Coffee Substitutes

Have you quit drinking coffee to still your jittery nerves, only to discover you miss that rich, java flavor? Well, you can prepare your own tasty brew from stuff you have in the kitchen, from veggies you raise yourself, or from plants you find around you.

All through history, and especially in hard times, people have made coffee from barley, wheat, rye, oats, rice, dry peas, beans, flax, or cornmeal by grinding the grain to a coarse meal, roasting until dark brown in coffee roasters or the oven, and brewing like coffee. While these coffee substitutes may or may not yield the taste you want, they do make good extenders, allowing you to use part of your coffee budget for more nutrient-dense food items.

You can make a better-flavored brew from the roots of plants in your garden. Chicory is a dual-purpose vegetable that provides you with nutrition-packed salad greens and roots that can be made into coffee. Jerusalem artichoke, a relative of the sunflower, produces tubers that are crisp and crunchy eaten raw or chopped into a salad, but that roasted, also make a good coffee substitute. Beets and parsnips, too, can serve this purpose.
Here’s what you do: cut the roots or tubers into small pieces, spread on cookie sheets, and dry in a warm oven or inside a hot car until completely dry. Next grind in a coffee grinder, spread on the cookie sheets again, and put in a 350-degree oven to roast, stirring often, so as not to burn your potential brew. When the grounds are a rich, dark brown, the color of coffee, you’re ready to take them out, cool and store in jars.  Brew as you would your coffee.

Wild plants whose roots you can use are dandelions and burdock, which looks like wild rhubarb in its first year and grows tall in the second year to produce the hooked burrs that gave the inspiration for velcro. Fall is the best time for  digging, as the plants deposit their reserves for winter and spring growth in their roots. Early spring is also good, before the plant has grown much. Burdock is best dug at the end of its first year. If in spring you accidentally dig a second year plant, you can still salvage the outer part of the root for coffee. The inner core will be woody and hard and you won’t be able to chop it. After digging, prepare and roast exactly as you would the garden-raised roots and  brew for coffee. Once you try burdock-root coffee, you may not want to go back to your comfortable coffee habit. But don’t harvest them all. Leave some for seed.

Other plants that have been used for coffee substitutes or extenders are potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, chestnuts, acorns, cotton seeds, okra seeds, persimmon seeds, and asparagus seeds. Bread crusts and hardtack have  also been tried.

With a look around and a little imagination, you might be able to come up with a workable coffee substitute yourself.

Winter Window Gardening

Don’t leave your garden out in the cold! Take it in with you for the winter! If you have south and east-facing windows and some fairly large pots, you can raise a surprising amount of greens for cold-weather salads. Not all plants, lettuce for one, will do well in winter’s reduced light, but some will. A little experimenting will help you find them.

One of the easiest plants to grow on a winter window sill is chicory. Before freeze up, dig the fleshy roots of first-year plants, cut the tops, reserving the greens for salad, and plant in deep pots. Water and place on your window sill or nearby table or plant stand. Chicory will tolerate its roots trimmed to fit the pot and still produce greens. Save any root trimmings and broken pieces to chop, dry, grind, and roast for coffee.

You can plant endive, the broad-leaved Batavian kind, from seed directly into pots of dirt or deep flats. They will take a bit more time to produce salad leaves than the chicory roots, but their lettuce-like leaves are well worth waiting for. Besides, you can start them at any time.

If you have cutting celery or parsley in your garden, you can simply pot up some plants, trim the tops, again reserving the trimmings for salad, and place on your window sill. They tolerate winter’s low-angled light very well and will add to  your salad all winter. The parsley will even make seed for you to plant in  next year’s garden. In the spring, divide the cutting celery and plant it out again to produce greens all summer. In late fall, bring it in.

Other plants you can try are chives, spinach, dandelions, dill or herb seed you have on hand.

You can seed wheat or barley in pots for greens for your cats. Or snip them while young and tender into a salad for yourself.

Some problems you might encounter are house cats sunning themselves on your new plants, flattening them in the process. You can create a cover made of chicken wire or something sturdy to keep them off. Other pests are aphids that come in with the plants from the garden. Try a spray made of chopped garlic or onions in water. And later in winter when the lady bugs come out of the woodwork, make sure they find their way to your plants. They’ll eat a surprising number of aphids.

The benefits of your window garden go beyond nutrition. The bright green not only colors your supper plate, it beckons cheerfully through the window as you go about your winter chores, a splash of green in a sea of white. What better way to cure the winter blues! And once again you have raised your own food and not depended on huge, profit-seeking corporations to do it for you.

So, go find some pots, dig some soil, mix in some worm castings, get out your leftover seeds, and be prepared to do some window gardening!

Exercise

According to the American Heart Association, twenty-five percent of American adults are not physically active, an important factor in our high rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and stroke. A brisk walk, they say, is one of the best ways to have a healthy heart.

According to a recent AARP article, exercise can help keep knees functional and pain free. Side shuffle, leg lifts and wall squat were offered as knee-friendly exercises.

These are excellent first steps toward maintaining health, but if you used the time spent walking and exercising in raising your own food, you’d find yourself engaging in a whole range of new exercises and movements you didn’t know were possible.

Walking would still be your main exercise, especially if you tend to be absentminded and disorganized and can’t remember to bring everything you need in one trip. Whether you’re gardening or taking care of chickens and other livestock, there are usually many trips back to the house for more seeds and stakes, or to the tool shed for the hammer and nails you forgot for that chicken coop fixit project, or to the grain bin for more buckets of chicken feed.

Lugging hay to animals with a sled can be excellent exercise. If you make it too easy for yourself by setting out a bale with the tractor, (unless you have a herd of beef cows) you won’t get the benefit of the exercise. Never do things the easy way except in severe weather. And as you get older, never wish things were easier. That’s just one step closer to the armchair of inactivity and stiff joints. You have to keep moving.

There will be days, of course, with less activity, when you will want to take that brisk walk recommended by the AHA, maybe out to check on the animals. There is a storm hood available at army surplus stores that is perfect for protecting your face from the cold winter wind as you walk.

Besides walking, pitching out animal pens and chicken coops, lugging hay, feed, and water and all the different movements needed in gardening will keep you limber, especially if you let that motorized tiller sit. You will side shuffle down your rows while planting corn or hoeing potatoes. Leg lifts will get you across the fence around your garden or hay lot. You’ll squat while weeding or picking beans or getting a closer look at the critter that’s eating holes in your cabbage leaves. All these movements will help keep your knees and hips from getting stiff.

An added bonus will be weight loss, not only from the activity, but from time spent with the refrigerator out of sight and out of mind. If you nibble it will be on heart-healthy, fresh-from-the-garden veggies or edible green weeds.

And weight loss translates into more ease of movement and less wear and tear on the joints.

The sense of accomplishment you’ll feel from taking charge of your health and well-being as well as producing your own food will make it all worthwhile.

Pros and Cons of Mulching

Should you turn that weedy garden patch into a permanent mulched garden? Well, there are  plenty of pros for doing just that but also some cons.

Most years moisture is a concern, and mulch prevents a garden from drying out. Not only does it slow evaporation, it traps rainwater, allowing it to soak in.  At the same time, it prevents soil erosion, not only from rain runoff, but from
wind as well.

After a rain, you can walk in your mulched garden without getting muddy, and you can pick clean vegetables because the mulch keeps dirt from splashing up on them. In fact, there’s often no reason to wash them except to remove a few
insects.

A thick layer of mulch will prevent most weeds from growing, allowing you to spend less time weeding. Or you can throw more mulch on top of any weeds that get started. You can also turn weedy mulch over, if the weeds haven’t rooted in the ground.

In summer, mulch keeps the ground cool. Put your hand on black, exposed soil on a hot day, and you’ll wonder how plants survive at all. In winter, it protects fall-seeded plants or sensitive perennials from extremely cold temperatures.

A permanent mulch means no-tilling your garden, and this is good. Even though you can’t see most of it, your soil is full of earthworms, bacteria, fungi, and all kinds of microscopic organisms that help your plants get the nutrients they need. When you till, the surface organisms are buried, threads of fungi are broken, and earthworm tunnels and root paths that help move water are destroyed. Also destroyed are clumps that allow air spaces in the soil, depriving these organisms and your plants of  oxygen.

Mulch helps feed soil organisms. Earthworms move organic matter from the surface down to the roots, feeding bacteria and fungi, which in turn give nutrients to your plants. Some soil organisms can even prevent plant diseases and help them resist insect damage, all reasons to protect them.

After considering the pros of mulching, think of the cons. One is the unwieldiness of planting. To plant a row, you must first pull back the mulch with a hoe or rake and then make your row. After planting and covering your seed, you put a small amount of mulch back over the row. This process can  be
tedious and time-consuming and draws out the planting process to a week or more instead of a day or two. Putting out bedding plants is not an issue, as you simply make a hole the same as you would without mulch.

Hay mulch can have seed and cause a good stand of grass to start in your garden. You can add more mulch or you can turn it over. Creeping jenny grows through the thickest mulch, cannot be weeded out by the roots, and needs persistence to control it. But to be fair, creeping jenny grows in unmulched gardens as well.

So do the pros win or the cons?

Garlic

It’s garlic planting time. If you live in the North, October 1 is ideal as it allows your garlic time to establish enough root development to make it through the winter.

There are a number of varieties from which to choose, but all fall into two main categories—softneck or hardneck. Softneck garlic keeps a bit longer and can be braided, if that’s important. Hardneck garlic has larger, easy-to-peel cloves and
more full-bodied flavor.

Choose a location with good drainage and work in well-rotted manure or worm castings. But don’t overdo it. Better none than too much. Make rows about ten to twelve inches or more apart. Then separate your seed heads into cloves, using the largest and best, and poke them in, flat end down, pointed end up,  two or more inches inches deep, but about four to six inches apart and cover with soil.

Next, pile on a thick layer of hay or straw to protect your garlic through the long, cold winter. The farther north, the thicker. In spring, pull back some of the mulch to let the plants peek through, but leave enough to protect the soil  from drying out. If you forget, the garlic will make its way through the mulch anyway.

Garlic will come up early, sometimes right through the snow, cheering your gardening spirit and efforts along. Keep it well mulched and water as needed, but not too much, as garlic doesn’t like mud.

If you planted a hardneck variety, your garlic will shoot up flowering stalks in mid-summer. When they rise above the leaves, snap them off so your heads can grow larger. You can snip them into  salads and soups. If you have a large crop,
you can chop and freeze the excess in bags or jars for later use.

About the first week in August or when the leaves begin to dry, your garlic will be ready to harvest. There should still be five or six green leaves on the plant. Check first by digging a bulb to make sure the cloves have divided and have good wrappers. Dig rather than pull. Gently brush or shake  off dirt. Do not cut stems or wash the garlic. Rather, bundle in groups of about eight and hang from nails or rafters or on a line suspended inside a room or shed out of direct sunlight. Let hang about three weeks. If humidity is high you might need to run fans to help the curing process.

After curing you can cut the stalks an inch or two from the bulbs, trim the roots, and brush off any dirt, taking care not to hurt the papery wrappers. Store in net bags such as oranges or onions come in, or lay in boxes and store in a cool room. Your garlic will keep for months.

Before putting your garlic heads into storage, though, save your best, firmest, healthiest heads for planting the next crop.

Near spring, if you still have good heads, peel the cloves, store in bags or jars in the freezer. Or simply store whole heads in bags to freeze. This makes peeling so simple, you’ll be tempted to throw all your garlic in the freezer. But resist the temptation! There’s nothing like fresh garlic for taste or for your health!

Have a great garlic crop!

Apples

Apple season is coming! In fact, some varieties are ready to pick the end of August. If you haven’t invested expense, time, and effort into planting and caring for your own, there are plenty of people who have, or who have bought property that includes apple trees and who are willing to share.

Some folks of a frugal mindset with good-producing trees can’t stand to see the apples not being used. They go to great lengths, bless them, to peddle their excess to others who might use them. If you are the lucky beneficiary of such
bounty, add them to your produce supply. They are a nutritious source of food, providing fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Perhaps you have extra vegetables of your own you might exchange for them.

As a rule, the earliest apple varieties don’t store well. Process these immediately. You can make apple chips for healthy snacks by thinly slicing and dehydrating them in a dehydrator or oven set on warm with the door cracked. You can chop and freeze them for later use. Or you may can them with or  without sugar or honey. Your local extension office has detailed instructions.

The mid-season and late varieties have a longer storage life, and you can put these away in a refrigerator, cool room, or root cellar and use them fresh or process as you would the earlier ones.

When apples come your way, make more than apple pie. Think beyond sweet desserts for which recipes abound. Think main dish or vegetable dish. Apples can be tossed into beet, cucumber, sauerkraut, or potato salads. And who doesn’t like apples sautéed with onions and cabbage? Children perhaps, but as they grow, their tastes change. For them try apple pizza or an apple wrap. Here are some recipes:

Apple Pizza

In a baking pan, pre-bake your favorite pizza crust for ten minutes at 425 degrees. Next, spread with a layer of dry curd cottage cheese, ricotta, or Parmesan cheese. Add a layer of chopped onion and chopped pepper, green or red. Add a layer of thinly sliced apples and sprinkle with dried dill. Spread with shredded mozzarella cheese and bake at 425 degrees for another seven to ten minutes until the cheese melts. Cut into serving-size pieces and enjoy.

Apple Wrap Snack

Mix one tablespoon of mayo or ranch dressing with one tablespoon yellow mustard and spread on a flour tortilla. Next add thinly sliced apple pieces,
chopped lettuce, shredded  or sliced cheese, and bits of ham, cooked chicken or turkey. Roll up as you would a burrito to keep the pieces under control. Enjoy!!If this is too messy, you can skip the tortilla and convert the remaining ingredients into a tasty salad.

If your family enjoys apples, why not plant some? Check with your local nursery for varieties suited for your area and make plans to start an orchard this coming spring. You won’t be sorry you did, for in a few years you’ll have your own excess apples to pay back  friends and neighbors.

Self-sufficiency

Most of us agree that superior nutrition and taste are main reasons we grow our own food. Cost effectiveness is a close second. And there are other equally important reasons like our wish to reduce our carbon footprint and our discomfort with giant, profit-motivated corporations having sole charge of our food supply and allowing food quality and nutrition to take a back seat to profit and greed.

But have you ever considered that the line between having enough to eat and not enough can get pretty thin? Because of circumstances beyond our control, tornado, flood, job loss, economic collapse, whatever, we could find ourselves in a situation where it would be good to have the basic skills in place to raise and forage for as much of our food as we possibly can.

According to the Nov. 2009 USDA Household Food Security Report, one in seven Americans, nearly 50 million people, did not get enough food in the year 2008. The World Summit on Food Security in Rome reported that the whole world is hungrier than ever before.

Perhaps the easiest way you can take charge of your food supply is to raise a garden full of vegetables, plant some fruit trees, forage for edible wild plants. Raising animals for food takes more planning and facilities, but you should not rule it out.

How do you learn the skills needed for such an undertaking? Your county extension service is a good place to start. They have information on raising, storing, processing almost every kind of food you need. The internet is also a vast source of information. Mother Earth News is a paper magazine as well as an online resource, www.motherearthnews.com, for folks interested in self-sufficient living. You can sign up for a free newsletter on organic gardening topics at www.about.com or simply go to the website.

The most obvious and over-looked source of information is our elderly friends, neighbors and relatives. Many of them lived through hard times and have a store of tips for making do with little or nothing. The older they are, the more they have experienced, and the more they know and can teach you if your mind is open and willing.

So, don’t let those old skills die. Whether you’d like to learn gardening, animal husbandry, cheese making, bread baking, soap making, or farming with horses, read, read, read and go pick someone’s brain. If you learn something, put it to use, pass it on to others, and most important, teach your children and grandchildren.

Eating Worms

Eating worms comes after a journey of introspection and evaluating priorities. Certainly in the beginning I didn’t intend to, but after a lifetime of struggling to protect cabbage and broccoli from insects in a non-chemical manner, I’m at
the brink of desperation. After my no-see-um netting weakened in the sunlight and split in the wind, I’m ready to remove all row covers, come what may. I’m sick of taping up holes chewed by grasshoppers or perforated by grass and creeping jenny growing right through the cover. And I’m sick of the growing pile of fabric that’s no longer fit for covering rows, but too good to throw away.

But one priority will never change. I will never resort to chemicals to battle insects. The only chemicals to reach my garden are drift from nearby fields over which I have no control or forgetting and throwing on the chicken’s bedding straw without remembering it came from a sprayed field.

So if I don’t use chemicals or row-covers, I’m limited to diatomaceous earth which helps, but is not highly effective, especially for flea beetles. That or living with the insects.

Living with the insects means that some years I may have a damaged crop and some years not. It depends on who gets there first. If I plant earlier and my plants survive a killing frost, they will make progress before the insects become a problem. But that is a big IF.

My sister, a fellow gardener, and I were discussing over coffee an article I had read about a group of vegetarian people who were able to meet their vitamin B-12 needs simply by not washing their garden vegetables so squeaky clean. Without intending to eat insects, they did so inadvertently when they ate their greens. The conversation then turned to the little green worms that camp out in the branches of the broccoli florets. It is impossible to get them out by washing in salt water. They stay stuck in the branches. It is tedious to try picking them out, and besides you cannot see them.

And so what harm is there in leaving them? my sister asked. And I thought, yes, what harm indeed? Our preoccupation with removing them causes stress and is probably not necessary. Leaving them is much easier. Besides, they are harmless and actually could be beneficial, supplying us with a tiny amount of  protein and other nutrients such as the much-needed B-12. If we aren’t so fussy, we can trim the worst damage from heads of cabbage and throw the trimmings to the chickens and make sauerkraut out of the rest. If a head escapes damage, we can wrap that for winter storage in the refrigerator. If  not, then we make more sauerkraut. And as for the broccoli, we can add a few chopped onions, shredded cheese, milk or cream, and who’ll see the worms?

I haven’t tried it yet, but I think I’m game. Especially if it means no more row covers!

Parsnips

Parsnips look like large, cream-colored carrots but are milder, sweeter, and cook quickly. Once you discover their taste, you just might keep on raising them.

Parsnips take patience to start, but once they’re up, they’re hardy and easy plants to care for and can add significantly to your food supply.

Parsnips don’t like nitrogen, but do like cool weather, so in early May, plant your seeds a half inch to an inch deep, two to three inches apart or thicker if you plan on thinning. Parsnips take up to three weeks to germinate, so cover the row to keep it from drying out. You can use a board, paper, cardboard, or mulch. To help you keep track, plant a row of radishes nearby on the same day. About the time the radishes are ready to eat, your parsnips should be peeking through, and you’ll need to remove the cover. Keep checking though as the radishes may grow more slowly than you think.

At first, parsnips look like celery or parsley, but as they grow, they take on their own characteristics. Keep them weeded and watered. They take a long time to develop, so don’t try them until after the first frost brings out their flavor and sweetness.

Parsnips are cold-hardy, and even in the North, you can leave them in the garden all winter and use them in the spring before they start growing again. But you’ll want to use them for food in winter, so in late fall, after you’ve harvested all your other vegetables and before the ground freezes hard, you can turn your attention to your parsnips.

Parsnips grow deeper than carrots so you’ll need to dig with a tree spade beside the row in order to avoid hurting the roots. If your soil is loose, after you’ve dug down a ways, you can grab the top half of the parsnip and pull it up. Cut the tops as you would carrots, leaving about a half inch of stem. Wash, allow to air dry, and package in large plastic bags lined with absorbent material like toweling or an old sweat shirt. Store in the refrigerator with your carrots. Or if you have a root cellar, you might try other means such as packing in sand.

To save seed, leave one or two of your best specimens in the ground to overwinter. Cover with mulch to be on the safe side. Parsnips are biennials. They’ll grow a flower stalk in the second year which will produce seed for you. You can also take a leftover parsnip from the refrigerator and plant it for seed in the spring. As your seed plants grow, stake and tie them so they don’t topple in the wind. In August or thereabouts, cut heads of dry-looking seeds and lay them on screens to finish drying. One plant will provide enough seed for many years, and you can share with friends and neighbors.

You can cook parsnips and mash with butter and salt and pepper. Or you can mash them with carrots and potatoes. Another tasty way to use them is roasted with pieces of potatoes, carrots, green peppers, onions, beets, zucchini, or whatever vegetables you have on hand. Drizzle a little olive oil over, sprinkle with salt and pepper and an herb like basil or oregano, roast in the oven, and enjoy!

A Loving Relationship

Search Amazon.com for gardening books and you’ll come up with about 48,000 telling you how to garden.

While a good book can give you a start, no author knows the character of you or your garden. And no one can predict the relationship that starts up between you and your garden. This is something that grows over time with you being present in your garden, working in it, struggling with it, loving it. You become in tune with its cycles and specific needs. Over time your experience with it teaches you what vegetables grow well and which don’t. What methods work and which don’t. You become aware of its issues: moisture and nutrients, weeds, insects and pests, shade, and what works best to solve them or simply deal with them, maybe just working around them.

The old adage, “experience is the best teacher,” remains true. But first you need to apply perseverence, determination, and a good dose of elbow grease. The more you invest of yourself, the more your garden responds by producing food for you and your family, and you feel gratitude, and the relationship grows even more.

And as time goes by, you become a better gardener and you begin to love your garden like a member of the family. You treat it tenderly, gently supporting bean stems as you harvest, tucking errant earthworms back in the soil, admiring a tiny snail or a swallowtail caterpillar in the parsley. Your children, too, will sense your wonder and pick up on it, and it will propel them into a love of gardening that will last a lifetime. What better gift for the next generation!

So, the best thing you can do if you want to garden is just start. Decide on a plot, till it up, put out your seeds, keep it watered and weeded and ask lots of questions if you like. And over time, as you  observe your plants and see what works, and try different methods, you’ll learn more than reading all the books or taking a gardening course. Because what you learn will be specific to your little garden spot. You’ll know it like the back of your hand. And knowing leads to a loving relationship. Only you will be the best judge of how to garden in this place.

Reading is good. But doing is better!

To Peel or not to Peel

Some folks remove the peel from every fruit and vegetable—apples, potatoes, cucumbers, parsnips, even tender new carrots. A little feeder pig would make good use of all the discarded stuff. And some folks religiously scrub veggies without peeling, thinking there may be fiber and nutrients lurking under that skin.

Some fruits and vegetables of course have inedible skins—onions, garlic, bananas, oranges, and peeling them isn’t questionable. But if the skin you’re peeling is tender enough to eat, you might consider your reasons for doing so.

Are you peeling a store-bought vegetable without knowledge of how it was raised, handled, or if it was sprayed with pesticides or preservatives to prolong its shelf life? In this case, you may be removing a layer of undesirable chemicals. Are you peeling a potato that’s scabby and hard to scrub clean? Or one that has been in storage for awhile and the skin has grown tough and unattractive and bitter? These may be good reasons for peeling. But if you’re peeling a tender-skinned veggie fresh from your organic garden, you’re very likely removing a concentration of  useful nutrients under that skin in the process. You might stop and ask yourself why you’re doing it?

Certainly parents and grandparents teach you to do things a certain way, and it’s understandable if you continue in that teaching. But sooner or later you reach a stage in life when you begin thinking for yourself, thinking outside the box. It’s ok to question. After doing and studying and contemplating, you’re free to keep the ideas that make sense to you and to discard what doesn’t. You don’t have to do something a certain way because that’s the way it’s always been done. This holds true in all areas of life and is what makes you a strong, freedom-loving person. It’s what drives you to guide your children instead of brainwashing them.

So next time you pick up your paring knife, give yourself the third degree. Then reach for your vegetable brush. A good brush will get in cracks and deep-set eyes and even remove some scabs after a potato has soaked a bit. Scouring pads also work well for scrubbing potatoes, and an old tooth brush works for potato eyes.

If you insist on peeling, save the peelings in a bag in the refrigerator until you have enough to make vegetable broth. Some folks make potato peel crisps by sprinkling peelings with salt, pepper, chili powder and popping them in the oven until done.  Or you might consider peeling after cooking, as vegetables cooked in their skins lose fewer nutrients into the cooking water. As a last resort you can throw peels to the chickens or the feeder pig or add them to the compost pile.

In the end you do what works for you and your family. If some members simply won’t eat unpeeled vegetables, you have no choice but to peel. It’s better to eat peeled veggies than none at all.

Humility

Gardening and raising your own food are good for the soul. They keep you humble. Just when you think you are on top of things, and you have a strong sense of accomplishment and pride in that flourishing garden and that thriving flock of laying hens, nature has a way of throwing you a curve ball that destroys these feelings. In fact there are so many things that can go wrong, and you’re always struggling, that there is no way you can brag about anything you’ve done.

The more different things you try, the more chance for some kind of failure and the accompanying humble feelings. Onion maggots invade your booming crop of onions, and you end up throwing half of them on the burn pile before the critters grow up and fly away to make new maggots. Or you linger at a Fourth of July celebration too long instead of hurrying home to shut your chicken coop for the night, and a raccoon takes one of your beautiful, rosy-combed, free-range, laying hens. Or in spite of diligent and time-consuming weeding, the creeping jenny sends vines all over your peas and beans and garlic. And potato beetles strip the leaves from your new variety of spuds in the field garden while you were preoccupied with weeding the yard garden and with your family and day job. No bragging rights here.

But there are gifts in humility. Lessons learned in losses benefit you in the future and may make you a better manager. And when you are no longer thinking the success of your food raising is the work of your own hands only, you are then open to an acute sense of the miraculous. The life unfolding in a sprouting bean seed, the daily progress of an onion or a stalk of sweet corn, a tiny chick hatching from a seemingly lifeless egg bring a profound sense of wonder and awareness of the forces of nature at work around you, forces not only propelling healthy growth but destruction as well, and over which you have little control. Would you have noticed all this without humility?

After a string of failures, it’s natural to feel discouragement. But take heart. Even the most experienced gardeners and food raisers fail. Keep in mind the things that are out of your control. You either wait for a better year or find a way to deal with your problems and plagues. Even though you don’t feel like bragging because of your failures, remember the odds are in your favor. Successes outnumber failures. The important thing is that you keep on trying.

So even though nature sometimes destroys your pride, a little persistence and diligence will result in enough food for your family even in a bad year. And you can still  take pride in what you have accomplished, knowing you’re at the mercy of natural forces. Your pride will be tempered with humility, which makes it the best kind of pride.

Chives

For an herb, chives can provide a significant amount of food, enough so you don’t want to ignore it. Its mild onion flavor goes well in soups, salads, main dishes,  vegetables, or biscuits, and you can use it raw, frozen, or dried.

You can order seed from seed catalogs or you can get clumps of plants from a neighbor, separate them, and plant them in your garden or in a large tub. Planting them in a tub prevents grass and weeds from overwhelming your chives patch. If, after a few years, persistent weeds do get started, you can empty it
out, separate the plants, then replant them in fresh dirt.

Chives are tough perennials and one of the earliest plants to come to life in spring. They are a nutritious addition to that dandelion greens salad your body needs after a long winter of frozen or store-bought vegetables.

Because chives have so many uses, you might put your chives tub near the kitchen door, so that you can run out and grab some for the dish you’re preparing, whether it’s a topping for baked potatoes, or the final addition to your salad.

You’ll find that your chives grow much faster than you have use for. The simplest way to deal with the excess is to freeze it. Cut clumps of it off with a scissors, sort out debris, wash, snip into pieces, pop into freezer bags, and toss
into the freezer.

Make sure your chives tub has drain holes so you can water it freely. This will give you several cuttings in one summer. If the chives get to the flowering stage, throw the flowers into your green salad.  If they get past this point, the flower stalks will get tough, but you can pick them out and still use the leaves. Save any seeds your chive flowers make and start a new tub or share them with a friend.

Here are some recipes:

• Chives and Potato Soup
• 1 cup chopped fresh or frozen chives
• 2 large potatoes, diced
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cups chicken broth or other broth
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tbsp sour cream
• ¾ tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

Saute the chives and butter briefly in a large pan, stirring so as not to let them scorch. Add broth, potatoes, salt, and pepper and cook until the potatoes are tender. Add the milk and sour cream and heat to the boiling point. Turn off
heat and let stand so the flavors blend. Mash some of the potatoes if you prefer a thicker soup. Enjoy the flavor!

• Buttery Chives Biscuits
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tsps aluminum-free baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ stick butter
• 2/3 cup milk, buttermilk, or cream
• 1 cup cheddar cheese
• ¼ cup finely chopped chives
• 1 tbsp minced onion

Mix dry ingredients and cut in butter. Add cheddar, chives, and onion. Stir in milk slowly until batter is thick enough to roll and cut with biscuit cutter. Bake in 425-degree oven for 12 minutes. Enjoy!

Beets

Who doesn’t love the rich, dark red of beets? So rich that you must take care not to nick the skin or the color will bleed into the cooking water. And if color is any indicator of nutrition, then beets win hands down. In fact some authorities list them among the world’s healthiest vegetables, claiming they protect against cancer and heart disease.

Beets like cool weather, so you can plant your seeds before the last frost. Some folks soak the seeds overnight or crack them with a rolling pin to encourage germination. Plant seeds a half inch deep and about two inches apart. After your beets come up you can thin them, although beets push each other apart and upward if crowded. Weed and water as needed. Adding a bit of mulch will slow moisture loss and weed growth.

A dual-purpose vegetable, beets can contribute significantly to your food supply. You can harvest greens, using the tender small ones raw in salads and the bigger ones as cooked greens. Use them sparingly, though, as they feed the growing roots. After the roots are big enough to harvest, you can also freeze the greens in quantity as you would any other green vegetable. Blanch in boiling water two minutes, cool, and package.

Some folks store beets in root cellars or the refrigerator and use them as needed. But they take such a long time to cook, that you might want to do that job once and get it over with. At the end of the season, pick all your remaining beets, cutting the tops and saving those for blanching and freezing. Leave a bit of stem and the long root string so the beets won’t bleed their color as you cook them. After washing, sort by size into different kettles. The smaller ones will get done sooner and you can begin with them while the big ones are still cooking. When the beets are fork tender, drain and place in cool water until you can handle them. At this point, slip their skins, cut off the stems and tails, and slice into pieces. Place smaller pieces into freezer containers or bags and into the freezer. For pickles, pack larger pieces into washed pint jars and cover with a boiling syrup of 2 cups water, 2 cups sugar or honey, 2 cups vinegar, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon allspice, 1 tablespoon cinnamon. Seal and process in boiling water bath for 30 minutes.

You can thaw your frozen beets and heat them and add a little yogurt or sour cream, salt, and pepper. Or you can toss them into salads. Or make a salad with beets, onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, celery, chives, cucumbers, peanuts, cumin, and sage, and your favorite oil and vinegar dressing.

In summer you can pick a large beet, peel and shred it, add the chopped greens with stems, simmer until done, add a dollop of yogurt, a little salt and pepper, and enjoy!

You’ll be glad you raised beets!

Crop Rotation

Every good farmer rotates her crops and a gardener should, too. There are a number of reasons why.

Many plant diseases, like potato scab, blights, mildews, funguses, affect specific plants and moving your vegetables to a different spot each year will break the disease cycle. In fact you should let more than one year go by before you put a vegetable in its original place again. Insect pests, too, like Colorado potato beetles, onion maggots, wireworms, overwinter in the soil under their host plants. Rotating just makes good sense. Another thing to keep in mind is that plants in the same family group can share pests and diseases, so you don’t want to plant tomatoes or eggplant, for example, where you had potatoes last year. You can sort your plants into these nine major families:

1. Onions, garlic, leaks, shallots, chives

2. Carrots, celery, parsnips, parsley, dill

3. Lettuce, chicory, endive

4. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, mustard, kale, collards, radishes, arugula, mizuna, cress

5. Spinach, Swiss chard, beets, purslane and moss roses

6. Cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, squash, gourds

7. Peas, beans, peanuts

8. Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, potatoes

9. Corn, wheat, barley, oats, rye

Plants differ in what they take from the soil. Always putting the same vegetable in one place can deplete the soil of a particular nutrient. Rotating allows the soil to recover it.

Vegetables don’t just take from the soil, they can give to it as well. Peas and beans add more nitrogen than they use. For this reason, don’t pull up dead pea and bean vines because nitrogen is tucked away in the nodules on their roots. Vegetables provide food to soil organisms and receive moisture and nutrients in return. But specific plants can be a benefit to specific organisms. By moving plants to a different spot each year, eventually the organisms in each spot in your garden will benefit from a wide range of vegetables. Also, some deep-rooted veggies bring up nutrients and moisture from deeper layers of your garden, and they can penetrate hard-packed soil, loosening it. Rotating allows them to do their job eventually for the whole garden.

To keep track of all this, some folks keep records of where they plant each year. Others take photos to help them remember. Or you can simply get in the habit of planting all the veggies from one plant family in a single row and move that row over one place each year. Of course, such a simplistic approach may not work for every vegetable or every garden. Squash and pumpkins need plenty of room to sprawl and may need to be outside your garden.

And if you forget and plant peas where last year’s beans grew, don’t worry. Any change you make is a step in the right direction. A garden and its organisms are resilient. They’ll survive your learning process, and you’ll get some vegetables no matter what you do. Just do the best you can with the space you have.

Dry Beans

Who can resist the dry bean page of the seed catalog? The bright patterns and colors leap out at you, enticing you to try a new variety. Of the hundreds of varieties known, several originated with the native peoples and include the Great Northern, Arikara Yellow, Hidatsa Red, and Hitdatsa Shield Bean, a beautiful, two-toned bean.

And beans come with a bonus. Not only do they have protein, fiber, folate, and key minerals, but studies show that eating beans regularly can reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease and help manage blood sugar levels.

In case of a cool wet fall, choose a shorter season bean. Or you might try different kinds. But keep in mind before you plant that if you have seed you want to keep, you’ll need to plant different varieties at least fifty feet apart. Beans are self-pollinators, but it’s best to be on the safe side.

Beans are easy to plant and easy to grow and there’s no need to fertilize them. They fix their own nitrogen which is also good for the next crop to be planted after. When the danger of frost is past and the soil has warmed to at least fifty degrees, plant your bean seeds an inch deep and about three inches apart. Some experts recommend thinning, but often cut worms, deer, and rabbits will do that job for you. In fact you may have to monitor so you don’t lose your whole crop.

You might also plant a row of epazote, a strong-flavored herb to cook with the beans that prevents flatulence. After it has grown tall and leafy, harvest the leaves and spread them out on screens to dry. Crumble and store in the freezer to prolong its shelf life. The plant will also make seed its first year enabling you to plant it again. In fact the plant will reseed itself and you’ll have a crop the following year without planting.

Once your beans are up, keep them weeded and watered. Mulch will help for both and prevent your bottom beans from becoming embedded in the mud.

In fall when the bean plant has turned dry and brown, you can harvest them. Since the roots contain nodules of nitrogen that enrich the soil, you can either cut off the plant near the ground leaving the roots in the soil, or pick the beans from the plants. The latter is time-consuming, but the end result has no rocks or bits of dirt. You can have the kids shell them. Put the beans in a tub, turn on some music, and let them take turns dancing on them. Or do it yourself.

Lift out the empty shells and fan your beans in the wind to remove the debris. Then store them in a cloth bag or open container until you’re sure they’re absolutely dry.

The sight of a basket or jar of dry beans harvested, cleaned, and safely stored away will do your heart good.

Rhubarb

Don’t ignore rhubarb! It can add food to your diet without cost. If you don’t have plants of your own, there are neighbors who have extra. Drive through any small town and you’ll see large, healthy plants that don’t get harvested. All you have to do is ask, and if you’re lucky, you’ll come home with an armful.

Rhubarb is easy to freeze. Wash your stalks, trim the ends, cut into small pieces, and package in freezer bags. Remember to cut off any trace of leaves as they are poisonous.

Rhubarb is tender in spring, but still useable throughout the summer. In autumn when the stalks wilt and grow tough and hollow, harvesting is over.

Most rhubarb recipes are for sweet desserts. But have you ever thought of eating rhubarb as a vegetable? Toss a handful into your favorite potato soup or add them to other soups, stews, or stuffing and you’ll not only extend the bulk and nutrition of your meal, you’ll add an interesting and tangy taste.

But if you really want rhubarb pie, mix it with sweet fruits like strawberries, raisins, or apples and leave out the sugar or cut it way down. Or try Stevia, an herbal sweetener with no calories, available at natural food stores.

Another interesting use for rhubarb is to stew it a few minutes with wild fruits such as Juneberries, chokecherries, plums, and apples. Add a bit of cinnamon and cloves, thicken with cornstarch or instant tapioca, and sweeten with Stevia. You’ll have to spit a few pits, but the taste is great.

Once you’ve decided you like rhubarb, you may plant your own. You can order the roots from seed catalogs or if a neighbor is digging up a plant to separate, you might ask for a few roots for yourself. You can plant rhubarb at any time during the summer, though early spring and fall are best. Since rhubarb is a perennial, and you won’t need to plant again except for separating roots after a few years, make sure you put your plants where they won’t be disturbed by cultivation. Dig the holes in your row about three or four feet apart, add well-rotted manure and water. Place a root with a bud in each hole about four inches deep, cover, and tamp into the soil.

If you refrain from harvesting your first crop, you’ll have hardier plants the following years. But remove any seed heads so the plant can focus on growing roots and stalks. Once they start, you’ll have rhubarb for years.

Try this delicious recipe:  Rhubarb and Red Cabbage

In a bit of olive oil saute together about two cups red cabbage, a half cup onion, one cup rhubarb, a clove or two of garlic all chopped, a tablespoon of caraway or dill seeds, and a few shakes of herbal Stevia. When tender add three tablespoons cider vinegar and a little mayonaise or ranch dressing and salt to taste. Enjoy!

Pickles, anyone?

If you like cucumbers in summer and pickles in winter, you’ll need a packet each of open-pollinated slicers and pickling cucumbers, though picklers can be sliced, too. After the last frost, you can plant them in a row, allowing six to twelve inches between plants, or you can plant them in hills of three or four with about three inches between seeds and about two or three feet between hills. Poke the seeds in about an inch, firm the soil, and cover lightly. Water if needed, and keep weeds under control, at least until the cucumbers can shade them out themselves. You can let them sprawl, or you can build a trellis, making picking easier. There’s no set way. You’ll find your own.

Your cucumbers will make yellow blossoms, and near the end of July, or earlier, depending on where you live, you should find a few to slice for the table. With a little dill, onion tops, and salad dressing you’ll have a tasty treat. Or use cream and vinegar, the old-fashioned way.

If you’ve let your cucumbers sprawl, you’ll need an eagle eye to find them. One gardener waited for hot afternoons when the leaves wilted down, took off her shoes and walked barefoot through the vines. She found them easily without hurting the wilted plants. During the cool part of the day, when plants are rigid with water, they break more easily. And rummaging through wet plants spreads disease, something you want to avoid.

If you’ve weeded and watered, you’ll soon find that you’ll have slicers to share with neighbors and picklers to put up for winter. You can pickle the slicers, too, but the pickling cucumbers stay crisp longer and make a more satisfying pickle.

Here’s a pickle recipe you can make one jar at a time. Place two flower heads of dill in the bottom of a clean quart jar. Next fill with whole or speared pickling cucumbers, leaving space for two chopped cloves of garlic, a small chopped onion, a teaspoon of pickling spice, a small red chili pepper, and one tablespoon canning salt, or less if you’re concerned about your salt intake. Next fill the jar with cold, hard water, put on lid and band, preferably heated, turning it tight as you can. You can even grease the inside of the band so it turns on tighter. Then gently shake to mix the salt. Let stand about two or three days until you see cloudiness. Then place them in the refrigerator. They’ll keep for months.

After you bite into one, you’ll be hooked, but don’t make all your cucumbers into pickles. Save some for seed.

Broccoli and Cauliflower

Two big cabbage-family cancer fighters, broccoli and cauliflower, need row covers to protect them from insects, so have them ready before you put out your plants. Row covers can be old white nylon curtains sewed together, light-colored no-see-um netting, or commercial covers from seed catalogs. Prefer the curtains and netting as they  withstand wind damage, and you can reuse them another year. For taller varieties you’ll need covers about 84 inches wide. Row covers have the advantage of shading and conserving some moisture, which gives cabbage-family plants an edge. Other garden plants prefer full sun.

Purchase your plants from your local greenhouse. Next year after gardening is more comfortable, you can start your own.  But for now, started plants may suit you better. Make sure your row will fit your row cover. Then dig holes about two feet apart and fill with water. When the water has soaked in, put a plant in each hole and pull dirt around it, firming the soil so that the roots are completely surrounded and not in contact with air.

Immediately cover your row with curtains or netting and weight the edges with dirt, rocks, or old two-by-fours. Don’t put this job off, or you’ll have lots of tiny, black flea beetles nibbling away at your hard work. White butterflies, too, will be searching for openings, and if they find one, come harvest, you’ll find green caterpillars snoozing in the tight spaces in your broccoli and cauliflower. Soaking in salt water will dislodge a few, but if your heads are tight, they’ll die before they can disentangle themselves.

Weeding under row covers is not as convenient as weeding rows without covers. Putting mulch around your plants will slow weed growth and make this job easier. Rain and watering will pass through the covers, or you can lay a soaker hose along the plants under the cover.  But mulch will reduce the need to water.

When your plants have made heads, but before they start blooming, you can pick and enjoy them. If you harvest more than you’ll eat at a meal or two, you can blanch and freeze them for good winter eating. Wash and cut into bite-size pieces, blanch three minutes in boiling water, cool, and pack in freezer containers or bags. Contact your county extension service for more information.

After you’ve cut off the main heads, some varieties will continue to produce side shoots, and you can harvest until freeze up.

A plate of steamed broccoli or cauliflower and cheese on a cold winter’s day will taste good, and you’ll be glad you grew them.

Color

Picture a plate of colorful, nutritious veggies decorating your dinner table. Dark greens from your window garden or outdoor garden, rich orange squash, bright red tomatoes, white onions and garlic, and deep maroon beets whose color doesn’t end.

Why does this attract us? At what primal level does this speak to us? It seems the more colorful a fruit or vegetable, the more we want to eat it. And perhaps this is as it should be.

Studies show that the more deeply colored a vegetable is, the more nutrients and healthful, disease-fighting properties it has. And since each color of vegetable doesn’t absorb light in the same way, each has its own array of beneficial substances. It stands to reason that choosing a variety of colors for our gardens and for our plates will provide a healthy mix of nutrients and antioxidants for keeping our immune systems in topnotch shape. The same holds true for fruit. Nature may have intended to lure us with color to eat the healthiest of foods.

To produce the deepest colors, your garden itself must be healthy. Some telltale signs of deficiencies are yellow corn leaves or yellowness in general, pale cucumber leaves and cucumbers, pale carrots, or peppers with brown spots. Adding compost, worm castings, or well-rotted manure every year or every other year will provide the nutrients these veggies need to produce their color and accompanying load of goodies that help keep you healthy. Adding mulch to your mulched garden also provides nutrients in a slow-release form.

Here are some rainbow recipes for a multicolored diet:

Rainbow Roasted Root Veggies

Cut into a small roaster bite-size pieces of any of these veggies: potatoes, peppers, carrots, squash, onions, garlic, beets, parsnips, rutabagas. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with herbs such as basil, oregano, or rosemary. Add salt and pepper, and roast in the oven until done.

Rainbow Veggie Salad

Starting with a base of deep, dark greens like dandelions, chicory, spinach, or romaine lettuce or a mixture, add snipped green onions, tomatoes from your garden or freezer, shredded carrot, minced garlic, celery, chopped red cabbage. To make a full meal of it, add a bit of diced, cooked potato or cooked grain like barley, bulgur, millet or quinoa, chopped boiled egg (adds yellow), or diced meat of any kind. Top with an oil and vinegar dressing, and on top of that add a creamy dressing like ranch to enhance the taste. But to bring out the intense colors, leave out the ranch or add it on your plate.

For kids, place bowls of each color of vegetable on the table and ask them to build their own rainbow and top it with their favorite salad dressing.

As with everything, a little color goes a long way in making life interesting. In the case of fruits and vegetables, it benefits our health as well. So see what kinds of colors you can conjure up in that garden of yours! Have the kids help you!