Leafy Greens Farm: 2012

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Garlic Pepper Glaze

Due to popular demand, we have added a section to our blog where consumers can purchase the Garlic Pepper Glaze online with Paypal and have it shipped to their home. Our Garlic Pepper Glaze was a St. Louis Garlic Fest "favorite.” It is a sweet and spicy glaze made with our organic garlic that goes great with chicken or pork. It also can be served as a delicious appetizer when poured over cream cheese and served with crackers. Check out this link to purchase your jar of Garlic Pepper Glaze online: http://blog.leafygreensfarm.com/p/products.html.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

St. Louis Garlic Fest

Leafy Greens Farm kicked off their 2012 Summer festival season with a booth at the St. Louis Garlic Fest. It was a fun, family event in south St. Louis started by a bunch of urban garlic farmers. Last November, we had planted about 180 cloves of garlic and early this June we harvested all of them. Yes, garlic takes about 8-9 months to grow! After we harvested the garlic, we cleaned it, cut the stems off, and let it cure -or dry out- in the barn for about 4 weeks. Once the curing process is done, it is ready to be eaten, sold, or stored until the next planting season. Since we planted about 10 different speciality varieties of garlic, we wanted to find the right venue to sell them at. Luckily, we found out about the garlic festival so that we could sell them directly to consumers interested in trying fun, new garlics.

Our garlic varieties we sold

It was exciting talking to so people about garlic - which is considered both a vegetable and an herb. We brought other vegetables to sell, but garlic took center stage. Many people didn't know that garlics came in so many varieties and frankly we didn't know either before we started growing garlic. At the grocery stores, we typically just see one variety of porcelain white garlic, but we have read that there are over 600 cultivated sub-varieties of garlics in the world. The varieties range in flavor from mild to hot and spicy. We had a small range of flavors, but enough to intrigue some of our customers.

We shared and learned new garlics recipes as well as talked about how we prepare the soil for growing garlic. Damian used his amazing selling skills to our garlic and we ended up selling 90% of what we took to the festival. According to one consumer, we had the "cutest" garlics of the festival. We even had two celebrity sightings at the Garlic Fest, Mayor Francis Slay dropped by our booth and Garlic Man came over for a rare photo opportunity!

Mayor Slay and Garlic Man

Baked goods and canned items

One of the most surprising parts of the festival was how quick our baked goods and canned items sold. We had made garlic flat bread, zucchini bread cookies, and garlic pepper glaze. Garlic pepper glaze was the biggest hit of the day. I am not sure if it was the free sample or the awesome recipe, but we sold out of the garlic pepper glaze by 11am!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

22 Days of Temperatures above 90°F

Summer 2012 has proved to be a scorcher, but it is not stopping the vegetables or bees at Leafy Greens Farm. We are thankful for the well water and drip tape irrigation system we installed. We have been going to the farm every couple of days, watering for an hour or two and harvesting the hardy summer veggies. We found that kales and chards are the hardiest leafy greens around. Our other vegetables that seem to love the heat include the following: beans, zucchini, squash, okra, and cucumbers. We had to harvest all of our broccoli and cabbages because they started to flower and get burned by the sun.

One of my favorite things to watch at the farm is the zucchini and squash leaves come back to life after watering. In order to produce the zucchini and squash, the plant uses the water stored in the leaves to create the vegetable. In high heat, the plant's leaves become wilted and sad looking; however, they bounce back with a small amount of watering.

As for the bees, we were worried that the heat might make them swarm and disappear to a cooler place. Inside the bee hive, the temperature is normally higher than the outdoor temperature due to all of the busy activity going on inside. During the summer it is essential to have a water source for the bees nearby so that they can take it into the hive and help the hive cool down. We have two buckets of water near the hive. We also placed the hives under a shade tree for added protection from the scorching sun.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

New Harvest & New Recipes

We are in between lettuce growing seasons, but that doesn't mean the end of leafy greens. Fortunately, there are a lot of hearty leafy greens that are able to withstand the heat of the summer such as rainbow chards, kales, and radicchios! We found that our romaine lettuces and bibb lettuces do not fare well in the heat and become bitter if left too long in the ground at temperatures over 90 degrees. So, we are enjoying new salads and recipes with these greens that we would like to share with you.

Sautéed Rainbow Chard

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 small red onion, diced
1 bunch Swiss chard, stems and center ribs cut out and chopped together, leaves coarsely chopped separately
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
salt to taste (optional)

Directions

Melt butter and olive oil together in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in the garlic and onion, and cook for 30 seconds until fragrant. Add the chard stems and the white wine. Simmer until the stems begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in the chard leaves, and cook until wilted. Finally, stir in lemon juice and Parmesan cheese; season to taste with salt if needed.

Grilled Radicchio Salad with Balsamic Vinegar

· 2 heads radicchio, quartered through the core so that the leaves don’t fall apart

· 3 tablespoons olive oil, or to taste

· 2 cloves of minced garlic

· salt and pepper to taste

· 1 -2 tablespoon of balsamic vinaigrette

· Feta or Parmesan cheese

· 1 orange or lemon (optional)

Directions

1. Rub each quarter of radicchio with olive oil and garlic. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

2. Grill them over high, till they’re tender and nicely charred, 5 to 10 minutes depending on your fire.

3. Drizzle them with balsamic vinaigrette and top with feta or Parmesan cheese

4. Garnish them with orange zest or lemon zest and give them a squeeze of juice.

Kale Chips

1 bunch kale
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 pinch sea salt, to taste

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).

2. Cut away inner ribs from each kale leaf and discard; tear the leaves into pieces of uniform size. (I made my pieces about the size of a small potato chip.) Wash torn kale pieces and spin dry in a salad spinner or dry with paper towels until they're very dry.

3. Put the kale pieces into a large resealable bag (or use a bowl if you don't mind getting your hands oily). Add about half the olive oil; seal and squeeze the bag so the oil gets distributed evenly on the kale pieces. Add the remaining oil and squeeze the bag more, until all kale pieces are evenly coated with oil and slightly 'massaged.' Sprinkle the vinegar over the kale leaves, reseal the bag, and shake to spread the vinegar evenly over the leaves. Spread the leaves evenly onto a baking sheet.

4. Roast in the preheated oven until mostly crisp, about 35 minutes. Watch very closely toward the end. You want the edges brown, but not the whole chip. Otherwise, it will taste charred. Season with salt

Garlic - It is a long complicated affair

One of the things we have been most excited about growing on our farm is GARLIC! It is something that you plant in the fall, overwinter, and harvest in the late summer. Garlic is something that takes about 8-9 months to grow. For us, harvest came early this year because we notice its leaves were browning, scapes were flowering it's stalks were leaning over - the tell-tale signs that garlic is ready to come out of the ground. Since we had such a mild winter, we think that the garlic got a jump-start on growing during what was suppose to be the cold months.

Since this is our first year growing garlic, we are learning as we go. We had no idea that garlic plants send up a garlic scape - or a tall, slender stalk with an intense garlic that grows out of the middle of the garlic leaves and has a bulb that flowers. They are beautiful and can be used in cooking. They have an intense garlic flavor and can be used in stir-fry or pesto. Or, they can be left in a vase to flower and they create a huge purple bloom - only this bouquet has a distinct garlic odor.

When to harvest garlic is a judgment call, but basically it’s ready to go when the lower leaves start to brown or the stem starts to lean over. Harvesting too soon will result in smaller cloves that don’t store well. Leaving the bulbs in the ground too long and the cloves may be bursting out of their skins, making them unstorable and open to disease. We harvested a few to see if they were ready in early June and sure enough. They were!

We found that digging the garlic out is difficult. Since the bulbs were several inches down in the soil and developed a strong root system, we could not just pull them out. We used a small shovel to loosen the dirt around the bulbs and then dug underneath the bulbs to pop them out. We had to be very careful not to hit or slice the bulb with the small shovel because it wouldn't be able to be stored with a slice through it.

After all that waiting for it to grow and the effort it takes to dig them up, we still have to wait to actually use the garlic! I never knew that garlic has to "cure," or dry, for three to four weeks after harvesting it. We are curing it in a well-ventilated and dry, shady place. After that month, we can go crazy with all of our garlic recipes and we can store the garlic for about 7-8 months as long as we keep it in cool place at about 32°F.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Do you know who your farmer is?

Most of us search the internet or ask others to find out about the best restaurants, doctors, mechanics, or hair stylists are in our area; however, have you ever researched or asked about the best produce farmers in your area? It is strange that we know so little about the people that grow our produce and how carefully we chose other details in our life. We are used to the year-round variety of fruits and vegetables from all over the world in our grocery stores and there is a disconnect between the consumer and the produce farmer.

A few years ago, we didn't really think about where our food came from, but now that we are farming it is hard not to think about it! For us, there have been several things that changed this disconnect. Becoming a part of the organic trend has brought attention to importance of healthy growing practices of the farmers that deliver produce to the grocery stores. The label "organic" gives us insight into how our produce is grown, but not necessarily who grows it. The trend to "eat local" has also helped us connect to local farmers by going to farmer's markets or participating in a CSA (community supported agriculture). There is something truly enjoyable about meeting the farmers that grow our produce and hearing their stories!

Recently, Damian and I were able to sell our produce through a local market called Sappington Farmer's Market and participate in one of their "Meet Your Farmers" event on a Sunday afternoon. We stood by our produce and talked to customers as they came into the store. We really enjoyed spending time at the event and meeting customers. We have never talked about lettuce and kale so much in our lives. There was quite an age range in customers and we were impressed by the individuals who felt that organic and local produce was important. We also were impressed by the variety of people who told us about the fun dishes they create with local produce - from kale chips to delicious sounding salads and soups. For us, it is not just about knowing who our farmer is. It is also about knowing who our customer is and knowing that they enjoy fresh vegetables as much as we do.

Friday, May 18, 2012

200lbs of lettuce - Grown and Gone!

Damian harvesting lettuce

So, we planted a lot of lettuce this season with the hope that we could sell it and we did! So far, we have sold over 200lbs of lettuce to restaurants and farmers markets. It has been a fun challenge!

Planting, watering, and weeding around the lettuce was the easy part. However, harvesting and packaging lettuce was the most difficult part of the process. Head lettuces are fragile creatures. You cannot scrub them like a potato or be rough with them. You have to pick, wash, box them with a gentle touch otherwise leaves will break and the lettuce will be bruised.

Submerging the lettuces in cold water

Another thing is that lettuce has to be stored cool and dry or else it will wilt and become inedible. Lettuce actually "breathes" and has what's called a respiration rate. We need to cool it down immediately after picking it in order for it to maintain its crispness. This posed a problem for us because we don't have a refrigerator or a walk in cooler at the farm. What we do have is cold well water, so we decided to pick it and immediately submerge it in cold water to cool it down. This seemed to work! After cooling the lettuces down in cold water, we gently shook them dry and boxes them up. Once again, we couldn't be rough boxing them up and had to delicately package them so that none of them would be bruised. We did all of this under our canopy tent so that the sun wouldn't heat them up after the cooling process. Finally, Damian quickly puts the boxes in his truck and makes a immediate delivery. We don't want the lettuces sitting outside for too long and we wanted to get them into the walk in coolers at the restaurants or markets that we delivered to.

We have put effort and time into growing the lettuces and want to make sure the final product looks and tastes good as well as holds up over time for our customers. We want to be delivering lettuces that stay fresh for up to 2 weeks not ones that go bad after 3 days. Thankfully, we have been learning the best practices for doing that from workshops, books, and our other farmer friends. With farming lettuces, we are trying to learn and practice the best ways to do everything with the hope that we will continue to sell more lettuces in the future!

Damian picking off the outer leaves

Me packaging the lettuce

Trying not to squish any of the lettuces

Boxing and weighing the lettuces at the end of the process

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

More friends and less bullies on the farm

The other day I gave a talk to middle schools girls about bullying. I asked them to use art materials to depict what it felt like to be powerful and powerless. After they shared their collages and drawings, I noticed that the recurrent theme for feeling powerful was to have more friends. We talked about how to make or attract more friends and how this could help them be more resilient to the criticism of bullies.

Friendly Lady Bug with Cucumber Beetle bully

After the presentation, I went to the farm and smiled to myself about how certain bugs can be considered "farm bullies" and how I wish I had more bug-friends that would help us keep our crops safe and looking beautiful. When I turn to the farming research for techniques to get more bug-friends, I sometimes get lost in the terminology. In the organic farming world, there are buzzwords like "bio-diversity," "integrated crop management," and "companion planting." What does it all mean??? Basically, it means to have a variety of plants growing on your farm - some that attract beneficial (or friendly) bugs while others deter plant-damaging pests.

We chose not to use pesticides or insecticides on our farm because we don't want to damage the soil or ourselves. We want to decrease any potential toxins or carcinogens going into our body. We want healthy produce. Unfortunately, some bugs try to eat or damage vegetables before farmers can harvest. Just because we try to grow organically, it doesn't mean that we want "buggy" produce.

We use row covers on our farm to keep out pests and bugs. They do a great job, but they do not keep out 100% of the bugs. Many bugs overwinter underground and then emerge from the soil as it gets warmer outside. If they emerge from the soil after we have row covered it and planted our produce in it, we have just created a bio dome for pests to multiply. Due to the very mild winter, we are worried that this may be a problem this year.

Do we have bio-diversity going on at our farm? The answer is some, but not enough. However, we are slowly learning enough to be dangerous to those pests and how to bring in the "friendly" bugs that benefit our garden.. We recently read a great article in the Organic Gardening magazine about how to introduce more bio-diversity into your garden called "10 Fast Ways to Control Pests: 10 easy ways to outsmart garden pests." It is helpful with identifying key plants that exude a deterring smell and others that attract an "airborne defense squad" of beneficial "insects that feed on the bad insects. We definitely want more of those friendly bugs. We will be introducing more of these strategies to our farm in the fall! Ideally, we will have marigolds and nasturtiums growing next to our lettuces. We will also have dill planted between our beans.

Solving mysteries on the farm

As a child, I loved reading Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mystery books. As a young adult, I preferred murder mystery and crime novels. Now, as a new farmer, I am solving farm mysteries by doing a lot of research! It is a challenging new hobby that always seems to leave me with more questions at the end of the day. Here are a few of our recently solved mysteries that might help some of you other new farmers out there!

1. Why are some of our pac choi yellowing and dying off while others are healthy and still growing?

Answer: Sometimes over watering can cause yellowing and wilting leaves. We noticed that the pac choi that are yellowing are in a part of a row that sometimes gets flooded after watering for an hour with our drip tape. Next year, we need to make sure to level out this part of the row, so that flooding doesn't happen.

2. What is making holes in our beautiful green bean leaves?

Answer: We think it is either bean leaf beetles or grasshopper nymphs. Bean leaf beetles, as their name implies, primarily feed on bean species including soybeans. They typically feed on younger, more tender foliage. They are not always evident at first view as they feed on the undersides of leaves.Small grasshopper nymphs will eat very small holes in the leaf, similar to the injury caused by Japanese beetles, but the holes are often jagged and not very oval in shape.

3. Why does our potato trench look like a green algae-ridden swamp land?

Answer: We meant to do that! We are growing our own bio-fuel! :) Hahaha! Okay, we are not that advanced yet... Our potato trench is a green swamp land because we mistakenly dug it at the lowest, downhill spot in our farm. All of the rain water runs downhill and into our potato trench. Unfortunately, this is where our blue potatoes are planted and I think they may not yield any harvest this year due to rotting. Lesson learned!

4. Why do slugs and roly polys like our compost bin?

Answer: Slugs and roly polys like to hide out in damp, shady places during the heat of the day. In fact, slugs, snails, worm etc are all good workers in your compost bin. You're giving them an 'all you can eat' buffet and they are helping me break down vegetable matter.

5. Why do some weeds never seem to die?
Answer: After covering rows full of weeds with black plastic for two-weeks, we killed most all of the weeds. However, there are some weeds that still seem to survive. One in particular hard-to-kill weed is this seeded pod weed. It is my professional opinion that some weeds have evolved to withstand atomic bombs, nuclear strikes, and possibly live on the face of the sun. I pull these weeds out by hand and throw them in a far off ditch.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Pac Choi - What is it? How do I cook it?

After delivering several of our "Veg Out & Be Healthy" boxes, we had many questions about Pac Choi. Most people wanted to know, "What is it?" and "How do I do with it?" So, here is a post about one of our favorite and fast growing veggies.

Pac Choi (also known as pak choi, bok choi, or Peking cabbage) is a Chinese cabbage. It's commonly used in stir fry and spring rolls. It is also great sauteed or used as a substitute for spinach in cooked recipes.

Pac choi is also nutrient ricjh. It's high in vitamin C, beta carotene, folic acid and calcium, as well as many essential minerals. In fact, 1 cup of cooked pac choi contains 15% of your recommended daily allowance of calcium - the equivalent of 1/4 pint of full fat milk. Studies show that phytochemicals found in pac choi and certain types of broccoli fight off damaging molecules that can cause heart disease and cancer.

Here are 5 fun recipes to try with pac choi:

Ginger And Garlic Pak Choi

Ingredients

1 small pak choi (boy choy)

½ inch fresh ginger root

2 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon sesame oil (or olive oil)

Method

Separate the pak choi leaves and cut off the chunky stalks.

Slice the stalks finely. Roughly chop the leaves.

Peel and grate the ginger. Peel and crush the garlic.

Heat the oil in a wok until almost smoking. Add the garlic and ginger. Cook for 1 minute, stirring often.

Add the pak choi stalks. Mix well. Cover and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the pak choi leaves. Stir and then cook for 1-2 minutes, until they are just wilted.

Asian Bok Choy Salad

   1/4 cup olive oil

2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

3 Tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. sea salt, such as Maldon sea salt

1/2 tsp. black pepper

   6 cups bok choy, rinsed and chopped into bite-sized pieces

1 bunch green onions, sliced

1 pkg. Ramen noodles, crushed (save seasoning packet for another use)

1/3 cup wasabi peas

Put first five ingredients (through pepper) in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake well. Set aside. Toss remaining ingredients in a salad bowl. Pour dressing over salad. Toss and allow flavors to marinate 30 minutes before serving. Serves 4.

Unwrapped Spring Roll Salad

1 pack thin rice noodles – cook and save some of the water.
2 small bunches of Bok Choy thinly sliced including the greens.
1 bunch green onions thinly sliced including some of the green.
1 cup diced cucumber.
1 grated carrot.
handful of chopped mint
handful of chopped cilantro

Toss together.

Make a dressing using:

½ cup of the reserved water
½ cup chunky peanut butter
¼ cup Hoisin sauce (or less depending on your taste)
And for a little kick a dash of garlic chili sauce

If serving later, wait to add the dressing. I had some shrimp left over from the night before so I tossed these in with the salad. You could add just about any vegetable.

Pak Choi Stir Fry

1 bunch Pak choi

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

½ of an onion, thinly sliced

½ teaspoon dry mustard

2 teaspoons soy sauce

½ teaspoon rice vinegar

2 teaspoons sake or dry sherry

Salt and pepper to taste

Garnish: toasted sesame seeds

Cut the Pak choi stalks into 1-inch lengths. Finely cut the green tops and reserve. In a large skillet, heat the oil, add the garlic and the onions and stir fry until softened. Stir in the stalks, mustard and soy sauce and stir fry until the Pak choi is tender, about 10-12 minutes. Stir in the tops, vinegar, sake or sherry and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook 2 more minutes. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and serve.

CHINESE PAK CHOI AND CHICKEN SOUP

What it does: Strengthens your immune system

6 large spring onions
4 tablespoons canola oil
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
1.2 litres or 40 fl oz chicken stock
2 chicken breasts, skinned and shredded finely along the grain of the flesh
4 heads of pak choi, thick stems removed and reserved, the leaves finely chopped
150g or 2 oz Chinese noodles or vermicelli (optional)
1 teaspoon tamari or light soy sauce

Chop the white parts of four of the spring onions very finely; cut the others lengthwise almost to the root and reserve. Heat the oil very gently. Add the chopped onion and garlic and sweat for just two minutes. Pour in the stock.

Bring slowly to simmer and remove the garlic. Continuing to simmer, add the chicken and reserved pak choi stems and cook for ten minutes - until the chicken is almost tender.

Remove the pak choi stems. Add the pak choi leaves, noodles or vermicelli, and tamari or soy sauce and simmer for five minutes. Serve with the reserved spring onions floating on top.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

How do you like to dress it up?