For want of Cilantro....

Now that I have moved into my own apartment, I've started up a new project. It's a large one, and really very exciting. I've started to garden right inside my apartment. It's not the biggest undertaking in the world, but it's still pretty expansive and it all started with a desire for cilantro and tomatoes.

In my apartment, I have two west facing windows that are a combined 8 feet in length. While there is another apartment building right in front of mine, It's set at an angle, so I still get lots of good sunshine during clear days in the afternoon, and lots of bright indirect light. Perfect, I'm thinking, for growing plants!

Right away I asked my dad for help, and between the two of us we came up with a design for it. The bottom half of the shelf is built out of scrap wood he had in his garage, and we painted it with the remnants of a light grey house paint that was left over from the last house we lived in. The legs are fully detachable, making it easy to disassemble and move if I ever need to. The picture below features what it looks like, along with my windows. On the table is a potted geranium I've had for a long time, and some seedlings I started in some used yogurt cups.

After my dad and I had completed the plant shelf, I decided to get going on creating my indoor garden. One weekend, I shanghaied the other parent, and mom and I went to a greenhouse to pick up what we could. We were unable to find everything that I wanted to, as it was late fall by this point and many of the softer herbs were already unavailable.

I was able to pick up several plants though. In total, I was able to get a rosemary, purple sage, lavender, silver edged thyme, and several packets of seeds for various other plants like basil and mesclun salad mix.

In addition, some tiny tomato seedlings were starting to sprout at this point in the yogurt cups. When I was organizing my pots of plants, I paid attention to what other plants they did and did not like, and I created a pattern for optimum placement of the plants on the shelf. This allowed me to more easily fit the different sizes of pots onto the shelf, as I had 6 inch pots and 8 inch pots on a table that was 18 inches in depth and just under 8 feet in length.

For supplemental lighting, I bought two 2 foot long, 4 bulb T5 grow light boxes that I suspended from the ceiling over the plant shelf from Amazon. Though expensive, I bought these partially because they are more maneuverable than the longer version, which is a 4 foot long section. The other reason is because they are 'cool bulbs', which means that the plants can touch the bulbs directly and not burn. With ratcheting support hooks, I am able to move these up and down depending on what that section of plants need, allowing for greater control over the environment.

Eating Organically on a College Budget

It's not easy trying to live as impact free on the environment as possible when you're a college student....one of the reasons why I'm glad I'm attending a college where they've done their best to make sure that the food served in the cafeteria is not only cooked well, but as organic and locally sourced as possible. There's just one problem.

Although I may only weigh approximately 100 pounds, and stand 5'2", I have been told by the cafeteria staff that I eat about as much as a linebacker does. While all my friends say that they would love to have my metabolism, it's really not as great as it seems. It means that although I have a great resource with the meal plan I'm paying big bucks for, I often have a schedule that means I can't use to to its greatest effectiveness. My college has what they call 'meal replacements' that I regularly make use of instead of going to the cafeteria. This makes my schedule easier to handle, particularly when I'm running late and can't get to the cafeteria for breakfast as often as I would like.

When I can't get a meal replacement, or go to the cafeteria, I generally have to find alternatives that are both as healthy as possible, and within my budget. If I didn't have the ability to eat mostly organic at the cafeteria, I'd probably be relegated to the traditional college student foods. Yuck!

Hello After a Long Hiatus

It's been such a long time since I've posted to this blog; clearly, everyday life and a few dozen other things have gotten in the way.  But I believe in the ideas behind it, and I'm still just as passionate about trying to live in a way that benefits this planet and the beings living on it.

That means getting healthier, wiser, and more connected.  It means leaving light footsteps on the surface of the earth, not razing its resources to the ground.  It means realizing that living and eating "green" is a step in a much healthier direction.

Because life can be busy and being green is a job for more than one person, I've added another writer to this blog.  My older daughter is currently at college, and she may have many insights not only about the values with which she grew up, but also about just how it might be possible for even a busy college student to make a difference and live as "greenly" as possible in the midst of busy schedules and other important life events.

Welcome, Ayuh! (Our affectionate nickname for her.  Her baby sister called her that when they were younger and it stuck.)

Seedlings

The tomato and pepper seedlings are up--or at least, many of them are up.  Unfortunately, all but two of the Roma Paste tomatoes did not sprout, and one of the two that did is small and seems a bit sickly.  I fear the rest were non-viable, and that's a pity, because there should have been ten Roma Paste in total and I've ended up with only two.  There's not really enough time to replant successfully and have them get large enough fast enough to be effective this year, so I will have to purchase the eight I need from a greenhouse.

Fortunately, the Principe Borghese heirloom came up strong and beautiful, as did three of the Marglobes, and they will fit the four topsy-turvies that I plan to hang from the patio.  So it's only most of the ones that go in the garden that I will have to buy from someone else.

The huz is happy because all but two of the super-hot peppers I planted for him have sprouted; he warmed up the seed pots under a blanket and a light for a day, and the seeds he had saved from peppers we grew last year sprouted.  He has over a dozen of these pepper plants now, and he is the only one who really wants to eat such hot peppers.  But that doesn't matter.  He's happy, and he'll have his peppers, and that's a good thing.

Kicking Off A Year of Flat-Broke Eating

It doesn't seem like several months have gone by since the last post. Where does the time go? The economy being what it is, even food has to be on a strict budget. That got me to thinking that it might be good to share any tips or experiences I come across for the backyard gardener and people who want a greener lifestyle even on a shoestring budget.

It's mid-February, and time to start our seedlings to go into our small backyard vegetable garden this year. I'll start with that.

It isn't that seeds are horribly expensive, but it's better if you can save seed from heirloom plants--that way you aren't laying out even $1.50 for a packet of maybe 20 seeds. This year, I can't really afford that much, so I'm using seeds that I have either saved from last year's garden, that I already had on hand from previous years' purchases, or that were given to me a couple of years ago by the wonderful people at Wintersown.  Without them, I would not now have seed for the tomato plants I will need to help feed my family this year.  It's my goal to grow as much of our food as possible in the limited space we have. It's going to take luck and planning.

I'll post more soon as we go through the process of planning our garden, choosing which foods will give us the most bang for our buck, and taking the seeds through the indoor sprouting process so that they will be ready to go into the garden when the weather warms up.

Savory

Why is it that no one seems to know what the herb called Savory is? It's not important or anything--it's just one of the main herbs that help flavor the best-tasting tomato-based pasta sauce. It also adds the perfect flavor to cream of tomato soup. Tonight it was one of just three herbs (savory, parsley, and thyme) that I used to flavor the ham and broccoli crustless quiche we had for dinner. These are just the first few uses for savory that occurred to me. There are many more; hence my earlier sarcasm. I know I've heard many TV chefs mention it. So why is it that the big-box grocery store in our area does not even stock it with the culinary spices? And why do only a very few of our garden centers even stock the seeds, much less sell it as an annual along with the rest of the spice herbs? I've lost count of the people who've looked at me strangely and repeated, "Savory?"

Yes, savory. There are two varieties: summer savory and winter savory. The first is an annual and must be started anew every year, while the other is a perennial. If we were in Italy, I'd be willing to bet that this blog post would never have been written. I'm sure the Italians know what savory is. I'll bet that even if they didn't speak English and I asked for it by name, they'd still know what I was talking about. I, yi-yi!

Strawberries at Home

Here are the strawberries, all tucked into their new bed. There were more like three dozen plants, not two, and there are more where they came from. We're thinking about building another planter box in a different location so we can get the rest of the strawberries--maybe something that can hang on the fence and keep the plants away from the slugs.

Homeless Strawberries

For those not into New Age thinking or who may not understand how the principle of manifestation works, here is a practical example of the process and how it sometimes happens.

It's strawberry season in Idaho. But I have no money for strawberries. I might be able to justify buying a few, but not in the numbers I'd prefer if I had a choice. We've been on a very tight-to-nonexistent budget for almost two years now, and strawberries are not the main staple of our diet, and are therefore hard to justify purchasing. Strawberries are also things that you really need to buy organic, because they can be laden with pesticides if produced commercially. Some fruits and veggies tend to soak up more pesticide than others, and strawberries are on the bad list. Anyway, I wanted strawberries, and had been thinking about how I'd like to go pick some organic ones at the Berry Ranch, but was going to have a hard time paying for them. I hadn't really thought much about it beyond the fact that I wanted some and that I was going to have to limit how many I picked and purchased.

That was when the Universe manifested the strawberries. I have a friend who had planted a whole bed of strawberry plants in her backyard, but her husband had grown tired of them being there. They were in a yard with large mature willow trees, and the strawberries were constantly falling prey to squirrels, slugs, and other pests. There was nothing wrong with the plants and they were prolific, but they just weren't working out for my friend. A couple of weeks ago she announced that she was going to dig up all of her strawberry plants, and asked if I wanted any of them. I hastened to assure her that I would be happy to take them.

Today my friend called me and said that she was digging them up, and could I come get them? So this evening, after my day doing readings at a psychic/healing fair downtown, I stopped by her home to pick up the strawberries. Two whole flats and a round plastic planter full of them. I estimate more than two dozen plants, and most of them laden with little strawberries already forming on the vines. If they transplant well, we'll not only have them for this year, but for years to come, and at no cost. (Well, other than the bag of sand we need to buy to amend the soil in the part of my flowerbed where they need to take up residence.)

This, then, is manifestation. Beautiful, seamless manifestation, hand in hand with synchronicity. And the beauty of it is that everyone benefits. My friend gets rid of her unwanted strawberry plants. I get my strawberries--plants and all. And the homeless strawberries get a new home so they can keep on living and doing what strawberries do.

Imagine what the world would be like if we all functioned like this--sharing, giving, being provided for, all without the stress of money, scarcity, or worry about both.

Garden Time

The garden is going in late this year. I should have gotten started weeks ago, but the weather was just so cold and rainy most of the time, so I kept putting it off. The surprise has been that some chamomile I planted in one of the large raised boxes along the north fence has taken off and reproduced itself, so there's chamomile in the box. There's also curly-leaved spearmint, which should make a wonderful mint tea. Last year when I kept having to replant my snow peas because the mice kept digging up the seed, I went to a nursery and got peppermint and spearmint in small plastic containers and then just set the containers in the planter boxes near the peas. Apparently, mice don't like mint, but peas are just fine with it.

I never actually planted the mint, and it sat out all winter, still in its little plastic containers. The peppermint plants died but the spearmint was more tenacious. The spearmint somehow escaped the plastic containers and dove into the fertile soil of the planter boxes. This spring, I have curly spearmint in every one of the three planter boxes. It's persistent, but it pulls up just fine, and so I have ample spearmint to help deter mice from the peas, and also spearmint for tea as well. I probably should have just planted it in the large planters in the first place, and let it share space with the veggies, as it's going to do from now on. Because of its persistence, it survived, thrived, and now has a place of its own. There's a lesson in that.

I had a great time clearing out the planters and making them ready for the seeds, so tomorrow I'll be able to plant some of the things, and do more weeding in the larger garden spot. The Huz says he has enough materials left to build one more large planter box, so I'm really looking forward to that. I love those planter boxes. They're easy to reach, easy to weed, out of the way of the yard, and grow wonderful peas and carrots (and mint, apparently.) We've had the other three for about two years now, and I'm excited at the prospect of finally having another box to play with. Plus, it'll get rid of a lot of the big pile of topsoil that's been sitting on my back patio for the last couple of years, waiting for a box to hold it.

Asparagus Time Again

I won't even say I lucked out, because this is just how manifestation works, and I've managed to learn how to manifest produce for little to no money. I just spent an hour and a half with one of my daughters, blanching and freezing asparagus for next winter. I had about fifteen pounds of bulk asparagus, and paid just $1.39 per pound for it. In addition to the tips that we froze, we also still have a goodly portion of the harder stalks, which we'll remove just the white part from, cook the green part down, and then puree into cream of asparagus soup. Very little is wasted, and that's a decent amount of food for a small amount of money. You'd think people would catch on to the fact that organic, local produce is worth the effort. Better yet was the kindness of the people who owned the small produce market, who agreed to sell me the random-cut bulk asparagus for such a great price, even though the farmer from whom they are getting their asparagus has disced most of his patches and had only minimal amounts of asparagus to offer this year. They only got the one box of random-cuts, but took it because, as they said, they knew someone would be able to use it.

Carrots

I still have edible carrots in one of my outdoor garden boxes, after leaving them there the whole winter. It was like having a little root cellar, and yesterday I went out and dug up several of the carrots that were still in the ground. Tonight I'm making them into soup.

Fresh carrots, available right out of the ground after a winter of being left outside, with new, growing green tops and everything. I'm not sure they'd be fantastic for just gnawing on as they are, but grated and made into carrot-and-dill soup, they'll be perfect.

The ability to pull carrots out of the ground after a winter's outdoor storage...amazing. The ability to feed my family a nutritious dinner without having to run to the grocery store...priceless.

Green Tomatoes

I just finished canning two batches of green tomato relish. The first batch was the standard recipe found in the older edition of the Ball Blue Book. The second batch was almost the same except for the chilies added just for the Huz, who likes things a bit spicier than I do. I now have 8 1/2 pints of the regular GTR, and 15 1/2 half-pints of the "hot" GTR. Despite the fact that all I had to do was add the salted vegetables to the special brine, boil it and hot pack it, the processing still took me several hours to complete. The good news: every jar sealed. That's a 100% success rate.

If you haven't heard of or tried green tomato relish, you should definitely try it. It's amazingly good; I made some last year just to try it and see what would happen, and the whole family liked it so much that they all wanted me to make it again this year. Not only is it a wonderful way to use those end-of-season green tomatoes, but I find that if I use this relish, I don't need to use ketchup (especially the modern kind of ketchup with all the high fructose corn syrup in it!) The green tomato relish has just enough of a tomato taste that it satisfies the palate that would otherwise want ketchup on burgers or hot dogs, etc. And then because it's also relish, it just seems to take care of the ketchup and relish taste both at once. And because the relish has mustard seed in it, it pretty much takes care of a mustard taste also. This kind of makes it the perfect condiment, because if you have it, you don't really need any others. All that from a few green tomatoes and a little investment of time. Keep in mind also that this is a relish not easily found in your typical big box grocery store.

Gadgets with Gaskets

We inherited a wonderful gift from the Huz's folks--his mom's 22-quart pressure canner. From what we remember our folks doing and the directions we got from the Ball Blue Book, we know how to can our own veggies. We have the equipment and the knowledge to do it safely, and with the availability of free produce from the community garden and gifts of fruit, etc. from friends and acquaintances, we've been able to put by a fair amount of food for the winter. I can safely say that we don't need any more jam! I would like to have the wherewithal to can peaches and applesauce next. Thanks to the community garden, we've nearly got enough beans, and were even able to put away a few pints of peas. With any luck, we'll get a decent number of tomatoes this year from our own garden, but we'll see how that goes. I need a certain number to be ripe all at once in order to actually process them as canned tomato sauce or juice.

The other challenges we've had other than coming in between bean harvests has been time to do the canning, and problems with our canner's gasket/seal. Our canner was made by the Mirro company prior to 1983, and requires a very specific gasket. We have model M-0622. All the info online says that the correct gasket for this canner was the S-9882 model. However, after so many of these gaskets failed and became rippled or limp, we got frustrated and contacted the company directly. They responded to the Huz's email and told us that the correct gasket for our model of canner was in fact the S-3440, not the other one. I tried to get this gasket through Ace, the only local place where they actually sell canner parts, and the only one they had in their inventory was the other one--the wrong one we'd been using and hating for so many years. So I went online and found the correct gasket and ordered it in. $14.00 and a few days later, we had a new gasket, which looks similar to the others but ever so slightly different. It's a little thicker, for one thing, and the rubber curves outward just a touch. We tried it today to see how it would do, and lo and behold, a perfect seal. No dripping water from under the sides of the canner lid, no hissing, no trouble getting the canner up to pressure. Perfect.

Now, why the original misinformation as to which seal was the correct one for this model of canner? It seems to be a relatively uncommon model of canner, but still.... Just in case anyone else has been experiencing this frustration, the correct gasket for the model M-0622 Mirro-Matic 22 quart pressure canner is the gasket formerly known as the S-3440, now known as just the 3440. It is available from a company called Red Mill, as well as a couple others. Google "pressure canner gasket 3440," and you should readily find a place to buy one online. Good luck, and I sympathize! This gasket actually works; trust me.

Be Kind to the Beans

We've had an interesting time this summer, both in keeping ourselves fed, bills paid, etc. The most interesting part is that we've been so blessed and so fortunate in the food department. The nearby community garden we've become involved with has provided us with nearly enough beans to get us through the upcoming winter months. We've canned many quarts of beans from that community garden, even though most of the harvesting happened when the beans were past their first flush of production. Fortunately the garden people waited and did not till over the beans as they'd proposed doing, for now they seem to be gearing up for a second production run.

The only trouble we've had lately has been that people are not careful when they go through the bean patch. They seem to think that it doesn't matter how rough they are with the bean bushes, and often they end up pulling up the entire bush, or breaking off so many branches when they go for the green beans that the poor plant ends up nearly dead afterward. It's a shame that people aren't better educated about where their food comes from or even in the simple concept that if you want a plant to produce more food for you over the course of a growing season, it's important to make sure you don't kill the plant the first time you harvest from it. It's frustrating to go along a row and see the swath of devastation someone else cut in their eagerness to get at a few fresh beans for their dinner. From what I've heard from others this year, many people don't have much of an idea how to grow their own vegetables, so they go by trial and error, as if this were a new technology they're learning. And many don't have any more idea of how to preserve their harvest than simply to stick food in freezer bags and throw them into the freezer, when often freezer space is at a premium for most folks. The few lucky ones, like the Huz and I, grew up with parents or grandparents who grew and canned their own vegetables. The rest are pretty clueless, I'm sorry to say.

Abundance

I've just finished reading a book on manifesting, mostly written for the benefit of the people who were a part of the Findhorn community in Scotland. Manifesting is the process of drawing to you either people, opportunities, or things that you need. It seems to work best when you are not anxious about the need or worried about a perceived lack of whatever it is. Often, when you proceed with confidence that you will get what you need, the universe just seems to provide it for you.

Recently for us, this took the form of apricots and cherries from friends, enabling us to make jam and pie filling, as well as eat some outright. No money changed hands; these things were provided for us because others had them and did not need them, and did not plan to use them--or they had so much in excess that they had some to spare. It's been the same with the lambs' quarters, many of which I blanched and froze and put away for winter, in lieu of the spinach we did not get this year due to last year's two fence-spraying fiascos. Gradually, things are coming to us as we need them, and I'm grateful for every leaf and every piece of fruit. While one cannot live on jam and pie filling, it's still food, and food which would otherwise have been a luxury item we would probably have had to decide not to buy this year.

Our heirloom mammoth melting snow peas are doing as well this year as they did last year even with the late start due to the mice eating the newly-planted peas. We're getting a few beans, and I'm hoping for a bumper crop even though I don't have as many bean plants as I'd hoped for. The Roma tomatoes look good, as do the Marmande and Marglobe, and while the beefsteaks are still smaller than we really need them to be, I'm hoping they give us at least one or two meals of stuffed tomatoes. Though the salad is almost gone and the spinach needs to be replanted now, the kale and collard greens are doing great, with large healthy leaves that make the memory of last year's loss seem much more distant.

The really great thing is that we started all of these plants from seed this year--even the four healthy little Rosa Bianca eggplants that I recently transplanted into one of the tall box beds. My only disappointment in planting from seed this year was that the lemon cucumbers aren't doing as well as they did last time, and the Principe Borghese seeds that I got from the wonderful free tomato seed people at Wintersown did not sprout at all, even when I replanted them. Finally, two of the Chinese eggplants they gave me made a late appearance, and now that they're big enough to survive it, I'm going to transplant them into the big box bed as well. Then I'm going to actually freeze a small bag of snow peas--very cool. We did not have enough last year to do more than eat them up as they came. Now I'm about one container ahead of what we're eating, and if it keeps on for just a little while, I should be able to get a few small bags of snow peas into the freezer.

Flat Broke Eating

The post title says it all. So what are we eating, and how can we continue to do so on little to no income? Wild greens are certainly something most people don't consider, but nowadays, we're extremely glad to have them.

Lambs' Quarters, a type of wild spinach, are plentiful right now, thank goodness. It's amazing to think that the current economy has reduced us to partial hunter-gatherer status, but that's the case. You can use Lambs' Quarters for anything you'd use spinach for, and not only do they plant themselves and grow wild, but they're quite nutritious as well. Purslane is another thing I never considered much before now, but these days I'm reading about sauteed purslane and thinking that's got to be next on the menu. The last few days, I gathered several bags of the Lambs' Quarters and am now processing them--steam blanching and freezing them so we'll have them this winter. Even as recently as two years ago, I never thought I'd be pulling weeds and then freezing them for winter eating.

The garden is producing greens in reasonable quantity right now, though the spinach is bolting, so I'll have to pull it and glean all the leaves I can from it, then replant new spinach for fall harvest. And our snow peas are setting flowers, finally, so we should have some pods before long. That'll be a nice change from all the leafy greens.

Eating For Less

Food and the art of feeding a family, whether locavore or not, is a big deal. We want good, healthy food. We want organic or at least pesticide-free food, and heirloom varieties would be greatly preferable. But some people have reported that when they switched to locavore eating, their grocery bills went up. There are various legitimate reasons for this, but I won't go into them just now. Instead, let's look at just how much local food costs, anyway. I have to feed a family of four, so how do I do that on an extremely limited budget?

For one thing, we do not buy boxed cereals anymore. What we do buy is 3 dozen eggs a week, and organic oatmeal in bulk. That, plus local organic whole wheat bread usually suffices to feed us breakfast. We have lots of jam and jelly left from what we canned last year, so that makes toast more exciting if you like jam. I usually have tea and buttered toast, and sometimes eggs. Sometimes I vary that by having tea, eggs and oatmeal instead. It's not five-star dining, but it works as a breakfast, and it doesn't pack a lot of weight on. The oatmeal is way more economical than boxed cereal, and healthier, too, as it doesn't have sugar in it. If you really want to spice it up, you can put cinnamon or maybe a dab of butter and a little milk instead. It's a little bland in taste at first, but you get used to it and then overly-sugared food starts to taste horrible. The last time I tried putting white sugar in my oatmeal, I didn't like the taste of it. When I was a kid, I didn't eat oatmeal without a liberal crust of sugar on top. We're spoiled, we Americans. We don't need half of the sugared-up substances we are currently mistaking for food, and in most if not all cases, we'd be healthier without them.

Lunch can be salad from lettuce and spinach purchased at the farmers market, maybe a ham sandwich (the ham is from less than 200 miles away, bought in the form of a buffet-style ham and then taken by the deli for slicing--it's less per pound that way than just buying the usual brand of deli ham.) Sometimes there's soup started in the crock pot the night before--Idaho grows several different kinds of beans, and they're not too much per pound. Then you add just a bit of rice or barley, which is not local, but necessary if you want your soup to contain a complete protein. The soup might also be something else like potato soup, or carrot, or at this time of year, asparagus.

Now, here's a couple things I learned that I used to be unaware of. You know how most carrots are sold with no tops, even in the farmers markets? Well, that's a shame, because those green tops are completely edible. You just grate the carrots and chop up their tops and put them into the same soup. The tops are good for you and you do not have to waste them. How much did the carrots cost me for the latest batch of soup? Less than $.25, probably, because I grew the carrots myself last year from a $3.00 packet of heirloom seed. They overwintered very well, we got several pots of soup from the carrots in this very small patch, and I just pulled the last few because I need to reclaim the bed so I can plant my beans in a few days.

Asparagus stems are something else that you can get double duty out of. Most people only eat the tender tops and the softer part of the stems, but the tough parts are edible too, if you just simmer them for a few hours until they're softer and can be pureed and then strained. We made an awesome soup from the tough stems of the asparagus that I pickled the other day. The only parts that we threw away were the very bottom of the stems, the part that is whitish-purple and extremely tough to cut even with a sharp knife. The rest of the asparagus, we used in one way or another. How much is the asparagus? Currently $1.59 per pound, and a couple weeks earlier in the season it was only $1.39 per pound. But I've pickled ten pints and still have a few pints left over from the dozen I did last year. I'll get a little more of it to freeze, but right now we're also enjoying it fresh.

Greens: right now the farmers markets are selling bags of spinach, lettuce, arugula, etc. for around $4.00 per bag. I'm not sure how much this comes to in pounds, but we've eaten salad several times this week, and I still haven't gone through all the salad greens I bought yet. We'll do stir fry tomorrow (Friday) for a change, and Saturday's the farmer's market. Last week I spent about $26.00 for various things at the market including greens, leeks and green onions. At a store with local produce, I spent another $15.00 on asparagus for pickling and eating fresh. We've eaten off this food all week long. A few items we've eaten, like the organic bread, is not purchased at the market, and the Huz has been buying pre-shaved cheese to make pizzas and calzones, but so far this year, the farmers market has provided over half of the main ingredients for our dinners and some lunches, and we have not spent more than thirty dollars there in any given week. I'm estimating our weekly food budget at less than $100.00 for four people, so far. Remember that the asparagus wasn't all for eating this week; some of it was pickled, so not all of that $15.00 was part of this week's food budget. In budgeting for food, a locavore has to remember to get some to put away for when the food's out of season. If you don't freeze or pickle asparagus in April or May, you won't have any in November. Our grandparents used to know this, but many of us have forgotten. It's time to remember.

On a side note: I can't believe the WinCo is shipping in asparagus from Mexico when right now asparagus is local and in season, and cheaper per pound. It makes no sense at all. (Local asparagus: $1.59/pound. Mexican asparagus: $1.99/pound. Do the math.)

I guess the main tip for today is to find out which parts of a vegetable are actually edible, and not throw away anything that might be food. Cut down on the wastage in any way you can, and you'll have more options for things to feed your family. Who knew asparagus stem soup or carrot top soup could be so good?

Tomato Seedlings

I've finished transplanting the tomato seedlings into their own separate pots. I started them off two to a pot, in case one of the seeds didn't come up, and now they're all at least an inch high, and some of them are nearly three inches. So I separated the twins and moved them into their own four-inch peat or coconut fiber pots. They'll go from these straight into the ground in mid-may. Normally, I would have already transplanted them in early April, but since I planted my seeds a little late this year, we're not as far along as we would be normally. But that's okay.

Since my experience last year, I'm getting better at recognizing signs of a baby tomato needing more nutrients. When they're still a healthy green but showing the faintest signs of their leaves tending to change in color toward a slightly olive tinge, that's a sign that they need more nutrients, like Miracle Grow or similar. Last year I did not know what was going on when the leaves began to turn yellow, but this year I'm all over it before it becomes a problem or stunts the growth of my tomatoes. This means a person who wants to head off a nutrient deficiency in baby tomatoes needs to pay very careful attention to the color of the leaves. It actually helps to have seen the plants when they're nutrient-starved, so I know what the difference in color looks like. Suffice it to say for those who haven't seen this, a tomato plant that is healthy and getting plenty of nutrients is nice and richly green. The color is vibrant and unmistakable. Any tendency toward an olive-green or yellow tinge to the leaves means that the plant is starving for nutrients, especially minerals like nitrogen, calcium or magnesium. Their color will start to go off long before they are in serious distress from the lack, giving you enough time to supplement their water with Miracle Grow or something else before the plants start failing. Tonight when I transplanted the babies into their own pots, I noticed a slight color change in some of the ones who'd been sharing a pot with a sibling, so I know that now that they're in their own pots, a little extra snack might give them a necessary pick-me-up. I also planted them with the dirt up around their stems a little higher, which will encourage them to put more energy into roots and not shoot up long and spindly. If all goes well, by the time I get them into the ground, they should be of a reasonable size and hardy enough to live out their lives in the garden.

In the next couple of days, I'm going to be fixing up their garden spots, adding crushed eggshell for calcium and finished compost for valuable nutrients. I'll add a little of our extra topsoil to make up for what came out of the bed when last year's dead plants were pulled up, and the beds should be ready to receive their new tenants when the time comes.

Furry Little Thieves

The mice are stealing my peas right out of the ground. They don't even wait for the plants to come up; they just dig the peas out of the ground after I've planted them. I heard that mice don't like mint, so I've strewn peppermint all over the areas where I planted the pea plants; I'm hoping some are still left in the ground and that this will allow them to actually come up and form pea plants. Otherwise, I'm not sure what we'll do.

I tried to bargain with the mice. I actually went out and sat near their area for a while, and talked to them. (Yeah, I know this makes me sound completely loony, but I had to try it anyway.) I told them they could share the wild sunflower seed with the birds the way they did last year, and if they stayed in their area, I'd leave the last few peas alone for them or even shell them and put them in their area for them to find. But it seems they don't understand me. One even came up onto the picnic table on the patio, and when I switched on the light, it sat there for a moment, staring at me with its big eyes--and this was within an hour of my attempts to communicate with them. I wasn't sure whether they were taking me up on my offer or defying me, but within three days, there was the evidence of more peas stolen from the planter boxes. So much for trying to work with them, Findhorn-style. Sigh. The Huz put out poison for them, and I hate to do that, but if they keep stealing the seed, none of us will have any of those delicious snow peas we enjoyed so very much last year. Unfortunately, what we will have is more mice.

Thank goodness they don't seem to care about the bean, cucumber, or carrot seeds. But I'll be very disappointed if we don't get any peas at all. They fed us all summer long last year; in September, we were still getting heirloom snow peas.

Sprouting Life

Yes! The seedlings are coming up. First it was the Chamomile, then the Carantan leeks and green onions. Then the cilantro and regular onions. Now the tomatoes are starting to come up--the ones from the free heirloom tomato seed I planted. So far, I have one Beefsteak, a Marglobe and a Marmande, (both great midsized slicing varieties), and the first of the Roma tomatoes. I also noticed that the parsley has broken the surface. No eggplants or peppers yet, but they'll probably be soon. I was a little late in planting this year, but the seedlings are every bit as important as ever--probably more so because we don't have the budget to buy already-started plants from a nursery unless we absolutely have no other choice.

Outside today, I caught the first glimpse of the tiny new spinach seedlings beginning to come up in the garden bed near the east fence--the same bed where we recently had to pull up all of last year's already-rapidly-growing spinach due to its contamination during the Boy Scout fence-spraying fiasco. My blessings on the new spinach seedlings; may they come on fast and hard and with ever-increasing vigor. May they grow rapidly to an edible size and then persist without bolting well into early summer, so that I can both feed my family and also freeze some for next winter's food. With our finances stretched so very thin, our little backyard garden has never been more vital to our survival.

Beyond the concerns of my own family, backyard gardens in general have also never been more vital. We all need to remember that, as genetically modified food continues to sicken and fatten people and endanger human life on the whole. I recently read about how the introduction of peanut genes into the most common variety of tomato used in many fast-food restaurants has already caused health concerns for people. Poor, unsuspecting people went to the fast-food place to grab a burger and happily munched down, never knowing that their tomatoes contained peanut genes. What's the problem with that? Well, it's a heck of a big problem if you happen to be severely allergic to peanuts! Think about it. They've let the genie out of the bottle, folks, and we may never be able to put it back. But we can at least try to curtail its effects by supporting heirloom seed companies, growing our own gardens and buying from local, organic and heirloom variety farmers. The only thing these big agribusinesses see or understand is money, so let's put the issue to them in a way they'll understand. Just say "no" to big agribusiness, huge chain grocery stores and suppliers (pushers) of genetically modified seeds. Vote with your hard-earned dollars and support people who care enough to support the planet. In so doing, you'll be saving your own health, and helping to save the health and ultimately the lives of future generations.