Hazelnuts / Filberts In My Garden

hazelnut cluster near harvest

In the spring of 2007, I planted hazelnut trees on the north border of my garden.  Last fall, a short four years later, I began to harvest the nuts.  Not all the trees were bearing, but enough were so that I could enjoy a nice harvest and work out the details of what to do with them.  There may be a slight difference between hazelnuts and filberts.  One source referred to the varieties native to the U.S. as hazelnuts and the European varieties as filberts, however I’ve seen the words used interchangeably.  For clarity, I’ll just refer to them all as hazelnuts and specify if I mean American or European varieties.  I have seventeen trees each planted 4 feet apart.  The nuts grow in clusters on the trees, as shown in the photo.  It was exciting to watch them develop over the summer.  I had heard that squirrels often take them, so I watched carefully into September.  I didn’t want them to fall to the ground because I was afraid I would lose them.  As the clusters dried on the tree I pulled them off.  If they needed further drying I put them in the solar dryers.  The harvest began October 9.  At first I stored them in baskets in a cool room in the house.  Having them in clusters insured that there would be some air circulation.  Eventually I got around to threshing them out of the clusters by putting them in a pillowcase and hitting it with a stick.  I use that same procedure to separate dried beans from their hulls.  After threshing I stored some hazelnuts in a crock-type “cookie jar” in my pantry. (It came to my kitchen second-hand and actually says “Cookies” on it.)  The rest were put into a pillowcase and hung in the barn to keep safe from mice.

hazelnuts and vice-grips for shelling

The nuts still need to be shelled before eating.  These hazelnuts are smaller than the shelled nuts you will find in the health food store.  In fact, they were too small to use with a regular nut cracker, so I resorted to using a hammer to crack them open.  That worked, but often I hit too hard and also smashed the nutmeat.  My solution was to use vice-grips (locking pliers).  I could set the screw on the end of the handle so that the pliers would close to just the right space, cracking the shell but not the nutmeat.  At first I borrowed the vice grips from our workshop, even though they were a little big for the job.  Santa brought me a smaller pair that I keep in the kitchen and are dedicated hazelnut crackers.  From the photo you can see that some nuts are much larger than others.  The trees with the largest nuts seemed to have fewer clusters.  There were anywhere from 2-9 nuts in a cluster.  The largest nuts were in the clusters containing 2-5 nuts.

My trees are American hazelnuts, Corylus americana, which are native to the Eastern U.S. and Canada.  Of the hazelnuts you find in the stores, 99% are grown in Oregon and are European varieties.  European hazelnuts are not quite as hardy as C. americana, but produce larger nuts.  They grow well in the Pacific Northwest where they were thought to be safe from the eastern filbert blight…..until they weren’t.  Eastern filbert blight is now in the western states.  As a result, Oregon State University has bred some European hazelnuts that are resistant to blight.  Rutgers University  also has a breeding program for resistant varieties, hoping to bring commercial hazelnut production to the eastern states.

Eastern filbert blight is not a problem with C. americana.  I bought my hazelnuts as seedling trees from the Virginia Department of Forestry, however, a quick online check shows they don’t offer them anymore.  Yes, some of the nuts were quite small, but some are fairly large.  All are tasty.  According to my favorite garden book, How To Grow Fruits and Vegetables by the Organic Method, edited by J.I. Rodale, if you find a native hazelnut tree in the wild that produces large nuts, dig the suckers and grow them out in your garden.  If you have one that you would like to propagate, and not go digging around, you can just bend the sucker to the ground.  Peg it there or put a rock on it, leaving a few inches of the tip sticking out.  Roots will grow and the following year you can dig that new plant to put elsewhere.  It will have the characteristics of the parent plant.  You can also propagate by planting the nuts.  That method will give you about a 70% chance of having the same characteristics as the parent.  I think I will pay attention and try my hand at propagating my more desirable trees by layering the suckers.

hazelnut male and female flowers

Although you will find both male and female flowers on the same tree, hazelnuts are not self-fertile, so you need to plant at least two trees within 50 ft. of each other for wind pollination.  The male flowers are actually catkins that are more noticeable hanging from the branches.   The female flowers are tiny and can be found growing right along the branch.  You can see both in the photo.  Some varieties of hazelnuts are designated as producers and some are pollinators.  The pollinators will produce nuts, just not as many as the producers.

I chose hazelnuts for my garden border because I wanted something taller than garden plants for a north windbreak. I would have considered putting grapevines there, but it is a wetter area and grapes need a dry spot.  What I read at the time indicated that hazelnuts could stand the wet soil, however in doing research for this post, everything I see says they need a well-drained spot.  They seem to be doing well in my garden and we’ve had a wet year.  I used closer spacing because I was going for a hedgerow.  Orchard plantings, of course, would be further apart. 

multiple stems of hazelnut

In permaculture we always think of plantings that can fill multiple niches.  Hazelnuts naturally grow as a shrub with multiple stems.  As they age, more suckers come.  I assume that I will eventually have to prune some of them out.  That will provide basket-making material and fuel for my rocket stove.  Nuts to eat, baskets, fuel, a nice looking border, and a windbreak all from one planting!  Apparently hazelnuts can be pruned to tree form from the beginning, rather than having multiple stemmed shrubs.  You would have to clip out the suckers when they are dormant early on in the life of the tree.  One internet source I read mentioned spraying the suckers with herbicide!  I’d rather learn to manage the hazelnuts as they naturally grow and find uses for extra suckers/stems. In commercial production the tree form is more desirable because it makes machine harvesting easier.  They let the nuts fall to the ground and pick them up with their machines.  That means they need a clean orchard floor.  I don’t even want to think about how they control the vegetation under the trees for the harvesting to go smoothly.  The American hazelnuts, which grow to about 10 ft., are a little shorter than the European varieties.  Mint, clover, and grass grow under my trees.  If the nuts fell to the ground, I would have to go searching for them, unless I kept that area mulched, or put out tarps or old sheets.  The nuts are actually mature before they fall out of the clusters and I found that it was easy to harvest the clusters on the tree as they ripened.  I wonder if easily falling out of the clusters is a desirable trait in the commercial varieties.  I would think so, although not a good trait in my garden.

I hope you add hazelnuts to your permaculture garden.  They are quick to mature, a good addition to your diet, and provide materials for other projects.  My next post on April 3 will be about my Homegrown Fridays this year which have included my own hazelnuts.

On Growing All Your Own Food

I am often asked how much space it would take to grow all one’s food.  That depends on a lot of factors.  I can only address the issue from the sustainability of also growing all the compost crops to feed back the soil.  With the world population now topping seven billion, using the least area for this project is high on the list of considerations.

Limiting your diet to only what you could grow in the least area, sustainably, brings nutritional challenges, with the most limiting nutrients being calories, calcium, and protein.  Those can be met with careful planning, however the resulting diet may or may not be something you want to eat everyday at this time in your life.  This is exactly what is studied at the Intermediate level of GROW BIOINTENSIVE® Sustainable Mini-farming.  The basic information for GROW BIOINTENSIVE can be found in How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons.

The USDA has interactive diet planning information at http://www.choosemyplate.gov/.  You can find the nutrients for specific foods there.  According to the SuperTracker feature, at a moderate rate of exercise, I should eat 2000 calories per day.  The number of servings from each food group is suggested to reach that goal.  However, limiting myself to only my garden, I won’t have all those food groups available.  A GROW BIOINTENSIVE 2000 calorie diet might look like what’s in the box on the right.  It’s a vegan diet and includes no vitamin B12, a critical nutrient necessary for healthy nerves and to prevent anemia.  As with any diet, there are other nutritional considerations.  You would need to eat this amount each day to reach 2000 calories.  If you get pretty good yields, you could probably grow this amount of food for one person, along with the necessary cover/compost crops in about 3,800 sq. ft. of bed space, including compost piles, in zone 7.  I know that vegans often use supplements to get what is missing in their diet.  Personally, I believe in getting all my nutrients in the food I eat, the way Mother Nature intended.  The food contains the nutrients in balance with other things necessary for assimilation in our bodies.

Most likely you would want to expand on this diet.  Chickens are becoming pretty popular, even in city backyards, and would help with that B12 deficiency.  If you are considering the total ecological footprint of your diet, you would have to include the area your chicken’s food came from, including everything it went through from farm to you.  Pasturing your poultry helps, but most people buy in the grains they need.  You could grow your own and then use the straw and stalks for bedding before it all goes to compost.  Harvey Ussery has been working on some ideas for additional homegrown feed, including worms and soldier fly larvae.  He wrote about it in his book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.  The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe is another book of interest that takes a close look at growing much of your diet.

Then, of course, there’s dairy.  Cheese, yogurt, and other products are pretty nice to have, but they come at a cost of widening the ecological footprint.  And so it goes for each addition.  You could drive yourself crazy worrying about every detail.  I worry when people drop whole food groups from their diet.  I believe we need to feed ourselves from a variety of foods available seasonally and as locally as we can.  This does much to lessen our footprint.  Chickens could be raised for eggs, with the young roosters and old layers for meat, taking the place of the broiler industry.  Limiting our beef consumption to the young steers and old cows from the dairy herds could do away with the sorry feedlots the current beef industry now maintains.  The amount of these animal products and the way we eat them would have to change, but change needs to come anyway.

Our local newspaper just had an article about a family with 13 children, including four sets of twins, who were born between 1954 and 1974.  Reminiscing, one pair of twins talked of the large family garden, fruit trees, pigs, chickens, and hunted deer that fed their family in those days.  If their memory serves them, one season all their parents bought was salt and pepper for the table.  That is impressive.  I’m sure all of them were involved in growing that food.  I have a feeling that a lot of you would like to do the same thing.  Maybe you can, but if you haven’t been brought up with those skills, there’s a lot to learn.  Some people want to grow all their own food out of fear for what the future holds.  Remember, we are not alone in this world.  Furthermore, everything is connected.  We need to recognize that interdependence and build upon it.  It is in building our communities that we can develop a resilient food system that will feed everyone.  Most likely, as you go about becoming involved with the people in your community, you will meet just the ones who can teach you the skills you lack.

Permaculture ethics call us to care for the earth, care for the people, and return the surplus.  Each of us has talents we can use to strengthen the network within our own communities.  If our talents and resources allow us to grow more food than we can consume ourselves, we can share, barter, or sell the surplus within our community, building strong ties with others and expanding our own options.  Fear can be crippling.  We need to act out of love for the earth and each other.  In acting out of love, fear falls away.

Once again, I’m working on Homegrown Fridays.  That’s when I eat only what I’ve grown on the Fridays in Lent.  I grow a lot of food, but not all we eat.  I often think about what would be involved if I did.  Just as with communities, in our gardens we need to think in whole systems.  There should be no waste because excess from one operation would be a resource in another.  Your permaculture garden would have more than just vegetables.  There would be a hedgerow with filbert trees and berries, grapevines growing overhead, mushrooms in the shady areas, and beehives.  There are many ways to add food and shrink your diet footprint.  If you are building the soil as you grow, you can provide your family with more nutritious food than you can get anywhere else.  Buying from local producers what you can’t grow provides your family with a safety net that is only available within strong, resilient communities.

Seeds: How many do you need?

Bloody Butcher Corn

As you are planning your garden, what to grow would be the first thing that comes to mind.  Then, of course, the area you have available, which leads to making a garden map.  With the map done, you know how much space you have for each crop.  Next is figuring out how many seeds you need.  If you are just starting out in gardening, the number of seeds in a packet are probably more than you need for the year.  However, as your garden grows and you are more interested in really growing a substantial part of your diet, exactly what to expect from a seed packet is important.

You probably already know that not every seed you have is going to germinate.  There is a minimum legal germination rate that the seed companies have to abide by.  Their seeds can be over that rate, but not under.  You can find the minimum legal germination rate in the Master Charts of How To Grow More Vegetables (HTGMV) by John Jeavons.  If you buy from reputable sources, most often the seeds are well over that rate.  In fact, some companies label the packages with the tested germination rate and when they tested it.  On the other hand, I have heard of companies combining old seed with their new batch, getting rid of the old seed and lowering the germination rate.   All they are concerned about is making sure it meets the minimum legal rate.  Being aware of what the minimum rate is helps you plan.  You might be using seed leftover from a previous year or seed that you have saved yourself.  Since seed loses viability over time, you might want to test the germination rate.  Information on how to do that is available many places, including my video Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan.

seed packet with germination rate listed

A Seeds and Plants Needed form is included on the CD that comes with that garden plan video.  You can print it out and put pencil to paper, or use it in Excel form on your computer.  Besides how many might germinate, you need to know how many seeds are likely to be in an ounce.  That information is in the Master Charts in HTGMV and in the seed catalogs at the beginning of each crop.  The catalogs will tell how much the packets weigh and how many seeds to expect.  By the way, there are 28 grams in one ounce.  Often the seed packets show the amount of seeds in grams.

The seed packets sometimes suggest how many feet of row that the packet will plant.  It really depends on how you are spacing your plants and you might be planting in a bed with offset spacing, which would require more plants than just in rows.  If you have a small area, work out the planting on graph paper. Once you know the spacing of your plants, either from the seed catalogs, back of the packets, or HTGMV Master Charts, you can figure how many square feet each plant needs and how many will fit in your allotted area.   Add about 13% if you are using offset spacing, rather than planting in rows.

You have accounted for the fact that some of your seeds won’t germinate, but then not all that do will be the perfect specimens that you want to transplant.  You might plan to have as many as 20% more plants than you intend to transplant so you can choose the best.  Once you have done the math on your own, worked through the Seeds and Plants Needed form, consulted HTGMV Master Charts, or however you have arrived at your total seeds and plants needed, you should have the number and/or the weight of seeds you need.  Compare that with what you find available in the seed packets.

For some of you, this is just the information you are looking for.  For others, if you are still reading, it is way more than you want to know.  One spring, years ago, I was helping a friend who was in her eighties plant her garden.  She had only begun taking on the gardening chores once her husband passed, about six years before.  We prepared the beds, then it was time to plant zucchini.  I asked her how many hills she wanted me to make and she could come behind and put in the seeds.  She was confused at what I was asking.  Her method was to just plant as she went along and when the packet was empty, she was done.  She admitted that she always had more zucchini than she could use.  She said it never occurred to her to count the seeds beforehand.  Her garden, by the way, was big enough that she could do that.  Whatever works for you is the best method to use.   Once that way stops working, it’s time to consider other possibilities.

I hope you will choose to buy your seeds from a company that has signed the Safe Seed Pledge to not knowingly carry genetically modified seeds.  Seeds are precious things.  They determine our future survival.  Choose varieties that will do well in your area.  At first, don’t plant too many varieties of one crop until you have a base knowledge of that crop in general.  However, everyone wants to experiment and will usually try the new thing that comes along at some point.  I remember when Sugar Snap Peas were released back in 1979.  The pole variety was the only one available then.  I liked them and have been growing them ever since, adding Sugar Ann as a bush variety.  Other things I’ve tried, such as early or disease resistant tomatoes I didn’t like so much.  Often, people want to know what I’m planting.  I want you to do the homework yourself.  There are just so many reasons why you would plant different things than I do.  Read the seed catalogs, especially the ones that specialize in your region.  Talk to other gardeners.

If you don’t know any other gardeners, maybe you could put up a notice in your local library to have a gathering.  I believe most libraries will make a room available for things like that.   A Seed Swap would be a good topic to start with.  At a seed swap, everyone brings in their extra seeds to share and people who want some can take them.  It might be seeds that were left from another year or extra from this year that you know won’t get used.  Having old envelopes on hand and pens for labeling is helpful.  It’s also good to have seed catalogs for more information.  Usually you don’t need to contribute seeds to be able to take some home.   If you are new, this is the place to find gardeners.  If you are an experienced gardener, this is the place to offer the help that you wished someone gave you when you were coming along.  On a local note, there is going to be a Seed Swap at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Goochland, VA on March 24, 2012 from 2-4 pm.  The public is invited.

Here in Virginia, the weather has been so mild, we were wondering if winter was ever going to start before it was over.  We just had a 4.5 inch snow, but it’s not even lasting 24 hours. Very soon it will be time to be in the garden.  Acquiring all your seeds for the year now will help your efforts go smoothly the rest of the year, with no delays between crops.  Some things you try this year will work great, and some, not so much.  There are no mistakes.  Everything is a learning experience.  The most important thing to remember is to have fun.

Making a Garden Map

garden map

If you are serious about growing your own food, having a good map of your garden space is essential.  At one glance it can show you what is planted where, any day of the year.  It will also show when one crop is expected to come out and the next go in.  My garden map is the one thing I refer to more than any of my other garden records throughout the year.  Here is a copy of the map of part of my garden.  As you can see, I add color to easily identify the crops grown.

To make your map, measure your area and draw it out, showing where the beds are.  If you are making a garden for the first time, you need to decide where those beds will be.  I prefer to run my beds from east to west.  Four feet is a good width for most people.  People with a shorter reach may prefer a 3’ wide bed, but I wouldn’t go any narrower than that, unless you are planting against a wall or fence, then the bed might be only 2’ wide.  The wider the beds are, the more efficient use of space, but there is a limit.  You need to be able to reach all parts of the bed without stepping in it.  I would caution against anything wider than 5’.   Label each bed with a number or letter or, in some cases, both.  My large garden has four sections (A,B,C,&D), with each section having 9 beds.  So I have A1-A9, B1-B9, etc.  Maybe you want to give each bed a name.  It’s your garden.  Labeling helps to identify each bed in your planning.  To get the measuring done, a 100′ tape measure is a great help and is fairly inexpensive.

100 ft. tape measure

There is more to a garden map than the outline of the beds.  It helps your planning if all the beds contain the same area.  Many of your crops will occupy a whole bed—tomatoes, corn, and potatoes come to mind.  Some will need less space, such as lettuce and zucchini.  Those can be grouped together in a bed.  You will need to plan rotations and put those rotation arrows on the map.  It is not good to keep planting the same thing in the same place year after year.   That goes for things in the same crop families.  You can plan so that the crop, or group of crops, that are planted in each bed rotates to the next bed the next year.  There is a lot to explore in the area of rotations.  Eliot Coleman has a chapter in New Organic Grower about rotations.  Also, The New Self-Sufficient Gardener by John Seymour is a good resource on the subject.    My pet peeve with computerized garden maps that are often available is that they only show you the plan for one year, with no rotations.  It may be that part of your garden is shady and you have specific crops that go there.  In that case you would have two rotation plans—one for the shady area and one for the sunny part.  Maybe you have both large and small area beds.  If the large areas are twice the size of the small areas you might do as Brent did in my garden plan video and count each large bed as two beds.    Or, you might have a rotation schedule for the large beds and one for the small beds.  If you have only one garden bed, consider rotating the spaces within the bed.

Once you have the map drawn, complete with the rotation arrows, have some copies made to play with.  Write in the names of the main season crops you will have there and the beginning and end dates those crops will be in the beds.  Your garden is out there every day all year soaking up the sun.  Fill in the beds for the rest of the year with additional crops, cover crops, companions, etc.  If you don’t plant something there, Mother Nature will.  Once you think you have everything like you want it, take a good look.  If you have overwintered cover crops or eating crops such as greens or carrots in a bed, the group of crops rotating to that bed the next year needs to begin with what’s already going to be there.  If you plant garlic in bed B3 in the fall and the next year the crops from the current year B2 will be planted there, that selection of crops from B2 needs to begin with garlic.  Most often it is a cover crop that will be overwintering.  If a bed is the first to be planted in the spring with onions, lettuce, and sugarsnap peas, the cover crop planted there in the fall needs to be one that will winterkill.  Or, you could prepare the bed in the fall and cover it with leaves.  Pull them back two weeks before planting time to allow the soil to warm up.  You can click on the pictures in my posts and they will each open larger in a new window.  If you take a closer look at my colorful garden map you will see a couple places where the rotations don’t match for the next year.  That’s because it shows what’s there right now as the first crop, but I’ve made some changes for next year, so the last crop in the bed will be with the new plan.  For more information on planning cover crops for sustainability, refer to my blog posts Planning for Soil Fertility and Compost Materials on August 9, 2011 and Choosing Which Cover Crops to Plant Where on August 23, 2011.  For cautions on bringing in outside sources of mulch and compost read Killer Compost from July 26, 2011.  My video Cover Crops and Compost Crops IN Your Garden takes you through the year from March to November, showing you the different cover crops and how to manage them using only hand tools.

4-bed rotation map

It is good to have a “to-scale” map, but in some cases your working map might look a little different, with the beds large enough to write in all the necessary information. Just as long as you know how much area you are working with and that what you are planning for that area will fit.  In my video, Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan, I work through the rotations in this 4-bed plan.  I’ve had people tell me they really didn’t understand rotations until they saw me explain it in the video.  That video comes with a companion CD that includes this 4-bed map, plus worksheets to help you plan when your crops need to be planted, how long the harvest will be, and when the bed will be ready for the next crop.    In addition, the CD has a 7-bed rotation map that corresponds with Betsy’s Garden at Sunfield Farm, the garden you see in the video.  That map is included as a real-life example of a working rotation.

Now that you have your map as you like it, label it with the year and “Proposed”.  Take two more blank maps (which is why you need to make multiple copies) and label one “Actual” and another “Amendments”.  Put them in your garden notebook and fill them in as you go along.  At the end of the season, you will have a record of what actually was in each bed and when.  You will also have a record of anything you may have added during the year on the amendments map.  Have fun with your garden maps.  Spring will be here soon and you want to be ready.

Onions

I hope you consider growing onions in your garden, not only for diversity, but for better health.  If you aren’t growing them, I certainly hope you start eating more of them.  As you know, I’m interested in a crop mix that can provide a significant portion of one’s diet, and onions are on the list for sure.  From my research, I’ve learned that eating onions helps to improve kidney function, lowers cholesterol, and breaks up mucous in the throat, lungs, and nasal passages.  Onions also have antibacterial properties.  Eating raw onions regularly could help raise your HDL (good cholesterol) levels.  Cooked onions wouldn’t be as effective for that, but cooked or raw, onions have been shown to have blood thinning qualities, acting much the same way that aspirin does.  You can read more details about that in Jean Carper’s book, The Food Pharmacy.  James Duke, in The Green Pharmacy , recommends onions and garlic for controlling allergies because of their high concentration of quercetin which helps to retard inflammatory reactions.  According to Duke, onions, because of their quercetin content, will help reduce cataracts in diabetes patients.  Quercetin is important to your health in a lot of ways.

Over the years, I remember reading that onions are pretty powerful against cancer, being able to prevent new tumors and slow, or stop, the growth of tumors already present.  So, for some updated information I decided to google “onions as a cure for cancer” and found lots of good information, including this article at http://www.brokenearth.org/onioncancer.htm. There is so much out there about the health benefits of eating onions.  I had long known that you want to eat the yellow or red storage onions for these benefits and this article affirms that.  Then I googled “onions and diabetes” and “onions and heart health”.  Check it out for yourself.  You want to be eating onions.

yellow storage onions

Although people don’t usually associate onions with calories, onions are one of the more area efficient crops when it comes to growing calories.  That means that you can grow more calories in a smaller space with onions than with many other crops.   If you were getting a considerable portion of your diet from your garden, you would want to pay attention to this.  You can find more information about growing calorie crops in How To Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons.  The new 8^th edition is scheduled to be released on February 7, 2012.

I found a statistic that said onions are the largest vegetable crop grown in the U.S.  If that is so, why don’t I see more onions at the farmers markets?  When I was selling at the markets, I found great potential for onions.  My customers loved them and I never had enough.  If I would have continued selling, rather than turning my energies to teaching, I would have made onions a major crop.  Let me tell you, they are a lot easier to manage than most other things.  If you do sell them at the markets, educate yourself on these health benefits so you can educate your customers.

There are many different kinds of onions, but most important for you to know as a grower is that onions are day-length sensitive.  You can’t just stick them in anytime of the year.  Generally, the long-day onions are the pungent ones (with more health benefits), and the short-day onions are the sweeter mild ones.  I’m going to let my friend Pam Dawling tell you all about long-day/short-day at http://www.vabf.org/docs/information-sheets .  This is a website sponsored by the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, of which I am a member.  Look for the information sheet titled Onions: Organic Production in Virginia.  Even if you don’t live in Virginia, this article will be helpful to you.  Check out the whole VABF website.  Their annual conference is in Richmond this year on February 10-11, 2012.  I will be there.  Look for me in the Homeplace Earth booth.

The easiest way to get started with onions is to plant sets, which are small onions.  In late winter you will find them at your local feed/garden store.  The more local the store is, the better chance that the variety is suited to your area.  If you have a choice, look for the ones no bigger around than a dime.  The larger ones think they are in their second year of growing and will send up a seed stalk.  Large onion sets don’t give you larger onions, they give you onions going to seed.  You want to plant them early in March.  Preparing the soil in the fall and mulching that space for the winter, or having a cover crop there that will winterkill, would have your space ready for you with little trouble at planting time.  If you are starting from seed, now is the time to be doing that.  Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is a good source for onion seeds, particularly if you live in the mid-Atlantic. Their catalog has helpful culture information as well as open pollinated varieties, which is what I look for.  Here in Virginia, we are right on the line between the recommendations for long-day-vs-short-day varieties.  According to the Southern Exposure catalog, “not all LD types can bulb up as far South as Virginia, but ours can”.  Choose your varieties carefully.

flats in the greenhouse

I have gone to starting everything outside in my coldframes and have done that with onions in January.  When I was a market gardener I used to have the onion flats in the house for just a week, which is all it took for them to germinate.  Then I would put the flats in my small, unheated greenhouse to grow out until planting time, transplanting to deeper flats as necessary.  You would be surprised how many roots onions can have and you have to make room for them.  This year the bulk of my onions are multiplier ones planted in the fall.  They are a whole other thing to learn about—and I’m still learning.  I am working with some I got from Southern Exposure and some a neighbor gave me that he’d been growing out for years.  (Thanks Ronnie!).  I’ll tell you about multipliers another time.

While you are waiting for those seeds to come, or for the right time to put the onion sets in, get out your cookbooks and learn more about cooking with onions.  They are often a key flavor ingredient.  Find ways to get even the reluctant eaters at your table to like them.  Your/their health depends on it.

WE ALL EAT, SO WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE…..

WE ALL EAT, SO WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE for how the earth is used to produce our food.  We vote with each food purchase, each mouthful.  From our perch atop the food chain, it is sometimes hard to see and understand our interconnectedness with the rest of creation.  It is also sometimes hard to recognize what we put into our mouths to nourish us as the same thing that is grown on farms and gardens for that purpose.  Before we can even begin to think about caring for the land and other parts of creation involved in our food, we have to begin eating food that we can imagine comes from the soil around us.  If what you have been eating comes in packages, read the labels.  As soon as something is picked, it begins to lose nutrients.  Long distance travel and processing continue the decline.  Did you know that the U.S. imports food from other countries that may be treated with chemicals banned in this country?  If the ingredients are not recognizable as something you could prepare in your own kitchen if you wanted to, you probably don’t want to eat it. 

If you buy “ready for the microwave” meals, you may want to rethink that. Microwaves destroy nutrients in your food, so you don’t really want to be using them anyway.  Crock pots are great.  Learn to use one and your dinner is ready whenever you are.  Cooking for a small household?  Toaster ovens are good for that.  Learning to prepare food yourself from homegrown and/or local ingredients can be an adventure that leads you to a healthier lifestyle, community with others, and an appreciation for more things than you ever thought of.

Dill pickles fermenting in a gallon jar.

Part of the cycle of life many try to ignore is microorganisms.  Without them, we would cease to exist.  Microbes are necessary for our food to be transformed into nutrients that our body can use.  If things are not working well in your gut, your body becomes unbalanced, causing havoc throughout.  A way to replenish those beneficial bacteria in your gut is to eat naturally fermented food.  Plain yogurt is a good start.  Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon gives directions for making naturally fermented sauerkraut, pickles, and other foods by the jar.  I know people who have cured their acid reflux problems with sauerkraut.  Heating these foods kills the microbes, so the canned versions don’t work for this.  Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz will lead you on more adventures into ferment.  Making Sauerkraut by Klaus Kaufmann and Annelies Schoneck will acquaint you further with the nutritional advantages of fermented foods.

In my studies of nutrition and of the soil, I’ve come to realize that the same thing going on in our gut with the microbes, is going on in the soil.  When the right balance of microorganisms is present, plants thrive.  Healthy soil produces healthy plants, which feed healthy people.  We are what we eat.  We are a people of the earth.  When we get our nutrients from REAL food, they come with the enzymes and co-nutrients, in proper proportion, necessary for assimilation in our bodies. 

Once you learn about all this, you will begin to question your food sources.  Your quest for food with fewer miles on it, minimally processed and packaged, and grown in a way that builds, rather than depletes, the soil will inevitably lead you to the local growers themselves.   A good place to find them is  www.localharvest.org.  Become a regular at the farmers markets this year.  An interesting thing to do is to take a highway map and draw a circle with a 100 mile radius from where you live, and maybe circles for 75, 50, and 25 miles.  How much of your food could you find within that circle?  You could even start with just one item for a special dinner.  I know it is the winter here, although not for all my readers, but there are more winter and online markets opening all the time.  Can you imagine if everything on your table at one meal was homegrown and/or local food?  If you are new to all this, move slowly and celebrate each new step, keeping a list of your accomplishments. You will have a new appreciation for your nourishment and where it comes from.  Gathering together with others to share a meal will become a fulfilling experience.  Coming to the table will take on a whole new dimension.     

Fall veggies

Of course, it would be great if you could grow as much of your own food as you can.  Everyone will be at a different place along these lines.  It is important to start somewhere and for many just cooking a meal with food (no matter where they bought it) that looks like it came from a farm, rather than a processing plant, is a big step.  For those of you who are already on this path, check out Ira Wallace’s Gardening in the Southeast blog that she does for Mother Earth News.  Ira lives at Acorn Community, home of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  I’ll be doing Homegrown Fridays during Lent again this year.  My friends at Acorn are having Homegrown Fridays (eating only what they’ve grown) on all the Fridays from December until the first Friday of spring.  You can read about my 2011 Homegrown Fridays at http://homeplaceearth.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/homegrown-fridays/. 

I’ll be writing about some important crops that I hope you can include in your garden this year.  My next post on January 24 will be about onions.  See you then!

Think Globally, Act Locally

I hope all of you are enjoying the holidays.  December is always such a busy time.  If you are like us, Christmas is a time of gift-giving and feasting with loved ones.  Often homemade gifts are exchanged, such as the boot birdhouse we received from our daughter and son-in-law.  The week between Christmas and New Years, however, is usually a welcome slow down for us.  It’s a time to shift gears and think of changes ahead.  As you eat your way through the holiday, I would hope you would keep in mind others around the globe whose table is not so full.  You can learn more about some of these people and how to understand and assist them through the following organizations.

Ecology Action teaches people worldwide to better feed themselves while building and preserving the soil and conserving resources.  Find out more at http://www.growbiointensive.org/.  My teaching is based on Ecology Action’s GROW BIOINTENSIVE methods.  Ecology Action puts out a quarterly newsletter that has a garden report you might find interesting if you are serious about GROW BIOINTENSIVE.

Heifer International works with communities to end hunger and care for the earth.  They are best known for donating animals and training to community groups in impoverished areas around the world, but they also have other sustainable projects, such as tree planting.  Heifer publishes the magazine World Ark which is a wonderful resource to learn more about their initiatives and meet the people they help through the pictures and stories.  There are several Heifer International centers where you can learn more about world hunger and what to do about it.  I’m most familiar with Heifer Ranch in Arkansas.   Find out more about Heifer at www.heifer.org.   

Lambi Fund of Haiti works toward economic justice, democracy, and alternative sustainable development in Haiti.  The Lambi Fund is based on the premise that the Haitian people understand how development is best achieved in their country. Therefore, the Lambi Fund follows the lead of grassroots organizations in program and priorities. The Lambi Fund never dictates to a community organization what should be done. Through discussion and reflection, the peasants decide what is best for their community and present the project to the Lambi Fund for support.  Learn more about their work at http://www.lambifund.org/.

Tillers International encourages an attitude of experimentation to produce more local food with less global fuel.  This organization maintains a farm/learning center with classes in appropriate technology farming techniques, draft animal power, blacksmithing and metal work, timber framing, woodworking, cheesemaking, and many other skills. Their work includes maintaining a museum of farm tools and machinery which they use for inspiration to create tools needed in developing countries today. Tillers International Cooks Mill Learning Center is located in Scotts, Michigan.  Find out more at www.tillersinternational.org.

Trees, Water, & People develops and manages continuing reforestation, watershed protection, renewable energy, appropriate technology, and environmental education programs in Latin America and the American West.  Part of their work is with fuel-efficient stoves.  Find them at http://www.treeswaterpeople.org/.

Think globally, act locally has never meant more to me.  These organizations will give you a glimpse into how others around the globe live.  My work is with food.  I feel strongly that in order to make sure people around the world have enough to eat, we must first learn to feed ourselves, and do it sustainably.  In 2012 my blog posts will concentrate on what it takes to truly feed ourselves from homegrown and/or local food supplies.  Understanding that and making it a part of your daily life, helps to give you the skills and knowledge to better know how to help others do the same, no matter where they live.  Besides growing the food, or buying it from a local farmer, learning to cook for yourself from scratch and getting the food all the way to the table using the least fossil fuel is all part of it. 

Thank you for following my blog this year and for being part of the journey.  As we head toward the New Year, my prayers are with you.  May your table be full of good food and happy people.