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Beginner Gardening Resources
Ted here! I’ll be leading a Beginner Gardening workshop at the Memphis Mushroom Festival on Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023 from 10:30 – 12:30. The web is full of resources for gardeners–so much so that it can be overwhelming. Here are a few that I find really useful:
What to plant (based on your area):
Baker Creek Seed Co. (mostly veggies)
TN Nursery (Fruit trees)
Oak Hill Community Nursery (Shameless self-promotion)
Wild Ones Mid-South Chapter (Native plant resources)
When to plant:
For veggies, see the Urban Farmer planting calendars—look for Memphis in Zone 8.
For perennials, including trees, the best time to plant is usually early Fall or early Spring. The worst time is usually mid-summer.
Plant garlic in the fall—after Labor Day but before Halloween.
How to plant:
Planning for Square Foot Gardening
How to make more plants:
Propagating plants from cuttings
Cheap Garden Hacks:
Seed library (Memphis)
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A New Face for the Old Place – The Old Homestead Gets a New Champion
Since we’ve both been working off the farm, it’s been awhile since we’ve posted here. We’ve taken a breather from hog shares and CSAs to get a feel for where we really want to go with the place, to work on our infrastructure and hardscaping, and to dig into the work of making this home a place we’re proud to pass on to our daughter when the time comes. With help from the whole extended family, the house has gotten a major foundation repair, significant carpentry on the outer walls, a new paint job and columns, and a complete kitchen remodel. It’s been a blessed time in so many ways. We’ve added fruit trees to the orchard, a circular herb garden in the side yard, and a new garden patch by donkey’s lot.
New Directions
Our daughter is growing up and taking off. At eleven, she’s developed an interest in homesteading all on her own. She’s spent the whole summer raising chicks for a 4-H project and is now selling eggs herself. She does the majority of the work on her own… feeding, cleaning, providing fresh hay for the next boxes, collecting eggs, washing and boxing. Now, she’s ready to expand to rabbits! Updates to follow, y’all. Pray for her parents!
We’ve decided to spend the next year exploring what homesteading means and how we can move in that direction. It’s a big word with lots to unpack, and like anything in this world it means different things to different people. For us, starting small, it means making more and wasting less, growing or raising what you can, and being careful with our energy use and choices. Being good stewards of the earth.
Humble Beginnings
We’re starting small – for her birthday I gave her a subscription to Annie’s Hook & Needle Kit Club. This month we’re crocheting dish cloths for the kitchen. She’s already quite a steady knitter – simple knit-only fabric for now, but her stitches are getting more and more even and regular. Maybe most important, she’s already learning to pick up dropped stitches and both see and fix mistakes – she’s a natural. We’ll probably be making these for holiday gifts this year, along with our canned goods and most likely some cookies and candy.
For now, we’re exploring what other actions we want to take this winter: shoring up fences and building hutches, preparing for springtime livestock. Splitting and carrying firewood, making candles, cutting down on our uses of central heat and electric light. Making this winter’s presents instead of buying. We’ll blog here as we go along – it’s going to be a wild ride!
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Chocolate Chip Ice Cream #1
…aaaaand, we have an ice cream churn. This is probably a bad development overall, since it takes less than an hour to make a batch of ice cream and the result is better than what we can find in the store (and gluten free). I’ll be honest here: I like Ice Cream waaaay too much, especially on a hot day but even in winter. Since we will be experimenting with recipes, I’ll be logging them here. Feel free to use, adapt, and comment.
Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
4 cups heavy whipping cream
2 cups 2% milk
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup mini bittersweet chocolate chipsInstructions:
Mix the first four ingredients in the ice cream maker, set up (with salted ice around the outside) and let it run. Add the chocolate chips when mostly frozen.
Results:
This came out frozen after about 45 minutes. As usual for homemade ice cream, the final product was not hard frozen, but I added chocolate chips, stirred them in, and put the whole thing in the freezer for an hour.
Possible changes for next time:
- More vanilla
- Shaved/grated chocolate instead of chips
- Dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet
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We are still here!
No CSA? No hog shares? Are we even still here?
Yep. We are here and working on improvements around the farm. A CSA is a labor of love as much as one of economy, and while we still love the farm we both work off the farm to make ends meet. Ellie is a GIS Applications Analyst (she does digital mapping) and Ted is a teacher–high school during the day, and the University of Memphis in the evenings. With so much going on, we might still have been able to eek out a CSA for spring, but hanging people’s CSA memberships on “might” didn’t seem smart.
Even so, we are actually doing, in some ways, more on the farm than we have in previous years. Since we started the CSA we have talked about using permaculture practices, but when it came down to planting time we gave our first efforts to spring annuals like kale, beets, and cabbage. This year we are putting more time into the apple orchard, the newly-expanded herb garden, the edible landscape around the house, and the hardscaping (fences, gates, and borders) to support it all. We see things growing in new ways, and instead of planting rows and rows of seeds we are tending plants that will grow and produce for years–if we have patience and love.I
f you want a CSA, you should check out Oleo Acres–or if they are full any of the other CSAs around the area (if you run a CSA, leave a comment on this post with a link!)
If you like herbs, both fresh and dried, we are planting both culinary and non-culinary herbs: thyme, rosemary, lavender, oregano, sage, lots of different mints, rue, wormwood, yarrow, fennel, mullein, bee balm, and more. Stay tuned!
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Spring CSA Week 7
Last week of the Spring 2016 CSA!
In the bag this week:
Spring onions:
Garlic:
Broccoli greens:
Green kale:
Lacinato, AKA Tuscan, kale:
Cabbage:
Basil:
We’re off to deliver veggies–more details and photo later!
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Spring CSA Week 6
It is raining. Again. We’re not ones to complain–if it was a dry spring we’d be wishing for rain. We had enough of a dry spell mid-week to plant okra, corn, and purple-hulled peas, though they may not produce until late summer. This week: Cabbage for All! This is exciting for us; up until this year, bugs have always eaten our cabbage or the crop has failed for other reasons. One year, the hogs escaped and walked through the garden eating just the heads of the cabbages. What else is in the box? Read on!
Garlic: We really can’t call it spring baby garlic any more. Our babies are growing up!
Heirloom garlic scapes: These are special. Not only are they from out limited supply of heirloom garlic, they are only produced during a very short spring window. The whole scape is edible! We chop them and add them to eggs, to soups, over pasta–and don;t limit them to being a garnish: the scape can be the star! Follow this link for a list of seven ideas: we especially like using them in a pesto, minus the basil. Just garlic goodness!
Spring onions: Earlier this week Ted made dinner using these onions, leftover pulled pork, tomato sauce, and spices: Pulled Pork Tikka Masala. Substitute your favorite meat, tofu, or veggie if you don’t have leftover pulled pork barbecue:
Pulled Pork Tikka Masala
1 bunch spring onions, chopped
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
1 head spring garlic
1 inch fresh ginger or 1 tsp dry ginger1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 small container plain yogurt
8 oz tomato sauce
8 oz heavy cream or whole milk
1 lb leftover pulled pork
1 tsp garam masala
Thai basil, choppedSaute the onion and cumin over medium heat until the onion is golden. In a blender, make a paste of the garlic, ginger, turmeric, salt, and pepper (add a teaspoon of water if needed). Add the paste to the onion and stir until it begins to brown. Add the cooked pork, yogurt, tomato sauce, and cream and stir to mix. Simmer 10 minutes. add the garam masala, serve with a little Thai basil on top.
Cabbage: If you are NOT eating healthy, try this recipe for Polish Bacon, Cabbage, and Potato casserole. If you ARE eating healthy, try grilled Teriyaki Cabbage Steaks.
Russian red kale: Kale is back! Ok–you’ve had a lot of kale, but it is versatile. Have you made kale chips yet? Please say yes… If not you should really try it: coat the leaves with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and bake them (or grill them) until they are crispy. This is a great side or snack.
Hot peppers: You are only getting one or two of these–they do have a kick; if you don’t like spicy, share with a neighbor. If you do, chop them and add them to anything!
Thai basil: Unlike its big-leaved cousin, Thai basil has smaller leaves with a complex scent of lavender, licorice, and basil. It is hard to describe if you’ve never had it–but it is a classic herb throughout southeast Asia. You can use this almost anywhere (see the pork recipe above), but it is especially good with garlic and just a little spice. Let us know what you think!
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CSA Week 5: We got the beet.
There is a lot of love in this week’s box. It isn’t just that we love veggies, or that kale is showing us a lot of love this year. It’s the beets. We love beets. A few years ago we had the Year of the Beet, in which all of our beets grew to full size and customers got tired of seeing them. This year, three of our plantings of beets were washed out by heavy rains, and what you see this week is most of what survived. We debated leaving them another week in the ground, but they were calling us: “pull me!, pull me!” At least it sounded like they were calling us. Did I mention that we love beets?
We’ve heard rumors that some people dislike beets. To them we say, you might be doing something wrong. Now we aren’t ones to tell you how to cook, but if you hate beets and the only way you’ve had them is boiled or canned, try roasting them. Just cut off the leaves (save those!!) and the tip of the root, wrap each beet in foil, and bake in a 350 degree F oven for about 45 minutes. Let them cool and the skin should slide off. From there you can cut them into chunks and serve with feta cheese and walnuts, put them in a salad, or eat them whole like an apple.
As for the beet greens, they are great raw or cooked. They are, essentially, Swiss chard (chard and beets are different varieties of the same species, Beta vulgaris.) The classic preparation is to saute them in just a little butter with onion and garlic just until they begin to wilt. For example, this recipe (which adds Parmesan cheese).
Enough about beets, though. On to this week’s veggies!
Clockwise from top: Lacinato kale, beets, spring garlic, green curly kale, green onions, “salad helper” bundle, basil in the middle. Lacinato kale (or cabbage!): If you got kale last week, you will have cabbage this week–but for most of you you are getting kale two ways: lacinato (AKA Tuscan) kale and green kale, below. As it warms, try something cool like this cold kale and apple soup.
Green kale: Everyone gets kale this week! Here is one of our favorite recipes; please experiment and share! This is great for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and can be made oversized to feed a group, tiny to feed one, or ahead of time for an event.
Crustless Quiche with Kale
1/3 cup cooked quinoa
4 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup feta cheese
1/3 cup parmesan
1/3 cup cheddar
Salt and Pepper to tasteWe added:
1 cup chopped Kale
3 chopped mushrooms
1 chopped baby garlicPreheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a glass pie pan. Mix all ingredients, pour into pan, bake for 45 minutes. We actually baked it for 30 minutes, then turned off the oven and came back to the house an hour later, and it was fine. This is a forgiving recipe–play with it!
Beets: See the top of this blog post for recipe ideas.
Spring onions: Since you are getting these pretty much every week, here is yet another idea for green onions: green onion soup! Great as a starter or as a light meal–just be sure you wash the onions thoroughly to avoid any dirt!
Salad helper bundle: As we mentioned last week, the spring rains this week washed out most of our lettuce. Still, we can’t let the little bit that is left go to waste. These tiny bundles are enough for a salad for one–or to use as a “salad helper”. You can add kale and beet greens to liven them more. Included in the bundle: 1-2 radishes, tiny baby lettuce, spinach.
Basil: Unlike lettuce, our basil is starting to really take off. We included one sprig this week–not enough yet for pesto, but enough to chop and serve over a simple pasta dish, eggs, soup, salad, or in the quiche dish above.
Spring garlic:
Garlic Breath
by Shel Silverstein
Little Seth had garlic breath–
Said hi to his sister and breathed her to death.
Breathed on the grass
And the grass all died.
Breathed on an egg and the egg got fried.
Breathed on the air and the air turned green.
Breathed on the clock and it struck thirteen.
Breathed on the cat and the cat went moo.
Breathed on the cow and the cow gave glue.
Breathed on his brother,
His brother went blind.
Breathed on his mother
And she lost her mind.
Breathed on a top
And made it spin.
Breathed on the house
And the walls caved in.
Breathed on his feet and they ran from Seth,
Just to get away from his garlic breath -
CSA Week 4!
Clockwise from top: Turnips, spring garlic, cabbage, spring onions, lettuce (tiny), radishes, herb fennel. Welcome to the 4th week of the spring CSA! State of the Garden Every year is different. This year we have plenty of kale and cabbage (the cabbage is just starting to come in) but some of our old friends have suffered from too much rain at exactly the wrong times. Our first two plantings (and part of the third) of lettuce washed away along with some of our topsoil before they even sprouted. On the other hand, the lacinato (AKA Tuscan) kale seems to love the rain and is thriving and, as of now, largely bug free! While picking today we noticed the first few tiny baby squash and cucumbers, so unless the squash bugs outpace us you can look forward to that soon. Also coming soon: leeks, beets, kohlrabi, and basil. And, for those who stick with us through the summer CSA, tomatoes, peppers, squash, chard, and other summertime joys. We are also keeping an eye on our fruits. We have figs, blueberries, pears, apples, and peaches–much of which is too young to produce. Our figs have done well in the past but are still recovering from near death in a big freeze during the 2014-2015 winter. The pear tree is loaded–look for pears in the late summer.
In the bags this week:
Spring onions: We planted lots of onions, because they have so many uses–they should continue for the rest of the CSA! Have you tried them grilled?
Garlic: As with the spring onions, we believe that there is no such thing as too much garlic. Garlic is one of the food plants that is also used medicinally by many people, and our own anecdotal experience is that eating garlic helps with general health. Pro tip: when roasting garlic, seal it in aluminum foil or a clay pot. The oxygen in the atmosphere tends to make garlic bitter–but if you roast it in an air-tight environment it will be sweet.
Lettuce (Green Bibb): Salad. Of course, salad. But maybe, just maybe, you want something different? Like lettuce soup–this recipe is from Emeril Lagasse. Lettuce was one of the casualties of the spring rains this year. We are trying to rush another planting into production … stay tuned to the blog to see how it goes.
Turnips: The last of the turnips for this spring. Try roasted turnips with buttered greens (Hint: throw in some radishes to spice up the flavor!) We are sending out two kinds of turnips: “purple top” makes the familiar round turnip but the leaves aren’t as plentiful. “Seven top” makes loads of leaves, but the root is fibrous and should be peeled and cooked thoroughly before you try to eat it.
Purple top turnip 
“Seven top” turnip Radishes: As with the turnips, this may be the last bunch. After the recent rain, some of the radishes are cracked; this just means that they expanded too fast as they took on moisture. Wash and eat as usual. If you make roasted turnips and greens, you can add these to the mix: cook them the same as turnips and they will add a spicy zip.
Cabbage (OR Lacinato Kale): Hey! This is new! The cabbage is starting to come in, but we counted today and we don’t yet have enough for all customers (we had enough for 3/4). Since the ones that are ready may not make it another week we are giving them out randomly and keeping track of who gets them. If you don’t have cabbage this week, you will get kale–and next week that will be reversed. NOTE: Wash the cabbage well! Cabbage heads form from loose leaves and tighten up as they ripen. No pesticides, but there is likely some garden grit inside each cabbage. What to do with cabbage? Slaw is great, but try stuffed cabbage for an adventure.
Cabbage: Don’t throw out the exterior leaves! They are delicious! Herb fennel: This is great trimmed into tiny bits as an accent in a salad, over a soup (try it with the lettuce above), or even over vanilla ice cream. Fennel has a gentle licorice flavor that some people love even if they hate licorice. Herb fennel is a different variety of the plant that produces fennel bulbs.
Reminder: Please return your bag when we deliver new veggies each week. If you keep returning them, you will have two bags to keep at the end of the season. If we didn’t get a bag from you last week, you are getting your veggies in plastic this week–and that is not our preference!
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Spring 2016 CSA: Week 3
We love spring! Part of the joy is the growth of the season–but part is the surprise factor. Every year is a little different based on weather, shifts in weed and pest populations, stray deer, and other wildcards. Three years ago, for example, we refer to as “the year of the beet” because all of our various plantings of beets flourished. This year has started out as the year of the turnip–we were going to give you all a break from their deliciousness this week, but the fluctuating weather has started some of them bolting.
This week’s box is full of surprises, thanks in part to our neighbors and long-time friends at Oleo Acres, who provided some of this week’s diversity. On to the veggies!
CSA Week 3: Clockwise from left: Turnips with greens, spring onions, horseradish leaf, apple mint, collard greens, spring garlic. Center: Vietnamese Rau Răm. Turnips: We love these cut into cubes (about 1/2 inch), coated with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little honey, and baked in a single layer on a cookie sheet until golden. However you eat them, as the weather warms you will stop seeing them in the bag–so enjoy while they last!
Spring onions: Soups, salads, cooked, or raw. Check below for a special recipe…
Spring garlic: Spring garlic fettuccine? Spring garlic soup? Another couple of weeks, and our little babies won’t be so tender any more…
Collards: There are literally thousands of recipes for collards. Ted’s favorite: sautee a little spring garlic in olive oil (or, if you prefer, cook some bacon and use 1 tbsp of the bacon grease. Add the crumbled, cooked bacon to the dish at the end.) Wash and chop collards (remove stems) and add to sauteed garlic; stir until it just begins to wilt. Add 1/2 cup water, cover, and cook to desired softness. Before serving, add 1 tsp balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, hot pepper optional.
Apple mint: (thanks Oleo Acres!) First thing–cut off the ends and put your apple mint in water. You can plant this outdoors and it will grow easily from cuttings; just be warned: it spreads! Use it in salad, with rau răm (see below), in tea, or with roasted lamb. Or:
Oak Hill Farm Mint Julep
10 leaves apple mint
1.5 teaspoons super fine sugar
2.5 oz favorite bourbon
Hard apple cider (suggest Angry Orchard Green Apple)
Crushed iceChill an old fashioned glass. Muddle mint leaves and sugar until leaves start to break down. Add a splash of cider, ice, the bourbon, and another splash of cider. Porch and rocking chair optional.
Rau ram, AKA Vietnamese Coriander Rau răm: (thanks Oleo Acres!) This is a Vietnamese herb, also known in Malaysia as Laksa leaf. It is delicious in salad or soup and has a slight cilantro flavor. Rau ram is also a standard ingredient in Pho, the ubiquitous Vietnamese noodle soup–which, incidentally, can potentially also contain green garlic, spring onions, apple mint, collards, and horseradish leaf. This recipe for pho ga (chicken noodle soup) is a good start; include any of the box ingredients as garnishes, or cook the onions, garlic, and collards into the soup.
Canh Rau Răm / Vietnamese Coriander Soup (adapted from http://www.rauom.com/2011/08/15/clarified-vietnamese-coriander-soup/)
1 tomato
Green garlic
oil for sautee
1/4 lb ground beef
Rau ramChop about 3 inches of green garlic and sautee until wilted; add ground beef and stir until brown. Add chopped tomato, water to cover, and fish sauce to taste. when it is cooked, add one fistfull of chopped rau ram leaves, chopped. Serve immediately.
Horseradish leaf: (thanks Oleo Acres!): This is the lone large leaf in the box–it is slightly spicy without being overpowering. Suggested use: cook with collards or use raw in a salad or over a soup. Don’t be afraid! How about a horseradish/collard colcannon? 3 parts potatoes (cooked, mashed, with cream and butter–your favorite recipe) and one part sauteed green stuff: green onion tops, chopped collards, chopped horseradish. Mix together, serve with a dollop of butter on top… mmmmmm.
Horseradish leaf
