gone to seed

It is a cliché of gardening prose that non-gardeners are not aware of the origins of the produce that they consume. I suspect that, similarly, many gardeners would not recognize vegetable plants that have grown past the stage from which one usually harvests crops. Just as an urban shopper who grabs a bag of scrubbed potatoes from a fluorescent-lit bin in the produce section of a supermarket may not be able to imagine those spuds freshly dug from a mound of soil, so may a gardener have no idea of what a lettuce or collard will become if left to itself.

As gardeners, we are concerned with maximizing production and the efficient use of soil and weather; once a plant has produced the leaves, fruits, flowers, and edible seeds that the we seek, we pull it and compost it to make room for the next round of succession planting. We may assuage our feelings of ruthlessness with ruminations on the soil cycle—on how the unwanted stalks, roots, and leaves will be transformed in the compost bin into soil in which we will grow similar vegetables again; nevertheless, the change in our perspective in which a plant goes from being the source of food to vegetal waste differs little from that of the littering driver for whom a bag of cooling French fries transforms into trash to be thrown through the car window.

Our activities with crops extend beyond simple harvesting of products at the end of seasons; for many plants, we intervene earlier in the life cycle to extract our food. This is especially the case for those plants whose leaves we eat, such as lettuces, collards, chard, and basil. Our objective with these leaf crops is to keep them in the early stages of their life cycles, when their focus is on generating as many stalks and leaves as possible to serve as a photosynthezing basis for later processes of flower and seed production. Our goals as gardeners conflict with the goals of the plant: whereas the plant wants to guarantee the survival of its genotype, we just want salad.

At some point in the season, because of heat or some genetic trigger, a leaf crop plant will usually overcome the impediments of gardeners and bolt, or enter into its flowering phase. When a plant like spinach or lettuce goes into full bolt, there is no more harvesting: the plant’s leaves change from tender and succulent to tough and structural, and are no longer edible, much less palatable.

Lettuce

And like any adolescent, the bolting lettuce plant has volatile chemicals coursing through its body; in the case of lettuce, the plant is manufacturing a burst of sesquiterpene lactones, the compounds that make a broken lettuce stem ooze milky white sap, and which render it suddenly so potently, spit-it-out bitter. When lettuce season is over, it’s over. – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life 

Basil

Unlike lettuces or spinach, leaf crop plants like collards and basil are more dilatory and less dramatic in their bolting, and gardeners can still intervene to slow the process and stretch out the harvesting of leaves. Pinching the flowering tops off basil plants, for example, can head off bolting for months, until the plant pulls an end run in October and turns bitter enough to dissuade a gardener from continued meddling. Just last weekend (mid December), I harvested the last tiny leaves from the collard and kale plants that we had kept from bolting for an entire season, and only because I didn’t think that they would survive any more days of temperatures in the teens.

Every time I remove flowers from a basil or spinach plant, I reflect that much agriculture is really just an effort to keep plants in a state of arrested development. We struggle to stave off flowering so that we can extract the products of immaturity. I believe that our own culture retards us, the gardeners, similarly. Pop songs celebrate the heady, initial stages of romance and say nothing about long-term relationships. Women feel pressure to maintain the appearance of nubility even after rearing children. Pictures of disturbingly buff geriatrics start appearing in the ad windows of the browser sessions of middle-aged men. We are encouraged not to be who we are becoming but to try to remain who we once were. Our fight to stay young, or at least young-seeming, requires that we purchase clothing and gym memberships and cosmetics and plastic surgery and Viagra. Capitalists harvest disposable income from our attempts to keep age in abeyance.

Arugula

Partly to remind myself of my resolve to resist the blandishments of industries intent on infantalizing me, I do not pull up every lettuce or arugula plant as soon as it has bolted. I enjoy watching a few plants grow up wild and spindly in the spandrels formed between cucumber trellises; watching them change into something completely different from the luscious  seedlings that we tended so anxiously in the spring; watching them fully realize their phenotype, becoming what they intended to become.


A plant fully gone to seed reminds me to heed Max Ehrmann’s advice to “take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”

Collard

Swiss Chard

Dill

Photos from the Start of 2011

After developing an old roll of film I found these photos from the first few weeks of Ginkgo’s 2011 growing season. The beds look empty, like they do now, but there is life starting to reappear on the cherry tree and the rhubarb has self-started. The herbs don’t wait for us to unlock the gate and the mint in particular seems to care less about what we do.

It’s hard to acknowledge that the work is done for the season and that, while some of us may make mid-winter visits to the lot to aerate the compost or tend to this or that, we as gardeners are a seasonal crop too. We lay dormant and wait to be invited back to life.

Looking at these photos is therapeutic when confronting Chicago’s winter. Many people develop strategies to deal with the months of cold dark solitude– planning trips to upset the monotony, signing up for that knitting workshop, developing a reading list. This year I am looking at these photos to remind myself that it all comes back soon. There are no green leaves on the raspberries anymore, but the ground is not dead. All winter long the soil keeps working, replenishing itself, breaking down organic matter in the compost bins, insulating the fig trees, keeping the cover crop company.

So why should I feel dead come February? NAY! I choose life! Replenish Myself! Egg Nog, Hot Chocolate, Mulled Wine, and Mountains of Wreath and Reindeer Shaped Cookies To Bolster My Own Vitality! Overcoat Insulation! And keeping acquaintances company to help them replenish themselves and stave off the doldrums.The garden has returned to a horizontal landscape for the winter. No tomatoes and peppers and sunflowers sticking up, but looking at these photos reminds me of where the season begins and I cannot wait for Spring.

Gingko: 2011 Chicago Cares Community Partner Star

On the evening of Monday, November 28, a group of us from Gingko dressed up like adults (some of us did not recognize each other) and attended the Chicago Cares Star Awards Gala to receive the 2011 Community Partner Star award.

In its introduction, Chicago cares stated that

Ginkgo Organic Gardens consistently communicates with volunteers about upcoming project dates, other gardens in need of volunteers, and how they can become involved with Vital Bridges, a local food pantry catering to the needs of those living with HIV/AIDS. Their collaboration with Vital Bridges enables volunteers at Ginkgo Organic Gardens to impact the community in a variety of ways. By managing and maintaining a consistent volunteer base every week, their leaders make our volunteers feel welcome and truly appreciated.

And as we're coming to expect, there was a short film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=657kRLOsVac. (This has been the year of documentary for Ginkgo.)

Dave Snyder accepted the award for Ginkgo with his usual combination of grace, erudition, and flocculent majesty. The MC stated "when I looked around the room and saw Dave, I knew that he was the garden guy."

Later that evening, I asked where we would install our award.

"In the shed, of course," Dave answered. "Where else?"

So on the following Saturday, before adding leaves to the winter compost bin, I installed our award in an alcove formed by the joists in the wall of the garden shed: above where we hang the shovels, near the first aid kit and the keys to the cover plate of the water main, where we can see it on Saturday afternoons in summer.

2011 yield results

The following chart compares the annual yields from Ginkgo Organic Gardens for the past four years. Each year's performance is represented with two graphs:

• Each bar represents the yield for a week. The weeks cover the harvesting portion of each season, from the first weekend of June (week 23) to the weekend before Thanksgiving (week 47). 
• Each line represents the cumulative yield.
• Yields are in pounds.

The bad news

The yield for Ginkgo Organic Gardens for the 2011 season was 934 pounds. It's the first time in four years that the harvest has fallen below a half ton; in fact, the yield for 2011 was the lowest that it's been since we started collecting data in our current format.

We suspected midway during the season that the harvest would be lighter than that of 2010—just not by this much. The yield data support some of the reasons that we speculated might be behind this season's poor performance.

Foremost of these reasons was the season's slow start, as evidenced by the yield comparisons for our tomato crop. Our tomato vines in 2011 started producing 3-4 weeks later (weeks 33 and 34, in mid-August) than they did in the prior year. It is likely that temperatures were not sufficiently high during a critical phase of tomato plant development in May and June. Without an unusual late rally in mid-October (39 pounds), in fact, the 2011 tomato harvest would have been the same as that of 2009.

I focus on tomatoes because that crop usually composes the bulk of the garden's yield. In 2011, our yield of 322 pounds was 36% of the total.

Another reason for the low yield is that a number of our crops failed to produce. Our harvest of summer squash, for example, was a third of the 2010 yield (23 lb, compared to 69 lb); and most of our pears rotted or were squirrel-bitten before we could get them to the pantry (13 lb in 2011; 45 lb in 2010).

The good news

2011 was a good year for beets, winter squash, and green beans, and a banner year for peppers. Our tomato harvest, though lower than last that of 2010, was still significant. It was also the first year that we could bring figs to the pantry.

Selected Crop Yields, 2011

Crop	Yield (lb)
Green beans	42
Beets	44
Collards	19
Cucumbers	18
Eggplants	17
Kale	49
Hot Peppers	39
Sweet Peppers	98
Potatoes	26
Radishes	10
Butternut Squash	72
Turnips (with greens)	37
Tomatoes	326
Pears	13
Raspberries	10
Basil	19

putting up for winter: news

I'm back after a long hiatus. Familial and professional obligations kept me away from more regular chronicling of the 2011 season. I am faced now with a digital mountain of photos and a near-constant whispering internal chorus of potential posts. I won't be able to post everything before the end of the season, so I will preserve posts for later. Perhaps digital photos of produce in winter will evoke summer like a freshly opened Mason jar of canned tomatoes.



Some news:

1. The 2011 harvest may prove to be the worst of the last four years. Our harvest this year was varied—featuring tomatoes, potatoes, greens, garlic, and winter squash, among other vegetables and fruit—but sparse and late. I had half-hoped that we might exceed a ton this year; as the following image shows, as of the end of August, we were facing the possibility that we might not make even half a ton. The final yield may improve because of our banner yield of butternut squash, but not by enough to make up for the low haul of tomatoes, peppers, and tree fruit.

We are not sure if the low yield was a result of the cold spring or the rainy July. Some of us suspect that we've been coasting on our soil's steadily dwindling fertility, and have resolved to amend our beds extensively in the fall and spring.

2. We now have a Twitter feed. Of course we do. We've had a FaceBook page for a while now. Follow us, Like us, Friend us, buy us virtual Cosmopolitans, pester us to play FarmVille, write on our Wall, RT us, DM us, show us tiny photos of shoes sold by Kim Kardashian, offer us the magic formula discovered by a mother in Chicago that whitens our teeth, mine our  preferences and sell our personal information for marketing purposes.

3. Michael Leck is a videographer who lives near the garden. Michael approached us a couple of months ago to ask whether he could produce a short video about the garden and its mission. A number of journalism students from institutions such as Loyola or DePaul have filmed or interviewed us over the years (usually without showing us their work afterwords), so it wasn't much for us to agree to another project. We weren't expecting the professionally-produced treatment that Michael sent us. As soon as we figure out the details of where to store it, we'll host the video ourselves.

planting update and garden map as of August 13

The attached map highlights changes that we have made in the last few weeks.

Departures

1. We have had to pull almost all of the kale and collards because of a flea beetle infestation.  The only kale from the first planting that was unaffected was a small patch in Bed 22. We left a few collards in the north end of Bed 11 and some kale in Bed 9; however, we'll probably pull all but the plants in Bed 22 next week.
2. We also pulled up almost all of the plants that had gone to seed, including radishes in Beds 12 and 14.
3. We recently harvested all of the beets in the western half of Bed 14 and half of the potatoes from Bed 10.
4. We pulled the pea plants from Bed 19 and resowed the bed half with New Zealand Spinach (a heat-tolerant variety) and half with broccoli. None of the broccoli seeds germinated, so the eastern half of the bed is free.

Arrivals

1. We planted a lot of cabbage. In Bed 9, we planted Copenhagen Market in the southern third and Red Acre in the northern third. In the middle of Bed 14, we planted a few Early Wakefields.
2. We also planted varieties of carrots. In Bed 12 (our traditional carrot bed), we planted Royal Chatenay in the southern third and Asian Kurota in the northern third. In the eastern end of Bed 14, we planted Tonda di Parigi, a variety that produces stubby, round carrots.

Circling the airport

1. Because nothing else really seems to grow in the shady end of Bed 19 but lettuce, we plan to plant lettuce there in the next couple of weeks.
2. We want to try to grow broccoli this year. We plan to replant Bed 10, and maybe Bed 11, with broccoli sometime near the beginning of September.
3. We'll need to plant fall crops soon to replace crops currently in Bed 17 (pole beans), 22 (blue potato), and 20 (summer squash and cucumber). 
4. Because we'll lose access to municipal water in late October or early November, we'll also need to plan for the green manure crops that will grow as ground cover in the winter.

beta vulgaris

This year was a truly satisfying year for beets. While our kale and collards were munched into unappetizing doilies by flea beetles and our tomatoes and peppers struggled to raise themselves above knee height, our bed of densely planted Detroit Reds and Cylindras clamored for space into which to extend their lush foliage.

According to the seed packages, we could plant beets two inches apart if we were interested primarily in greens; three inches apart if we wanted to harvest our beets in summer; and four inches apart if we planned to store beets over winter. We opted for a closer planting, because we thought that the greens would go over just as well as the roots, and because none of us owns a root cellar.

The seed packages also recommended that we soak our seeds at least a day before planting them to encourage their germination. Immersed in a mason jar filled with rainwater, the seeds plumped up to resemble Grape Nuts, and clung stubbornly to our fingers as we fished them out and drizzled them along rows of freshly forked soil.



In the following weeks, the beet plants grew vigorously, beating out all but the hardiest weeds in the quest for space in the bed. After their initial coddling, our beets required little from us other than occasional watering.

In 1610, the gentlemen farmers who wrote “A True Declaration of the State of the Colonie of Virginia” were happily eating potatoes—along with the parsnips, carrots, cucumbers, and turnips that they had brought from home—and praising them as food “which our gardens yeelded with little art and labour.” –Jane Mayer, “Down Under”, The New Yorker, November 22, 2010

In late July, we began to harvest our beets, pulling entire plants intermittently from the rows. The roots were small, but well formed; and the greens were darkly vibrant. Our beets radiated vitality.

A year or so ago, when we asked for recommendations of what crops to grow,  dietitians at Vital Bridges specifically requested beets. Beets are acclaimed for their abilities to cleanse the liver: just Google “beets liver cleansing” for a host of links to claims of varying degrees of believability. Because many victims of HIV suffer simultaneously from Hepatitis C (talk about salt in the wound), foods that cleanse the liver would, on first reflection, be welcome to the pantry’s clientele.

The theoretical appreciation of the health benefits of beets, unfortunately, does not manifest in a mad rush for our rooty produce when we make our deliveries to the pantry. Beets may radiate vitality, and even glow with virtue; however, they do not suggest summer fun. Our beet greens, in particular, often languish in their market baskets. Other garden products attract the attention of visitors to the pantry: our tomatoes are like models in Daisy Dukes handing out Jell-O shots; our beets, on the other hand, wear cargo shorts and carry clipboards, asking whether you have a second for the environment.

Many of us may have been dissuaded from beets by early experiences with institutional cuisine—the canned, pickled beets, which, along with canned spinach and stewed prunes, filled the compartments of our school lunch platters with unappetizing vegetable matter that we often only ate on a dare. We carried our childhood abhorrence of the purplish and vinegary juice of beets with us into adulthood.

This is unfortunate, because lovingly prepared beets can be wonderful. Beets are not just good for you—they can often be just good. My wife converted to beet love last winter after ordering a salad featuring roasted beets at Karyn’s on Green. She recently made a risotto of beets and greens, using a recipe from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which resulted in leftovers that I ate without hesitation for three days in a row.

We harvested the final beets from our garden last weekend. The beet bed will now, if all goes well, host rows of dinosaur kale and cabbage.

If you think that beets are a hard sell at the pantry, imagine how dinosaur kale goes over.