If It's For Free, It's For Me: Garden Resources To Get Organized

Picture this: it's three months from now, and time to transplant those meticulously grown tomato and pepper plants (multiple varieties of each, of course). That means it's also time to direct sow beans, and of course, I can't just grow one kind. I take my trusty (beat-up, dirty, and badly organized) garden tool bag, my garden journal (also a mess), my seed packet pile, and my hopefully-still-properly-labeled transplants.

Then I start to wonder which plants will go where and in what order. I start jotting down some scribbly notes which make perfect sense at the time but won't make any sense in a month when stuff starts growing. At the exact moment I realize my plant tags have faded in the sun and I can't tell hot vs. sweet peppers, I will also remember that I never made a proper map of the layout. Problem. The beans don't look happy either. Were they bush beans or pole beans? Were they shelling beans or fillet beans? Suddenly, meal times become a dangerous game of Russian roulette. "Here Tom, I sauteed some Italian frying peppers" "Are they hot or sweet?" "Erm, not sure" [watches as Tom pops one into his mouth, pauses, then makes The Face] "Yes, then those would be the hot ones."

I always garden like I am being chased by a live tiger, when the tiger is in fact made out of a giant to-do list shaped like a tiger and given tiger-like properties by my active imagination. Obviously, rushing around leads to an inattention to detail that produces some crappy results. Can I be saved from myself? Who knows. But with a stubborn two feet of snow still on the ground, now is the time to get some organization skills in place. Google, take me away!

Seed Starting Chart: Organic Gardening Magazine kept a seed starting chart housed on its website for years, and now that I need a fresh copy, it is nowhere to be found. Basically, it consisted of a list of common garden veggies, how long they take to grow from seed, and how many weeks before or after your last frost date that they should be planted. I always printed the sheets and kept two calculations - one for my "early" crops that would go out under protection from the cold (April 1st), and my "late" crops that would go out on time (May 15th). Once I decided my two planting dates, I would go backward from there and calculate when precisely to start the seeds which was an elaborate pain.

But hark! Having been forced to look for an alternative chart to share on my blog, in no time at all I found this wonderful excel spreadsheet that does the math for you. Check out the "lazy gardener's seed starting chart" at You Grow Girl. All you have to do is download it, and enter the date for your time zone. It even provides a link to the Farmers' Almanac list of frost free dates by region. This is already a huge improvement over my pencil scribble list.

Online Garden Planners: I still love my pencil/graph paper/college rule notebook. I do. But my vegetable garden has grown exponentially over the years, and I can't keep my paper templates in order. I don't have enough room to view the entire garden on one page per season as an aerial map overview, and it's really hard to keep track of crop rotations. I think my solution is to get some helpful software.

This will be my first computer-oriented gardening year thanks to Mother Earth News and their online vegetable garden planner. Although it does not belong in this article since it's only free for the first month, you can practice on the demo to see how it works and decide ahead of time whether it's worthwhile for purchase. I did the 30 day trial so I could actually start putting in my garden dimensions, and I'm finding it pretty user friendly. The demo videos show you exactly how to input your garden bed layout with its exact dimension. Once I get the bed layout put into the online map, I can click and drag various fruits and vegetables from the menu into their potential new homes. The software automatically calculates how many can fit in the space I have (which in itself is vastly useful to me since I am a pathological over-planter). Then it will help me use all this information to calculate crop rotations and succession planting. The downside to this is the yearly $24 subscription fee, and the fact that it doesn't SEEM to allow for integrating exact varieties of annual and perennial flowers among the vegetables. It has a placeholder called "flower" but that isn't the level of detail I need. But maybe I just haven't figured out how to do that party yet. If you have a small garden, I believe this application is really over kill, and probably not worth the investment. This year I will have about 18 raised garden beds of various shapes and sizes, so this might be really helpful for me, which saving Tom some unnecessary food-induced pain.

I've run into another great website with some truly free garden resources. Myfolia found me on the Twitter account that I can't seem to learn how to properly operate. It appears to be a hybrid garden planner and social networking site for gardeners. A free account let's you set your profile with your plant hardiness zone, which then links you to other gardeners in your area. It has easy connections to Twitter and Facebook, along with Flikr and other photo accounts. Aside from the community garden feel, the account lets you input and track your plantings, add journal entries, make task lists, organize your seed stash, and even arrange seed swaps with other members. This application seems more list oriented than map oriented, so it could be a good addition to the Mother Earth planner. They even have a mobile app so you can update your info FROM YOUR GARDEN! I don't know if I would use it, since I much prefer to write stuff down on random pieces of paper and lose it. Finally, wouldn't it be super neat-o to find other garden nerds in my area besides the only other one I know!?! (That would be you, Dina).

While we're working the free theme.....

Free Seeds: Oh no! This offer ends tomorrow, but I just heard about it. Click the link to the blog for Your Small Kitchen Garden and follow the instructions for getting your own free squash and tomato seeds. Move yourself up higher on the waiting list by sharing the info on Twitter or Facebook! But the generous gardener at this blog stops taking names tomorrow, so get moving.

Ed Hume Seeds will send you a seed packet in the hope that you will donate some of your veggie proceeds to the worthwhile program Plant a Row For the Hungry.

The Dinner Garden has designated national site for picking up your free seed offerings. If you don't have one nearby, you can submit your information via email for delivery via mail.

I'm stopping here, because there seem to be quite a few free seed offers once you start looking around. Also, I have given my self A LOT of homework to do as a result of this article. I need to follow my own advice and get organized.

JOURNAL NOTE: Day 7 of the tomato/pepper/herb seed under lights, and all is quiet. Hopefully by next weekend, I'll have some germination. Talk to you later!

I'm With Fergie. Let's Get It Started!

Even though I'm from Pennsylvania, I'm not referring to the single most important Sunday event in winter. Nor am I referring to the famous burrowing rodent from the western part of the state who pretends to be a psychic. No. Neither of these events leave me with any optimism or hopefulness after this beastly Northeastern winter we've had (and will likely continue to have, regardless of what the garden-gobbling varmint claims). My only source of hope lies in my dingy basement, since it is officially time to start early tomato, pepper and herb seedlings!

Seed starting is the official beginning of my personal spring, which is also the beginning of this year's grand garden schemes and resolutions. To hold myself accountable, 2011's garden resolutions are as follows:

1.) The meticulously chopped and bagged leaves from last fall will be placed on the garden for mulch AS the plants go in, as opposed to AFTER all weedy hell has broken loose.

2.) Trellises will be built and installed AS the plants go in, as opposed to AFTER the plants have hit that gawky teenager growth spurt that leaves them as impossible to manage as human teenagers.

3.) The blog will be ACTUALLY UPDATED and used regularly as a place to record relevant information, instead of being a high school creative writing project. Wherever she may be, Mrs. Timms is not likely reading this and recording my grade in that giant green ledger teachers used in the 80's.

4.) Thanks to this handy online garden planner, I swear to actually document what I plant and where I planted it, abandoning my previous habit of jotting stuff on random pieces of paper, losing it, and having no idea which variety of vegetable I am harvesting.

5.) Lastly, "Laura's Organic Gardening Adventures" will now just be "Organic Gardening Adventures" since Chef Tommy is doing more than his fair share of writing, cooking and hauling stones around. Time to give credit where credit is due.

I mean it, people. I really do. And where I would normally spend the next hour concocting a creative, funny and interesting last paragraph, I will now proceed to resolution #3. Let it be known that on this date, seeds were started in my homemade potting mix (equal parts compost, perlite and peat moss), packaged into plastic grape tomato containers saved from the grocery store, and placed under 4' fluorescent bulbs in my hideously ugly seed starting shelving unit shown here.

Seeds started today ..........

Tomatoes: Garden Peach, Sugar Snacker, Husk Cherry, Beaverlodge, San Marzano

Artichoke: Imperial Star

Fennel: Fino

Peppers: Ring-O-Fire Cayenne, Piquillo

Herbs: Common Sage, Italian Parsley, Chervil, Epazote, Culantro

I put the peppers, epazote, culantro, and artichokes on top of a heating pad, since they seem to need a little more heat to germinate. I have no idea whether the sage will germinate since it's a perennial, and those are usually tricky to start from seed. I'm just going to wing it and see what happens. The rest should be no big deal.

I'm most proud of the San Marzano seeds, since I filched them from Sicily (SSSSHHHHHHH!) in 2003 and the original seeds are still germinating well. I find this variety to be smaller and denser than other San Marzano seeds I've purchased elsewhere. Hopefully I'll get a good crop and save some of the seeds so I can get some fresh stock. I'm equally proud of the Sugar Snacker. I bought this as a plant from a big box store6 or 7 years ago and have never seen it since as a plant or seed. I save the seeds every year. The fruits are tiny, bright orange, and the sweetest cherry tomato you will ever taste. The vines themselves are monstrous, uncontrollable, and produce like crazy. These jerks topple every trellis I've ever made, but they are always worth it.

I usually consider these tomatoes and peppers my "early" plants because they will be put out under protective coverings called Wall-o-waters about two months earlier than is appropriate for my area. The goal, of course, is home grown tomatoes in June. The Beaverlodge variety is an early maturing hybrid with only 55 days to harvest according to the seed packet. So IF I do everything exactly the way I'm supposed to do it (not likely) tomatoes in June should be a cinch this year. Of course, hybrids with that early a maturity date were bred for speed, not flavor, so they probably won't be the most fantastic tasting tomatoes ever. But that first tomato from the garden tastes great every year, no matter what.

That's my story for today folks! By now the game should we winding down, marking yet another winter milestone. And even though I was out today trying to shovel through ice so the mail lady could drive to the mailbox to deliver me her goods, I was using Grandpa Knott's rusty old garden spade to do it. Let the 2011 garden season begin!

Welcome Back to the Autumnal Gourds

Tom DiGangi, Jr.

One great thing about living in a part of the world that experiences seasons is that there is always something different to eat. Each fall, we enjoy the transition from the fresh fruits and crisp salads of summer to the more mellow flavors and softer textures of slow-cooked hearty vegetables that fit with the cooler weather. The earthy sweetness of onions, leeks, chards and especially the wide range of gourds, from acorn squash to pumpkins, are perfectly appropriate for cooking in this autumnal style. Butternut squash is a favorite as it is easy to find at markets - if you aren’t growing your own - and it tastes great.

Risotto with Butternut Squash and Smoked Mozzarella Cheese

On a trip to Italy a few years back, Laura and I discovered that Italians don’t make a big deal about varieties of squash. For the most part, it is all just “Zucca.” We learned this from a gregarious and rotund chef at a small osteria in Campania. Due to the wine involved in the dinner, I remember very little about the place. In fact, I only remember the chef was gregarious and rotund because of a photo – embarrassingly enough – of Laura and me seated on his lap (rotund), while he sang songs (gregarious). In addition to being our chef and host, he was essentially our gondola and gondolier, all in one enormous package. It’s weird, I know, but true.

The other thing I remember was the “Risotto di Zucca con Scamorza” or “Pumpkin Rice with Smoked Mozzarella Cheese.” It was November, and the season for zucca was in swing, so we had to try it. It was fabulously creamy and a lit bit smoky. Scamorza is a lightly smoked cheese, traditionally made by hanging balls of mozzarella over a hearth for a short time. I have had versions of this cheese in the States, and they are usually too smoky for my taste. So, for this recipe I combine smoked and fresh mozzarella to keep the flavor subtle. Butternut squash plays the role of zucca.

Ingredients

1 ½ Cups Arborio Rice

1 Small Butternut Squash (seeds removed, shredded on the large side of a box grater)

1 Medium White Onion (finely diced)

6 Leaves Fresh Sage

¼ t. Freshly Grated Nutmeg

3T. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

6T. Butter

1 Cup White Wine (not cooking wine)

6 Cups Chicken or Vegetable Stock (hot)

4oz. Fresh Mozzarella Cheese (shredded on the large side of a box grater)

4oz. Smoked Mozzarella Cheese (skin removed, shredded on the large side of a box grater)

¼ Cup Grated Parmigano Reggiano Cheese

¼ Cup Finely Diced Flat Leaf Parsley

Black Pepper (freshly cracked)

Salt to taste (sea, grey or kosher)

Procedure

In a large slope-sided pot, melt only 2 T. of the butter with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, squash, sage, nutmeg, and two heavy pinches of salt, and cook slowly for a few minutes until the onion and squash soften a bit and the onion begins to turn translucent. Add the rice, and cook for a few minutes until the rice changes color a bit. Add the wine and turn up the heat to medium high. Cook the mixture while stirring, until the wine evaporates. Add a ladle-full of stock and cook while stirring, until the stock is absorbed. Repeat adding stock, a ladle-full at a time, until the rice reaches the desired consistency. I like risotto prepared “al dente” or “to the tooth.” The rice should be creamy, not soupy, and each grain should have a bit of resistance when bitten.

Remove from the heat, add the three cheeses, parsley and remaining 4 T. of butter. Adjust the seasoning with salt and black pepper. Stir to incorporate.

Serve immediately, with a subtle white wine. Old world white wines such as Chablis, Soave or Frascati are ideal. New world versions of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc are often too heavy and too grassy, respectively.

An Afternoon Snack - Scented Geranium Cake

Tom DiGangi, Jr.


An afternoon snack - Geranium Cake

Who needs afternoon tea and biscuits when you can have espresso and geranium cake? I sure don’t. And, it is all because of Laura’s over-exuberance for herb planting. Let me explain. No, let me sum-up, for all you “Princess Bride” fans.

To my surprise, some varieties of geranium are actually edible. And, this year, Laura produced more edible geranium than anyone could possibly use. To make the excess even more excessive, the plants just won’t die. It is mid-October and Laura’s “Old Fashioned Rose Scented Geranium” is going strong. She has already put its intense combination of rose and citrus fragrances to use as potpourri, to make teas, and even to spice-up a mixed drink. Just ask her about a recent concoction of vodka, lemon, lemoncello, simple syrup and seltzer, finished with geranium. But, I digress.

In a sheer act of desperation to reduce the mountain of geranium accumulating on our counter top, I experimented. What follows is a twist on the barely sweet cakes that often represent the Italian equivalent to the baked goods served with English afternoon tea. It is roughly based on a recipe from Mario Batali for rosemary cake, which is excellent and can be found in “The Babbo Cookbook.”


Geranium, Lemon and Olive Oil Cake

Ingredients

4 Eggs
1/2 C. Sugar
1/4 C. Light Brown Sugar
2/3 C. Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
2 T. finely chopped fresh geranium leaves
1 Lemon (zest and juice)
1 1/2 C. All Purpose Flour
1 T. Baking Powder
1/2 t. Kosher Salt

Procedure

Preheat oven to 340 F.

In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Set-aside.

Using an electric mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and both sugars until the mixture thickens, and turns foamy and pale. With the mixer running, gradually drizzle in the olive oil, and then add the geranium, lemon juice and lemon zest. Finally, add the flour, baking powder, and salt mixture, with the mixer on low speed. Scrape the sides of the bowl and finish combining.

Pour the now combined contents of the mixing bowl into an oiled 10-inch loaf pan, and bake in the oven for about 45 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Let cool for a few minutes, then remove from the pan to finish cooling on a rack.

Serve a slice as an afternoon snack, ideally with a topping of fresh whipped cream, sorbet or a fruit jam. Espresso, “corrected” with a bit of Sambuca, would be a fine accompaniment. If coffee isn’t your thing, consider vermouth, port or vin santo as excellent alternative beverage choices.