Yard Farm 3

The abundant rain of late has been good for all things green and growing. Here's how the little bed I started in the front yard looked on April 17:



Here's how it looks today -- the two basil plants have doubled in height and breadth (I'm out there daily pinching off the new leaf pairs to force the basil to expand its breadth) and the two pepper plants, stripped of their leaves by a rabbit (?) the night after being planted, are putting out new leaves. The spinach, beets, and two kinds of kale are all growing well -- especially the kale:



The little dogwood I planted last fall has been an interesting study. My neighbor got three dogwoods from the wooded property of a friend who lives in the country, and gave one to myself and my next door neighbor and kept one for himself. As a rule, dogwoods in the wild get "leggy" (grow tall and thin, reaching for sunlight that filters through the tree canopy). All three of our dogwoods looked the same when they were planted, but mine looks different: it has gotten bushy with leaves that are 2-3 times the size of the leaves on the other two. Here they are by comparison:

One of the neighbor trees:



The other neighbor tree:



My tree -- notice how much it has grown out instead of just up, and how thick the foliage is compared to the other two. Don't misunderstand -- this is not for bragging rights -- it's to demonstrate the power of food. I have fertilized (fed) my tree consistently since last fall, whereas my neighbors have not. I don't know that my tree is healthier, but it is certainly more robust looking -- which I'm taking as a vote for diligent feeding. The size of the leaves on this tree are amazing. The neighbor who provided the trees came over the other day and wanted to know why mine looked different from his, and I offered him the same liquid concoction I created that I've used to water mine:



Some more pics -- including the first (tiny) tomato:



The eggplants are about to flower:



The planter-spinach is already being eaten for supper (thanks for the seeds, Priscilla):



The little patch of Bordeaux spinach is growing:



The chard is doing great -- along with five volunteer tomato plants that have come up in the midst of the bed from last year's dropped tomatoes:



The container herbs and veggies are healthy:



Especially this tomato -- it seems to love its pot, though I need to prune the suckers to divert its energy into fruit:



And the tomatoes/peppers (bottom) and bean/pea (top) buckets are doing well (the parsley in the end bucket didn't make it, so I'll take this bucket down and move it among the containers so the beans can get plenty of sun):



Another shot:



Beans (don't know the variety) from my neighbor on the top, cherry tomato on the bottom:



So far I'm encouraged by this idea -- though the beans are ultimately going to suffer without more sunlight -- still thinking about a solution:



And yet more veggies to plant or give away -- these are from the seeds I started in the Winstrip tray. The seeds from my parents' yard in Alabama never made it, though I have saved the soil they were in. Who knows -- they might spring up someday:



There is such pleasure in being around healthy, growing gardens. A taste of Eden-past and neo-Eden to come.

Losing Chlorine

Chlorine gas will evaporate fairly quickly out of city water, even more quickly if the water is sitting in the sun. Found a quicker way to create garden-use water with my air pump and stones:



P.S. Alack and alas! I left the pump running for about 45 minutes and came back and it had stopped working. Will have to call "tech support" and see what else besides the diaphragm might be wrong.

P.P.S. Pump now working after installing a second replacement diaphragm.

New Town Farms

Went to New Town Farms (between my house and Waxhaw) today to pick up my CSA box for the week. Took some pix while there -- it's such a wonderful place I thought readers would enjoy the tour:

The CSA box is getting more full each week as the season progresses:



In this week's box, from left to right: in the big clear bag, three HUGE heads of lettuce (green leaf, red leaf, and Romaine); bag of spinach; the red root veggies -- until Sammy sends his list later today I don't know if these are a red radish or a turnip; lacinato kale; white turnips/turnip greens; bundle of turnip greens. Just picked this morning!

Update from Sammy's email that just arrived: in the bag with the three heads of lettuce there is a head of Escarole -- a heavier leaf with a little more flavor than lettuce -- great as a salad green (along with Romain and leaf lettuce). The "bundle of turnip greens" are, in fact, Broccoli raab, a "hearty Italian cooking green usually cooked wtih garlic and red pepper and tossed with pasta and cheese." The long red radishes are shunkyo radishes.



Farmer Sammy on the phone:



Gespar, Sammy's Mexican helper for many years, lives on the farm with the family. I get to use my very broken Spanish with Gespar:



Beautiful rows of nutrition:



Kale:



Garlic:



Cabbage and more greens:



Many varieties of potatoes:



Eggplant:



Even the best organic farmers battle the eggplant leaf hoppers: (this was the only bad eggplant leaf I saw)



Blueberries (there are twice this many bushes):



Grapevines:



Movable chicken "tractor:"



Porkers -- a small herd of pigs supposedly descended from the ones kept by George Washington at Mount Vernon. While these will end up on the table, they have a full two acres of woods in which to manifest their pigness and porcine sensibilities. One had just given birth that morning back in the woods to a litter of babies:



The lake separating Sammy's farm from his late father's 25 acre homesite:



Sammy's greenhouse for starting plants in the spring:



Sammy's late father's home which he and Melinda are turning into an event site, rentable for dinners, family reunions, and other events. Their oldest daughter Zoe is headed to college this fall to study hotel/hospitality management and she will come back to run this facility in the future. A gorgeous setting. In a couple of weeks, Slow Food Charlotte is having a big wine-tasting event at "the Inn" featuring an organic California vintner and food from local farms and chefs -- a typical use of the property that they plan to expand in the future.





Ah, the traditional Southern tree-lined lane to the "big house:"



Another (larger) mobile chicken "tractor" on his father's property:





Great farm, great family -- since they homeschool their eight kids the older ones are all active in the farm, helping to load the CSA boxes, etc. Had a nice visit with Melinda but didn't have my camera with me when I chatted with her. She's a gracious, hard-working and hands-on woman/wife/mom -- with the farm and with her children. A great place to hang out.

P.S. There is another entry further below with additional pix from New Town Farms.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Decided to try taking advantage of the fertile "upstairs" portion of the hanging bucket (container) planters: Planted bean and pea seeds in the top of each one. This is probably fraught with problems—mingling the roots of legumes with the roots of tomatoes, peppers, etc., growing in the "downstairs" parts of the buckets. On the other hand, perhaps the bean/pea roots will fix some nitrogen that the downstairs plants can take advantage of. The main problem is sunlight—the pea and bean seeds sprouted beautifully in all six buckets but they are in the shade nearly all day. The plan was for them to grow up the strings on which the buckets are suspended but that would keep them in the shade permanently under the porch overhang. I'll work on this. :-)









The lizards were eating Mexican the other night and this guy stopped by for some cilantro:

Bob Dylan Has a Message for You

Good Samaritan

When I crashed on my bike last Sunday, a good Samaritan named David Huneycutt, also a bike rider, was one of the first to come to my aid: (David rides a carbon Orbea Orca -- a primo ride.)



David is a former EMT and an orthopedic surgery consultant to surgeons—so he was the right man at the right place at the right time. He checked me out before the other EMTs arrived and made sure I was okay. He also took my bike home with him for safekeeping and brought it by today. I'm very grateful for David's concern (and for his family sitting in the hot sun in their car while he waited until the ambulance arrived). There were lots of other Union County neighbors who stopped on the busy road as well -- many thanks to them all. One, the owner of a popular local restaurant, gave me his card and told me to come by for a free meal. How nice!

I checked the bike computer -- it had stopped at 55.7 miles. Less than six miles to go on my 61-mile birthday ride. So close! I'll have to do it all over now for the record.

Thanks again to David and my Union County neighbors!

Hipocritical Hippocratics

It was Hippocrates (460-377 B.C), Greek physician and so-called "father of modern medicine," who said, "Let food be thy medicine." Obviously, modern doctors who take the Hippocratic Oath upon graduation from medical school have revised the good doctor's dictum to read, "Let drugs be thy medicine."

In his current newsletter, Dr John McDougall tells the story of his own attempts to integrate nutritional therapies into the hospitals where he worked as a young physician, and the opposition he faced from administrators and insurers in spite of the success he was having. Simply put, there is no money to be made from nutritional therapy compared to drugs and surgery. He ultimately left "organized medicine" and became one of the leading (and most creative and successful) voices for plant-based diets for preventing and reversing disease. I encourage you to take 10 minutes and read his story.

When Bike and Body Are One

Ringers at the Gila

If I was racing in the five-day Tour of the Gila road race in New Mexico this week, and looked over and saw these three entrants on the Mellow Johnny's team, I might suddenly develop a "sprinter's limp" and withdraw. They are (L to R) Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner, and Lance Armstrong, the three Americans on pro cycling's most powerful team, Astana.


Mellow Johnny's (the closest-sounding English words for the French "yellow jersey" worn by the leader of the Tour de France) is the name of Armstrong's bike shop in Austin, Texas -- and the MJ team was thrown together at the last minute to participate in the Gila as a warm up race for these three heading into the upcoming three-week Tour (Giro) of Italy.

This is of interest to me, having just broken my collarbone and a rib in a crash last Sunday, since Horner just broke the same two bones three weeks ago and Armstrong shattered his collarbone a month ago. (And Leipheimer cracked his sacrum in February in the Tour of California.) So they apparently heal quickly -- good news.

Michael Pollan Speech

Author and food analyst and activist Michael Pollan spoke at the Georgia organics conference in Atlanta March 20-21. Everyone who eats and cares about food and health -- and how agriculture is the key to human and environmental health -- should be familiar with Pollan. The video is an hour long, but there is no "action" to keep up with so you can listen to it while doing other things. The last 10 minutes are the most important -- anecdotes from several presidents illustrating how important it is to bring pressure on Washington to produce change:

Christians, Animals, and Vegetarianism

Finally! -- the Christian Vegetarian Association has just produced and released a 26-minute video on a Christian/biblical perspective on animals and the mandate to exclude them from the human diet. It is a calm reflection by a number of pastors, scholars, and doctors (like Caldwell Esselstyn) -- as well as "the Mad Cowboy," Howard Lyman. It was such a pleasure to hear Lyman speak -- a man who spent 40 years in the factory beef industry before realizing that God never intended meat to be eaten. Getting up in years, he is such a wise and gentle man with an obvious love for animals.

The video can't be embedded so you'll need to go here to watch it. If you are a Christian of any flavor, and have thought vegetarianism is a lunatic fringe element of the faith, I encourage you to watch this video. The Christians who speak come from a broad perspective of the faith and they won't all sound like what you're familiar with. But that's a good thing -- helps us grow and learn.

CSA Firstfruits

I have joined the New Town Farms C.S.A. (Community Supported Agriculture) program for the summer. New Town Farms is owned by farmer Sammy Koenigsberg, Charlotte's longest-standing organic grower. A CSA program is a subscription plan: subscribers pay a set amount to the farmer at the beginning of the season and get a box of fresh produce in return each week. The up-front payments help the farmer with planting costs and gives him a good idea of how much he needs to plant. Sammy keeps his CSA fairly small and there's always a waiting list of folks eager to join. I picked up my first box today: German red head radishes, baby arugala, salad mix, braising greens mix (10 different mustards, kales, and Asian greens), Bordeaux spinach, and kale. Belonging to a CSA is a study in eating with the seasons as people have done for thousands of years -- before refrigeration and international shipping altered our view of the cycles of nature:



Sammy's main growing field. Come mid-summer it will be lush with growth:



Tool house and washing station:



Beautiful lake on the other side of which Sammy and Melinda are developing a Bed and Breakfast:



Sammy was an architectural design major in college and designed a beautiful home for his large (eight children) family. It's a well-used house, hosting church, farming, and "slow food" groups all year long:



The chicken house -- Sammy sells fresh eggs and chickens to his customers, and he and his son are getting into raising heirloom pork as well. (Bummer.)



Sammy's a good man and a good organic farmer. He and Melinda are well-respected by all who know them:

Yard Farm 2

An update on how the garden grows:

Tomatoes and eggplant on the side yard. There are TV and cable wires running underground in the middle of this area so I have to avoid it until I get the cables marked:



"Containers" has become the theme. A couple of neighbors have supplied me with additional buckets, in which are tomatoes, peppers, oregano, dill, parsley, etc. Looking forward to seeing how they do:





Jade plant (from Daniel) and aloe starts:



Seed starts -- everything is coming up nicely except the tree seeds from my parents' yard in Alabama. Especially pleased that all the Brandywine heirloom tomato seeds from 2-3 summers ago that I saved have sprouted nicely. Note to Daniel: the Winstrip trays fit PERFECTLY in a wheatgrass-growing tray for soaking and bottoms-up watering. Nice! (I'll bring you one.)

Yard Farm

In an effort to come up with more planting space in the front yard I created a bed around the dogwood and iris in the front yard. Took all afternoon, digging out the clay and sod, digging down 6-8" to loosen the soil, using a mini-tiller to break up the clods, mixing and spreading some "good" soil/amendments and mixing them in -- all for 20 square feet of garden space (4' x 5'). (Mel Bartholomew would be proud.) I had some extra plants left from the ones I bought the other day, so put two basils on the back corners and two peppers (a banana and a bell) on the front corners. In the four remaining sides I seeded beets, Siberian kale, lacinato kale, and American spinach. If time and need allow, I can keep expanding this "natural area" in the front yard (with a more flowing design instead of "square") to create a combination of flowers and edibles. The dogwood is really growing -- sending out lots of new branches. I have fed it diligently since planting late last summer.

19 Good Reasons to Have a Garden

This information is from Dr. Joel Fuhrman on the cruciferous family of vegetables that are the most potent cancer fighters. How many are in your produce bin today (or mine) or planted in your garden?

If we really want to win the war against cancer, we must improve the nutritional quality of our diet. We have all heard about the antioxidant effects our bodies derive from the phytochemicals in plant foods. However, the unique phytochemicals found in cruciferous vegetables offer superior benefits. Cruciferous vegetables contain phytochemicals that have unique abilities to modify human hormones, detoxify compounds, and prevent toxic compounds from binding to human DNA, preventing toxins from causing DNA damage that could lead to cancer. Studies have even shown that genetic defects that may lead to cancer are suppressed by the consumption of green cruciferous vegetables.

Certainly, many studies have shown that eating fresh fruits, beans, vegetables, seeds, and nuts reduces the occurrence of cancer. I plotted cancer incidence in 25 countries against unrefined plant food intake and found that as vegetables, beans, and fruit consumption goes up 20% in a population, cancer rates typically drop 20%. But cruciferous vegetables are different; they have been shown to be twice as effective. As cruciferous vegetable intake goes up 20%, in a population, cancer rates drop 40%.

• arugula
• bok choy
• broccoli
• broccoli rabe
• brocollina
• brussels sprouts
• cabbage
• cauliflower
• collards
• horseradish
• kale
• kohlrabi
• mustard greens
• radish
• red cabbage
• rutabaga
• turnips
• turnip greens
• watercress

Include them in both raw and cooked forms and eat a variety of them. These benefits cannot be duplicated by taking any one pre-formed compound or supplement.

The evidence is now overwhelming that cruciferous vegetables play a major and unique role in the widely recognized protective effects of natural plant foods against cancer--and are the most important players in this arena. The biologically active compounds from raw and conservatively cooked green vegetables enhance the natural defenses of the human body against DNA damage and they even fuel the body's ability to block growth and replication of cells that are already damaged. For those in the know, these foods are the most important nutritional factors to prevent common human cancers.

Millennial Signs

Hanging Gardens of Stallings

King Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Hanging Gardens of Stallings aren't quite up to his standards, but they're a start. Because I have such limited ground space in the front yard I decided to try a growing method I've read about: growing plants in hanging buckets, upside down. Yes, it works -- not sure if mine will work, but I rigged up five buckets this afternoon (need to get one additional bucket for the sixth hook). In the five are a cherry tomato, a banana pepper, a bell pepper, a tomato, and a parsley. I originally planned to hang the buckets higher, hanging directly on the hooks, but discovered they had to hang lower in order to avoid the shade of the porch overhang. If they grow and the leaves proliferate downward I'll gradually raise the height of the buckets. Problems? High winds and grass fiber string rotting. (Need to replace string with some small chains if I can.) I used some food-grade plastic liners to line the non-food-grade buckets to protect against chemical leaching. (Not pictured are a half dozen other tomatoes and three eggplant plants that I put in the side yard where the avo trees were planted.)

I have to admit I'm not wild about the way these look -- "buckets" hanging off the front porch of my house. I think it's the string and the fact that the plants are so small at present -- so they just look like buckets. Hopefully, when the plants get bigger the look will change. Ideas welcome!

Millennium Restaurant

Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco is among the oldest, most popular, and award-winning vegetarian restaurants in the U.S. It was started by Ann Wheat and her husband after Ann gained her health back through Dr. John McDougall's counsel to switch to a plant-based diet. Here's her story:


Ann Wheat from John McDougall on Vimeo.

Thank God, Sunday Came

Dr. Shadrach Meshach (S.M.) Lockridge (March 7, 1913 – April 4, 2000) was the Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, a prominent African-American congregation located in San Diego, California, from 1953 to 1993. He was known for his preaching across the United States and around the world.

He was well known for the following two sermon excerpts, both appropriate for this Resurrection Sunday: