seed order

I order seeds last weekend, during a blizzard. It was so much fun to think about tasty tomatoes and tall beanstalks while the snow swirled around outside!

Johnny's seed catalog had a really good reference - a table that estimated how much of a given vegetable would grow in 100 ft of bed space. Because of that, I realized that allowing 70 ft for green beans was way too much and was able to re-devote 50 ft of that space to growing dry beans! I'm really excited for this - I don't think they're commonly grown in home gardens, so I didn't think about them until I noticed them in the seed catalogs. We eat a lot of beans and we were able to pick out heirloom varieties that you can't find in the store.

We decided to purchase tomato and pepper starts from our farmer, but we will still be starting celery from seed. This is the only vegetable we will start indoors and then transplant. Since we are growing food to preserve and eat over the winter, we are not concerned about extending the season. Maybe next year? It depends on how this experiment goes!

I ordered from two different companies, just to keep it simple. One of the companies shipped our seed order yesterday, so we will be getting the celery seeds to start soon! I'm going to start a batch in egg cartons when they show up, and we'll see how that goes. They send a crazy amount of celery seeds (probably because they are so difficult to grow) so if the egg carton batch doesn't thrive, we'll have time and seeds left to step up our efforts with the next round.

I am getting SO EXCITED for the growing season!!

film review

We went to see Living Downstream at the local theatre, a newly released documentary about chemicals in the environment. We were lucky to have the filmmaker Chanda Chevannes and the main scientist in the film, Sandra Steingraber, available for questions after the film.

The basic point of the film is that at least some of the chemicals in our food, soil, water, and air - for whose presence humans are responsible - can cause cancer. I think this film has the potential to reach a much wider audience because of the cancer element which so many people can relate to.

The film was very good and I do think it's one everyone should see. Even more than the Future of Food or Food Inc, it shows the importance of large-scale changes. The film explains how chemicals get into our food, soil, water, and air supply - so even if you are eating organic, you are still swimming in harmful, cancer-causing chemicals with every breath you take. That was why it was surprising to me when after the film, the first question on the 'what should we do?' theme was unanimously answered "eat organic." After the leaving the theatre I wondered whether they were trying to avoid being political in an effort to avoid polarizing or alienating viewers.

The film receives high marks from me in terms of its educational quality, though even if I were using this in a college classroom I'm sure the students would need help making connections in certain places. For the most part, Dr. Steingraber does a great job of conveying scientific facts and reasoning to a lay audience.

One of the most interesting points she made was that when she was going through the initial doctors visits for cancer treatment, she would try to engage her health providers in a conversation about environmental factors and cancer incidence, to no avail. In the medical literature, the link has been clearly shown time and time again. This to me pointed out something that I am personally disturbed by, which is the gap between scientific knowledge and practical knowledge. I think one of the reasons for publicly funded higher education is for professors to be researching in the public interest, but the way the career of professor is structured, credit is given only for publishing in specialized academic journals, read by other academics. In my field of Sociology, this is a huge problem, but it just seems even more urgent in the medical field.

Anyway, I recommend it! Go find a way to watch this film and get other people to see it too!

know your farmer!

While at the market Saturday chatting with our farmer, who knows of our plan to have a large garden and preserve lots of vegetables for the winter, he had a great offer: he said that if I wanted to come out to the farm for a day or two in the spring and help with tomatoes, he would give me some seedlings. I am planning on at least half of my tomato plants being heirlooms and I don't know what he will be planting, but I figure this is a good opportunity either way.

I've looked into farm apprenticeship programs, which many of the local of farms offer. You apply and most of them offer housing as part of the payment, plus a small stipend, and it lasts through the growing season for one year. It would be a great opportunity for learning from an expert - it seems that farming is the type of thing that is much better passed on by working hands-on with someone experienced rather than learning out of a book, as I am doing. But in the end, the drawbacks outweigh the pros for me. I don't want to live away from my spouse and my dog. And I don't want to have to pause my dissertation work for a whole six months (or however long it would end up being). Of course I suppose I could try it out, do it for awhile until it gets too hard and then quit - but I think the experience would be best if you make it through the whole season. I also think if you make a commitment to something, you should see it through. Anyway, I will probably take any short-term offer like this I get, just for the learning experience.

For those with some time to spare who are looking to save a little money, this is a great way to get good quality seedlings and learning experience.

A Garden in Pictures, 10/30/10

Finally, we made some progress on the fence and I got some pictures taken! Also, I found an answer to one of my tomato problems! We had a fantastic time at the farmer's market today. I'm sad that it was the last one, but most of the farmers were in a good mood because they're looking forward to sleeping in next Saturday:) Which is to say we had lots of good conversation.

First, the garden. Right now we just have the posts for the fence in...my spouse took off work yesterday to dig the holes and install the posts. He rented a post-hole digger for $12 and we bought some concrete for $16. I wasn't sure about the concrete but he said it was necessary, particularly in the Illinois winters - the ground freezing and thawing tends to push things out of the ground, like our chain link fence. He said it we need to take down the fence, the concrete will come out with the fence posts without too much trouble. I can't remember how much the wood cost right now but I'll see if I can find out. The first photo is the view from the second-story window, the picture on the right is on the ground, looking northeast.



The farmer's market always has a master gardener booth, and I brought this tomato to show them. This is what happened to all of my tomatoes...they looked great when they were green, and as soon as they started to ripen they split and got this cottony/spider-weby looking stuff in the cracks. The master gardeners weren't sure, but they gave me lots of resources. I'm excited to check them out, I'm sure I will make good use of their knowledge next year! I asked my farmer and he said that several of his tomatoes had that happen - it has to do the weather this year, where we had several downpours followed by extreme heat. The tomatoes had too much water and then when exposed to the sun, they grew too quickly. Their outside tomatoes had the same thing happen, but the tomatoes that they had in the hoophouse, where they can control the conditions more easily and the plants are protected a little better, did not have this. I talked to another farmer who lives a little bit further away, who did not have the same problems with his tomatoes this year, and he agreed with our farmer's diagnosis - I think he'd seen it before in previous seasons, but his location was drier so he escaped with many delicious amazing tomatoes this year.

In other news, here is what happens to tomato plants after the first frost.

I was amazed at how different the plant looked! It is totally wilted and shriveled up, and it looked great the night before the frost. I'm going to cut open one of the tomatoes to see how the fruit was affected by the frost. We have several green tomatoes that we were planning to batter and fry, but if the insides of the fruit look anything like the plant I don't think we'll want to use them.