To Grow is to Give and Share

As we enjoy the long-awaited seasonal delights from our gardens, I was thinking that we could all use a little reminder to donate to our local food banks. There are good resources on the web that will help you find a food bank near you.

Ample Harvest is a great web site devoted to doing just that.

Sharing the bounty at harvest time comes naturally to gardeners - growing means giving. Sometimes we are sharing only with our families, but most often it's with our neighbors and community too. Planting a few extra vegetables to donate for those in need is a simple but powerful way for urban gardeners to contribute to the well-being of all members of our communities.  

Growing food is a fundamental human activity that leads naturally to sharing our abundance with our neighbors.

At my local food donation center, CommunityServices Agency (CSA) in Mountain View California, on average over 200 people a day shop at the agency’s Food and Nutrition Center for food to supplement what they and their families have to eat. The most popular items are fresh fruit and vegetables, and sadly there is often not enough of these to distribute. Donations of fresh herbs are also welcome and gardeners usually have an abundance of prolific herbs (oregano, thyme, mint, basil, etc.).

Most gardeners are  happy to contribute their surplus garden produce to feed the hungry, but the challenge is raising awareness about this simple but critical act. It truly makes an enormous difference to those who just can't afford fresh produce on a regular basis.

So this summer get the most out of your luscious ripe tomatoes - think of those grateful and happy families benefiting from your generosity and thoughtfulness. Then remind your friends and neighbors to donate too!

Please share your favorite ways to donate your extra garden harvest - you might inspire someone to do the same...

A version of this post was published on Eat Drink Better

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke

Growing Urban Artichokes

Artichokes are a hardy perennial plant that can be simple to grow, as well as being a stunningly beautiful addition to your edible landscape. There are many varieties available to cultivate in your own backyard garden; though the Green Globe is by far the most popular in the United States. You might even say we have a monoculture of them. 

Artichokes and Agriculture: Background
In the United States the reason new varieties of the green globe were developed was because commercially, an artichoke was needed that could tolerate a broader range of temperatures. Artichokes thrive best when temperatures are fairly mild, 55° F at night, with an average of daytime temperatures of 75° F. When the plants are young they require vernalization or chilling, at temperatures below 50° for as much as 90 hours to 240 hours in order to produce the edible buds.

Green Globe artichokes produce a crop  twice yearly

Beyond Green Globe Artichokes

There are several different varieties of the Green Globe on the market, but there are also many types of purple and violet artichokes that you can grow. Many Italian families have historically raised an incredible diversity of heirloom artichokes, from Violetta di Chioggia and Purple of Romagna, to Romanesco Italian Purple. But if you want to eat some of these more unusual cultivars, you may just have to grow them yourself.

I  became enamored with incredibly beautiful varieties of violet artichokes that I haven’t seen in my area; I’ve begun growing them myself, and am enjoying keeping the legacy of their diversity alive.

I found a violet artichoke plant at my favorite garden store, and I’m growing seedlings of Purple of Romagna with seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. You can find other organic seed suppliers that offer heirloom seeds for many different types of violet artichokes.

Key tips for Growing Artichokes

Artichokes have proven to be fairly easy to grow in our home garden. This is not so surprising, as we live a few miles north of Castroville, the self-described "artichoke capital of the world". If you don’t live in the coastal regions of north central California or the Pacific Northwest, your best bet is to do a little research to find a variety of artichoke that is best suited to your region, but here are some basics:

 

1. Artichokes propagate well from divisions taken from an established plant. If you plant them early in the year, you should get a fall crop. Seedlings planted in the spring will produce, as long as they have had the necessary amount of chill time.

2. Artichokes do well in fertile soil with good drainage, however they are known to be adaptable to different soil conditions. My plants have done well in soil amended with compost and chicken manure.

Artichoke plants have lush, showy, silvery leaves

4. In hot weather artichokes need frequent watering — if you notice the leaves drooping, make sure you give the plant a deep soaking.

5. Overhead watering is not recommended. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way. Overhead watering seems to attract aphids; the plants did much better with slow deep drip irrigation at their base.

6. In order to control aphids plant nasturtiums a few feet away from the artichoke plants; these flowers will lure the aphids away from the artichokes. The yellow nasturtiums are supposed to be especially effective, but I have had success with a mix of colors. Spraying with any chemical pesticides is not necessary and not recommended.

7. To harvest your artichokes, watch the buds develop and as soon as you see any sign of the leaves beginning to open, they should be harvested. If it is a globe variety, the edible bud should have very tightly packed leaves. The elongated types of artichokes may have bud leaves that slightly open. You can also harvest the budding chokes when they are very small, for baby artichokes that are sometimes called for in certain recipes.

Slice fresh young artichokes thinly and saute in olive oil

 8.  The plants need plenty of room — mine are about 4 feet high by 6 feet wide. The large leaves are fragile and can break easily — be careful not to drag the hose over them.

9. When the leaves wilt and get yellow, just trim them off to keep the plant from getting too raggedy. The late fall is a good time to trim all the stalks way back to twelve inches or so.

10. In the SF Bay Area artichokes do fine over the winter and enjoy the rain; by January my plants have already grown back beautifully lush.

Artichokes will not tolerate temperatures below 25° F without protection. My farmer friend in Oregon grows them and he says they winter well insulated under the snow. So make sure that you mulch the plants to protect them through the cold seasons, and they may survive to grow again in the spring.

Artichokes are beautiful showy plants with elegant silvery serrated leaves. You can display them in your front yard and occasionally let some of the buds open into spectacular flowers. As a child, I grew up eating them often, and they continue to be one of my very favorite foods.

Photos: Urban Artichoke

This post was also pubished @ Ecolocalizer

Our Summer's Bounty in Pictures!

It's September, and I'm posting some end-of-season pictures of our edible garden. The new beds we installed in the front yard are thriving. I'm simply amazed at how they filled out so quickly, even with our cool Bay Area summer weather:

The  "Stella Blue" Hokkaido squash in the foreground grew so big it's growing over our hedge in the front yard out to the sidewalk! And the bed on the other side of our front yard is just as lush with vegetables and flowers:

Out front we grew winter and summer squashes, Emerite string beans (bean teepee), Cranberry and Scarlet Runner beans for shell beans, basil, tomatoes, strawberries, Japanese eggplants (two types), Corni di Toro peppers, and lemon cucumbers- all in the beds you see here. Here's a pretty picture of a typical harvest for dinner (okay, I cheated- the carrots and Poblano peppers are from the backyard!):

I have to show a picture of the squash "escaping" from our front yard and out towards the street:

And here's a close up of the beautiful, blue-green, almost mature squash:

The  Stella Blue Hokkaido is a kabocha (Japanese) squash- I've never seen this type in the grocery store. You can bet I'll try saving some seeds!

I hope this convinces you that edible landscaping in the front yard can be attractive, as well as a provider of abundant, healthy food for your family and neighbors.  Besides sharing with my neighbors, I've been taking the extra bounty over to the Community Services Agency in Mountain View, which provides food for the needy in our area. I will definitely be planting extra from now on to share!

Gardens are naturally giving: in beauty, healthful living, and in healing the planet.
The more gardens the better!