Spring nipping at my heels

By Marilyn
I worked in a landscape nursery for years, The Greenery and the “2-minute warning” for spring was a small TNLA Garden Center Landscape Show in Mesquite. This weekend is that trade show. SPRING IS COMING…it is on our heels! November, December and January are typical regrouping and planning ahead for the next years projections and maybe a little down time. Pouring through the seed catalogs, ordering and by January having seeds planted in the greenhouse. Planting seed in the greenhouse is an on-going process starting trays of the seeds on heating mats, watching for seed emergence, joggling plants around, moving flats of seedlings to more efficient lighting and when every seed in tray has sprouted moving plants off heating mats. Daily chores are watering and monitoring of temperatures in the greenhouse. Next step is the bumping all seedlings to larger containers. Working in the greenhouse is relaxing and a welcome relief most winters when it is cold outside it is warm in the greenhouse.

Knowing spring is on my heels there is an aroused sense of urgency. In one month the fresh brew compost tea house has to be up and running (Really? That means a trip to Hamilton, Texas needs to happen very soon to pick up supplies!) Spring clean- up, bed prep and irrigation repair are on the radar. This year CSA Mentors are working with me and learning gardening techniques and processing the whole circle of sustainability. God grant me the wisdom to impart knowledge and instill the urgency of farming procedures without overwhelming our new comers. Have you ever tried to teach someone how to prepare a meal, the art of preparing a meal and have the bread, meat and side dishes coincide with one serving time is tricky. Prep time of each dish has to become instilled in the seasoned cook to orchestrate fine dining. In gardening, timelines have to be established and ingrained in the mind of the gardener. Indoor seed start happens 6 weeks prior to outdoor planting dates, garden prep really needs to be done in January or February, composting year round is necessary with a fair amount of finished product for February/March spring planting, asparagus a perennial needs to planted in February, to plant bulbing onions a gardening has to watch and seize the opportunity to plant onion slips in January. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant need to be bumped to a gallon size for the March planting dates. Just like the novice cook in the kitchen has to know the ins and outs of fine cooking procedures to prepare pleasantries at a meal. So are the timelines and knowledge of vegetables and the ability to recognize nature’s “2-minute warnings” because nature does not always play the calendar game but often throws curve balls of early spring, or late spring farmers have to be intuitive and willing to work with nature and not against her.

Our new venture, The Farm Girls from Garden Inspirations now on the radio talk show gardening series, “Ask the Pros” on Friday’s at 1:00p.m. aired its first show last Friday. It was exciting, fun and nerve racking all in the same. This platform is hoped to enlighten the viewer audience of the value of gardening, mentor and encourage both novice and seasoned gardeners. We will be talking about real food, local food and appreciation and encouragement of the local farmer.

The urgency of spring is on gardener’s heels but a sounding alarm is blaring across our nation. I hope you hear it! Wake up Americans and take blinders off your eyes, I speak for myself and I believe others, business has consumed Americans and this business has been unintentionally devastating to our upcoming generation. In our effort to “better” our lives with things, our business, running to and fro from work to soccer, to football and ballet. From church, to parent night out to baseball tournaments to play-dates…..we have lost our sense of direction. The end result has been politicians making decisions for us, fast foods and school cafeterias feeding our children and the disconnect from communication with our children, our neighbors and our extending families. Slow Food, community, families, health I hope “Our Voice” will reflect the need for Americans to return to the family dinner and knowing their food, knowing their farmer and knowing their next door neighbor and thus recreate a sense of community.

Per example, put some lawn chairs out in your yard and when your neighbor walks by use your Southern Hospitality and invite them for tea, invite their children to play soccer in your back yard while the parents relax, share gardening tips with each other and laugh and talk maybe attempt to solve the world’s problems and basically to know each other. This will save gas and time and each family will have time and the energy to sit down to a home cooked meal with their children and eat their locally grown, chemical free real food that they have grown from their own garden or purchased from their local farmer.

Why the urgency? Why the alarm? 40 per cent of Texas children are obese in Texas alone! Diabetes and hypertension is on the rise in children at epidemic levels. It is simple VOTE WITH YOUR FORK, VOTE WITH YOUR CHOICES, make yourself aware of what has happened to the food industry and why this epidemic of obesity in children has happened.

Just like we will nurture you in gardening…..we will be nurturing the food revolution right here, and right now. I hear the sound of spring coming…..I hear the alarm in our country sounding. What am I going to do…..I am going to plant a garden!!!!

Fish City Grill

Donelle and I are privileged to attend many appointments with our wonderful clients.  We have the best intentions of eating wholesome, natural, local and farm fresh food.  Best case scenario would be to pack our lunch on these busy days.  We had a 11:00 o’clock appointment with plans to wrap up and find local and fresh food.  Best laid plans… we left our appointment about 1:00pm and the next appointment was approaching fast at 2:30pm and   we were starving.  STARVIN MARVIN I Do SAY.  Driving across Dallas and looking for a good place…Donelle finally just pulled into Fish CityGrill, never heard of it but hey I am HUNGRY!!

 

We had a good waiter and told him we were too hungry to decide what to order.  So, he read off the specials of the day.  Donelle said, “ Mom, I think we need to try the arugula salad.”  I agreed.  However, we were so hungry by then I ordered (from the fit and trim with the little heart icon section of the menu)  the gumbo soup (it was yummy), grilled shrimp, coleslaw and sweet potato fries and the arugula salad.  It was all good, but let me tell you about the Special of The Day Salad.

 

Baby arugula (with a nice gentle flavor not too spicy) with roasted and flavorful butternut squash cubed,  crunchy pumpkin seeds, buttered and toasted bread cubes and best of all the dressing.  It was a rosemary infused oil and vinaigrette.  Now, I know I was very hungry, but hands down this was a superb salad and a great meal.  LOVED IT!

 

We spoke with the manager and told him that we appreciated the “Fit and Trim” section of the menu and would love to see local, natural and farm fresh.  Quantity is the issue he said his executive chef would love to provide local and fresh but the quantity of local vegetables just is not available.  Much work for the Farm Girls to do.  Not only do we need to grow and teach and promote local and fresh, but we need to find more farmers to grow real food!

 

We will also have to provide great recipes for the slow food revolution and the real food picked fresh from the gardens.  Good news!  We recently with a friend and former CSA member that has just completed her training as a chef in Boulder, Colorado and has returned to Dallas.  She has agreed to cook some local and natural meals for us.  She is generously going to share the recipes with you and on our website.  That will start February 7^th.  Tonya is as passionate about cooking real food as we are with raising real food. 

 

Earning our right to good health is a curious and wonderful journey.

 

Rain water harvesting cardio

So, I hear much in the news about the drought…we are going into a long season of little moisture, some areas have water restrictions in place. I really don’t want to hear so much about it, I personally think positive thinking goes a long way!

But just in case the nay sayers may be right, I have made a major effort to collect rain water the past few months. It is not the prettiest asset to have buckets and barrels( mine are very colorful red, blue, yellow and green) strung along my back porch collecting the rain in addition to a large rain water system on the north side of my house and a scattering of rain barrels throughout the gardens. However, I feel a responsibility to gather as much water as possible because I have many gardens to maintain. We have a 40’ x 50’ at the front of our property with 3 full rain barrels on the farthest side, where it is hard to stretch the hose to. In that garden we have had a drip irrigation for about 3 years, which is good but the rain barrels are helpful when planting. The second garden is small about 600 square feet and the one rain barrel is full to the brim there. There is no irrigation in that garden but part of the garden has drip built into the landscape matting and has proven to grow vegetables very well. The third garden is 40’ x 70’ and has drip irrigation and two rain barrels. One of those barrels, as of today full of harvested rain water and filled to the brim.

The last rain harvested from the back porch amounted to 90 plus gallons. All of that had to be bottled up and redistributed to rain barrels in the gardens. It is amazing how much rain one can catch coming off the roofs in just a short amount of time. But one must be ready and willing to carry out the work it involves. Water cannot remain in open containers because of mosquitoes and safety of children. Also, the sunlight will cause fungus and destroy the harvested rainwater.

So about that cardio…Donelle works out and teaches Pilates and looks great. Gardening provides great exercise but obviously not enough. Today, Donelle couldn’t go to the gym so she dutifully worked out in my living room with her video instructor. Proud of her but I am not as motivated to go to gym or use video instructors as she is.

The rain was coming, the skies were grey and the thunder was sounding. Feeling a little guilty about the buckets not being emptied from the most recent rain and the fact that Miss Slim and Trim had done her cardio…well it was enough of a push to start wagging buckets of rain water down that hill to the farthest end of the big garden and fill up those rain barrels that have no catchment on them.

Feeling rather good I carted 55 gallons of rain water up and down the hill. It was a great work out!! Now, it is pouring down rain and my exercise program will await me tomorrow. Thus, my garden-cardio connection!

DFW Truck Farm 5k Fun Run!

It’s happening on April 22nd 2012 at Fair Park…at the EARTH DAY DALLAS festival!

What are we up to now?  Believe it or not, we are organizing a 5k fun run.  Earth Day Dallas is letting us come into their event on the second day and set up a course prior to the opening of the Sunday’s activities. 

You can get TWO events packed into ONE day – for the whole family!

Here’s what’s up:

The 5k fun run is to benefit the DFW TRUCK FARM.  Are you not familiar with the DFW Truck Farm?  email me @ dfwtruckfarm@gardeninspirations-tx.com and I will send you some media and documentation on the program.  The basic gist – a rolling moving real live vegetable garden driving down the Texas Highways into schools and the community with the purpose of educating the audiences surrounding the old Dodge about gardening.  Gardening in small space, gardening in Texas, local and fresh food, CONNECTING people back to REAL FOOD!

The profits of the race – helps DFW TRUCK FARM to move into the 2012-2013 school year…but this funding project is going to be “OH SO FUN!”  The plans are in place and the word is about to spill…but all we can tell you for now — you are in for a real treat!

Enjoy your day – we will be posting more about this upcoming event…if you want to register early and support the DFW TRUCK FARM, click here:

Friendship

On a flight over to San Diego in 2008, mom and I drew out a new business plan and part of that was finding a way to get fresh vegetables to families, our CSA program we call VEGGIES IN PARTNERSHIP, VIP. Through the program we have met some wonderful people and have had the opportunity of raising vegetables the natural way without pesticides etc., we have had basket pick ups at the house, at farmers market, at the lawn and garden show, at Potager Cafe, on my stairwell, at Luke’s Locker, Blue Mesa Grill, we have delivered baskets all over the metroplex, it has been a joy to help others eat healthier. We feel you should have choices and being able to provide a healthy choice has been a blessing.

The purpose of our CSA ambition was to educate. Living in Europe changed my eating habits more than the organic hippie musician that taught me to love of grass fed burgers, and moving back from Europe took an adjustment for my taste buds…everything I ate tasted like metal to me. So began the journey of turning the caliche ground into beautiful eating gardens.

In 2011 we came to realize the educational side had gotten lost along the way of all the harvesting and delivering and it made our hearts stop long enough to realize we had abandoned our mission! SHAME! Those 100+ Degree days of heat, when mother nature shooed us indoors, gave us time to make a new plan.

We want our clients to understand the growing seasons, we want our clients to know what grows here and how to prepare the food we grow, we want to sink in knowledge and time with our clients – our decision morphed our CSA Program into a mentorship.

Going from 20-25 open slots to 10 was a big cutback but we felt it was necessary. We put out the word and have watched a nice group of folks come together and join the program. We are delighted in the change! Working with our clients in this new program is driving our purpose to educate into full force. Yesterday, I saw the connection being made and I saw the formulation of friendships in the make.

I have a feeling we might have stumbled on our CSA niche and it’s all due to disgusting chemically flavored food and Mother Nature’s scorching summer to drive mom and I to our thinking tank. We are looking forward to this new beginning of garden friendships in 2012 and the outcome of this program. Hopefully we will have ten new gardeners each year…

Marilyn’s first post of 2012

First blog of 2012 – New Beginnings – by the mother.

Exciting day and I can’t seem to sleep so I decided to blog.  The new year always brings new beginnings but this year seems to be exploding with newness.  Babies in the greenhouse, our first South Dallas networking meeting, the Green Gardening Club, the canning club,  the 300 plus new strawberry plants,  Donelle is establishing our first Dallas Fort Worth Truck Farm Fun Run and today Donelle and I signed on to host a garden radio talk show starting in February on KAAM 770 AM. 

 

Along with these new beginnings, hopefully will be many wonderful new gardeners joining our 8 week vegetable garden classes.  The workshops begin in February.  We have been so blessed to meet, teach and mentor so many wonderful people on gardening techniques.  On many joyous occasions we have received pictures of beautiful gardens with bountiful harvest shared by our previous students.  It is not really about a green thumb but more about technique, amendments and timing. 

 

We have many new projects and soon many new friends but our passion and drive is the same…promoting local, fresh and natural produce here is Central North Texas and the awareness of eating in season….teaching and mentoring natural solutions… working with and not against nature.

 

This year has already brought a renewed awareness of the desperate need for organic and natural growers, chefs,  gardeners, ranchers and mentors.  People that are willing to plant, teach, cook with integrity and wellness in mind.  I have said it many times before and will say it many times again.  We are Americans and we need to know how to grow our vegetables, we need to know how to preserve our food.   We need to know that if push came to shove, if the unthinkable would happen …we need to be confident that we could and would survive and sustain our families.  No, I am not a nay sayer, I am not even suggesting the sky is falling.  I am saying to my fellow Americans establish a confidence in who we are and where we came from and what we could be in any given situation.

 

If Garden Inspirations can mentor 4 gardeners on every block those 4 gardeners could produce and  feed many people if need arrived.  Those 4 gardeners in turn could mentor other gardeners.  If Garden Inspirations can teach food preservation to the same people then food security would be better established.

 

Now if we can reach a few more people by radio….well I am just saying…..

 

Food security, cost of food, organic and natural all put to the side……this year I hope to cultivate a community of new friendships and happy successful gardeners.

 

Why?

 

Planting seeds bring hope with every seed planted life springs up first a blade, then the leaves, then the plant, then the bounty and then the  seeds….thus life begins again.

 

Newness with every season…..

Day number 1 of 31

Well the menu today:
Sweet ginger peach tea brewed from the house, not as many status updates on Facebook when we don’t wait for tea at the whataburger drive thru.

Breakfast: smoothie for me (pretty usual) mom had some meal replacement drink

Lunch: taboli & butternut roasted squash (downfall – one starving duchess and a mother who went down fast at 4:00)

Snacks: smoothies and munched on applebutter

Dinner: beans

We must create a better menu in order to survive 30 more days. At this point, not sold on the whole meatless diet I probably shouldn’t swim the same start day!

Went to HEB trying out some veggie burgers. We are very willing to try, just undecided for now on our opinions.

Other news: the greenhouses are coming to life! Onions planted everywhere & we are teaching 13 different times this month – are you coming??

Hello plants

What begins as something new for us happens on our very next Meatless Monday, January 2nd. We, mother and myself, will be soaring through the whole plant cookbook we received from Forks over Knives.

The journey we shall share, the effects we will record, and our opinions will simply tell you how we feel.

Nothing like starting off the New Year with a lofty goal.

It’s time to put down the soda pop cans and have a little colorful quinoa fun.

Happy New Year garden folks & friends!

A little bit of herbs

Simple Day.

I spent time organizing and preparing for the Spring Gala we have in our future…(the Spring Garden is what I’m really talking about) as you can imagine we have a bajillion and two herbs in our pantry, so I spent a good part of my day with mason jars and the green funnel.  Consolidation, a precious concept in the world of organizers otherwise known as container store junkies.  I filled a mason jar quart size container full of tumeric.  I found all sorts of allspice packages, and let’s not get started on how many teas we have in the house.  Believe me, if you would like to stop by for a cuppa’ tea, we have more than enough flavors for the liking.

When I called mom to tell her we no longer need anymore tumeric, she said really?  I just bought some more today at the Spice Market in Seattle.  I slapped my hand on my forehead and moved along in the conversation.

A turkin (the non-laying chicken we have)  got loose today, my hands were freezing and I was tired of clucking around like a human chicken and decided to let him enjoy his freedom for the day.  When I was leaving to go back to my cozy little home, Randy (chicken guy) was there – hanging out with the hens and roosters…he was able to get that silly bird back in its coop.  Gah, I am not a chicken fan. 

Not much to do with gardening today, it was more of a prep day – but as you may already know the successful gardens come from organized pantries   LOL.

My turn with the chickens

Well, mom flew to Seattle and I’m supposed to care for the flocks of birds and work in the greenhouses. Doable I have many plans to fulfill this week and I hope I can keep my promise to NOT WORK tomorrow. My workbag is stuffed with new movie releases, so maybe I can be distracted for at least 24 hours.

We are down to 3 hens and 1 rooster. I hope the numbers stay the same this week and the roaming mountain lion has had his fill.

As for the greenhouse, it’s time to begin the seedlings for spring! Oh how I love to work in the greenhouse.

Merry Christmas everyone!