The Garden In September, Part I

Lettuce is one of our winter crops in Los Angeles – Merville des Quatres Saissons (Marvel of the Four Seasons) is more like Marvel of the Two Seasons here – our summers are way too hot to grow this lovely French belle, but in cooler months this is a true delight that is as tasty as it is beautiful – and it's really beautiful!!

As the Summer crops begin to decline, we now get ready to see the seasons change in a dramatic fashion. The plants that have given you tomatoes all summer, are mostly a heap of sad, brown vines. If there has not been any difficult diseases, I prefer to leave the vegetation where it lays. I chop it up using my trusty pruners or a machete – or a shovel, if it is handy and will do the job. The cut up plant debris is left where it lies and fresh mulch is piled up on top of it – to three or four inches deep. The paths are filled with wood chips if I don't have a clover or other green manure crop growing there. The old vegetation will break down and in the process will become composted in place.

These plants have drawn nutrients from the soil and, by leaving them in place, we allow some of that nutritional value to be returned to the soil. It's true, when we harvest a tomato, we are really harvesting the soil's fertility that has been converted via the sun's energy into the things we eat to live. Putting the tomato plant back into the soil, without the tomatoes you harvested, represents a net loss for the soil. That's where the additional mulch and wood chips come in – we try to replace the stuff we ate with stuff that will allow the soil to recreate its bevy of nutrients to nourish our next round of food plants. It is not sufficient, in the long run, to just add fertilizers – we need to add things that will provide sustenance for the critters in the soil – a thriving soil ecology will provide better nutrition to your plants without spending needless dollars on fertilizer, most of which will only provide pollution of our ground water.

In a garden where perennial weeds are not a huge problem, I encourage everyone to plant a perennial crop that will assist in nourishing the soil. I like any one of several clovers or alfalfa or whatever else that will take mild foot traffic and will do something to add to the fertility of the soil. If this crop is mowed in a sustainable manner – like with a hand sickle, for a small area, to a scythe for larger areas – the mowings can be put right back into the beds next to where it was cut. Some kind of soil regeneration must be happening all the time or the soil will eventually not support food crops. Unfortunately, growing in a community garden, control of the perennial weeds is only as good as the worst gardener and so a perennial cover crop on the pathways isn't always a practice we can use.

One portion of the garden needs to be left fallow in every season, 'fallow' means it is not growing a crop to harvest – usually what we call a green manure crop. For gardeners in Sunset Zone 24, that means a part of the garden can be left without growing crops to harvest every single month of the year. In areas where there is not a huge problem with perennial weeds, the paths can supplement this soil enrichment by growing something like clover year round that improves soil viability. In any growing season, it is better to have the soil covered with some crop – even a crop of weeds is better than leaving the soil barren, except they'll produce more weeds if they go to seed.

More September later in the month!

david

The Garden In August; Part IV: A Short List of Seed Houses

I've started a new blog called "The Learning Garden - Almost - Daily," and this photo of some lettuce seed trials appears in the very first post there. These are so-called 'summer lettuces' that we're trying to ascertain how well they will do in the Southern California summer heat.

Following, I list a few of the seed houses I order from consistently. I tend to order most of my seeds from Pine Tree Garden Seeds simply because I rarely need the quantities of seed per packet that I get from the other companies. I pay less, I can experiment with different varieties and I have less seed left over at the end of the season. What's not to like? Their listings include almost all the main varieties I want to grow.

BOUNTIFUL GARDENS; 18001 Shafer Ranch Road; Willits, CA 95490; 707.459.6410 www.bountifulgardens.org This is a good source for open-pollinated seeds and often have varieties not found elsewhere. They also sell packets of grain seed – grow a little wheat, some oats or rye? Don't dismiss this out of hand – I had a wheat field in my front yard once. It is a good thing to support organizations that do credible garden research.

FEDCO SEEDS; PO Box 520, Waterville, ME 04903; 207.873.7333; www.fedcoseeds.com A very funky catalog, that makes me think of the Trader Joe's Frequent Flier, provides good quality open-pollinated seeds. While their focus is on 'cold-hardy, short season' seeds, we can use a lot of them here. As of August 31, they will no longer take orders for 2009. They begin to prepare for 2010's growing season. Their prices are really low - puts places like Seeds of Change to utter shame. And they are all open-pollinated.

PEACEFUL VALLEY FARM SUPPLY; PO Box 2209; Grass Valley, CA 95945; 916.272.4769 www.groworganic.com A fair priced purveyor of more than just seeds. This is the company to order cover crop seeds and tools as well as veggie and flower seeds. Their catalog is so chock full of data on pest control, fertilizing, cover crop seeds and irrigation; I have used it as a text in my organic gardening classes.

NATIVE SEED/SEARCH; 526 N. 4th Ave. Tucson, AZ 85705; 520.622.5561; www.nativeseeds.org; Like Seed Savers Exchange, this is a non-profit organization that exists to save seeds that have been grown for generations and represent a genetic diverse collection that mankind cannot allow to fall into obscurity. Their efforts are centered on the Native American seeds of the desert climates of Arizona and upper Mexico, which, despite the challenge of desert conditions still represent a disproportionate portion of our modern food crops.

PINETREE GARDEN SEEDS; PO Box 300, Rt. 100; New Gloucester, ME 04260; 207.926.3400 www.superseeds.com This is THE catalog where I order most of my seeds – they are the least expensive. How? The packets are smaller, fewer seeds. And that makes good sense for us with smaller sized gardens. If I want more, I can order more packets – but usually I order several varieties with which to experiment.

SEED SAVERS EXCHANGE; Rt. 3 Box 239; Decorah, Iowa 52101; 563.382.5990 Membership fees $25. Free brochure. www.seedsavers.org This is the other main source of seeds for me. I have been a member for over five years because I believe in the work they do saving the rich heritage of heirloom seed varieties that might well be a thin green line between us and the Monsanto's of this world that are striving to control our food supply. I urge you to order from the Exchange and to become a member; we NEED these seeds.

There are many other seed catalogs out there, some of them quite fun. I used to love to look through all of them and indulge dreams of acres of land on which to grow vegetables until I learned that subsidiaries of Monsanto were buying up some of the old Mom and Pop seed houses and keeping the cute old names. Seminis, Monsanto's seed supplier also lists some of my old favorites as sellers of their genetically modified seeds. Firms like Burpee, Parks, Cooks Garden, Nichols Garden Seeds are listed on the Seminis site as dealers for Seminis. I have changed my recommendations to these few that clearly state they do NOT sell genetically modified seed.

david

The Garden in August Part III: Some Suggested Varieties for the Fall/Winter Garden

Seeds of this onion will soon be harvested so we can sow them for onions next year's crop. We don't save seeds of everything and those we need to have for fall planting must be ordered now. Here are varieties I have used with success, but it shouldn't limit you! Plant as many varieties as you have space to allow! In some years one will do good and the next year not so good, so hedge your bets and try to plan for a longer harvest by planting varieties that mature at different times. This is a good strategy for almost all vegetables - especially our fall crops! Some suggested seed houses will be published later this week!

Artichokes (a perennial)
Green Globe – one of the more productive varieties, Green Globe is usually one of the varieties available in the farmers' markets and groceries.
Violetto – is not so often seen in the market. Not quite as productive but still quite acceptable. Like the name implies, it has a good splash of purple in it. Each leaf tip possesses its very own, very sharp spine. But I think they are worth it!

Beets
Burpee’s Golden – there was a time when 'Burpee' was synonymous with seeds for the home gardener. While this is no longer true, way back there in that faraway time, Burpee bred a lot of wonderful crops that we still find useful today. This beet has lower germination rates than other beets, but boy oh boy! They are worth it! From the mere fact that they don't bleed red beet juice all over your fingers (and clothes!), Golden beets are very sweet. Sauté in orange juice.
`Chiogga – another heirloom. Very productive and sweet, not as sweet as the Golden, but running a close second. One of these beets, cut in half before being cooked, reveals alternating rings of a light red and white. They keep those alternating rings when roasted.


Broccoli
Premium Crop (62 days) and Early Dividend (43 days) are two of the better hybrid broccoli varieties. If you are gardening in pots, Early Dividend is a great selection.
Nutribud (58 days) and Waltham (85 days) are the heirloom varieties available today. Of these two, Nutribud is the one for container gardening. The days listed behind each variety is the 'days to harvest' from the catalogs. This refers to an approximate day by which you may expect to harvest the broccoli heads from the day you set them into the ground (transplanted out). It is an estimate only – weather conditions and other factors speed it up or slow it down, but in these four varieties above you have the idea that Early Dividend will come in first and Waltham last, all other things being equal.

Brussels Sprouts
Bubbles – 88 days. Brussels Sprouts are a largish plant but have the added advantage of providing a rather continuous harvest over many weeks. They also can be a pain if they get aphids or whitefly because they are very difficult to police.

Cabbage
Danish Ballhead – A late season cabbage – not so good for containers, but a reliable producer for those who wish to preserve some of their cabbage. Note that all these cabbages are not savoyed cabbages. Those crinkled leaves of the savoyed variety hold dirt and also make very opportune homes for slugs – and one gets a lot of slugs in long season cabbage anyway.
Point One – An early cabbage that is a delight. The 'early' cabbages are usually smaller headed and more useful in succession planting and for containers as well.
Surprise – Another early cabbage – like the name implies, this is not a round cabbage, but forms a pointy little head of cabbage.
Ruby Perfection – For those who want a red cabbage. Small heads and early. I've found red cabbage much more difficult to grow.


Carrots
Little Finger – A small carrot that is good for containers – an early harvest and you haven't had a carrot fresh from the garden, you don't know what you're missing! Sweet!
Mokum – This has been my number one carrot over the past five years. Productive and delicious.
Thumbelina – Little round carrots that are considered THE container carrot, but I like Little Fingers better thinking they are more sweet. Still, many folks will plant these and be perfectly happy.
Yaya – This may well be my new number one carrot. Bright orange six inch blunt roots, with a great flavor and will hold in the ground for a long time – which means I don't have to sow carrots in succession.

There are many different colors of carrots to think about growing as well – Pinetree Garden Seeds sells a carrot mix that includes a number of different varieties and colors!

Cauliflower
Early Snowball – is an open-pollinated and is the earliest and tastiest of all the cauliflowers available. Other varieties are out there that are tasty but I think this one takes less work and compares well with the others. There are, though, several varieties that are quite colorful, Green Harmony is, of course, green; Graffiti is purple and Cheddar is yellow. Not sure how I feel about them, but then I'm not a huge cauliflower eater.

Celery/Celeriac
Large Prague Celeriac – I'm not even going to list celery. In our climate, I don't think it's possible to get a sweet celery that isn't as tough as a sisal rope! Celeriac, on the other hand, has that delicious celery taste, is easy to grow and works as well as or better than celery in soups and other dishes. You can't fill it with peanut butter or cream cheese like you can celery, but how healthy is that anyway? And if that's the only advantage, stick with celeriac!

Chard
Five Color Silverbeet – All the chards taste about the same to me, so I like to plant this chard to get all the different colors – some of them are quite wild. (Australians call chard “silverbeet” which is a nod to the fact that chard and beets are the same exact species of plant.) Dependable and beautiful, you can't beat this one in the garden or the kitchen.

Cilantro
Delfino – A new variety that puts the old 'Slo-Bolt' to shame. Holds better than older varieties in heat (cilantro does not like to grow in heat) and the plants are a little larger for a better and longer harvest.

Fava Beans
Windsor – Though not the only fava out there, this one is probably the premier fava bean for a home garden. Not for those of us with very little garden space, a typical fava plant can get to be four and half feet tall or more. One plant, happily tended, will provide enough fava beans for two folks unless they really intend to chow down on favas! (Fresh grated parmesan cheese on fresh raw fava bean seeds marks you as a dedicated fava eater and you will need more than one plant!)

Florence Fennel (bulbing)
Fino – Usually used raw or cooked in Italian cuisine for its sweet, anise-like flavor, don't let it go to seed or you'll have this all over your garden as well.

Garlic (this is a long season crop, plant in Fall harvest next Summer)
Chesnok Red – The three varieties listed here are all heirloom varieties. This variety doesn't store so well, but the taste it holds even after cooking is worth the trade off!
Music – A slightly spicy, incredibly flavorful garlic, this is one of the most popular types around.
Spanish Roja – I grew this hard neck garlic for years – one of the finest flavored garlics I know. Not just hotter, the subtle tones that weave through the taste allows this garlic to compare to the common garlic in the supermarket equal in flavor as a fine Cabernet compared to a 'box of wine.'


Kale
Dinosaur – Also called Tuscan Black Palm or Lacinato. A unique kale with very large, rounded, well filled, meaty leaves. Plants are large, hardy, and vigorous, and the flavor, if you like it is 'bold' and if you don't like it, it's 'overwhelming.'
Nero di Toscano – A three feet tall plant with dark, meaty, puckered leaves, the color of a blue spruce. The striking ornamental leaves have a fine flavor harvested young and cooked simply in olive oil.

Leeks
Carina – Leeks have been divided into 'over-winter' and 'summer' leeks. Over winter are usually larger and take something like 110 to 130 days. In cold climates, these leeks stay in the frozen ground to be harvested out from under a blanket of snow. We usually don't have to dig them out from under the snow, but the slower growing leeks are larger.
King Richard – A 'summer' leek, this one grows nicely in our winter and quickly makes a decently edible leek in something like three months. To get a longer white part of the root, bring up the soil around the base of the plant – even though the catalogs say we don't need to do this, if you do, you will be rewarded with more usable root.

Lettuce
more varieties than you can shake a stick at – or grow a mix! There are many different colors and types, get as many as you have room for! Ha! I usually can't keep myself to less than 10 varieties at a time!

Onions (also a long season growing; find “short-day” varieties)
Italian Red Torpedo – Peaceful Valley Farm Supply has these as 'sets;' young plants to set out. This is my very favorite onion. Onions are difficult to grow by seed unless you plan on taking two years to get a good onion.

Parsley
Italian Flat Leaf – A brighter, more intense flavor.

Peas
Super Sugar Snap – I admit that I've mostly given up on peas. They take lot of space and don't exactly overwhelm a person with production, they get mildew and croak early and I'd rather grow another row of fava beans which are much more productive.

Potatoes
Yukon Gold – A ton of varieties are available, Peaceful Valley Farm Supply will have seed potatoes available in mid-October.

Radishes
French Breakfast – The standard radish for dependable crops. All radishes are easy to grow and are very quick to harvest – usually around 20-25 days.
Easter Egg – A fun radish that is great for children (and the young at heart!) with white, red, purple and intermediate colors between those.
Purple Plum – A lovely purple skin with white flesh – milder than most of the rest.

Shallots
Bonilla – Onions are a hassle (and don't really cost that much in the market), shallots are easy to grow and replace the expensive shallots one would need to buy at the store. This hybrid shallot is quick and easy from seed. I got a remarkably good crop with little effort in my first year to grow them -even though I got them in rather late! Dried, they make a good long term storage item.
Olympus – Another easy to grow shallot from seed. This one is white and also stores well.


Spinach
Melody – A semi-savoyed spinach. Most of the spinach we remember from way back were all savoyed spinaches, but savoyed (wrinkled), holds dirt better than smooth so I'm all for leaving the savoyed spinaches behind.
Space – A smooth spinach that is easily cleaned and has that taste of fresh spinach I didn't like until adulthood. Now I love it.

Turnips
DeMilano - A lovely flattened turnip – the best for container garden and very productive.
Purple Top White Globe – Will get to be the size of a small foreign country if you let them, but they are better when small.

You can also plant perennial herbs and perennial flowers. Try some fun annuals like calendula, larkspur, poppies (bread, California or Iceland types), sweet peas, and venidium.

david

The Garden in August; Part II

It's not enough to grow the stuff, you also got to decide what to do with it! Six pounds of Sweet Banana Peppers and what to do? I think I can make some decent pepperoncinis with them - just need to find a recipe.

At this time, a gardener also needs to keep the green and yellow beans picked (they can be pickled as well) or they’ll stop producing. Keep using the basil, continually pinch their tips – flowers and the first pair of leaves and throw into whatever you're cooking or a salad - the flowers are as edible as the leaves. Next month, you can harvest whole plants and make pesto and this constant pinching will cause the plant to grow into a vigorous small shrub! Share the abundance of all your produce with friends, relatives or a food bank. Nature isn’t stingy so carry on that tradition and share too. We all need a fresh homegrown tomato now and then to remind us how blessed we really are.

Anything planted into the garden in August is an act of desperation. Mind you, you CAN plant, but it isn't going to be a cakewalk for you or the plants. You'll both need extra water and you both will chance a sunstroke that could kill them much more readily than you. You, at least, should have the sense to move into the shade if you notice symptoms of hyperthermia. Plants, on the other hand, have to stay put. If you do plant on a hot day, it is not a bad idea to find someway to shade your little darlings. A stick propping up a black nursery flat, with the flat covering from the south of the plants is a tried and true way for many gardeners to provide shade for their newly planted starts.

What to plant in the coming months is a great game gardeners play, wiling away long, insufferably hot hours in the shade. It is best to write down some of the ideas you're having for next summer's garden now. while this year's experience is fresh, otherwise the harvest of knowledge could be wasted. Of all the ways to learn gardening, the most sure and least expensive is to keep a garden journal. It is so easy now days and can be very inexpensive. If you have a computer, a digital camera and a word processing program you are set up. It can be a cheap camera (find a used one on eBay) and a free word processing program (I'm using Open Office Writer to do all my writing nowadays), and your thoughts will be preserved for the next year's garden. If that's not your bag, get a paper notebook, draw your plans, paste in pictures from catalogs and write your observations in a multitude of colors. Or use a combination! The point is to write down things so you'll remember them and to find a way to write them down that will give you enough pleasure to insure you'll do it. A chair or bench in your garden is the most perfect place to do this. Haul out a few catalogs, something cool to drink, sit down in the shade with your notebook (computer or paper) and think about the year gone by. It can be a meditation that is almost as good as eating from your garden. See below for a few catalogs to consult in preparing your next garden.

But don't throw all your attention in to next summer's garden. Spend some time now to consider what you will grow in our mild winters. I'm looking through some catalogs looking for cabbage, broccoli, onion, lettuce and other seeds. If I order them soon, I'll have them by the end of August and I'll be starting little pots of seedlings that will be going out into my garden by the beginning of October. Below, I've listed a few of the vegetables I want to grow along with some varieties that I like. I'll order seeds to start now, and, to save on postage, I'll order seeds that I'll be using a little later on.

However, no matter the state of the present, August is the time to contemplate the fall and winter garden; I’m in my seed catalogs already dreaming of my next great adventure in the garden. Soon, in sheltered locations, I’ll be starting seeds of broccoli, cabbage, kale, leeks and onions. I’ll plant several different heirloom varieties of sweet peas – maybe some blends of antique varieties, two seeds per pot. I’ll pour very hot water over the seeds the night before and leave them to soak until I actually stick them in their pots. It is amazing to see how much they have swollen from absorbing water because of that treatment. Don’t worry, pouring even close to boiling water on them won’t kill these seeds because the seed coat is too hard and the hot water will help the seed inside to break free.

david

Book of The Moment: Animal Vegetable Miracle

I would imagine that many of you are familiar with Sharon Astyk's writings (Casaubon’s Book; Sharon Astyk’s Ruminations on an Ambiguous Future). I am an avid reader and Sharon has recently commenced a daily blog entry on the books she suggests for our edification. The title of the posts are, "365 Books #___." Sharon is a prolific writer and a farmer in upstate New York. I cannot believe she finds the time to write all that she writes AND farm(!), but, in plentiful evidence in her writings, she reads a whole lot too.

I only have an acre to keep up with and a couple of writing projects, so I am a little envious of her time management skills (and should go looking for anything she has written on the subject), but I will emulate her after a small fashion. I will post one book review every so often and over any amount of time, build a library of the books I suggest. These will be mostly garden books, but every so often, I will add in books that have changed my life in ways that have contributed to me becoming the gardener I am today.

So here we go with the first book, a 'why' book more than a 'do' book.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Barbara Kingsolver, Steven Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

Publisher: Harper
ISBN-10: 0060852569
ISBN-13: 978-0060852566
Cost: $14.95 Paperback

“At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them.” Barbara Kingsolver

A lot of books a person finds in the bookstore are eager to tell you what to do, sometimes with a rather shrill tone. Kingsolver, with her husband and two daughters (one was too young too sign a publishing contract), tell us what they did, acting on their conviction that they had to change their participation in the way they ate and participated in the American food chain.

Most of us are probably more than a little queasy about the modern American food distribution system. No other culture has had the luxury of food choices that we enjoy and the productivity of our agriculture staggers the imagination, still at no other time in mankind’s history has a civilization faced such an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Something is terribly broken with the way we eat.

The Kingsolver/Hopp clan do not intend to preach to us about what we could do, but quietly set off on their own private revolution and simply confide in us what happened. They chose to become “localvores” (also written as “locavores” by some), eating only food produced within a 100 mile radius of their home in Southwestern Virginia. Each family member was allowed to chose one item from a further realm (Steven Hopp, obviously a man of vision, chose coffee), but beyond that, the commitment they signed on for was to eat locally for one whole year.

Most Americans would think of eating seasonally as a little too “quaint” – something akin to foregoing indoor plumbing – if they thought of it at all. But when one chooses to eat locally, one is also choosing to eat seasonally in some degree as well. This alone would be a shock to most of us, used to, as we are, strawberries any month of the year, or peaches, asparagus, or any of our common fruits and vegetables. In fact, it’s probably a point of pride for our culture that we can eat these things at any time of the year.

But what has the cost been? Our farmers are as bankrupt as the taste of the food from the local market. No preaching, but plenty of common sense guides the family through the year as they learn how to provide a lot of their own food and how to get the rest from local sources. Not only is the family empowered, but those they work with locally are also empowered. Not only do they not starve, but they eat well. In fact, their year long experiment has changed by year’s end from experiment to lifestyle.

Along the journey, the “Miracle” in the title seems to morph as the book progresses. In the beginning, filled with the fear of throwing her family’s diet to the winds, the “miracle” seems to be they might really be able to eat through the year. By mid-book, the “miracle” becomes this tastes so good, even though it is a lot of work. By the conclusion, the miracle is the transformation that will inspire many others to try this as a way of life and the hope that Kingsolver and clan clearly offer the rest of us.

The Kingsolver family maintain a blog site that has more to tell about their year of food 'freedom.'

david

The Garden in August; Part I

A couple of handfuls of Cannellini beans show the beautifully dried beans ready to be bagged for storage away from critters that would like to eat them as much as I would! And this is just one of the many things we are harvesting from the garden this month!

(This month I am experimenting with the idea of posting the monthly hand out in several segments. This is Part I - there will be several addendum's, hopefully weekly or so, to this one over the course of August.)

I used to think of August as nap time, and in the heat of Southern California's summer, it sure is inviting! Grab a cool drink, a hammock and the Dodgers on the radio and I can feel the muffled sounds of snoring...

But not anymore. Not since I realized that growing the food was less than half the battle. I mean, there's a lot to do on that account too, more will be revealed very soon, but getting the harvest in and making good use of it is another important part of gardening.

It's hot work, but this week alone, I've harvested 10 pounds of those famous Italian Cannellini beans (a dried bean sometimes referred to as 'white kidney beans' but that refers to the physical appearance and not to their eating or cooking qualities), about as many pounds of peppers – mostly the sweet banana types that I hope to pickle soon. As well as the tons of cucumbers I am hauling in. Did you follow my advice and plant any Armenian cucumbers? If you did, you are swimming in cucumbers by now and have come to realize the reason that pickles have such prominence in our culture!

How do you preserve the harvest makes a huge difference in how well you can eat from your garden. When the season is in full swing, like it is right now, dealing with the abundance is the major focus of the home gardener.

There are several ways to deal with fresh produce that will allow you to eat from your garden long after the heat of August is gone. You can dry the produce. This is the easiest way. Beans, like my Cannellinis (above), are simply left on the plant until the pods are crispy and ready to drop the white bean seeds on the ground. I come along, gather them up and lay them in a dry, partly sunny location to dry for a couple of days. In Southern California that should do them nicely. Putting them away with too much moisture could result in moldy beans when you want to use them in cooking.

Juicier veggies can be dried too, but they take longer and are a little more involved. If you want to dry tomatoes, or peppers, pick up a good book on drying. Look for a list of my suggested books soon. Drying has the wonderful advantage of not being dependent on the power grid to continue to be edible, unlike freezing which is totally dependent on electricity.

Likewise canning definitely cannot be done without careful consideration. Pickling making jams, a subset of canning, is not quite as involved as other types of canning though it too needs to be done with some awareness. Pickling and jams are easier because the high acidity or sweetness (pickling uses vinegar, jams and jellies avoid botulism with lots of sugar) keeps the bad organisms from growing in your food without using a pressure cooker. Get a good book on canning and pickling and you will discover a whole new world.

Certain kinds of fermentation have begun to make a comeback in modern times. Making alcohol has been one way of preserving grape juices, and apple jack for apples. They require no refrigeration, because most of these methods predate electricity by a couple hundred years. Again, delving into that would take more space than I can muster right here.

But do give how you will keep some of your harvest on into the coming months should be a priority in this month of plentiful heat and produce to match!

Check back next week for more August doings.

david

The Garden in July

Corn high in the garden promising good eating right around the corner. As a boy in Kansas, I knew my Grandfather's goal every year was to harvest sweet corn ears by July 4th. He might have even had money bet with a neighbor or two who would harvest corn first and I'm sure in most years he won! Corn takes a lot of room though, most of us will have to buy our corn at farmers' markets.

July means we are speaking of hot weather, so now is the time to get a cool drink and say hello to summer in our Southern California gardens; I insist that no garden should be created without seating for the gardener to glory in the work that has been done. This is not the month to do a lot of planting, if you can help it at all. Water is what your garden wants along with some weeding and harvesting. Don’t just pour water on your garden without exercising your noggin! Monitor the soil moisture and apply water as needed – but before plants begin to wilt. Try to water when less will be lost to evaporation – early in the day or late in the day… At night under the full moon listening to the owls... Stick a finger in the soil up to the first knuckle – better yet, turn over a small spot of soil with your trowel. It should be slightly moist down about an inch or so. The surface of the soil can be quite dry and that's fine. A gardener is more concerned with the moisture level in that part of the soil where roots live.

Check the mulch level this month – insure it is deep enough to keep roots cool and prevent evaporation of the precious water you are putting down. I don't use ANY fertilizer, which means my plants are never over-fertilized, except I am cautious about using really good compost that might have a lot of nitrogen in it on tomatoes or other members of that plant family (peppers, eggplant, potatoes and deadly nightshade, for example). They tend to use up all the nitrogen you give them by growing very large and healthy looking plants and not setting fruit. For our climate, this isn't a disaster, you just have fresh tomatoes in October and November. But if you don't want to wait, skip fertilizer or good compost. Save it for corn which is a notoriously heavy feeder.

I know I said this isn't a good planting month, you and I both were supposed to get all that done last month, but we probably didn't, so listen up: With care, it is still possible to sow beans and, for those of us with the room, corn. If you need it, it's also possible to sow another planting of summer squash. Some of the real heat loving veggies can be set out, like more peppers or tomato plants. If you desire that foul taste of eggplant, one might set out another plant at this time. But these guys will need extra water (try to plant them in the late afternoon – and try very hard to minimize root damage). The problem with planting now is that the leaves can easily transpire much more water than the small root system can take up. If these plants have been growing in the same amount of sunlight that they will get in the ground into which they have been transplanted, they stand a much better chance of survival. But wilted leaves the following afternoon suggest the root system is not keeping pace with the lost moisture and unless your little darlings put on enough roots quickly, or you can do some judicious, temporary shading, your crop might not make it to a thriving adulthood.

Other experienced gardeners have disagreed with me so this is purely my own call, seen with my own eyes, but I don't think corn works well once the Summer Solstice has passed (June 21 or so). As the days get shorter (Wait! Weren't they just getting longer? What happened?), corn “realizes” it has to set seed before the cool months of fall and winter and so it flowers and sets seed as fast as it can. I've seen corn seedlings at six inches high fully tasseled out and trying to produce ears of corn. The ears they did produce were so small you needed a 10x jeweler's loupe to see them! Not a lot of corn to eat. Gardening will disabuse a person from believing that California doesn't have seasons! The plants know seasons better than we do.

In our climate, especially in that part of the west coast that gets a lot of Pacific Coast influence, growing the cucurbits can be a challenge because the moisture in the air allows mildew to grow and kill these plants. The cucurbits are cucumbers, squashes, melons and pumpkins (which are really a squash) and they are particularly susceptible to getting mildew. It can be hard, in some years with heavy 'June Gloom' to get a good crop. There are some remedies for mildew but I haven't tried any yet. I get rid of the infected plant and simply grow another. It's usually only a hassle with winter squash.

Summer squash is called that because you eat it in summer. Summer squashes include zucchini, patty pans, crooknecks, and all the squashes the British call 'marrow' and 'courgettes.' They are characterized by soft skin and will rot if you keep them around too long without refrigeration.

Winter squash, which includes pumpkins, are so named because they would keep for many months and provide families with food over the winter months. It is their hard outer shell that allows them to be a part of a winter diet in a world without refrigeration and the ability to transport food over thousands of miles. Our ancestors relied on the keeping ability of winter squashes to hold starvation at bay. Keeping winter squashes edible for a long period of time in Southern California is a challenge because we don't have root cellars to store them cool and dry. Many of us can't really grow a lot of winter squash because of the space they take up.

The avalanche of ripe harvest should begin to worry you before July is halfway through. Tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, corn, zucchini, stone fruits and others will begin to overwhelm a gardener. Keep the harvest coming by picking when ripe promptly and finding ways to keep the produce for later.

Zucchini and summer squashes are a special concern. A four inch squash on Tuesday will be 9 inches and will resemble a caveman's club by Friday. It won't be as tasty and tender. Any summer squash will do that, with the ones we call 'zucchini' being the quickest to grow to laughable sizes fastest. It's the reason for a million recipes for Zucchini Bread, Zucchini Casserole, Zucchini Lasagna – I have even eaten a Zucchini Crumble, which was pretty good as long I could avoid eating any of the zucchini in it (which means eating the brown sugar, butter and cinnamon around the zucchini slices). Don't let that happen – once they have gotten much beyond the four to six inch size, they aren't all that tasty and begin to get woody. Harvest them early and often – just like voting in Chicago!

Melons are a challenge. Cantelopes and honeydews should have wilted tendril at the stem end of the fruit and should smell ripe (mouth waters when smelling). Watermelons are much more difficult to tell; I have a very funny story about being fooled by a watermelon when I was twelve, but that's for another day. I only know to thump them, listening for a dead, almost hollow sound to determine ripeness.

Cucumbers are not so much a challenge – as soon a cucumber is big enough for you, snag it. There are many different varieties of cucumber and it would be impossible to list each and every one because they all come in different sizes and shapes. Suffice it to say that Japanese cucumbers and Armenian cukes are able to get quite large and be edible – not just edible, but delicious! Not so much with other varieties. I know everyone gets goo-goo eyed about 'Lemon' cucumbers, but I don't share the love on them. Some say you have to wait until they turn yellow before they are good to eat. I think they are never THAT good to eat no matter how long you wait. I'll go with the Japanese or Armenian cucumbers – highly productive and delicious!

The harvesting of corn is another that begs exploration. The first time I saw city folks trying to choose ripe corn in the market, I was completely blown away! I had never seen people pull back the shuck (the leaves covering the ear) to see if the corn had filled out the cob or to see how large the kernels were. Although, I suppose if you hadn't picked it yourself, these things would be suspect. I had learned to merely feel through the leaves to 'see' what was underneath. Corn sold in markets – even farmers' markets – is usually picked after it's past the optimum stage – and non-gardeners are likely to prefer it. It is a 'more = better' kind of thinking. But corn kernels that have gotten big and fat are not as juicy and not nearly as tender. Smaller kernels are better.

The tassel on a corn plant are the 'boy flowers' and the silks are the 'girl flowers.' The pollen falls from the tassel onto the silks and that causes the kernels – really the seed of the next crop of corn – to grow. Each kernel has its own silk – if you find a cob with a vacancy (no kernel where there should be one), that is one silk that did not get pollinated. When the silks begin to dry out, they have been pollinated. If you have experienced worms in your corn, as soon as you can see silks, put a couple of drops of mineral oil in the spot where they emerge from the shuck. The worms will find that an impassible barrier and you'll have worm free corn! To harvest, feel the ear – it does take some training, but after a time, your tactile explorations will enable you to feel the ripe (and full ear) and leave the underdeveloped still on the plant. Grab the ear firmly and pull slightly out and down in one compelling motion and liberate it from the plant. The up and down ends will need trimming to find the actual ear in all that you have in your hand. Here again, you can find it by careful touch.

In this season of heat, don't neglect yourself when you are in the garden. The sun we experience today is not the same sun our grandparents faced. With ozone depletion, it is much easier to have to face skin cancer, so take steps to avoid having to deal with that. I know the popular method to avoid overexposure is to slather on lots of sun screen, but I don't find that a realistic alternative for a person in the sun almost every day. In the first place, I'm concerned that all that goop eventually gets washed off our bodies and goes into the waste stream and I know there is no provision for what happens to it after that – it isn't one of the substances ameliorated by city sewage treatment and so flows out into nature where we don't have a clue what it does. It's just another human pollutant and no one has bothered to investigate if it's harmful or benign. Dealing with our environment, we should always assume the worst and take exceeding care to not damage the only world we have. I know this is a contrary view.

I continue to wear long pants and long sleeved shirts even on hot days. I have several that are quite light and let the breeze flow through. It is one way to avoid harmful rays and avoid having to purchase goop on a regular basis – the pores of my skin aren't clogged up with questionable solutions and I am as comfortable – or as uncomfortable – as the next person. I also strongly suggest a hat – not only for the interdiction of the sun, but a way of shielding my eyes and keeping cooler. And besides, a straw hat is the epitome of fashion!

And while we are on this tangent, consider your number one tool set in the garden: your hands. This is one set of tools you can't replace or upgrade so it's best to take good care of them at all times. For gardeners, the feel of earth in their fingers is one of the true joys – and feeling of connection – a gardener can experience. However, the hands can also get injured easily in a garden so take a few steps back and consider how to protect them. When doing repetitive tasks that abrade your skin, wear gloves. Have more than one pair: one for moist work that has a moisture barrier of some kind, one for light work (goatskin gloves are marvelous to the touch – they contain a lanolin that works wonders on your hand while you work) and a heavy leather pair for hard work. The goatskin and heavy leather gloves can now be replaced by some non-animal products that are almost as protective. You will find good selections of gloves from your local nursery and your local big box store – mail order gardening companies' catalogs show you the full range of whats available. There is no need to settle in your glove choice – never buy a glove you find uncomfortable. In the first place, you don't need to and in the second, it will discourage you from wearing that pair as often as you might need to.

One more thing: is your tetanus shot up to date? Talk to your doctor – this shot should be renewed every several years and you should strive to remain current. I'm not a doctor and I can never remember how often it is now recommended (they changed it several times and I'm not sure which figure is right anymore). It was seven at one time, now I think it might be ten. So, talk it over with your doctor. You don't have to garden on a former dump site (which is what The Learning Garden once was) to be surprised by a nail or broken piece of glass. And while soil is one of the safer substances in its natural state (penicillin was concocted from a soil mold), soil in the city might not be in its natural state!

In the evening, grab some lemonade and contemplate your garden. You are awesome – you are growing food you can eat. Aren't you glad you put a seat in your garden? When you are done with your reverie, go inside and write me an email about how happy you are. I also accept checks.

david