10 Great Reasons to Plant a Vegetable Garden in 2010 December 31, 2009

I think there are probably 2010 great reasons to Plant a Vegetable, Herb, Fruit garden in 2010, but I have dinner plans here in a short while, so I’m going to give you just 10 good ones.

1.  You control what you eat.  For years, I just assumed that everything I ate was safe and fresh.  It never occurred to me to ponder where it came from, who grew it, who picked it, what it was planted in, or what it was sprayed with.  Not to mention, whether the seeds had been genetically modified to make the plant more pest resistant, to have fewer seeds, to grow bigger and faster, or what any of that meant.  Many of these things, I’m still learning.  I know exactly what I am planting, that no chemicals are sprayed on any of it, and that inorganic chemical fertilizer has touched my vegetables.  I know what I’m eating and importantly, what I’m not eating.

2.  Home grown food is as fresh as it gets.    Vegetables start to lose valuable  nutrients the moment they are picked.  Fruits ripen very quickly after being quick, and can be stored for long before they go bad.  Fresh food lasts a lot longer, and is more nutritious.  You are able to harvest only what you need at mealtime, as well.  Much of what is available at the grocery store has been sitting in a truck for days making its way from Mexico, Brazil, California, wherever.

3.  Fresh produce tastes better, because it is fresher and picked when ready, not ripened in a box in the back of a truck.  Fresh herbs make everything taste better, and there is nothing like having all of the herbs you use, available for snipping right from the yard or patio.

4.  Eating home grown foods is good for the environment.  The fewer trucks on the roads transporting fruits and vegetables to the grocery store helps save energy and fossil fuels, which is good for the Earth.

5.  Growing fruits and vegetables, especially from seed, is economical.  A 1 gram packet of lettuce seeds will provide a continuous supply of lettuce for several weeks, for the cost of $1.99 or less.  A bundle of onion starts, about 50 onions, is $1.50.  When properly stored, onions can last up to a year.  Heirloom tomatoes were $5.99 a pound at my local store this Spring and Fall.  One heirloom tomato plant cost around $2.00 at a local plant sale.  Seeds are even less, and plants produce fruit for at least one season.  There is an initial cost to get a garden set up and fill it with good soil, and the soil should be amended from time to time.  Amending with compost is recommended, and if you start a compost pile or bin, compost is free, (leaves, yard clippings, vegetable scraps)

6.  Gardening doesn’t take a lot of time, unless you want to spend lots of time gardening.  Plant, water, harvest, eat.  It is pretty simple if you provide good soil and have adequate sun.  Nature does most of the work.

7.  Gardening is relaxing in a stressful world.  I find that I get my most creative ideas, when I’m digging in the soil, whether dropping in seeds, or digging  hole for transplants.

8.  Gardening provides a bit of free exercise, and the opportunity to get outside and breath in the air and feel the sunshine.

9.  Children will eat what they have participated in growing.  Kids love to garden and are more willing to eat vegetables they had a hand in bringing to the table.  Watching the progression of seeds in the soil, as they grow into something edible, is fascinating and fun!

10.  Austin and the surrounding area has a year round growing season.  Every month is a month to plant and a month to harvest.  You can eat well all year long with a garden.

If growing your own foods sounds like something you might like to do, but don’t know how to get started, or don’t own a wheelbarrow and shovel, we can come get you set up with a raised bed filled with good organic soil, and seeds or plants that are season, and get you started.  In 2010, we plan to offer some continued support options should you find you need help along the way.  For the do-it-yourselfers, we have kits available for pick up, and can offer advice on good soil, plant and seed resources, if  you wish.

2009 was a great gardening year for me.  Here are 10 reasons I’m glad I became a gardener, plus 1 reason I wish I’d picked the broccoli sooner.    With all the lessons I learned this year, I’m truly excited about the possibilities of 2010.

Onions

Garden basil for pesto

Green Bean plant sprouting

Spinach

Peppers

So many peppers I learned to pickle!

Sugar Snap Pea

Woops, didn't pick the broccoli early enough. Lessons learned.

Strawberry Patch

Resolve to Eat Local in Austin in 2010 December 31, 2009

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, because they usually are too grandios for success.  My future goals include growing more of my own food, supplementing my home grown produce with produce from the farmer’s market, and eating no meat of unknown origin.  I admitted to a friend today, that I have not stuck to the latter, buying only locally sourced, humanely raised, hormone free meats, 100%.  If a local grocery store sends me an email advertising ribeyes for $8.99 per pound, I have stocked up, without asking the source.  I am going to commit to eat healthier, and stick to my goal of buying from local farmers, so that I can control what I consume.    Food, Inc., the movie, still looms in my conscience every day and I highly recommend it to everyone.  I don’t want salmonella or E coli, but I don’t want hamburger that has been washed in bleach, or chicken breasts from chickens who were bred to have such large breasts they couldn’t stand up.    That’s just me.

In that vain, I spent much of the day amongst local farmers.  See previous posts about Boggy Creek Farms.  Below are pictures from this afternoon’s Farmer’s Market held at the Triangle Development, every Wednesday from 3:00 to 7:00.  What an amazing array of beautiful, organic, humane food.  This market, like the Downtown Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, is sponsored by the Sustainable Food Center, an organization committed to helping folks eat local, healthy organic food, and supporting local farms.  I’m not a photographer, so I hope the pictures are OK.

Local Honey

Engel Farms Produce

Richardson Farms

Today's offerings from Kocurek Family Artisinal Charcuterie

Sustainable Food Center demonstration table, cooking shrimp

Photos from Boggy Creek Farm December 30, 2009

I got to Boggy Creek Farm this morning, specifically looking to pick up some Pure Luck Farms Chevre and Meyer Lemons.  The farmstand was bustling with people and the tables were full of organic vegetable goodness, local honey, baked goods and tamales.   I got my Chevre, lemons and some lettuce which I didn’t need, since my garden is full of lettuce, but it was too pretty to resist.  I paid a visit to the chickens and snapped their photo. Larry told me there is one chicken who is about 14 years old.  I guess they live longer lives when treated as well as these chickens are.  These chickens are given room to roam and be happy chickens, not stacked in cages.  Everything about Boggy Creek Farm is good.  The next farmstand will be Saturday at 9:00.

Farmstand table

Happy Chickens

Boggy Creek Farm, Farmer’s Market December 30, 2009

If  you are off of work today, and in need of some fresh produce, local cheese and honey, farm fresh eggs, and other healthful goodies, head on over to Boggy Creek Farm on Lyon’s Road, just off of East 7th Street.  It is a full on working farm, with a larger farm in Gause.  Carol Ann and Larry have a beautiful set up on some acreage and grow some of the tastiest organic food around.  They are really nice people as well.  The farmstand is open from 9:00 to 1:00, every Wednesday and Saturday.  Make sure to say howdy to the chickens!  And wear appropriate shoes, it might be a bit muddy from yesterday’s rainfall.  From their website, here is a listing of what is available.  www.boggycreekfarm.com

Currently on our Market Tables:

Carrots (4 varieties, 3 colors!); Lettuce Salad Mix! Butter Head Lettuces; Red Lettuce Bouquets; Freckles Tender Romaine; sweet Japanese White Turnips; Baby Kohlrabi bunches (eat Kohlrabi raw!); Meyer Lemons; Dan Sondgeroth’s Sweet Potatoes; Daikon Radishes; Broccoli and its Greens; Salads: The Marias’ Brassica Babes (kale, brussel, broccoli leaves, pea tendrils, etc.); Baby Lettuce Mix; Baby Arugula; Baby Chard; Succulent Spinach;  Chicory Mix: radicchio,escarole,frisee); Curley Endive; Escarole; Radicchio; Bunched Collards, Brussels Greens, Four Kales (Dinosaur, Siberian, Red Russian, & Frilly); Red & Yellow Swiss Chard, Cilantro, Dandelion Greens, & Arugula;  Gause Yaupon Honey!

Seeding for Lettuce in the Austin Winter Garden December 30, 2009

I have harvested much of the bibb lettuce and Black Seeded Simpson and it is time to re-seed so that I can have fresh lettuce in January and February.  Tomorrow, with the soil wet from the cold rain, I’ll seed for more Black Seeded Simpson, Buttercrunch, Lolla Rossa and Gourmet Baby Greens from Botanical Interests, one of my favorite seed companies.  One packet of lettuce seeds costs $1.89, or $1.99, (huge pack is $4.99) takes less than five minutes to plant, less than five minutes to harvest and will provide lettuce for a long time.  Good healthy food from the yard, with no chemicals, no unknowns, no seeds that have been genetically modified to be “Round-up Resistant”.  Just good healthy home grown food.  I’m committing myself to grow as much food as I can, and buy from local sources as much as possible from now on.  (Especially meat)  I’ve been eating locally for several years, but not in a wholly dedicated way.  Now that I’ve learned what I have about our food supply, I’m going to make more of an effort going forward.  And it starts in my own back yard.

Late December in an Austin Garden December 27, 2009

As we enter into the harshest days of winter, my garden is again in transition.  The onions I planted last week are just fine being left alone in their raised beds.  The lettuces are still beautiful, and we had fresh salad for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.   There are 3 broccoli plants that need to be harvested soon, and the spinach still needs to be harvested, perhaps today.  I pulled up the sugar snap peas, which didn’t do as well as I had hoped.  They were hard to train to cling to the trellises I had, which were not ideal.  The strawberries are chilling out in their 4′x4′ space, their roots kept warm by a thick layer of mulch.  They continue to put on new leaves.  The cabbages are gorgeous, but not making heads.  I’ve read that if you tie the leaves closer together, it will force heads to form.

Broccoli heads

Big garden

HOPE Farmer’s Market in Austin December 27, 2009

There is a newish farmer’s market in Austin that I love.  It is the HOPE Farmer’s Market which is East of I-35, at 5th and Waller.  This market has a different vibe than the other markets.  It is very relaxed, in and next to an old art warehouse.  It is on Sunday from 11:00 to 3:00, which makes it easy, since Saturdays are normally so hectic with errands and such.  Vendors include Kocurek Family Artisinal Charcuterie, with wonderful sausages, pates, and chutneys, Elevated Artisinal Cuisine with a wonderful lemmony cheese, and very clean tasting vegetable soups,  Engel Farms, Rain Lily Farms, Finca Vida Pura,  Dai Due with hot lunch, Microbial Earth, with compost products, Pola Cheese, Kala’s Cuisine, Soy Delites candles, Texas French Bread, brazilian food and many more.  Part of the market is inside, part outside.  The HOPE market is a great addition to the other Farmer’s Markets in town, and the fact that it is on Sunday, makes it even better.

Onion Planting Day December 20, 2009

The onion starts arrived from Dixondale Farms a few days ago, so I’ve been anxious to get them in the garden.  The raised beds on the side of my house had been resting since I pulled up the peppers and tomatoes before the first freeze, about a month ago.  Today I amended the soil with some worm castings, may favorite soil amendment,  raked them in, then loosened the soil with the rake.  I poked holes for the onions using a wooden stake, meant for marking herbs, because it was pointed and just laying around.  No fancy tools here.  Then I planted about 50 onions, composed of 3 short day varieties.  Not all of them will make it, some, especially the red variety, in my experience, will bolt (go to seed).  When that happens, a rigid stalk shoots up from the middle and forms a bulb at the end.  I’ll post their progress as time goes on, and post pictures of the bolted ones as well.

Baby onions

Christmas Gifts for Gardeners December 20, 2009

I seldom use this blog to promote Austin Urban Gardens, but it is my blog and I and can, so if you know a gardener, a wannabe gardener, or just want to buy a cool gift for someone, we have raised garden DIY kits, Splinter Free Sandboxes with covers (all the same product) and gift certificates for garden installations with soil.  We also have Earthboxes, the full kits, not just the boxes.  All the information is available at www.austinurbangardens.com.  Happy holidays!

Winter Garden in Austin December 19, 2009

One of the good things about my failure to harvest some of the broccoli before it went to seed, is that the bees love the broccoli flowers!  We need bees to pollinate much of our food plants, and they are disappearing.  So whenever I see bees, I’m happy.  The cabbage plants look gorgeous, and the spinach is beautiful as well, and needs to be harvested.  Lots of gardening to do tomorrow.

Bees on Broccoli Flowers

Cabbage