Keeping your garden warm through the fall

Here comes fall again...its seems like just yesterday I had ample daylight to do with as I pleased: after-dinner hikes, early morning bird walks, flexibility to do my garden chores whenever they fit in.  Now, I am scrambling to get everything done before it gets dark.  The revolving seasons change the way we are currently gardening at the Armstrong Education Center.  We can't create more hours of sunlight, but we can surely govern the micro climate in our garden to keep temperatures  – and production – from dropping too low.  There are many techniques for what is commonly called 'season extension', which generally means growing crops beyond their normal outdoor growing season.  Some forms of season extension – such as the greenhouse – certainly ring a bell with most people.  Lesser known methods with interesting names such as 'row covers', 'hoop houses' and 'cold frames' are actually used regularly among small to medium sized agricultural operations.

Row covers, used to extend the growing season, at the Armstrong Education Center.

Underneath the row cover.  Inside, our swiss chard, kale and carrots will get some early winter protection.  

This week at the Armstrong Education Center gardens, Sarah Bush and I installed Agribon AG-19 row covers over our remaining crops of salad greens, carrots, beets and herbs.  This material will provide protection against early frosts and, until then, keep the beds from cooling off on cold nights.  In addition to season extension, row covers are used for a variety of other reasons including pest control and preventing wind damage.  Just googling 'row covers' will yield dozens of helpful sites and hundreds of pictures.  
         
On a personal level, learning about row covers and season extension opened my eyes to the commitment, skills, knowledge, and ingenuity of the farming community.  When I first saw season extension I thought "Wow, these people just wont give up!".  I first encountered season extension in Alaska where, with only a three month growing season I expected not to find many farmers, but I did.  Growers in Alaska take advantage of the looooong days, which help crops grow almost before their eyes.  To get a jumpstart on the late season and to hang onto it as long as possible, the Alaskan growers that I met used various methods of season extension.

Alaska Grown is a state program that promotes Alaska state agriculture

To me, these techniques represent a certain strain of resilience, stubbornness and dedication that I am finding to be universal among food growers.  I am learning from these growers that to keep a productive and sustainable garden requires us to master the art and science raising plants.  At the Armstrong House, productivity and sustainability are goals and in only our first growing year, we are learning a lot.  To increase productivity and sustainability in the future, we have much more planning and learning to do; our row covers are just the beginning.  Stay tuned to see what else we try.

For the region's authority on growing, gardening, farming and agriculture see Stone Barns.  Visit their website at least, but do yourself a favor and visit their farms, sit in on a class and participate in a workshop.  A recent trip to their greenhouse, hoop houses, orchards and compost arena left me speechless.  They really know how to grow food over there.            

Seasons of want and plenty

I'm not a foodie but I have a couple foodie friends who would rather eat dirt than a winter tomato from the supermarket.  After hearing their arguments and giving my taste buds some time to reflect, I am beginning to agree.  At the Armsrong Education Center, I am trying something new this year: my partner, Sarah, and I bought 40 pounds of organic heirloom tomatos from Amawalk Farm in Katonah, NY, and processed them into sauce for the winter.  Come January, when the mealy tomatoes get shipped in from who knows where, we will be thawing out bags of tomato sauce for pastas, pizzas, chillis and more.  Here is what the process looked like:    

We met a farmer and asked if we could buy slightly damaged tomatoes at a reduced price.  They were happy to sell off tomatoes that weren't otherwise marketable.  After a quick trip to their farm, we came home with two big boxes of assorted heirloom tomatoes. 

A quick rinse

Some of the tomatoes were a bit under ripe so we set them aside to eat in a few days.  They will not be made into sauce.  This informative pictures appeared on the side of the tomato box.  The tomato faces are cute. 

We cut up the sauce tomatoes and removed any damaged parts.  On average, each tomato had one or two small spots that needed to be cut out and composted.  This step took roughly 2 hours. 

  

We placed the tomatoes into a oven pan and added good olive oil, salt and cloves of garlic.  We broiled the tomatoes for roughly 25 minutes.  We stirred the tray two times to make sure the garlic didn't burn. 

  

Amazing. 



We spooned the sauce into freezer bags

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. 



What does freezing bags of tomato sauce have to do with Living Lighter on the Land?

1)  Food is nature, nature is food.  We can't fully understand and appreciate nature without understanding our food and bigger 'food systems'.  We may not think of a single asparagus plant as part of the ecosystem, but when you consider our country's land cover, agriculture plays no small role.  In America, the millions of acres of agriculutral land (formerly wild forests, prairies and wetlands) still connect with the greater ecosystems through their soil, water, plants, animals and the atmoshphere.  There's no two ways about it: our agricultural operations are big part of our new ecosystems.  To rethink your place in nature is to rethink your place in your food system. 

When I thaw out my sauce in the winter I will know exactly where it came from, who picked it, who shipped it, who cleaned it, who cooked it, and who bagged it.  That's food safety.  Also, I will know how the farm operates, the philosophy of the farmers, how the farmers treat their land and how the farm fits into the greater ecosystem.  That's land stewardship. 

2) Eating in season, or perhaps more accurately stated, buying in season.  When we buy food out of season, that food gets shipped from very far away.  Southern California and Florida are the closest large winter-food producing regions, and much of our winter food comes from Central and South America.  A tomato that travels 3,000 miles (and the fuel that was required to do so) doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  I'd rather buy it from a farm five miles away and freeze it.       

Freezing is just one option.  You can pickle, jar, smoke, cure, and dehydrate your food to keep it for the winter.  It's surely not easier than driving to the supermarket, but it puts you back in control of your food.  Plus, you can feel good knowing that you would have made your grandmother proud. 

Commenting on this Blog is now much easier

I must apologize to my readers who were unable to leave comments under 'anonymous' or 'name'.  As it turns out, Blogger (who hosts this site), comes equipped with a few bugs.  I have worked out the bugs and it is now possible to leave all the comments you wish.  FYI, I used my mother as a guinea pig on my new and improved settings.  If she can successfully leave a comment, surely you can too.

I am sorry if I inadvertently turned my readers into this angry fellow.  Sometimes computers can be frustrating.  

Adorable...and awesome

Source: http://www.idealhomegarden.com

Post # 26 The more adorable side of conservation

Remember the three R's: reduce, reuse and recycle?  Well, I just realized that they are listed in order of importance. While recycling is awesome, we should really focus on reducing our consumption and, in the example below, reusing the things we already have.  

This little piece of wall art hangs next to my sink at the Armstrong House Education Center to instruct my guests of our sponge reuse policy. I cannot take credit for this – it was inspired by a friend of mine. Feel free to replicate.  Stay tuned for more adorable conservation-based wall art in the future.  Send me yours and I will post it on the Blog.

Post #25 Setting goals

Last week's post was about a particular weed called mile-a-minute vine that is spreading through our forests and killing other plants.  I began my last post with the musing 'what is a weed?'  The word 'weed' isn't technically a botanical term; there is not a group of plants that botanists have described as 'weeds'.  Instead, weeds – or undesirable plants – are only weeds within a certain context.  For example, a dandelion growing along the railroad tracks may not be considered a weed, but as soon as it pops up in your lawn it certainly is.  Likewise, sugar maple seeds are very welcome to germinate in the forest, but the gardener will rip them up once they sprout among her kale.

Dandelion, a common weed.  

From these examples you can see that a plant's context is what makes them a weed and their weediness usually stands in our way of achieving a goal.  For example, the gardener is trying to raise some food for her family.  Garden=context.  Food=goal.  Weeds=reduce food production.  Once there is a context and a goal is set, weeds take form.  Once a person builds a garden and is committed to growing some food, plants like lady's thumb and sorrel automatically become the weeds, simply because these plants grow quickly in full sun and can crowd out our vegetables.  It really has nothing to do with the plants themselves, their weediness is simply a result of our decision to keep a garden.  No gardens, no weeds. Simple.

The mandala garden at the Armstrong House Education Center, where we get our fair share of weeds growing among the desirable vegetables and herbs.  

Lets think bigger than our backyard garden.  What are our goals for Pound Ridge's land?  Once we set some town wide goals, our town wide weeds will take form.   Believe it or not, conservation is a bit like gardening.  Conservationists, just like gardeners, decide what we want to remove from the land, what we want to keep on the land and how we want the land to appear/ work.  Of course, its easier to control your backyard garden than something huge and complex like a forest or a watershed, but the principle is identical.  Gardeners and conservationists follow the same process: we identify our context, set our goals and manage our weeds.

So I'll ask you again, what are our goals for the garden of Pound Ridge?

It is safe to say that the people of Pound Ridge have at least one common goal: forests.  People move here because of our beautiful trees.  Our forests are pleasing to look at, give our homes privacy, provide us with shade in the summer, keep our soil in place, provide food and shelter for hundreds of forests critters and dazzle our eyes in the fall with their colors.  Honestly, our honorary membership in Southern New England would be revoked if we didn't have such forests – the New England states would simply laugh us off stage.  Beyond all these reasons, we must admit that there is something magical about forests that touch our soul.  Can we all agree, then, that we like our forests?

An artsy photograph I took of a forest in Pound Ridge, NY.  We surely love our trees around here.    

So back to our formula.  Context= Pound Ridge.  Goal= a forest full of trees.  Weed=?
This is easy. The greatest threat to our trees is the cute and fuzzy white tailed deer, period.  At their current density, virtually ZERO NEW TREES are being recruited into the forest.  Sure, we have trees now (fewer by the storm, mind you) but we will have less in twenty years, far fewer in fifty years and in one hundred years Pound Ridge will be hanging onto its forested past via a few giants.  Good bye New England, hello NY metro.

A white tailed deer browsing a tree branch

What will our future landscape look like?
In general, the forest will grow older and older and without new recruits, we will see a large gap in the age demographics of the trees.  The youngest trees we have now (roughly 10-15 years old), will always be the forest's youngest trees.  Therefore, in 50 years, the youngest trees will be 65 years old, standing over an understory that is open, bare, and sparsely vegetated.  Instead of an understory of native trees, we will have extensive shrub thickets of deer resistant invasive plants (Japanese barberry, wine berry, multiflora rose) under an aging canopy.

What's the gardener to do?               
As conservationist/gardeners we have to decide what we want our landscape to look like in 20, 50 and 100 years.  Once we set our goals, lets get to work managing our weeds.  I, for one, vote for trees.

If you are new to this white tail deer conversation, there are plenty of resources to become acquainted with.  See below.  If you are a veteran of this conversation, what are you doing to grow more trees?  I currently have 40 young trees growing in a small nursery at the Armstrong House Education Center.  Soon I'll have 60.  In addition to planting native trees, maybe we should come together as a town and do something about our deer.  These weeds are certainly within our power to manage.  

Deer related resources:

Background ecological information
http://www.na.fs.fed.us/fhp/special_interests/white_tailed_deer.pdf
http://www.duke.edu/web/nicholas/bio217/ekc7/deer.htm                       
           
Local conservation groups measuring the effect of deer on plants
http://www.mianus.org/2012/07/main-deer-exclosure-is-now-open-to-public/

Deer hunting in Pound Ridge, NY
http://www.townofpoundridge.com/boardsandcommissions/deer-management-pound-ridge

Conversations about effective control measures
http://www.mianus.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/RECORDREVIEW3.9.10_Contraceptive_darts_may_hold_key_to_managing_deer_population.pdf