This Spud's for You, Part II

This is going to look kind of strange coming in line before Part I, but we'll go for it.

The pizza dough is rising, the flats have been watered, and I am ready to proceed. I believe our potatoes are ready to go in? Good... So we turn to the soil.

Our bed preparation for potatoes varies depending on how loose the soil already is. In the Golden Rule Garden, where the soil structure is mostly excellent, we often only do a single-dig (that's ~12" down with a digging fork) though sometimes we do double-dig the beds (24" down with spade and fork). Since potatoes are roots, they perform especially poorly in compact, rocky soil.

We don't do trenching and hilling here, just planting. We used to use a bulb planter, but that is a lot of up-and-down, and sometimes does not put them far enough under. (The funny thing about potatoes is that the tubers grow up from the original material. The seed potato is planted, the shoot comes up, and the potatoes develop along this shoot. This is why hilling and many other stranger procedures are popular - the plant grows, you bury it, it grows more, you bury it, and it grows more, all the while producing potatoes. Then when it is done growing you have to dig as deep as the original material to harvest all your potatoes.)

Anyway, how about a picture?These are the tools we use when planting potatoes: first the digging board, which helps distribute the planter's weight to avoid compacting the soil. Next, the spacing board at the top of the bed. This board is as long as the bed is wide, and is marked at 9" intervals, which are offset on the other side of the board. You would notice, upon drawing a line between the markings, that they formed equilateral triangles. This is no coincidence. With the intensive spacing used in Grow Biointensive (also referred to as "offset" or "hexagonal" spacing) all plants in the bed are equidistant from their direct neighbors. Ok, I'll get back to the planting board in a minute.

Next up is the shovel. Specifically a trenching spade. I used to call it a tree spade until I learned that a tree spade is actually the hydraulic truck-mounted hunk of steel that can dig up and move full-grown trees. So don't use one of those, use a trenching spade instead. The glory of this tool is its long, curved blade (to which the angle of the photo doesn't do justice).

Last of all is the little stick you see there next to the spade, which is a 6" spacing stick. How to Grow More Vegetables recommends that potatoes go six inches down, and the stick is to measure the depth if you want. Deeper than 6" is good, too.

We go about the whole process like this:

Start at one end, lay the planting board where the first row goes, and plunge the spade in. Pull slightly back and up, and put the potato in the hole the spade made. Pull the spade out, and the hole caves in. Nice! Plant the rest of the row in the same way, and when that is all done, flip the planting board over. The markings on the far side should indicate where the previous row's potatoes were planted, and the markings on the near side indicate where the next row should go. So do that row, flip the board towards you, plant that row, repeat... And if you are working with another person it becomes even easier. One stands with the spade, one squats with the potatoes. Works real good.

We cover the bed with a shade net then to protect the soil until the potatoes come up, and then we raise the shade net on sticks to protect the potato foliage. Some of the really hot days can scorch them back, so we figure any added bit of protection is worth it.

The other quirky thing we do is, with stakes and string, trellis the foliage of the plants. This keeps the plants vertical, out of the way of the path and each other. Additionally, you know the tubers are ready to harvest when the plant dies back and flops over (see left), so by holding them up we hope to keep the plants going just a bit longer...
When they eventually do kack, it's time to see what you've got! This is what Margo enjoys the most about root vegetables: it is always a surprise, and you can never be quite sure what you have until you dig. We use a potato fork, which is a lot like a digging fork except that the tines are wider - good for lifting potatoes instead of stabbing them. I'm sure later in the season I'll have a lot to say about this process. For now I'll note that we go through each bed at least twice when harvesting, and still find potatoes popping up the next year.
How to Grow More Vegetables lists an intermediate yield for potatoes of 200 lb per 100 sq. ft. One of our beds last year did that well, and we are counting on better this year. The gophers can surely only eat so much, right? If we do get intermediate yields, or better, for our crop it will mean 1,500 lb of happiness! That's what I'm talking about!
I guess I could say a bit here about storage. There are some potatoes that store better than others, and so you should have an idea of what you are growing them for. And if you want to be able to store your potatoes from harvest all the way to planting the next year, well, that will take really knowing your varieties together with some of your own experience. There are always some bitter (and smelly) failures, but success is oh, so succulent! Especially with some salt, a little roasted garlic, a bit of mayonnaise...

This Spud's for You, Part I

Margo and I love potatoes in almost every way. In addition to boiled, baked, fried, toasted, and the inevitable mixed-with-garlic, we like to plant and harvest them.

Let me stress this one point about potatoes: they are easy. If I can grow them with any amount of success, you can as well. While there are many creative ways to cultivate our originally South American friends, this post will outline the method we use in Grow Biointensive, with a few elements we include for this area's hot summers.

Let us begin with varieties... As the wonderfully informative and pictorial (though depressingly-titled) Fatal Harvest points out in the chapter "Monoculture vs. Diversity," there are upwards of 5,000 varieties of potato in the world today. Only four of these are grown on the major commercial scale, but since we're all small potatoes (ha ha) we have many more choices open to us. This year we stopped by one of our local nurseries to find they had organic seed potatoes, which was great. (The only two reasons I can think of to buy seed potatoes to plant as opposed to grocery store potatoes are 1) the aforementioned possibilities of choice and 2) the disease-free guarantee that seed potato vendors can give you. None of us want potato diseases imported from Maine or somewhere.)
So we got Purple Majesty, Yellow Finn (on the left), All Red, Jacqueline Lee, Red Desiree, Red La Soda, Red Norland, and the ubiquitous Yukon Gold and Russet Burbank. And these are not getting put in tiny allotments, either. We'll be growing around 750 sq. ft. of potatoes. That's seven and a half beds that measure 5'x20'. We'll be rollin' in the potatoes by October, woo hoo! Yeah!
I think I'm getting ahead of myself.
If your local garden supply store doesn't supply seed potatoes (or has poor selection) you can always order them from one of many dependable suppliers. For great diversity we usually go to Ronniger's catalog. There are lots of others. Remember to plan ahead on this point.
How to Grow More Vegetables says it will take 25 to 30 lb of potatoes to plant 100 sq. ft. It gives a range because the actual weight depends on the specific potatoes you are going to plant. Massive potatoes can be cut into smaller pieces to plant, assuming there are enough "eyes" - I'm going to assume we all know what those are. That said, you can't carve a peanut-sized piece off around a viable eye, plant it, and expect it to grow. We go by the policy that plant-able potatoes should weigh at least 2 ounces.
If your supplier is being kind to you, they will give you "single-drop" potatoes, which are small enough that they can be tossed in the hole a bulb-planter makes. If your supplier is being naughty, they will sell you huge potatoes, by the pound, with only two eyes, both on the same end so as to make cutting impossible. Most likely you will get a mixture. Unless you get to choose, in which case you will choose excellent-looking, perfectly-sized potatoes.
If the previous two paragraphs don't make much sense to you, ignore them and plant whatever you want. This shouldn't be made into rocket science. But always pay attention to what you do, because it will give you a chance to learn something.
Now you have your potatoes... This part is easy: Set them out a month before you want to plant them. Not in direct sunlight, and not where they will freeze. How about on your dining room table? Or beside it? Ok, how about in front of the sofa? (These pictures indicate the lengths to which our addiction leads us - they are not simply the same trays being moved around). Put them wherever you want. The point is to get them to sprout.
Once they have sprouted, determine whether any can be cut in one or more pieces. Cutting should happen three or so days before planting, and you should have a can of wood ash at the ready when you do it. Each cut face should get coated with some. This will help keep the potato from getting disease, I think, but Margo will let me know for sure when she checks this out.
Now your potatoes are ready to go, and it is time to get down and dirty in the garden!
...but now it's time for me to make tonight's pizza dough, and so Part II will follow shortly.

Past Accomplishments

Margo has instructed me to write about planting potatoes, and I will, but later this week. I think an accounting of how the past couple of weeks went is in order first.

We have had visits from prospective members of the Golden Rule Garden gang, a visit from my brother, a trip to Hidden Villa Ranch to present to the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) orientation of new stewards, and a trip to go surfin' and campin' down around Santa Cruz (I'm the one in front of the blue board). Plus a whole lot of gardening, weeding, and things I'll tell you about momentarily.

Since last post, Spring Equinox, where I declared the trees were budding and asparagus sprouting prematurely, we have had at least five, maybe more like seven nights below freezing. Most of those well into hard-frost territory. The Asian pear and Plum trees go right on, as if they didn't notice. That means we'll be getting out the spun polyester soon to protect them.

We had, on the west end of the garden, a large blackberry/grape vine bramble. It stretched about twenty feet along the fence and stood around eight feet tall for most of that. Let me first stress this most important of all facts: it did not produce many berries, nor did it produce any grapes whatsoever. It shaded the bed next to the fence starting around 3:00pm, which could be good or bad depending on the crop. It leaned heavily on the fence, which is a plastic deer-barrier fence and not in any way structural. And it provided an excellent habitat for a number of birds. We thought this last part was great, until the Red Fife wheat we planted nearby began to be decimated. And then the sugar snap peas, then the kale, then the mustard. You have probably noticed that the bramble has been referred to here in the past tense, and that is what this paragraph is really about. Ellen has been talking for a while about getting the backhoe in to rip the bramble out, but last year it was shading the delicate crops so nicely that we asked her to put that off a bit. This year is different, and since my brother was visiting with his excellent trail-maintenance skills we did it last week. Now it acts as a nice, but mobile, habitat. I'm guessing it will ambulate (with persuasion from a golf cart) to a better location in the next few days. Besides, it isn't like there aren't blackberry brambles ALL OVER the place here anyway. That one taking over the greenhouse, for instance...
The final point I'll reference now is the reconstruction of old flats... Flats are great for using space wisely in the garden - seeds are planted in 3" deep flats and stay there until the seedlings are of a size to transplant. That way whatever is already growing in the beds can grow some more before being pulled out for the new crop. The downside of flats, as with most other things, is that they eventually break. This is the corner of our greenhouse where we store such flats. (They don't know that the wood burning stove around which they are stacked is out of service - it keeps them honest.)
Out of this pile, so far, have arisen fifteen solid and usable flats. Eight of these were cobbled together from pieces of broken flats, and the other seven incorporated some brand new material with the old pieces. Here are three of the flats, which constitute the two most popular flat dimensions at the Golden Rule Garden. The two on the left are referred to as "half flats," because they are approximately half the width of the full flats cited in How to Grow More Vegetables. Their interior dimensions are 15.5"X 10", and they are much easier to deal with when full of wet soil. The flat on the right is a "long flat," and is 2'X 9". It is heavier, but since it is long you can keep its center of gravity closer to you.
I'll end with a digital print of my flat-concocting diagrams. The medium is graphite on 1/8" redwood board. It is the first of its series...

Happy Spring Equinox!

Golden Rule Garden, 3/20/09

This seems like a great time for a State-of-the-Garden report, to take stock of where we are now and what is imminent...

We'll start with the perennials. Someone is confused in the garden, and I think it is them. They've all been living here longer than I have, but I'm pretty sure that just because it is officially Spring, and just because it has gotten nice and warm for the past stretch of time, it is not by any means certain that no hard frost lies in our near future. But the raspberries are caning, the blueberries are forming flowers, the Asian pear is tempting fate with its buds and the asparagus is four or five inches high. We'll see. As the folks who buy their tomato starts in February say, "You never know. This year may be different!" And our perennials will be ready.

I talked to Mom today, and she pointed out how lucky we are to be moving ahead with garden preparation. They weather has been nice and warm back in Ohio, but that simply means that the ground has thawed into a thick muddy mess.

We are starting to pull up cover crops to plant potatoes, and have already put in about 250 square feet of them already. Those that haven't been pulled are shooting skyward, as are the fava beans and the seed heads of the green onions we didn't quite get harvested last fall. We have happy garlic and lettuce, and Margo just planted sugar snap peas yesterday. A little early, perhaps, but something to look forward to.

Our broccoli is flowering.

As for work, we are clearing paths from weeds (which seem to give us half of our compost material themselves) and building compost. Here is Margo with the first pile this year! We have also started sifting the compost piles from last Fall to get out the rocks and un- decomposed material out.

And flatting... We have promise of wonderful crops in flats in the greenhouse right now. Allow me to rattle off the list: arugula, basil, beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, eggplant, flax, kale, leeks, the ever-present lettuce, mustard, parsley, peas, sweet peppers, hot peppers, quinoa, salsify, spinach, stevia, tomatillos, and tomatoes.

Finally, the main-season wildlife is starting to show up again. Most notable are the western bluebirds and cliff swallows. One of these days I'm going to post our bird list on here, as inspired by Anne.

So Happy Spring, everyone! I hope you get all the water and sun you need to get your gardens going!

One of our male western bluebirds shows what he's all about

Fava Bean Burgers

Margo pointed out to me that it has been suggested to us that Banner Fava Beans are not the tastiest, and that the bigger the bean, the tastier it is. That said, we here prefer a modest bean that grows very well to a delicious bean that doesn't. In the past year we have learned that most parts of the plant are edible (roots being the exception), and can be delicious. Last year at a fancy fund-raising dinner for Pacifica Gardens (a wonderful educational/community resource garden project that deserves its own post) one of the plates featured Fava Bean greens, the top 6" of immature plants which were then sautéed in wonderful things and served on baby potatoes... Mmmmm!

Almost immediately after being told that, yes, fava beans grow well here, but no, they don't taste good, Margo set out to create a recipe that would do them justice. Without further ado, I am going to give you the sheet she worked up on them. Photos are of flowering plants and dying, mature plants.

Summer 2007

In the garden we have just completed our harvest of mature fava beans. In the kitchen, I am playing with my new favorite recipe, fava bean burgers. At the table, we are delighting in each new batch of burgers soon to be accompanied by our own fresh tomatoes! We have enjoyed these burgers topped with steamed greens, onions, and vegetables or on our own sourdough rolls. Fava beans have a sweeter flavor than most beans; it is a unique taste to savor. (Fava beans are known to result in an allergic reaction of varying degrees in some people of Mediterranean decent, be aware.) For those interested in trying this garden treat, here is the recipe:

Soak overnight:
• 2 c. dried fava beans Drain the beans, cover with water, and cook until soft (add a bay leaf or two if desired).
Mash beans and add:
• 1 c. onion or green onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• ½ c. mashed potatoes
• 1 T. flour
• 1 T. fresh thyme (or herb of your choice)
• ½ t. salt
• ½ t. pepper
• pinch of cayenne
When well mixed, shape into patties and cook on a lightly oiled or well-seasoned skillet until browned. Flip burgers and brown other side. This recipe was created with the intention of being as directly “from the garden” as possible. I experimented with adding an egg to hold the burgers together more and determined it did not make a difference. I encourage you to experiment with this recipe too. If you make any delightful discoveries or improvements I’d love to hear about them! - Margo :)

Jack Frost Nipping at our Beans

I know this post isn’t going to receive any sympathy from folks in the northern lands, but those of you on the west coast and in the south know what I’m talking about: when the mercury falls below 32°F it’s really cold! So much so that things start to freeze! Thank God it doesn’t stay that way when the sun comes up…

All subtle bragging aside, we have a mild enough climate that the occasional nighttime lows below 32 are sometimes exasperating as we consider all the things we might be able to grow if it never froze. Add to that our last frost date of May 15 and occasional frost begins to seriously affect our capacity to grow long-season crops. Sorghum and corn barely mature before frost comes again, late potatoes are often still small at harvest, and miscellaneous other marathon crops are, for the most part, out of consideration. So tease us about our lack of severe winters, but realize that your warm nighttime lows in the summer allow your plants to overtake ours handily. (See the sidebar under “temps” for clarification).

As to the title, we have a variety of legume that stands out in a number of ways. Its seed production is great, its biomass production is incredible, and its hardiness means it will live through our winters. All three attributes put together make it an ideal crop for us. It will act as protection for the soil against sun, wind, and erosion, give us a great deal of mature material for compost, and make a tasty meal to boot. This wonder crop is the Banner variety of Fava Bean. It grows to around five feet high, can produce more than six stalks per plant, as many as seven pods per stalk and up to six beans per pod. We’re talking up to 252 beans per plant, and they are largish beans. And, as I said, they are hardy.

It gets down to 18F, as you can see if you scrutinize the min-max thermometer above, and while the Favas don’t like it they do cope. They get a little wilty, maybe a little covered with snow, and maybe even the tops die back. The point, though, is that they don’t die, and whatever they have saved to their roots starts going into high-gear around late March, which we’ll see soon. Here you see them relaxing onto the strings we set up to help them stay vertical.

As I mentioned earlier, any solar exposure usually melts the frost promptly around here. It seems, in general, that the sun is stronger in the west than, say, the Midwest. If you are working outside when the air temperature is, say, around 65°F you might be comfortable in the shade, but when you move out into the sun you get too warm quickly. Not that I’m complaining about that. At least, not in the winter. It means that, as long as your garden isn’t shaded all day, the ground doesn’t freeze very far down, and won’t stay frozen long. Root veggies store pretty well left in the soil. And you don’t have to worry (too much) about draining pipes and hoses. This photo was taken about 8 am. The hose is still frozen, as you can see from the frost, but the sun is on it already and it will thaw soon. Pipes are all around 12-18” down, well out of danger.

This week looks to shed its wetness tomorrow and turn the gardens into a warm, sunny, potato-planting wonderland!

Lemon Tree, Very Pretty

Walnut Grove in Lake County

A disclaimer: some of the following images may be offensive to arborists or horticulturists. Children may be able to identify them as somewhat Seuss-esque.

This year's pruning time has come and gone. I almost missed out on most of the action because of my high ideals: I believe that pruning fruit trees requires long-term vision, and the owner of the tree should either 1) be the sole pruner or 2) always have it pruned by the same person. The rationale is that fruit trees can live productive decades if taken care of, but can take years to train in a certain direction. A surrogate pruner might cut off a two-year-old branch for which the owner had high hopes.
But I enjoy the art of pruning, so until I have trees of my own I'll prune any trees for which the owner hasn't created a plan. Step one was our visit to a friends' place in Portland, OR. They have a recently acquired property with a few fruit trees, two of them over 50 years old, maybe over 60. That leaves plenty of time for mismanagement. The pear was probably at least 30 feet tall, water-sprouts and all. A little high for easy harvest. At 10' the main trunk split into two 8" trunks which were racing each other to the heavens. At 20' both of these trunks had been cut to stubs, each of which had a dozen or more branches reaching out. To make a long story short I was aggressive, perhaps overly. I wish I had pictures. With the advice of an arborist who lived across the street I cut one of the two competing trunks halfway down. (The idea is to end up with a tree half the height of the current one, but such a change has to happen over a long period of time with such an old tree.)
The other old tree was an apple, which was less out of shape. It is a shorter story. Essentially, it is said, your fruit tree can be a fruit tree or a shade tree, but not both. So it got thinned mercilessly. Again, the pictures would be great. You'll have to use your imagination after seeing the lemons.
So that was step one. Step two was that, upon our return, Garden Manager Ellen started talking about the lemon trees in the greenhouse needing pruned soon. She always lets interns prune those, because she says they come back beautifully from anything. So last week I went for them.
Not ignorantly, of course. I looked up articles on the internet.
I read an amusing quote recently by the Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade which goes "The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say."
The internet is like an amiable genius on LSD. If you listen long enough it will run the gamut from the insightful to the utterly incomprehensible. But, like the Bible, it is most easily misinterpreted when you step into the middle of the monologue, not knowing what came directly before or after (and not taking the time to find out).
So I found two main thoughts on pruning lemons, and citrus trees in general. The first is that everything thinner than a pencil should be taken off every year, and you can prune it all off back to main branches. In "the industry" they sometimes cut them back to trunks. The second is that citrus trees don't need to be pruned. They'll take care of themselves.
I disregarded the second because 1) the trees are in a greenhouse and are already touching the ceiling without encouragement and 2) it isn't any fun. So I started pruning, then went back to the internet to check because the tree started to seem a little gaunt. Emboldened by what I re-read, I forged ahead. I took pictures this time.
With the first tree I followed the advice thoroughly. As you can see, the number of leaves left on the tree could be counted on two hands. We had a family of friends visiting about this time, and they were glad to come out to the greenhouse to help tame the wild lemons with me. I'm leaving their names out to protect them. If I get hauled away for tree mutilation I want them to be safe. I'll take responsibility for this one, guys.
They were in charge of two of the other trees, setting a more moderate example for me when it came down to the final two.
Now time for a little educational piece. You might or might not wonder what I did with all the prunings. In Grow Biointensive we try to keep everything in the system, so tree prunings generally either get used as mature material in a compost pile or as the rough material upon which we build the pile. These tree are different, though. I don't know if this is true for lemons as a whole, but Meyer Lemons (the variety we have) produce a bonus crop on their branches: 1-2" thorns that are sharp enough to slice as well as pierce. We handle our compost often enough to not want surprises like this inside.
Last year's prunings got tossed out the back of the greenhouse and ignored.
This year I was going to do the same, but further away. I wanted to provide wildlife habitat, but preferably not right up next to the greenhouse. We have enough rodent problems. I started by moving the earlier pile, which had been increased by weeds tossed on top. Underneath the pile was some very nice compost. Now my plan is to make the new pile further away from the greenhouse, yes, but not to ignore it. Every bit of organic matter is a big help.
Here are some of the tools I used. The Felco pruners at top left and the pruning saw are both indispensable, but the next tool to the right is also very nice. It has pruning shears at the business end, which is on a long, adjustable aluminum pole with a hand-trigger at the other end. Very, very nice. The last tool is powerful but wicked. It has a lopper on the business end of its pole and a long rope. Pulling the rope levers the lopper closed on the branch of choice, but you have to pull hard. This is where it gets wicked. Where do you put the butt-end of the pole to brace it against the pressure? I tried my rib cage last year, but only once. The shock of the successful lopping bruised one of my ribs, so now I steer clear of the thing completely.

I don't know if you can identify with me, but I often find that shortly after I do something new, which I thought I had read enough on, I stumble upon something else enlightening on the subject. So one of the books I later looked at on a whim mentioned that lemons store most of their fruiting energy in their leaves. Hm.