Organic gardening culiblog: Organic gardening Archives
Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

CPULs
when bad acronyms
happen to good people

June 09, 2006

It's pronounced 'SEE, PULSE' and stands for Continous Productive Urban Landscapes. Architects Viljoen, Bohn and Howe's postively radical notion of combining productive urban landscapes with continuous landscapes, proposes a new urban design strategy that would change the appearance of contemporary cities towards an unprecedented naturalism. Think urban agriculture, allotment gardens, increased biodiversity, decreased carbon emissions and strategically connected green space - and you will start to get an idea of what the authors are suggesting. Although this is in no way within the scope of the book, never have I encountered a more holistic approach to urban planning that so thoroughly takes into account our imminent plunge into energy descent and the extreme effect that this will have on our food supply.


Diagrams showing a projected development of CPULs © Bohn & Viljoen Architects, reformatted for culiblog and used entirely without permission

Despite sporting a singularly unsexy title and a graphic design utterly devoid of charm, CPULs is a compelling vision for urban planners and (landscape) architects. The book is loaded with truly useful facts and case studies yet somehow remains a rivetting read for layfolk, comme moi. The authors were wise enough to begin the book with a succinct glossary defining all of the concepts so that within five pages you're already an adept at juggling terminology like vertical and horizontal intensification and you know the difference between an organiponico and a heurto intensivo.


Farmers at the Organiponico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project in downtown Havana, weed the beds. Photo by John Morgan used entirely without permission

According to people who are in a position to compare, CPULs offers a rich documentation of UK allotment history and vivid reports of successful urban agriculture in contemporary Cuba, one of the few countries to have yet experienced peak oil. In 1990 when Cuba stopped receiving cheap juice from the Mothership and subsequently lost its largest client for agricultural produce, Havana citizens suddenly found themselves without access to sufficient food as expressed in 30% fewer calories in their diet! Instead of engaging in some futile rioting, they took up gardening en masse, and by gardening, I mean organic gardening. Later the government jumped on the bandwagon and started facilitating the urban agricultural effort in the form of responsible planning and infrastructure development. Presently Cuba is considered to be a living laboratory of how small urban farms and gardening collectives can successfully provide a significant portion of the urban food supply in spite of energy descent. Listen up, everybody! The CPULs authors were enlightened enough to note that a population accustomed to collectivism is more likely to be successful at community projects and that Northern European urban agricultural initiatives of the future will need to develop a native form to ensure their success.


Oil drum lids used as markers in Havana organiponicos. Photos by Tom Phillips from CPULs used entirely without permission

CPULs' authors articulate the benefits and obstacles to their proposal and offer cogent strategies for creating city land use policy in which urban green and brown are treated as productive space, considering the unbuilt as an event of equal intensity as the built. A vision of a thriving CPULs in London 2045 provides a powerful scenario that I can imagine myself being a part of at any stage in my life. This is something I would not characterise as a common feature in most urban planning. In CPULs city planning the well-being of people is a central and distinguishing factor. In fact, its completely seductive.


A map of London expanded to accomodate mini- and SUPER-market gardens, from a 1998 study © Viljoen and Bohn Architects, photographed from the book and used entirely without permission

Robert Hopkins from Transition Culture weblog notes, 'It is only in the last 30 or so years that we have perfected the art of creating totally useless landscapes. New industrial estates and business parks typify this, planted with 'low maintenance' shrubs, specifically bred to be entirely unproductive.' Bohn and Viljoen point out that though European cities have planned for a variety of approaches to open space including urban parks, urban river fronts, urban squares, urban stages, urban forests and urban beaches, there are as yet no urban fields. 'Living and growing food in the contemporary urban space, CPULs could formally be similar to urban parks.' I am inspired by the notion that landscape architecture could be pivotal in designing for a future in which peak oil will have tremendous impact on the urban food supply.

As someone who writes about food and culture and as an an art and design educator, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I hope that its concepts are embraced by those who are in a position to implement urban planning of this nature. The notion of CPULS deserves to feature prominently in design and architecture curricula, informing a new generation of people designing our cities and potentially our well-being through our access to healthy food.

CPULs do not yet exist.
In type, they will be new,
in type they will be productive.

See, pulse, with a silent meow at the end.

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The vertical
kitchen garden

May 12, 2006

Spring planting is finished but before returning to the Polar Circle, I took this image of the bamboo framework for my vertical gardening concept. The plan is to train the wandering plants (melons, gourds, squash) to grow up the wide end of the frame, allowing them optimum sunlight, saving roaming space in the garden and eventually providing a tunnel of dappled light to walk through or linger in on hot August afternoons. An added benefit will be that my hanging calabas will grow with straight necks.

On the 'short end of the stick' side, morning glory will wind its way up the poles and produce blue and purple flowers. If everything goes according to plan (!) there will be yellow flowering plants climbing up the 'wide end' of the framework (left - in these images) and purple/blue flowering plants on the 'short end of the stick' side.

This idea is inspired by the Dutch architects MVRDV who also write about vertical farming in their book on density, KM3. I know, I know, they would never favour such vernacular materials or style.

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Kitchen garden inventory

May 10, 2006

What is intensely boring to one person can be rivetting to another. Case in point: my kitchen garden inventory as of the 10th of May 2006: Upper Garden


Row 0 l: (up) sage, cali poppy, silver dollar, rocket, (down) opal basil


Row 0 r: (down) basil, (down) opal basil


Row 1l: (up) sage, fennel, various bulbs rainbow chard, sage, (down) strawberries, delphinia, rainbow chard, bulbs


Row 1r: (up) fennel, red kale, purple cauliflower, purple kohlrabi, (down) silverdollar plant, red cabbage, brock calabria, violet cauliflower


Row 2l: (up) strawberries, onions (x2) coreander, marigold, tulips, dill, (down) strawberries, shallots, purple haze carrots


Row 2r: (up) purple shiso, borage x 3, amaranth, (down) bergamot x 4, onions


Row 3l: (up) strawberries, choke early and purple, choke late, (down) choke late


Row 3r: (up) jalapeño, paprika, jalapeño, paprika, aubergine, gladiola, marigold, aubergine, (down) jalapeño paprika, paprika, jalapeño, onions


Row 4l: (up) opal basil, mizuna, amaranth, (down) opal basil, mizuna, red berry bush, mizuna


Row 4r: (up) mangetout peas, onions, (down) mangetout peas, onions, carrots (made a mistake because onions and peas don't go together supposedly)


Row 5l: (up) 2 x cherry tomatoes, 4 x ondine cornu, (down) 4 x roma, 1 x cherry tomato


Row 5r: (up) celery, onions, dahlia, (down) onions, radishes, red cabbage, beets


Row 6l: (up) moneymaker x 4, cherry tomato, (down) 4 x ondine cornu, cherry tomato


Row 6r: (up) red cabbage, beets, marigold, fennel, (down) rhubarb x 2, beets (detroit, candycane, egyptian flat), fennel, horseradish, beets


Row 7l: (up) 3 x roma, cherry tomato, (down) 3 x moneymaker, opal and green basil, purple and green shiso on borders of tomato rows 5-7


Row 7r: (up) horseradish (x4), beets, (down) brassica corner, bruxelles sprouts, romanesca, beets, chervil, fennel


Row 8: (up) beets, genovese basil, lupines, (down) coreander, lupines, gladiolas, fennel, cali poppy, fenugreek


In front of upper kitchen garden shed right: fig, mint, peppermint, ginger, marigolds, calendula, iris germanica (please grow you dang thing!), dahlias, lupines, lavender.

Perimeter Upper Garden left: mint, mint and more mint, peppermint, lupines, glads, delphinia, cali poppies, shiso red and green, basil green and purple

Lower Kitchen Garden:
Row 1: sunflowers, dill, soy
Row 2: soy, dill, chickpea
Row 3: adzuki, dill, red night kidney (at pole: morning glory)

Raised beds from upper to lower:
Bed 1: marigold, gold rush yellow courgette
Bed 2: pickling cucumbers
Bed 3: luffah
Bed 4: pumpkin
Bed 5: spaghetti squash
Bed 6: calabas gourds
Bed 7: galia melons
Bed 8: cantaloup
Bed 9: watermelon
Bed 10: poblano chilies, marconi peppers
Bottom 2 rows: golden bantam corn
Perimeter: amaranth, buckwheat and temporarily alfalfa and buckwheat were compulsively planted on the beds to change my weed environment to these weeds.

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Wild tomatoes
for guests

May 07, 2006

Here's a clump of wild tomato seedlings with the exploded tomato skin still attached to the roots like a busted balloon. They're popping up everywhere in my kitchen garden, and to think I wasted all that time fussing with the foetuses and a propagator when they can grow themselves all by their lonesome. From now on I'm just going to let a few tomatoes dry on the vine and let them dump themselves on the ground. I may just be getting the hang of the Masanobu Fukuoka style of gardening!

These are currant tomatoes, a wild variety that produced zillions of little berry sized fruit and which pretty much scattered itself throughout my kitchen garden end of season. This is the one I use as my 'guest tomato', planted at the ends of the rows so that visitors can have something to nibble on and I can put lingerers to work on an obsessive compulsive harvesting task.

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Note to self: search for suitable acronyms

May 06, 2006

CCLPSGGCWPMC or backwards, CMPWCGGSPLCC. In the last row (covered in hay): courgette (gold rush), cukes, luffah, pumpkin, spaghetti squash, gourds, galia melon, cantaloup, watermelon, poblano pepper, marconi pepper, corn. At this stage in development, I'm having trouble telling the gourdy, cukey, melony plants apart and even had to label them. I prefer to keep notes in a muddy garden notebook to labeling a plant, the idea being that the dangling cucumber should tell me the plant is a cucumber. But in the meantime, the plants are babies, and like all babies, they sort of look alike.

On the 'right bank': amaranth, buckwhat, alfalfa. ABA.

In the 'bean rows': sunflowers, dill, soy, soy, adzuki, chickpeas, red night kidney. No acronym necessary since the plants are so different looking.

CoCuLuPu
SpaGoGa
CanWatPoMaCo

Grow, You thangs!

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Pest control

May 05, 2006

The scales are tipping at the allottments, the organic gardeners are in the majority! Although our numbers are too small to make a real statistic, the demographic of the organic group is thoroughly mixed. In the image above, Sidi AlGouche, not exactly an organic gardener, has decided not to spray his potatoes to get rid of these bugs. Instead he spends an hour each day picking the potato beetles off by hand and indulging in a fair amount of tri-lingual cursing. Afternoons Sidi AlGouche stops cursing and puts his daughter Aqima (9) to work. Aqima is too much of a pistol to spend her afternoons bug-picking and usually puts in a solid twenty minutes before wandering off to hunt frogs with the kids across the waterway.

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First strawberries of the year!

May 04, 2006

The strawberry nearest to the camera is the first strawberry that I've grown. What a marvel. Before I tasted strawberries from the garden, I couldn't understand what exactly was so special about strawberries. Now I know I needto grow twice as many and am eager to try different varieties. The native garrigues are producing well considering that I ignore them most of the time. I'm starting to think that my lack of presence in this commuter garden is a good thing.


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My cover crop
slash green manure
experiment is a success

May 03, 2006


Mustard microgreens, about to be turned into green manure

This January in an experiment in producing biomass, maintaining good soil condition and weed mitigatation in my lower garden, I planted green manure cover crops. Of course nothing sprouted because in January the ground is far too cold and you'd have to be a crazy woman who has just read fifteen articles about the benefits of green manures to do such a thing. But in March I re-sowed the same crops again and this time the seeds sprouted to the acronym AMBRASSS, rhymes with je t'embrace, alfalfa, mustard, buckwheat, red night kidney, adzuki, soy, soy, soy).

This lower garder is going to be my workaday garden for plants that take up space, need verticality and like to roam. Yesterday I turned the alfalfa, mustard and buckwheat rows under as green manure for the summer's seed beds. I am thrilled to bits with the results of the covercrop/green manure experiment. The plants yielded very long roots and massive hairy rootballs, all of which are going to rot forthwith and produce a healthy subterranean microbial culture upon which the summer gourds and melons will thrive. Whilst turning the soil I came across zillions of earthworms, dark and fat. Am I insane for not really liking the rototiller, turquoise though she is?


Mustard and buckwheat, sadly no image of the alfalfa

The goal of the first phase of this experiment (produce biomass to introduce organic material into the soil) is an absolute success. The goal of the second phase of this experiment is to see how the green manure performs. Performs in comparison to what, is the question.


A clump of buckwheat showing how much rootmass it has produced, pretty red-stemmed and bronze coloured foliage

Reality check: It probably goes without saying that I have not exactly applied the scientific method to this 'experiment' and should probably call it the 'Hmm, wonder if this works' method. Unfortunately I'm emotionally attached to the green manures and cover crops concept and have already decided to get good at doing things this way, but I've observed (unfortch) that the array of native 'weeds' in combination seem to produce as much biomass as the alfalfa, mustard and buckwheat mix, although I don't know what they do to the soil condition. Considering that the soil condition already looked good before starting, I have no reason to believe that the weeds deplete the nutrients, but of course I'll never know because I didn't leave a control section.

And obviously, because I can even write about the native weeds shows that the covercrops weren't really that good at mitigating weeds - although there were LESS weeds in the rows than on the banks of the rows. I'm more of an eyeballer than a counter.

Come autumn, the proper season for planting the green manures, I'll try planting over the entire allottment to see if this helps with weed mitigation. In fact, I've pretty much decided that throughout the summer I'm just going to go around throwing alfalfa, mustard and buckwheat seeds at everything.

Whatevs. I'm married to the idea that these plants will be my new weeds and I even had a dream last night that after years of planting the cover crops, I had increased the biomass on my allottments so much that my gardens were one metre higher than everyone elses.

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Kitchen garden before
Ice Saints

May 02, 2006


My kitchen garden on the 27th of April

Some people grow up with socialist folk songs, others grow up with Catholic weather knowledge. Until now, I'd never even heard about Ice Saints, but that was before I had a kitchen garden. Ice Saints refers to the 11th, 12th, and 13th May, the feast days of St. Mamertus, St. Pancras, and St. Gervais, purportedly the cut-off date for night frost. And the date after which you can start wearing cut-offs when you potter about with summer crops in the potager.


My kitchen garden on the 1st of May

Oddly, these May dates are the same from the Netherlands, way up in the Polar Circle, all the way down to Occitania. The cut-off town is Beziers, 100km from here, where its warmer and they have different days, different saints and they can grow meyer lemons outside. No cut-offs though.


Tomato foetuses bracing themselves for a rigourous session of acclimatisation

I'm not having any of it, and even though it seems like Occitania lost a month of growing season this year due to the cooling effects of global warming, my sunflowers and lupines are growing visibly each day. But the men of the kitchen gardens are laughing at us Ladies-who-put-our-tomato-foetuses-out-early. Thursday, the gents will really split a gut watching me sow cantaloup, galia melon, cukes, luffah, gourds, pumpkins, spaghetti squash, courgette and watermelon into the bare naked ground. As a tribute to the Saints I'll repurpose some plastic ice cream containers into little hot houses. See ya later Propagator.


Lettuce and tomato section sorted


Covercrops before being plowed into seed beds


Mustard microsalad

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Urban gardening lessons for Dutch children

April 21, 2006

On an island in Amsterdam's Westerpark, a horizontal grid of 1m2 garden plots are being prepared for the children. The sign says that around 500 children will receive weekly education about nature and the environment on these plots. Although this garden grid offers an extreme image of mini-allotments filled with one carrot, one lettuce, one rhubarb, one sunflower, one fennel, one this and one that, I cannot say that I think this is a negative idea in terms of education. In fact, gardening in this way has the potential to teach children about density and clustering. It's like an MVRDV-isation of grammar school education. By this I am referring to educarion informed by architects MVRDV's notions of density and as explored in their publications FARMAX (floor area ratio) and KM3, (cubic kilometer) Excursions on Capacities from Actar Publishers. Next step, vertical gardening for urban children!

(The image has been enhanced to increase readability of the sign.)


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Soy vey is mir

March 06, 2006

Dang birds, eating my beans! If you're going to kill a sprouting soy bean plant, the least you could do is eat the whole bean. Note to self: Next time make a scarecrow.

Tomorrow I return to the Netherlands. Hope the snows will have cleared...

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Note to self: alfalfa, mustard, buckwheat, red night kidney, adzuki, soy, soy, soy

March 02, 2006

This is the planting order when facing the lower allotment. The acronym is AMBRASSS, which could stand for the the English embarass, if the cover crops once again fail to thrive. If the cover crops survive my handling and the weather, I can pronounce the acronym in French as in je t'embrace, which translates into a summer garden cocktail party with homegrown edamame as the cameo snack.

Note to self: I Innoculated the mustard seeds with dirt to form broadcastable seed pills. Narrowcasting is a more accurate description of what actually took place. Hopefully the mixing action didn't disturb the sprouted seed too much.

First irrigation run goes awry. Lowered irrigation pipe, made a huge mess of the footpath.


Digital photo of author drinking soup in KvR's new shed

It appears that I'm the first guest in Ktje's new cabane. JT remarked that we've started to dress like the 'Turnip Ladies' in a fairy tale and excepting the fact that neither one of us has actually grown a turnip, it's hard to disagree. For fun, we're going to wash and wear urban clothing for dinner from now on. Starting tomorrow.

Each day the gents come to marvel at what seems to them to be a unique form of gardening. Today's crowd got a buckwheat sowing performance and a taste of buckwheat sprouts. I tried explaining that I was growing buckwheat (and alfalfa, mustard...) to improve soil condition by fixing nitrates and increasing the organic matter in my soil, but this didn't translate very well. In fact it didn't translate at all. Trick is to leave the explaining to Sidi AlGouche, the allotment's alpha male.

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Irrigate, ice skate

February 28, 2006

Took the new irrigation system out for a spin and it looks like I have a hunquering for the Netherlands. The idea is that all manner of plant life will grow along the borders, if it would just stop freezing for one day.

Vernacular architecture. Surely I have the ugliest shed in the gardens and hope that a good flood will wash it away.

My sweet neighbour Sidi AlGouche, who saw me pissing about with the main canal structure, took the hoe from my hands, (Gimme that hoe, Ho!) and laid out the canal perimeter. He's so bored right now that he's raking his lands for the fourth time. Note, the blue pills that he gives his garden.

Irrigorgeous!

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Spring is a time of rebirth

February 26, 2006

But not for everyone. Upon inspection of my lands I discovered a dead mouse. And then another, and another. In total, there were six dead mice on my new plot!

Looks like someone is a picky eater. Actually, its not spring here, its still freezing five degrees in the night. I returned to my Occitanian kitchen garden Sunday to discover that not one of my cover crops had sprouted let alone burgeoned in the sub-zero weather. Imagine that, seeds not sprouting when its -5!

In the mean time I got to try out the motoculteur, which we have nicknamed the motivateur for obvious reasons. It took me thirty minutes to turn my gardens, fifteen of which were spent getting the motor to start.

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Grow your own dang food

January 30, 2006

Back in the eighties, as a student at the University California at Santa Cruz, I lived in a vegetarian commune with a bunch of hippies. As hippies, we produced our own sprouts, yoghurt and salsa fresca for the entire commune, approximately thirty people. I had all but forgotten this part of my life until recently, when my Food Atelier students at the Design Academy Eindhoven started working on ways to grow their own food. The work of two enthusiastic students got my wings flapping enough for me to dare revisit my past. These are the images from the first trials, theirs and mine.

After initial attempts at growing mung sprouts in bread (see above), Cygalle Shapiro is successfully growing a ready-made 'salad on salad'.


images top to bottom: sprouts in bread, salad on salad, sprouting experiments courtesy of Cygalle Shapiro, copyright Cygalle Shapiro 2005 - 2006. Contact culiblog for further information.

Liora Rosin is growing sprouts in labneh, a fresh yoghurt cheese, commonly made at home. For Rosin it is important that the seeds are grown within the labneh in order to transmit the flavour of the sprouted seed into the delicately tangy cheese.


images top to bottom: home sprouting installation, soaking, lactic fermentation sill; courtesy of Liora Rosin, copyright Liora Rosin 2005 - 2006

Wouldn't the world be a better place if we all had a designated windowsill for lactic fermentation?

Having resolved to practice what I preach in 2006, I am also working on growing sprouts on labneh and find that the experiments coördinate nicely with my developing a good recipe for yoghurt ravioli.

This is a cute disaster of basil seeds rotting into overly dry labneh. Seeds that become gelatinous when they are moistened (e.g., basil, buckwheat, watercress) are poor candidates for immediate immersion on or in the yoghurt medium.


images top to bottom: sprout collection 2x, basil on labneh, playing with mistakes, pretending sampler, curd seed brittle; Debra Solomon

The results of an unsuccessful attempt at growing woody spice seeds (dill, coriander, cumin, kummel) in yoghurt medium with the intention of flavouring the labneh were not especially delicious, although visually exciting. The linen and the seeds texture the labneh beautifully and I look forward to spin a few successful recipes from these experiments soon.


Here are other urban gardening solutions, mostly rooftop gardening related:

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Weedy plot, commuting, cover crops and humble pie

January 11, 2006

People who know me well would never say that I'm a practical woman. Now, all the more so. I've left my winter quarters in Occitania to return to the Polar Circle, where paid work is calling. Screaming, really. In gardening there's a time and a place for everything, and ever since I've had this garden, my commuting life-style has forced me to ignore this simple rule of nature and do things at the wrong times. Sunday, I finished turning the earth by hand on both allotments. One hundred and sixty square metres. That's seven in dog years, carry the three, and if you're not impressed, I don't care. I'm totally impressed with myself.

It's a funny thing in our allotments, all the women are organic gardners, and all the men are not. I don't know if that corresponds with some kind of hippy statistic, but that's the way it is. And there's a great deal of social control, you can't just let your garden go to pot, just because it's yours. I decided for this reason to experiment with growing cover crops, a crop just meant to keep out the bad weeds and condition the soil in the process. It's absolutely unconventional around here, and for this reason, I'd been preparing my neighbour, spending time talking to him about my experiment, to let him get used to the idea.

I'm talking about my very sweet neighbour AlGouche. The one who built the retaining wall/serre without my even asking for it, the one who waters my garden when I'm up north, the one who makes me sit down and eat a lunch of barbequed chicken and wine that he's prepared on his little fire when he thinks I'm working too hard (il faut manger), the one that feeds his garden little red and blue pills. I've been telling him for a week now, that before I leave Occitania, I'm going to plant a crop full of weeds, on purpose. Buckwheat, alfalfa, mustard, soybeans and adzuki beans, not for eating, but to improve the soil composition, keep down the real weeds, and give me an excuse to use that turquoise blue rototiller that we just bought. (I read that each time you use a rototiller you have to add 6% organic material to the soil so as not ruin it's texture.)

Plants not for eating? Al Gouche shakes his head, and tells me in a Moroccan-Occitanian dialect that I'm meshuggah.

The last days, I turned one hundred and sixty square metres of earth with a spitfork. The men of the allotments, bored out of their skulls with winter-lack-of-work, gather daily at AlGouche's shed for gossip and beer. That's 'man' for tea and sympathy, I guess. But on Monday, my last day in the garden, before departing for Amsterdam, I was completely shocked to overhear AlGouche defending me to the other men. 'She's not planting real weeds, just some plants that will improve the soil.' My heart lept.

And now I'm praying, and looking at the Occitanian weather report from Amsterdam, that the seeds that I have ever-so-crazily planted in January, and that really is meshuggah, will somehow sprout and thrive, beat the weed-race on my little plot of land, between now and March.

Subsistance farming really is a nerve wracking affair, part-time susbsistance farming, even more so. I keep telling myself that if this experiment doesn't work, nothing will be wasted but a few handfulls of seeds, one day of planting and a huge amount of pride. Which is expensive. Upon leaving the garden Monday evening, I say a little prayer for all the microbes and the earthworms, hoping they enjoy the oysters shells I crushed into the soil, hoping they enjoy the leaves and rotted corn husks, hoping the little legume seeds will grow, and win the growing race for the most light, water and nutrients. Please little legumes, winter cover crops, fix the nitrates in my soil, and produce as much biomass as you possibly can. I'm counting on you.

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Brussels pearls neither bitter nor farty

January 06, 2006

Look what Maman brought home for dinner tonight! While everyone else in the valley is shooting at wild boar, I managed to wrestle to the ground and uproot this domestic brussels sprouts tree. Admittedly, that sounds like I'm getting the short end of the stick, but the pearly buttons and sweet leaves of this homegrown resemble nothing of the bitter fartiness that I know to be storebought brussels sprouts. I've been scheming on how to bring back a whole tree to the sorrel-eating Dishy Lad on Tuesday, when I return to Amsterdam.

As a kid, not liking the food dished up at the dinner table was not an option. It was more or less expected that one would come to the table with a good appetite, sit down, join in the bubbly conversation and not only eat your food, but enjoy it. There was only one thing that brother Aar and I didn't really like, and that was brussels sprouts. Not liking something in our house meant that it was prepared once a year in the name of good health, and that we ate it anyway, smothered in tabasco sauce.

Tonight we're having brussels 'pearls' as a snack, that's how freaky we are! Two handfuls thrown into salted boiling water for just a few seconds, tossed with lightly salted butter and a squeeze of lemon and served on cocktail skewers. The friends were eating right out of my lap.

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Please read more... "Brussels pearls neither bitter nor farty"

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Green manure cover crops and another garden parcel

January 05, 2006

Yesterday I aquired another parcel of land when I went to pay my yearly subscription at Monsieur L. Thirty-five euros per parcel (roughly 100m2) and all the river water you can use. Still, with the chateau of the Comtesse de R. in plain view, we the serfs of the C'-ac allotments know that all of this could be taken away at any time. But for the time being, I have enough ground to grow and experiment to my heart's content. It's extremely relaxing when my largest concern is how to increase the biomass of my soil. I'll be experimenting by sowing 'green manure' cover crops (buckwheat, yellow mustard, soy beans and alfalfa) on my two parcels until spring planting begins in March.

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Another gushy garden story

January 04, 2006

Why is this eighty-seven year old man smiling? One possible reason is that he has a garden... and neighbours. If I am any sort of judge of things that make one happy, I can report that the addition of a garden and all the things it brings with it, fresh veg and fruit, new friends, a sense of community, has increased my happiness considerably. Yesterday for example, I returned to the allotments to find that my generous neighbour, AlGouche, had pressed the eighty-seven year old Louis into service, installing a petit serre (little green house) for me in back of my cabane! AlGouche (see below) is concerned that, once back in Amsterdam, I'll worry endlessly about spring planting, but with the serre up, in March I can just get down to business. My heart melted when I saw the two gentlemen happily digging and pounding away, just so that I wouldn't worry! They even turned the soil, Louis taking very special care to remove all of the topinambour and bits of glass, and they all joked that I shouldn't gush too much and keep them from their work.

By the way, the first I'd ever heard of Louis was not in the context of the garden, but in a dancing story. Having just returned from a village party last spring, Ktje rang me up in Amsterdam to report the party gossip and to tell of an amazing old man who was passionately dancing salsa all by himself for more than two hours straight. This old man was Louis, the kind of eighty-seven year old that I aspire to be, although it may take me awhile to develop an affinity for salsa.

image: AlGouche initiates the works for the retaining wall/serre with garden neighbour Louis

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Birthday picnic au plein air

December 24, 2005

With a small group of friends we celebrated my birthday with a fresh and freezing garden picnic in the painfully crisp air. Champagne, oysters and a sorrel quiche, in the case of the sorrel, eaten one meter away from the very plant that grew it. New neighbours, new but wonderful friends, all kicking the frozen ground and sipping champagne. We unanimously are longing for summer, or at least the spring planting.

Still, the leaves of the bruxelles sprouts are very sweet and the kale is abundant. In the case of the kale, the plants came from seeds that spilled unto the ground whilst moving the cabane, all so very sweet.

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Winter BBQ practice down at the kitchen gardens

December 23, 2005

Can kitchen garden soil ever really have enough potash? A quick look around the environs and the answer is a resounding 'no'. It's fire lighting time, again!

All the guys are doing it. Really. Every single last one of them.

Because lighting fires is like youth serum.

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Sort of public gardens

October 21, 2005

The urban garden is thriving in Istanbul. Walking around the Biennale's parallel programme locations in Karaköy, I spied some ad hoc agriculture in 'public' planters. These images show vegetables being grown amidst 'ornamental' city landscaping. Chapeau to the hacker-farmers growing squash, bell peppers, tomatoes and aubergines in their urban gardens. Look, they have even contructed a BBQ on which to do the grilling!

Smack dab in the middle of the Üskudar ferry terminal, ad hoc growers have cultivated tomatoes in all of the planters.

Images documenting beets being grown within public landscaping at a student housing complex in Nanjing in PRChina (April 2004).

And in Montpellier this summer, PRChinese artist Song Dong's salad installation.

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Yurt and garden

August 13, 2005

My garden at three and a half weeks old, is thriving! My yurt, set up at the edge of a vineyard, with views into two river valleys and mountains on all sides, is now little more than a glorified bedroom, shouting distance from the 'real house' in town.

But in one week's time a very special guest will arrive and we will among other things, live, and cook (!!!) at the yurt without the support of a proper kitchen. And because I am not a practical woman by nature, I have my heart set upon the notion that the yurt-cooking menu should consist primarily of food originating from my pre-pubescent garden. So I'm digging my toe in the dirt and wondering what kind of grits can a gal dish up using corn, tomatoes, several kinds of lettuce, rocket, chard, red chicory, mint, basil, sorrel, coreander, and everything but the squeal of a radish and a beet using nothing but a BBQ-for-one and an Occitanian 2-ring burner.

Fortunately, he's a vegetarian.

images from t to b: author slash subsistence farmer surveys her harvest possibilities, yurt lighting, flashed-view from the foot of bed.

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So except for the vodka...

August 06, 2005

We thought that homegrown bloody marys would be an appropriate drink to celebrate his 44th birthday and to give the yurt a proper yurt-warming. All of the ingredients except the ever-important electrolytic enhancors were homegrown or grown within 2 kilometres of the yurt. Thankfully more homegrown (from only 4,5km away) was gifted later. Gawd bless us.

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So except for the coffee...

July 26, 2005

You may have noticed that culiblog has entered holiday mode. Hopefully this will all end soon. Profound apologia for the die-hards, but it's summer and all I want is homegrown. Please just go outside.

Here in Occitania, most of our food doesn't even make it the fridge before we've brushed the dirt off the roots and gobbled it up. Breakfast happens during the morning's water & weed and consists of cherry tomatoes, blackberries and baby courgettinissimi. Raw sheep's cheeses from the market, either very young or very old are our favourites and the saltiest dried ham compliment our salad at lunch. We have decided that we like all of our lettuces pure, not mixed. They're so sweet and full of flavour when you grow them yourself.

Except for the coffee, tea and peanut butter (you can take the girl out of California, but you can't take the California out of the girl), we're easily eating food grown within 5 kilometres of where we live. Yes, including the wine.

Now if we could just say that about our cosmetics. Please send black nail varnish.

images from l to r: today's harvest to be eaten at lunch, my garden (which changes every single day)

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Blackberry harvest

July 14, 2005

Je suis arriivé! This is half of the blackberry harvest of just 5 days. We ate the other half while contemplating what we should do with them. Kristi produced some blackberry sauce which we slathered on vanilla ice cream.

In a few minutes we'll go to the garden and I'll plant the ginger plants. The meyer lemon cuttings did not make it.

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It won't fit

July 09, 2005

This last week I officially inherited a kitchen garden. My dear friend KvR facilitated the entire affair in my absence and took this photograph of the allotment overlaid with my planting wishlist. As you can see I have not been blessed with a practical mind but KvR put things into perspective for me with the illustration above.

All advice concerning cover crops and creating espalliers in tubs is welcome. Good espalliers make good neighbours! The area floods every 3 years or so and I was planning on keeping the expensive fruit trees mobile until they can hold their own against the flood waters.

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Poison

July 29, 2004

Oleander means 'poisonous for man(kind)' and the flowers, leaves and sap of this plant are indeed poisonous for humans to ingest. Upon my arrival here (2 weeks ago today!) Kristi asked me to take care of her failing oleanders. I got straight to work, watering, inspecting, killing large herds of orange aphids, concocting homemade pesticides to kill the aphids (just soap), and transplanting the oleanders into planters that effectively keep in the moisture.

These days the oleanders are putting on quite a show and this morning when I walked out to give them a look-see I noticed a very funny 6-legged white stamen! A white spider had camouflaged herself in the flower and was waiting for something delicious to come along and become breakfast! I am really pleased with this development because this means that nature has taken over the foul task of dealing with the aphids. If you're like me and don't like eating aphids, it's really nice if another species lends a hand. One woman's meat is another one's poison.

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