It's Easy Being Green

Spring can’t arrive soon enough here at the Half-Acre Homestead.  The first day of spring is March 20th, just two and a half weeks away but we’re already itching to get back out into our garden and get back to growing our own food.  One of the most missed garden items at the moment are those glowing orbs of goodness brought on by sunshine and warmth called tomatoes.

Some of the biggest tomatoes we've ever grown came off our Pink Brandywine plants that we bought at the Master Gardeners Spring Plant Sale. This is the type of tomato we miss in the winter doldrums.

Typically we just avoid buying store bough tomatoes altogether.  They’re horribly bland, watery and shipped in from destinations several thousand miles away.  If  I haven’t ever been able to visit the country where my food is coming from then it certainly doesn’t belong on my dinner table.  It’s not sustainable and doesn’t do me or the farmer in that country any good.

This has become a bit of a challenge the past few weeks though as my Homestead Hottie has started craving a nice big juicy tomato to slice and eat.  It could be a pregnancy thing but she always likes to slice tomatoes, sprinkle with Himalayan Pink Salt and eat away.  We love raw, fresh tomatoes in this house!  However, finding a tomato that isn’t foreign and isn’t terrible is an insurmountable task this time of year.

There wasn’t a single tomato grown in the U.S. to be found at Sam’s Club during our recent visit.  Some came from as “close” as Mexico while others heralded banners from Guatemala, Chile and other exotic South American destinations.  Thank heavens for produce labels that proudly display where a fruit or veggie has come from!

Our next stop was the local Schnuck’s grocery store where we found one brand of tomato grown in Florida.  These hulking, misshapen and truly red tomatoes looked like something you might pluck off an heirloom tomato plant out in the garden.  Each one was delicately wrapped in it’s own styrofoam net, protecting it from the bruising or beating it might have endured on it’s shorter truck ride from the sunny Florida coast.  They looked like a winner.  They were called UglyRipe.

UglyRipe claims their tomato is an heirloom, a derivative of the deeply ribbed Costuluto variety from Italy.  Sadly, the state of Florida wouldn’t originally let these tomatoes be sold because they weren’t perfectly round and didn’t have smooth skin.  In the eyes of these beholders, we thought they looked perfect.  We plucked about four of the “beauties” from their display basket and proudly paid our price at the check-stand, about $8.  Yes, exorbitant the cost but it is the dead of winter.  Fresh local greenhouse tomatoes are still at least another two months off.  Plus, our food dollars were still going to support a U.S. based farm operation.  With anticipation we hurried home and Talina got right to slicing open a tomato for a mid-afternoon snack to share with baby 2.0 in the womb (that’s two-point-oh as in version number two of our offspring following our Darling Daughter Everly).

I have to say on first taste, the UglyRipe did manage to win over our tomato craving taste buds.  The texture was firm and juicy with deep red flesh, much redder than you typically see in store-bought tomatoes.  The taste for me was mildly acidic with a hint of minerals.  On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give the UglyRipe a 7.  It certainly is much better than the watery, tasteless, yellow-orange fruit labeled tomatoes at the local store.  It has more flavor, better texture and a beautifully imperfect shape with deep coloring.  It’s a monster-sized tomato too.  One slice will easily cover your hamburger patty.  But I give it a 7 because it still doesn’t live up to the freshly plucked, hot off the vine, perfect 10 creation that I grew with my own bare hands.  Nothing will ever replace that so here’s to hoping tomato weather arrives real soon.

What is you favorite tomato to grow? Leave a comment below and let me know.  We had a few standouts last season (read more here) and we’ll be trying some new varieties this year but that’s for a future post!

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Our mailbox is looking like most other gardeners mailboxes these days, overflowing with this year’s flush of seed and plant catalogs.  As much of a nerd as I am, it is one of the things I most look forward to at the start of the new year.  It brightens the winter doldrums long after the warmth of the Christmas cheer is gone to think about the sunshine, warmth and rewards reaped in the upcoming gardening season.

Seed prices can be exorbitant at times.  Just flipping through the Burpee catalog, I can easily ring up a $100 bill in my head by tallying my wants on just a handful of pages.  Quite frankly it’s ridiculous, especially considering most seed purchased from gardening catalogs are hybrids.  While hybrids allow for an almost endless possibility when it comes to different varieties available to grow, it also limits what you’ll get from any seed you might save for next year.  Hybrids don’t reproduce a plant that’s just like the original so you never know what you’re going to get.

On top of that, I just learned something even more concerning about most of the major garden seed companies.  I just started reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this past week and I’m already enthralled.  Kingsolver documents her family’s first year in their quest into the land of sustainability and local eating.  It’s humorous and informative, possibly helping you down a path that could be full of a few pitfalls.  Today, I learned from Kingsolver’s writing that giant agribusiness conglomerate Monsanto supplies many strains of garden seed to these big companies.

Needless to say I reeled in horror thinking about our seed box and how much of it might be from just one of the many companies I associate with the devil.  Remember, Monsanto is the company who produces Genetically Modified plants like corn and soybeans which are Roundup Ready.  The gene manipulation allows the plants to be sprayed with Monsanto’s chemical cocktails, killing every weed and pest around it yet leaving the corn or soybean plant untouched.

This villainous company has also made a name for themselves attacking farmers who, by no fault of their own, have Monsanto’s GM plants growing in their fields.  This company, along with several others, are making an effort to homogenize and patent whatever plant they can.  It’s a path that is leading our human race to outright calamities like  famine and the eventual death of open-pollinated varieties of plants that have been around for ages.  Recently, Monsanto also got approval to begin selling their GM alfalfa.  With no possible way to prevent the spread of this genetically modified plant, consumers who rely on organic alfalfa for food or animal feed now face a bleak future.  Monsanto’s bullying tactics and outright quest to own and dominate the world’s food supply has to be stopped.  If you haven’t already contacted your legislators about this, please do so immediately.

While Monsanto’s main business is to supply farmers with bulk seed for corn, soybeans and other commodity crops, Kingsolver’s book said they’re also dabbling in garden seed supplies.  Of course not wanting to give Monsanto anymore of my hard earned dollars and definitely not wanting to consumer GM foods from my own garden, I want to know who these seed companies are and how I can avoid them.  The Council for Responsible Genetics has developed a Safe Seed Pledge giving seed companies the opportunity to denounce GM seeds and refuse from selling them to their customers.

I’m glad to see some of our favorite garden seed companies on the Safe Seed list like Seed Savers Exchange, Baker Creek Heirlooms, Ferry Morse, Territorial Seed Company and Native Seeds SEARCH.  Thanks to this list, I’ve also now discovered my nearest seed company signed on to that pledge:  Nature’s Crossroads in Bloomington, Indiana.  Burpee and R.H. Shumway are two of my total disappointments who sell GM seed and won’t sign the pledge.

I eventually want to become a member of Seed Savers Exchange so I can get the big giant book of thousands of members who trade seeds back and forth.  This is a great way to spend less on your gardening pursuits, share what you have and do your part to ensure biodiversity will continue despite the pursuits of some greedy corporation only looking out for themselves.

I’ve started a local Tri-State Seed Savers Exchange group on Yahoo Groups.  Become a member and begin swapping your extra seeds or plants with other fellow Tri-State gardeners.  Together we can do our part to maintain local biodiversity and share the rewards of our gardens.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Glorious is the only way I can think to describe the sudden onset of balmy temperatures and sunshine the past couple of days.  Yesterday we climbed into the land of the 60’s and it felt downright amazing.  Even before the first cup of coffee was finished here at the Half-Acre Homestead, we threw open the door and rushed outside to enjoy some fresh air.

Everly, much like the rest of us, has been getting an extreme case of cabin fever as of late.  There is only so much indoor activity to keep toddlers occupied and for our resident garden faerie, it’s just too much time cooped up inside the house.  She had a blast throwing bags of leaf mulch around the yard to help stymie the springtime mud pie that our grass turns into this time of year.  We also took the opportunity to move our rabbit hutches from their temporary home in the garage to their more permanent spot outback.  This gave Everly the opportunity to chase the lop-eared rabbit throughout the flower beds as he explored and munched under the February rays.

Today marked another stupendous day outside and so we relished it.  Darling Daughter and I poked around in the kitchen garden to take a look at everything coming to life this week.  Long lost garlic and onion bulbs have started shooting up all over the place.  Rhubarb crowns are beginning to break the soil’s surface and reach for the light.  Lemon balm, chives and sage are beginning to leaf out in their hotboxes as well as the rosemary bushes which are still triumphantly marching through the winter fully clothed.  Strawberry plants began peeking out from underneath their leaf mulch this week as well, heralding the bright red berries that will soon grace them much to Everly’s daily picking delight.

Homestead Hottie briefly joined us in the garden before tossing her cookies down one of the walkway aisles (her story here).  The pregnancy was getting to her today, well the whole week for that matter.  Everly and I looked on in worried support until the spewing stopped and then quickly ushered our poor Homestead Hottie back in to flop on the couch.

Later as the thermometer climbed to the 70-degree mark and there was no rain in sight, I set out to finish Talina’s Valentine’s Day present.  Built from recycled wooden pallets, I’ve been making a potting bench for my Homestead Hottie’s gardening fun.  Everly loves to be involved in any project, especially building and she has great fun helping to wrangle loose screws and sit on boards while Daddy screws them down.

Just as the sun set tonight, I finished building the upper shelves.  It took little time to complete and looks great in a eco-chic sort of way.  I was thinking about painting it several different bright colors to match our outdoor cushions but Talina likes the look of the wood.  Rough cuts, nicks, old nails and discoloring will all show through a couple of nice coats of sealer.  It’s what makes the potting bench unique.  I’ll take orders if anyone else wants one.  I can guarantee no two will look alike!

Have you been out in your garden lately?  What is beginning to come back to life?  If you recycle wooden pallets for projects, let me know what you’ve turned them into.

Popularity: 11% [?]

If you’re looking to become more self-sustaining, growing and preserving your own food is an excellent way to achieve that goal.  Not only is it probably one of the easiest ways to achieve your sustainability, it is also one of the cheapest.  For some reason, I had always imagined home canning to be a bygone era but reaching back I could vividly remember one of my Mom’s old high school friends canning her own jams and jellies frequently when I visited.  Maybe I thought, it’s not that far out of vogue.

As Homestead Hottie and I looked for more and more ways to make our life more green and self-sustaining, food preservation seemed to be a logical next step following our entry into growing some of our own food.  Home food preservation does take time but the end results are so worth it and will save you a ton of money in the long run.  You won’t have to rely on a run to the grocery store for a canned good but simply walk into your kitchen pantry.  Check out this video as I show you how we turned a bumper crop of green tomatoes into a half-dozen quart jars of our own, homemade pasta sauce.

If you didn’t catch my post on how to ripen or use all those end of season green tomatoes,  click here.