Granted, this is the first operation of its kind in Hamilton, MT, but still – this would never fly in Asheville.  If you’re going to call yourself a “Farm to Table” restaurant, I’m used to seeing 4 or 5 local meat entrees, a local cheese source, some varied radish, turnip or beet sides (Spring does limit somewhat what you can put on the local table, but please, not green beans for a spring menu item!)  Even the flour is outsourced while there is a huge Montana Wheat operation just an hour or so away.  So despite the disappointment with the facade of the operation, the garden still holds wonders and new things to learn and consider.

I’m working with “Farmer Paul,” not really a farmer since this is only a garden without the added cyclical elements of bird or beast (heck, there’s not even really a proper compost pile here.)  He’s been gardening organically for about 20 years now and has dealt with Montana soils for the majority of that time.  For starters, despite the dark gray-brown color, working in the soil is reminiscent of building sand castles on the shore; it’s so sandy here! 

My Montana Cabana

Weeds are incredibly shallow-rooted and pull super easily, it drains faster than the time it takes to hang the hose up and you can hear the grit on the floor of my cabin whenever you walk on it. (I have been vacuuming every few days.)  A few amendments had been made before I got here, mostly with ‘Moo Poo’ compost and a top-dressing of a small amount of homemade compost. (Most of the waste from the restaurant goes to the 20 or so chickens – from which we’re getting about 10 eggs a day.  Time for those 4 & 5 year olds to graduate to the stew pot and make room for a new wave of chicks, if you ask me.)

Nonetheless, 2 beds of Spring mix are on their second cutting now (salad greens are what’s known as “cut-and-come-again” plantings, because you can lop off the tops of the growth down to the stem and a couple of weeks later they will have regenerated into new green tips – same shape and all; just watch for the bitterness factor with each subsequent cutting.)  The spinach germination was so-so, but we’re still able to get about 30 lbs. a week.  The pea vines are about 10″ tall now and we spent some time constructing trellises for them out of T-posts with twine strung up at 8″ up-steps to provide support and ease of picking as the vines really take off.  The potatoes (a few varieties from red to pink to blue to purple to a Yukon,) are looking vibrant and healthy and popping up with great regularity throughout all the beds. 

View to the North

Some of our main struggles are upkeeping the beds; last year, before Paul was hired, WWOOFers comprised the entire garden crew, so a few of the projects – though good-intentioned, I’m sure – ended up a little off-kilter.  The raised beds were dug up so that the top soil became subsoil and the rocky/sandy texture of the subsoil became exposed to the air and gave us what we’re predominantly cultivating on right now.  Also, the diameter of the beds is a bit too long, so with each subsequent planting we’re trying to level out the bed a little bit more to make more path space to bed space – this helps greatly with leaning over to harvest or pick and squash potato beetles in the early morning when the back and knees aren’t quite warmed up yet.  We also have many ‘volunteers’ popping up; by that I mean random heads of lettuce popping up in the basil beds, many unknown flowers germinating in the Spring mix bed and a wholke blanket of arugula right in front of the garden gate where we can’t help but walk right across it.  These surprises are due to a falling through of garden maintenance last year and letting numerous crops go to seed, then die back or get tilled under.  So hearty though they are, they’re both uninvited and unwanted in the middle of beds inhabited by such things as bunching onions which need room to grow and bulb out. (Makes you rethink your definition of a ‘weed’ doesn’t it?)

The hoop-house though, is a thing of inspiration.  A layout featuring alternating rows of tomato-basil companion plantings with other rows of cukes, zuchinnis, eggplant and peppers, along with a few pots of rosemary (here in Zone 4-5, rosemary will not get taken out of containers which can easily be used to carry them into the house to overwinter; they wouldn’t even survive in the unheated high-tunnel,) and some starting flats of lettuces, broccoli, kohlrabi, more cukes, fennel and thyme.

Snow caps can last all year; and it's snowed in every month of the year here

Not only is the hoop-house inspiring, it’s also quite necessary here in a part of the country that only has a 3-month growing season.  That’s 90 days people.  Brussel’s sprouts and corn alone can take up to 120 days to mature!  Being resourceful and implementing any season extenders available is crucial to livelihood farming here. (Btw, elevation is at about 3500ft.)

Though the officially recognized frost date is June 1st, Paul says in his experience it’s definitely best to wait until the 10th to plant any frost-wimpy plants – so this week will be a planting extravaganza.  That is, if the rain will hold off for a day!  Here in Western Montana the climate is dry and dry, with a large range of hot and cold.  But ever since I arrived last week, we’ve had at least drizzles every day.  This is both a blessing and a curse for this climate; for one,

My back deck overlooking Sleeping Child Creek

it means that it’s preventing forest fire danger from rising this season, but two, it also means that more low-growth with be dying back in the fall creating more dry brush with a tendency to ignite when the regular dryness sets back in.  This is a relatively micro-example of how cause-and-effect can be far removed from each other.  Also, how you maintain (or not) your garden one season can keep affecting it for many seasons to come. (Just ask the amaranth, aka: pigweed.  It’s seeds can lie dormant in the soil for up to 30 years before deciding to germinate! Just try to rid yourself of that one.)