As someone who grew up on a farm (decidedly non-organic, but we did have a good-sized garden patch as well for our own fruits/veggies that was just seeds, water and sweat), this sort of thing can’t happen soon enough. My wife and I grow a few things now in containers. Once we buy our own place (or after the next move, if we find a landlord hip enough to let us tear up half the backyard), I want to put in a nice garden with tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, cabbage, beans, corn, and maybe even a small strawberry patch.

Not only is it personally nostalgic, it’s the right thing to do.

Thanks for this, Amanda.

WF

I can’t keep a houseplant alive but this year we planted our first ever vegetable garden. I said I was doing it for my kids (8 and 4 years old) as a teaching tool but that’s really bullshit. I’m doing it in response to my own anxiety about the economy. I don’t like admitting it but there it is. Now I know that my carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, watermelon and pumpkins aren’t going to keep us financially solvent if it gets really bad but I think that’s part of the point. I’m trying to control what I can and let the rest go. Now, if we actually get anything we can eat out of this garden I’ll be stunned but I am hopeful.

I am encouraged by all of these articles though and I’ve found I kind of enjoy the gardening (except for the weeding, it’s 94 degrees in NC) and I think I’m going to put in a real garden next year.

Let’s not forget that the Victory Gardens had a motivational factor called World War II. It’s hard to believe that a mere economic crisis would get everyone pulling in the same direction like that. But hey, the more fresh produce out there, the better.

In before organic celery will kill you dead.

I have a small garden every year, since we moved out of an apartment and into this house (with a yard—I was so excited when we moved in that I finally got to have a garden).  I don’t grow much, because most of the yard is in shade and the main sunny spot is also the fenced in part where the kids play, but I have enough to grow some tomatoes, eggplant, herbs, and a few other vegetables, plus some other stuff in containers.  And this year we also have carrots in a big box that is specifically the kids’ project.  They’re really excited about it (especially the 4 year old), as the carrots are almost ready to harvest and then we’ll plant another round for eating in early fall.  And this year everything is doing really well, much better than in the last few.  My blackberry bush is even finally growing.  I don’t expect any fruit this year from it, but I have high hopes for next year.

This.  Have been canning for years, but only just started gardening two years ago, when we moved to the country.  Yes, it’s amazing how much knowledge is involved in successful veg gardening—I am in awe of the experts, and feel even more of a loss whenever a farming family goes under and takes all that irreplaceable lore with them.

On the subject of urban gardening, check out this past May’s issue of National Geo Mag, which has an incredible photo-essay on urban rooftop gardens.  It’s heartening to read about recent innovations that allow for successful, drip-proof soil-beds to be installed on roofs, not to mention regulations in some N. Euro countries that insist new flat roofs get “gardened up”.  Happily, more of these spaces are being used to actually grow food, not just green things.  The critical mass isn’t quite there, but it may reach us in our lifetimes.  Conceivably the next gen of urbanites can get a rooftop rood of their own and make eggplant babies, even if they’re renters.

There’s also no reason why the urbanites of “now” can’t at least check out possibilities in their areas—Vancouver and Chicago seem esp. accessible.  Most inquiries will be dead ends, but putting bugs into proprietors’ and city officials’ ears is a good start.

Pssst, aftercancer:  The secret is to mulch, mulch, mulch.  It cuts down drastically on weeding and watering and it keeps the crops cleaner because mud doesn’t splash up onto the plants in the rain.  Straw works well and is cheap.  It breaks down nicely over the winter and improves the soil.  Make sure you use straw and not hay.  Hay has a lot of seeds in it.

I had to laugh at the comment about how gardening lets you feel “in control”.  Yes, it does, in some ways but few things dictate your schedule like harvesting season.  Put harvesting off by even a day and you lose crops.  Tomatoes suddenly rule your world.

We’re in a community garden this year and I’ll be heading over to a friend’s mom’s place later this summer for a weekend of canning and drinking. Hopefully, I’ll have enough good vegetables.

I started a garden this year for religious reasons. Laugh if you want. As a pagan, even a nontheistic one, I’m not really happy if I’m not growing something: kids, kittens or plants, preferably all three.

Since I killed my last houseplant, I decided to try it.  I went with a raised box and square-foot gardening. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s small enough I can keep the weeds down. I have a fairly small yard and most of it is shaded by two enormous oaks. But even if all you have is a 5 gallon pickle-bucket on a decorative balcony, you can grow a couple of tomatoes or some herbs or some carrots.

I planted a blueberry bush (dead), a peach tree (dead) an apple tree (flourishing), 8 tomato plants, a patch of corn-beans-squash (of which the corn is fine and the beans have 1 vine), other stuff that died and 5 zucchini plants.  When the zucchini die off, I plan to plant pumpkins for Thanksgiving. (I have a freezer, hello pumpkin puree for muffins and pies)

We got our first tomato yesterday. OMG! I’ve been eating pink styrofoam from the store for too long. That little beefsteak burst all over my tongue and tasted amazing. We have 2 brandywines on the windowsill, turning red.

I’ll put the other box together and have 32 sq feet next year. Also, I’m going to dig a larger corn patch for next year and plant more green beens. We’re going to start earlier and have peas and lettuce too.

Okay, I’m gushing, but it’s so EXCITING!  When I was a kid, I hated the garden. We had a big one and it was just unending drudgery for all three of us who worked in it. I know my dozen little tomatoes aren’t going to save my family’s food bill. But it’s gotten my kids out from in front of the TV. They pester me to take them out to water the garden, so they can see what’s ready, what’s growing and what’s died.

one is about the giant organic garden at the White House that Michelle Obama has spearheaded.

Under the next GOP President (far, far in the future, we hope), it’ll probably end up like Carter’s solar panels under Reagan: wastefully ripped out to score a stupid ideological point.

Gracchus, call me Canadian, but I had no idea Carter installed solar panels.

Of course, that requires staying put for long periods of time, which is also not so easy for modern urbanites.

Well, that’s helped by the collapse of the housing market: can’t sell your condo for anywhere close to the price you got it, so you’ll stay put after all!

I don’t know, urban gardening seems bad for the environment to me.  Not pots of vegetables on a fire escape or roof, but actually using land in an urban area as farmland.  By denying that land for housing or retail, you’re just going to push that development out into the sprawling suburbs, which is far worse for the environment.  Furthermore, a plot of farmland in the city decreases density, which makes that community less walkable and more car-friendly.  I think there are externialities to urban farming that people here haven’t considered.

Gracchus, call me Canadian, but I had no idea Carter installed solar panels.

Yep, it was symbolic (this was during the oil crisis of the late 1970s), but it did run a water heater. Reagan took the system down during his second term (“take that, hippies!”), and the panels ended up at a college in Maine.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/white-house-solar-panels_n_160575.html

Okay, I’m gushing, but it’s so EXCITING!

You got it bad, girl!  I find gardening incredibly rewarding and OMG, the taste of a fresh tomato still warm from the sun is amazing.  I used to keep bowls of cherry tomatoes around the house in bowls like candy.  I’d pop them in my mouth all day long. 

Incidently, there are harmless bacteria in soil that boost your mood (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18082129) .  Between the sunshine, the soil and the exercise, gardening is a darn good way to help with depression. I’ve had to stick with flowers for the last few years because of contaminated soil but my whole front yard smells wonderful right now because the roses are blooming.  Pretty soon the star gazer lilies will be blooming and their fragrance is so strong that the whole house will smell good.  We’re already planning the vegetable and flower gardens at our new house.

I distinctly remember that chicken in my childhood came to you in whole chickens that you had to dismantle yourself.*

Here in CA, we can buy Foster Farms chicken, which are sold as whole fryers or the bigger ‘roaster’ and the ads promise that they aren’t ‘plumped’ or injected with water to increase their size.

The only difference is that they don’t sell backs by themselves anymore, I guess the meat for chicken sausage and hot dogs has to come from somewhere, I guess

On the contrary, I think that if people start to see that they can make changes that seemed intimidating before they tried them, that can in turn encourage them to be a little bolder, more sure of themselves, and more entitled.  The widespread social reform that happened in the wake of WWII is usually painted as something the powers that be did out of gratitude to the everyday people that saved their nations from the threat of fascism.  But while there’s probably something to that, I think that it’s also relevant that the people themselves had weathered some seriously hard times, and everyone did their part, and when things got better, they felt capable and empowered, and the social reform from middle class creation programs in the U.S. to the formation of the NHS in Britain was a response to the mood of the times.

The GI Bill was both a belated response to the Bonus Army and a way of giving the discharged veterans something more than the back of the hand and the inevitable(up until then) recession that would make job hunting difficult for said veterans as in WWI and earlier wars.

The British NHS was in response to a study done during the depths of WWII:

The idea was that if Britain could work towards full employment and spend huge sums of money during the wartime effort, then in a time of peace equitable measures of social solidarity and financial resources could be redirected towards fostering public goods. Aneurin Bevan, the newly appointed Secretary of State for Health, was given the task of introducing the National Health Service.

People want to be healthier, but they can’t seem to manage it, in part because our food industry has made even knowing where to start remaking your life seem impossible.  But with this gardening trend, I think people are finding the foothold.  And hopefully they can turn it into something bigger.

This can also be a part of a bigger trend towards more resilient communities as well:

RC JOURNAL: Square Foot Gardening
One of the most obvious and critical first steps toward community resilience (in tandem with ruthless debt reduction) is to start a garden.  This provides you with:

  * Fresh, low cost, and high quality food during the growing season.
  * The skills and the head start needed to deal with systemic breakdowns in the
    agricultural supply chain or rapid price inflation of foodstuffs. 
  * Income potential/community connection through your local farmer’s market. 

My wife and I moved into the city about five years ago and have had a garden ever since. One detail about urban gardening is the frequently poor quality of the soil. In the lot next store that we use for the garden there had been a house about a decade or so ago and the soil that had been used to fill in the foundation was of very poor. We build 8’ x 8’ x 1’ bins and started filling them with leaves, grass clipping, kitchen waste and after a lot of turning and watering we have built up a considerable amount of rich, home-made soil filling three of those 64 square foot frames (with another one currently in progress).

I would worry that anyone not as geeked out on the miracle of composting would have lost heart after the first three years of terrible crops. One thing about urban gardening is that frequently you are litterally starting from nothing and composting is vital.

John Cain, I think there’s a lot of urban space that is unused or decorated with non-food bearing plants, especially in most American cities. The only truly dense city is maybe NYC, and even the outer boroughs have a lot of unused garden space/parking space. Urban gardens are about the least likely thing to cause sprawl in my mind.

Also, I don’t know if this is true in other cities, but in Kansas City there is a special “farmer’s market” for urban gardeners to sell off excess produce. So, if you want to get a nice fresh tomato, cucumber or mess of green beans and also support your local gardeners without getting off your sorry ass, well, there you go.

@ John Cain.

That’s silly John.  For one, you act as if every bit of urban land should be built up - by your logic, parks are a silly waste, too. 

There has been much research done on the nature deficit children suffer without greenspce - a garden can fill that. 

In poorer neighborhoods, especially those that have abandoned (and not worth repairing or rebuilding) homes, gardens can serve as a way to fight blight - see Flint, Mich recent downsizing plans.

Further, you obviously have little idea how much you can grow in a smallish veggie garden.  This garden should be treated as a business/community asset just like any other.  Angelic Organics of Caledonia Illinois (see their website) feeds 1200 families on 125 acres which inlucdes fallow rotation land.  If you take a typical midwestern city block of 30 homes, using one lot as a garden can feed those 29 families easily.  (Assuming a 30 foot x 90 foot lot) In some cases, land “lost” to farming can be offset: gangway footage can be saved by rowhouses, or smaller front yards.  Include some parkway planting and you can even do fruit. 

Now, take out some highway lanes for shipping produce grown 1500 miles away, and my guess is it’s a net gain or at least a break even in land use.  Add the pollution subtracted by the less transport, the physical fitness if the consumer puts in some sweat equity or even just walks to the garden, and the additional processing by the plants and esp. trees of any garden, and you’ve got a benefit.

AS fat and sloppy said, you can also use it as a way to reduce landfill with a composting pile.  Which takes more trucks off the highway.
   

Oh, and did we mention summer jobs for teens that needn’t be driven to?

@t-ster:  That’s my point, though.  Making cities denser and more walkable places will be better for the environment than any amount of urban farming.  Sure, right now a community garden will most likely be on an abandoned plot that is of no interest to developers.  Once that changes, though, residents will likely fight against the more efficient use of the land. 

A community roof garden on the other hand…

I suspect I will save a great deal of money on having a garden, because when I have tomatoes in my house my children eat them for snacks, and tomatoes are at their *cheapest* $1.99 a lb. (and 2 tomatoes are a pound.) So spending $30 on pre-started tomato plants will break even for me at the point where my six tomato plants produce a minimum of 30 tomatoes. Given how the neighbors’ tomatoes go gangbusters, I think six tomato plants making 30 tomatoes is the *least* of what I can expect.

Whether I actually get anything useful out of my zucchini or my pumpkins, now, that’s ambiguous. And the grape vines don’t seem to want to do much yet, and the raspberry bush died, and I have only one blackberry bush so I probably can’t get any berries this year. But I can count on my kids to eat tomatoes and blueberries if they have access to tomatoes and blueberries, and tomatoes and blueberries are so goddamn expensive that if my blueberry bushes come up with *any* berries I’ll probably save money.

As for cities and urban gardening, I remember reading that putting a garden on the roof of a high-rise (the kind with a flat roof) is a great way to control runoff and soak up heat, thus slightly reducing the general temperature of the city if enough roofs do it. And roof space is generally completely wasted otherwise. Tomatoes do well in containers, so some nice buckets containing tomato plants all over the roof of a high rise could keep any number of residents in fresh tomatoes all growing season.

On killing houseplants: My quota of survivors got notably better when I switched to “water the plants that need a lot of water only when the earth is dry to the touch, water everything else once a week really well, then throw out the excess water.

I’m still killing the occasional one, but not all of them anymore.

John Cain:

There’s two responses to that. The first is to think of urban gardens as another form of parkland; such things do tend to improve the general intangibles of an urban area and give people room to stretch out so they don’t feel like they live in beehives all the time. The other is to point out that there’s been a lot of work done on multilevel urban farming in greenhouses—IIRC Cuba is actually a world leader in that sort of thing, since cutting ties with Russia forced them pretty quickly into greater self-sufficiency. There’s a lot to be said for hydroponics.

Urban density, overall, is a good thing. But you can’t honestly expect to pack everyone into arcologies and expect them all to be happy. Urban design, like any other form of functional art, is a balancing act.

I love my garden. I come from a long line of peasants, and while way too many of them were loony fundamentalist peasants, I will always appreciate the example they set for loving gardens and growing food and flowers. There’s a lot of return to that work that can’t be measured in dollars.

I accidentally drowned the first tomato plant that showed fruit this year (it was put out front in a poorly drained pot during our torrential rain period this spring). I tried repotting in fresh soil, but it just sulked and limped and didn’t come back.

Out of sheer laziness, I left it in the pot out back and heaped a variety of leafy garbage on it (slugs and insects munched through all my bok choi and some of my basil until I KILLED THEM ALL by drowning and stomping and salvaging what I could of the edible stuff.) This morning, I looked at the pot and under the garbage was something that looked like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. It had limped back to life through my benign neglect over the past month. I’ve cleared out the garbage and have added more soil.

This is either my miracle plant or a zombie. Kill it with fire or eat plenty when harvest time comes?

I am only saving money with my vegetable gardening by choosing specifically to plant things that are hard to get where I live (like tomatillos), or I use a lot (like herbs) that are expensive to buy fresh. I’m not going to waste time and space on cheap, maincrop stuff like onions and potatoes, I’m going for the stuff like tomatoes and peppers that I use a lot of, and really benefit from being ripened on the vine and picked immediately before use. Sticking it to Big Agra, in whatever small way I can, cheers me immensely when I’m out there weeding.

If you plant pole beans instead of bush beans you can stretch the harvest time naturally. Just keep picking the beans to encourage the plants to keep producing.

I have a small area for vegetable gardening, so I want to get the most from it that I can. Bell peppers have been about the least productive (per square foot) thing I have grown. Chilies produce more per plant. Corn yields only two cobs per plant, and takes up a lot of room and nutrients.

Years ago, PBS ran a series called “Square Foot Gardening” which showed how to grow a lot of stuff in a small space. Pole beans, cucumbers, and melons can be grown vertically on a trellis. Companion planting (e.g. tomatoes and basil) helps increase yields of both. Marigolds keep pests away.

I hang nylon trellises from frames I made from galvanized water pipe. The hardware store threaded one end of each upright, and both ends of the cross bar. Screw a sacrificial female-to-female coupler into the upright and pound it into the ground with a small sledgehammer (borrow or rent). Then screw an elbow on the upright, and screw the crossbar into the elbow. Then pound the other upright into the ground at the free end of the cross bar. Screw this upright into the elbow.

“Crop rotation” is useful. Basically I grow three things: Cucurbits, nightshades, and beans. Alternate where you put each every year.

Incorporating organic material is key for efficient use of water and nutrients, as well as aeration. But one caution: animal manures are high in salts compared to compost. If you use a lot (because it’s cheap), you have to soak the hell out of it to keep the salts from stunting plant growth. This includes worm manure (vermicompost) as well.

John Cain, if you want people to live in high density urban environments, denying them any green isn’t going to do it.  Small gardens and bits of green scattered throughout will do more to attract people away from the suburbs than completely green-free packed areas.

I wish I could, but the apartment in which I live doesn’t even have a good place for window boxes… 

My parents, who live in New Jersey, grew (and still grow) fresh tomatoes, corn, and zuchini…

That said, container gardening is a great option for a lot of people.  I get angry every time I see a new apartment building go up in Austin that doesn’t have large balconies.  There’s no excuse when we have warm weather 10 months out of the year.  Large balconies that you can put a garden on should be standard.

Alara, @ your last paragraph, that was pretty much the focal point of the National Geographic article, and why we can afford to be optimistic that rooftop gardens will take off—reducing latent heat and alleviating overflowing sewers will be welcome stuff if a climate creeps up in temps. Roof gardens also add insulation in winter.

But you can’t honestly expect to pack everyone into arcologies and expect them all to be happy. Urban design, like any other form of functional art, is a balancing act.

Here’s a little bit about the Garden city movement:

The garden city movement is an approach to urban planning that was founded in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained, communities surrounded by greenbelts, containing carefully balanced areas of residences, industry, and agriculture.

Smaller developments were also inspired by the garden city movement. Two notable examples in London being Hampstead Garden Suburb and the ‘Exhibition Estate’ in Gidea Park. The Gidea Park estate in particular was built in two main bursts of activity, 1911, and 1934. Both gave birth to some fine examples of domestic architecture, by such luminaries as Welles Coates and Berthold Lubetkin. Thanks to strongly conservative local residents associations like the Civic Society both Hampstead and Gidea Park retain much of their original character.

BrianX:

I don’t think urban gardens are as analogous to parks as you might think.  Parks are multi-use, for one, and can accommodate many more people than a community garden can. 

I also think you dramatically overestimate the density in most cities in the United States.  Cities in the south and west especially are entirely non-walkable.  It’s not a question of making a dense place even denser, it’s a question of adding density to where there was none before.

Basically, I’m with Ryan Avent on this.  Urban farming is great, but it should take a backseat to density promotion, where the two conflict.

I have no illusions that I’ll save any money with the vegetable garden this year, but it’s totally worth it anyway. Just being out working in the garden is so good for my mood and my body that it’s worth it even if we only end up feeding the deer.

Also, compost, compost, compost! I’ve been amazed at the amount of stuff we can put in the compost that used to go in the trash, and it’s finally turning into real dirt (took about 9 months - we didn’t use any worms or bacteria to get it started). All those coffee grounds and filters, tea bags, food scraps, egg shells, and stale crusts of bread are turning into soil instead of sitting in a landfill, and that’s got to be good. Also, a company called Ecoproducts makes compostable paper cups, and we tossed one of those in there as an experiment. It worked. It’s part of the dirt now.

Oh dear Lord, the Garden City movement.  This sort of planning is what gave us the terrible public housing projects built in the sixties.  Jane Jacobs was not a fan.

I am a big fan of more gardening, but as a feminist I’m inherently suspicious of any trend that seems to add more burdens to what is traditionally women’s work - like cooking, food preparation and meal planning. Yes, of course men are gardeners too, but in most households whose job is it again to stock the pantry?

I’m an avid gardener and have been since I was a child.  My current garden consists of about 3000 sq. feet of brick or flagstone pathways, statuary, and flower beds filled with drought tolerant / desert adapted flowering plants.  But I’ve rarely tried much more than tomatoes, when it comes to vegetables.

This year, I put in a small 4’ x 4’ raised bed, which I over-stuffed with tomatoes, squash, zucchinis, carrots, and lettuce.  The lettuce provided a daily salad for at least a month and a half, but now it’s going to seed in the heat.  I’ll probably take it out and seed more carrots.  The tomatoes are starting to ripen and we’ve had a few squash, zucchinis and green beans.  I’ve got green beans in a big pot; more squash (and a melon that must have sprouted from not-entirely composted compost) in another pot.  It’s a mess; the close planting eliminates weeds, reduces water usage, but encourages more pests.

Like squash bugs.  I swear, if I don’t check every day, the nasty beasties turn my zucchinis into a low-rent squash bug motel, with pairs of ‘em fornicating like mad.*

My soil is basically sand, but I have an abundance of organic material…thanks to my horse. (Although, since he gets wormed regularly, his poop may not actually be “organic.”)

hp and fatand sloppy: have you ever tried potatoes in old tires?

http://www.ehow.com/how_2240029_grow-potatoes-tires.html

@ Amanda:

I’m not talking about denying people green spaces.  But urban land is scarce, and we have to make smart decisions about how to allocate said green space.  Green roofs are fantastic in this respect, as they use what was once wasted space without denying development.  Same with balcony gardening, and gardens within larger parks.  Community gardens on developable land are a lot trickier.

*Oh, and I forgot to note, that sneaky squash bugs can be located by spraying the base of the plant with water.  The bugs will flee the flood and climb higher into the leaves where they can be picked off and killed.  Of course, this is not for the squeamish or bug aversive, but I don’t think there’s really many other viable organic methods for dealing with the little monsters.  Pesticides like Sevin will kill the nymphs, but will also kill valuable pollinators and allies in pest control like spiders.

We grow fruit and herbs in our urban garden, and while it’s a charming and enjoyable passtime, it doesn’t save us any money (you can’t, really, on such a small scale). 

Furthermore, I have serious doubts about the touted health benefits of home gardening.  Yes, it’s all “organic” in that we avoid pesticides, but what about airborne contaminants?  Everything in our garden is coated in sticky city dust, a toxic combination of smoke, rubber, and I don’t even want to think of what else. We can wash the outsides, but how much chemicals are getting inside the fruit?  And then there’s the nearby auto shop; hasn’t it been leaking chemicals into the soil for the past 60 years?  I really wonder, and think it’s a good thing that our household isn’t relying solely on homegrown produce.

Hey Avenger: don’t forget Daniel Burnham in there, and the largest garden city: Chicago, whose motto is “urbs in horto.”

I’ve done bush beans mainly because those are the seeds I can find. Pole bean seeds don’t seem to be widely available in my area. I actually have an area where some pole beans on a teepee would probably look pretty nice. I’ll look around for some . . . I presume if they’re constant producers, they’re also pretty quick to initial maturity?

hp on 07/06 at 01:03 PM

You might liek Kentucky Wonder.  Get the heirloom type and you can save the seeds fm year to year.

John Cain: 
You don’t want to take a particular thing like the avent green city article and extrapolate it as a plan.  This sounds like a very time and particular city commentary.

Well mythago this is again changing.  In the past, children were divided at an ealry age - the boys and men were out working the livestock while the women canned.  Since that is unlikely for the urban or suburban family, start the boys canning/preserving at an ealry age and it stops being women’s work.

I know my experience does not equal data

Then why are you sayin it? And if you’re going food shopping with a list prepared by She-Libertarian because she’s the one who does all the cooking, that’s not really the same as being the designated Provider of Meals in the household.

Feeding the members of the household is seen, in Western culture, as women’s work. Obviously, because somebody is going to run in defensively and insist I’m saying this, it doesn’t mean if you grow your own tomatoes or have a pepper plant on your balcony that you’re a brainwashed slave of the patriarchy. But it does mean that as feminists, we shouldn’t shy from looking at the ‘home gardening’ movement any more than we would avert our gaze from any other cultural shift.

John Cain—since the resources used for urban farming are almost entirely separate from the resources used to increase density, this is a both/and situation.

This puts aside the fact that there should be a nontrivial quantity of greenspace in any urban plan, and gardens can do good for that.  I really do think you’re thinking of something much larger.  Think keyhole gardens.

(Please ignore the christian missionary bull; of course the idea for the gardens was from the local folks with the local knowhow.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some garden-minded aid folks contributed some technical info, but yeah.)

Also, the kick for me into Learning How To Cook Ok was being diagnosed with celiac disease.  Suddenly, the processed stuff just didn’t work at all ever.  Also, I think I just got a little older and stopped hating cooking as much, for no particular reason.  So if you didn’t used to like to cook, maybe that happened to you.

I like this plan for growing potatos:

Urban gardens are actually a better bet for getting green into urban spaces than parks.  A lot of parks go completely unused, usually because they’re badly placed.  Nor it is feasible for people to get all their green by visiting it.  If green is woven into the fabric of city life, then you maximize the use of space.  Not that parks are bad or anything, but in many cases, they’re much more of a waste of space.  John, I think you’re way overestimating how much space people are talking about here.

we shouldn’t shy from looking at the ‘home gardening’ movement any more than we would avert our gaze from any other cultural shift.

It’s hard to view gardening as a cultural shift when you’re a fourth generation backyard gardener, and everyone before that was a farmer.

Pole beans actually take a week longer than pole beans to produce.

Just as the people who started victory gardens in the 40s likely had personal memories or even experience with growing their own food, modern Americans aren’t that far away from knowing how to make meals from ingredients that they have to prep themselves.  Nowadays, it seems like most chicken comes to you deboned, deskinned, and pre-sliced, but I distinctly remember that chicken in my childhood came to you in whole chickens that you had to dismantle yourself.

It’s important to remember that huge numbers of people did not have this experience.  I grew up eating fast food 5 nights a week and I know I’m not alone in that.  Even through I know cooking isn’t that hard, and I’ve since learned how to feed myself, I still panic every night around 6 when I realize I’m hungry and have to make something.  It is not easy.

A lot of parks go heavily used, because they’re free.  I doubt many homeless people are going to get to sleep in gardens and I rather doubt many poor parents are going to send their kids to gardens in lieu of expensive entertainment. I’m all for urban gardens, but I don’t get why anyone would argue for them by dissing parks.

Libertarian - resist what? Do you really think that feminists aren’t used to liberal nonfeminist men playing the What About Teh Menz game? Take your needy persecution complex to your wife, who’s stuck putting up with; maybe she’ll think the ‘hysterical’ comment was witty for you, too.

Bottom line is that even you have to admit you offered dumb anecdata.

I suppose I should go garden, because I’m not thinking of what I’m typing:

Pole beans actually take a week longer than bush beans to produce.

What do people do in parks, anyway? I sit and read the newspaper—I’d just as soon stare at some okra plants as their hibiscus cousins. Playgrounds are not notably green. Ballfields and meadows need to be expanses of grass, obviously.

Jane Jacobs apparently liked the chaos of Greenwich Village. Looking at it from Google’s aerial perspective, I see there are a lot of buildings built around a courtyard stuffed with greenery, a la the neighborhood in Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

I’ve never done potatoes, and I’ve actually always had a lot of problems with root veggies in general. The sugar ants always seem to destroy them. There’s nothing like pulling up what looks like a pretty radish from the little peeking above the ground, and finding it’s been eaten to the nubben under the dirt. I got about 1/4 my radishes this year before the ants did.

hp - The sugar ants left alone my turnip roots.  The slugs on the leaves in the very wet June we had, not so much.  Turnips are a good both/and veggie - green leafy stuff early (plant at half or less the suggested spacing and thin 2 or 3 times) until harvest (inner new leaves still tender when roots are fully developed) and a root for a spicy crunch as sticks for dip or sliced into salads and midfirm to mushy steamed or boiled slightly starchy staple.  The youngest roots can be shredded and eaten in salads, less tender ones sauteed, boiled, included in soups. 

Turnips are not high value (the other winners for northeastern MA so far this year are more so, snowpeas and zucchini), but pretty re-enforcing, especially if trying to interest kids, especailly with the quick growning cycle.

Urban gardens are actually a better bet for getting green into urban spaces than parks.  A lot of parks go completely unused, usually because they’re badly placed.  Nor it is feasible for people to get all their green by visiting it.  If green is woven into the fabric of city life, then you maximize the use of space.  Not that parks are bad or anything, but in many cases, they’re much more of a waste of space.  John, I think you’re way overestimating how much space people are talking about here.

Amanda Marcotte on 07/06 at 02:02 PM

This.  Parks are extremely labor/petrochemical/energy intensive/professional input/expensive intensive.  I.e. parks of the green savannah variety.  Take a drive out there John Cain. See how those treeless mowed fields are mostly quite empty (except between the hours of 4-8 p.m. weekdays and Saturday mornings) when they are used for soccer and baseball.  Most kids don’t get to go to the park on their own anymore, and parents don’t want to hang our in the green desert, so….

It’s important to remember that huge numbers of people did not have this experience.  I grew up eating fast food 5 nights a week and I know I’m not alone in that.

Also important to remember is that some of us actually had back-to-the-earth hippie parents who raised their own chickens for eggs and meat (me) and there are still many people who were raised on farms so that the package of meat coming out of the freezer had both a name and description (my spouse - e.g. Cookie/cube steak).  Our children also had the experience of the chickens for eggs and meat, though not until their late teens, and packages of meat from their grandparents dairy farm with those wonderful labels to remind than those were specific animals.  The Hs also don’t have a lot of respect for the recently deceased.  We’ve had a garden whenever we had space and time, not something that necessarily goes together IME.

Jane Jacobs was not a fan

As a Californian, I find that citation funny, knowing nothing of Jane Jacobs,  remembering a few things:

1:  The orange groves of Southern CA were a selling point to attract people to settle there in the late 19th and early 20th Century, and then they got mowed down for suburban living in the post WWII era.

2:  Santa Clara Valley used to have “Blossom Tours”  before the same post-war boom, my grandfather was an estimator for PG&E;and essentially his work history mirrored the expansion of San Jose and the area as a whole.

Also, I linked to the concept, it’s like I’m a socialist who can also say that, yeah, Lenin was a real asshole.

Yes, it’s all “organic” in that we avoid pesticides, but what about airborne contaminants?  Everything in our garden is coated in sticky city dust, a toxic combination of smoke, rubber, and I don’t even want to think of what else.

FWIW, it’s my understanding that most of the contamination takes place in the front yard, which is why it’s not a good place to grow a fruit tree that isn’t an ornamental or use green onions which are a popular landscape plant as they are shade tolerant, in one’s meals as well.

<u>I wish I could, but the apartment in which I live doesn’t even have a good place for window boxes…</u>

If you can afford florescent lights and the rest of the ‘starting costs’, you could go hydroponic or even aeroponic.  For a kitchen windowsill, all you need are tall jars and you can grow green onions with a trace of water in the bottom, you can trim the green tops and it’ll regrow without too much trouble. You can even trim them for a couple of weeks by storing the crop in a baggie in the fridge.

Even just doing houseplants, you can look up what varieties are suitable for your temperature/lighting conditions, and you’ll be reducing your carbon footprint while improving your air quality at the same time.

Another thing about urban growing is it helps to test your soil before you plant in it.
If you’re renting (like me and the BF) and it’s an older house or apartment building, one you might have had to sign lead disclosure agreements before you moved into, it might help to find out if that is in the soil before you spend money and time growing veggies and plants that are going to put things you don’t want in your body.

Seattle recently removed the huge permit fee for growing things in the strip between the street and the sidewalk (you still have to get a permit but it’s free now) and I’m not sure that I would invest time or money in that space. For reasons of possible theft or destruction and there’s a great famer’s market with certified organic growers every Sunday within walking distance of the apartment.
I can support my local farmers without having to stress about my (relatively unprotected) investment.

I think for renters, unless you’re able to container garden on a deck/porch, unaccessible to most of the public area outdoors, it’s a losing game. But that’s just MY math. Yours may vary but in urban gardening discussions, soil quality is pretty important.

This.  Parks are extremely labor/petrochemical/energy intensive/professional input/expensive intensive.  I.e. parks of the green savannah variety.  Take a drive out there John Cain. See how those treeless mowed fields are mostly quite empty (except between the hours of 4-8 p.m. weekdays and Saturday mornings) when they are used for soccer and baseball.  Most kids don’t get to go to the park on their own anymore, and parents don’t want to hang our in the green desert, so….

Why on earth would you be driving to an urban park?  Have you ever been to one?  Your description of unused green deserts doesn’t exactly jibe with neighborhood parks I’ve seen where I live in DC as well as in New York, Chicago, New Haven, and many other cities.  I see people playing ball, throwing the frisbee, sunbathing, walking dogs, playing with children, playing chess, etc. etc. in these parks.  What in the world are you talking about?

Nope, sorry John, where I grew up in Chicago and get to often (sorry, often have to drive thrugh to get to the train station), the park is empty.  Yes, the field house/pool gets used, some teens hang out at the “pavillion”  and the cops drive them off. The new playground is generally empty midday.  The sprinkler park is glass strewn.  Same for the basketball courts - which are a matter of “protecting from outsiders” and some gang shootings.  The surrounding four block park of ball fields are empty.  Little League and Babe Ruth play at their own fields.  Some walkers and bikers in early a.m. or later p.m. on the perimeter sidewalk.

Yes, it’s all “organic” in that we avoid pesticides, but what about airborne contaminants?  Everything in our garden is coated in sticky city dust, a toxic combination of smoke, rubber, and I don’t even want to think of what else.

FWIW, it’s my understanding that most of the contamination takes place in the front yard, which is why it’s not a good place to grow a fruit tree that isn’t an ornamental or use green onions which are a popular landscape plant as they are shade tolerant, in one’s meals as well.

Dark Avenger, what’s this about green onions?  Are they particularly bad for absorbing contaminants or something?  Does the same thing go for chives?

I hadn’t heard about the front yard vs. back yard fruit tree advice, but suspect it doesn’t apply in our neighbourhood, where the lots are so tiny and old that no one has a front yard and road pollution is everywhere.  Plus the air quality is truly terrible, thanks to geography and a local fondness for unfiltered wood stoves.  The street has been there since the pre-plumbing 1830s, so no doubt there is some lead in the soil, too, plus heaven knows what else. (Now no one is going to want to eat our plums and grapes, hah.)

Lazy garderner tip: Rhubarb is a perennial!  They’re like hostas for sunny areas: They just need fertilizer, and to have their root balls split every 10 years or so.

John Cain:

To a certain extent, you do have a point, but you do seem to have a bad case of hammer-and-nail syndrome. Consider several points:

-Localized agriculture is increasingly looked on as a good idea, and there’s a very good reason for it—during production seasons, it drastically reduces the price and energy requirements of transport.
-I’m standing by the “urban garden as a type of park” thing, with the additional point that such a thing can be easily run as a sort of living museum, like an arboretum or a zoo.
-Urban gardening isn’t mutually exclusive with other walkability solutions.

@ purpleshoes & phylosopher:

I don’t see why your issues with parks are problems with parks themselves rather than issues of bad planning (phylosopher) and insufficient government upkeep (purpleshoes).  The fact that parks have become the enemy here only underscores my point that urban land is scarce and we need to make choices that maximize it’s use and efficiency.

@BrianX:

To your points:

1.  I simply don’t agree that local production will ever be able to meet all of our food needs.  There is simply no way that local production will ever replace farms.  You also can’t ignore development pressures in an environmental cost assessment of this issue.  That said, I have absolutely no problem with local production if it doesn’t use urban land (roof gardens, for example). 

2.  I guess I just disagree.  Unless you’re talking about a lot of land, subdividing an urban plot is only going to serve a small subset of people.  Grass with benches just gives you lot more options in terms of activity, and you generally don’t have to subdivide the park to do so.

3.  I don’t think it is either (again, see my comments on green roofs and balcony planting).  At least not always.  But if you’re talking about using an entire plot as a garden, you’re going to run up against density concerns.  My preference of land use goes as follows:  abandoned building < abandoned lot < community garden < mixed-use building. 

@ Amanda:

Sure there’s not a lot of land devoted to this now, but isn’t your post advocating for more and more urban agriculture?

what’s this about green onions?  Are they particularly bad for absorbing contaminants or something?

The green onion is used as a landscaping plant around here because they can tolerate some shade, and the possibility of it picking up contaminants means that you don’t nibble on the stuff if it’s grown in your front yard, backyard grown should be okay.

I dunno about green onions, but I found this, the slide you want to see is #47.

FWIW, I live in one of the more polluted parts of the country, airwise, the Central Valley. My noble spouse who grew up in the Philippine countryside has eaten a lot of stuff grown around here, and she’s never seemed to have any problems with eating the stuff grown locally, YMMV.

-Urban gardening isn’t mutually exclusive with other walkability solutions

Indeed.

Dark AGCM,  that is fascinating! Thank you for the slide link.

The great thing about community gardening in poorer neighborhoods is that it uses space that would otherwise sit empty.  As older homes burn down or are torn down, the vacant lots just get weedy and filled with garbage.  They’re not exactly in high demand with developers. 

When I lived in south Minneapolis, our block club organized and asked for permission to use a vacant lot for a community garden. An apartment building had burned down years before and the vacant lot was an eyesore.  We applied for a small grant from the city to pay for soil testing and a fence.  Each gardener paid a whopping $10/yr for about a 10 x 10 plot, which grew a ton of vegies.  In addition, we could swap crops with other gardeners or take their overflow.  We met our neighborhoods, learned gardening skills from each other, and the neighborhood kids learned where food comes from.  They took pride in helping the adults with basic gardening tasks.  We had few problems with vandalism because the kids were involved. The garden made an ugly, unused and dangerous chunk of land into a useful, thriving green place.  In contrast, the “park” around the corner sat empty and was always defaced with graffiti and torn about by vandals.

@phylosopher

Ummm, actually my psuedo is FASTandsloppy, not FATandsloppy. True, I am not as fast as I used to be and am fatter than I once was. But still….

And thanks for the link to the Grow Potatoes in Tires info. We grow our potatos in out bins along with everything else. My wife (and master of all things green and growing) says they should be ready in a week or so. (I was amazed at how much better garden fresh potatoes taste compared to the ones you get out of the bin at the store).

I also think the focus on whether gardens save money is misplaced. The value is in tastier, fresher produce and (if you compost, which you SHOULD) less household waste. We’ve been gardening in our new place for five years and I don’t expect my initial investment in the material I bought to build my composting/gardening bins will start paying for itself for ten or fifteen more years.

@phylosopher

Ummm, actually my psuedo is FASTandsloppy, not FATandsloppy. True, I am not as fast as I used to be and am fatter than I once was. But still….

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.  My full pseudo should be blindandtypographicallychallengedphylosopher, I guess.

If your parents could do it, so can you.

Come on now, Amanda. First, not everyone’s parents could do this, as someone has pointed out. Second, if you go back to the generations where most people could and did do it, they usually had a homemaker (or two, when you count Grandma or the oldest daughter) making it part of her fulltime job.

Third, those generations lived in houses built with the expectation of having food storage for canning and preserving: pantries, anyone? Basements, attics, under-eaves cupboards? I know the idea of preserving large amounts of food appeals to me a lot more when I imagine doing it in my Grandma’s Craftsman house than in my own teeny tiny place where we hardly have enough space for pots and dishes.

Fourth, people who could and did do it had access to fresh foods. Hard to cut up your own stewing chicken when you have to drive several miles to find a store that carries whole chicken. Hard to successfully garden when you don’t live anywhere near a place that carries appropriate seeds for your climate and needs (a lot of places just have those little seed racks with totally inappropriate selection: varieties that need a long hot summer being sold in the Pacific Northwest, for instance, or varieties susceptible to a certain fungus being sold in an area that gets that fungus).

I love gardening and canning and I won’t stop doing it until and unless my illness forces me to, but it’s just silly to pretend that everyone should be able to do it and it’s only a matter of finding a way.

That said, I sure wish I could find someone to trade labor with: watch their kids while they can tomatoes and jam, and split the yields.

start the boys canning/preserving at an ealry age and it stops being women’s work.

Well, yes, but who has to teach and supervise those boys? The woman. And as you may have noticed, teaching a child to garden or cook (or do several other types of skilled work) is often more labor intensive and frustrating than actually doing the job, quickly and efficiently, yourself.

I mean I get that teaching your boys to do household work skillfully is valuable in that it may break the “women’s work” cycle (although it’s not a sure thing, since plenty of men know how to do that work but choose not to do it when there’s a woman around to do it instead) but in the short term it’s pretty much still just another burden for the individual woman involved.

@ John Cain:

First, what badkitty said.  Unless you are talking major east coast city, there simply is land there that isn’t being sought out by any developer:

http://michiganmessenger.com/21271/flint-mayoral-candidates-eye-neighborhood-downsizing-wary-of-details

Gary, Indiana is another one.  Most rustbelt cities are now like this.  IN Chicago, especially on the west side, lots of the gaptoothedness of the urban street is thanks to the ‘60’s riots (still).  AANd no one is jumping to build in those places.  For one, it is $$ tough to do scattered site infill and lots of developers just do greenfield. 

As for why this became a park vs garden discussion, I’ll take the rap.  Your density, density, density position would preclude something like parks.  Since we (municipalities) haven’t precluded parks, which most on here will argue are much less used and useful than gardens, ergo, it’s a flawed argument or position.

Oh, Kristin, looks like we’re at odds again. :-(

1, and. 2. Ball Blue Book and reading a recipe?  I had one of those parents who didn’t can - self-taught.  The joke around here is “I learned to cook in self-defense.”  Between some of the long cure, long cook stuff and today’s modern conveniences those recipes for canning are doable.

3. Stud wall cabinets are phenom for any kind of canned storage whether it’s from the big box or homecanned.

4. What, suddenly you don’t know about the Internet to order seeds?  To find people inyour area who may have to trade?

Kristin, I’m beginning to like you in an admirable adversary sort of way, so (yeah it’s annoying but it’s how I react to friends problems, I attempt to offer advice to solve)so here’s some unsolicited advice:  church group if you have one,  try a UCC one if not, the last pastor at the one in our area was an atheist; county extension office to meet other gardeners;  homeschool or parenting group for trading time/chore/stuff.

ANd yes, someone would have to supervise them no matter what, so it’s just a matter of choosing an activity to do - both parents can be involved in the process, so it isn’t necessarily only female parents. 

And NOTHING with kids is a sure thing regarding permanent results.

The canning/preserving chores are pretty equally split around here.  One does the fruit picking and purchasing and jam/jelly making and pickling.  The other does the vegetable garden and freezing.  And we help each other when the stuff in the garden/on the counter is overwhelming.

Best wishes on coping with your illness.

I agree with Kristin that gardening isn’t for everyone. My wife has always loved it and her enthusiasm got me hooked, but I can understand why some people would hate, hate, hate spending a hot Sunday pulling weeds or turning compost.

That is why I like the idea of Urban Gardeners market.  People who like that sort of thing can grow as much as they can fit, people who don’t like the work but who like the produce can buy what they want. vacant lots get their soil rehabilitated (as long as the gardener composts and rotates crops), neighborhoods look nicer and people eat better. Also, we have put the call out to our neighbors to drop off their yard waste with us to compost so we are absorbing the waste of several houses now.

And for what it is worth, Kansas City is one of those cities with huge empty gaps in the inner city neighborhoods. That is pretty common in mid sized cities in the midwest. Our house has vacant lots on either side from houses torn down by the city during the crack era. The area has gentrified a bit in the last decade or so, but there are vast swaths of neighborhoods that were torn down as a matter of policy to keep vacant house from becoming drug houses. Now there is a huge glut of empty lots in “iffy” neighborhoods that are reverting back to prairie and forest. My sister lives in Brooklyn NY and I know it can be hard to find a room to grow a decent garden there (but not impossible, there is a really nice one a couple of blocks from her apartment), but in a lot of US cities poor municipal policy and the flight of people to the exburbs have left the inner cities as a frontier of sorts with ample room for gardens.

Nope, sorry John, where I grew up in Chicago and get to often (sorry, often have to drive thrugh to get to the train station), the park is empty.

Oh, well, shoot, then every park in America ought to be turned into rutabaga fields.

Where I live and have lived on the West Coast, the parks are full. That’s because they’re in residential neighborhoods with families, and taking your kids to the park is free.  This is very important when you’re not on the socioeconomic end of the scale that allows your kids to be entertained by being shipped off to Switzerland or send to private horseback riding lessons. Most of the problems you run into out here are overcrowding (e.g. too many kids on the damn slide at once) or idiot dog people who think “voice control” means “after my dog has already jumped all over you and knocked over your drink, I’ll call him off”.

Of course community and urban gardens are a Good Thing, particularly when there are community resources to help people start, maintain and harvest their gardens. And from personal experience it is indeed true that children are much more likely to eat vegetables that they grew themselves. But again, I don’t get why supporting that idea means we need to pretend parks suck.

I love gardening and canning and I won’t stop doing it until and unless my illness forces me to, but it’s just silly to pretend that everyone should be able to do it and it’s only a matter of finding a way.

Word. This attitude reminds me of Mollie Katzen going back and revising her original recipe books, and realizing that at the time she just assumed of course everybody in the world was a grad student who could putter around the apartment all day, working on research, while they checked in on the stew or whole-wheat bread as necessary.

Re: canning.  Not that hard.  My minimum equipment requirements are a stock pot, a 2 quart pot, a long-handled spoon, a 2 burner stove, and jars and lids.  Really. 

It doesn’t have to be a big production.  A quart of berry jam will last months, and that doesn’t take up that much cabinet space.  Hell, store it in the back of your closet with the shoes and stuff, it would probably be fine.  And since we do live mostly in places with grocery stores, you don’t have to aim to get yourself through till the next growing season.  When you run out, or don’t have enough space to store more, go to the store again.

Your ‘minimum equipment’ is fine for putting up strawberry jam; not so much with the vegetables.

Hard to cut up your own stewing chicken when you have to drive several miles to find a store that carries whole chicken. Hard to successfully garden when you don’t live anywhere near a place that carries appropriate seeds for your climate and needs…Pacific Northwest

Stewing hens are indeed hard to find (and rather expensive when you do) but I’m pretty sure Amanda was talking about whole fryers. And if you have to drive several miles to find a store that carries whole frying chickens, in my experience (chicken shopper everywhere except New England) you have to drive several miles to any grocery store.

In the Pacific Northwest, order (or drive to get) your seeds from Nichol’s Garden Nursery.

Where I live, along with formal community gardens, I see people growing vegetables along railway rights of way (as far as possible from the actual tracks). I have eaten wild asparagus growing along rail spur tracks, and lived to tell the tale.

Rather than can vegetables, I’d rather just freeze them. You can get a chest freezer for about the same price as a good pressure canner.

Yes to the pressure canner mythago for beans and such (most people I know usually freeze these days, I know, freezer space - but small freezers are aplenty on freecycle, BTW, in my area).

You can can tomato, (including juice, sauces, etc,) as it is high acid, like fruits without a pressure canner.  Also anything pickled doesn’t need pressure canning.  And… pressure ccookers,  like that freezer are aplenty on freecycle and IF you can afford it, are a good tool for quick cooking a lot of things, and cheaper than a microwave.   

If you need an older pressure canner tested, the cooperative extension service will usually do this for free.

By the way, the chicory is in bloom here in NJ - The blue flowers at the side of the road.  You can make a tea out of the root and I understand it tastes a lot like coffee. I wouldn’t know.

As the economy tanks and/or the dollar is eventually replaced by a supranational currency (I think it’s coming), the price of imports, including COFFEE, YIKES! will skyrocket.  Back in the old days people drank chicory when they couldn’t get coffee.  I wonder if we’ll start drinking it again?

Rather than can vegetables, I’d rather just freeze them. You can get a chest freezer for about the same price as a good pressure canner.
Hector B.  on 07/06 at 06:50 PM

Uhm… not quite if we’re comparing new to new. 

23 qt. Pressure canner = @$81 on amazon (+ canning jars)

2’x3’ freezer (capacity 3.6 cubic) = $241 (+ freezer baggies)

It may be @ even with all costs and other uses though.

One method that hasn’t been mentioned is dehydrating.  I bought mine for use one year when we were overwhelmed with apricots, and I’ve used them for other things like mushrooms and bell peppers.  It was under 30$, and the only marginal cost afterward is the electricity and the produce itself, of course. Mine is round for maximum exposure, and is about the volume of a counter-top microwave.

You can even lend it to someone who has their own stuff to dry, a batch shouldn’t take more than a day to process from my own experiences, and if you get the timing right you can do 3 in 2 days, YMMV.

My own calculations revealed that at least with mushrooms, you reduce the wet weight by 50%, and they seem pest-proof(we have flour beetles around here) as long as the baggies are of the resealable kind.

My cat puts his fat ass on my little seedlings and squashes them to death. Otherwise I’d love to grow stuff in my apartment. I think urban gardening is a fantastic idea, as suburbs swallowing farmland is a problem.

John Cain, I think urban development companies can handle the urban gardeners, if the gardeners are in fact sucking up enough valuable land to put an apartment complex or shopping center.  Hell, where I’m from having the land already developed doesn’t stop them- we recently had a case where a building company convinced a city government to declare a big swath of prime lakefront property as “blighted” so they could evict all the homeowners and build condos.  It didn’t work, because newspapers can print these things called “pictures” and it also turns out “blighted” has a specific legal meaning, but they tried.

If it comes down to it, it will be the developer’s bulldozers against the gardener’s tiny shovels.  Urban gardening will hardly affect development.

We hung planters on the upper-store eve to put tomatoes and vines in, and plant flowers and herbs on the ground below.  It cuts down on the insects hitting our tomatoes and most of all… Urban filchers.

Not that I wouldn’t give tomatoes to anyone, or let them harvest, but I wish they’d ask.

DAGCM: bay leaves in cabinets

A few points:

the amount of energy you use to get vegetables from the store home is probably more than was used to get it from South America or Asia, so local is not obviously better for the environment;

if you’re thinking about an urban garden you should check to see if the ground is ok. A lot of urban land is built over fill which is, especially if it’s older, not very clean.

I’m not really sure there is a trend yet. In Boston, renewed interest in urban gardening came in the 1970’s (this is in addition to the Victory Gardens which have survivied in the Fenway all the way from WW II) and seems to have jumped up and down since then.

I’m a little surprised the garden/park debate is so human-centric. Urban parks are very important for migrating animals in many places, even small ones.

I think urban gardens are really more important for the society it engenders than the food. Small ag will never replace big ag, but it might bring some pressure on them. What’s really needed is some government involvement to promote medium-large ag which could be better environmentally if done right (big enough to get economy of scale and not big enough to bring the current problems, although some of the problems have more to do with the middle companies than the farmers themselves).

phylosopher:

I have to add the bay leaves into the flour and starch-based goods directly, it’s that bad.  I don’t want to get the flavor into the dried mushrooms themselves

Gardening is a limited prospect for me: my patio is barely large enough to lay down on, is shaded and has northern exposure.  I suppose I should have thought about that before buying the place.

However, I am interested in fresh and organic fruits, veggies and herbs.  I grow whatever shade-tolerant herbs I can in pots and visit our local farmer’s markets.  It’s nice because I can question the growers themselves (many of them run their own farms with their children) and even view their growing practices.  I drive past one of the growers I frequent once a day during the school year.

Another benefit: our local heirloom tomato seller.  If you get the chance, try growing some heirloom tomatoes such as Black Krum (my current favorite).  Each one has its own unique flavor and texture.

I grow a few self-pollinating things on the rooftop - tomatoes, peppers, eggplant. Haven’t seen bees up here and don’t want to mess with pollinating myself. I can’t see ever relying on our little containers for a source of meals. Organic gardening on such a tiny scale isn’t cheap. And the water use - we are finally not in a drought this year and I haven’t had to water a whole lot because of the never-ending rain - but still. It’s a lot of water; everything dries up on the roof. Every time I water, I have visions of the Denver Water conservation ads, like a siren blaring “you’re using more than what you need!!!”. So it’s definitely a pleasure thing and not at all practical. But my little Japanese eggplant just doubled in size overnight, so the pleasure is definitely there and worth it!

I grew up in Russia in a big city, but I spent every summer in the country, so I have some first-hand experience with small-scale farming. It’s nostalgic and romantic to talk about small local farming and feeding yourself from the land, but I wouldn’t want to depend on a small patch of land and a short growing cycle, like the family we rented from did. Calling that “hard work” is an understatement. There’s hay to be made in the summer to feed the cow in the winter. And if it rains and your hay doesn’t dry, you’re screwed. There are potatoes and all kinds of root veg to be planted and cellared. And like every good Russki, I love my potatoes, but imagine eating them all winter! Even with a very creative cook, it gets old. And the canning! A lot of what we’d can (preserves and mushrooms) had to be gathered in the wild. Picking wild blueberries, even abundant as they were, was not fun - you’re literally covered in mosquitoes from head to foot and you’re crouched down low to the ground; if you’re old, your back is in agony the next day. And anyone who has made preserves knows how little product you get out of the fresh fruit! So a lot had to be gathered. This is not to say that they didn’t have fun with it, especially if the growing season was good and the wild-growing stuff abundant; but definitely not as much fun as us city folk who just stayed for the summer and went back to the city with 20 cans of preserves and dried mushrooms to tide us over for the winter. We didn’t have to rely on the country store that was being stocked once every two weeks (if the roads were passable).

Also, it’s all good and well to can and store, but we just don’t have the kinds of storage one would need to support a family for the winter. At least not in the cities. You can grow a ton of potatoes on a small patch, but without a cellar, you can’t store them properly. Same with preserves. The woman we stayed with had a huge cellar with potatoes, and beets, and onions, and jar upon jar of preserves going back years. She had barrels of pickles! Seriously, a 2-3 barrels the size of the wine barrels! And she never stopped going - planting, and picking, and cooking, and pickling, and canning non-stop, no matter how much she already had stored away. Because you just never know when the summer turns too rainy or winter comes too soon. So,  yeah, there’s that aspect of it being woman’s work; back-breaking and never-ending. She loved doing it, but it was still work and she was unsupported in it by her menfolk.

And the other thing - that knowledge, it dies quick. I watched this woman, my grandmothers, my mother, do all kinds of miracles with just basic fruit and sugar for years and years. I can pickle a jar of half-sour dills like nobody’s business, but to actually can them for longer storage? No way! If it’s something you don’t do every year, you forget quick. So I don’t really buy the argument that if our recent ancestors could do it, we could. Sure, there are cookbooks, but there’s nothing like the little tricks that get passed down woman-to-woman (and there’s that again!) through generations.

So, yeah, I like the idea of giving the finger to Big Agra and using brownlots and rooftops for community gardening. I see the community-building, neighborhood-improving value in it.  And the satisfaction of producing something tasty from scratch. But as far as actually producing food on a scale sufficient to feed a family? I think the possibility of that sort of agriculture in urban areas has gone the way of the dodo. And when I think about what it was actually like to feed a family by growing and preserving - it being back-breaking work, and all done almost exclusively by women - I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing. Ultimately, it’s pretty cool to feed yourself off the land if you have other options if you have a bad season. But if you actually have to depend for almost all of your food on what you grow, with no escape route if things go south? Not fun.

Re: urban gardens…I’ve always wondered why we don’t “landscape” with useful plants.  Many herbs, greens, etc. are quite attractive…obviously wouldn’t replace colorful flowers, but couldn’t this be a niche for some business-minded gardener?

<blockquote>So, yeah, I like the idea of giving the finger to Big Agra and using brownlots and rooftops for community gardening. I see the community-building, neighborhood-improving value in it.  And the satisfaction of producing something tasty from scratch. But as far as actually producing food on a scale sufficient to feed a family? I think the possibility of that sort of agriculture in urban areas has gone the way of the dodo. And when I think about what it was actually like to feed a family by growing and preserving - it being back-breaking work, and all done almost exclusively by women - I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing. Ultimately, it’s pretty cool to feed yourself off the land if you have other options if you have a bad season. But if you actually have to depend for almost all of your food on what you grow, with no escape route if things go south? Not fun.
elena on 07/06 at 11:32 PM<blockquote>

Hmmm… I think you’re forgetting a lot of the differences that we do have today, elena.  To name just a few: food processors, gas/electric stoves, electric dehydrators, pressure canners, freezers, dishwashers and ziplock bags. 

Not to mention the Ball Blue Book, that bible of canning.  We also have some “official” how to assistance here in the states.  For those of you who’ve never encountered it, there’s something called the Cooperative Extension Service.  http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/
Through a number of programs (including 4-H), Extension is often the repository of that woman to woman knowledge or more correctly, generation to generation knowledge + landgrant university science. 

No one claims it has to be all or nothing.

1, and. 2. Ball Blue Book and reading a recipe?  I had one of those parents who didn’t can - self-taught.  The joke around here is “I learned to cook in self-defense.

I was thinking less of having the skills passed down, and more of how in generations past when these activities were taken for granted as part of household life, our households and houses were differently structured.

Stud wall cabinets are phenom for any kind of canned storage whether it’s from the big box or homecanned.

Money and space. Money to buy the cabinets and the tools to hang them. Space free to hang them. Sometimes you have wall space but not wall space that would accommodate the depth of a cabinet without impeding access to other storage, for example, or making a hall impassable.

It’s not about my personal situation because I’m lucky enough to have time, space and money to hang cabinets if I want, and I’m well stocked with tools. But not everyone is in my shoes and this kind of thing represents a significant investment for them before they can start seeing the benefits from growing and canning. Some people don’t even have the space to store basic cooking tools and if they live in an apartment they may not be allowed to hang cabinets, either.

What, suddenly you don’t know about the Internet to order seeds?  To find people in your area who may have to trade?

Again, not about my personal situation. I order regularly from heirloom seed companies, I can get to nurseries carrying good seeds, I swapped a lot before I had to give up large-scale gardening. But not everyone can do those things. Ordering online means paying shipping, it usually means you need a credit card. Who do you swap with if you’re the only one you know growing vegetables? Don’t forget, you also have to find time to research which varieties are right for your area or you risk having your time and money wasted when your crop fails.

So given the possible obstacles, growing your own food and canning it goes from something simple that everyone should be able to figure out how to do, to something that’s very difficult to do if you live in an apartment, are a single parent or two-working-parent household, don’t have a credit card, live where it’s impossible to buy decent potting soil or seed, and on and on and on. This stuff makes a difference in how feasible growing your own fresh food is. You can’t just handwave it away.

someone would have to supervise them no matter what, so it’s just a matter of choosing an activity to do - both parents can be involved in the process, so it isn’t necessarily only female parents.

But it’s not six of one and half a dozen of another. If a bushel of pears needs to be canned before they go bad and I’m tired and grumpy, it’s way easier to supervise the kids playing in the yard while I do a quick, good job of canning the pears myself—being confident that they’ll turn out OK and not be wasted, and that there won’t be any unusually disastrous messes to clean up afterwards—than it is to get the pears canned while teaching a kid to do it slowly, clumsily and inefficiently. This is not an argument against teaching kids stuff, just an argument against the idea that teaching the kids to do a job necessarily saves Mom any work.

This is exactly the dynamic that keeps the woman doing “woman’s work” in so many households—she has finite energy, the work needs to be done, and it’s 5x harder to “teach” a spouse, roommate or kids to do it (whether that’s because they’re willfully difficult adults or just being kids) than just to get it done herself.

Yes, theoretically Mom *or* Dad could do the teaching, but that doesn’t mean much given the context that what we were discussing was how these things do tend to be “woman’s work” in our culture, meaning both that Mom is more likely to know the basics and more likely to be expected to learn any skills not currently possessed, but also to actually take on the task. If your family has a good split of tasks going on, that’s great, but by definition it removes you from the worry that certain jobs are women’s work, so how you do it isn’t really relevant to the question.

By the way, lest anyone think I’m cursing the darkness without lighting any candles, one of my favorite things to do is to mail out packages of easy-to-grow seeds to people I know and even strangers, gratis. Lettuce is one that can be grown in a very small volume of soil and I spent one year mailing out tons and tons of heirloom lettuce seeds when my own plants went to seed. Another time I had oodles of Royal Purple bush beans. That’s not even getting into the flower seeds.

Mr Kristin knows that if I croak it before he does, I want packets of heirloom seeds given out at my memorial service.

I share the wealth. I want people to discover growing things. But mailing somebody seeds isn’t going to magically make it possible for them to grow a truck garden.

Phylosopher, all good points. But, again, the things you list are options we have because we have access to a lot of things in the Western first world. I think what troubles me is viewing subsistence agriculture through this romantic/nostalgic lens, without addressing how the things that could make it possible for a Western family to grow/can/preserve food even in an urban setting constitute a huge privilege and are not accessible to most of the rest of the world’s population. I always think about Maria Mies proposing subsistence solutions in her work. It’s interesting, but a bit too romantic for me. 

In any case, I absolutely see your points and the attraction of gardening, but it’s ultimately difficult for me to look past my experience with what real subsistence farming could look like. I have to be honest, I prefer the idea of CSAs, farmers markets, and supermarkets stocking local ingredients. If anything, these things also support the preservation of small farming as a livelihood. It’s just… complicated, no? Definitely not all or nothing but not quite an and/or for me, either.

it’s way easier to supervise the kids playing in the yard while I do a quick, good job of canning the pears myself—being confident that they’ll turn out OK and not be wasted, and that there won’t be any unusually disastrous messes to clean up afterwards—than it is to get the pears canned while teaching a kid to do it slowly, clumsily and inefficiently.

kristin’s like my mom’s mother: either you did it perfectly or not at all, so none of the kids learned any household skills from her. In contrast, my dad’s mother put everyone to work, so everyone learned how to do everything. In fact my father taught my mother how to cook. She taught herself how to sew, knit, and crochet, as an adult. My father was in charge of gardening and preserving, because it involved dirt and vats of boiling water.

If you get the chance, try growing some heirloom tomatoes such as Black Krum (my current favorite).

I don’t recommend heirlooms if you’ve never grown tomatoes before. Modern varieties are resistant to disease, and things like blossom-end rot.

The bible of food preserving is Putting Food By. It includes freezing and drying as well as canning. It has many examples of what notto do if you want to avoid botulism.

Another gadget that comes in handy for either freezing or drying is a vacuum sealer such as a FoodSaver. this will prevent freezer burn as well as rehydration of your dried food. Costco has them at good prices, so tag along with your Costco friend when you want to buy it.

I was thinking less of having the skills passed down, and more of how in generations past when these activities were taken for granted as part of household life, our households and houses were differently structured.

THIS. And the rest of your post, Kristin. It all boils down to family structure, women’s roles, and access to things. It’s easy to say “Don’t you have tools to build a shelf unit? Can’t you order seeds on the internet? Can’t the dad teach the kids to can?” But those very basic things are still a matter of privilege and access. And it seems to me that, in urban areas, people who need it least are able to do it the most. I can blow $100 on plants, pots,  organic soil, compost, what-have-you. I have a pantry and a large fridge to store whatever grows. I can call long-distance to another state to talk to my mom or use Food Blog Search if I want tips on preserving. I have roof space I can use to grow my plants. I can make weekend trip to Home Depot or a nursery, because I have time and don’t need to work or raise kids (and, also, I have those stores in my neighborhood and a car to transport plants and pots and soil).  I’m not saying I’m the only kind of urban gardener there is, but I think my experience is somewhat representative of what it takes to be able to grow food in a large city. 

And I’m not saying that there’s no value in urban gardening. There’s huge value in it. I would just like to note that 1)people who might need to save money and would want to start an urban garden to do so might find it very difficult, pricey, and time-consuming to get started and 2)subsistence gardening is not all fun and games. It’s a sort of and/or thing.

Haven’t seen bees up here and don’t want to mess with pollinating myself.

You may or may not have European honeybees around,  but I’m willing to bet garbage to doornails that there are some native solitary bees around, like this bold fellow who I found in my yard a few months ago.

So I don’t really buy the argument that if our recent ancestors could do it, we could. Sure, there are cookbooks, but there’s nothing like the little tricks that get passed down woman-to-woman (and there’s that again!) through generations.

If that were true, archaeologists would’ve never figured out how to make Folsom points, seeing as the folks who last made them for use aren’t around to consult with anymore. 

And yah know what, here in America we have all this research that is suppose to be for the public benefit:

   
USDA Publications
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2006 revision

Why can foods?......................................................................................1-5
How canning preserves foods…...............................................................1-5
Ensuring safe canned foods…....................................1-6
Food acidity and processing methods…...................................1-8
Process adjustments at high altitudes….............................................1-10
Equipment and methods not recommended…...............................................1-10
Ensuring high-quality canned foods…............................................................1-11
Maintaining color and flavor in canned food….................................................1-11
Advantages of hot packing…............................................................................1-12
Controlling headspace…...........................................................................1-13
Jars and lids…........................................................................1-13
Jar cleaning and preparation…........................................................1-14
Sterilization of empty jars….............................................................1-14
              etc,

PDF link

As someone who studied microbiology, unless there was some sort of weird Russian/local foodstuff that your forebearers canned that this manual doesn’t cover, I would say this guide would be what you need for what you’re growing at the moment.

And, on a different note, heirlooms are a pain in the ass. I tried Mr Stripey last year as my first tomato plant. It started blossoming, a few tomatoes formed, and then it got really hot. It didn’t like that at all, so no more fruit formed. Then, at the end of August, it cooled down and the plant started sprouting fruit everywhere. Of course, it cooled down too much for the fruit to ripen and I ended up with a dead plant full of tomatoes that never even got bigger than 2” -  I couldn’t have chopped it off and hung it upside down to ripen. Meanwhile, my regular cherry tomato was giving fruit this whole time. The 4 tomatoes I got from Mr Stripey were delicious, though!

Dark Avenger, thanks for the tips!  I don’t think we had pressure canners - I remember observing jars being boiled in a regular old pot, but no one ever said “you boil the jars this way and for this long and by doing that, you avoid this or that happening.” They just did it. Sometimes I think that maybe no one paid attention to the health aspects at all, but we must’ve, because no one died! I remember botulism being mentioned, but when I look at Western canning instructions, part of me is thinking “wow, they are going way overboard!” and another part is horrified at how things were done back in ye olde Soviet Union. I think that’s what I mean by knowledge being lost. Example: every once in a while, my grandma would open a jar and find it “funny,” so to the trash it went. My mom would always defer to her in those matters. She doesn’t can anything now, since my grandma is gone and she herself doesn’t have the experience. Were I to go it alone based on my childhood memories, I would poison everyone in sight. So definite loss of knowledge over generations. Good thing there are books out there!

kristin’s like my mom’s mother: either you did it perfectly or not at all, so none of the kids learned any household skills from her.

I dunno, that would be true if kristen were complaining about the dishes or the vacuuming, but canning food is a whole nother story.  You do it wrong and you find out months later that a) your whole investment was shot to shit and b) you have a giant, festering, individually packaged mess to clean up.  Oh, and improperly canned or preserved food can kill you.  There’s also that.  Food preservation is probably something that takes years to pass down properly, and even then only to the kids who already have a good grasp on regular cooking.  Once again, major work on the part of the teacher, and probably not even worth discussing until the “kids” are almost not even kids anymore.

I have taught myself to make jam, and ye gads, it is miserable labour: hot, sticky, messy, back-breaking, and expensive.  Sugar isn’t cheap.  Plus, there’s no better way to make yourself loathe the smell of a particular fruit than to stand amid pound and pounds of it for days on end in a humid kitchen harassed by buzzing flies and a small squalling child wondering why it is being ignored.

My conclusion is that gardening provides much enjoyment as a small-scale hobby or novelty pursuit, but subsistence agriculture sounds like a nightmare to me.  Sure, it’s been nice to be able to give people pretty pots of homegrown jam as gifts, but I still receive plenty of skepticism from friends that worry about a) fast poisoning via botulism, and b) slow poisoning via urban soil contaminants.  And honestly, who needs to eat that amount of sugar, anyway?

I don’t know what kind of fruit you were canning, but you can dry pretty much any fruit, and the only sugar added would be perhaps a little honey brushed on prior to dehydration,  then you just turn the machine on, set a timer, and wait.

sugar isn’t cheap

At my local cheap grocery (two blocks away) a ten pound bag of sugar goes for $4.79. Since my great discovery that pectin is unnecessary, I can make jam from my backyard fruit for 25 cents a jar, plus the cost of a lid.

Once you’ve done it a few times, making jam is no more difficult than making spaghetti and tomato sauce: you cook the “sauce,” funnel it into jars, wipe the jar tops, put the lids on, screw the bands down, and boil the jars for five minutes. Do in in the morning when it’s coolest.

Regarding spoilage prevention: Boiling water baths are sufficient if you’re canning high acid foods (old tomato varieties or pickles) or high sugar foods (jams, preserves, etc.) If you’re canning, say, beans or meat, you’ll need a pressure canner. I recommend the All-American line, which are not cheap. But you’ll never need to buy a gasket. But I’d rather blanch and freeze surplus beans.

My neighbor used to take his mom’s pressure canner up to Vancouver Island every year, when he would bring back jars of salmon that he had caught.

One thing that’s important to know about tomatoes is that they more or less break into two varieties: Determinate and Indeterminate. A determinate tomato will produce all of it’s fruit all at once and then be done for the season (and generally doesn’t need to be staked, you can cage it and it will do ok), and an indeterminate variety will produce fruit all year round and usually needs to be staked—in the gardening sense, not in the vampire-slaying sense.

If you’re canning, a determinate might be the best variety for you so long as you can drop everything to spend the weekend canning and preserving the crop when the fruit is ready. If you just want tomatoes whenever and you aren’t looking for a massive “all at once” crop, then you’ll want an indeterminate variety so that you’ll be likely to have fruit more or less all season.

Kristin, kristin, kristin… There you go with those negative waves as a friend of mine used to say. 

First, here’s the deeeluxe way.  http://www.ronhazelton.com/archives/howto/recessed_shelves.shtm

Here’s the down and dirty utilitarian way, using the above site as a guide.  Cut wall between studs. .  Cut furring strips to length you want.  Drill them with evenly spaced holes.  Use level to align them.  Nail and or glue to exposed studs.  use shelf “spoons” to support shelves.  cut shelves to length.  Insert.  You can finish the exposed edges with plaster or casing if you want.  you can also get really creative and use stencils etc.  The back of the “cabinet can also be wall papered or painted if you feel you need to decorate, but personally the pretty jars of fruit and jams should look just fine. 

these also work as paperback bookshelves and spice racks.  No doors needed.

tools:
hammer
hacksaw
level
razor knife

material:
furring strips (under $2)
shelf spoons (under $2)
shelves (1x4’s and ask the hardware store (menard’s, home depot) to cut them to the EXACT length you’ll need.  Probably under $10 for wood and cutting fee if any, depending on the number of shelves.

Elena and Kristin, I’m not writing to 3rd worlders here.  Though if there are any reading, hey, try it.  Yes, there are things that would preclude the above, like renting (though it’s funny, I received permission to put these in at an apartment I rented, as well as some other improvements (landlord even bought materials and let me use tools in return for my sweat equity.  He was real happy when I moved on because the apartment rented so quickly because of all the storage!) or condo owning, or cement block walls. 

Since anyone reading this has computer access of some sort, I’m assuming there’s at least some level of time and technology available.  ANd I think that’s a justified assumption.

You’ll note I and DAGCM have also pointed out online assistance and online assistance that can lead to in the community support - like the extension offices which also generally have master gardener classes or hotlines where you can get assistance with your gardening questions, or help/referrals to community organizers who will work to get community urban gardens and CSA’s up and running.

Re: the kids, again, they’re not doing it all.  When my guys were really little, they got to shell peas, or snap beans.  Yeah, if they lasted 15 minutes and did 5 peas it was 5 I didn’t have to do.  Ditto the picking.  As they got older, they got to do things like turn the crank on the food mill, go pick a bucket of cherries.  (What kid balks at being told “go climb a tree?”) Write Cherry Jam 2009 on these labels or lids. Kids learn a ton by simply being in the kitchen, maybe asking questions.  They still don’t get to lift canners or deal with the boiling water… but soon. 

Love the food mill: saves tons of time and relatively cheap.  We do lots of sauces when our apple or pear tree gets too prolific.  And salsa, lots!

Days of canning fruit - that’s the danger when you start - fruit overload because the eyes or the bounty are bigger than the stomach.  Realistically assess your needs - this is why I like the Ball BLue Book.  It even has a section on how many row feet of garden you need for family of #  Unless you’re the Duggars.  Small batches are good.  ANd, you don’t need to use everything, if, like our cherry tree we can’t use it all, and I’m not feeling guilty about that, used to though.  (Call friends to come pick if they want.  Or, breakfast’s on us Mr. Robin)  My canner holds 9 jam jars, 12 oz. each.  3-4 batchs of various fruits is about all that’s needed for the year.    1 strawberry, 1 cherry, 1 blueberry, 1 grape and sometimes 1 fun like hot pepper or root beer.  I mean, that’s @ 36 -45 jars of jelly - even though we eat a LOT of PBJ’s we still go through less than a jar a week.

I don’t know what kind of fruit you were canning, but you can dry pretty much any fruit, and the only sugar added would be perhaps a little honey brushed on prior to dehydration, then you just turn the machine on, set a timer, and wait.

Dried fruit—great idea!  I’d never considered it.  Would I need to purchase a special dehydrator machine, then?  And how do you store the dried fruit after (and for how long)?

We grow blue plums, concord grapes, white grapes, and black currants, all of which I imagine would taste delicious dried.  I wonder if you can dry rhubarb, too.

At my local cheap grocery (two blocks away) a ten pound bag of sugar goes for $4.79. Since my great discovery that pectin is unnecessary, I can make jam from my backyard fruit for 25 cents a jar, plus the cost of a lid.

Once you’ve done it a few times, making jam is no more difficult than making spaghetti and tomato sauce: you cook the “sauce,” funnel it into jars, wipe the jar tops, put the lids on, screw the bands down, and boil the jars for five minutes. Do in in the morning when it’s coolest.

No pectin, seriously?  I’ve never tried that.  See, the pectin instructions warn not to double or triple the batch, so I end up having to do five or ten small batches of everything, since we’ve got over 100lbs. of fruit to process, and it comes ripe at pretty much the same time.  With the oven running to sterilize jars, lids and rings boiling in another pot, a second pot cooking fruit, and a third pot for the double-processing…well, things get pretty hot, and stay hot for hours.  And that’s not even factoring in the time needed to pick, clean, seed and juice all the grapes beforehand.  Is there an easier way?

With the oven running to sterilize jars, lids and rings boiling in another pot, a second pot cooking fruit, and a third pot for the double-processing…

Don’t boil the lids and rings. Rings don’t touch food, so just wash them and let them dry (keep the dust off). Put the kettle on to boil, wash the lids and put them in a clean pot. Pour the boiling water over the lids and set the pot lid on top. I boil all the empty jars up in the canner, fill them, and put them back in the canner. If I’m making an huge amount (more than a case of jars) I boil up some more jars in another large pot. So you have typically no more than two burners going at a time.

I’m not sure why your oven’s on—air won’t sterilize jars.

Good tips! Thanks.

Sticking the pre-sterilized jars in the oven to stay hot and clean prior to filling was something I read somewhere. Guess this is what happens when one’s canning lessons come from books instead of grandparents.

Re: conversation about gardening and women’s work:

Yes, that’s why we don’t have a vegetable garden this year.  It became my job last year and I didn’t like doing it all by myself.  He likes the idea and likes the initial digging and planting, but the tedium of weeding, pruning, watering, spraying, and checking every day if things are ready to harvest, he won’t think about and do unless someone reminds him.  I enjoy gardening but I’m not willing to do all the work alone.

Would I need to purchase a special dehydrator machine, then?

Yes.  I you can get one for about 60+$ at the local Target or from an online source.  I got this one except without the fruit roll sheet a little cheaper, and it can be expanded up with more trays quite easily.

Also, if you use them in the summer, you just set them outside(unless you live where it can rain suddenly) so you don’t heat up the house.

Koolbickle, I perceive that you’re Canadian

Oh, and as for storage, that depends. If they are totally dry, you can store them in recloseable bags for about 1 to 2 years.  If not, the freezer works, and any residual moisture kept in the name of edibility precludes cabinet storage.

As for your grapes, you’d be better off making them raisins the way my wife’s aunt does, by putting them on trays in the sun, washing them and drying them off as you do this for a period of 4 to 5 days.  These made the Sun-Maid stuff that grows here and is sold nationwide more like a poor imitation of raisins.
These were the first raisins that were so well-done that the sugar in them crystallized to the outside of the skin, something I never say before then.

You’ll note I and DAGCM have also pointed out online assistance and online assistance that can lead to in the community support - like the extension offices which also generally have master gardener classes or hotlines where you can get assistance with your gardening questions, or help/referrals to community organizers who will work to get community urban gardens and CSA’s up and running.

I was about to say that this thread should perhaps be retitled “No, no podemos!”

Sticking the pre-sterilized jars in the oven to stay hot and clean prior to filling was something I read somewhere. Guess this is what happens when one’s canning lessons come from books instead of grandparents.
Koobickle on 07/07 at 02:17 PM

The processing step sterilizes (you’re boiling the contents).  You need to wash the jars in hot soapy water and rinse.  The reason you wan tto keep the jars hot (which I’ve found isn’t that necessary) is that hot food + cold jar = CRACK.  But room temp seems to do fine.  If you have one, you can also wash the jars in the dishwaher and leave them in there.  Yes, this comes from the books and asking the extension USDA sciency folks why? a lot. 

Dehydrating tomatoes - esp. the large cherry or small plum ones (princiipi borghese type) cut in half is great.  Did mine in the oven.  Flip once.  can add salt or not.

Oops, almost forgot, if you want expert and real live advice that won’t kill you, you can also call that extension office - just ask for the home ec department. 
Podemos, indeed!

kristin’s like my mom’s mother: either you did it perfectly or not at all, so none of the kids learned any household skills from her.

Bullshit Hector, and why did I not expect that when a woman points out that there are minimum standards to a job if it’s worth having done, and that extra messes are a PITA for someone to clean up, the charge would be perfectionism? If I were a man no one would be twisting this into me being an unreasonable bitch that doesn’t want to teach my kids any skills.

Pardon me for not seeing how it SAVES ME any time and energy to teach a twitchy 10-year-old to can, watching the pears turn brown because he peels and slices and packs so slowly, doing a delicate duet in a narrow kitchen with boiling water and syrup and a partner as graceful as a baby calf, and inevitably having jars knocked over or syrup poured on the floor or full jars dropped and someone having to clean that up. Oh and having an increased possibility that after all that, because a 10-year-old is a 10-year-old and doesn’t really believe in things like botulism, that half the jars won’t seal right and after all that work and trouble they go bad and are wasted?

Once again: I am not arguing against teaching kids to do this stuff. I am arguing against the idea that somehow it saves the woman from doing all the work. Teaching kids to can does not make less work, it is an additional task making more work for the teacher. This is obvious.

There you go with those negative waves as a friend of mine used to say.

First, here’s the deeeluxe way.  http://www.ronhazelton.com/archives/howto/recessed_shelves.shtm

Here’s the down and dirty utilitarian way, using the above site as a guide.

How many times do I have to tell you that this isn’t about what I personally can or can’t do? Stop trying to solve my imaginary problems!

You just said it yourself: this task would take cabinets, a wall to hang them on, furring strips, screws, a drill, a hammer, transportation to a store that has those things, and time to do the work. Lots of people have all that but LOTS OF PEOPLE DON’T. And if they don’t, then growing and canning food isn’t simple or cheap, it’s time-consuming, hard, and out of reach for many.

I’m not writing to 3rd worlders here.

One more time in short words. This is not about the people who are reading this right now. It is about the people who would have trouble growing and preserving their own food. Why is that so hard to understand, or are you just being deliberately obtuse?

DAGCM: oops, is my maple leaf showing?
/adjusts skirt>

I love the idea of drying fruit! But don’t you have to de-seed the grapes beforehand?  Still, very good idea; thank you for the link.

Phylosopher, your explanation for jars-in-the-oven as an anti-cracking manoeuvre makes perfect sense.  Given that room temperature during canning borders on 35ºC, we’d probably be safe skipping this step.

Pardon me for not seeing how it SAVES ME any time and energy to teach a twitchy 10-year-old to can, watching the pears turn brown because he peels and slices and packs so slowly, doing a delicate duet in a narrow kitchen with boiling water and syrup and a partner as graceful as a baby calf, and inevitably having jars knocked over or syrup poured on the floor or full jars dropped and someone having to clean that up.

Did you miss this then?

When my guys were really little, they got to shell peas, or snap beans.  Yeah, if they lasted 15 minutes and did 5 peas it was 5 I didn’t have to do.  Ditto the picking.  As they got older, they got to do things like turn the crank on the food mill, go pick a bucket of cherries.  (What kid balks at being told “go climb a tree?”) Write Cherry Jam 2009 on these labels or lids. Kids learn a ton by simply being in the kitchen, maybe asking questions.  They still don’t get to lift canners or deal with the boiling water… but soon.

So, your 10-year old has to be pulling a Clumsy Carp routine(my childhood nickname) exclusively,  he can’t write on labels and jars, or just read or do something in the kitchen and the next room, as has been suggested.

Nobody is saying that, and if you paid attention, you could get a dehydrator to dry the fruit so they can take it in their lunch to school, etc, and they could learn help in a food preserving activity that requires neither strength or dexterity above their abilities.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!

We get it, there’s a lot of folks who can’t grow a garden outside for one reason or another, don’t have superchildren who can help can with one hand while churning the butter after doing their calculus homework,  etc.

It is about the people who would have trouble growing and preserving their own food.

This is an and/or blog, not a Yes, but blog.  Or were you looking for an argument?

As we say here in CA,

I cried because I had no Oscar, and then I met a man who had no Golden Globe.

Koobickle, the tip-off was your mention of black currant, as it isn’t grown in this country because it can host a virus that is deadly to it’s botanical sibling, the red currant.  You weren’t growing in America, ergo, you had to be Canadian.

As for raisins, this is from Wiki:

Raisin varieties depend on the type of grape used. Seedless varieties include the Sultana (also known as “Thompson Seedless” in the USA) and Flame. Raisins are typically sun-dried, but may also be “water-dipped,” or dehydrated. “Golden raisins” are made from Sultanas, treated with Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) , and flame dried to give them their characteristic color. A particular variety of seedless grape, the Black Corinth, is also sun dried to produce Zante currants, mini raisins that are much darker in color and have a tart, tangy flavour. Several varieties of raisins are produced in Asia and, in the West, are only available at ethnic specialty grocers. Green raisins are produced in Iran. Raisins have a variety of colors (green, black, blue, purple, yellow) and sizes.

Thompson Seedless are excellent for raisins, YMMV.

For people not blessed with fruit trees or vines, strawberries are your best bet. Your hypothetical ten year old can pick them, hull them with a little pincers thing, wash jars, lids, and bands (we were put to work washing dishes as soon as we were tall enough), and even measure out fruit and sugar. Pears I would give the kids a peeler and let them rip. That reserves all tasks involving boiling water and jam to the adults of the household.

an unreasonable bitch that doesn’t want to teach my kids any skills

Hey, if the grandmother’s shoe fits…

We never criticized her to her face of course. And man, could she cook. Although she never did show any of her kids. She took the secrets of her specialties to her grave.

Another example of her UB-ness: When she got too old to clean house to her standards, her kids chipped in for a cleaning woman to come in once a week. Grandma fired her right away, because the woman did not wash the ceilings.

Yep, Hector.  Papa Phylosopher even grew them on that 30’ city lot before a term like urban garden was even a glimmer in a city planner’s eye.  South side of garage, where the irises used to be.  Hector, I’ve been freezing strawberries.  On cookie sheet, then into bags - great as a finger popsicle or in smoothies,  with the food mill, I find that saucing is the easiest (and you can do any fruit sauce) because you don’t have to peel.  Just quarter, boil and then put through mill.  I have the freezer storage, so I do what I did when the kids were little and I made baby food - pour it in ice cube trays.  When frozen transfer to plastic bags and use to make smoothies in winter.  Can you tell we like smoothies? 

Zucchini carrot and squashes can be treated same way, larger screen on food mill - used in cakes and breads to increase veggie consumption.

You just said it yourself: this task would take cabinets, a wall to hang them on, furring strips, screws, a drill, a hammer, transportation to a store that has those things, and time to do the work. Lots of people have all that but LOTS OF PEOPLE DON’T. And if they don’t, then growing and canning food isn’t simple or cheap, it’s time-consuming, hard, and out of reach for many.

headdesk.  And you accuse ME of being obtuse?  One more time, read my materials list- no cabinets listed, because THERE ARE NO FUCKING CABINETS INVOLVED in that utilitarian version.  It is a set of shelves inset into an interior stud wall. 

You actually listed “a wall to hang them on?”  Shit Kristin, if someone is living in a tent, or under a bridge, I really don’t think they’re hanging out on the Net in their spare time reading Pandagon, a thread on ways to save cash, no less. 

Look, this started in response to someone upthread saying something like, I’d can, but I don’t have room to store the canned goods.  It was meant as a suggestion for removing a final impediment to someone already contemplating the canning.  OK?

You actually listed “a wall to hang them on?”

You actually think there are people who can’t hang shelves on their walls?

Phylosopher, my first post in this thread was calling Amanda on her assumption that if our parents could grow and preserve food, we can. You replied with an airy “Nonsense, if you do it like I do there’s no problem!” and I poked holes all over that, so don’t make it seem like now I’m unfairly picking on you.

Uhm, no, you didn’t, because you assumed something that wasn’t there.  I didn’t say, “do it my way”  I pointed to a number of resources and remedies for the specific impediments you claimed. 

Please, read my posts before attacking:

Elena and Kristin, I’m not writing to 3rd worlders here.  Though if there are any reading, hey, try it.  Yes, there are things that would preclude the above, like renting (though it’s funny, I received permission to put these in at an apartment I rented, as well as some other improvements (landlord even bought materials and let me use tools in return for my sweat equity.  He was real happy when I moved on because the apartment rented so quickly because of all the storage!) or condo owning, or cement block walls.

which is different - legal prevention, physical property of wall versus your implication of “not having a wall”  which would well include homelessness.

“Picking on” Kristin, I don’t find you irritating personally, more in a general sense as you’ve just undertaken the role of wet blanket on every single thread (lately?).  Perhaps it is your illness or depression or just your personality.  But your comments are a real drag on any type of motivation or momentum or joi de vive conversation.  Pessimism seems to be your art form.

Phylosopher, my first post in this thread was calling Amanda on her assumption that if our parents could grow and preserve food, we can.

No, she set the bar much lower, and I took the statement in a general sense, not that we have to replicate what our forebearers did even if our life circumstances don’t allow for that possibility, but that if they were able to do it, we can, even if it takes a different form.

As Rex Stout wrote in Fer-de-Lance

“Detach yourself, Archie, personal resentment of a general statement is a barbarous remnant of a fetish-superstition.”

“If a man constructs a dummy, clothes and paints it in exact outward resemblance of yourself, and proceeds to strike it in the face, does your nose bleed?

not that we have to replicate what our forebearers did even if our life circumstances don’t allow for that possibility, but that if they were able to do it, we can, even if it takes a different form.

Exactly so. Until the 50s, my forebears still had an actual icebox—being able to freeze garden produce makes up for not having a cellar with shelves to hold mason jars.

Some of my neighbors are growing tomatoes in their front yards, which is encouraging to see. If you’ve decided there’s no point to watering/fertilizing/weeding a lawn, check out Rosalind Creasey’s book on Edible Landscaping; the first edition was published in 1982. Although she maintained a small rectangle of lawn in front, my dad’s mother always planted the back yard of her city lot completely in vegetables and flowers—mustn’t forget flowers. The kids she taught to plant, pick and preserve came over to help her at busy times, along with their kids, and finally their kids’ kids.

DAGCM, I never knew that about cassis!  Our blackcurrant bushes shall henceforth be known as The Forbidden Fruit.

There you go with those negative waves

That’s from Kelly’s Heroes, a Clint Eastwood movie, one that I highly recommend.

Thanks, Helen.  The friend never said anything about where it was from.  I’ll try to catch the film sometime.

Pectin is naturally present in most greenish fruit and in apple peels.  Add either greener fruit or ground apple peels if you have jam or jelly that ends up staying kind of syrupy (elderberries are tricky , but mom’s elderberry syrup on pancakes was better than the jelly would have been on toast IMO).

Apple sauce cooked further and/or started with finer ground or minced fruit makes apple butter, a near equivalent of apple jam.

The kids wont ever be of any help if you don’t teach them in stages as their able and don’t let them pull the “It’s too Hard!” crap.  Then you ALWAYS will have to do ALL the work.  Awfully shortsighted IMO as well as leaving them inept and dependent.

Agreed, Helen and Shhhhhh… sometimes it’s not that they’re actually really helping, just that they think they are.  There’s a great anecdote in Courtney Parker’s “How to Eat Like a Southerner and Live to Tell the Tale”  of being asked by either Grandma or one of the cooks (yep- hoity toity elitist with cooks in the house and all) to chop parsley when she was @ 4 y o .  Parker claims to have used her Barbie doll to stomp the parsley.
My guess is that that particular parsley never got into any dish, they may have givne it to her just to give her something to do, but the kid was in the kitchen learning about food and how crushing releases fragrance, etc.

Kelly: Well Oddball, what do you think?
Oddball: It’s a wasted trip baby. Nobody said nothing about locking horns with no Tigers.
Big Joe: Hey look, you just keep them Tigers busy and we’ll take care of the rest.
Oddball: The only way I got to keep them Tigers busy is to LET THEM SHOOT HOLES IN ME!
Crapgame: Hey, Oddball, this is your hour of glory. And you’re chickening out!
Oddball: To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some type of weird sandwich, not some nut who takes on three Tigers.
Kelly: Nobody’s asking you to be a hero.
Oddball: No? Then YOU sit up in that turret baby.
Kelly: No, because you’re gonna be up there, baby, and I’ll be right outside showing you which way to go.
Oddball: Yeah?
Kelly: Yeah.
Oddball: Crazy… I mean like, so many positive waves… maybe we can’t lose, you’re on!

As for your grapes, you’d be better off making them raisins the way my wife’s aunt does, by putting them on trays in the sun, washing them and drying them off as you do this for a period of 4 to 5 days.

My mother used trays covered by screens and then cheese cloth to keep out birds and insects when we lived in CA in mid to late 60s.  As I meantioned up-thread, raised by back to earth hippie types.

“Always with the negative waves!” and “Again with the negative waves!” was usually directed by Oddball at his driver (Moriarty?).

Re: the grapes (and here I go with the negative waves).  I’m not sure sun drying would work in the Pacific Northwest or the Midwest.  The few times I’ve tried anything outdoors beyond herbs, I’ve gotten mildew because of out humidity.

Because she mentioned a road built in the 1830s, I would say that koolbickle lives neither in the Canadian PN or the Midwest.

Yes, raisins are usually best done in low humidity situations such as we have here in CA or in other parts of the Southwest.

And if done anywhere, should include the screens, and if the screens ar not sufficiently fine, something like cheesecloth.

Someone asked about rhubbarb.  My best result for preserving that have been stewing/saucing and freezing.  Cook, with or without sugar or a sweeter fruit, to desired softness; pack into plastic containers or cool and put in zip close bags; freeze.
Take out, thaw, dump into whatever you want to use rubbarb in (I tended to pies, fruit breads and crisp - crisp is quickest and easiest).