Book Review, The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander

 

The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables, Adam Alexander, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022. 306 pages, $22.00.

Adam Alexander is a seed collector, seed conserver, seed distributor, gardener, and a fascinating writer. He set out to find the origin of many vegetables, dividing the book into crops arriving from east of his home in Wales, and crops arriving from the west. He is a researcher and traveler, gourmet foodie, and one-time market gardener who couldn’t sell red Brussels sprouts.

He has joyfully searched out and found many rare, sometimes endangered (and in at least one case, the last known) seeds. He grows out the seeds he is given, and returns some seed to the person who lent them to him. He is very respectful of people’s cultures, and won’t grow for financial gain any crop that has been entrusted to him. He has enchanting stories of his efforts to seek out the seeds he’d heard about, in vegetable markets and dusty cupboard corners.

He has a website, podcast, videos and seed list at https://theseeddetective.co.uk/ He has 499 varieties of vegetable seeds, and grows out around 70 of them each year, in his garden, which includes a polytunnel (hoophouse). For some of the crops, he works with the Heritage Seed Library in the UK. If you live in the UK, he will send you a packet of seeds for a donation of £1 plus £1.50 for postage. As I write this, in August, many varieties are out of stock. Seeds are maturing, be patient.

Adam explains why garlic was fed every day to Egyptian pyramid builders; how chilies from 6000 BCE were found in a Mexican cave; why there is so much confusion between squash, pumpkins, zucchini/courgettes and marrows; and why giant Christmas lima beans are popular in northern Myanmar.

Christmas Lima Beans from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Agricultural history and archeology contain intriguing stories, and Adam tells these tales with humor, passion, insight. Maritime history is included, so we understand why and how certain beans were valued as storable foods for the crew on long journeys, incidentally spreading the leftover beans in the land of their arrival.

From the east, Britain received various peas, fava (broad) beans, carrots before they were orange, leeks (no, they really are not native to Britain!), asparagus, lettuce, garlic and many brassicas with unfamiliar names. From the west came tomatoes, green (“French”) beans and their dried offspring, maize in its many types, lima beans, runner beans, chili peppers and the whole squash-pumpkin hyphenated extended family (except Lagenaria siceraria gourds).

This book includes global histories and geography, and starts from a British perspective in the demarcation of East and West. There is a mistaken reference to Thomas Jefferson’s New York State home of Monticello. Elsewhere, the author correctly locates Monticello in Virginia. Jefferson did rent a house in New York City while Secretary of State. “The only person who never makes a mistake is the person who never does anything!” (Theodore Roosevelt)

Adam truly wants us all to enjoy healthy food – this is far from dry research. Vegetables have been industrialized to maximize profit for some at the expense of those who toil in the fields. Crops have, in some cases, been patented. Their flavors and nutrients have been ignored. We can change this. We can rebuild biodiversity, bring back flavor and the enjoyment of eating vegetables! We can put plants “at the heart of good cuisines and health” as Tim Lang says in his Foreword.

In his previous life, Adam was a film and television producer, used to traveling widely. In his introduction, Adam tells of an evening when his film crew took over the kitchen of their hotel in Donetsk, because they were hungry and the kitchen staff were on strike in protest at the foreign film crew staying there. Adam was able to shop well, with a very favorable currency exchange rate. He found some tennis-ball sized sweet red peppers with a fiery heart. They enjoyed their dinner and Adam was able to take some seeds home. This started his seed detective journey. From then on, he used every opportunity to seek out farmers’ markets and ask the stall-holders about local varieties. He started to build a seed library, because he realized some of the seeds were in danger of going extinct.

His began to wonder about how those crops had arrived in that country, and what was their place of origin. There were eight Centres of Diversity identified by Nikolai Vavilov, who created the world’s biggest seed bank, the All-Russian Research Institute. Since then, additional Centres of Diversity have been recognized, such as in Australasia and Africa. In this book, we meet plants from just three of those Centres: the Fertile Crescent in the Middle east, Mesoamerica, and the northern parts of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. These hilly or mountainous, tropical or sub-tropical regions are now associated with drought, but at the time of domestication 12,000 years ago, were rich in natural resources including rainfall. Our current day vegetables are the result of Neolithic farmers selecting plants to save for seed.

According to the historian Mary Beard, the Romans were the first society to export their food culture as part of their brand, Cabbages, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce and leeks all traveled with the legions, as familiar comfort food to fuel them for the invasions. Sophisticated Arabic irrigation systems enabled Moors invading Spain in the eighth century CE, to plant saffron, apricots, artichokes, carob, eggplants, grapefruits, carrots, coriander and rice, which all became basic ingredients of Spanish cuisine. Vegetables have been traveling the globe for a long time! Here I cannot include much of the particular seed tales, so read the book!

Adam Alexander shopping for seeds. https://theseeddetective.co.uk/my-book/

Adam’s first tale is of a local pea variety in Laos. Through an interpreter, he asked a market stall-holder about some pea seeds she had for sale. To his every question, her unvarying reply was “Of course”. They were peas, they grew tall, she saved the seed herself, and had been doing so for a long time, and of course, the whole pod was edible. When he got them back to Wales and planted them in late spring, they grew, and grew, topping his extended trellis. They produced abundantly and were delicious. His short row of peas also produced over a kilo of seeds!

Peas were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent over 8,500 years ago, from a twining winter annual in Syria. Peas we eat today come from two species, the round (mostly grown for drying) and the wrinkly (most fresh-eating peas). 2,000 years ago, the Syrian pea crossed with a wild climbing pea from the eastern Mediterranean area. This “modern” pea spread across the much of Asia and Europe. A third species of pea was independently domesticated in Ethiopia. In Europe up until the seventeenth century, most peas were grown to be dried and stored for winter. Later, farmers developed peas for fresh eating. At the end of the nineteenth century, the USDA had recorded 408 varieties of peas grown commercially, but by 1983, 90% had been lost, and only 25 appear in the records. This threat to human survival is mirrored with all edible crops.

Mysteries and scandals abound. One tall pea tale involves seed reputedly grown from one live among three seeds taken from an Egyptian tomb. It was shown to be identical to a common Dwarf Branching Marrowfat pea. And yet the charlatan continued in business, selling to gullible gardeners. In 1861 the Royal Horticultural Society in London tested 235 varieties of peas, and found only 11 worthy of merit (but what were their criteria?)

One of the peas in Adam’s collection is named Avi Joan, and came from Catalonia. Over ten feet tall, covered with pods of sweet tasty peas, still good when mature. A truly local variety, with only one known grower, it could have died out, but now has many growers in the UK.

The other tales of seeds from the east cover fava beans from Syria, carrots from Afghanistan, becoming orange in Holland, leeks domesticated in Egypt and Mesopotamia at least 4,500 years ago, Greek krambé (leafy greens) 2,600 years ago, asparagus depicted in Egyptian hieroglyphs in the third millennium BCE and growing wild (feral?) in Britain 2,000 years ago, lettuce domesticated eight thousand years ago perhaps in Kurdistan and Mesopotamia, and garlic originally from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The oldest garlic remains, dated to the fourth millennium BCE, were found in an Israeli cave near the Dead Sea.

Popping garlic for replanting at Twin Oaks.
Photo Bell Oaks

After this Adam considers arrivals from the west. Excavations in Mexico have given us a timeline of South American ancestors transitioning from being hunter-gatherers to farming 12,000- 9,000 years ago, after the supply of game decreased, and pressure on gathered crops reduced availability. Many crops were introduced from outside the immediate area, including amaranth, maize, squash and chilies. About 3,000 years ago, almost all the diet was farmed. About 500 years ago, these foods reached the Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

At this point we must acknowledge that European colonizers violently displaced and killed most of the native people in North America and the Caribbean and brought in abducted and enslaved Africans. In the history of Europe, we mentioned invaders from one country to another, in much earlier days, in some cases thousands of years earlier. The past history of the human race was not all peaceful. Current events are not all peaceful. The flow of foods from one culture to another is generally a better aspect of ourselves.

Columbus, when returning to Spain from the Bahamas in 1493, brought maize, tobacco, sweet potatoes, chilies and two species of beans. Twenty years later, Cortés brought from Mexico avocadoes, pineapples, cocoa, squash, more bean species, tomatoes, cassava and potatoes. These crops from a small corner of southern Mexico have become embedded in European food culture.

Tomatoes are all descended from the wild tomato Solanum pimpinellifolium, indigenous to coastal Peru. “Common” beans, Phaseolus vulgaris originated in an area from Northern Mexico to Argentina, and were grown in Britain by 1597.

Pinar del Rio Bean Seed Bank at Finca Hoyo Bonito, Cuba. Display of black bean seeds. Photo Pam Dawling

Identifying the wild ancestor of corn took scientists until the 1930’s, because the changes from teosinte to modern day maize are profound. Teosinte is a short weedy grass without any cob-like ears. It has a head consisting of about 12 kernels in two rows along a hard stem. It is now accepted that a single domestication event brought maize into the world. Domestication was a feat of impressive crop selection from genetically diverse teosinte enabling rapid mutations. The common idea that evolution takes centuries of gradual changes is not true. As if by magic, maize suddenly appeared at archeological sites. It didn’t take many generations of Neolithic plant breeding 10,000 or more years ago in the Balsas Valley in SW Mexico to open the way for breeding the 20,000 landraces of teosinte and maize that exist today.

The oldest evidence of lima beans is from 8,500 years ago, in Guitarrero Cave in Peru.

In northern Mexico and Puerto Rico the limas are the smaller more drought-resistant and heat-tolerant Sieva type. Ships returned to Europe and to Portuguese and Spanish colonies in Columbus’s time with lima beans to feed the crew. Portuguese ships from the fifteenth century on sailed round the Cape of Good Hope to southern India. The pallar types of Lima beans from northern Chile and Peru, probably crossed the Pacific to the colony in the Philippines, from the sixteenth century onwards. By the end of the eighteenth century, both types of lima beans were commonly found in China and India.

Lima beans do not grow outdoors in the British climate, but their close relative, runner beans, native to high elevations of Mexico and Central America, do very well. There is some evidence that they were domesticated by 4,000 BCE. They reached England around the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Chili peppers to grow from The Seed Detective collection

The next tale is of chili peppers (spelled chilli in the UK). What is the fascination with eating the hottest possible peppers? The earliest find of domesticated chilies is in a cave in the Tehuacán Valley in south-central Mexico, and dates from 5,000-6,000 BCE.  Five species have been domesticated, starting 7,000 years ago in Mesoamerica. The species with the hottest peppers, C. chinense, is native to the Caribbean, the Yucatan and Central America, and includes the habanero, (there is no tilde over the n, no ny pronunciation – that is just English speakers trying too hard to sound foreign!), the Dragon’s Breath, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and Scotch Bonnet, popular in Jamaica.

The Arawak people in the Bahamas were eating chilies when Columbus arrived in 1492 and they had arrived in Europe by 1542. Chilies traveled so fast that a Dutch botanist named the C. chinense species believing they came originally from China! People in India might not realize chili peppers came from Mexico! Chilies became such a big part of cuisine on the Indian subcontinent that every region now has its own special variety. Surprisingly, chilies did not reach North America until the Spanish brought them at the end of the sixteenth century.

Lastly we turn to the pumpkin and squash family (Cucurbita). Domestication of squash started 10,000 years ago in the Americas. Before Columbus brought back squashes from the Americas, white-flowered bottle gourds (Lagenaria siceraria) were widely grown in the so-called “Old World” for the edible seeds and as containers, and sometimes the flesh was eaten (some was toxic). This led to confusion in names between the two incompatible genera.

Today we divide squash into 4 species. C. pepo is native to North America, where it has been cultivated for thousands of years. Acorn squash and maxima squashes, such as those cultivated by the Algonquin, were valuable to the early colonizers who did not have ovens, but were able to bake hard-skinned squashes (emptied of seeds and refilled with milk and spices) in the fire ashes.

There are two types of C. moschata (native to Mesoamerica, probably northern Peru), the ones we know as Butternut squash, and the giant crooknecks, such as Tahitian Butternut, not to be confused with C. mixta Cushaw squashes (native to Florida). Many names were used for different subgroups of squashes, pumpkins, melons, gourds, cucumbers. Immature squash of many kinds have been consumed, and often called zucchini. Most canned pumpkin and commercial pumpkin pies are made from butternut squash.

Green Striped Cushaw Winter Squash, a Mixta variety, also known as Striped Crookneck. Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

C. maxima is probably a descendent of wild C. andreana, native to parts of Argentina and Uruguay, where it became one of the key crops of the Native Guarani people. 1,500-year-old whole squashes have been found in Salta, in the mountains of northwest Argentina. The Spanish brought C.maxima north, where it became a widespread part of the cuisine of Native Americans, and by the end of the sixteenth century, it was found across the European colonies there. C. maxima squashes reached Japan in the eighteenth century, where they were bred to make distinctive varieties and types like Kabocha and Kuri.

A fascination with growing giant pumpkins (or squash) has developed in the last 500 years. This is not about the food supply any more than the quest for the hottest chili is.

Today, desires for nutritional value, flavor and quality are moving public opinion away from the drive to more, bigger, better at any cost. That path led us to poor quality food without much flavor, that relied on pesticides rather than pest resistance or tolerance, fungicides rather than disease-resistance, and heavy inputs of chemical fertilizers to achieve the touted high yields.

Research and development on how to feed the planet with the climate in chaos, population growing and available land shrinking, is turning more towards cultivating biodiversity and valuing sustainable and traditional farming methods. It is important for the well-being of us all that we do not divide the people who are scraping together to buy the cheapest, mostly ultra-processed, unhealthy food, from the people who can afford to feed themselves organic, sustainably produced food. Small-scale diverse vegetable farming is capable of generating more income per acre than large-scale monocropping. Our task is to ensure food justice.

Diverse farming will give us resilience in the face of climate change. Collaboration between farmers in distributing their produce is a success for us all. Home gardeners providing food for their households are part of the bigger picture of feeding the world. I learned from Adam’s book that there are more than a million acres of gardens in the UK, which represents more than 8% of all land growing crops. Maintaining local varieties can produce high yields, and, again, give us resilience. Restoring and maintaining seed libraries of local varieties around the world will bring us more strength than being in thrall to agrochemical mega-businesses. The website has a Save-and-Sow section with growing tips.

Author Adam Alexander

Growing and Saving Seeds: my Seed Garden Slideshow and a Cuban Bean Seed Bank

 

At the Organic Growers School Spring Conference I gave my presentation The Seed Garden, about combining growing some seed crops alongside lots of vegetable crops – a way for vegetable growers to diversify and grow seed of a few special crops either for themselves or to sell for some extra income and to keep a chosen variety available. I included information on selecting desirable characteristics and making an improved strain of that variety.

You can watch the slideshow here, by clicking on the diagonal arrow to increase the screen size and then the right pointing triangular arrow:

I also took the opportunity to add a few more of my slideshows to my collection on SlideShare.

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Meanwhile I’ve been sorting out more photos from my Cuba trip, and I want to tell you about a bean seed bank at Finca Hoyo Bonito I visited during our day traveling from Havana, west for three hours to the Viñales Valley in the province of Pinar del Rio.

The seed farm has a bank containing 250 varieties of bean seed. It’s a hobby for the retired woman growing and saving the beans. Her goal is to get a hundred pounds of each variety. She gives bean seed to any farmer who asks, with no requirement to return the investment. (this is different from some seed banks, which require growers to repay the “loan”)

Finca Hoyo Bonito bean seed bank, Pinar del Rio, Cuba
250 bean seed varieties are kept in this tiny seed bank.
The Seed Conservator, or Banker at Finca Hoyo Bonito. Note the reuse of ubiquitous plastic water bottles to store some of the seeds. Tourists need to drink only bottled water.
Bean seed has a limited shelf life, and so must be grown out frequently.
Here is a display of just some of the bean varieties.
Finca Hoyo Bonito Bean Seed Bank, Pinar del Rio, Cuba

Here is a short video about Finca Hoyo Bonito. It’s in Spanish, naturally!

Book Reviews: The Seed Garden and The Ethical Meat Handbook

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I love it when I get the chance to read great books and then tell other people about them. And, of course, books make great gifts. If you want to read more of my book reviews, click on the Book Reviews category in the list on the left side or here.

First up today, is  The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving

Edited by Lee Buttala and Sharyn Siegel. Written by Michaela Colley and Jared Zystro. Published by John Torgrimson, Seed Savers Exchange, 2015. Distributed by Chelsea Green $29.95 400 pages.

Seed Savers Exchange published Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed in 1991, one of the first popular seed-saving books. The Seed Garden brings the information up to date. This is a beautiful, inspiring and informative book, which provides all you need to know to start seed growing, or to start saving seeds from a crop new to you. The explanations are clear. The technical information that you need is in a very readable, accessible form. Many mysteries and confusions are cleared up. With this book, you have all you need to understand how to reliably get plentiful viable pure seed.

The Seed Garden is written for home gardeners as well as farmers, and is divided into two sections. First comes the Art and Practice of Seed Saving, then come the individual Crop Profiles

Section 1 covers the botany of seed saving, pollination methods, plant life cycles, maturity indicators, seed harvesting and drying methods, seed-borne diseases, seed longevity and how to store seeds.

Section 2 includes information on population size (how many plants you need to preserve genetic diversity), and isolation distances (how much distance is needed between your seed crop and other crops it could cross with). The crop profiles are by scientific name. Appendices explain germination testing and a table of seed-borne diseases.

Throughout the book are “Master Class” sections, giving two or three pages of practical advice (such as how to hand pollinate squash) and explanations of important phenomena such as inbreeding depression, photoperiodism and vernalization. There is an excellent glossary and a good index.

There are chapters with Regional Considerations. For example the mid-Atlantic has hot summers long enough for most heat-loving crops, such as cowpeas, limas, eggplant, peppers, sweet corn, melons and watermelon. There is regular rainfall and high humidity, which can lead to fungal and bacterial diseases, so it is harder to grow dry-seeded crops. Harvested material should be brought under cover. Biennial seed crops can usually be over-wintered outdoors. Except in the hotter regions of the mid-Atlantic, winter is cool enough for vernalization. Cool season crops are best sown early so that seed is produced before the very hot weather which can reduce seed quality.

I read up about growing buckwheat seed, because I participated in a VABF/VSU buckwheat trial which included growing some seed. Buckwheat takes 10 weeks to produce mature seed. Temperatures above 90F reduce seed yield. The minimum population size is 80 plants, and the isolation distance is 800ft-1/2 mile for home use, 1-2 miles for commercial seed. Buckwheat has perfect flowers (that is, all flowers have both male and female parts), which come in two types. The pin types have long styles and short stamens; the thrum type have short styles and long stamens. An individual plant produces only one type of flower and pollination is only possible between different flower types. This is referred to as an “obligate outcrosser”.

Another section I studied was the explanation of the difference between Brassica napus and Brassica oleraceae. Brassica napus varieties (rutabagas, Russian and Siberian kales) are biennial and must undergo vernalization in order to flower and set seed. Vernalization requires plants with about 8 leaves standing for 10-12 weeks at temperatures below 40F. They are hardy to 10F. Brassica oleraceae annuals (such as heading broccoli) on the other hand, have only a minimal cold requirement of 1-4 weeks below 50F before they start to flower. The biennial B oleraceae (European kales, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, collards, kohlrabi, sprouting broccoli) need 10-12 weeks below 50F before flowering. They are hardy to 20F or lower (some much lower).

Finally I read up on growing sweet potato slips, which I do every spring, hoping to learn a new trick. Presprout at 80-85F and 90% humidity, for 2-3 weeks. (I think I do that) Then plant in 2-3” moist sand at 80-85F for 4-5 weeks until shoots emerge. (Yes, I do that but use compost rather than sand.) Cut the slips 1” above the sand (compost) when they are 8-12” tall. (Yep.) Pot up or plant directly (We plant into flats for a few weeks). I’m on the right track, no worries there.

My examples show you the level of detail and breadth of topic that this book includes. Additionally, the photos are breath-taking. A book of practical inspiration!

On the Seed Savers Exchange page for the book, you can view a short video about seed-saving.


EthicalMeat_Comps1Next is  The Ethical Meat Handbook: Complete home butchery, charcuterie and cooking for the Conscious Omnivore

$24.95, 256 pages, published by New Society Publishers October 2015

Meredith Leigh has given us a wonderful book. The trifecta of practicality, politics and poetry. “You need food. What everyone will not admit is that you should love it too. If you don’t love good food, put this book down. Now.” “The key is to honor the process, the pursuit of good food.” Ethical meat is that from an animal which enjoyed a good life, was afforded a good death, the meat is butchered properly, then cooked or preserved properly.

One aspect of her book combines practical information on how to butcher beef, lamb, pork and chicken step by step; make sausage and smoked meats; raise livestock humanely and successfully make a living doing so. She encourages and demystifies, sharing otherwise hard-to-find information in words and photos. I won’t say much about this section. I have butchered poultry and in the past, a few sheep. But this is not my area of expertise.

The second aspect includes the politics of animal farming. Meredith says “I am not a meat-crazed woman. I detest dietary dogma.” She was vegetarian for nine years, vegan for two, and also a vegetable farmer. She advocates for integrating meat consumption into a robust, diverse diet. She explains that she became a vegan motivated by “deep empathy and political aggravation . . . but my solution, sadly, mostly helped only me.” She now sees that her diet had been one of luxury and a desire to escape a system that she felt she could not affect. Now, in her life as a butcher, she can be more politically effective. Her book does not dwell on abuses of livestock, but promotes the more ethical path. In answer to those who criticize the water use of livestock farming, Meredith points out the bigger picture: water given to livestock doesn’t disappear – that which isn’t converted to meat returns to the pastures to improve the organic matter and to be used again. It’s the water cycle we should consider, not water “use”. Using water isn’t wrong – it’s important how you use it.

Supermarket food is subsidized by our tax dollars. We are not paying the true cost at the point of sale. The true cost of “cheap” food includes higher healthcare costs, higher environmental clean-up costs. Paying in installments causes us to expect food to be cheap.

The third aspect of her book is her poetic way of sharing her observations and feelings. Her farming and domestic partnership collapsed, she lost her farm – clearly that was hard.

In the Pork chapter she writes “I owned land once. Looking back, I like to think I can remember every single morning on my farm, but what I really remember it is the way that it feels each time to walk out the door into it. That’s the hush.”

“I used to feel like an invalid every spring, or like someone who had been asleep, because I was always so surprised at how new the earth made itself.” “ But the pigs, now are lying in the sun. It is the stillest, sweetest moment, there in the mud, and they are all spooned up against each other sideways. Every now and again, an ear twitches, or a chubby head bobs, but the pigs and the sun are mostly etched there, silently.”

And while it’s clear that losing her farm was hard, it’s just as clear that Meredith has jumped back on her feet, and now she runs a retail butcher shop. “Inspire yourself to a point of spirituality towards the animals you raise.” She is a true foodie: “Good food ignites all of our senses.” She generously shares some very delicious recipes.

Meredith Leigh at work. Photo by New Society Publishers
Meredith Leigh at work.
Photo by New Society Publishers

VABF Farm School and Virginia Festival of the Book

I gave a presentation at the  VABF Farm School  at J Sergeant Reynolds college, Goochland, VA, with Ira Wallace of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange on Monday evening (3/18). It was one of three classes on Sustainable Farming Practices. You can see my half here:

Between us, we covered garden planning, record keeping, crop rotations, succession cropping, storing seed and doing a seed inventory, (mostly me). And production efficiencies, online planning tools, growing healthy plants, seed growing and ripeness indicators (mostly Ira). The purpose of this program is to help beginning farmers and ranchers in Virginia to make informed farm planning decisions as part of a whole farm plan. It’s a  six week comprehensive program (Monday evenings from 6:00-9:00pm) covering:

  • Introduction to Whole Farm Planning
  • Marketing
  • Sustainable Farming Practices
  • Holistic Business Management
Virginia Festival of the Book
And yesterday, Thursday March 21st, I spoke at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, Virginia.I talked about the process of writing my book Sustainable Market Farming, who I wrote the book for, the gaps in the available books about ecological vegetable production that caused me to write it, and about my experience growing vegetables sustainably to feed our community at Twin Oaks.My panel discussion, the Locavore track, was at the JMRL Public Library, 201 East Market Street. 

Also on the Locavore panel was Jackson Landers, author of The Beginner’s Guide to Hunting Deer for Food and Eating Aliens (about hunting invasive animal species for food). Here’s an interesting interview with Jackson Landers from 2010 and his blog The Locavore Hunter.book_detail

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Twin Oaks September Garden Calendar

Welcome to Twin Oaks!
Photo by Bridget Aleshire

THE SECOND SPRING

Here’s our Garden Task List for September: 

During the month

Weed and thin carrots and brassicas (kale to 12”).

Lettuce Factory: Sow hardy lettuce every 2 days till 21st, (3 rows/planting) then every 3 days. Sow #34-46 this month. Transplant 120 every 3-5 days (1/3 bed) #27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 for last outdoor planting (Dec harvest). Transplant  #34, 35, 36  9/24-9/30 for frames

Root cellar: air and cool to 60°F by mid-September

Collect seed from Roma tomatoes if necessary.

Screen compost and fill old greenhouse beds before October, for winter lettuce and spring seed compost.

Early Sept: Prepare and plant new strawberry beds if not done in late August, using rooted potted runners or plants carefully thinned from last year’s beds (see August for details).

Transplant collards and kale if necessary. Transplant lettuce #27, 28, 29, 30.

Retrieve spinach and onion seeds from the freezer. After acclimating spinach seeds, sprout 4oz/bed (1 cup/10,000 seeds) for spinach #1 in fridge for one week, then direct sow (if <68°F, and dead nettle has germinated). If still hot, sow (preferably pre-sprouted) spinach in Speedling flats in float tank. 9/20 is last sowing date for fall harvesting. [Could broadcast oats into spinach at planting time for weed control & cold weather protection.]

Sow if not done already: kale and collards by 9/15; turnips by 9/30; radishes, kohlrabi, daikon and other winter radish, miscellaneous fall greens, scallions.

Plant large potato onions this month or early in October, at 8” (wider if supply limited). Cover with ½-1” soil, mulch with hay.

2nd fall disking: Watermelon plot when 800 have been harvested. Roll up drip tape first, or move to new strawberries.

Mid Sept: 7-14 Sept is the best time to sow vetch & rye, 1:2, 2# of mix/1000 sq ft (75#/acre) on old spring broccoli patch; crimson clover and rye, 1:2, at 55#/acre.

Transplant lettuce #31, 32.

Sow 1st sowing of hoophouse seedlings (hoop and cover).

Bring 6 tractor buckets compost to hoophouse for fertilizing fall and winter crops.

Move stored onions from basement to fridge, after apples peak in mid-September, and space available.

3rd fall disking: corn #3, #4, #5. Part of corn #3 plot may be used for new strawberry beds.

Late Sept: Sow spinach #2 for spring harvesting (9/20-9/30), and 2nd sowing of hoophouse seedlings and cover.

Transplant kale for spring, filling gaps; lettuce #33, finishing up the last outdoor bed; [#34, 35 & 36 in cold frames?] Plant large potato onions (>2”) if not done earlier.

Move garlic from basement to fridge late September-late Oct as needed to make room for winter squash.

Weeding: this is a good catch up time on weeding in the raised beds.

4th fall disking and seeding: Sow cover crops wherever possible (in unused raised beds too). The last chance for oats is early Sept (9/15??). Can sow winter wheat (winter-killed in zone 4) or winter barley (dies in zone 6) if oat planting date missed. (Oats winter-kill in zone 8). Can sow hardy Austrian winter peas in late Sept at 8oz/100sq.ft. with rye. Can sow red clover this month.

Bush-hog late corn if undersown with oats and soy cover crop.

Perennials: New strawberry beds: Prepare and plant by mid-September if not done in late August. Weed strawberries. Could till up grass in grape alley & sow clover if not done in March. If clover sown earlier, let it seed.

Harvest and store winter squash: Acorn (pepo) types (stem still green, ground spot “earthy” or orange), store 1-4 months; Maximas: Cha Cha, Jarrahdale, Kabocha (stem 75% corky) store 3-5 months; Moschatas: Butternuts, Cheese (peanut colored skin, no mottling or streaks) store 4-8 months, or more. Leave on live vines as long as possible, avoiding frost on fruits. Cut leaving long stem using pruners; handle gently.

September Harvests: Asian melons, asparagus beans, beans, beets and beet greens, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupes, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard, Chinese cabbage, corn, cow peas, cukes, edamame, eggplant, horseradish,leeks, lettuce, limas, maruba santoh, okra, pak choy, peppers, hot peppers,radishes, Romas, scallions, senposai, summer squash, Tokyo bekana, tomatoes, turnips, watermelons, winter squash, yukina savoy, zucchini.  It is possible to lightly harvest rhubarb during September, if wanted.