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Vegetable Garden Evolution

We’re all somewhere on the  garden path. Some of us have a few pots, maybe indoor herbs, maybe a farm.  Our family is working to make the most of our big suburban backyard. One year ago, almost to the day, I was completing the prep for our new vegetable garden! We’ve been through a  bit of an explosion in our backyard over the last few years. And this expanded space is the latest in what we’ve dubbed ‘musical gardens’. Well, these beauties are staying put!

In order to add the amount of growing space we wanted fast, we went with a well known no till option called “Lasagna Gardening”. Just one growing season in and I’m amazed at what a great addition these beds have been!

In The Beginning…

When we moved in 10 years ago our backyard had spruce trees, overgrown bridal wreath and an almost dead hydrangea. And a lawn of mostly creeping charlie. No garden in site. Needless to say, we’ve added A LOT of perennials, bushes, trees, chickens, pathways, and yes- Gardens. Of course the creeping charlie will forever be part of our landscape as well… But let’s focus on the Vegetable Garden here.  Continue reading

5 Steps To Prepare Your Garden For Winter

Freeze Baby!

And just like that, it’s time to prepare your garden for Winter! We skipped right over frost warnings and went straight to a freeze warning for tonight. Oh Minnesota, somehow your sweet Summer song always lulls me into forgetting about Winter lurking around the corner. It seems like yesterday I was sweating away, swatting mosquitoes, harvesting the abundance from my gardens. So how on earth is there a freeze warning for tomorrow!?!

Ramsey County Master Gardeners at your service

Since I’m aware the fast change always catches me off guard, I asked friend and local Master Gardener, Brianna Godhe, to give us her take on getting our vegetable gardens ready for the inevitable. The Ramsey County Master Gardeners have been a great asset to our local gardening community, recently attending a Harvest Party, available for Q&A.

Take it away Brianna-

Tucking the Vegetable Garden into Bed

As the days get shorter and the evenings get cooler, it’s time to think about preparing your vegetable garden for winter. It’s hard to think about ice and snow in September when the sun is still warm but you want to be ready. Our average first frost date– that is, the date when we can expect a hard frost which will kill the tender and warm-season crops in your garden – for St. Paul, MN is October 9. It can happen anytime from the end of September to the end of October. It’s a hard truth: once the State Fair ends, our gardening days are numbered. 

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Harvest Party to Celebrate Local Food!

Are you ready to party in the Garden!?!

This Harvest Party grew from the BearPower organization. White Bear Lake is lucky to have the efforts and talents of this group of dedicated people. They’re working to bring healthy living to our community in so many different ways.

I’ve been digging into coordinating this BearPower Harvest Party with the BearPower team and loving finding the best of the best to help celebrate community grown food. We’ve brought together the cream of the crop local chefs to prepare all that lovingly grown food. Add to that a great mix of activities to take over our White Bear Area YMCA gardens for the day and you’ve got a can’t miss event! We’ve got FREE food,  games,  information, samples and activities to get you growing your love of good food! Continue reading

Seed Saving for Home Gardeners

Garden Fresh Food

It is that time of year gardeners… Everything is ripening, and FAST in the garden right now. So right now is the time to start looking at your plants’ produce not just as food- but also as seed for next year’s garden crops. Time to start seed saving!

I started saving seeds because I got behind on picking my pole beans. When I found a few (ok, lots) of bean pods that were swollen and starting to yellow and a light bulb turned on. I didn’t have to toss these inedible beans into the compost- I could let these keep growing and save these to plant for more beans next year.

It was a sublimely empowering moment. One I want you to have too!

Beginners Luck

I got lucky starting with one of the easiest seeds to save. For the first few years I saved mostly bean varieties and native flowers. I’m still a novice when it comes to saving seeds. Which is why I’m the perfect person to pass the torch: if I can do it – you can too! I want you to feel that same kind of power that saving your own seeds invites.

The Barn + Diane’s Garden at Heritage Farm, Seed Savers Exchange. Photo Credit: Molly Moe

Seed Savers Exchange

Diane Ott Whealy and I in her magical heirloom garden. Photo credit Molly Moe

First- I want to give a shout out to the Seed Savers Exchange for their recent Summer Conference and Campout on Heritage Farm. I’m still buzzing with all the new information I brought home. I had to share some of what I learned with you all!

They’ve built a vibrant community of dedicated volunteers and staff, all starting with co-founders Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy in 1975. I was lucky enough to meander through Diane’s gardens with her at the beginning of the weekend. Continue reading

Farmers Markets Summer 2018

Get your Fix of Farm Fresh the easy way, there’s a farmers market almost everyday!

I really like really local food… So of course I wanted to share my favorite Farmers Markets in my corner of the Twin Cities with you!

I shop these markets to: buy ‘new to me’ varieties to test before I grow myself, buy in bulk for preserving and to buy the crops farmers have started early or keep growing late in greenhouses to extend our local fresh food season. I also love chatting with the farmers and vendors, and I get some good insight into my own home gardens listening to the experts.

We are absolutely feeling the bounty of local farmers’ hard work up North right now. The food rolling in is dripping with sun ripened sweetness; from the cucumbers  to the zucchinis. And with a little planning, can be served on your table the same day it was picked! These Summer bounties make our MN Winters worth it, am I right!?!

For tips and secrets on ‘how to’ shop a Farmers Market like a pro, read this article! 

Summer 2018 Farmers Markets

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Pick Your Own Blueberry Farm

Pick Your Own Blueberry Farms are becoming more popular and for good reason! PYO Farms bring together the best of summer- getting to spend time in the great outdoors in a beautiful setting, with friends + family, all working towards a tasty end goal; buckets full of blueberries! This is local food bliss. Blueberry Fields of Stillwater brings a sweet mixture of this bliss to their guests each year.Rows of netting covered blueberry fields

**Updated article 7/10/23**

Two women in straw hats standing in a blueberry fieldSummer took over Blueberry Fields of Stillwater in early 2022, and she is just as in love with the farm, connections to the earth, blueberries and customers as the previous owners. 

Blueberry Fields of Stillwater

As Summer explains, “I was looking to make a change and for a place where I could be more in tune with nature, while still being part of the community.  When I saw the Blueberry Fields of Stillwater property, I just knew it was where I needed to be.  The love, care, and hard work that Bev and Mike O’Connor put into the Blueberry Fields was evident; the land just sang to me.  I am so grateful that they were willing to let me carry on what they had started. They have been so helpful and supportive to me in teaching me the craft of blueberry growing hands on here at the Blueberry Fields of Stillwater.”

Getting the how to pick info from staff at Blueberry farm before picking our own.

So- same great blueberries, same ORGANIC farming practices, new smiling face. I’m in.

Is it the farm’s rolling hills and pastoral setting? Or the acres of immaculately maintained spacious rows all bursting with blueberries? Maybe it’s all the energy and love that farmers have poured into the land?

If you’ve never picked your own blueberries before no worries, they’re every bit as easy as strawberries and raspberries. You can just roll them between your fingers and the ripe ones will kind of fall off. You can easily tell the ripe from unripe berries. Continue reading

Local Food For Thought

I love that when I took a step back and looked at why I care about local food so much, the answers came full circle! Of course, nature had her answer all wrapped up like that. And just for the record, no one knows exactly what ‘local food’ means… some say it is food grown ‘within 100 miles’ of the purchase, others say ‘in my state’.

Here’s a quick(ish) look into why I believe taking the extra effort to eat local pays off in dividends larger than we can measure.

Nothing beats sun ripened home grown tomatoes!

Local Food Tastes Better 

Fresh + local food just tastes better. Exhibit A> The Tomato. Homegrown varieties will leave you smiling as you savor the layers of flavor that drip off the sun warmed juices. The store bought, often packaged version of tomatoes  we get up North in winter are pale pink, mealy, styrofoam imposters. Don’t even get me started on eggs 😉

Nutritional Value

Food loses nutrients after it is harvested- up to 30% in three short days! Being able to pick a salad out of my garden or buy from a farmer that harvested earlier that day means more nutritional ‘bang’ for my buck or my work than buying food that was shipped across the country. Not to mention food flown/shipped here from another continent before it was ripe. Continue reading

Worms at Work: Vermicomposting 101

Compost is Key

We all know compost is good for your garden soil, and that I’m a big fan of incorporating composting into the garden cycle- but did you know that worm castings are nature’s effortless and ideal answer to up-cycling!? Vermicomposting is the practice of using worms to decompose food scraps and using their worm poop (aka worm castings) to grow more great  food. 

Melanie with some impressive garlic- must be the worm castings!

I asked local vermicomposting expert, Melanie Harding, to help us understand more about using worms to transform trash into treasure. Melanie has been Tamarack Nature Center’s Naturalist Coordinator for going on 5 years. She’s most happy when she gets to help people have those light bulb moments when they make a nature connection. Her info here will have light bulbs going off all over the place!

So… let’s all learn a little more from Melanie:

I have a deep respect for decomposers – those marvelous creatures that recycle nature’s leftovers into the building blocks of new life. That probably doesn’t surprise people who know me, as I have been working in the field of environmental education for more than 25 years. But when someone finds out I have worms living in my kitchen, the reaction is usually surprise…followed by disgust…and eventually curiosity. Those who are curious enough to ask about the three bins stacked inconspicuously in the corner, open a proverbial “can of worms” at my house. I have worms living in my kitchen and I love to talk about them!

Everyone can help with the worms!

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It’s All Good: Organics

There’s something comforting about meeting people who are doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s even better when they’ve taken over the family farm; better for the land, the crops, the animals- and better for us lucky people who get to eat the food they raise.

Butch and Hunter Cardinal of All Good Organics have worked hard to find their groove and they’ve really hit their stride after figuring out their unique niches.

Butch is a 5th generation farmer – OF THE SAME LAND making his son, Hunter, the 6th generation! This family has been farming their slice of heaven at 6657 Centerville Road in Hugo since 1866. The way they have farmed has swung the pendulum over their 152 years of land stewardship. “Everything was organic back when my dad was born- but then, by the 40’s chemical fertilizers and pesticides showed up. And these guys were of the mind that if a little is good, more is better. When my dad came home from WW2 it was all about the chemicals; they meant less weeding,” but it took over 50 years for most farmers to figure out that the chemicals had some major downsides.

Butch knew what we could grow as a conventional grower with the pesticides and herbicides, but he’s worked with them and didn’t want them around-. “I mean, just read the labels and directions on some of them, if I need to put on full suits and respirators to apply, I don’t want that stuff sticking around in my soil or my food.”

So when his dad asked him to help with some pumpkins years ago, he countered with wanting to grow organic vegetables too. They’d been growing conventional hay for years prior.

So, Butch brought the farm back to organic practices, and they’ve been certified since 2010. By USDA NOP (National Organic Program) the transition period is three years. Now they plant 25 acres of vegetables, many started in the 1,800 square foot greenhouse. Like most organic farms, they’ve got a ‘full circle’ approach, using each resource in many ways, and always keeping their eyes open for opportunities.

Even their little red Farm Store has a great back story. The first year they were growing organic veggies they were selling form a tent (along with a short-lived attempt to sell at farmers markets). But then the tent blew away. Next they built a shed, but outgrew that in a season. So, in 2012 they decided to ‘Go Big and Stay Home’ and built their Farm Store with coolers, freezers and a self-serve system that just feels like the good old days. Even in the depths of a Minnesota winter they are open 9-5 so you can grab a bag of fresh picked spinach, lettuces or kale, carrots, a pack of frozen squash, pickles, preserves or dried spices- all right from the farm. They work with other local farmers to bring in eggs and honey.

Some of the happy chickens who will roam free this summer!

Besides growing vegetables from Asparagus to Zucchini, they also raise meat chickens and hogs each season. This year they got 225 ‘Cornish Cross’ hatchlings which were already hanging out in the fresh air, scratching for bugs and munching grass when I was visiting. They’ve almost completed a new mobile chicken coop, called a ‘chicken tractor’ that will be ready to take the chicks into the fields any day now. He’s also waiting to pick up his hogs until the season moves ahead a little.

Preserves round out the veggies over the Winter in the farm store.

Butch estimates they are about 3 weeks behind for the season already. Last year they were planting potatoes out in mid-April, and already had the brassicas and onions in the ground. When I visited last week, everything was still on hold in the greenhouse thanks to that late April snowstorm.

In case you’re in the same boat, I asked Butch to give us his tips on planting overgrown tomato starts  (like mine are since they’ve been waiting under the grow lights much to long!

The All Good Organics greenhouse is in year-round production for the farm. They keep some hardy crops rolling from fall into winter, and start new lettuces, kale, green onions, radishes and spinach mid-February into March. “I’m lucky my dad had a thing for collecting 5-gallon buckets,” Butch joked, “because we really use a ton of them now.” By planting in bigger buckets rather than small starter flats they can let the plants keep growing without the transplant shock, it also saves a lot of labor by not having to take the time repotting each plant.

Butch has had a few years to work on streamlining his processes. He’s also got the perfect outlook for a farmer, “Something fails every year, but I don’t let that bother me because each year something turns out to be a big success too.” He’s able to take a step back and see the way nature balances things out. This year, Butch is “trying” – (please visualize his air quotes) parsnips- again. He’s pretty sure he’ll get them to grow like crazy… some season 😉.

He definitely doesn’t let a little failure slow him down. Like with Ladybugs. Butch sets free hundreds of ladybugs in his greenhouse to keep the aphids under control. He’d been searching for a good supplier and finally found a great resource through eBay for happy healthy ladybugs that won’t break the bank and ships for free.

You too can search eBay for “live lady bugs” and go organic like Butch in this video…

More Lady Bugs = Less Aphids

Like all good farmers, Butch loves planting and loves his land, “I know where every rock is, especially the ones that shake the tractors.” His joy for farming his way manifests itself as a delicious meal on your table. That love of farming was passed down from his father, who at 91 years old, was getting the roto tiller attachment ready to start opening up some fields as I spoke with Butch. Of course Butch was just as anxious to get out there, he’s got a lot of people counting on their CSAs for the season- there are a few left if you want to SIGN UP FOR THE ALL GOOD ORGANICS CSA.

For Butch and his farming family all the work, all the risks, all the failures and successes add up to “All Good”.

It’s time to let the professionals get to work with their tractors, I’m heading back out to get my fork in the dirt.

Keep Digging In!

Michelle

One Year of Digging In!

Ringing in 2018!

Let’s Celebrate One Year of Forks in the Dirt!

Looking back over the first year of sharing food stories and info with whoever would listen- I had to stop and say THANK YOU! Thanks for making me so happy I took that leap of faith!!

I’ve learned more than I could have imagined; about growing food, farmers, food systems and building websites- but I also had a chance to distill what is important to me. I got to hang out with dozens of farmers on lovingly cared for land. I got to eat my way through a delicious summer and ate mostly locally grown (home preserved) food all winter.

Karin Costa helping my boys get their weekly sweet corn fix!

Officially, my website had 4,469 reads and lots of engagement over the many different posts on the blog, Facebook and Instagram… again, thanks for showing up!

*Some* of the topics covered:
Composting, Community Gardens, Farmers,  CSA’s, Planting Tips, Farmers Market Shopping Tips, Farm + Food Events, Raising Backyard Chickens, Pollinators, Food Hubs, ForagingHealthy Eating Recipes + Canning Recipes, Food Shelves, Growing for Food Shelves, the first ever Winter WBL Farmers Market and our WBL Seed Library– wheee! Continue reading

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