Power to the Flowers

Whenever it is time for harvest on Thursdays, Rich always gives me the wonderful task of cutting flowers for arrangements. I think he has realized how much I enjoy this part of harvest.


Gorgeous Zinnias are blooming all around the farm!

It is one of my favorite jobs because there are very few guidelines- as long as the flower is pretty enough to give to your mother or lover, then it is perfect for arrangements. He also encourages picking flowers and leafy plants (for extra girth in the arrangements) that are interesting and different.. The other day I cut some flowering dill and cilantro!

After harvesting the flowers and placing them into some buckets, we bring them back to the Southside Community Land Trust office and arrange the flowers ourselves. Rich likes to put a bunch of different flowers into beer bottles, creating a wild flower look.





Sean and I have been competing with the flower arrangements- we each make the same amount of arrangements and then see how many of ours are able to sell. Sean has been winning :P Rich and Patricia joined today and we all made one arrangement each. Rich's arrangement looked fantastic, you can tell he has been doing them for a couple years...

We will see tomorrow whose sold!

Food for Thought

Today Chris, the Children's Garden Coordinator at SCLT, and I romped around with kids from Bright Horizons and Luv 4 All Daycare Centers. We made sure to reiterate the parts of the plant to them (root, stem, leaf, fruit, flower), and what plants need to grow (light, water, soil).

After taking a walk around the garden, we checked on the spot where everyone in the group planted cilantro. I had not expected to see any cilantro shooting out of the ground in just one week, but to the kids' excitement, there were little tiny cilantro seedlings popping up.

We then had some arts and crafts time, and the kids were able to draw imaginary plants, with one condition: that their imaginary plants have all of the necessary plant parts. It was really interesting seeing what the kids drew- Car plants, money trees, and ipod plants... It makes me wonder how the future will evolve according to the priorities of this generation..

We have also incorporated a bunch of activities that involve eating into the lesson plans- it is important for the kids to see that healthy food is delicious, and that they can someday grow food that they can eat and enjoy as well.

We picked tomatoes and gathered a bit of cilantro (not the seedlings, but some that was fully grown) and made a fruit salsa.


Chris's Fruit Salad Salsa


1 peach
20 cherry tomatoes
1 kiwi
8 cherries (take out the pits)
a handful of cilantro
3 scallions
1 lime

All the ingredients were diced up and the lime was squeezed over the salsa for some added flavor.

Some of the kids were shy to try the salsa, but most of them enjoyed this homegrown tomato dip. It would be better if all of the ingredients were able to be grown locally... Rich told us that we could use some of the recently harvested pears at the farm for the other groups that come!

Visitors and Intruders

Today was the weekly visit from our good friends at Bright Horizons, nine playful and curious kids.

We started off our morning with Seeds, a book by Ken Robbins. After talking about the way that plants grow from seeds last week, this was a good follow up because it discusses the different ways that plants manage to spread their seeds far away. It covered everything from dandelions to plants with burrs.

We walked around with the group and everyone picked a plant that they will pay close attention to for the rest of the summer. We are hoping that the kids will be able to notice the changes that occur and how the plant's life cycle carries out.

While checking out the Tomato plants, one of the teachers noticed a bizarre caterpillar resting under one of the leaves. It reminded me much of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Some bugs are beneficial to the farm, such as certain Butterflies, Earthworms, etc. while others are highly damaging, like the Cutterworm, so before I picked it off of the plant, I brought Rich over to check it out.



He identified it as a Tomato Horn Worm, a damaging insect at the farm. After letting all of the kids check it out, we ran over to the coop to give the chickens a snack :P




We showed the kids a cool plant that we have in the greenhouse, the Sensitive Plant. The video below is able to show why it would be called this...



There is some more interesting information on Wikipedia..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa_pudica

In with the New

The farm is constantly changing.

New vegetables and fruits have been popping up everywhere:



Cucumbers



Cranberry Climbing Bean (this is a type that you remove from the pod and dry)



Pears appearing too (Not quite ripe yet though)

We harvested Garlic last week. With this crop being under the ground, it is difficult to tell when the bulb is not fully developed, or if it is so much so that it is beginning to rot... You can estimate the best time to pull it up when the foliage is about 80% dead (or brown).

Some of the Garlic was a bit slimy, showing the first signs of decay, but we saved these anyway- Sean and I salvaged this garlic, separating the cloves and removing the parts that had gone bad. Rich took all of the good garlic up into the attic to be dried for later sale at the market.

I have been eating a lot of the salvaged garlic, and supposedly it is called "green garlic." I believe this is because it is harvested earlier in the season than regular garlic and has not been cured.

Usually when a bed is harvested and cleared out, we aerate, spread compost, and spread seed or transplant another type of plant. Contrary to the norm here at City Farm, we didn't spread any compost because garlic does not deplete a great deal of nutrients from the soil. In addition, beans are nitrogen-fixers, so they actually help to replenish the soil while growing.

We have been also just recently been harvesting Purple Bush Beans at the farm.



I was not aware that all beans are not climbing beans... pretty cool purple color! They are green inside and supposedly they turn fully green when you cook them.

In with the new, but also out with the old; the pea plants were taken out and put into the compost- the last couple of weeks the pea pods have been noticeably less tasty and the plant, less productive.

This Cyclical Earth

Today was one of the Children's Garden Workshops with a local daycare. Last week, we explored topics such as how to keep a plant healthy (soil, water, sun, nutrients), and also had a scavenger hunt for finding different plants and bugs around the farm. This week, we taught the kids the life cycle of plants (seed>plant>flower>fruit>seed) using a children's book From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons, and the book, A Seed Grows: My First Look at a Plant's Life Cycle by Pamela Hickman. These were great- I would suggest picking one up at your local library if you need a tool to use for explaining this process.

We also drew plants making sure to include the major parts: the roots, stem, leaves, and flower/seed/fruit. Once we started walking around the farm and physically pointed out some of the concepts that we learned from the book it really clicked for some of the children- this was very exciting to witness. I especially liked seeing an attitudinal shift take place in the kids with their idea of bees. By learning about the way bees play an important role in the life cycle and survival of plants, the kids were able to realize that a bee's role in life is not merely to produce honey or bother humans. It was enlightening being able to see this shift from fear to understanding.

After taking them on the observation walk, we showed them how to harvest lettuce, basil, tomatoes, husk cherries, scallions, and edible flowers. All of the kids got a chance to harvest something- we showed them the correct way to cut off a lettuce head and where to snip basil so that both plants are able to grow again. We also demonstrated that husk cherries are ripe when they fall to the ground, and that tomatoes start out small and green and that they are ready to eat when they turn red. After harvesting all of these plants, we made a nice salad with the kids and shared some with Rich, and the high school interns, Princess and Eugenio.

Today was totally fulfilling in the sense of "aha" moments with the kids. It was great seeing how eager each of them became to try their first husk cherry and how pleasantly surprised they became when realizing how delicious basil leaves are.








Husk Cherries!

I am looking forward to seeing them next week, and in future weeks, to witness the progression of their understanding of the environment and food systems.

~~~How to harvest basil~~~

When your basil reaches a stage where there are two sets of leaves, they are ready for clipping!

Clip just above the lower set of leaves.



And in a week or two, you will see that your basil is just about back to the height it was before :>

Sweetly Eaten, Savored, and Stung

As the season moves on, it is amazing seeing all the cycles of each plant. A few weeks ago, the raspberries were at their peak, providing thousands of flavorful, explosive berries each day, seemingly ripening within mere hours. They were the big hit at the market, vanishing faster than they were able to be picked. Now the raspberries, though still enjoyable, have seemingly become the "washed up actress" at the farm: still available, but less flavorful, not as badly wanted (at least by the volunteer/work crew at the farm- we have had our fill of berries with decadent grazing during harvests), and quickly dwindling in abundance.

Tomatoes have graced us with their presence, and suddenly the spotlight has shifted from sweet raspberries to these savory gems. Yesterday, I ate the first cherry tomato of the season. I had no idea what cherry tomatoes actually tasted like until this moment.



More on bind weed... Rich told me that there has been a bind weed problem at the farm the entire time he has been farming there- almost a decade! The previous caretaker of the farm thought that the weed was actually a wild morning glory. Though these two plants are related, bind weed is extremely invasive. Sean, the apprentice at the farm, pointed out the difference between the two to me- The first picture is that of a morning glory plant, and below is a bind weed.






Notice that the bind weed has a much sharper leaf shape. Both bind weed and morning glory leaves and flowers are edible, but should be eaten in small amounts. I ate a bind weed flower on the farm the other day (they are white and look like morning glory flowers) and Rich told me that he would be hesitant to eat such a plant. You are what you eat... perhaps I will only eat this weed out of necessity in the future.

The sunflowers are blooming everywhere around the farm, and it is absolutely wonderful with their added presence.



Rich gave us all Stinging Nettles this past Friday and told us that we had some homework to do: Find out the reason why this plant is good to have around the farm, and cook something with it. Rich told us that usually, nettles are considered as weeds- they are quite unpleasant to come in contact with, living up to their name.

So I called up my friend Rachel, an ethnobotany lover, and asked her why they would be beneficial. It is amazing how healthy this plant is for you- containing up to 25% protein, nettles are the most protein rich of all leafy greens. Consuming it is also beneficial to your kidneys and acts as an anti-diuretic. This plant has a great amount of iron in it, making it a good treatment for anemia. It has also been used externally as a treatment for arthritis, through repetitive whipping of the body with a long section of the plant.

While preparing the nettles, I made sure to avoid touching the plant at all, because it seems that there are stingers, or "trichomes", located not only on the stems but even on the leaves. At the beginning, I carefully plucked off each leaf individually, but then eventually I realized that by holding the top of the stem, grasping the stem in a fist (with gloves or wash cloths), and sliding my hand down, the leaves were able to strip off of the plant quite easily.

In Europe, nettles are not only more present, but more frequently eaten. I called up my mom to ask for a Swedish recipe, and I also added my own spin.

Stinging Nettle Soup:

1. Soak the nettles in room temperature salt water (I added about 5 tablespoons to a large bowl of it) (I think this is to deactivate the sting).
2. In the bottom of a large pot, saute onion, garlic, chives, and chopped potatoes with some olive oil, salt, and pepper.
3. When the potatoes are almost fully done, add a bit of vegetable broth and then a bit of flour, and repeat, to make a rue of some sort.
4. Add a tablespoon (or two) of ginger, a splash of soy sauce, and a tablespoon of thyme (perhaps some rosemary too! I didn't do this, but thought that it would have added a nice flavor)
6. Stir in chopped tofu. Let cook for a little, then chop the nettles into strips and add to rue.
7. Gradually add more vegetable broth (as much as you like) and let simmer for 5-7 minutes.


I enjoyed this recipe, but Sean told me that he ate his nettle soup in a pureed form! The hearty texture of the nettles I imagine can be a problem for some people, but I enjoyed eating this earthy plant. Tomorrow the rest of the farm crew will share recipes and information on nettles- it should be interesting learning about different ways to cook this plant.