 We have been hearing from both new and experienced gardeners who want to grow more--not just summer treats like sweet corn and tomatoes, but a serious portion of the year's food. So we're spotlighting two ways to have more from the garden: growing crops beyond the salad/vegetable side of the plate, and increasing the yield and quality of what you do grow.
Scrambling to keep up with a flood of orders, we couldn't spare anyone in February or March to write a newsletter about the crops that need an early start. Perhaps many of you have been late too, or didn't know what to plant. Here are some ways--starting now, not next year-- to really contribute to your household's pantry.
Old Favorites for Year-Round Meals
How did people provide a complete diet for themselves in the days before supermarkets and long-distance trucking? They grew sweet/starchy plants like winter squash and pumpkins that naturally keep for a long time. If they had the climate and space for it, they grew corn for cornmeal and hominy. They also grew nutritious greens like chard that could be cut over and over, and not mind summer heat or fall freezes. Snacks? Popcorn and sunflower seeds aren't hard to grow at home. And two of the biggest dietary staples, beans and grains, store dry without any fuss. (We'll have information and links for them further on.)
Corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers like warm weather and warm soil--they cannot be planted outside until after the last-frost date for your area. (Here in Willits, CA, ours is May 17th) Nothing is gained by planting these too early, so there is still time for you to get your seeds and plant them. At high elevations, or the far north, choose short-season varieties.
Root crops--carrots, beets, parsnips, rutabagas and potatoes--are another age-old staple, and can be stored in a cool moist cellar. (Potatoes grow from pieces of potato, but the rest grow from seeds.) There is still time to plant the root crops too--get storage varieties if you plan to store them in a root cellar, refrigerator, or in the ground for long periods.
Click here for Edible Sunflower |
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Or, if you don't want to have to choose varieties... The Survival Garden Collection was developed in response to the many customers who have asked for help choosing seeds for food security. It is an assortment of seeds for crops that give a high yield of food energy from a small space. Think of it as a starting place for learning how to grow these crops and which work best for you. It contains winter grain, summer grain, beans, soup peas, rutabagas, parsnips, carrot, kale, lettuce, onions, and squash.
Survival Garden Collection |
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Home Grain-Growing Booklet  Carol Cox, manager of our research garden, has written this 24-page booklet titled Growing Your Own Grains: Raising, Harvesting, and Uses. It covers both winter and summer grains, with an excellent chart comparing seven summer grain crops. There is also a very useful cooking chart, bibliography and list of sources for equipment, seeds, etc. Just the facts; no fluff.
The owners of this suburban home were in their second season as new gardeners when this picture was taken. Growing some grain for your household doesn't require tremendous skill--but it is important to monitor the crop and harvest promptly when it is ready, before the grains fall to the ground. If you will be away from home at harvest, you might want to grow a more forgiving crop, like winter squash, and work out a trade with another local gardener who would like to grow grains.
To order Grow Your Own Grains |
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Amaranth: Heat-loving Grain and Greens  Amaranth is a vegetable native to the Americas, with varieties that have been bred for producing tasty nutritious grain, and varieties that are used when young as hot-weather substitutes for spinach. We carry both types, as well as Golden Giant, which is considered good for both uses. (pictured at left, with intern Anel Rojas)
The picture above shows a former suburban lawn that has been turned into a food garden, with dramatic plumes of both red and golden amaranth. Amaranths are exceptionally beautiful in the landscape, and are a good choice for front-yard plantings--some have been bred just for ornamental use. They love hot weather and require minimal care.
Click here to see Amaranth varieties. |
Grains for Breakfast, Dinner, and Dessert
Millet, Quinoa, Sorghum, and Teff are grain crops that are sown for summer growth. You can use them like rice, like oatmeal, or as an addition to baked goods. Many are similar in texture to polenta when cooked. Each of these can be ordered now, planted in time for summer weather, and harvested in the fall. (Bread grains like wheat and rye are generally planted in winter or early spring. We will feature them, along with information on growing them, in our Fall newsletter.)
All of the grains offer large amounts of straw for the compost pile, providing precious carbon to balance the green nitrogen-rich waste from garden and kitchen. So when you grow grains, you can grow fertile soil as well.
MILLET is the little round grain often seen whole in multi-grain breads (or birdseed). It has a mild flavor and fluffy texture like cous-cous. Unfortunately, most millet is encased in a hull, traditionally removed by pounding with a large mortar and pestle.
QUINOA (pictured far right) is extremely high in complete protein, and its small round grains cook quickly for main dishes and salads, with the grains separate like rice. Instead of a hull, the seeds have a soapy coating that protects them from insects, so they are easy to thresh for use. The natural soap coating must be washed off before cooking. (You can use the rinse water for washing laundry.)
SORGHUM yields a small grain used for porridge and beer in Africa. Many people grow it to make syrup or molasses out of the stalks. (It can grow much farther north than sugar cane.) 100 sq. feet of well-gardened ground can yield one gallon of syrup, as well as lots of carbon for composting. (See grain-growing pamphlet above for instructions.)
TEFF is the staple grain of Ethiopia. It has a rich taste much like whole wheat. Each grain is tiny, but the plant has many stalks with feathery plumes of grain, so yields are quite high. We started one seed packet of Teff last spring. It sowed two seed flats, and Golden Rule Garden planted them out into a 5'X5' garden bed. From that tiny space, they harvested almost one and a half pounds of grain, enough for many bowls of hot cereal. Teff also makes delicious bread. It is easy to thresh.
click here to see our grain seed selections |
Delicious Main Dishes
Most gardeners have grown green beans for summer eating, and perhaps for canning or freezing. This might be the year to consider planting an extra bed to grow a crop of dry beans for winter soups and main dishes. Pole beans take very little space because they grow up a fence, wall, or tripod. (Or up a cornstalk, for a double crop!) Bush beans can be planted anywhere because they don't need support. Both are easy to grow and enrich the soil for other crops. Pictured: Good Mother Stallard pole dry beans; a young bean plant; Ireland Creek Annie's short-season dry beans; and Dragon Langerie wax beans, which can be eaten fresh as pictured, or left to mature into dry beans. Send us your favorite bean recipes for the Fall newsletter.
To See Dry Bean Selections |
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Books: Our Top Picks for Increasing Yields in the Garden There are many gardening books out there, and many of them are charming, helpful, beautiful or just plain strange, but these are the ones we feel will give you the skills to really grow a lot of food.
First, the book that started it all, How to Grow More Vegetables, by our own John Jeavons, still a revolutionary guide to huge yields in small spaces. More timely than ever, with its unique emphasis on gardening without store-bought fertilizers or other products from outside your garden.
How to Grow more Vegetables |
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Roots Demystified...change your gardening habits to help roots thrive. Would you believe that the roots left behind when you pull a carrot may go down over seven feet? Or that a lettuce has roots six feet deep? Modern research has shown that roots are not the same size and shape as the tops; they are much, much bigger, and live a life we can scarcely imagine. This book is a surprising guide to what they really want.
Robert Kourik is a practical, professional gardener. He tries things out, seeks the best research, and develops strategies that work. Here, he compares methods of planting, watering, digging, and getting rid of weeds in vegetable gardens, home orchards, lawns, and edible landscapes. He is honest about the downsides and trade-offs, so you can fit your garden to your soil, climate, and lifestyle. 150 pages, black and white, no frills.
Roots Demystified |
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The Complete Compost Gardening Guide Research can tell you which composting methods will go faster, or yield the most nutrients, but it will never tell you how to get your family to empty the compost bucket; what to do with the box your computer came in; or how to use composting to solve all sorts of real-life landscaping problems in your real-life yard. This book will.
After they've explained when to use the traditional hot piles they introduce you to lazy-jane methods like cold piles, growheaps, catholes, treasure trenches, compost comforters, walking piles (and catch-and-release worm growing!). Lots of books say finished compost is the solution to garden problems--this is the only one we've seen that sees the composting process itself as a garden problem-solver.
There are nifty tables on how to compost everything from dryer lint and wicker furniture to clam shells, leather and different kinds of paper. There are sections on making sustainable potting soil, seed-saving, and using tree leaves and wood products--even making a solar cooker. There's a great section on how different crops interact with compost. Sidebars highlight common questions and "perfect matches" between individual plants and compost methods. While not every single thing in this book is totally Biointensive, it's hard to imagine a garden that couldn't use all that fertility...Not to mention the humor, ingenuity, and just plain joy the authors bring to the task.
Quality Paperback, 8x10", 300 pages, lots of color pictures.
Complete Compost Gardening Guide |
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Gardening Tip for May  With all the focus on those hot-season crops, don't forget you'll be wanting cool salads, and your early spring sowings of salad greens will not last forever... Here is a reprint of the summer salad tips from last year's newsletter, for our new subscribers.
To keep having fresh greens in hot weather:
-Use seeds of bolt-resistant varieties.
-Put lettuce seeds in a jar in the fridge for a week before planting if weather has been above 85 degrees. (This make them think it's spring again.)
-Succession-sow (works best for me to start half a dozen seeds every weekend, or do a few every two weeks).
-Use shade cloth or floating bed cover (old bedsheets will work in a pinch) stretched above your plants, or plant lettuce where there's only morning sun or dappled shade.
Bolt-Resistant Lettuce Mix |
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Last Chance for Snail-Barr....Long-Lasting Barrier to Slugs and Snails Copper creates all by itself a modest electrical charge that snails and slugs cannot bear to cross. The US Dept of Agriculture requires that any snail-rearing facility have copper strip to keep the snails from escaping. Copper strip works just as well to keep snails OUT, permanently.
Caveats: (1)You have to completely encircle the area to be protected--slugs will find gaps, branches touching the ground, etc. (2)The copper must be insulated from "ground" in the electrical sense--it can be on pottery, wood, or dry dusty soil, but moist earth will prevent the small electrical charge that repels the slugs. (3) Any snails inside the barrier at the start are still there and must be picked or otherwise eliminated.
CLOSEOUT: The world price of copper has put the manufacturer out of business, and we have searched in vain for remaining warehoused supplies, so what we have in stock is the last there is.
Order Snail-Barr |
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Ask Emmer: What does "Area 20" or "Area 100" mean in the variety descriptions? Where IS Area 20?  The "Area" figure at the end of the item description means that one seed packet will plant 20 square feet, 100 square feet, or whatever the area figure says. (This is in a perfect world, however, where all the seeds come up.) In the real world, inhabited by cats, birds, cutworms, and so on, plant a few extra...
Believe it or not, this is our most frequently-asked question. In the catalog, look along the bottoms of the pages (as well as on page 68) for explanations of the codes. On the website, just click on "cultural info/seed codes" at the top right-hand corner of the homepage (in the brown area).
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We hope you will share the load, the bounty and the fun of gardening. Most of us have a neighbor or two without the space, time, or strength to garden. Do you know a child or neighbor who might like to learn about gardening or food preservation? Plant a few extras for relatives, neighbors, and those friends you haven't made yet. (Many food banks, churches, community organizations, and soup kitchens will gratefully accept garden produce.)
Finally, remember you won't be able to do everything this year. Be patient with yourself and your garden. It's more important to be learning than to be perfect...We at Bountiful Gardens wish you a summer of learning, sharing, and fun. |
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To learn more about small-scale grain-growing: Ecology Action's own Dan Royer-Miller has posted his first-hand experiences with grain gardening (along with helpful pictures) on this blog:
http://goldenrulegarden.blogspot.com |
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