Long Island Gardening Community Resource

This blog began with an inspiration to follow the life, death, and resourcefulness of the plants in my garden.    I also wanted to find out what my fellow gardeners were up to as well.  I am working how to make this site a community place (in addition to just adding comments to my blog entries), but for now I will concentrate on what is happening in my garden.

Take for example, garlic.  I have some previous postings that discuss where I got the garlic for this years planting from, when I planted the garlic, how I planted the garlic, and have been taking photos at random times throughout its growing season.  Upon harvest and curing, I intend to post up a time line of “the life of my garlic crop”, for all growers in our zone 7 (but especially Long Islanders) to learn from.  Maybe I made a huge mistake and then I can hear back from some experienced paisano gardener who lives down the road from here.  Maybe I did it perfect and someone else can learn from it.  Anyway you slice it, this blog is meant to be a resource for continued learning and experiences in the garden.  I think I found a good technique for posting on this blog.  Take each plant, and write about it.  I intend to showcase the journey of the plant and how I was able to facilitate in its growth or facilitate in its death - whoops - yes I am guilty!   Each plant will have its own posting that I will update from time to time, once I have the next good piece of information about it.  Anyway, I look forward to sharing my experiences and learning from all of you too!

-David

Over the past few years I have come across many articles/books that discuss the importance of mirobial/bacteria/fungi activity in order to accomplish a healthy soil. They say in every handful of a healthy soil, there should be millions of cute little microbes that do the dirty work to make food readily available for our plants while aerating the soil as well. This topic of the “soil community” is quite interesting to me and I would love to write more about it as I learn more about it. But in this entry, I would like to share a technique I have learned that allows the soil community to stay in tact and flourish/populate while creating a new space for planting. Its called kill mulch and while it takes some prior planning and patience, it’s easy and worth the wait.

So you want to create a new space/plot for gardening?

You will need newspaper or cardboard and a whole bunch or mulch. I use wood chips from a neighbor who had a bunch of trees cut down, but you could use anything you like. All you do is lay out the newspaper over the grass you want to turn to soil, making sure to cover the area entirely and put a little bit of wood chips on each piece to hold it down from the wind. After you have laid out the plot, cover the newspaper entirely with as much mulch as necessary to smother the grass. Wait 6 months or so, loosen up the soil a bit, but don’t flip it over .  By flipping it over you would kill (pardon the pun) the whole point of the kill mulch - To aerate the soil and keep the soil community in tact, use a broadfork or a pitchfork or a kitchen fork - any fork will do ya =). Add some fresh compost and you are ready to plant. Easy huh?

I plan the upcoming year in fall as best as I can, but that is when I think about if there are any places I wish to apply this technique to. Come spring, I am ready to go.

My most recent inspiration for this entry was from a Mother Earth News article, Best Low-Tech Tools by Harvey Ussery (if you dont have Mother Earth News, get it, but tell them not to share your name.  They are VERY guilty of that and contribute to the madness of catalogs).

Harvey is my favorite author in Mother Earth News. I look forward to reading his articles every few months because he is in tune with nature and treats the land with respect. I want to be more like him. His talks about his homestead way of living at his website The Modern Homestead.

There are some thinks to think about when starting or preparing your garden.

1. One of the most important things is to know how much sun your garden gets everyday. If you gauge it at this time of year, remember the sun will be out longer and will be higher in the sky (and does take a little bit of a different angle during high summer months). Of you get less than six hours of direct sunlight, you need to plant accordingly.

2. Prepare Your Soil. Test your soil if you can. I am certainly guilty of not testing the soil. I figure if I keep adding my amazing home-made compost I don’t need to, but really I think I should. Also I can get it done for free because I have recently become a member of the Horticultural Program at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County. Along with my membership (think it was $20 or so) I get a free soil test at their labs. Testing the soil allows you to amend the soil and get it nice and ready for herbs, vegetable, fruits and flowers. Each plant has an ideal soil ph range and they do vary. So you may want to prepare differnt beds (if possible), a more acidic bed for acidic loving plants and a more alkaline bed for basic soil loving plants. Here is a list of vegetables sectioned into plant ph preferences. Also, make sure your soil is loamy. You want your plants to drain well. Otherwise, you may find them stunted or unwilling to grow and asking why o why won’t you grow? Do this by adding gypsum and/or using raised beds. Raised beds really worked for me.

3. Find North! - The most northerly part of your garden is where you want to plant your tallest plants. I plant vining cucumbers and pole beans there. In front of that Ill plant tomatoes. In front of that Ill plant Peppers and Eggplants, Herbs and others alike in size. In front of that, onions and lettuce and so on…. The idea here is to allow your plants to grow in an area where they get maximum sun exposure. By placing the tallest plants to the north, you can guarantee they will not shade out the other plants (unless the sun one day decides to go off track).

4. Give your plants enough space. Look and the seed packages and allow the space needed for proper growth. Sometimes I cheat here and the only reason is that I know that my plants are not going to be competing for nutrients. On the other hand onions for example need more space to grow bigger (from my experience). So if its carrots and basil, close together, tomatoes and onions, normal spacing. But you will have to experiment for yourself on that one.

Usually, I will pick out which plants I want to grow this year and then map them out on a piece of paper. I draw each plant in the space I want to give it. This way I can also plan on when I can harvest it and plant something else (for example, lettuce or radishes or arugula or snap peas). I like to plant some of these producers that I can switch out halfway or quarter way through summer.

What usually winds up being a problem for me (good problem though) is that my vining winter squash plants go everywhere and my prior planning gets all messed up. Once I saw in someone else’s garden that they planted all the squash vines all over the perimeter of the yard, this way they were controllable along the borders of the yard and had free roam. I’ll redirect my plants as much as I can but they always wind up on the lawn. I don’t have the luxury of a large yard.

5. Plan By The Seasons. To keep the garden growing all season, make a spring, summer, fall and winter garden plan. Ill give a few examples for each.

Spring - sugar snap peas, lettuce, broccoli
Summer - tomatoes, peppers, eggplant
Fall - same as Spring
Winter - Kale, Garlic, Brussels Sprouts

Keep in mind if your growing from seed to start many of them 3-6 weeks ahead of when you want to plant them. I will start planting some seeds in February.

6. Some other basics

Plant near a water supply.
Don’t plant near trees and shrubs - compete for nutrients.

7. Crop Rotation - If possible try not to plant the same plant families in the same places you planted them the previous year.

Well, thats it for now. I will add more to this list as I remember more. Feel free to list your comments about your experiences and suggestions.

Now is the time to start thinking about the garden of 2008. Start asking your friends and family what they want you to grow or just pick em yourself. When selecting seeds, a little preparation and planning can go a long way.

First, you need to know the basics when planning the Garden

So far, I have had one request…Brussels Sprouts. I got my mom to expand her garden this year after she loved picking her own home grown carrots. Now let’s see if she can keep up with the weeds. Ill try adding straw around her plants to slow them down.

Personally, I have become a big fan of Edamame (soybean) which means “Beans on Branches.” I usually get it as an appetizer in the local sushi restaurants. It’s great steamed with a little salt. I can eat so many of them.

——–Begin Rant Here—–>

A word about soy - It is one of the 4 big genetically engineered crops grown in America and a large percentage of those crops are (corn, canola and cotton - the others). They are going into the DNA of the plant and putting in all kinds of stuff. And for what? You would think if they are going to do that, then they would at least make it more nutritious for you. Well it turns out they are not more nutritious and the yields are less than before. So my question is why? And the answer is money, of course. These big companies who are “manufacturing” the seeds are taking out patents on the genes they developed for the seeds. So if anyone wants to use their seeds, they are reliant on them for that seed. And so what if you want to save the seed? They figured that one out. They have created a “terminator gene” that forces the plant to basically commit suicide after one year. All this for money, greed, power…the usual.

There is a book called Your Right To Know that everyone interested in organic food and progressive lifestyles should read.

When you see the ingredients in food we buy at the market like soy lecithin, soybean oil, soy flour or soy protein, chances are they come from genetically engineered soy. Unless you buy Certified Organic! Vote with your dollars!

———End Rant Here——>

So where was I, oh yes, I really love soybeans! They are so easy to grow and you can buy organic seeds from Seeds of Change. That’s definitely a select in my garden this year.

Last year I experimented with some tomato varieties and 2 out of 3 were great! But I got stuck tending for and growing these yellow tomatoes that nobody in my house really enjoyed (in comparison to the other amazing ones). They did not have as much flavor and were just strange tasting. The worst part is that I planted 4 of them. That took up about 1/6th of my entire garden. So I learned when experimenting with large plants, try one or two, not four (depending on the size of your garden).

This year I was at the market and I bought a squash that was locally grown. I think it was called a Hubbard. It was greyish and a little blue. I have decided to give that a shot because it has become accustomed to Long Island soil and climate. To find local seeds I am starting and ending right here with the Long Island Seed Project. I have yet to get seeds from them but you can bet this year I will.

The garden is sleeping but the garlic is growing. The parsley is still there. So is the thyme. So is the rosemary.  So is the kale, brussel sprouts, carrots, and cabbage.  Sounds like I still have a garden out there.

We’ve had a light winter so far and as the seed catalogs come in, I am starting to think about what I will grow this year. I am more and more interested in native plants or seeds that have come from this region, Long Island if possible. My garlic came from upstate.

The Long Island Seed Project is of interest to me.

Their focus is on seeds of interest to the organic gardener, small farmer, seed saver and “backyard breeder”. Here’s the Long Island Seed Project’s Seed List.

I have been receiving waaay too many catalogs. The funniest is when I get mail from the Arbor day Foundation that speaks for the trees and offers you some free trees along with return address stamps with my name and address on them. To be honest with you I keep the stamps, but I am turned off at the foundation for using all this paper from trees to solicit me and preach about trees. It’s too ironic and gets me good.

Since that day I have been tracking down all phone numbers that come with all my junk mail. One by one, I am calling up and getting off their lists. I try and find out how I got on the list but they never know. One woman told me they rent a list of addresses. I want to find out the culprits who started me on the list in the first place. Since I moved here only a year and a half ago, I have purchased gardening products from Seeds of Change and Hicks Nurseries and thats all I can think of. Anyway, Im trying to get to the bottom of this. And just so all you fellow like-minded people out there know, any junk mail you receive usually is required to show who it is coming from. For example, the big plastic bundle I get like once a week filled with supermarket coupons and other advertisements usually comes with a separate postcard that has the famous “have you seen me?” missing child ad. That postcard will have the publishing company information (phone numbers, etc) so you can call them and tell them to take you off their mailing list. They don’t make it easy to get to the person who can do that for you but just go the the main operator and they will know what to do. Just say I would like to be taken off all mailing lists and give them your address. Never give them more information. One guy asked me for my phone number so if I ever called back they would be able to track me. So I said I don’t want to be tracked. That’s the whole point.

Anyway enough of my ramblings about that. You can probably tell I have been hibernating a bit too long already and we are only a bit more that a quarter way through winter.  I have been neglecting this blog during this gardening hiatus called winter.  Usually I would have more time to gather my thoughts and write articles that have been on my mind.  For example, I am reading Your Right To Know by Andrew Kimbrell, founder of The Center For Food Safety.  I am wanting to write more on the topic of Genetically Modified Food Products and what is in our supermarkets but my clients are keeping me quite busy these days.

The other book I am currently reading is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver.  It’s a book about a family that has decided to more or less rely on themselves and the surrounding community for all of their food for one years time.  They keep chickens and turkeys and “harvest” them along with their huge garden/small farm.  It’s a great story so far.  I highly recommend it for anyone interested in self-sustainability or anyone that loves to grow their own food (one tomato plant and one basil plant counts too - that’s how I got started and now I’m a gardening junkie).

 Signing off !  Back to my Bear Hole.  Is it spring yet?

Today was garlic planting day; Four rows, 3 inches apart, each garlic 3 inches apart.  The bed had been prepped a few weeks ago with compost amendments and old mulch (from the tomatoes) mixed in to the soil.  I set up two strings lengthwise to to the bed and marked with marker every 3 inches.  Then set up a string going across the other strings so it can slide down the line and lay in a straight line to show where the garlic needs to be planted (in order to maintain straight lines for weeding purposes later).  The strings worked out for the first two garlics and finally I said forget about it.  I’ll wing it.

Each garlic clove (some of which I purchased from an upstate New York farmer and some from Seeds of Change) was pressed into the ground as far as I could push.  I had to run my spade through each row to loosen the soil up a bit.  I was planning on planting 100 garlics.  I planted 99.  25 in each row except for one.  Finally, I I took half a bale of straw and spread it on the garlic to give it a nice warm bed until  spring comes around.

I was browsing the Craigslist Farm and Garden section of Long Island (my article about Craigslist) and came across the following ad for local unprocessed and raw honey (3 varieties - spring, summer, fall). I am just going to copy the ad in here:

I currently have 3 types of local Long Island honey that’s all natural, pure, and raw (unprocessed).
From left to right in the photo are:
1. The spring honey, primarily from black locust and autumn olive blossoms, is of the highest quality. The color is very light and the delicate, rich flavor is very popular with many people.
2. The summer honey, primarily from linden/basswood and sumac blossoms, has the classic amber color and wonderful flavor. Said to be most helpful with colds.
3. The autumn honey, just bottled, primarily from goldenrod & fall asters. Rich dark color and great warm taste. Said to be especially helpful with allergies and extra rich in anti-oxidants.
The 1/2-lb jars are $4.50, the 1-lb jars are $7, and a handful of 2-lb jars are $13.
The honey can be picked up at our house in Smithtown or on Park Ave in Huntington. I can also drop it off between Smithtown and Huntington. I make occasional trips into Nassau and Queens.
631-549-6625 daytime during the week
631-724-3546 evening & weekends
waldig@netzero.com

A few weeks ago I went on a foraging walk with the “Wildman” Steve Brill. He showed the group a tree with edible berries and I knew right away I had seen them before, loads of them. So long story short, I had a wild harvest of probably about 15-20 lbs. of berries. I feel as if I barely made a dent in the grove either, so I did leave plenty for the birds.

What was I to do with a boat-load of small berries that have seeds in the middle?

I looked up some recipes and most were for jam. They all had a different way of trying to get the seeds out, like pressing it through a potato masher or a sieve, etc. etc. I tried boiling them for about a half hour and pressing them through a small strainer, but the pulp all got stuck in the strainer. I thought to myself “Some jelly this is going to be.” So I decided I would continue doing what I was doing and press all the liquid out and then reduce it until it becomes a full flavored syrup (almost).

After it had reduced for about 45 minutes under very low heat, I let it cool and put the delicious berry syrup into ice cube trays. Now, I have about 40 ice cubes and 1 jar full of dense berry flavor I can use for whatever I wish.

One side note - If your going to try this, the berries will burn on the bottom of the pot if the heat is on high or even medium, so bring it up to te boil very slowly and keep mixing! I learned the hard way.
; )

Some ideas for use:

Pancake Syrup - Mix with Maple Syrup (tried it - it was real good)
Mix with Vodka or any other liquid you want (Orange juice or other juices)
Use it in a sauce - It has about 17X the lycopene as tomatoes (which is what gives it the red pigment)

Interesting Fact:

-According to a USDA article, analysis showed that, ounce for ounce, the typical autumn olive berry is up to 17 times higher in lycopene than the typical raw tomato. Lycopene has generated widespread interest as a possible deterrent to heart disease and cancers of the prostate, cervix and gastrointestinal tract.

In my Long Island Garden, I planted German Chamomile (back in 2004) and it has come back every year since then, in different places. It’s great! I allow them to grow where I want and pull the rest up. They are always one of the first garden herbs to show up at the end of winter, popping their cute little leaves out and saying “I have arrived!” For me, they grow into huge bushes that yield great harvests throughout the early summer. I love going out into the garden to smell the scented flowers. They smell just like apples! and every year, I get feelings of amazement and wonder and appreciation for this plant.

As the flowers start to show, I start to pick. From the time I start picking the little flowers, the plant starts producing more flowers, and the cycle continues until I am surrounded with chamomile flowers and am running out of space in front of my window to dry them. The way to pick them, run your fingers from the leafy parts up the stems until you hit the flowers and snap them off right into your hand. It is not uncommon to get 7-10 flowers in one lift. Dry them out in front of a sunny window (for about a week or so) and place them in a bag or closed container to be used as one of the best tea ingredients you will ever have. Some of the “fallen soldier flowers” that fall back into the ground are sure to turn into brother and sister plants next year. Each flower head (the yellow center) holds at least 50, maybe a hundred little seeds.

I use it at night before bed as a very relaxing tea. It is great mixed with most herbs. I love mint chamomile tea (maybe with some ginger and licorice root) for a good digestion tea. One of my other favorite uses for chamomile is for cosmetic purposes. I like to (maybe once a month) take a facial steam bath (that’s my name for it) by taking boiling water, pouring it into a big pot that is filled with an herbal concoction based around chamomile (other ingredients - lavender, wintergreen, rosemary, eucalyptus, and anything else you feel like) and fill up the pot 3-6 inches with water. Wait about 2-5 minutes so the water doesn’t burn. Take a towel, drape it over your head and position your face over the pot. Make sure the towel surrounds the pot so it keeps the heat in. However, if its too hot, you can use the towel to let some air out until you reached a comfortable temperature. I like to sit there for as long as necessary, allowing all the impurities sweat right out of the pores. Another thing I notice about doing this, well, this might sound a little strange, but it works for me. I bite my teeth together, and breath in through my teeth and out through my teeth, and this hot water vapor does something good to my gums and teeth. I do not know what it does, but it always feels like I needed to do it. After you are done, wash your face with warm water to get all the impurities off the skin so they do not re-absorb.

Some detailed growing information and links about chamomile:

German Chamomile, Scented Mayweed (info from Dave’s Garden)
Matricaria recutita

Family: Asteraceae (ass-ter-AY-see-ay) (Info)
Genus: Matricaria (mat-ri-KAR-ee-uh) (Info)
Species: recutita (re-KOO-tee-ta) (Info)

Synonym:Chamomilla recutita
Synonym:Matricaria chamomilla
Synonym:Matricaria chamomilla var. coronata
Synonym:Matricaria suaveolens

Category:
Annuals
Herbs

Height:
6-12 in. (15-30 cm)

Spacing:
6-9 in. (15-22 cm)

Hardiness:
Not Applicable

Sun Exposure:
Full Sun
Sun to Partial Shade

Danger:
Pollen may cause allergic reaction

Bloom Color:
White/Near White

Bloom Time:
Mid Spring

Foliage:
Aromatic

Other details:
May be a noxious weed or invasive
Flowers are fragrant
Average Water Needs; Water regularly; do not overwater
Self-sows freely; deadhead if you do not want volunteer seedlings next season

Soil pH requirements:
5.6 to 6.0 (acidic)
6.1 to 6.5 (mildly acidic)
6.6 to 7.5 (neutral)

Propagation Methods:
From seed; direct sow outdoors in fall
From seed; sow indoors before last frost
From seed; direct sow after last frost

Seed Collecting:
Allow seedheads to dry on plants; remove and collect seeds

Organic Seed Sources:

Me - If I have some (which I usually do) I will gladly give some to you.

Seeds of Change

Chamomile Links:

Botanical.Com’s Varieties of Chamomile

Wikipedia - German Chamomile

Garden Guide - German Chamomile Plant Information

Given the right care, even one hot pepper plant can produce an over-abundance of peppers. In this case, between my neighbor and I, we had about 20 plants. That is a load of peppers, many of which get neglected and go bad (for one reason or another).

So the other day (the day before the first dip in temperatures around here) I went out to his yard and mine and picked all the peppers and tomatoes I could find that were still good. There were so many peppers, sweet and hot. I was left with a great opportunity. What to do with them though? I have dried peppers before in a dyhydrator and it worked good. I find that it uses heat and therefore gives the preserved food a cooked flavor (not that it’s bad, but it does use low heat). I was also concerned it could catch on fire.

I found Alton Brown’s technique to be very interesting. He makes a dyhydrator with 1 box fan, paper air-conditioning filters, and 2 bungee cords and while it takes a bit longer to dry, it preserves the food with only air, no heat. I have never used this technique, but the next time I want to dry produce, you can bet Im going to try it. The reason I did not want to dry the peppers this year is because I dried so many of them a few years ago that I am still going through them. Basically, I don’t need them right now. So Ill try something new. I thought I would experiment with simple recipes that can last a while.

Hot Sauce!

I made two kinds.

1. Poblano Punch

Ingredients:

• About 15 Fresh Poblano Peppers (Green, Red or mixed)
• 1-2 Carrots
• 2-3 heads of garlic
• 1 or more cups of apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup of white vinger
• 1 cup of water or more
• juice of 1-2 limes
• 1 teaspoon or more salt
• 1 onion
• Other Spices: Turmeric, Cumin, Dried Oregano
• Hardware: Blender, Rubber Gloves, Bottling Supplies, Aluminum Foil

Roast Garlic in aluminum foil. Cut off top 1/4 of garlic head, place in aluminum foil. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on it and wrap it up and put it in 350 degree oven for a while (30 mins or so - until it smells unbelievable). After you put it in the oven, start roasting the peppers. I use a cast iron pan and just pop the peppers in there on medium to medium-high heat. Keep flipping them once they blister up nice and black so they get blackened most of the way around. Chop and saute an onion in a little olive oil for a few minutes. Chop the carrot and simmer in the water for about 15 mins and then let it cool down a bit. Take the peppers out of the pan and place into a paper bag or put them in a bowl and cover them (anything to trap the steam coming off the peppers). After about 10-15 minutes, take the peppers out and remove skins. They should come off easily, but could be a bit finiky. Don’t stress if some will not come off, it’s no big deal. Some people like to remove the seeds here, but I just pop off the tops and throw the peppers into the blender. This is HOT sauce.

Once the garlic and carrots cool down a bit, add them to the blender along with the onion, juiced lime, salt, vinegars, and the rest of the ingredients. Many recipes add a little sugar. I would have but forgot it and it was still good. Blend it together and add more water and/or vinegar to get the right consistency you want.

As I was making hot sauce I saw it was kind of hard to mess it up if you have the right ingredients. So at the end, I was adding more water, more vinegar, some garlic powder, some dried oregano, turmeric, cumin. And it came out really really good. Actually, it was a bit milder than I thought it would be, but I liked that too. Because of this and because I had a million more peppers, I decided to make a REALLY HOT sauce.

2. Jalapeño de Plainview

Ingredients:

• Some tomatoes (roma, san marzano - for roasting)
• 3 heads of garlic
• 1 teaspoon of salt or more
• 1 cup of water (or more)
• 1 1/2 cups (or more) of vinegar (white or cider)
• 20-25 jalapeño chiles
• 1-2 ripe mangos

Cut off the tops of the peppers and put them into a small saucepot with the water. Put the heat to medium/medium-hot and bring to boil. Lower heat to low for a few minutes and shut off heat. Let cool.

Roast garlic the same way as above recipe. I made both recipes in the same night, so I used the same batch of roasted garlic. Cut tomatoes in half lengthwise. Warm up a pan and add a little oil. Place tomato halves flat side down until browned a bit. Chop up mango.

Add all ingredients to the blender and blend away. Add more liquids, salt or more fresh chiles to taste. Bottle and give to friends. It can keep in fridge for a long time, if it lasts that long.

Onions and Peppers

I bought a 50 lb. bag of onions last month at a big farm stand out east and have been keeping it in the garage. I also had an overabundance of sweet peppers, so it was fairly obvious to me what I needed to do. Saute a mass amount of onions and peppers, like the vendors at the Jets games. Then, borrow a pressure cooker from my friend and bottle it. It was the firs time I used a pressure cooker by myself. The results were fair.

Chop the onions and peppers in fairly large pieces, and remove all the seeds and veins of the peppers. Then saute them in batches with a bit of olive oil and salt.

Fill sterilized bottles with onions and peppers. Use pressure cooker to finish bottling process. I will write a later article about how to use a pressure cooker, once I master the technique. Right now, I am a mere novice. Only two of the bottles actually closed properly, however, after a night in the fridge, the rest closed as well. I don’t trust them enough to take them out of the fridge though.

So hopefully the peppers and onions will hang around a while. They are quite versatile for a boost of flavor many dishes. They add sweet, savory, and down home flavor, especially because the peppers were grown in our backyards (as organically as organic can be). Just today, I used it in some leftover pasta to give it some depth of flavor. Top a steak with it, or the famous “Sausage, Peppers, and Onions,” or stuff them in a baked squash.