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Some Summer Pest Problems
Author: Paul Deaton
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Spring Ends
LAKE MACBRIDE— Spring ended at the New Pioneer Food Co-op in Coralville where we did periodic shopping for specialty items. A man with a microphone attached to his ear was speaking to a group of wine-sippers on the mezzanine. His words drifted over the bakery, frozen food cases and rows of brightly packaged dry goods, barely audible. A few patrons shopped with carts, and after a while I went outside to wait on a bench for fulfillment of the trip— a month or more of supplies that can’t be purchased elsewhere.
A fly got into the house yesterday, signifying the invasion of insects. There were broccoli beetles at the farm on Wednesday, and something is eating the cucumber leaves in our garden. The small white butterflies continue to lay their eggs near the broccoli and Brussels sprout plants. A dash of chemicals would kill the pests off, but I don’t use them in the garden. Today’s activities will include identification of the cucumber pest and research on organic remedies. Summer’s struggle may not reach epic proportions, but the cucumber problem kept me awake last night. The pest control part of gardening is less exciting than harvesting.
Some rain fell last night, but not much. The wet spot on the driveway will soon evaporate, leaving what is expected to be a hot, dry day. There is a 30 percent chance of rain mid-afternoon, so here’s hoping it does rain. We don’t want another drought, and any rain would save watering.
Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring” is playing over the radio waves, a version conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Somewhere there is a cassette tape of the piece. It is one of my favorites and I listen to a version of it most springs— n informal ritual. The radio has moved on to “Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss. It must be a morning of popular favorites on the classical station.
A pot of pasta sauce is simmering on the stove. It was made with yellow and red onions, salt, finely minced garlic scapes, fresh basil, a quart jar of tomato sauce from last year’s garden, and a can of prepared tomato paste. It will make a lunch, so I had better get busy working up an appetite. Spring is over, and the hot, long work of summer begun.
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On Michael Pollan
LAKE MACBRIDE— Few people who work in academia are as well known, admired and reviled as Michael Pollan. Safe to say that a vast majority of the people on the planet have never heard of him.
Readers of this blog should know a). an answer to the question who is Michael Pollan and what does he do; b). I am familiar with most of his books, along with some articles, speeches and particularly his tweets on twitter; and c). I am not a “Pollanite” as some derisively refer to his followers.
The dust jacket of his latest book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation,” has the briefest of biographical snapshots and is likely the best. He is an author, a contributor to The New York Times, and Knight Professor of Journalism at Berkeley. In a bit of self-promotion, he added the sentence, “in 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.” Maybe more people have heard of him than I thought. More information about Michael Pollan is available on his web site MichaelPollan.com, and his full biography and curriculum vitae are useful for getting a brief overview of the man and his work.
Where Michael Pollan influenced my thinking was in three of his books that are mentioned less often, beginning with his 1997 effort, “A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams.” The other two were “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education” (1991) and “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World” (2001). What impressed me about “A Place of My Own,” and was a bit irritating, was that the book was about building his personal study, tying in a number of disciplines to tell a story about a building on his property— how he planned and built it.
My first reaction to Pollan was that he was a narcissist. What he does well is to take a common activity, like building a study, hemp growing, whole hog barbecue, or growing and tending lawns, establish a personal experience that relates to it, and lay a foundation to transcend the narcissistic impulse to focus on broader points. His inclusion of so much of his personal activities is a literary device, although my immediate reaction prevented me from understanding that at first. Sometimes the device works well (Iowa corn growing ), and sometimes it doesn’t (North Carolina barbecue).
There is really little point in writing, as I have done, about trivial things like cooking buttermilk biscuits, pruning trees and downsizing my book collection unless there is something relevant to say about the rest of society. My takeaway from reading Michael Pollan’s books is that we can base broader social criticism in our personal experience. As an academic, and now famous author, Pollan has access to information that most of us do not. That, and the unique perspective he gained from years of study, are reasons to read him.
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Brush Piles and Yard Work
LAKE MACBRIDE— To say yard work has been a low priority is an understatement. During the 20 years since we built our home, landscaping has been a haphazard process governed by whim and fancy— and a vague sense of design that sufficed to get trees and a large quantity of lilac bushes planted.
An important consideration of buying a 0.6 acre lot was planning a large garden, but there is more to it than that. Trees were planted with an idea of gaining privacy on what was a barren piece of farm ground turned residential lot. Until the neighbor’s bordering evergreen trees began to die and were cut down last year, we had succeeded in getting as much privacy as one can in a rural subdivision.
The only surviving tree from the two that came with the lot is the mulberry tree. Since arriving we added four bur oak, one pin oak, two maple, two green ash, four apple, one pear, and two locust. With the mulberry, that makes 17. It took me a week to prune and cut up the fallen branches from all of these.
We don’t have a fireplace or use an outside burn pit for entertainment, so the brush needs to be cleared and disposed of. I’ll make a burn pile after the garden season, and store the brush for now. It should be a big fire.
If we lived in an apartment or condo, any yard work would be included in our association fees— others would do it. A state legislator recently said, “people want to live in cities,” but I don’t know about that.
Clearing the brush on a residential lot in the country is not the same as on a large acreage, but it remains a connection with nature and our attempt to cultivate it. This work runs through the heart of our lives in society, which might be less without it.
The exigencies of yard work and making something of the place where we live, in harmony with what remains of nature, takes work sometimes neglected. For a brief moment, when one job is done, and before another begins, we can feel good about our work, and that is something.
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Garden at the End of Spring
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Consuming Local Food
LAKE MACBRIDE— White butterflies have arrived to lay eggs in the cruciferous vegetable patch as spring enters its final days. Part of gardening is the notion that there is a world of deer, rabbits and rodents; caterpillars, beetles and aphids; microbes and bacteria; all ready to compete with us for food during the cycle that defines each year’s garden production.
A home cook who gardens is more acutely aware of this as a deer munches the top leaves of a pepper or green bean plant; as caterpillars make a home among broccoli and cabbage; or as potatoes considered from planting in early spring through growth and flowering are touched by Colorado potato beetles and the tuberous roots are eaten by rodents before we can dig them for the table. Application of chemicals is not an option in our garden, so more vulnerable crops like sweet corn and potatoes are leveraged from other growers, the bugs get picked off by hand, and complex webs of chicken wire and netting work to deter wildlife from access to garden plants— at least until after harvest time.
Gardening is a constant symbiosis that sustains a diverse and complex community of species in the context of an ever changing planet hurling itself into space. To say the future sustainability of local food systems rests in what home cooks do in their kitchens is putting a lot of pressure on a process that is far more complicated. Home kitchens are a part of the process, and human centered.
When considering a bigger picture, the assertion that home kitchens require a revolution to sustain local food is more a statement about marketing than anything else. What matters to sustainability of local food systems is how they fit into a broader context of a supply chain that includes grocery stores, pantries, gardens, farmers markets, CSAs, community food banks, government programs, neighbors and friends, and other sources of foodstuffs.
That said, farmers markets like the June 15 market in Cedar Rapids seem critical to sustaining a local food system. It is the behavior of a consumer society that attracts as many as 20,000 people to a Saturday market, and without consumers, there is no market for local produce.
One hopes that the cravings for sugar, salt and fat inculcated in us by industrial food processors get replaced with something better. However, changing how people behave regarding production and consumption of food is like piloting a large battleship in that changing course takes more than a few driving personalities asserting this or that needs to happen. Having a local food Saturday (or any day) in a home kitchen can work to correct a course currently fraught with obesity, chronic disease and ill health.
My recent local food Saturday is past and I look forward to the next. But before leaving it, there are some points to be made about what it was and could be for others. By bearing witness to the efficacy of local food Saturday, perhaps readers will consider likewise. Like Scheherazade, I hope to keep you interested.
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June Lettuce Planting
LAKE MACBRIDE— According to a local organic farmer, “one of the most common mistakes home gardeners make is not planting sequentially.” What does that mean?
Certain crops, like lettuce, spinach and radishes, have a short planting to harvest cycle, and multiple crops can be planted during a season. That is, as soon as one row is harvested, another can be planted as long as the plants can tolerate weather as it get hotter and dryer.
What I learned at the farm this year is that lettuce produces the best crops when they are planted as individual seeds in a starter tray, then transferred to the garden as seedlings when the ground is ready. This accomplishes two things.
First, and this is really important, when planting lettuce, plant individual seeds, using a starter tray, or an old egg carton. Because lettuce seeds are so small, the temptation is to sow more than one together. By using a starter tray, and one seed per cell, if one cell fails to germinate, no problem when planting the seedlings in the rows in the soil. If the seed didn’t produce in the starter tray, there is no seedling to transplant. Planting single seeds ensures sufficient moisture and nutrients for each head of lettuce by avoiding over-crowding. It makes for larger leaves.
Second, by planting seeds in trays, the garden space can be more productive. A four week old seedling will take less time to mature once it is planted in the garden. If timed properly, a garden can be in lettuce most of the summer, into fall. For example, I have two and four week seedlings started in successive trays. They’ll be ready to plant when the current crop is harvested.
Avoid a common mistake, plant lettuce sequentially this June.
~ Written for Iowa City Patch
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Morning Vegetable Harvest
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To Market, to Market
CEDAR RAPIDS— Saturday was my first trip to a farmers market this season. An abundant garden, combined with a share from our CSA, reduced demand for outside produce. Until now, the cucumbers, zucchini and squash for our salads have come from the grocery store. Greenhouse operators now have local ones available, and that is reason enough to switch to the market.
There are more reasons. Depending upon how busy the farmers were at the market, they were a source of information about how they grew produce. It is a form of community knowledge about weather, temperatures and techniques for gardeners and producers that is hard to match. Hearing stories about how the early season was wet and cold, and the impact on growing, either taught me something new or ratified my own experience. Communal knowledge is part of being a producer, even small scale ones like a home gardener.
The market served to address some deficiencies in my planning this year. Not enough radishes, turnips behind schedule because of delayed planting, and kohlrabi fizzled as seeds. The farmers market made up for most of this.
The leafy green vegetables all looked good at vendor stalls, but my garden has plenty. I bought some broccoli to allow mine to grow a few more days before harvesting. Cucumbers, zucchini and yellow squash looked much better than what is available at the grocery store— everything did. Here’s what I ended up purchasing.
Some of the produce was cheap, turnips with greens for $0.50 each, cucumbers for a dollar. At $3 a head, lettuce seemed pricey, but I bought a pound of local honey because the pricing point seemed right at $5. Maple syrup was too dear, and I didn’t stop at any of the prepared food stalls. I budgeted the $18 I had in my wallet for the shopping trip, and spent it all.
My approach was to consider what was priced right and how items would fit into the coming week’s meals. Honey for bread making; radishes, cucumber, zucchini and yellow squash for salads; the turnips to make soup; broccoli for dinner that night and kohlrabi for an experiment of cooking it with potatoes— getting ready for the generous supply from the CSA. I kept looking at the beautiful greens, but sensibly resisted the temptation to buy more— really, I did.
As many as 20,000 shoppers come to the Cedar Rapids market on a Saturday. It’s what makes the market. It is cheap entertainment for a family, and produce is fresh and tasty raw material for an afternoon of transforming it into dishes and meals. There is a lot to write about farmers markets, but, importantly, they are a key part of the current local food system. How to use the combination of a home garden, grocery store, farmers market and CSA will be the topic of my next post. It is the case for sustainability of a local food system, beginning in a home kitchen.
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Local Food Saturday
CEDAR RAPIDS— If local food will gain market share from the industrial food supply chain, there must first be a fulcrum. A home kitchen may be that fulcrum— a place where our consumer society can pivot toward growing, buying and preparing more locally grown food.
The trouble is people spend so little time in the kitchen, and when they do, the industrial food processors have done a lot of the cooking for us. Whether it be a frozen pizza, bagged lettuce, peeled fresh garlic imported from China, green peppers and watermelons from Florida, strawberries from California, yogurt, breakfast cereal, canned soup, salted snacks, and increasingly, prepackaged, calorie-counted microwavable meals. The folks at the industrial food supply chain want us to cook less as it’s more for them.
In a previous post, I argued that a revolution should take place in home kitchens and that the relationship between home cooks and local food is essential to sustaining a local food system. That revolution may be as simple as going to the local farmers market on Saturday to buy what we don’t have in our gardens or pantry, then spending a part of an afternoon preparing and cooking a few meals for the week. It sounds too easy.
I have been demonstrating food preparation and cooking for our daughter a long time, beginning at home. When she moved to Colorado after college, I would visit and cook a meal in her kitchen using what she had on hand. One time someone had given her a large box of Colorado peaches in season and I made a peach crisp for dessert. The only baking dish she had was a glass pie plate, and we had no recipe, but it was one of the memorable dishes there. On another trip she was preparing to move and I spent a day while she was at work cooking everything I could find and filling every container in the kitchen with leftovers. By the time I was done there were more than two dozen prepared meals ready for her to microwave or heat up.
Imagine my parental delight when she sent me this mobile phone photo of produce she bought at a farmers market. She is learning how to cook, and not every meal is drive through or a restaurant chain, something the parent of a millennial fears is only supplemented with sugary drinks and expensive coffees.
My point is few people are as busy as a millennial. If there is a process, like having a local food Saturday, an increased portion of local food can be added to our diet. After my work at the newspaper this morning, I took the idea for a test drive to Cedar Rapids and visited their periodic market which includes locally grown food and a host of arts, crafts, music and other products of home industry. During the next posts, I intend to write about my experience and how having a local food Saturday would work.
I believe local food Saturday can fit into the busiest of schedules and be cost effective. This addresses two of the most often heard objections people name when asked to consume more local food, “I don’t have time” and “local food is too expensive.” There may be a better way in local food Saturdays.
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