Grow Better Veggies

Gardening Class: Grow the Earliest Tomatoes

I finally have my schedule of spring gardening classes set!  The hard part is trying to figure out what sort of classes people want.  One of the classes I thought people might like, "Grow the Earliest Tomatoes," necessitated me running out to my greenhouse and sowing seeds of my earliest maturing varieties:

This is the earliest I've ever sown tomato seeds.  My intention is for these babies to be ready to give out to participants in the "Grow the Earliest Tomatoes" class on February 2.  Students will learn the newest technology to get their tomatoes to fruit and ripen in early summer, rather than having to wait until mid to late summer for their first ripe tomatoes.  Class participants will take home varieties bred to mature early, such as Matina, First Lady, Siletz, Stupice, San Francisco Fog, Oregon Spring, and Early Girl.  I also sowed the varieties that turned out to ripen first in my garden last year, which were Lemony, Homer Fikes, Camp Joy Cherry and Sungold.

This class won't be for wimps or people not willing to put in some work.  If you want ripe tomatoes by the end of June (instead of the end of August, which sometimes happens here in Coastal California), then you'll need to fuss over them quite a bit and know what you're doing.  But if you want to do the work, I'm more than happy to show you how to do it.  This should be a fun and interesting experiment for those of you who want to be the first on your block to have ripe tomatoes.

For a full class description and tuition information, click here to be directed to my Upcoming Events/Classes page.  You will also find my other newly added classes to the schedule.  I'll talk about each one individually as the days go on.

Working on Upcoming Class List and Newsletter Contest Winners

Sorry for the delay in posting, folks, but I've been busy working on an upcoming roster of classes to be held here at Love Apple Farm.  I've been putting together descriptions, figuring out class dates, and outlining material lists.  I'll unveil the classes within the next couple of days, but for now I'll tell you that they include tomato seed sowing, growing giant tomatoes, growing very early summer tomatoes, starting a summer vegetable garden, compost and vermiculture, and keeping chickens.  Those of you on the "A" list (subscribers to my newsletter) will have the opportunity to win a class tuition or two.  Oh, I'll also be tallying and announcing the winner of the TomatoFest poster and tomato seeds!

Compost Mythbusters - Continued Yet Again!

Myth #3:  You Have to Turn Your Compost Pile

Truth:  You Don't Have to Turn Your Compost Pile!

Yes, it does help to turn it, but if you don't have time, or are otherwise unable (i.e., too lazy), then that's ok!  It will take longer, that is a certainty, but it's not required.  The beautiful compost in this picture was from an unturned pile.  We started the pile a year ago, in October.  We built it with an entire tree's leaves, all of our tomato vines we grew in 2006, and the contents of our chicken coop. Then we injected it with our biodynamic preps, covered it, and let it sit.  I meant to turn it.  I wanted to turn it, but turn it we did not.  So the pile just sat there, getting smaller and smaller as the decomposition process continued. 

When I wanted to start using it this past fall, we dug into it and discovered that it was ready to go.  A bit chunky, yes, but nevertheless crumbly, dark, and absolutely fabulous.  We screened it through our compost mesh, and have been adding it to our beds ever since.

Bottom line:  if you want quicker compost, go ahead and turn it; try to get the outside parts into the middle.  If you don't want to turn it, don't.  As long as it's built properly, with thin layers (2 to 4 inches thick) of alternating brown and green matter, it will eventually decompose nicely.  Takes about a year. 

Yet one more reason to go ahead and start that compost pile of yours.  Just do it!

Last Tomato of the Season - Merry Christmas to Me!

This tomato was not purchased from a grocery store, in fact, I seriously doubt you can buy an Orange Russian 117 (the name of this variety) at any store.  But wait, Cynthia, you might ask: "How is it that you have ripe tomatoes on Christmas day?"  The answer is that this tomato was picked two months ago, in mid October, after our first mild frost.  That spelled the end of our tomato season here in central coastal California, so we took down all of our tomato plants (over 100) and stripped the plants of all of their green viable fruits.  "Viable" means no breaks in the skin and large enough to make them worth saving.  The four large flats of tomatoes spent the next 8 weeks or so in my south-facing laundry room window slowly ripening.  We've been using them one or two every day, on my son's sandwiches he takes to school and in our salads.  Today marked the last of the batch.  And although it was 24 degrees Fahrenheit in our garden this morning, I had a little slice of summer right here in the kitchen.

Planting Leeks

In my opinion, the best way to grow leeks is to buy them as starts and transplant them.  I have tried to grow them from seed, but I much prefer the starter method.  Growing from seed is a bit tricky. It requires that the seeds be refrigerated over night before sowing, and then soil temps of between 68 and 78 degrees (20 to 25 Celsius).  After germination, they need thinning, and they do not give themselves up easily, often breaking during the process, necessitating another thinning of the regrown stumps.  So, since I already have my hands full of other things that absolutely require direct sowing and careful (read: time-consuming) thinning, I choose the starter method of planting leeks.

I buy them in "sets," meaning a bundle of plants (you can do the same with onions as well).  Seventy bucks gets me 30 bundles of 60 plants, about 1800 leeks.  I get them from Dixondale Farms in southern Texas. The photo above shows the last few bundles in their shipping container.

Before we plant, we use our standard bed prep, see this post for how I do that.  Once prepared, and the bed is quite fluffy from incorporating the amendments, we dig a trench about six inches deep with a trowel:

We then firmly push the bottom of the leek into the soft soil at the bottom of the trench, about an inch apart:

When we finish a row, we fill in the trench.  This is the important part: only a bit of the leek is then above the soil surface.  Most of the leek is underground.  This will enable the leek to grow tall and strong, as well as have a nice long white neck, before the above ground plant tissue is turned green from photosynthesis.  We then dig another trench about six inches next to the first row and continue planting.  Once we are finished, we water them in well.

Leeks can be grown year round in some climates, like my California garden.  If you live in a snowy area, they should be planted well before winter, so that when the snow comes, the leeks are big enough to continue living in the cold ground with a thick mulching of straw.  You can go out and harvest them as you like, big or small.  We typically pull them small for Manresa.  Here is a picture of some of our leeks prepared by Alain Passard when he came to the restaurant last spring to cook a few special dinners. Photo courtesy of Chezpim.com

Farm Animal of the Week: Indiana Jones

This is my Australian Shepherd, Indiana Jones.  We just call him "Indy." We have loads of pictures of Indy, because he's so photogenic, but this is my favorite of him, taken by Pim, of Chezpim fame.  I also call him "Superstar," because he's completely charismatic and everyone instantly loves him. His ears are always turning inside out, as you can see here as well, which makes him doubly cute.

Indy takes his farm duties very seriously.  He's always on the look-out for danger, whether it be a deer trying to eat the veggies or a chicken that needs herding back into the pen. Check him out here just lookin' fer trubbles:

He is the boss of all the dogs on the property, and makes sure they know it if another dog tries to steal his thunder.  Should one of our other dogs senses danger before Indy does, he'll jump up with an "Aaarghhh," and chase down the other dog, nipping them a bit like he would a sheep he was trying to herd, then go running off trying to figure out what the other dog was so riled up about.  Sometimes he never does find the problem.

Indy tries to help out on other projects as well.  Here he is supervising while the Chef buries our Prep 500 last fall.  He's as close as he can get to the hole without actually being in it:

Indy also gets impatient when I'm in the house taking too long on the computer, which seems to be quite a lot these days.  He's always poking his head up from under the table and looking at me with those big amber-colored eyes, telling me, "Hey we better get outside, there's trubbles out there to herd up and sort out!"

Indy and his sister, Trinity, who you will meet at another time, are rescue dogs.  They adopted us when they were 4 and 3 years old respectively.  Although we've only had them a year and a half, I can't imagine my life without these lovebugs.  I urge anyone who has space in their home and in their heart to adopt an adult dog from a shelter. They'll repay you tenfold with devotion.

The Winner of the 2008 Farmer's Market Calendar is...

For those who subscribe to my email newsletter, I run a contest each week. Last week I decided to hold a drawing for this gorgeous Farmers Market 2008 Calendar.

All people had to do to enter the drawing was to forward my newsletter to someone, anyone, perhaps even someone who works for Monsanto or another agriculture conglomerate hungry to rub out all farmers markets and ensure each of your food dollars is spent at Megalo-Mart on genetically-modified fruits and vegetables.  I am digressing!  On to the drawing!

First, I jotted down all the emails that forwarded my newsletter.  People who forwarded to more than one person got entered the number of times they forwarded. 

Then I put them all into a big vase and had my super handsome, strapping 17 year old son, Zach (those are his huge paws in the pic) to reach in and grab one.

Voila!  As you might be able to tell from this super-fuzzy photo (we are still learning how to use the macro setting on my new camera), the person whose email starts with: "Odonne" was the winner (I conveniently hid the rest of her email address as to save her from the onslaught of vicious hate emails ya'll are likely to send her because she won and you didn't! Ha!

Not to worry, though, Tana Butler, the creator of this beautiful calendar, has graciously promised to make a few more available for you guys to fight over at a future date.  Should you not want to wait for that, click here to go to a page where you can buy your own calendar.  Oh, and if you want in on these contests (this week we are giving away a TomatoFest Heirloom Tomato Poster and TomatoFest Seed Packets, click here to sign up for our free free free Grow Better Veggies newsletter.

Harvest Tuesday

Here's what we harvested for Manresa today:

Pac choi, cauliflower (two kinds), radishes, beets (three kinds), turnips, pea shoots, carrots (five kinds), kale (three kinds), New Zealand spinach, Bordeaux spinach, rapini, savoy cabbage, tatsoi, lettuces (three kinds), Violas, Calendula, fennel, mizuna, Chrysanthemum greens, red mustard, parsley, sorrel, cress, red cabbage sprouts, mache, minutina, arugula, chard, hon tsai tai and cardoons.  Oh, and we threw a few chicken eggs in the picture just for fun.

Invigorating the Garden with Prep 500

This week we applied biodynamic Prep 500 to all our beds. Prep 500 is composed of fresh cow manure that has been stuffed inside cow horns and buried for the six months between the spring and fall equinoxes. This picture, courtesy of Chez Pim, shows our cow horns freshly filled with manure last year and awaiting burial.  While underground, it is infused with the energy of the earth, and decomposes into a rich, completely non-smelly elixir. The small photo is of the manure after it's been buried for six months.  Isn't it beautiful?  It is then ready to be mixed and applied.

Prep 500, also also called "horn manure," is a soil enlivener. In biodynamics, we recognize that soil health is key to plant growth. But Prep 500 is not like worm castings or manure or compost, which are all typically applied by the shovel-full. We use only a small amount, some would say a homeopathic amount.  We begin with about three or four ounces of this manure-based substance, and mix it up into several gallons of water. We are making a medicine for the soil, so to speak, and every aspect of it needs to be a pure as possible.

We begin with well water – more pure than our city water. We bring the water to a warm temperature by heating over a natural fire. The ‘natural’ part of the fire – that it’s heat be based on a flame – is important for esoteric reasons which I cannot fully explain, though I get the essential reasoning. We’re not bombarding this water with electricity or microwaves, we’re heating it naturally. Once the water is warm, we take the prep in our hand; plunge it into the water, and begin to swirl it around, releasing it. Then we begin what is perhaps the most important part of the procedure: aerating it.  It's important to stir it in a certain fashion, to create vortexes that force the water high up onto the sides of the container.  A deep, conical depression is in the middle of our swirling. This is a vortex. Once we have a good vortex, we sustain it for a few moments, then violently interrupt it with our stirring implement, creating a bit of chaos as we begin to create a vortex in another direction. This process of vortexing – interruption – vortexing is repeated for one hour. Focus is maintained on the preparation, since we are making medicine for our soil.

As I directed Christopher through his first stirring, I told him how important it was during the hour to be quiet, focus on the vortex, and treat the stirring as a meditation.  He later wrote down his impressions: "I had time during the hour of vortexing to ponder what it is we were doing, and why it should work. And I recalled the perfect beauty of the horn manure. How it exemplified what we look for in a high quality soil or soil amendment, being moist, colloidal, and structured. And I thought of the vortexing procedure which is what plants are doing with respect to bringing the earth into light and the light into earth, as biodynamics recognizes. And it occurred to me that perhaps this preparation provides to the soil a template or vibrational exemplar toward which to aspire, and that by spreading it lightly around we are providing the soil with a goal worth working towards." Great meditation, Chris!

Now at the end of the stirring, it is dusk, and we are ready to apply it to our soils.  We do this with brushes, which we dip into the finished prep and flick droplets onto our planting beds.  This is a seemingly tiny amount, don't you think?  But we are talking here about a powerful substance, used in homeopathic quantities, that we trust will bring about subtle but significant improvements in our soil.

Horn manure prep is but one of the "elixirs" prescribed by Rudolph Steiner, the father of biodynamic agriculture.  His theories of natural growing preceded the modern organic movement.  Organic gardening overlaps many of Steiner's tenets.  Some call his ideas "voo-doo."  Some dismiss them out of hand.  The proof, to me, is in the growing.  And the healthiest gardens I've ever seen have been biodynamic ones.  So we'll continue our black magic here and thumb our nose at the skeptics.

 

Frosty California Mornings

When talking to folks in other parts of the country I sometimes like to fudge a bit and emphasize the warm temperatures we are enjoying here at the farm during the day. I guess this is because most non-desert locales experience less drastic temperature swings than we do in a typical twenty-four hour period. So when I tell others that it’s 61degrees Fahrenheit, I neglect to mention that the night-time low was 23 (minus 5 degrees Celsius).

Although some plants, like red mustard seem more-or-less able to tolerate the extreme night-time lows, most plants quickly give up the ghost without some form of protection. So every evening at dusk, Love Apple Farm undergoes a transformation. All our plants are covered up and tucked-in, beneath sturdy frost blankets.  These coverings are truly life savers for the plants, and for the farm, since our winter garden must continue to produce throughout even the coldest months. We also cover the rows inside our giant hoophouse, as the ambient interior temperature will only be about one degree warmer than the exterior during the night.

We mostly use the heaviest frost blanket available, which is rated to protect up to 10 degrees below freezing (although they seem to work just fine even lower than that).  These blankets can be purchased lighter weight as well, which will allow more sunlight in.  Since we use the heavy, we must uncover the rows first thing in the morning. You do not want to uncover until the temperature is above 32 degrees (0 degrees Celsius).  If you do, very sensitive plants (like lettuces) can still be damaged.

Announcing our Newsletter Winners

Every week I send out a newsletter to those on my email list.  Within each newsletter is an opportunity to win something, be it a veggie-related book, Love Apple Farm seeds, class tuition, tomato seedlings, garden implements, or who knows what else I'll come up with.  If you want to be part of it, enter your email in the little box on the right column here.

In my first newsletter two weeks ago, there was a seed give-away of ten of my favorite tomato varieties.  Seventeen people won, and each are getting ten different packets of my tomato seeds,as seen in the photo.  Here are the winners:

Jeff H. (Boulder Creek, CA), Marianne O. (Monterey, CA), Andrew H. (Hollisdale, Australia), Lauren M. (Boulder, CO), Melita I. (Aptos, CA), Doug W. (Santa Cruz, CA), Helen R. (Salinas, CA), J.Y.L. (Bonny Doon, CA), Mary Ellen L. (Santa Cruz, CA), Carol M. (Celina, TX), Kathleen T. (Ben Lomond, CA), Richard B. (Tampa, FL), Jill (Santa Cruz, CA), Julie F. (Santa Cruz, CA), Sharon C. (Columbia, CA), Susan B. (watsonville, CA), Allen S. (Atascadero, CA).

Last week's newsletter had the option for people to enter a drawing for: "The Tomato Festival Cookbook."  I'm happy to announce that the winner is Catt P.  I just sent her an email letting her know.

So sign up now for the Love Apple Farm newsletter.  You get to stay in the loop and perhaps win some cool stuff!

If you're a Food Lover, Don't Miss This!

I love food.  I don't know a whole lot about really fine food, like chef David Kinch or his super-glam gourmet food blogging girlfriend Pim does, but I do know that when I get to dine at Manresa, or other Michelin-starred restaurants, it's a transcendent experience for me.  That's why it's exciting for me to let you guys in on an amazing culinary opportunity; it's called Menu for Hope.

What is Menu for Hope?  It's a fabulous foodie charity raffle organized each year by Pim, of Chez Pim fame.  She sweet-talks a bunch of celebrity chefs, world-renowned  restaurants, food writers, and other culinary superstars to donate mega-prizes.  Each $10 raffle ticket gets you in the running for the prize of your choosing.  And these aren't ordinary prizes; here's a sample:  Dinner for two at a slew of great restaurants, both local and international, gourmet gift baskets from internationally known shops and kitchens, high-end cooking apparatuses, and signed copies of books by famous peeps!

Love Apple Farm is participating by opening our gate for a personal tour for two led by chef David Kinch. We'll plunge your hand into our over 100 degree biodynamic compost pile, let you gather eggs from under our fancy chickens, and pluck a radish straight from the ground as your first amuse bouche of the day. The lucky winners of this prize then head off to Manresa (one of Gourmet Magazine's picks for top restaurant in the U.S.) for an unbelievable bazillion-course dinner with premium wine pairings, courtesy of Chez Pim and Manresa.  Can you imagine winning this for a measly $10?

Food bloggers around the world host the regional prize groupings, although you can try to win any prize in the world.  If you want to get a tour of the el Bulli experimental kitchen by chef Ferran Adrià (in Spain), then feel free to put your raffle ticket in that "hat."

For U.S. West Coast prize offerings, click over to Rasa Malaysia.  For other regions, see the full list at Chez Pim.  To go directly to the donation and enter raffle page, go to the administration site, Firstgiving.

Farm Animal of the Week: White Cochin Hen

Isn't she gorgeous?  She's a Cochin hen, a large breed that is known for their gentle natures and fluffy feet.  I call them my Frodo chickens (for those of you not familiar with Hobbits, they have furry feet).

My son, Zach took this picture, and he was lucky to get it with the hen eating a sprig of parsley.   We give our hens just about everything we don't send to the restaurant or compost.  Weeds, Manresa kitchen scraps, our own kitchen scraps, harvest trimmings, or brush trimmings, the girls get most of it.  It keeps our feed costs down, gives the hens treats that they dearly love, not to mention that a diet rich in lots of different things results, I believe, in better tasting eggs.  I swear their eggs are extra herbalicious when we do our twice annual cutting back of our herb garden.  I'm not sure how the bugs they are always catching affect the taste of the eggs, but at least it's really good protein.

The hens know when we're bringing them treats.  They see us walking toward them with a bucket or a wheelbarrow, and they come running.  We dump the receptacles in their pen and they happily scratch, squawk, and cluck in delight.

What I've noticed over the years is that they're not the biggest fan of tomatoes.  Could it be they instinctively think it's a deadly type of a nightshade?  I'm convinced they can automatically tell when a plant or a piece of kitchen scrap isn't good for them.  Despite this eerie instinct, they eventually reluctantly accept the tomatoes, preferring the seedier varieties.  Maybe I'm imagining this reluctance.  It couldn't be that they're just tired of the hundreds of pounds of tomatoes they get fed over the course of a season, could it?  Sometimes I almost see them sigh when I give them yet another bucket of tomatoes. 

It does make for some pretty tasty huevos rancheros, though. Thanks, gorgeous!

Biodynamics and Root Vegetable Sowing

Post by Christopher Donovan

I first encountered biodynamics when I studied for a year at Sunbridge College (formerly The Rudolph Steiner Institute), in Chestnut Ridge, New York.  My fellow students and I were studying to be Waldorf teachers,  reading a lot of Steiner, and being exposed to all of the wacky things that Steiner-folks do -- like sculpture, eurythmy, and biodynamic gardening.  Each week we students would trudge out to the garden, where -- under the watchful eye of a god-like man named Gunther -- we would be instructed in the metaphysics of soil enhancement and plant growth. 

For in biodynamics, the metaphysics -- the larger than physical -- comes first.  To try and explain biodynamics as a list of prescriptions or tenets is like describing an ocean as a compilation of water and salt, together with the animals that live in it.  Technically true, but the poetry is gone, and so is the essence.

The essence of biodynamics is a holistic understanding of the plant as a being.  Part of what allows biodynamics to succeed in producing such radically tasty and powerfully nutritious vegetables is its awareness of the influences of other forces in the cosmos:  lunar forces, planetary influences, and tensions among these.

Which is why, to finally get to the point indicated by this post's title, when it comes time to plant -- but especially when it comes time to sow -- we consult Maria Thun's biodynamic planting calendar. This calendar saves us a lot of work, since it summarizes for each day -- and in one word -- the universal (planetary, lunar, etc.) attributes for the day, as they relate to planting. For those of you interested in a brief summary of this calendar for the year 2007, go here.

For instance, this past Wednesday was a "root day."  (Next to December 5th, 2007, in the planting calendar, the word "root" appears.)  Which means that, in a nutshell, root vegetables will benefit from being planted on that day.  (The other ways of characterizing days are "fruit," "leaf," and "flower.")

So we knew we had to get those root vegetables in the ground, and we knew it would be best for them if it happened before the sun set on Wednesday.  We planted three kinds of carrots (Thumbelina, White Satin, and Nelson), three kinds of beets (Chioggia, Detroit Red Top, and Golden), Hakurei Turnips, and a new type of long white radish from Italy.  We planted them in the hoophouse, in a long bed that contains soil-heating cables (otherwise they wouldn't be able to germinate in our cold December weather).  Cynthia will explain more about how to use soil-heating cables in an upcoming post.

That is a brief description of how we at Love Apple Farm allow biodynamics to guide and support us as we guide and support our vegetables -- and vice-versa. 

By Chef David Kinch: Into the Vegetable Garden...The evolution of a dish

The Chef wrote this post.  When I asked him about including a photo of the dish, he said, "People need to smell, taste, and feel it to really experience it.  Seeing a one-dimensional picture of it isn't the same."  I've had the pleasure of eating the dish.  I couldn't agree more.  Here are his words:

The relationship between Love Apple Farm and Manresa Restaurant is very special. Love Apple is not a show garden, nor does it exist for just PR purposes. It is not just a seasonal garden; it’s where the bulk of the restaurant produce is grown year round. It is a working farm, an integrated facet of the restaurant, just as important as anything or anyone else. Its role is unique; not many other restaurants have the opportunity to create an exclusive farm to table relationship that has such an impact on a menu.

From the very beginning, we wanted to create a dish that celebrated the garden, that showed the special nature of our relationship and how it constantly changes, not only with the ephemeral changes of the seasons, but with the thoughts and designs of the kitchen team.

It had to be a vegetable dish and the obvious choice was to create one in which the complexities come from the abundance of the produce itself.

There is a reference point for a dish like this. Michel Bras in Lagioule, France is one of the most influential chefs of the last century and into this century. Ingredient obsessive, and a forager of forgotten flavors, his food is unmistakably French. He nevertheless embraces, in fact, helped create, the modernist aesthetic we see developing around the world. He has a huge (and is perhaps the largest) influence on Ferran Adria and the other Spanish vanguardists who garner a lot of current press. Bras’ dish was simple; a “gargouillou” or a dish of vegetables (with a touch of ham). It contained herbs and vegetables, cultivated and foraged, raw and cooked, grains, flowers, etc. He wanted this melange to reflect the landscape and country that he was in. The dish changed as the seasons did, a perfect reflection of that seasonality. This dish has had enormous influence on a whole generation of chefs around the world, many who took the idea and built their own theme into it. Some, like Andoni Aduriz of Mugaritz, just outside of San Sebastian and one of the world’s brilliant talents, has placed his own stamp on what has now become a signature dish at his restaurant worthy of his name.

So how did we start? The only real rule for this dish was that if it had arrived from the garden, then it had to be on the plate.

We originally started with a dish called “Potato gnocchi and burrata cheese, vegetables from the garden." After awhile the gnocchi became a superfluous element, especially since Cynthia started harvesting fantastic varieties of potatoes.

So it became “Potatoes and vegetables from the garden, burrata cheese.”

But through the course of our first four full seasons we wanted to go even more. We did not want it to be a collection, but a plate as if we had held a mirror up to the garden and it showed an edible reflection. The ephemeral nature of what the unfolding seasons show us, the daily nuanced changes that only Cynthia and her team see must be present.

Over time we have learned how we can use different elements of a plant at different times of its life: roots, stems, seed, flowers, buds, leaves, shoots, etc. The possibilities are endless. This changed things dramatically. We began to view the dish more as a concept, a mirror, and not just as a plate of food. We wanted customers to step into the garden, to enter it in their taste and in their minds when they ate the dish, to feel as if they transported themselves to the garden of which we are so proud.

So we changed the name and called it “Vegetables from the garden, their vegetable juices.”

We then created an edible “dirt” based on roasted chicory root and dried potatoes, which not only played its visual role but a superbly flavorful one, contributing the slight bitter note that we had been searching for.

We changed the name one more time.  It became “Into the vegetable garden.” This concept of a sense of place on a plate, not just a reflection of the terroir, but for the dish to actually represent the location is a big step. There are some groundbreaking chefs who are taking these ideas to the next logical step of what we are just touching on. It is fascinating.

We have a lot of visitors to the farm and the restaurant, both customers and people in the industry. It is amazing the reaction that we get from them when they have the dish after a visit to Cynthia’s special place. It is interesting that almost all understand the idea, and some even take it with them.

This dish has now been on our menu for two years and the name never changes. But the dish does.

Everyday.

Like a day in the garden.

Compost Mythbusters - Continued

Myth #2: You Need a Fancy-Pants Compost Bin

This is the "ComposTumbler."  You don't need this.  It's $499.00.  Your wallet doesn't need this, unless you want your wallet composted in 14 days like the ad says.

Some people think they need a pre-fabbed bin to start making compost. There are even loads of composters that are significantly cheaper than the tumble-type bins. I still say do NOT put off making the best soil amendment EVER by waiting on a specially made structure. 

Great home-made compost is the most important thing you can do for your plants. It should be an absolute priority for you.  Compost can completely eliminate the need to buy expensive fertilizers and amendments for your garden.  After several years of adding two or three inches of compost per year to planting beds, their health will improve dramatically.  You'll see a reduction in both pests and diseases, because healthy soils grow healthy plants.  Healthy plants are much less susceptible to both pests and diseases. 

You can start a simple compost pile tomorrow in a corner of your yard with no tools whatsover and no container.  Just start alternating shallow layers of brown and green waste.  That's carbon (brown) and nitrogen (green). If you want to make a simple structure, then do what we do here at Love Apple Farm.  Our piles are merely wire fencing material formed into a circle.  Here's a schematic of this type of ultra-simple compost bin:

We use concrete reinforcing wire for our piles, but I would prefer to make them with the 2 x 4 wire fencing, like the diagram.  The reason we don't is that we have an overstock of the concrete wire, and we try to use what we have. 

Our circle bins are about five feet in diameter.  We start with circles of wire about two and half feet high, and then as the pile builds, we'll add another level of wire to get the pile higher.  We'll stop after three levels, or about 6 feet.  We don't build the piles all in one day, but rather over a period of a month or two, then stop when the pile is high enough.  At that point, we'll insert our biodynamic preps, cover it, and let the decomposition process happen.  Let's go through it step by step:

After you've got your circle in place, the first layer in contact with the ground ideally should be some twiggy material, like corn stalks, dahlia stalks, or small branches.  This layer aids in air circulation, and helps airflow to the interior of the pile, which aids in the break down of the plant materials. 

After this first layer, all you need to do is alternate your green and brown layers.  Kitchen waste, fresh manures, weeds, and green plant trimmings are all high in nitrogen and considered "green."  Most things that are dry, such as fallen leaves, straw, paper towels, and coffee grounds, are considered carbon, or "brown."  We make each layer quite thin, about two or three inches.  This layering is essential to cause the heat generation required for decomposition.  Here are our major layers, clockwise from the top left: fallen leaves, Manresa kitchen trimmings, end-of-season tomato vines, and handfuls of wood ash from our fireplace:

After every few layers, we water the pile for a good 5 minutes, then leave it be until we have more fodder for the layering.  You can take a few months continuing to build your pile, but at some point, just cover it up and leave it alone. After that, start another one next to it while you're waiting for the first one to finish composting.
Next post in this series: Myth #3: You Need to Turn Your Compost Piles

Compost Mythbusters

Myth #1: You can't compost animal products

Well, I'm here to tell you that you can indeed compost animal products.  Look at this beautiful blue fin tuna head.  It came from Manresa, and would have ended up in the dumpster had it been at just about any other restaurant.  But here at Love Apple Farm, we take all the fish waste back to the garden and compost it.  This tuna head was gigantic; it's hard to get a proper perspective on its size, but if you check out the head of romaine lettuce next to it, you can appreciate how big it was.

You can compost animal carcasses as well.  I was initially appalled at this revelation when Harald Hoven, my professor at the Rudolph Steiner College explained how they regularly put road kill carcasses in their biodynamic compost piles.  But after helping the class turn a pile that had six months before contained eight dead opossums, I became a believer.  The only discernible residue of the opossums in the now perfectly black and crumbly compost was small bones and skulls.  Harald explained how they sprinkle a good handful of lime on the carcass to help get the decomposition started.

I haven't quite got up the nerve yet to compost any dead animals, mostly because the restaurant keeps us in a pretty steady stream of fish parts.  We keep my dogs and the marauding racoons out of the fish-infused piles by making sure there is plenty of plant waste put immediately on top of and around the stinky bits.  Once enough plant residue is properly layered on the fish and then compacted down by stomping on the pile (more on that later), the decaying fish smell isn't noticeable to humans.  As far as the curious critters are concerned, I further ensure they don't dig up the pile by having high wire sides to it, and covering it with a tarp.

Fish products in the compost pile make  extra nutritious finished compost.  You all know the benefits of fish emulsion on plant growth; it's very high in nitrogen.  Having the decomposed fish in the compost just adds another healthy element to this all-important soil amendment.  And let me tell you, the quality of Manresa's seafood scraps couldn't possibly be any better.  They indeed help us grow better vegetables.

Stay tuned for more compost myths debunked this week.