Grow Better Veggies

Announcing our 2008 Tomato Plant Sale

It's getting to be that time of year again, folks!  Love Apple Farm will start selling tomato plants (also called starts or seedlings) Saturday, March 15, and continue selling them three days a week.  Our open hours will be every Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  We should have plants for sale through May (or while supplies last). Click here to go to our page that details special appointment needs, a map to the farm, and our complete list WITH description of the 125 different tomato varieties we will be selling this year.

Photo courtesy of Tana Butler.

Questioning my Sanity and getting an Answer

Sometimes I get a little doubtful about the path I've chosen for myself.  Why am I out here in a quasi hurricane on my knees with frozen fingers meticulously cutting individual leaves off of my patch of Bordeaux spinach?  Why am I out here in 110 degree weather desperately trying to fix an irrigation break before the heat kills every living thing that I've spent the last six months nurturing?  Why do I do these things when I could go get a cushy desk job, go back to wearing tailored suits and high heels, go out to lunch with other similarly-attired professionals, getting manicures and carrying a briefcase instead of carrying 50 pound feed sacks around?  Here's part of the answer - an email I received yesterday from a stranger in Chicago:

Hi Cynthia,

I happened to view a television program, about Love Apple farm, at a friends house on satellite. I searched for your site in Google, and went through all of your site.  In fact, I am ordering various heirloom tomato seeds.

I wanted to tell you what your site has done for me, personally. I am a 56-year old guy from the Chicagoland area.  I am of Italian ancestry (of which I am VERY proud)!  Your site, and Love Apple Farm, brought me back to my childhood.  I can remember my wonderful grandfather, very much an old-world Italian man.  We lived, as many immigrant families did, in an apartment building. My grandmother and grandfather owned a 3-flat.  They lived on the first floor, we lived on the second, and their other child, and his family, lived on the third floor.  In those days, immigrant families  stayed very close. My grandparents owned the vacant lot next to the 3-flat.

My grandfather took that vacant lot, and turned it into a little farm….in the heart of Chicago.  In that lot, he had peach trees, sweet and sour cherry trees, pear trees, apricot trees…. you name it, and if it grew, it was in that garden!  I remember rows of beans, peppers, lettuce, celery, and TOMATOES!  I remember just strolling through the rows of tomato plants, and picking tomatoes, rubbing them on my shirt to clean them, and eating them on-the-spot!  There is a memory burned into my brain, and to this day, there is NOTHING like the smell of tomatoes fresh off the plant…in fact, I STILL like to run the stem of a tomato plant between my thumb and index finger, and just savor the scent that is released on my fingers!  There is also NOTHING in the world like the flavor of a warm tomato (from the heat of the sun), the smell of the tomato, and the taste right off of the plant!  God, did your site bring back some happy, and yes, some sad memories!

Thank you so much, Cynthia, for your site, and what you do!  I'll bet you NEVER received an email like this…..it's amazing what you have rekindled in my mind!  Again, I want to SINCERELY thank you!  It has been quite a few years since I have been in your part of the Country, and I don't know if I will ever be back there, but California also holds a very special place in my heart.  I have been through your area several times, and of all the vacation experiences I have had in my life, NONE match the  experiences that I have had in California!  It ranks #1 in my heart, and in my vacation memories!  Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco….mine is in California….as a whole!

You have a wonderful site, and you are doing a wonderful thing at that Farm!

Thank You So Much, Cynthia!

Sincerely,

Mike Optie

(printed with Mike's permission - what can I say, I'm verklempt!)

Tomato Seed Winners!

As always, I run a contest each time I send out a newsletter, and my last one was to give ten lucky folks a set of TomatoFest seed packets.  These seed varieties are wonderful:

Black Cherry

Dagma's Perfection

Tobolsk

Sunset's Red Horizon

and Black Prince:

(All photos, courtesy www.TomatoFest.com)

The winners are, according to the "name" they listed when they entered the contest: Annette, Cathy S., Jeph Remley, Annie, William Barnard, Cheryl, Breadl, Aggie, E., and Jen.  I have sent each of you an email letting you know how to claim your seeds.  And if any of you who are not yet on my newsletter list want to join in on all these free-wheelin' give-aways, click here to sign up.

Check back here for a series of posts I'll be having soon on starting tomato seeds.

   

Celeriac - Would You Eat Something This Ugly?

This looks God-awful, doesn't it?  Maybe not quite as intimidating of an initial bite as the brave soul who first sampled an oyster, but unappetizing-looking nevertheless.  But after you cut away the rough exterior (no peeler I've found seems to work), the interior white flesh has all the pleasant taste of celery, and none of the strings.  And did you know that the stalk of the lush, showy, parsley-esque foliage can be cut and used as a straw?  I'm thinking really tasty Bloody Marys!

I like growing celeriac, and the chef certainly appreciates it (give him a root veggie, any root veg, and he goes to town on it).  The downside to it is that it takes FOREVER from seed to harvest.  My last batch I sowed in flats in the greenhouse a year ago January, and we were picking it from August through the last harvest, which was when the above picture was taken, on January 19th.  From 8 months to a whole year!  One of the nice things about celeriac is that you can harvest it and store the bulbs for two or three months.  We don't do that here; we fresh pick Manresa's celeriac and they use it immediately.

Also called celery root, the seeds are very tiny, and they can take up to three weeks to germinate.  They need to be kept constantly moist, which  makes it a challenge, as it is sometimes hard to be that vigilant.  That's the first reason I sow in flats rather than directly sow the seeds in the ground.  The second reason is that once germination happens, they are frustratingly slow to grow. They seem not to be doing anything for a long time, then you prick them out thinking they are way too small. Then they kind of sit there in their little pots not seeming to do much.  Finally one day you realize they're actually growing.  At that point you can happily transplant them out into your prepared bed, spacing them about six inches apart on all sides. Here is a newly planted bed:

Once the babies are safely tucked into their new bed, another wait is in order, about three months before you can harvest them.  It's perfectly fine, though, to start picking them once they are showing a couple of inch diameter bulb.  You'll be able to see the bulb poking up out of the soil.

The cultivar I use is called "Brilliant," and it's a biodynamically grown seed available from Turtle Tree Seeds.  They carry only biodynamic and organic seed of many old heirloom varieties.  Every time I order from them, I've been extremely pleased with both the health and vigor of the plants, as well as the taste.

I'd love to hear if any of you grow celeriac and what wonderful things you might do with it.

Farm Animal of the Week: Dali the Pot-Bellied Pig

Does she scare you, or do you think she's adorable?  I get both comments from visitors to the farm.  People who have never seen a pot-bellied big are both delighted and repulsed by Dali.  She's often confused for a male, but let me tell you, if you saw a full grown pot belly pig boar, there'd be no mistaking the gender.  The boys have tusks, heavier bristles, and their fright factor is such that you do NOT want to run into one in a dark barnyard.  Dali is positively the embodiment of femininity in comparison.  Rubens would have delighted in her generous curves and folds: Dali was brought home as a tiny baby, about 8 weeks old.  She was only 10 inches long and a spitfire from the beginning.  I remember holding her to try to get a walking harness on her, and she squealed so loudly, she completely freaked out the neighbors.  The decibel level coming out of a body so small seemed impossible.  Since then, we've let her be, and the best we can do is scratch her back and her ears. Although my friend, Manny, has bribed her into letting him fondle her considerable jowl.  He calls it "buche," and claims it to be a delicacy in Mexico (although I've also heard that buche is pork tripe, so if anyone knows definitively, let me know).

All this talk about pork may make you think that Dali is scheduled for the table at Manresa.  But no, she's a pet, and alive she will remain.  But I have heard the chef exclaim, with more than a hint of covetousness, "Dali, you are looking really tasty, today!"

I asked my son, Zach, to name her when she was a piglet.  In the middle of a very interesting seminar of AP Art History, he decided to name her after his favorite painter, Salvador Dali.  When I reminded him that she was a girl, he said, "No matter.  Her name can still be Dali."  When I pronounced it "dahl-ee," Zach corrected me.  He said her name is properly pronounced "doll-ee," emphasis on the latter syllable, like Demi Moore.  One can certainly make the argument that Dali's belly resembles that of the very pregnant then-Mrs. Willis on that famous Vanity Fair cover.

Besides bringing sexy back with her own rotundness, Dali has another talent.  She has an incredible sense of smell, much like her French counterparts, who are trained to hunt truffles.  Dali has never enjoyed a truffle, but she can detect a cheeseburger at 200 paces. She doesn't get many treats lately;  I found out a whileago that I had been feeding her too much, so sadly for her, Dali is on a diet.  Which would make you her new best friend if you brought her a Big Mac should you come over to visit.  She may even let you fondle that beautiful buche.

 

The Experience of Manresa - A Novice Reports

Cynthia's assistant, Christopher Donovan, ate at Manresa Restaurant for the first time last night. Here are his thoughts about the experience.

From the moment a patron enters Manresa s/he is 'held'—like the way a newborn baby is held. The analogy holds, because to enter Manresa is to enter a land where every detail has been designed with the goal of providing an exquisitely soothing atmosphere wherein to enjoy exquisitely crafted food. One enters, as it were, David Kinch-Land, and for every detail of refinement noticed, a hundred or more pass unnoticed, working even more subtly to support the various aspects of his art.

Like the meal itself, entering Manresa involves a series of subtle shifts. Utter absence of pretension describes the door, and you are greeted in a soothing hallway. Your coat is stowed for you in the highly functional wooden paneled cupboards. You enter the dining room proper — though you do not realize it except upon reflection — at the very middle of the room. So there is no awkward moment where the entire assemblage looks up with impatience at an outer door letting in a blast of cold air and a 'new' customer; by the time a patron enters the Manresa dining room, there can be no awkwardness, since her entry point is the very center of the restaurant.

The Chef's Grand Tasting Menu is the choice for those with the leisure to enjoy a selection of dishes Chef Kinch feels like conjuring up on any given night. We were graced with seven amuses – tiny, savory treats that are so tasty you literally cannot help but want more . . . much more! But then that is me wanting to 'super-size' everything. It is antithetical to the agenda, which is more akin to prolonging pleasure than drowning in it.

In considering how I could possibly do justice to the experience of any one dish, or (heaven forbid) the totality of dishes which delighted me, I realize I cannot. How does one describe sex in words? Arpege farm egg (soft boiled, with sherry vinegar, cream, maple syrup and chives). A sunset in braille? Blood orange sangria, with Cointreau and carrot. To the person who has had the experience, the words may evoke a memory, may seem accurate in their own way. But to one who has not eaten Manresa fare, no words can remotely describe the experience. We had, as I said, seven amuses. These were paired with appropriate wines. Then followed eight courses, and four exquisite desserts. Since I cannot describe it in words (and I decline to use the cliches), you simply must eat there.

Manresa is a temple to quality. Not the appearance of quality as described by external features, or quality as it is commonly understood—but quality as functionality: what tastes the best? What smells the best? What has the most life? I know this to be so because I help Cynthia grow the vegetables that supply the restaurant, and I appreciate the wisdom that underlies and overshadows biodynamics. The rest of it that I don't know or understand (which is most of it), I take on faith. Because I know the chef. In the garden, his favorite question is, "how does it taste?" His favorite statement: "Here—taste this!"

We live, for the most part, in a culture fascinated with veneer thin appearances, where quality may be entirely absent so long as a thing looks like the thing it is a simulacrum of. And yet quality has a power that is undeniable. We cannot gainsay it. Witness Manresa; you simply must eat there!

Romanesco Broccoli - A True Objet d'Art

If you think veggies are boring, then you've never seen the likes of Romanesco broccoli.  And if this true marvel of nature doesn't make you wonder what the hell the first George Bush was talking about when he proclaimed that he didn't like broccoli, then you're an incurable Lachanophobe.

See the way each little peak spirals around?  And then notice how each little bunch then spirals around the whole head?  This is called a fractal form, or a self-similar pattern.  There are lots of examples in nature of fractal forms, but I think the Romanesco broccoli is one of the coolest, because you can get right up close to it and admire it for as long as you want, and then you can eat it!

Romanesco broccoli is not really a true broccoli, it's more properly classified as a cauliflower, and a lot of people do know it as such.  I can tell by the way it grows that it's a cauliflower. The plant is much larger than a broccoli - about 3 feet in height when mature - and once the main head is cut, that's it.  You cannot rely on lateral growth for additional minor heads as the season goes on, which is a nice feature of regular broccoli.  However, this beauty is so interesting, with a nice nutty flavor, that it's worth it.

I mean, talk about a great segue at the dinner table.  You could steam this baby whole, present it to your perpetually bored lachanophobic teen-ager, and with any luck, get him to eat his veggies AND start a conversation about molecular nanotechnology.

Now go forth and multiply in a self-similar pattern.  Plant some Romanesco.  Pronto.

Winter Garden versus Summer Garden

There are some subtle differences between winter gardening and summer gardening that may not immediately come to mind.  Of course, I'm not referring to the obvious difference in the temperature.  What's also common knowledge to most people is that there are a lot of vegetables that you can only grow in the summer - the cold of winter and its short days spell disaster to tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and other heat loving plants.  Then a bit lesser known is the relief the organic winter gardener feels when faced with a much smaller opposing army of pests.  We don't have to spend nearly as much time running around trying to save the nirvana we've created from invading forces intent on plundering and pillaging.  Another difference is that plants grow much more slowly in the winter - the colder your climate the slower the growth.  In fact, at some point plants are just in a cold-storage dormant stage.  They won't start growing until the days lengthen a bit and the temps get warmer.

But one subtle difference between the two seasons is something that had to be pointed out to me, and that is that the winter garden is low.  It hugs the ground, almost as if it's trying to stay warm.  Look how these first two photos of the winter garden show the plants close to the ground.

Then notice how these next pictures of the summer garden reveal it reaching for the sky.  The green beans stretch toward the sun, and the only thing that stops them seems to be the height of the pole they're on.

The dahlias just get taller and taller over the course of the summer.    People are amazed when the dahlias tower over them.  I'm always stopping little children from crawling into the beds and trying to play hide-and-go-seek in the dahlia forest.  Not very easy trying to hide in the lettuce patch.

And just look at these tomato plants in the hoophouse.  I've got 7 foot tall tomato cages which were still too short.  The tomatoes shot up past the 7 foot mark a good 3 feet, then couldn't support their own weight anymore, so they just bent over the top of the cage and cascaded down.  At some point, I couldn't walk through them, I had to walk under them.

The summer plants are all about light and heat - trying their best to reach up up up to the sun, sending out tendrils and elongating their stems in their pursuit of just a little more light.

The winter garden is content to hug mother earth.  Their bounty goes down, literally, into the soil.  Winter is all about the root crops: the radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, salsify, parsnips.  These are all things that cannot hear the siren song of summer.  None of these root crops do well in the summer.

So the next time you admire that your summer corn is growing as high as an elephant's eye, think about why that is.  Ponder the strength of the astral forces that produce that growth - the sun obviously -  and the moon and the stars.  Also think about summer's polar opposite, literally, the winter garden's inclination to grow inward, toward this earth, this terra firma, this terroir, this great big ball under all of our feet that is as life giving and supporting as that giant star of ours in the sky.

The Winners of the Class Tuitions Contests Are...

I run contests every time I send out a newsletter (I know I keep saying that, but some of you haven't gotten the news yet!).  Only my newsletter subscribers can enter.  In my last installment, a couple of weeks ago, I promised to give away a couple of class tuitions to one of my upcoming gardening (and chicken) classes.  The winners get to pick which class they want to come to.  Click here if you want to subscribe to my free newsletter and get in on these contests.  Click here if you want to see a list of my classes.

The winner of a full class tuition goes to Annette T. of San Jose, who wanted to win a seat in my chicken class.  Congrats, Annette!  You'll be receiving three chicks, a starter brooder kit, and two hours of learning how to care for these babies, with the end result being fresh eggs for you and your family!

The winner of a buddy seat tuition to a class in which they've enrolled, is Diana C. of Santa Cruz.  Diana greatly increased her chances of winning the buddy seat because she enrolled in four of my classes.  She gets to bring a friend for free to any one of those classes.

My next class, Grow the Earliest Tomatoes, is this coming Saturday, February 2, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. here at the farm in Ben Lomond.  I'll be showing folks how to get their tomatoes to fruit a whole month early, with some hard work and perseverance.  Class participants get to take home 6 already growing plants of my proven earliest maturing tomato varieties.  There are a few spots left in that class, so email me at loveapplefarm@gmail.com if you'd like to enroll.  The class costs $30, plus a materials fee of $18.

In the meantime, congratulations to our two winners, and we'll see you soon!

Kohlrabi: A Kick-Ass Winter Veggie

Kohlrabi is a wonderful cool-weather crop because it tastes great (like broccoli some say, or a tender turnip) and it grows really fast.  It's also easily grown from seed, which makes it an all-around wonderful and satisfying plant to cultivate.  The slow growth of most winter veggies is frustrating, but kohlrabi is one of those that busts that rule.

Many people don't know that kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage family. Its name being derived from the German "kohl" for cabbage and "rube" for turnip.  It's sometimes mistaken for a root vegetable, but the bulbous part of the plant grows above soil, with a thin tap root below ground.  I grow both a white and a purple variety for Manresa, and they can use it either raw or cooked.  It's best picked when the bulb is small, tennis ball sized or less, as it tends to get woody and tough when larger.      

The culture of kohlrabi is much like that of cabbage. It prefers temps under 70 degrees; if your temps get above that when the plant is small, put a shade panel in front of it to reduce heat stress (more on my home-made shade panels later).  They prefer an elevated soil Ph, so add lime if your bed Ph is below 6.3.  I use oyster shell lime.

You can sow kohlrabi seeds directly in the ground in early spring (it can withstand minor frosts) and thin to three or four inches apart.  I would use the tiny thinnings as salad additions or in stir fries.  Since it grows so quickly, if you want a continuous harvest of it, make plantings every two or three weeks until the hottest part of the summer.  You can begin sowing again in the fall.  I like to start my kohlrabi seeds in flats in the greenhouse, prick them out into 2-1/4" pots, and then transplant out into the garden.  We plant them closely together, as they do not need much room.

In this photo, you can see this young purple variety growing in our hoophouse.  Kohlrabi loves the hoophouse and grows extra fast in there, but we also have plenty of it growing outside as well.  The purple type of kohlrabi, although beautiful, does not maintain its color all the way through, so be aware of that.  Don't just throw away those leaves; they're great used like turnip or beet greens.  Now go kick some ass and plant some kohlrabi!

Soil Heating Cables Work!

Soil Warming Cables are handy tools for the gardener to have when he wants to manipulate nature a bit.

I first used them last winter when I needed to get a bed of carrots to germinate in January.  Germinating most directly sown seeds out in the garden would be nigh impossible here in January, as our night time lows are typically between 25 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  And as most of you know, you cannot sow carrots in a nice warm flat in the greenhouse and transplant them out in the garden.  Veggies with tap roots just don't tolerate that.  Things like radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, salsify, burdock, daikon, all need to be sown where they will stay put. 

The cables are placed several inches under the soil surface, about 4 to 6 inches apart in any arrangement (straight lines, squiggle lines, etc.) just as long as they don't touch or cross each other.
You can dig mini trenches and insert the cable into them, or you can do what I do and place the cables, affix them with landscape staples, then add a good two inches of soil on top.  Here, we've just started adding compost, and will finish topping it off with garden soil. 

Once the cables are placed and covered, they are plugged into an extension cord, with the connection wrapped in waterproof tape, and carefully protected from moisture intrusion.  The cables are supposed to keep the soil surrounding them at 70 degrees, which is a good average temperature for most seed germination.  Truth be told, though, the cables do not quite warm the soil that much.  Fortunately, though, they do warm it enough to get some germination going on this long bed of carrots (a little wispy and hard to see in the foreground of this picture), beets, and at the far end, turnips.  The cables can no longer be seen, but my black irrigation lines are clearly present on top of the soil.
We moved the white row cover to the right in order to take the photo, but we usually leave the bed covered with the lightest weight floating row fabric from seeding to harvest, as it keeps the carrot maggot fly from laying it's nasty little eggs on the soil surface and burrowing into the roots.  We do remove the cover, though, after the seeds germinate, and we need to thin.  As you can see here, these gorgeous beet shoots are way too close together, and we'll need to spend some good time carefully removing the excess.  What's nice is that we have little waste here, the chef loves to see these thinnings in the harvest delivery.  They make tasty and unusual garnish.

Once germination has been achieved to my liking, I unplug the cables and leave them in place.  The roots easily grow around the cables.  When the bed is completely harvested, I can remove the cables and use them again.

So would you use precious electricity to get a bed of veggies going?  Well, if your mortgage payment depended upon it like mine does, then you might.  If you were trying to get a jump on tomato growing season by warming your soil a month earlier, then that might entice you to use them as well (more on that later).  The cables themselves can be pricey, but I've been lucky to get mine off of ebay (brand new) for about a third of the price.  Click here for a link to where you can get them full price. 

Farm Animal of the Week: Buff Laced Polish Hen

Isn't she a pretty girl?  This breed is called a Polish, also known as a "Top Hat" chicken because of the feathers poking out of the top of her head like some crazy Rod Stewart impersonator.  These chickens' head-dresses are so lush and full, they sometimes obscure their eyes, much like a hairy Lhaso Apso dog.  Her coloring is called "buff lace" because of the delicate white edging around her beige-colored feathers.

With chickens, we just can't call them a regular color name, like beige or grey.  For some reason, the poultry breeders have to sex it up a bit and euphemize it, much like nail polish.  "Red" is changed to "Hot Kiss" and "Pink" is not going to sell unless it's named "Valentine Ice."

So the same with chickens.  We call brown "buff" and grey "silver."  Is this more than you wanted to know about chicken colors?  Perhaps for most of you it is.  But for the few of you who have thought it might be cool to have your own hens for homegrown eggs (not ANYTHING like store-bought eggs, mind you) and manure to enrich your compost pile, then you might be interested in my "Keeping Chickens" class that I'll be having on April 19th.

You don't need to live in the country to keep a few hens.  You can do so with proper planning in your backyard.  At this class, you'll learn how to keep baby chicks happy and healthy until they are full sized and start laying eggs.  You'll learn what to feed them, how big of a yard they need, how to keep them from flying out, how to get them to lay eggs throughout the winter months when they usually stop laying.

You get to take home three baby girl chicks (no roosters - your neighbors will thank you), along with supplies to keep them happy until you can build or buy a proper coop (about a six week window).  We'll talk about coop design and a simple do-it-yourself plan will be one of the hand-outs.

The three chicks you get will be a Polish like the cutie in the picture, a Cochin, like my previous post, found here, and an Araucana chick.  Each breed lays a different egg color, so you will end up with white, brown and green eggs, like those shown in this gorgeous photo taken of our eggs by Pim Techamuanvivit.

So if any of you in the greater California Bay Area want to come learn about chickens, click here to be directed to my "Upcoming Classes/Events" page.

 

Oseille Rouge - Red Sorrel - Such a Beautiful Thing!

I thought this would be a quick and easy post to write, but after trying to find the botanical name of this plant on-line, it proved to be quite a project.  The plant above, with its shiny crinkly green leaves and deep blood-red veining, were the happy result of a French seed packet brought back to me from Europe by one of David Kinch's cooks, J.P.   The seed packet says "Oseille Rouge" on it.  "Oseille," pronounced "Oh-Zehy," means "Sorrel" in French. 

I've been propagating it for Manresa and Chef Kinch for months now, and most of it doesn't make it big enough to plant out in the garden.  Not because it dies, or it's not the season, but because Chef loves using it small, straight out of the seed tray.  I insisted on saving some from the last batch to plant out in the garden, and this was the day to do it.  I had to choose a place that it could stay for years to come, because my knowledge of its supposed sister plant, green sorrel, is that it's a perennial, and will last for years well tended in perpetually damp soil.  Here's what regular sorrel, often called French Sorrel, botanical name, Rumex Acetosa, looks like:

I wanted to include the botanical name of the Oseille Rouge here, but like I said, when I started researching it, I found that there are as many different kinds of sorrel as there are paparazzi hounding Britney Spears. I spent way too much time looking at images of what purported to be Red Sorrel (none matched the plant I'm growing) and found out that the synonyms of Red Sorrel are as diverse as Bloody Dock, Sheep's Sorrel, Jamaican sorrel, Roselle, Rozelle, Hibiscus Sabdariffa, and Rumex Sanguineus.  Whew! 

I even went to the source, the seed company that packaged the seed, Graines Voltz.  They list it on their French website, but do not list a botanical name.  At least I know where to go when I need more of it.  The great thing about European seed packets is that you get a lot of seeds, much more than in our stingy American packets.

Regular green French Sorrel, is a fabulous herb/salad green.  It's one of the things that I have people taste when I'm showing them the garden.  They are amazed at it's very lemony flavor.  The Oseille Rouge is similarly flavored, but much prettier.

So alas, we have it, and you can eat it at Manresa, but if you want to grow this beauty yourself, you'll have to order the seed of Oseille Rouge from Graines Voltz yourself.  Good luck with the French translation!  If any of you know for sure, without a doubt, no foolin' what the true botanical name of this is, and where I can get it here in the States, I'd love to hear from you!  Update:  As you can see in the comments, we got it sorted out.  It is indeed Rumex Sanguineus, and it's available from Johnny's Seeds.  They call it "Red Veined Sorrel," but they also list the botanical name underneath it.  Here is a new shot I took of the babies that the chef likes to use:

Gardening Class: Grow Your Own Tomato Transplants from Seed

This class used to be called "Tomato Seed Sowing," but I thought I needed a more descriptive name.  I mention the name change so that those of you who like to take this class year after year will know it.  Here's a photo of my tomato apprentice, Rachael, after last year's class.

Rachael has probably been my youngest student, as most folks who attend my gardening seminars are adults.  When I first saw her, I worried that she would not be able to focus for my entire lecture.  But she did great, taking home a sown flat of tomato seeds that she was able, with her new knowledge, to nurture into about 70 or 80 tomato starts.  She didn't need that many, so Rachael ended up selling her extras at my seedling sale later, and made over $100.  I was very proud of her.  Rachael has continued to come to the farm and volunteer over the past year, and has learned a whole bunch of stuff about plants.

Believe it or not, but this is the time to start thinking about starting seeds for tomatoes. The "Grow Your Own Tomato Transplants from Seed" class is all about learning how to get that little bitty seed into a healthy, robust plant, ready to go out into the garden.  As some of you know, doing that is harder than it looks.  Soil, airflow, lighting, watering, fertilizing, potting up, are all important to know how to do right.

The thing that keeps a lot of people coming back to this class is that they get to take home a sown flat of tomato seeds, and choose up to 48 different varieties to place in their 48-cell flat.  My seed bank currently holds over 125 varieties of tomatoes, some "normal" such as Early Girl, but most highly unusual like JD's Special C-Tex, Purple DogCreek and Portuguese Monster.

It has not been unusual for my students to successfully propagate 100 or 150 plants from this class alone.  I know that some folks have even sold their excess, just like Rachael.  I love hearing those stories! 

I'm offering the class on four different dates.  Choose an early date if you want to plant out in early April.  Choose a later class if you want to plant out in May.  Click here to go to the dates and fees. All classes are held here at Love Apple Farm in Ben Lomond, California.  We are located 45 minutes from San Jose and about an hour and a half from San Francisco. Here is a complete list of the tomato seeds you will be able to choose from: 

Amazon Chocolate (new for 2008)
Ananas Noir
Aunt Ruby’s Green
Aunt Ruby’s Green Cherry
Azoychka
Barad’s Yellow
Basinga
Beauty Lottringa
Bi-color Cherry
Big Beef
Big Rainbow
Black Bear (new)
Black Cherry
Black Ethiopian
Black from Tula
Black Krim
Black Oxheart (new)
Black Plum
Black Prince
Black Stripe Cherry (new)
Black Zebra
Blondkopfchen
Bloody Butcher
Brad's Black Oxheart (new)
Brandysweet Plum Cherry (new)
Brandywine OTV
Brandywine Landis
Brown’s Yellow Giant
Burpee's Supersteak (new)
Camalay
Camp Joy Cherry
Caspian Pink
CelebrityVFFNTA
Chapman
Cherokee Purple
Chocolate Vintage (new)
Chuck’s Yellow
Church (new)
Copia
Cosmonaut Volkov
Costoluto Genovese
Costoluto Florentino
Coustralee
Coyote
Earl’s Faux
Early Girl
First Lady
Fourth of July (new)
Gardener’s Delight
Gary O'Sena (new)
German Red Strawberry
Giant Belgium (new)
Gold Medal
Grandma Josie (new)
Grape
Green Doctors (new)
Green Giant
Green Zebra
Grub's Mystery Green (new)
Hawaiian Pineapple
Heart of Compassion
Hippie Zebra
Homer Fike’s Oxheart (new)
Hugh’s
Isis Candy Cherry
Lemony
Japanese Black Trifele
Japanese Oxheart
Jaune Flamme
JD's Special C-Tex (new)
Jersey Devil (it's back!)
Julia Child
Kellogg’s Breakfast
Kentucky Beefsteak
King Pineapple (new)
Lemony
Love Apple
Love Happy (new cross of mine)
Magnum (new)
Mammoth German Gold (new)
Mandarin Cross (new)
Marianna’s Peace
Marvel Stripe
Matina
Moskvitch
Mr. Brown (new)
Nebraska Wedding
Neves Azorean Red
Northern Lights
Oaxacan Jewel
Orange Russian 117
Orange Strawberry
Oregon Spring
Paul Robeson
Peacevine Cherry
Persimmon
Pineapple (new)
Pink Accordian
Plum Lemon
Porterhouse Steak (new)
Portugese Monster  (new)
Purple Brandy
Purple Calabash
Purple DogCreek (new)
Purple Russian
Red Pear
Riesentraube
Rosalita
Rose
San Francisco Fog
Siletz
South American Giant
Southern Pride (new)
Stupice
Sungold
Super Marzano
Sweet Horizon
Taxi
Texas Star
Thessaloniki
Tigerella
Tommy Toe Cherry (new)
Top Sirloin (new)
Tree's Bottom Yellow (new)
Valena Pink (new)
Vintage Wine
Virginia Sweets (new)
West Virginia Sweet Meat (new)
White Cherry
White Tomesol
Wild Bill's Big Red (new)
Yellow Brandywine
Yellow Pear
Zogola (it's back!)

Major Storm Damage - Blessing in Disguise?

Here in central Coastal California, we've had a major storm, with hurricane force winds and 10 inches of rain in Ben Lomond within a 36 hour period. My 90 foot tall Cypress tree fell with a big crash onto my 60 foot tall Sugar Maple that held my really cool treehouse. Correction:  My  tree-removal guy just told me that the Cypress was 120 feet tall.

The base of the trunk measures around 18 feet in circumference, if my math skills hold up. I'm basing that on a diameter of about 6 feet.  Pretty damn big tree.  It also took out my power lines,a cabana, and as you can see in this picture, landed on my travel trailer, poking two holes  through the roof.

After making sure everyone was safe, and breathing a sigh of relief that the behemoth didn't fall on my house or someone else's house, I started thinking, "Hey, you're going to have a much sunnier space over in this area.  Maybe you should put some new crop beds here?"  So that may be the blessing in disguise.  Unfortunately, it's going to cost me a pretty penny in clean-up.  Anybody want to come over for a free "class" on chainsaw skills, demolition, and dump runs?

The Winner of the TomatoFest Poster and Seeds is...

We had another contest for my newsletter subscribers; to enter, people had to leave a comment on my Harvest Tuesday post of December 18.  I asked folks to tell me what they were doing in their garden right now.  As you can see, we had a lot of interesting tasks outlined and many of you peeps were harvesting a nice array of your own winter veggies. Here's what a lucky subscriber won:

This is a beautiful heirloom tomato wall poster generously donated by Gary Ibsen of TomatoFest.com.  He is also throwing in 3 packets of his heirloom tomato seeds for the winner.  I chose the winner at random, after jotting down everyone's email address and stirring them around in a box.  Congrats go out to Cheri from Tracy, California. If you'd like to sign up for our free newsletter and get a chance at many more seeds, posters, books, class tuitions, etc., click here.

TomatoFest has 600 different kinds of heirloom tomato seeds on their site, and right now they have put on sale 70 of their most popular varieties for only $2.00 a pack until January 20th.  So if you are in the market for tomato seeds, go on over and take a look.  I love Gary and Dagma, the husband and wife team who run TomatoFest.  Their annual tomato festival is my favorite event of the year, and it benefits many children's charities.  They work very hard to preserve old heritage varieties of tomatoes, and I've personally seen them both laboring in a gigantic tomato field, sweating buckets in 90+ degree heat, harvesting tomatoes for seeds.  They are the real deal.

Thank you, Gary and Dagma, for supporting the cause of righteous tomatoes, and for supporting me!

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 r