Have Garden, Will Trade for Sausage

Last year I began trading some of the produce we grow in our kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia for venison a neighbor harvests on a family farm in Virginia. So far we had received two large packages of venison stew meat and some tenderloin. My last gift to them was a box full of pickles and preserves, a sampling of the many jars we had left over from the summer.

The neighbors said they were enjoying the pickles and hinted that more venison was on the way, this time in the form of some sausages. "It's being processed now," they said.

Then one night a figure appeared at the store carrying a strange looking load. I turned on the porch light and had a long, frozen package thrust in my direction. When I unwrapped it, this is what I found: two 20-inch long venison summer sausages, the biggest sausages I've ever seen.

Truthfully, I wasn't expecting much from this sausage. As you can see from the label, it was processed for private consumption only. There are big letters indicating "Not For Sale." I thought it would be dry and tasting of who knows what. But that just shows you how little I know about venison sausage. This summer sausage is some of the best stuff I've ever tasted, moist and meaty and--how to say this--barely distinguishable from the finest beef sausage.

That leaves just one question: what to do with two 20-inch long sausages?

I decided we should start eating some immediately, put some away in the freezer and share the rest with friends. So after the sausage defrosted, I cut it into portions. And began eating...I think I have a new favorite high-protein snack.

Meanwhile, the neighbors will be getting two fine tomato plants. We are growing them now and soon will be planting them in the garden. They'll be able to come by any time and pick what they like. Does that sound like a fair trade to you?

Don't Wait for a Community Garden Plot!

We don't publish many guest posts here at The Slow Cook (this may be the first). But this story was too good to pass by. Nat West, of Portland, Oregon, got tired of waiting for a community garden plot. So he went to Google's satellite map, located a vacant lot near his home and turned it into his own CSA urban farm.

By Nat West

I live in urban Portland Oregon on an average-sized city lot of 5000 square feet. That's 50 feet by 100 feet. My house takes up almost 1000 square feet, my garage another 750 square feet or so, and an always-shaded driveway about another 500. Throw in a grand old cedar tree on the southern neighbor's property, a nice deck to relax on during summer months, and I find myself happy to have squeezed in about 250 square feet of raised beds.

Now 250 square feet of good dirt produces a heck of a lot of zucchinis, cherry tomatoes, peas and lettuce, provided I plant intensively. But I'm one of the lucky ones because of the orientation of my property, the placement of the house on it, and the surrounding neighbors' structures and trees. Some of the properties on my block could not grow anything more than a few tomatoes in pots, no matter how much grass they gave up.

After a few years of growing on 250 square feet, I decided it was time to expand. I never had the room for voluminous crops like cabbage, winter squash, pumpkins or corn. And I would frequently prune my yellow crookneck squash to a single vine. I've even tried trellising beans, peas and tomatoes, but once I decided to seriously grow food for my family, not just pretty summer fruits, I simply had to expand.

So I did what most urban gardeners do when they find themselves in a similar situation. I found the closest community garden owned by the city and put my name on a waiting list 18 months long.

After mulling it over for a bit, I realized that an "18 month waiting list" is worse than a "twenty minute wait" at a swanky restaurant. The maître d' has no real idea how long it will take to get me seated. She's just guessing that table 22 will get up soon. But unlike eating a meal, gardening never "ends". After all, why would it? There's no forced-eviction after a couple years so everyone gets a chance. You can rent a plot forever, or even sublet it like rent-controlled apartments in New York. The likelihood of getting a plot is even slimmer since, in recent years, many home garden seed suppliers are selling more than they've ever sold before. Those seeds have to go somewhere, and I haven't notice people razing houses and chopping down trees in my neighborhood.

I concluded that I could not wait for a community garden space to open up. I had to find my own garden space.

The first thing I did was to think about my neighbors' yards. Some of my neighbors had patches of relatively unkempt grass. Would they mind if I killed the grass, tilled the dirt and planted vegetables? I would have to share some produce, but they also get out of mowing. And of course I would have to use their water for irrigation. I figured it wouldn't be too hard to put together three or four small parcels, each about the size of my own garden at home.

But as I thought about the daily effort and workload of managing multiple plots, and dealing with multiple people, I realized that it might turn into a lot of work very quickly. What if a neighbor cut me off in mid-season? Or what if a neighbor ate everything, thinking they were entitled? How many sets of hoes, shovels and wheelbarrows would I need to buy? I realized that these issues would have to be dealt with no matter what, but it was in my best interest to have the fewest number of plots as possible. Which meant that I needed to “go big” - find the largest contiguous plots I could.

Other than riding my bike around the neighborhood and keeping my eyes peeled while on walks, I used Google Maps’ satellite view, in high magnification. Starting at my house, I made concentric circles, searching block by block for empty lots or very large back yards. Using this strategy, I was able to quickly identify a number of potential sites that I would not have found had I been searching on foot.

Now that I had a list of nearby large yards and empty lots, I used Portland Maps, an online database of property records. Navigating through the maps, I was able to find the name and address of the owner of each property. The same information could have been found using public records at the county courthouse, but I saved an immense amount of time. In some cases, I also cross-referenced them in the phone book since the address on file with the county is oftentimes not a current address, especially in the case of empty lot owners.

I planned to contact them in person if I could not find the mailing information for a particular lot. I sent an introductory letter to the landowners, explaining who I was, where I lived, and what I wanted to do on their land. I got one response, for a full empty lot directly across the street from my house. 5000 square feet of flat, full-sun dirt, absolutely perfect.

The landowner had recently received a nuisance complaint from the city about the buildup of refuse on the lot. She was elated that I would clean up the lot and turn it into a garden. In exchange for the use of the land, I am providing her with approximately one CSA share of produce for 16 weeks. We drew up an agreement, and she promises to give me as much advance notice as possible should she decide to sell. She also offered me a lot four times the size of this one, about 20 blocks away, which I hope to use next year.

Eventually I came to the realization that my new lot is much better than a community garden plot. I did not have to wait 18 months, or for that matter, 18 years for a small plot. I pay no rent for my 5000 square feet, but I would have to pay rent for a fraction of that size in a community garden. Also, I get to manage crop rotations, soil amending, and pest management holistically.

Community plot gardeners have to either work together or more often than not, grow weaker crops beset by pests because they are surrounded by crops grown using different practices, oftentimes on depleted soils. Working to encourage more collectivism of community gardens would solve some of these problems, but why wait? I’m sure there are usable, empty lots around your neighborhood.

For another ingenious approach, read about Murray Hill Row-by-Row, an urban CSA started by a school teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, who got 22 neighbors to share their back yards to grow food. And for even more stories about how the food system is changing, check out "Fight Back Friday."

Schools & Community Gardens

Walking my daughter to school each morning, I often looked wistfully at the huge expanse of yard next to Cardozo Senior High School and thought what a wonderfully productive garden it would make. All that space with a clear southern and western exposure. What a shame to pave it over with grass that no one ever used (except to fly a kite sometimes).

Well, the flattest part of the yard, actually a complex of asphalt basketball courts, recently was turn into a parking lot. Too bad. But there's still plenty of yard that could be gardened. Come to think of it, after the federal government, the District of Columbia school system is one of the largest property owners in the city. There are dozens of large campuses and hundreds of smaller school yards all over town. Why do we plant them with grass? Why not turn them into food gardens? Even better, why not turn them into community gardens that everyone could use to grow local food?

For the last couple of years I worked with an organization that was all about promoting school gardens and trying to integrate gardening into school curricula. It was a tough slog. But I think it might be more successful if, instead of trying to organize gardens strictly within the school, the efforts were expanded to bring in the entire community. Turn school gardens into community gardens.

Of course, someone's already done it. And here's an excellent article about a group in Petaluma, California, that is bringing community and schools together to establish gardens and a CSA to help feed the hungry. They also work with a group that focuses solely on gleaning, or collecting unharvested fruits from people's back yards.

Humans can be so resourceful when they put their minds to it.

Food Lessons for Hard Times

To hear the economists tell it, times may be getting even worse before they get better. Some people have already been forced to tighten their belts. For others, it's time to think about tightening belts even further. Still, there's a silver lining to these austere developments: Less consumption by us humans is better for the planet. It might even prompt people to start thinking of ways they can consume more wisely and tread lighter in the process.

For those of you looking for ways to eat smarter for less, here are some thoughts accumulated over the last two years writing this blog:

* Eat less. Not only will you pay less for food, your body will reward you with better health. With all the different kinds of diets admonishing you to eat that but don't eat that, we lose sight of the fact that the easiest way to lose weight is to cut back on portion size. The latest studies confirm that it's not carbs or proteins so much as the number of calories we consume that influences our waist lines most. Slimming down and keeping the weight off relieves all kinds of stress on vital organs, prolonging life.

*Stop eating processed and refined foods. There are many reasons to reject food from factories. First, they contain all kinds of chemical additives and industrialized oils that previously were never part of the human diet, such as corn and soybean oil. Processed foods also contain too much sodium, which contributes to high blood pressure. Refined grains raise glycemic levels, a cause of diabetes. Despite these health consequences, corporations such as General Mills and Pepsi think of all kinds of ways to persuade you buy their products because the extra money you pay for them earns profits for their shareholders.

* Buy from the bulk section. The previously mentioned processed foods all come in packaging, much of it plastic made from petroleum, that just ends up in the landfill. Even if you recycle paper and cardboard packaging it's still more environmentally friendly to purchase foods that don't have any packaging at all. And you pay extra for the packaging. These are all good reasons to buy your foods from the bulk section whenever possible. If your local store doesn't have a bulk section, talk to the manager and urge her to start one.

* Buy whole foods whenever possible. Unfortunately, the federal government does not subsidize the growing of healthy fruits and vegetables the way it subsidizes the growing of corn and soybeans. That means the most nutritious food at the grocery store is the most expensive, while the foods that are most harmful are the cheapest. Still, the best source of nutrition is food that has not been adulterated in any way, the stuff you find in the produce section. Potatoes and sweet potatoes, broccoli and cabbage, carrots and parsnips--they are all loaded with good nutrition. So are whole grains of all kinds and dried beans. If you can afford it, start buying your produce from the local farmers market. Not only will you know exactly where your food is coming from, you will be helping to support your local agricultural economy, not some giant agribusiness a thousand miles away.

* Eat less protein from animals. Our bodies must have protein, but we've grown too accustomed to getting it from beef cows and pigs and chickens. Feeding these animals in order to deliver them to your dinner plate is expensive and it has environmental consequences. Most animals for consumption are now raised on huge feedlots that produce tons of pollution that ends up in our waters and in our air. They and all the fuels used to feed and transport them contribute mightily to global warming. Try getting more of your protein from eggs--especially the kind produced on pastures instead of giant hen houses. Eggs are still a nutritional bargain, even when they're $4.75 a dozen at the farmers market. Also work more dried beans and whole grains into your diet. Together they make a complete protein and they are much cheaper than meat. The next step up would be chicken. Chickens (look for "pasture raised") are much more efficient producers of protein than cows or pigs.

* Stop buying wild-caught fish. Have you checked the price of tuna or swordfish lately? Prices have gone through the roof because there are fewer and fewer fish to be caught. Humans are rapidly destroying the oceans. If you must buy wild-caught fish, check first with a reputable rating agency such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch program to make sure you are buying only fish that has been sustainably harvested. Otherwise, look for fish raised on farms in the U.S., such as catfish, tilapia, striped bass or shrimp. These have the further advantage of being cheaper than most wild-caught fish. Another excellent protein source is farmed shell fish such as clams, oyster and mussels. For my money, farmed mussels are a great seafood bargain. Just make sure they carry a U.S. or Canada label. If you are pregnant, breast feeding or otherwise concerned about having enough Omega 3 in your diet, be assured that there are other sources besides fish.

* Stop drinking bottled water. Bottled water is outrageously expensive and Americans throw away something on the order of 80 million plastic water bottles every day, to say nothing of all the fuel being used to make the bottles and transport them from factory to store. In most places, ordinary tap water is just as good if not better for you than the bottled variety. If you must drink water out of a bottle, save your last bottle and fill it from the tap.

*Stop drinking soda. Whether it's Coke, Pepsi or Mountain Dew, sodas are loaded with sugar that rots teeth and helps make people (especially children) fat. Americans consume way too much soda. Plus, sodas are a major contributor to our plastic bottle and aluminum can nightmare. Diet sodas are only marginally better, in that you eliminate the sugar. But in the process you consume industrialized chemicals posing as sweeteners. Is it possible we could grow to like water again?

* Don't eat out so much. It may not help your local fast-food restaurant if you start eating more at home. But the fact is food from restaurants and especially fast food joints is not particularly good for you and typically the portions are much bigger than what you need. It just helps put on unhealthy poundage. If you are using whole ingredients and healthy oils such as extra-virgin olive oil or canola oil, just about anything you make at home is bound to be more nutritious and likely cheaper than what you get eating out. Making food at home and sitting down to a meal at the dinner table also teaches valuable lessons to children and helps strengthen the family unit. Get your kids out from in front of the TV and into the kitchen helping you make dinner.

* Start a kitchen garden. You can solve many of your budget and nutritional issues by growing your own food. A package of broccoli seeds costs less than $3 and typically contains 300 hundred or more seeds. That works out to about a penny for every head of broccoli you grow. How does that compare to what you are paying at the store? There is very little in the produce section or at the farmers market that you cannot grow yourself, including all your most expensive favorites: strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, rhubarb, artichokes. There's nothing tricky about growing mounds of your own potatoes or sweet potatoes. Or beans and tomatoes. You can fill your pantry and your freezer with enough food for the whole year. Don't have a yard you can turn into a garden? Join your nearest community garden. And if there isn't a community garden in your area, start one.

Or perhaps you have some other great ideas for shaving the food budget? Feel free to leave a comment....

Are Community Gardens Obsolete? Part II

Yesterday's post drew more than the usual number of comments. Rather than respond to each individually, I'm going to follow some of the threads that emerged.

I am encouraged by the number of people who support the idea of treating community gardens more like collective farms. As expected, there are a number of gardeners out there who cling to the notion that the plots in community gardens should belong to individuals. They like the idea of doing whatever they want with their individual plots, to work a lot or a little, to plant what they please. To my mind, the difference is not so great as one might think. It's simply a matter of shifting attitude from what is "mine" to what is "ours."

But the bottom-line question is this: Will the District of Columbia in fact embrace the idea of growing local food, or are we going to sit here like a potted plant and wait for the next shoe to drop? My personal view is, things are going to grow more difficult in the future, not easier. I can easily see a time when urban land--land suitable for growing food--will simply be too precious to give over to the leisure pursuit of puttering around a private garden plot. Growing food locally for people to eat will be serious business, not just something that certain people of means get to enjoy on Sunday mornings at the Dupont Circle farmers market.

This is not a new idea and it does not belong to me. Some 20 years ago, the D.C. Council passed a law that called on the mayor to conduct an inventory of all the vacant land in the city and start turning it over to food producing gardens. The legislation also called for involving the city's youth in these gardens to teach them marketable skills. Apparently, the mayor at that time and mayors since then have found it convenient to ignore that law. We hear a lot about the city making land available for developers, for instance, but we hear very little about the city making land available for food gardening. Part of the problem may just be that we have not done enough to convince the public--or our public officials--that gardening is more than picking flowers, that gardening should be taken seriously.

The fact is that for too many thousands of D.C. residents fresh fruit and vegetables are either not readily available or not affordable. Children in these families go to school on a breakfast of flavored high-fructose corn syrup and potato chips from the corner convenience store. Hard as it may be to believe, hunger is not a stranger to the District of Columbia. Consider these facts:

* The poverty rate for school children ages 5 - 17 in the District of Columbia is 51.3 percent compared with 34.5 percent nationally, the highest in the nation. This translates into 56,000 children at risk of hunger in Washington, D.C., or 1 in 2 children.

* More than 57,000 D.C. residents live in extreme poverty. For a family of four, that means they live on less than $29 a day for all their expenses – including food, rent, and transportation.

* 12.5 percent of households in the District of Columbia struggled with hunger from 2004-06. That’s an increase from previous years. From 2001 – 2003, just 9 percent were considered to be food insecure.

* 109,000 D.C. residents are eligible to participate in the Food Stamp Program each month, however only two-thirds actually receive food stamps, and of those who do, 74 percent report that their food stamps do not last the entire month.

* The average monthly Food Stamp Program benefit is $91.83.

* Food access issues continue to challenge D.C. residents. Residents of Wards 2 and 3 have three times more access to supermarkets than residents in Wards 1, 4, 6, 7 — although the latter have a comparable or a greater number of residents.

* At every supermarket in the District, foods with high nutritional value such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and dairy products are more expensive to purchase than highly processed and less healthy items. It has become clear, in fact, that cheap processed foods are a leading cause of obesity, diabetes and other life-threatening ailments, putting poor people at greater risk of disease and shortened life span because of what they eat.

Does this mean that we can't plant flowers? No, I don't think so. Flowers attract pollinators to the garden and make a lovely border or even a solid bed that is pleasing to the eye. Flowers can be cut and sold at the farmers market to raise funds for the garden. But there are many opportunities to grow flowers in the city other than in the confines of a fenced community garden. Think pocket parks and street medians and tree planters and the beds outside apartment and office buildings and schools. Think apartment balconies and streetside containers and window boxes.

Does turning a "community garden" into a food-centric collective mean we can't plant fennel or broccoli rabe or any of our other favorite designer vegetables? Without getting bogged down in how a reformed community garden would operate, I wouldn't deny the leadership of such a garden the freedom to decide what kinds of things to plant. But in a world with many hungry mouths, I also think it behooves us to get a lot better at growing things like potatoes and beans and corn--things with a big caloric payoff--in addition to lettuce and collard greens, beets and spinach, kale and cabbage.

And does sacrificing a bit of ownership and independence for a higher purpose take all the fun out of gardening? Anyone who has worked as a volunteer in a garden that was not his own can state categorically that it was still every bit as enjoyable and fulfilling.

But most importantly, it is time to accept gardeing as a civic responsibility in this changing world and to press the powers that be in our city to start getting serious about making more public spaces available to grow local foods across the District on an organized basis. This is a matter of policy that only our local office holders can turn into a reality. But D.C. Urban Gardeners, as one of the few organizations of its kind in the city, is in a unique position to play a leadership role on this issue. With the entire culinary world pressing the Obamas to turn the White House lawn over to vegetables, we who know what our local needs are should do no less in our own public spaces. I urge all gardeners who are reading this to ask themselves what they can do to further this goal.

Sources for this article: D.C. Hunger Solutions and the Capital Area Food Bank.

Are Community Gardens Obsolete?

Recently I was asked to consult on a possible new community garden in my neighborhood. The local parks and recreation department owns a 1/4-acre plot of land just up the street from my home that is being developed either one of two ways: a passive, walk-through public park with seating, or as a community garden with individual plots.

A meeting was held at the nearby recreation center and a handful of would-be plot holders came out to vote for a community garden. I proposed something a little different: Instead of assigning individual plots, why not form a co-op that could operate this parcel more like a farm? Food production would be so much greater, I argued. It could be managed for eye appeal--no messy tangles of rambling tomatoes and squashes. Shares of produce could be distributed according to the work people put in, and a portion could be assigned to the needy as well. Pest problems could be eliminated with selective planting and crop rotations. The garden could be operated year-round. It could, in short, demonstrate to all just how much food can be grown on a small urban parcel.

Well, I was nearly run out of there on a rail. "Sounds like the Soviet Union!" grumbled one attendee. "Is this how they managed those gardens in World War II?"

This may not be how gardens were run during World War II (or maybe some of them were?). But then again, a few things have certainly changed in the last 60 years. There are more mouths to feed. Precious resources are dwindling. Urban areas certainly have been more built up: There just isn't as much open space available. What's more, we are entering times when pulling together as a community will be all the more important if everyone is to have access to healthful food. It's high time we start looking at the urban spaces that are available for food gardening as a collective resource.

In the District of Columbia, there are some 30 community gardens spread across the city, most of them located in more affluent areas. Typically, these gardens are divided into individual raised beds that are assigned (usually for a modest fee) to individuals on an annual basis. Most gardens have a waiting list of people who are eager to garden and don't have a yard of their own.

The problem with these gardens, as I see it, is that there is no control over what is planted in the individual plots. The gardeners are all on their individual learning curves. They may be growing a great deal of food, or very little. They may be planting things appropriate for the site, or they may not. They may be putting in a great deal of effort, or they may not be doing much at all, in which case the garden managers at some point are forced to take back the plot and assign it to someone else. It's a very inefficient system, as far as overall production is concerned.

There are also horticultural issues. Not too long ago, I was asked to visit a community garden on Capitol Hill and give some advice on Integrated Pest Management. The plot holders had had problems in the past with nematodes. Now they were experiencing an infestation of cucumber beetles. They wanted to know how to get rid of the cucumber beetles. Well, I said, have you tried not planting cucumbers for a year? Or delaying your plantings to interrupt the beetle's life cycle? Those are two effective methods. But one of the garden leaders threw up her hands. "We can't do that?" she said. "We can't tell the other gardeners what to do!"

There is a model for a more effective use of urban space here in the District of Columbia and that is the 7th Street Garden. This garden was started on donated property by two young women who saw it as away to address food security issues in an inner-city neighborhood. Since installing raised beds and trucking in loads of compost, they've been besieged by volunteers and started programs to get local residents involved in tending the garden and sharing in the proceeds. They sell the produce at local farmers markets and give gardening and canning classes to raise funds.

The system I have in mind would work more like a Community Supported Agriculture farm. Most people think of CSA as a farmer who sells you a subscription to his produce, then delivers it weekly in a box. But there are actually many types of CSA arrangements. Some of them involve community residents actually purchasing a plot of land then hiring a farmer to manage it. The CSA members make collective decisions about how the farm should operate, and they are required to spend time working on the farm before they share in the bounty.

Why couldn't such a system work in the city? Instead of assigning individual plots, elect a steering committee that decides what will be planted and when. Great use could be made of border fencing for growing beans and cucumbers and grapes and kiwis and other climbing fruits and vegetables. Space could be set aside for perennial vegetables such as asparagus and rhubarb. There could be room for small fruit and nut trees. Instead of puttering around their plots individually, members would receive work assignments and all pull together. In that way, many more people could be involved, sharing in a greater volume of food. It would become a community garden in its truest sense.

And why do community gardeners walk away from their plots in winter? There's no need to, especially in our climate zone. The type of urban garden I envision could be growing a bumper crop of collards, kales, mustard and Chinese greens for the community straight through till spring.

Americans grow up with the idea that we make our fortunes as individuals. Perhaps it's time to let a little air into that cherished credo, especially when it comes to something as precious as urban green space. Maybe you belong to a community garden somewhere that already operates along the lines I've described? Or perhaps you disagree entirely. We'd love to hear your thoughts....

Brain Freeze

Sunflowers, cosmos, zinnia--all are standing tall and proud, giving the garden an air of youth and vigor. Everyone comments on how good the garden looks at the moment. But I know better.

The squash and cucumber plants need to be pulled to make way for an attempt at fall potatoes. The turnips are beyond ready for harvest. The kohlrabi are giving up the ghost. I've planted a few seed trays of fall crops--cabbages, kale, lettuce, broccoli. But I haven't managed them very well. Half won't make it. Meanwhile, there are so many other things to plant that I haven't even begun to think of. And before I can get to that, a big bowl of cucumbers waiting to be pickled stares at me from the kitchen counter. I am staying up past my bedtime to can a bumper crop of Roma tomatoes.

I should be mowing the grass (we've had a drought, so not too much growth there) and beds are long past due for a good weeding. I am not so much avoiding all this work as just plodding along, somewhat stunned by the turning of the seasons and with it a long list of new things to do. It seems like deja vu all over again.

Even in our kitchen garden one mile from the White House in the District of Columbia, the toil never ends. If you start as we did back in February, the life of the garden seems interminable. I am developing a greater appreciation for all the work our forefathers faced just getting by from one day to the next. We are greatly satisfied to be feeding ourselves from our own small plot of land. But you know what? It's a lot of work....

Pickle Round-Up

All you skeptics out there should know that our Hungarian sun pickles, which sat outside our front door for four days in a two quart jar with a fat slice of rye bread, produced some of the best pickles we've ever tasted. These pickles are incredibly crisp, not too salty, with just enough flavor of dill and garlic and a faint, yeasty sweetness.

We don't exactly understand how this fermentation works, between the salt and the yeast, but this may be our new favorite pickle of all time. One reader calls them "penicillin pickles," yet they are incredibly easy to make. Unfortunately, they won't last forever, so we are eating some every day.

It's been a month now since we first started making our pickles. We've made quite a lot, and several different kinds. Here's a roundup:

Deli-style dills: We love these crisp, fermented half-sour pickles. It's the perfect pickle to eat with a corned beef sandwich. They are easy to make, the basic formula being two tablespoons of salt for every quart of water, then add dill weed, garlic cloves, peppercorns and oak leaves. Five or six days later, you should have a small bucket-full of pickles that will last a week or two.

Martha Stewart's Refrigerator Pickles: I wasn't expecting a lot from these pickles. They were a little bland at first, being preserved in white vinegar rather than fermented. But they have gained flavor over time and they are growing on me. Quick and easy, and they last a long time. I like nibbling on them with a piece of cheese.

Sweet & Sour Pickles: I wish these pickles were a little firmer. Perhaps I processed them a bit too long. But the combination of vinegar, sugar, cloves and celery seed provides a jolt of flavor. They are fun and addictive.

Bread & Butter Pickles: These also have to be near the very top of our list for most outstanding pickles. Don't spare any effort: get yourself some pickling lime for the long soak these pickles require to turn out firm and extra-crisp. These are a dense, full-flavored pickle with cider vinegar, sugar, cloves and ginger. Sit yourself down with some of these and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Oak Leaf Pickles: If you spend enough time in the pickle literature, you'll see all types of recipes calling for oak leaves, grape leaves, cherry leaves, currant leaves. The tannin in the leaves is supposed to help keep the pickles crisp. The original recipe for these pickles called for grape leaves, but the closest thing I have is the oak tree outside my front door. These are fermented pickles, similar to the deli-style dills described above, but fermented for two or three weeks until they are fully sour. They can then be processed for long-term storage. This is a full-flavored, classic dill pickle.

Mustard Pickle: I had my first taste of these this morning because they've been mellowing since I first made them two weeks ago. Again, I wasn't expecting much because they are so easy. But they are devilishly good, with plain white vinegar and a bit of mustard powder. Some readers objected to the tiny bit of artificial sweetener in the recipe. I'm sure you could leave it out. I could easily spend an hour or two with these pickles and a bowl of popcorn. Once processed, they should keep almost forever in the pantry.

Cajun Pickles: You figure with a name like this, they have to be good and they are. They gain heat from ripe cherry peppers and jalapenos from the garden, along with lots of flavor from the many different herbs and spices in the brine. These are another variety of fermented pickle and I just wish the recipe came with a method for canning them so we could put a few quarts away in the pantry. I hate the idea of them going bad before we can eat them all. This is one of those pickles to give to a friend who likes something with a kick.

That wraps up our pickling marathon for now. Seems to me what's missing here is a simple dill pickle made with vinegar for easy canning and storage. With all the references in our cookbook library, we should be able to find one so none of our cucumbers go to waste.

Remember to check your cucumber plants often and well. And may the cucumber fairy bless you plenty.

Germination!

No matter how much we hover over our garden, Mother Nature will take her course in her own good time. The Roma tomatoes were the first to emerge from the seed tray we've been tending on a heated mat. All four seeds sprouted seemingly in unison. But that just raises the suspense level for our other plantings. We have not seen any activity from our Cherokee Purple tomatoes, for instance, but there are signs of life from Dr. Carolyn, Mortgage Lifter and Green Zebra.

The emerging seedlings are called cotyledons. Plants with two of these "false leaves" are called dicots. Grasses have only one leaf; they're called monocots. These leaves just provide initial nourishment for the tiny plants. The true leaves--the ones that perform photosynthesis--will come later. At that point, these seedlings will need to be placed in a sunny spot to thrive.

Spinach looks a lot like grass when it first sprouts. Planted on March 7, it was the first seed to germinate in the garden, even when temperatures overnight were dipping into the 30s.

Talk about suspense. I have been checking daily for some movement in our bed of fava beans, first planted back on March 4. Favas are supposed to germinate in seven to 14 days, and here we are three weeks later. I had all but given up hope. But lo and behold, this morning the favas are beginning to emerge. They like the cold. And a good thing, because this has been a below-average March, temperature-wise.

Lettuces, arugula, mustard greens--I like to plant these directly in the garden, sprinkling the seeds over the soil then rubbing them under the surface with the palm of my hand. Distribution of the seeds is never perfectly even, but the plants don't seem to mind terribly. By planting them relatively thickly, they crowd out weeds--most of the time. Here are some little bitty Golden Frill mustard plants. They first become visible as tiny green dots as we water the bed. The telephoto lens makes them look much bigger--a tiny pebble turns into a boulder.

Here is one of our first peas of the season. It looks like something from outer space, illuminated by the first light of morning. The peas were also planted March 4, same day as the fava beans, so we have been in a state of high anticipation over them. They have their own schedule, regardless of what it says on the seed packet.

Compost: Making the Sale

I love talking to groups about compost and last night I did my schtick in front of the Capitol Hill Garden Club. Who, you ask, gardens on Capitol Hill? This club, you should know, is one of the largest in the Washington, D.C., metro area. Many of the members have been gardening for 30 years or more. And I got a very warm welcome.

I had less than an hour, so this was not the kind of venue where you can do a hands-on composting demonstration. Over the months (they invited me to speak last summer) I worked on a Powerpoint-slide show that would give the what and the why of composting. It's a fascinating story, how humans for thousands of years were spreading compost and manure (the Greeks talk about making compost heaps) on their crops. Darwin was convinced that earth worms ruled the world (or at least the underworld). But then in the 19th century German scientists started pushing for an industrial process that would turn gaseous nitrogen into something that could be spread on farm crops to feed an exploding human population. It's only within the last few generations that we have come to believe that fertility is something we buy in the form of turquoise pellets, and that composting is only for hippies and tree huggers.

The sad truth is that chemical fertilizers are ruining our soils and choking our waterways. People are receptive to composting and gardening "naturally" or "organically." But especially in urban areas, they aren't sure how to make compost without investing tons of money in manufactured bins. There are rodent issues, neighbors to consider. It's a very thorny problem, and I'm just starting to get a grip on all the details. But that's what we need to be doing, especially in our cities: figuring out how we can recycle all that stuff we normally send to the landfill, or put at the curb in plastic bags.

On a more amusing note, I did a little hobnobbing with some community gardeners last week, courtesy of our local department of the environment. An environmental specialist is meeting with community gardeners to talk about Integrated Pest Management, or how to deal with unwanted bugs and plant diseases without using pesticides. Except the environmental specialist is not really a gardener. So I was told to expect questions. Sure enough, everyone wanted to know how to deal with cucumber beetles. They weren't very receptive to the idea of planting something other than cucumbers if they have a recurring infestation of cucumber beetles.

Somehow, we need to get the idea across that there isn't an organic spray to replace every chemical spray. Organic is a holistic approach that requires plant diversity, opening you mind to the needs of the environment, providing food and nesting places for wildlife, choosing the appropriate plants for local conditions, thinking globally instead of where can I get my hands on a good spray.

After my presentation last night, an elderly woman on crutches approached me to make this observation: "I started gardening 35 years ago and I had the worst soil. So I just took my leaves and spread them around the garden. I've been doing that every year, just spreading the leaves around. And you know what? I've got the most wonderful soil you've ever seen."

Go on with your bad leaf mulching self, girl.

To be continued...