Pictures From My Late Spring Garden

Just a few quick shots from around the yard (front, back, and side)

Mullein

Calendula

Lettuce patch

Berry patch. Strawberries, Raspberries, and Boysenberries. 

New cinder-block bed in the side yard

front yard

Johnny Jump Ups

Mint spiral: Spearmint, Chocolate mint, Lemon Balm

Bardbra

End of week 2 at the farm in photos

"Farm Day"

Pulling Weeds

Dan cutting Comfrey

The Kitchen & The Clubhouse

One of 8 resident cats on the property

Paths lined with papaya trees

Jungle Huts

Our outdoor shower

Cacao pod

Soursop - taste like sour candy

Where we grow our veggies

Thimble Berry

Christmas Eve at the beach

"Red Sands"

Hiding in a cave while the rain passed by

Christmas morning treats

Last night of Hanukkah Latke prep

Latkes with guacamole 

My Backyard Crop Swap Haul

Today was the second of our newly started Backyard Crop Swaps that happen at the Phat Beets N. Oakland Satruday Market. These swaps happen the FIRST Saturday of every month. Last month was our first one and I came home with an impressive spread of fruits & veggies. This time was even better with more people showing up and a wider range of items.
I brought a bunch of mullein (for teas), culinary sage, Vietnamese cilantro, tree collards, & baskets of garden huckleberries. 

I came home with all this:

From the top:
Large bag of dried stinging nettle
oyster mushrooms
summer squash
curly parsley
figs
tomatoes
large zucchinis
eggs
mint
Jerusalem artichokes
hot peppers
peppino melon
purple potatoes
and green beans.

And I didn't have to spend a dime!
Eating well and healthy is totally possible when you can get your community together to share their resources. With events like these swaps everyone who participates benefits. Like me, you can turn your bumper crop (even if it's just herbs you grow in pots on your porch) in to wide variety of produce.
I'm off to turn all those tomatoes in to some pasta sauce. More on that later :)

Fun with Nasturtiums

 Nasturtiums pretty much grow like weeds here in California. Most people know these edible flowers have a nice spicy flavor that make a great addition to salads. But there are other things you can do with them as well. The whole plant is edible: flowers, young seeds, leafs and stalks. Here are a couple of other options for putting nasturtiums to use in your kitchen.:

I headed out around my neighborhood with bags in hand and collected both flowers and young seed pods.

Wild overgrown bush of nasturtiums

These flowers grow everywhere. I wondered around and collected from about 5 different patches in my neighbors front yards.

Young seed pods

 The seed pods grow in clusters of 3. You want to pick them when they are still green. As soon as they start to get tiny red spots or turn yellow its too late. They will be be woody and not very palatable.

I ended up with a full bag of flowers and just enough seed pods to fill a small jar.

The first thing I made was "Poor Mans Capers". Real capers are the seed pod of the caper bush, however, nasturtium seed pods taste remarkably similar when pickled.  I used the lacto-fermentation method of pickling for these.

Poor Man's Capers (lacto-fermented)
Young Nasturtium Seed Pods (enough to fill your jar with 1/2 inch space at the top)
zest from one lemon
1 small onion cut in to slices
clove of garlic cut in to 2-4 pieces
bay leaf ripped in half
3 or 4 small sprigs of thyme
about 6 pepper corns
1tsp salt


Mix all the ingredients (minus the salt) together in a bowl then empty in to your jar. The goal is to have the flavorings spread out somewhat evenly. Sprinkle in the salt then fill with water up to the top. Put cap on jar then shake well to dissolve the salt. Uncap the jar, place inside a dish (to catch any liquid that might spill over), then top with a plastic bag filled with just enough water to seal off the entire opening of the jar. Make sure all organic material is under water and not touching air. Let sit to lacto-ferment for 6 days. You should see a good amount of bubbles forming and the liquid should smell sour. 
You can use these capers the same way you can use the real deal. The only difference is these ones will cost you next to nothing, be hyper local, handmade, and great for your digestion.

The next thing I made was a quick tasty dressing/sauce using the nasturtium flowers.

Nasturtium Flower Dressing/Sauce

6 cups of loose nasturtium flowers (or one produce bag full)

2 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/8 cup apple-cider vinegar

1/2 tsp salt (or more to taste)

1/4 cup water

Place all ingredients in blender and process till smooth. 

This is a super basic recipe. Feel free to play with the ingredients. Add herbs from your garden, try a different type of oil/vinegar, or add other edible flowers. Each new ingredient will change the flavor just a little bit. Mess around till you find your perfect combo.

I used this sauce as a flavoring for a vegetable quinoa dish I made (below). I love the bright orange color and could imagine using this as a salad dressing, sauce on meat, or dip.

Quinoa with garden vegetables and Nasturtium dressing

The Grey Areas Of Made At Home Food Laws.

A few weeks ago I attended a small meeting of local food activists put on by the Sustainable Economies Law Center. We discussed the state of food laws regarding the legality of sharing, trading, & selling homemade foods, as well as what laws we would like to see pass here in California. The SELC really has their stuff together. They have been doing research for months on laws that have passed in other states and have worked hard to come up with a plan of attack.


Legal Intern Kelly Densmore and Co-Director Janelle Orsi from the Sustainable Economies Law Center’s wrote this great article for Shareable.net that I wanted to share with you all. 


http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-shareable-food-movement-meets-the-law

"“The Underground Food Movement” has become a thing lately. It’s a foodie’s utopia in Oakland these days...But this movement goes deeper than its sheer yumminess. We thrive on food. When we share in efforts to grow, process, prepare, and serve food, we greatly enhance our abilities to eat well, provide for ourselves, and build livelihoods around food. Sharing food is particularly important during hard economic times and many small food projects develop out of unemployment.

The realm of shareable food is flourishing with community meal sharing, potlucks, gift-economy restaurants, community food growing projects, food swap events, pop-up stores, stone soup gatherings, food-buying cooperatives, goat-sharing, chicken cooperatives, events like The Big Lunch, and so on...

Now picture all of this food sharing activity on a spectrum. At the private and personal end, we eat a homemade meal with our family. At the public and commercial end, we get chicken nuggets from the drive-thru window at a chain restaurant. Somewhere in between is a point at which our society has decided to impose protections and regulations."

Read the full article here: http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-shareable-food-movement-meets-the-law

Using egg shells in the garden

We have 3 chickens. We also have 6 people who live in our collective household, so we tend to go through a fair amount of eggs every week. Whole or cracked egg shells generally do not compost well. When we harvest our worm bin we often notice a few things like egg shells, seeds/pits, & avocado skins still in tact. We've tried to start seeds in egg shells but the plants always seem to get root bound way too quickly so I don't recommend doing it. Always looking for diy hacks, Dan & I did a little research and found some great ways to use up those egg shells and actually get some benefit from it as well. 



Here are a few tricks for using egg shells to help improve your garden: 


-Deter slugs, snails, and cutworms. Loosely crush up egg shells in to small pieces (like in the img to the right). Sprinkle these pieces in a thick ring around the base of young tender plants to deter harmful pests like slugs, snails, & cutworms. These guys don't like crawling their tender bodies over the sharp shells. 


-Add ground shells to the bottom of planting holes for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. This gives the plans a nice dose of calcium which helps stop the blossom end rot that can commonly affect these crops.


-Give your chickens the extra calcium they need to make their own strong egg shells. Add a small amount of ground up egg shells to your chickens food about once a week to help them produce stronger shells on their eggs. This is especially helpful during the summer months when chickens are laying at their peak. 

- Put lightly broken egg shells (roughly half pieces) in the bottom of plant pots instead of rocks for drainage. The egg shells are lighter than rocks and allow for more air flow in the soil. They will also very slowly break down and give your plant some nutrients over time.


-Add finely crushed sells directly in your compost bin. Make sure you crush them up very well or grind them in to a powder. This will help add calcium in to the soil you will use in your garden next year. 




* To grind up my eggs I use an old coffee grinder I got at a thrift store. This grinder is dedicated specifically to grinding spices, oats, nuts, etc. When I grind the egg shells in it I always make sure to clean it out very well, though a little egg shell powder won't hurt you.

Tiny Garden Treasures

Front Yard Makeover Progression Pics

We have slowly but surly been working on the front yard. When we first moved in there was more cement than we would have liked, a giant Camellia bush/tree and a whole lotta grass. Here are some pictures of our progression so far:

Here is a not so great picture of what our front yard looked like when we first moved in. 

First we tore out the strip of cement on the right. Then planted some fruit trees & artichokes

Then Dan built some awesome raised beds & trellises out of redwood we got for free on craigslist. We planted more!

The large camellia came out and we put in a sign for Bike Man Dan, Peach & Mulberry Trees & PLANTED MORE!

Huckleberries, Marigolds, Onions...

Scarlet Runner Beans

Porch O'Pots

Succulents from the Plant Swap

Succulents from the Plant Swap