The Urban Farmer’s Almanac

These days it’s not hard to run into someone extolling the virtues of eating local, or growing your own food, or getting in touch with your inner omnivorous dilemma. It can get a little old, even for someone who is all for it the ideas at hand. One reason is that it seems like a lot of extra expense or effort just to prove you’re “aware” and achieving your proper balance in the food system. Sometimes, a bag of Doritos just sounds delicious and kale is the last thing I want.

Then yesterday we ate our first salad of the year, thinning out the thick rows of lettuce. And despite the obvious cliché, it was different enough from our typical winter fare of crock pot meals to make us look up and say, “This salad is actually pretty amazing.” It was probably 15 minutes out of the garden, with a lemon-honey-mustard vinaigrette and some pepper, so light and tender that it just about melted in your mouth (in a way that wasn’t weird for a vegetable to do.)

We started a bunch of seeds way back in January, getting things going on the kitchen counter, and then moving them to the back porch. They stalled out on the back porch, so we moved them to the portable greenhouse hoping that some warmth would perk things up. You’ll see a photo from 3 weeks ago, and bunch from today, and you can indeed see that despite the miserable weather here in Seattle, the plants are thriving in there. Plus, the lettuce that Hannah and I planted awhile back is ready to start eating… starting with a salad or three from thinning the rows. (Look at how small the lettuce is in the background of the first picture).

A bunch of the plants are in pots made from newspaper (thanks ReadyMade magazine) and ready for the seedling exchange I’m going to in a few weeks. We have tons of tomatoes, peppers, and squash, along with a couple different kinds of cucumbers and some swiss chard; way more than we have room for.

{ 2 posts today because I always get excited when I see we’re being linked from somewhere… thanks to Trudy’s friend Emily for finding this one from Apartment Therapy’s Re-Nest. Onward and upward! }

Free plant story #1: Last weekend, while doing my normal Craigslist cruising of the Farm and Garden section, I noticed someone who was willing to trade strawberry and raspberry starts for poppies. Well, our yard produces crazy amounts of poppies (and they’re pretty, if short-lived, when I forget to weed-whack them down.) So I dug up a couple of them and ended up getting a bunch of strawberries, rasberries, and as a bonus, a rhubarb start in exchange. Everyone wins – we were both just getting rid of plants that were getting out of control in our yards.

Free plant story #2: Last November we were in Leavenworth for Thanksgiving. On one of our walks I noticed an entire hillside covered with hops (the plant that adds the bitterness and aroma to beer). I stole away for a half hour and scavenged a bag full of hops, and though they were pretty brown, they smelled really good. My extreme-brewing brother Alex was all for doing an experiment with them, but my scientist-brewing brother Ian was appalled at the sight. A few months later they remained unused, so my laziness decided for me that it wasn’t a great move to brew with them, and into the compost pile they went.

However, I didn’t only harvest expired hops that day. I also pulled up a couple chunks of root (hops spread like crazy and any part of the plant that touches the ground will send down roots). Over the winter I had a couple pots with these roots sitting in the back yard, and they just started sprouting. I installed some wires for the hops to climb on the side of the house, and by the end of the summer they should be 15 feet in the air, ready to make some tasty beer.

This is an interesting post from the local wannabe-farmer message board this week:

We just enjoyed our last 2009 home-grown tomato this week! For the first time we tried hanging our tomatoes up to ripen indoors when the rains arrived last fall. Last November we cut the stems that had green tomatoes on them and hung them over our kitchen sink. We just cut 2-3 foot-long stems and strung them up in our kitchen window (which doesn’t actually get any sun). It was a big improvement over the previous year, when I pulled entire plants up and hung them in our garage — and then kept forgetting to check them.

I was amazed at how much time had passed between harvest and getting to enjoy the last of the tomatoes.

Leslie

The Jersey Supreme asparagus that we planted last year is just starting to come up.

I keep checking the asparagus bed for signs of life, and finally today there were two tiny little asparagus spears poking out of the ground. Asparagus patches take a couple years to establish so we bought crowns that were supposed to be ready the next year and planted them last summer. Asparagus are kind of the divas of the vegetable world; I had to dig an 18 inch ditch to plant them in, let them grow some, then bury them up to their necks, so to speak, in more dirt. However, once they’re established, an asparagus patch will apparently last 10 years or more. With any luck, they’ll be our first edible crop this spring, and for many springs to come.