A Few Ideas for Implementing Food Rules

Michael Pollan's new book is hitting the shelves offering simple advice for those looking for a better way to eat and think about their food. But you confess that while edible landscaping is appealing you really do like your lawn. And you don't know the first thing about starting seeds, and aren't so fond of getting dirty. A Project Grow garden plot sounds good (accepting applications now!), but that goes back to that dirty thing again. Yet, garden-fresh vegetables, flowers and herbs are a favorite.

What to do?

The Michigan Availability Guide quite nicely lists what is in season when in our fair state. Vegetables and fruits are both listed on this handy (and attractive!) guide that could easily be tacked up on the refrigerator.

Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and get fresh vegetables each week. Most farms also offer tasty recipes to go with the vegetables, as well as fun events at the farm. Fresh food plus a fun weekend outing a few times a year - is that perfect or what?

Visit the farmer's market and choose a variety of vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs, breads, meats, and so much more from a cornucopia of vendors. The added bonus of this (like the CSA) is that you get to talk to the grower/producer and you know exactly where your money is going. (The Farmer's Marketer also offers a weekly list of what's available at the market to help with planning.)

Attend a local food event and see what's happening including the upcoming Local Food Summit. Meet other folks interested in exploring food and gardening, have a little and who knows? Maybe getting dirty won't seem so bad after all...

Consider volunteering at Project Grow to continue a strong tradition of community gardening, and learn loads. Plus, getting to know gardeners means they share the summer's bounty!

If You Want to be Happy Forever, Make a Garden

Written by a friend of Project Grow, the following piece tells the story of some of the gardens and gardeners to be found at our Clague site. Transplants themselves, the gardeners have found a taste and feeling of their former homes and histories in their new country.

They aren't called "community gardens" for nothing. Large shared plots are little communities, enclaves where friendship and social harmony flourish as surely as fresh, nutritious food. And Project Grow's Clague Community Garden is one of the best: a mini-Eden of health and happiness, though non-Asians might not recognize most of the produce.

"This is a luffa gourd," said Xianfang Xu, 77, gently reaching into a six-foot tangle of gargantuan vines and leaves to cradle a shiny baby fruit. "It looks like a zucchini, but it's spongy inside," Xianfang said. "We use it for soup. We like Chinese food because it's good for health." (Mature luffa - or luffah - fruit can be dried to make kitchen and bath sponges.)

Like many communities, the Clague gardening community has changed over the years as old “residents” have left and newcomers have taken their places. Located at Clague Middle School, on the city’s northeast side, the garden was first planted in 2005 by three families. Then two years later, Quansheng Xu, a resident of the nearby Parkway Meadows Senior Apartments, was out walking and spotted his dream garden.

“I saw this beautiful garden at the entrance to Divine Shepherd Lutheran Church,” said Quansheng, 74, a retired engineering leader at a textile factory. “The plots were much larger than the plots at Parkway Meadows, where I had planted a small garden for four years. So I entered the church and asked about it and they told me about Project Grow.”

He defected to Clague and by the 2008 growing season had recruited a small contingent of other Chinese seniors, including his wife, Bing Xian Zhang, 72.

“In 2007, there was one Chinese man -- me,” said Quansheng, smiling. “Now, there are seven Chinese families and four American families here.” The garden has become a “cultural exchange between America and China,” Xianfang added.

“The families share vegetables and gardening knowledge. We enjoy each other. We see each other and we see what we’re each growing.”

What the American families see is a parallel universe of exotic produce: Chinese celery, which is leafier and has skinner stalks than the more familiar European variety; Chinese long beans, the freaks of the bean world, which make “normal” green beans look like haricot verts; Chinese lettuce, which grows high instead of low to the ground and is topped with seeds; Chinese amaranth, a purple-and-green plant so pretty it could be a houseplant, whose tender leaves are sautéed in oil, like spinach. There are Chinese varieties of chives and garlic as well as Chinese eggplant, Chinese cabbage and Chinese “hollow vegetable,” a lushly tall, dense grass with hollow stems whose long, narrow leaves are eaten raw, in salad, or steamed and wilted.

Everything is organic, which is a big hit with the Chinese gardeners children, who emigrated earlier than their parents, most of whom left China or Taiwan after they retired and speak very little English.

“My children like to eat the fresh, organic vegetables,” said Bing Xian, speaking through an interpreter, Helen Bucklin, the daughter of fellow gardener Hsien-Wen Fang, 81.

But their parents have embraced organic produce, too, reading up on the nutritive content of various vegetables and fruits and treating the garden with near reverence, as if it were growing traditional Chinese medicines.

“This cauliflower started as only a tiny seed!” said Hsien-Wen, whose scientist’s curiosity serves him well in the garden. Born in China, Hsien-Wen moved to Taiwan in 1949, when he was 21, after the Chinese Civil War. In 1963, he moved to Ann Arbor and earned a PhD in biochemistry, returned to Taiwan to teach, then moved back to Ann Arbor in 1982 to become a UM researcher.

“Now, the cauliflower is huge!” he said in early August, when the compact plants were still weeks away from being ready to harvest. “I started them in my home garden, and transplanted them one by one here. Now, I eat the leaves. I found in the literature that the leaves have even more nutrients than the cauliflower, different kinds of nutrients. Previously, I steamed them, but the literature said you lose many nutrients that way. So I’m eating the leaves raw now. I put them in salad with vinegar, sometimes even yogurt, and salt and olive oil.”

All the Chinese seniors are thin and seem extremely fit and limber for their age, bending over to care for their plants and crawling around on their hands and knees to pull weeds.

“This is physical labor!” said Xianfang. “We all use a lot of mental energy, so this helps us balance (the body and mind). For example, I have high blood pressure. If I work in the garden, my blood pressure goes down. I come here to relax.”

As if she were at a party, Fang offered a visitor a container of homemade Chinese canapés: fried slices of Chinese eggplant; chunks of a Chinese chive omelet; Chinese zucchini pancakes; Chinese bean noodle buns and tomato-and-cucumber salad. They were delicious, balancing an American visitor’s physical and mental energies by transporting her back to China and her own memorable stay there in 1985.

The Clague garden is so devotedly tended and explosively green that it’s hard to imagine any failed experiments. But there have been a few.

“In Southeast China, we have a longer growing season because it’s warmer there,” said Zhikun Zhou, 75, a retired elementary school and piano teacher.

Zhikun is the group’s master gardener, credited with knowing the most about how to water plants, dig ditches and ventilate soil. Like several of the other gardeners, he’s from Wuxi, near Shanghai. Like all of them, he learned to garden as a child out of necessity.

“The first year here, I failed -- I planted seeds in March and April, and they all died of frost!”

At Clague, an old Chinese proverb seems to hold true: “If you want to be happy forever, make a garden.” The Chinese gardeners can’t seem to spend enough time there, walking over daily from their apartments just a short block way.

“I come here every day, at least twice, sometimes three times,” said Guishan Wang, 76, a retired medical school professor. His wife, Guiqin Jiang, 79, wears pearls with her gardening clothes!

“I like the soil and the land,” she said.

Guiqin and the others have reaped so much more from the garden than just produce: deepened feelings of independence and belonging in their adopted country; pride, improved health, peace.

“I like to garden because first, I have nothing else to enjoy,” said Zhixian Jiang, 70, who moved to Ann Arbor because her son had settled there. “Second because watching the vegetables grow every day makes me happy, gives me a sense of accomplishment.

"From the end of June to the end of November, we don’t need to go to the store to buy vegetables,” added Quansheng.

Perhaps Xianfang expressed the group’s attachment to the garden best: “We think of these vegetables like our kids and grandkids. We watch them grow up.”

Tomato Blight Update

Tomato blight, as mentioned previously here, is troublesome to say the least, and devastating for farmers and home gardeners, to say the most. Royer Held, a.k.a. Project Grow's Heirloom Enthusiast, sent along the following helpful links about tomato blight and how to contend with it.

NPR's Science Friday recently aired an interview with Chad Nusbaum, a scientist who mapped the genome. Along with some genetic science, Nusbaum offers insight into how the disease spreads and what gardeners should do if they discover it. (The transcript of the interview is also quite helpful.)

Additionally, Science Friday's Flora Lichtbaum visited a farm afflicted with late blight, and created a video vividly portraying the plight caused by the disease as well as illustrating its effect on the plant.

What to do with infected plants?

If a plant is suspect, remove it immediately including any fallen leaves. DO NOT COMPOST IT. Bag it up and put it our with the trash. Other options are detailed in this document, along with more links to properly identify late blight and how to monitor for it.

Winter Gardening

With the Equinox upon us, it is surely time to be thinking of winter gardening. Not just packing up the garden for a nice winter's rest (although that's not a bad thing), but giving some thought to what can be grown in the cooler part of the year.

Whether or not a hoophouse is on the horizon, there are a fair number of vegetables and smaller structures that could make for a lovely harvest nearly into winter. Some favorites of the cool weather gardener are kale, cabbage, broccoli, and lettuce, but surely beets, leeks, and an assortment of other tasty treats could be added here and there. This article is a good primer for planning and planting. This article from Mother Earth News is also quite comprehensive with nice associated links.

If a hoophouse is a bit of a scary proposition, Coldframes are usually short, small, and often easy to build and maintain. They are a nice way to gently break into the realm of winter gardening without breaking your back or your bank account. That said, Elliott Coleman pops a few into his hoophouses to grow an even greater variety of vegetables throughout the winter months.

Local garden centers may also have cool weather crop seedlings for sale, too, along with the usual offerings of garlic and spring bulbs. Treat yourself to a tour and come home with a mini feast!

Think Outside the Box

Gardening isn't just for squares...or rectanagles or any other specific shape, for that matter. The shape the garden takes is really limited only by the space available and the gardener's imagination. As you plan for where to put all those lovely seeds and seedlings this spring, try thinking beyond the usual rows and rectangles. Incorporate perennials as well as annuals - edible and flowering both - to attract pollinators and encourage visitors to stay for a moment. A beautiful nasturtium blossom in the cool of the evening while snacking on a just-picked cherry raspberry sounds like a perfect dessert!

Looking for some plants to put in that new bed? Don't forget about the upcoming Project Grow plant sales!

Friday, May 8th through Sunday, May 10th

Mattheai Botanical Gardens

Join us for three days of fun, learning, and great plants!

Saturday, May 16th

People's Food Cooop

Grab a cup of coffee, talk to us about your garden, and see what great heirlooms we have to tempt you!

Kitchen Garden Tips

Starting a garden can feel like quite a daunting task - where to put it, how to build it, what to grow, and how much work it might be - that even the thought of all those great vegetables can pale in comparison. To help alleviate some of that concern, we've put together a list of helpful tools and resources that will get you through the process and on the way to those great fresh vegetables and herbs for your summer table.

• Start with this nice little article from Regional Gardening News about planning a kitchen garden. The piece helps define kitchen gardens, and offers some good tips to organize your thoughts about the garden - everything from locating it to what to grow - in preparation for the upcoming season.

• Give some serious thought to lasagne gardening. Lasagne gardening uses layers of organic materials that let you take advantage of the soil structure already in your yard. It's also an excellent way to build raised beds without having to do lots of digging. It is ideal to install your lasagne garden in the fall so the materials break down over the course of the winter to some of the most beautiful soil ever come Spring; however, you can plant seedlings directly if you decide to go for it now.

• Make a list of things you like to eat - tomatoes, greens, radishes, beets, sweet peppers, hot peppers, basil, cilantro, potatoes, sweet corn, popcorn, peas, beans - and see what of that is feasible to grow in your space. You can use some handy electronic garden mapping tools to see how the garden might shape up and be organized, or you also consider succession planting. This allows you to put something else in the space recently vacated by the radishes you just pulled, washed, and ate for lunch. Or for the peas that died back once the weather got too warm.

• Remember the garden can (and probably should) contain some flowers. Flowers, like cosmos and zinnias, make not only terrific bouquets all summer long, but also attract pollinators and house predators that will help control unwanted critters. And flowers like violas (a.k.a. Johnny-Jump-Ups), nasturtiums, and calendula are edible, too. Toss them in with your assortment of homegrown lettuces and arugula, and you've got one of the prettiest dishes going.

• Companion planting can be part of your kitchen garden, too. Many flowers and herbs, as mentioned above, attract pollinators as well as house predators, but they also can repel some bad guys. Marigolds help defer some unwanted vistors by their strong smell, as do onions and garlic. A great book to help you start thinking about this concept is Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember as you begin thinking about your garden is to enjoy it. Grow things you like to eat in a space you feel is manageable for a first time and for your schedule. Then, at the end of the season, you can join the legions of gardeners plotting ever larger and larger spaces with a greater variety of plants for the next season! You'll love it.

Electronic Garden Planning Tools

As spring wends its way the time to start garden planning is upon us! (Especially with that seed swap coming up on Saturday!)

Two sites offer some good electronic tools for planning a garden that let you play around with the arrangement of your flowers and vegetables and figure out when to start seeds, and when you should be able to harvest. 

The first is a tool offered at Eat Close to Home  - a good blog offering information on gardening, cooking, and other fun stuff. There you can drag and drop an assortment of vegetables into place. While the selection of things to grow is a bit limited, perhaps the best feature of this tool is the ability to click on a month and see how things will look at that time. This allows you to see how things expand or disappear (assuming you've harvested it to eat yourself versus a rabbit coming in to harvest for you) over the course of a season. 

The second tool is a Kitchen Garden Planner offered by Gardener's Supply. This planner has options for pre-planned gardens with titles like Cook's Choice and Salsa and Tomato Sauce as well as a design your own feature. You choose the plants from a limited list and plunk them in place. A nice feature here is that the plants are listed below with seed-starting information and instructions for general care. You can also email it to yourself to keep track of different ideas. 

Gardeners Save Seeds and the World!

The Environment Report on Michigan Radio ran a great little piece recently about the surge of interest in organic and heirloom seed varieties. Choices as simple as this help maintain the diversity of fruits and vegetables and help ensure our food security now and into the future. So, don your superhero cape, sit down with your seed catalog, and carry on!

(Don't forget about Project Grow's great heirloom seed collection, too! And we offer some terrific classes on seed saving and gardening with heirloom vegetables. If seeds aren't your thing, you can always wear that cape to the Spring Plant Sale in May.)

Photo courtesy of Devo(lutio)n. For more pictures, check out Project Grow's photo pool on Flickr.

Full Frontal Gardening with Fritz Haeg

For most of us, the garden (especially the vegetable garden) is behind the house. Tucked in the back away from public view are tomatoes, herbs, squash, and cucumbers. Zucchini surges to the front only as we desperately try to give them away during peak season. The front yard is sacred space for a tree or two, maybe a flowerbed, and most definitely for grass.

Architect Fritz Haeg (with Melissa in photo at left) overturns that notion in Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn (2008). Exploring the perceived sanctity of the front lawn and what that tells us about ourselves, Edible Estates offers literal and figurative food for thought.

Speaking this past Saturday at an event co-hosted by Project Grow and Avalon Housing, Haeg revealed a gardeners dream as grassy front lawns became lush garden spaces. Strawberries bloom on a New Jersey street corner and okra lines a sidewalk in Kansas. Kumquat and lemon trees grow in Los Angeles along with melons, cucumbers, collards, and a bevy of other vegetables.

Haeg writes that “Food grown in our front yards will connect us to the seasons, the organic cycles of the earth, and our neighbors.” (pg. 22, Edible Estates) Each of the photos mentioned above contained not just plants, but people working the gardens together, sharing the joy of getting their hands dirty in the front yard.

Aiming to create a space where everyday people could build something collectively to express unity and cooperation in a time that Haeg desperately felt needed it, the Edible Estates project continues to turn heads while turning the soil. Gardens created in Salina, Kansas; Baltimore, Maryland; Los Angeles, as well as communal gardens in affordable housing complexes in Austin, Texas and London, UK, offer a simple strategy for bringing people together and possibly even changing the world.

Haeg believes turning empty grass into productive garden space creates possibility. From a first tomato plant to the first harvest, sharing seeds and then sharing stories, gardens like those created by Project Grow and Edible Estates create a common ground of cooperation and community – the building blocks of democracy as we often think of it - in a world where so often we only see what divides us. “Full frontal gardening” is a statement about what could be best in our society and unearthing what may be most essential.

“Politicians, architects, developers, urban citizens, we all crave permanent monuments that will give a sense of place and survive as a lasting testament to ourselves and our time. We were here! These monuments have their place, but their capacity to bring about meaningful change in the way we live is quite limited. A small garden of very modest means, humble materials, and a little effort can have a radical effect on the life of a family, how they spend their time and relate to their environment, whom they see, and how they eat. This singular local response to global issues can become a model. It can be enacted by anyone in the world and can have a monumental impact.” (pg. 27, Edible Estates)

Early Blight Attacks!

I don't know about you all, but I'm seeing a lot of early blight around the garden this year. It's turning all my leaves yellow and making them die off! I plan to deal with the problem using a home remedy floating around on many of the organic gardening websites. The recipe is as follows:

1 T Baking soda
2.5 T lightweight horticultural oil
Mix with 1 gallon of water and spray foliage every 2 weeks.


You should also be careful to water your plants from the bottom to avoid getting moisture on the leaves.

I will let you know how this works in my garden. Let us know what remedies you have for this pesky and common disease.

Project Grow Plant Sale 2008!

Are you as excited for the Project Grow Plant Sale as we are??? It's coming up soon (May 3 and 4 and the 10th); check out the Project Grow Events page for details.

To get you excited I'm posting all that we plan to sell with descriptions. Enjoy!

Eggplants

• Applegreen Eggplant (62-70 days)-Productive upright 2-3' plants. Oval fruits are 5" in diameter with pale-green skin and mild white flesh, non-acid flavor, no need to peel.
• Diamond Eggplant (65-95 days) - Russian variety. Plants grow 20-25" tall and fruits are set in clusters of 4-6. Dark purple fruits are 6-9" long by 2-3" in diameter. Excellent texture and flavor, never bitter.
  
• Rosa Bianca Eggplant (80 days)- Italian heirloom, beautiful fruits are prized by chefs. Very meaty 4-6" round fruits, mild flavor and almost never bitter.
  

Hot Peppers

• Anaheim Hot (90 days)- Mild to medium-hot pepper popular for roasting, frying and stuffing. Prolific bearers of long, thin, two-celled fruits, 6-8 in. long when fully grown. Can be used green or red -- hotter when red.
  
• Bulgarian Chili Pepper- Vibrant orange, 2-3 in. carrot-shaped fruit has consistent heat and fine flavor. Extremely productive variety.
• Czechoslovakian Black Chile Pepper (90-100 days)- Productive bush yields many 2-3 in. mildly hot fruits, which are such a dark green that they appear black before ripening to red.
• Early Jalapeño - Heavy-yielding 3-3 1/2” blunt-end fruit can be eaten dark green or allowed to ripen to red. Delicious with that distinctive jalapeño flavor. Medium heat.
• Fish Pepper- (80 days)- Pendant fruits 2-3" long, ripen from cream with green stripes to orange with brown stripes to all red. Good for salsa. Medium-hot.
• Hot Portugal Pepper (65-70 days)- Sturdy upright plants, very heavy yields. Large smooth, glossy, bright-scarlet, fiery hot fruits taper to pointed tips, grow 6" or longer.
• Ring-O-Fire Cayenne Chile (80 days)- Packs even more heat than traditional cayenne. 4-6 in. fruits ripen to flaming red. Fiery flavor is good dried or fresh.
• Thai Hot Pepper (85 days)- Loaded with little 1⁄2" fruits ripening from green to red, averages 200 fruits per plant.
  

Sweet Peppers

• Chocolate Sweet Pepper (70-75 days)- Dark, shiny green fruits ripen to a rich chocolate brown. Excellent sweet flavor when fully ripe, average flavor when green.
• Hungarian Hot Wax (75 days)- Dependable and productive northern variety -plant sets fruit continuously. Produces upright, hot, yellow fruits.
• Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Pepper (65-70 days)- Excellent fresh or fried, the sweetest non-bell Pepper when ripe. Red when ripe, these 6-8 in. peppers have shiny, wrinkled skins.
  
• King of the North (70 days)- The best red bell for northern gardeners where the seasons are cool and short. Sweet flavor.
• Klari Baby Cheese (65 days)- Ripens yellow to orange to red. Great for pickling whole. Ripens from white to yellow to red.
• Pimento Sweet Pepper (74-100 days)- A large, thick-walled pepper with sweet, succulent flesh. An extremely heavy producer of 3 in. long, heart-shaped fruit. Best when ripened to scarlet red.
  
  

Tomatoes

• Anna Russian (70 days)- An excellent, gorgeous tomato. Early maturing 1-pound fruit. Superb rich old-fashioned, tomatoey flavors with lots of juice. Indeterminate.
• Armenian (90 days)- Large flattish yellow and orange flesh with some red marbling. A bi-colored beefsteak with great flavor and unusually strong flavors for a bi-colored. Indeterminate.
• Aunt Ginny’s Purple (79 days)- A productive beefsteak that yields 1-pound, deep-pink tomatoes that are smooth with little cracking and contain juicy flavors that some people claim are equal to the Brandywine. Indeterminate.
• Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom (90 days)- Late maturing, large (up to 20 ounce), oblate bright yellow fruit with pale yellow interior and very, very few seeds. Great tasting. Indeterminate.
• Aunt Ruby’s German Green (80 days)- Beefsteak fruits, 5" by 4" deep, weigh one pound or more. Sweet juicy flesh, refreshing spicy flavor. Pick when soft to the touch. Indeterminate.
• Bisignano #2 (80 days)- Wonderfully flavored, with medium to large (four ounces to one pound), red, variably shaped fruits - oblate to elongated. Great for canning and sauces. Indeterminate.
• Black from Tula (80-85 days)- Good yields, 3-4” fruits. Indeterminate.
• Black Krim (60-90 days)- Slightly flattened 4-5" globes with dark greenish-black shoulders, turns almost black with enough heat and sun. Excellent full flavor. Indeterminate.
• Black Zebra (85 days)- 1 1/2" round fruit with purple/brown skin with green stripes containing rich tomato flavors with hints of smoke and sweetness
• Box Car Willie (80 days)- Produces 10 to 16-ounce, smooth, bright-red with an orange tinge. Excellent tasting tomatoes- very juicy. Good resistance to disease and cracking. Indeterminate.
• Brandywine (90 days)- One of the best tasting tomatoes available to gardeners today. Large pink beefsteak fruits to 2 pounds. Incredibly rich, delightfully intense tomato flavor. Indeterminate.
• Brown Berry Cherry (75 days)- Warm, earthy brown fruits are a great color addition. Excellent sweet juicy flavor, extremely heavy producer. Indeterminate.
• Burpee’s Quarter Century (75 days)- A medium sized smooth round red tomato originally offered by Burpee in the late 1800's. Resists cracking. Indeterminate.
• Caspian Pink (90 days)- One of the best tasting tomatoes available to gardeners today. Large pink beefsteak fruits to 2 pounds. Incredibly rich, delightfully intense tomato flavor. Indeterminate.
• Cherokee Chocolate (75 days)- Warm, earthy brown fruits are a great color addition. Excellent sweet juicy flavor, extremely heavy producer. Indeterminate.
  
• Cherokee Purple (75 days)- A medium sized smooth round red tomato originally offered by Burpee in the late 1800's. Resists cracking. Indeterminate.
• Cosmonaut Volkov (72 days)- 1-2 pound fruits. Round, slightly flattened fruits have a full, complex flavor and nice acid/sweet balance. Indeterminate.
• Crnkovic Yugoslavian (80 days)- Prolific, disease resistant heirloom that produces large, 1 lb.+, pink beefsteak fruit that is meaty, juicy, with a robust, complex tomato flavor. Indeterminate.
• Cuostralee (85 days)- A French beefsteak heirloom that produces heavy quantities of huge (1-2 lbs.), red, blemish-free fruits that have intense, balanced flavors. Fruits are typically 4-inches across. Indeterminate.
• Dr. Wyche’s Yellow (78 days)- A beefsteak heirloom that produces slightly flattened, smooth, blemish-free, golden-yellow fruit with a meaty interior and few seeds. Rich flavor. Indeterminate.
• Dunneaux (85-90 days)- Large late season paste tomato that lost its ID tag. It might be Howard German, but I just dunneaux. Good fresh eating, in addition to great sauce.
• Ethel Watkins’ Best (70 days)- Originally from Australia, this tomato has a unique flavor when eaten slightly under-ripe. When fully ripe, it is sublime! Consistently a winner with Ann Arbor’s tomato tasters.
• Eva Purple Ball (70 days)- Delicious, round, 2 to 3-inch, blemish-free, pink-purple fruits. Indeterminate.
• Evergreen (72 days)- Large, up to 2 lb fruit that stay green when ripe. Mild, delicious slightly sweet-spicy flavor. Lime green with yellowish shoulders when totally ripe. Indeterminate.
• Pete Motza’s Evergreen (80 days)- Good yield of 4-7 oz amber and green fruit, very good flavor. Indeterminate.
• German Johnson- A popular American heirloom tomato from the South, 'German Johnson' produces large pinkish-red fruits with meaty flesh and few seeds. A good slicing or canning tomato. Very productive and fairly resistant to disease. Indeterminate.
• Glacier (58 days)- Produces an early crop and continues to bear the entire season. Good flavor. Determinate.
• Glasnost (75 days)- An open-pollinated variety from Siberia producing 3", smooth, red-orange, dense, meaty fruit. Excellent flavor. Indeterminate.
• Gold Brooks (70 days)- An accidental cross that won the Ann Arbor tomato tasting held in 2004. This is seed from the F2 generation selected from a plant that had large, yellow beefsteaks with good texture and flavor.
• Goldie (75 days)- Large deep orange beefsteaks are full of flavor and juice. Indeterminate.
  
• Green Zebra (75-80 days)- Green 11⁄2 - 21⁄2" fruits with various shades of yellow to yellowish-green stripes, sweet zingy flavor. Very productive plants. Indeterminate.
• Hog Heart (86 days)- 2 1/2 to 3-inch long red fruit, shape varies from a banana shape to a heart-shape. Excellent sweet flavors with moderately juicy flesh. A top paste tomato for sauces. Indeterminate.
• Kellogg’s Breakfast (80-90 days)- Large beefsteak-type fruits are 1-2 pounds, juicy and meaty and truly orange in color. Delicious rich flavor. Indeterminate.
• Macrocarpum Lutea
• Olga’s Round Yellow Chicken Egg (70 days)- Very heavy production of 2 1/2" 4-6 oz. round yellow-gold thick-skinned tomato with a slightly tart flavor. Indeterminate.
• Orange Banana (85 days)- Sprawling plants with good yields of 1 x 2 1/2" 2 oz. plum-shaped orange paste with pointed ends and a good sweet-tart flavor. An all-purpose plum tomato with good disease resistance. Indeterminate.
• Oaxacan Jewel (85 Days)- Beautiful 1-2 pound, yellow beefsteak tomato with red streaks throughout the fruit. Wonderfully rich, sweet flavors. Indeterminate.
• Pachino (75-80 days)- A medium-sized mid-season red tomato from Sicily by way of Orvieto, Italy. Fruits have an intense, tangy tomato flavor that makes great sauces and is excellent fresh.
• Peacevine Cherry (75 days)- So named because of the high amino acid content which has a calming effect on the body. Indeterminate.
• Pineapple- An heirloom garden favorite that grows to 2 lbs. This bi-colored, slightly flattened, yellow beefsteak has a red blushing and streaks on the outside. Taste is wonderfully mild with tropical fruity-sweet flavors. Indeterminate.
  
• Pixie Red Rock (70 days)
• Rose de Berne (75 days)- Swiss heirloom variety of dark pink tomatoes with soft meaty flesh. Very rich flavor, good acid and sweetness. Indeterminate.
• Roughwood Golden Plum (76 days)- Beautiful 2-inch, orange paste tomato that is meaty with few seeds and a delicate, sweet flavor. Semi-determinate.
• Speckled Roman Paste (75 days)- Heavy fruit production of meaty 4-5 oz. oblong fruits until frost. Indeterminate.
• German Striped Stuffer (78 days)- This German stuffer tomato is red with yellow stripes and has very good flavor for a stuffing tomato. Indeterminate.
• Stupice (52 days)- Cold-tolerant tomato that bears an abundance of very sweet, flavorful 2 to 3-inch, deep red fruit. Sweet/acid, tomatoey flavor and production. Indeterminate.
• Yellow Pear Cherry (85 days)- Clusters of small bright-yellow, pear-shaped fruit. Very tasty. Like eating candy. Indeterminate.
• Zapotec (85 days)- Pink fruits are large, with ruffles like a pleated dress. They can be stuffed and baked like a bell pepper, or served raw. Indeterminate.
• Jaune Flamme (90 days)- Plant produces heavy yields of 3 oz orange tomatoes. Tomatoes are very sweet. Indeterminate.
• Bicolor Cherry (80 days)- Small, mostly one-ounce globe-shaped yellow and red bicolor fruits. Size is not consistent ranging from one to two inches in diameter. Excellent flavor - sweet and juicy. Indeterminate.
• Micado Violettor (80 days)- Rare. 4-6 oz. fruits. Vigorous 18-24 in. vines with 2 in. fruits of excellent quality and flavor. Indeterminate.
• Chadwick Cherry (70 days)- Flavorful, 1-inch, red fruits borne in vigorous clusters of six. Indeterminate.
• Green Cage
• San Marzano Paste (70 days)- A very productive, 1 x 5-inch, red paste tomato. A great addition to tomato sauces and salsas. Indeterminate.
• Manyel (75 days)- 3-inch, round, clear-yellow fruits look like hanging from the plant. Mildly sweet and juicy. Indeterminate.
• Santa Clara Canner (79 days)- Rich, complex flavor. Plant produces a great amount of red-orange fruit that is juicy, meaty and flavorful. Just as suitable for eating off the vine as it is for salads, cooking and canning. Indeterminate.
• Sutton (79 days)- Good yield. Medium-sized 8 oz. white slicer with irregular shapes and sweet fruity taste. Indeterminate.
  

Basils

• Purple Opal Basil- Beautiful lilac flowers with dark red stems. Excellent contrast with green basil, spectacular as a garnish, in salads, or for adding to basil vinegars.
• Lemon Basil (60-70 days)- The fragrant, small leaves combine the flavors of lemon and basil in a delightful way making it excellent fresh or dried in salads and dressings or dried in potpourris.
• Thai Basil (75-80 days)- Intensely sweet, anise-like fragrance. Leaves are green at the base of the plant becoming more purple toward the flowers.
• Genovese Basil (65-75 days)- Classic Italian basil. High leaf to stem ratio. Uniform, slow to bolt.
• Chen Basil (65-75 days)- A thinner leafed, profuse Italian large-leaf type basil. Bright green, glossy leaves. A slow bolting variety with a strong aroma and good flavor. Very disease resistant and good for pesto.
• Tulsey (Holy) Basil (65-75 days)- An excellent tea herb, but more highly valued as a companion plant and ornamental. Aromatic, fuzzy 2-inch leaves have an unusual scent, sometimes described as walnut, ripe bananas, or spice.
• Cinnamon Basil (75-90 days)- One of the finest tea basils, and also used in flavoring Mediterranean and Mid-Eastern-style dishes, the dark green leaves have a wonderful fragrance and a distinct cinnamon flavor.

Heirlooms, What's Growing On?

What are Heirloom Vegetables?
Heirlooms vegetables are defined as open-pollinated cultivars that were popular and available many generations ago, before large scale hybridizing. Some of these heirlooms are indigenous, some were brought to this country by immigrants, and others were passed down by farmers, families and gardeners.

Our Heritage
Imagine what it used to be like: Farmers and gardeners maintained their own vast seed collections of plant varieties. Over time these plant varieties diverged from the original stock and adapted to local tastes. But, when agriculture became industrialized, the premium on taste and local suitability was replaced by the ability to stand up to mechanical picking, trucking and storage.

Taste
It’s not just hype! Heirlooms are highly regarded for their flavors, textures, aromas, colors and other unique qualities. Come to Project Grow’s Fall Tomato Tasting and see what all the excitement is about.

Protecting Diversity
The USDA recognizes the need to recover, protect and sustain seed diversity to maintain the vitality of commercial crops. Each year, a small percentage of the USDA seed bank is planted out and fresh seed is harvested. Individual gardeners contribute too: Nonprofit organizations such as the Seed Savers Exchange have ever expanding seed banks and organized seed swapping. In fact, it’s a worldwide phenomenon!

Project Grow Heirloom Garden, Workshops and Events

• Located at the Leslie Science & Nature Center, our heirloom garden includes varieties of vegetables.
• We offer classes in heirlooms, seed saving and plant breeding, plus a Spring seed swap! Check out the Project Grow class calendar.
  
• Join us for our annual free Project Grow Tomato Tasting! Over 30 varieties of tomatoes are available for tasting -- vote for your favorite and see the winners online. For this year’s date and location, visit the Project Grow Website.

Sewing Schedules

from Melissa's Corner in the Spring 2007 Newsletter
by Melissa Kesterson
photo by Richard Thomas under Creative Commons License

This time of year, seasoned gardeners are busy planning how to get their crops or flowers in the ground at the optimal time. It’s easy for new gardeners to feel overwhelmed by the amount of available information about getting started—what to grow and when to plant!

Easy-to-read lists are always helpful, and I know I have certainly benefited from them over the years. A few examples from the book Just the Facts, published by Storey Books, may help you as you dream about your gardens this season.

Hardy Crops – plant when ground can be worked, 20-40 days before last frost

• Broccoli: best started from transplants, seeds usually require 80-100 days to harvest
• Brussels sprouts: best started from transplants, usually requires 100+ days from seed, pick off lower leaves after sprouts form
• Cabbage: transplants are best, but, fall harvest cabbage is an option from seed
• Kale: start from seed or transplant; will survive frost and snow
• Kohlrabi: best results if seeds are planted directly in ground, and rapid growth is a must with this crop as slow growing plants are tough and the flesh is strong
• Onion sets: onions prefer rich, fertile, reasonably well-drained soil, dry soil can cause onion bulbs to split forming two small bulbs instead of normal growth
• Peas: sow early in spring, they don’t like hot weather
• Radishes: plant with other seeds to mark rows—fast sprouting
• Spinach: likes cool weather, goes to seed quickly in warm weather
• Turnip: never cover turnip seeds with more than 1⁄4 inch of soil as they are very small and the tender young plants are easily killed when there is a thick layer of soil on top

Semi-Hardy Crops – plant 10-30 days before last frost

• Beets: prefer a well drained soil but hot, dry weather can cause beet roots to become stringy and tough, beet greens removed during thinning can be cooked like other greens
• Carrots: one ounce of carrot seeds will sow 100 feet, the seeds should be sown relatively thick, about a half-a-dozen seeds to the inch, darkest green foliage indicates the largest carrots
• Cauliflower: start as transplants in spring, seed in early summer for fall crops
• Lettuce: 3” spacing for leaf lettuce, 8” for head lettuce, cut don’t pull for second and third harvest
• Swiss chard: can be grown in any good garden soil in which lettuce thrives, plants should be placed 12 inches apart and a 15-25 row is usually sufficient for a family of four and can supply greens from July through frost, cut and serve when plants are 8”-10” tall

Tender Vegetables - plant on the average last frost date

• Snap Beans: from seed, pick young before individual beans are visible in the pod
• Cantaloupe: plant 5-6 seeds per hill, later thin to best 3-4 plants
• Sweet Corn: from seed; pick immediately before serving to prevent natural sugars from turning to starch
• Cucumber: plant 5-6 seeds per hill later thinning to 3-4 best plants
• Eggplant: transplants are a good idea
• Peppers: transplants are a good idea, thrive in poor soil
• Pumpkins: needs space to sprawl, grow as a barrier to keep raccoons out
• Summer squash (including zucchini): for extra early crop start some indoors and transplant
• Squash (winter): same as pumpkin
• Tomato: transplant well after the danger of frost passes, late May in Michigan

Garlic

By Sarah Hashimoto
Community Gardener, Autumn 2001


If you love garlic but haven’t grown it before, don’t wait! It’s not too late to get a great crop growing for next year. Garlic is a staple in our kitchen, and now that I have discovered how truly easy it is to grow, harvest, and store, I can’t imagine my garden without it. It requires very little from you as a gardener, and it gives great results in return. Now, if I could just get it to teach those habits to the cucumbers, I would really be set!

Varieties
There are two types of garlic: hardneck and softneck. Hardneck garlic sends up a hard flower stem around which the cloves grow. This kind of garlic is sometimes called “topsetting garlic,” since the stem produces small bulblets at the tip (these bulblets should be removed so that the plant can focus its energy below). Most garlic connoisseurs will tell you that at least as far as taste is concerned, hardneck varieties are superior to softneck varieties , for they are said to have more complex, interesting flavors. My husband, who claims to be a garlic connoisseur, will attest to this fact; all I can tell you is that the hardneck garlic that we grow is indeed delicious. Hardnecks also have bigger cloves that are easier to peel. Hardnecks must be planted in the fall. The one drawback to hardneck garlic is that it doesn’t keep for very long. Usually, you can count on keeping the bulbs for six months, from mid-summer to January.

Hardneck garlic can be sub-divided into several groups: Rocambole, Porcelain, Creole, Asiatic, and Purple-Stripe. Rocambole, probably the most popular of these sub-groups, grows 6-13 cloves/bulb, is easy to peel, and has a full-bodied flavor. I am fond of the Porcelain group, which has the largest cloves out of any of the hardnecks. Porcelains aren’t super hot, but they are very tasty. They also store quite well.

Softneck garlic is distinguished from hardneck garlic because, as you might suspect, the stems are soft and pliable. This means that you can braid the stems for storage (or combine the garlic with dried peppers to make a fabulous gift!). Softneck garlic has superior storage qualities, and thus it is the type you will most often find in the supermarket. Under the right conditions, softnecks will keep for up to ten months. The flavor of softnecks is usually very mild or very hot, with little in between. Softnecks are easier to grow than hardnecks, though, since they are more adaptable to different climates and soils. In places where the winters are extremely harsh, gardeners can plant softneck varieties in the spring and still get a decent, although not as spectacular, harvest.

Softnecks can be divided into a couple of groups: the Artichoke group and the Silverskin group. Artichokes are the most common. They are easy to grow, have approximately 12-20 cloves/head, and keep very well. They grow well in most climates. Silverskins are the kind of garlic you find most often in the supermarket, because they have exceptional storage abilities. They are very productive and perfect for braiding. I should mention, however, that they prefer a slightly warmer winter than the artichokes, which makes them a bit trickier to grow.

Soil Preparation
You’ve probably already guessed what kind of soil garlic likes best. Rich, fertile soil, lots of organic matter, loose, not clayey. If that’s the kind of soil that you have, good for you! You’ll have to let me know how it goes, because I grow my garlic in crummy soil, solid clay (I suspect that it is fill dirt). I have mixed in compost and leaves to lighten things up a bit, but the clay is so hard that it tends to form clumps that are impervious to lightening. I’m sure that lighter soils are optimal, but if you fertilize well during the growing season, I think you can make due with whatever you have available. The one thing that I have learned about garlic is that it is pretty forgiving.

Planting
While it is possible to plant softneck garlic in the spring, for best results, you have to plant in the fall. In Michigan, we plant 4-6 weeks before the ground freezes, usually anywhere from October through November. This planting schedule allows the garlic to start developing a good root system so that it doesn’t get heaved out of the soil when the ground freezes. Usually, the very cold weather hits before it sprouts too many leaves. I should note, however, that even if your garlic sprouts quite a bit, it is not something to worry about. I have seen garlic planted in warmer micro-cilmates, usually right up against houses, and it does just fine.

When planting your garlic, you’ll want to choose the largest cloves. Small cloves usually grow small bulbs. Push the cloves into the soil root-side down (not the pointy end down!) and about 1-2 inches below the surface. Space the cloves 4-6 inches apart. Finally, cover with soil and mulch lightly with hay, grass clippings, or shredded leaves. Mulching is an important step, since this prevents the cloves from heaving out in the winter. Furthermore, mulching also suppresses weeds and helps to conserve moisture.

Grow!
When spring comes, your garlic will start sending shoots up through the mulch. At this point, you should fertilize the plants by sidedressing with compost. For the absolute best results, you can also use a foliar fertilizer of liquid kelp, seaweed, or fish emulsion.

When the garlic greens are still young and tender, pick a few and taste them. Yum! Garlic greens are absolutely delicious. The flavor, as you might suspect, is garlicky, but it also has more than a hint of onion. Some people eat the greens raw, but I prefer to cook them, since the flavor mellows with cooking. We generally use the greens in stir-fry, but I have also tasted garlic pesto, which was quite nice.

Hardneck varieties will send up a tall flowering stalk, with bulblets at the tip in June. Snip the bulblets off, since you want the plant’s energy to go into making a large bulb, not into making seeds. Don’t throw these bulblets away! They are a tasty addition to stir-frys, and a hint of what’s to come.

Problems
What problem? Garlic is rarely bothered by pests. This is because, as you may already know, garlic itself is very effective at deterring a wide range of pests. Garlic sprays are an indispensable part of the organic gardener’s arsenal. If you have the room, though, you should consider rotating crops and not planting garlic where garlic, onions, leeks, or any other member of the allium family has been planted in the past three years. While garlic is generally free from problems, pests, or diseases alike, crop rotation will ensure that the odd disease doesn’t visit your plants at all.

The Great Harvest
Harvesting your garlic is probably the trickiest part of growing garlic, but, truthfully, it’s not very hard at all. Timing is the main thing. If you harvest too early, the skins won’t have formed around each clove. If you harvest too late, the bulbs may have spread apart in the soil, plus the papery outside will be more prone to tearing (this results in poor storage abilities). After about a third of the plan has browned and died off, dig up a bulb and take a look. If it looks good, you can start the harvest right away. If it still looks immature, you’ll want to wait to harvest, checking the bulbs’ progress every few days.

Before garlic can be stored, it must be cured. The main thing to remember when curing your garlic is that you are drying the bulbs, and thus good air circulation is essential. After digging up or pulling the bulbs, gently brush the soil off. Don’t wash the bulbs—remember, think dry, not wet! Don’t worry about cutting off the stalk or leaves, since bulbs dried with their stalks and stems still attached store better. You can dry your bulbs in a number of ways, tying them in loose bundles and hanging them, putting them on screens or drying racks, even simply putting them in single layers on newspapers (in this case, you’ll have to turn the bulbs every so often). The key to successful curing is keeping the bulbs in a dry location away from direct sunlight.

Garlic can be stored for months at a time, so long as it has good air circulation. We have had good results using netted sacks hung from the basement rafters. If you have softneck garlic, you can also braid the stems and hang them up. As far as the temperature is concerned, 45-55 degrees is perfect. If you must, you may store the bulbs at a slightly higher temperature, but a lower temperature may cause the bulbs to sprout.

Sources
The biggest mistake that people make when growing garlic is trying to use garlic that they have purchased at the supermarket. While this garlic may be fine and tasty for eating, it is not appropriate for planting in the garden. The reason for this is that these cloves have most likely been treated with chemicals to inhibit sprouting.

I should also mention that while the initial investment in purchasing garlic cloves for planting may seem high, this is a one-time cost. At the end of the season, set aside some of the largest cloves for planting, and then you’ll have garlic again for the next year. Unless you decide to try new varieties, you shouldn’t have to buy seed garlic again.