An August garden is pregnant with expectations.
The garden I share with my friends, Karen and Kate, has a tomato jungle. The three plants have over run three concentric layers of “cages.” They’re now trying to colonize the carrots.
Unrelenting weeks of sun and heat have battered our 10 by 14 foot plot in Karen’s backyard. LA’s water rationing has taken its toll as well. No matter. The tomatoes seem to ripen from pearl green to bloody red as you watch.
Late last month, Portland Tuv Ha’Aretz hosted its first Jewish Garden bike tour, focusing on gardens in NE Portland. 25 riders, ranging in age from pre-teen to, well, older than pre-teen, met at a local park. The ride was both conceived and led by Tuv Ha’Aretz member Beth Hamon, with help from Joel Metz. Beth is a bike mechanic and co-owner of Citybikes, a co-operatively owned bike shop here. She’s also a serious old-school bike geek and thought our first bike tour should be commemorated in true bike geek fashion, so she made spoke cards for all the participants (everyone thought they were cool, and you can check ours out at the top of this post; extra points if you can figure out what the Hebrew says)
The other day, I met a gardener who used to ply the same community garden as I do. He had recently stopped by the old growing grounds, and noticed that many more of the plots were in use this year than last.
I could think of quite a few explanations for more folks growing their own veggies—from the economy to greater awareness about local foods—but this guy believed we owe the rapid increase primarily to one cause. “It’s Michelle Obama,” he said.
- Nasturtium Butter
Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought flowers were for vases – not plates.
Oh, sure, I read the articles showing a cheerful chef tossing a nasturtium blossom on a pile of lettuce. Surely a tasteless bid for attention, I sniffed.
A recent web search for organic pest riddance has given me a new taste for ripe nasturtium blossoms, leaves and seed pods.
Gardeners have long loved nasturtiums as companion plants to keep insects off of collards, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, fruit trees and radishes. Nasturtiums themselves are as edible as the vegetables and fruits they protect.
The flavors are not dramatic. Blossoms, tossed whole or torn into salads, taste like mild radishes. Sautéed nasturtium leaves processed into a cold vichyssoise are peppery. Bined or pickled seedpods make a poor gourmet’s capers.
Here is one of my favorite recipes: nasturtium butter. The petals give the butter a wonderful gold color. This is excellent on freshly steamed vegetables or fish.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Plastic tables at the farmer’s market are straining under their bounty, colors are popping from veggies of every stripe and new garlic is out of the ground, drying on racks and tarps and hanging in braids in barns around the country, the smell of fresh heads mixing with the with last year’s pungent hay.
The plants in the photo grew from seeds out of a packet that was marked “melons” and printed with a picture of round, yellow-skinned fruit. I consider it a miracle. Not that cucumber plants sprouted forth from melon seeds. Rather, the fact that I have cucumbers in my garden. My several previous attempts to grow cucumbers had resulted in plants that yielded maybe one or two measly, pale fruits before turning brown and shriveling up. However the cucumber seeds got there, the guilty party seems to have considerately provided a fungus-resistant variety. And they’re actually pretty tasty for cucumbers, which, lets face it, are generally more crunchy than flavorful.
Many fruits are symbolic of summer – watermelon, peaches, corn on the cob. But perhaps none so much as the juicy, ripe tomato. I associate late summer with slices of red tomato lightly salted, or diced tomatoes mixed with fresh corn, garlic and basil in a salad. This year, it seems, summer is early. Farmer’s Markets in Northern California often are a mix of seasons as it is – with most items stretching into the early and late sides of their seasons. But this year in particular, perhaps because of the unusual weather patterns, the market is a symphony of seasonal tones all blaring at once – dark leafy greens, succulent lettuce leaves, new potatoes, cherries, and on and on. It’s loud. But most surprising of all is the late May tomato.
Americans waste more than more than 100 billion pounds of food every year, at every stage of production from field to store to plate. That number doesn’t include the produce thrown out or left to rot by the millions of home or community gardeners. Wouldn’t it be great if all those leftover tomatoes and cucumbers in your backyard could be linked with local food pantries and shelters?
Gary Oppenheimer had just that inspiration. He’s the founder of Ample Harvest, a project aiming to help home gardeners donate their unwanted produce to food pantries. Gary is a master gardener and the head of the West Milford Community Garden. I spoke with him about Ample Harvest and how home gardeners can make a difference.
I met someone special at Purim this past year. It wasn’t love at first sight, not at all (after all, I was wearing a mask when we met). And it took some persistent and clever wooing on his part, but I am now very smitten.
It’s been a few months now, but my heart still races whenever I see him. I get this big goofy grin on my face when I am with him. He makes me want to be a better person. In the past I’ve described myself as a conscientious omnivore, but he really challenges me (in good ways) to think about my food choices. Needless to say things were going quite well. We had gotten to the point in our relationship where he offered me some space in his apartment to keep some of my personal items, like a toothbrush and some clothes, stuff like that.
Everything comes together at this time of year. We meaningfully commemorate the Exodus, dutifully begin to count the Omer and then the darkness of Yom HaShaoh slaps us in the face. And after that, this year, the next day is Earth Day. Given the state of the economy and the recent warning by the EPA that carbon dioxide emissions endanger human health, my family and I were tired of abstraction. I wanted to look these holidays in the eye, here and now. This is the story of how a Pesach in the desert inspired us to plant an indoor organic vegetable garden in our NYC apartment.
The other evening, I committed a crime: I watered my asparagus patch. Emboldened by my misdeed, the next morning I watered my lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and even some inedible potted plants.
No one’s coming to arrest me, or even to slap a fine on me. In truth, it’s not exactly clear if the new Israeli law prohibiting watering applies to all gardens, to public gardens or just to lawns. It’s also not clear who will be enforcing it: The “green patrol” is famously understaffed. You can be sure that bigger criminals than me will be watering lawns in the middle of the day this summer, and one or two of them may even get a slap on the wrist.
What could be better than learning about just, sustainable, healthy and delicious food systems for free and in your neighborhood?
Well, if you live or will be in Brooklyn, NY on May 2nd, the Brooklyn Food Coalition, is seeking to bring together a uniquely broad and diverse community of activists and citizens to discuss and learn more about the critical food issues of our time and what role we as neighbors can play to address them. Both Hazon and the Jew and the Carrot are conference partners so come and meet some of your favorite Jew and the Carrot writers! Click here for more information.
America, Blessings, Community Agriculture, Cooking, Dairy/Vegetarian, Gardening, Personal Story, Recipes, Seasonality, Side Dishes, Vegetables, Vegetarian
