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July 2007 Newsletter
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Dear Kitchen Gardener,
Walking through the well-known farmers' market in Uzès,
France, as I recently had a chance to do, is a religious experience for
food lovers. The
olive stands alone are worth the trip. Add to that heaping
tables of sun-drenched produce, artisan breads and cheeses, a
mind-boggling choice of honeys, meats and seafood fished from the nearby
Mediterranean Sea and you have all the
makings of a memorable meal, if not several.
In fact, the quality and
variety of the produce is so dazzling that you might be tempted to ask
yourself why any area resident would bother growing some of his or her
own. Yet, despite the fresh bounty on offer twice a week at the Uzès
market, the kitchen garden, or "potager" as the French call it,
seemed much alive and well where I was staying.
I had a chance to meet and
speak with a few gardeners while I was there. If they grow some of
their own food, it's for the same reasons that you and I do: taste,
variety, freshness, economics, concerns about the environment, and, most
importantly, because they enjoy the process. My trip
reinforced what I already knew: kitchen gardening is a universal
language with many different dialects. What's different is that
some of us have a better garden view out our back door than others!
I learned a lot while I was
there. Rather than try to share it all in one gush, I'll let the
stories, pictures, and recipes trickle out over the course of the next
several months. In fact, if there's sufficient interest, we may at
some stage even consider organizing a KGI trip for those of you
interested in seeing and tasting the pleasures of Provence firsthand.
I'll look forward to updating
next month in the week leading up to
Kitchen Garden Day. I hope you'll find a way of recognizing
the day in some small way. We've got a lot to celebrate and share
with others.
Warm regards,
PS: Interested in starting a
local kitchen garden group in your area?
Check out
our new info page on gPods
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| 2. |
June 2007 Newsletter
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To read the full newsletter online, please see: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletterjune07.html
Dear Kitchen Gardener,
You are cordially invited to my house on August 26th to celebrate
Kitchen Garden Day. We'll be organizing a walking tour of some
home gardens in my neighborhood, making a stop at the newly-planted
kitchen garden at our local elementary school, and munching on some
delicious food along the way.
Since I'm assuming that some
of you will not be able to make it (for example, those of you from
Argentina, South Africa and Australia!), I thought I'd give you a quick
virtual tour of my June garden through the picture above. I've
left out a few identifying labels (e.g. garden hose, kale, onions,
misplaced toys, etc.) for lack of space , but it gives you a feel for
what's planted. For those of you who are curious, that's not grass
growing in between my beds, but fresh untreated grass clippings that I
put down as a mulch...very soft under summer's bare feet. I've posted a
high resolution picture of my garden
here without the labels if you want to see it in its natural state.
As you can see, it's been a
busy month getting plants and seeds in the ground and quite a few greens
out and into the family salad bowl. It's also been a busy month at
KGI "headquarters". We harvested a bumper crop of public awareness
raising this past month due to an
Associated Press article that featured our efforts to bring about a
kitchen garden revival. The article appeared in over 30 papers
across the US and has attracted a number of energized people to our
effort. Welcome newcomers!
Speaking about reaching out
to new folks, I continue to brainstorm ideas for reaching out to people,
some old, some new. In the new category, I've recently posted a
new short video to youtube,com which hopefully will get people
thinking and, ultimately, eating in a different way. If nothing
else, it's good for a chuckle. Please pass on the link if you find
it worthwhile. We're also adding prizes to our "Grow-Off
Show-Off" competition, too, so be sure to check that out.
Grand prize is $500 and all the international celebrity one gardener can
handle.
For those of you who can't
make it to Scarborough, Maine for our celebration of Kitchen Garden Day,
why not throw a little garden party of your own? That's the best
way I know to grow the number of home-growers: by bringing new people
into kitchen gardens - whether big, small, urban or rural - to
show them the quantity, quality, and diversity of crops a small plot can
produce.
I know this works because I
just recently helped some neighbors who attended our Kitchen Garden Day
party last year plant their first garden. They're delighted
to be eating their first home-grown foods ever. If that's not
cause for celebration, I don't know what is.
Happy summer,
PS: Next month, I'll report
from southern France: ooh la la, good things ahead!
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| 4. |
Take-away, give back
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Editor's note: This article and photo were contributed by Liz Kirchner of Manchester, UK. They feature an inspiring man, Shorker Tashek, who grows apple trees by the thousands in a modest garden tucked behind his take-out restaurant, giving the seedlings out to his customers and anyone else he can. Through his trees and his life, Shorker reminds us all that one person can make a difference.
Standing hunched in a sleety drizzle, Shorker Tashek surveys his orchard.
The back garden of Kyae’s Pizza and Curry Take-away in Bury, UK is crammed with yearling apple trees, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They're gushing from fruit boxes mounded with compost. They're sprouting from milk crates stacked in racks. They're stuffed in plastic pots. They're clustered shivering around our ankles in nooks of soil with no pots at all. A forest of cherries trees, head-high, in rows of rusting tomato puree cans huddle against a shed full of restaurant supplies - fat bundles of onions, stew pots, bright yellow tomato puree cans, sacks of chiliis. A white cat is sitting on a stack of burlap bags. Beyond the brick wall, a bus roars past spewing gravel and exhaust down Tottington Road, but in the rain, the garden smells sweet, cold, and soggy, like compost and cinnamon.
We hunker in the rain looking at the little trees. "I can tell you just the time I started planting," he says. "When my son was born. He is seven. I knew that if we don’t do this, the next generation will not respect us. They will say, 'How can we trust you? You have ruined the planet.'"
Your child's disapproval is strong motivation, surely, so. Tashek, 34, set about matter-of-factly greening the planet. In his native Bangladesh, he worked with volunteer organizations planting mangoes, bananas, and jackfruit to reduce hunger and bolster flood protection. In the UK for five years, he continues.
A giant hoarding above the gardens in brilliant blues and greens encourages passers-by to "Save the Planet. Save Yourself". People come everyday to take trees, he says.
His is the no-frills, no-nonsense "Grow trees. Give trees." approach. Tashek buys fruit-bearing trees, but plants apple seeds simply to produce plantable trees. Then he gives them away. One-by-one they go in little bundles along with the naan and cucumber salad to customers, neighbors, and friends at the take-away.
By the thousands they go to organizations like the Red Rose Forest, neighborhood Green Streets efforts. Elementary school classes replant barren fields with them. Garden centres hand them out at the till. "I grew 2,000 this year. Five thousand all together are in the gardens",
says Tashek.
There’s no knowing how many actually get into the ground, but the huge scale suggests quite a few. When it’s suggested that 5,000 trees is a lot of trees, he says, For one person it is a lot. For a country, it is nothing.
In from the cold, we drink hot chai on teal plastic couches under the take-away menu for pizza and poppadums, and newspaper clippings about Tash’s trees and his recent nomination for the prestigious Unilever Dragonfly Environmental Award.
"What he’s doing is to be commended", says Bury Councillor Dorothy Gunther. "Some of the trees are very small, but, you know, tall oaks from little acorns grow. Everything’s got to start somewhere. "
Saying good-bye and walking to town on that wintery afternoon, the lights are coming on in the houses, and I realize, there are apple trees in the gardens all along Tottington Road.
Story and photo copyright of Liz Kirchner of Manchester, UK.
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| 5. |
Water: Tap is the new Bottled
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Just as in the world of high fashion, trends come and go in the world of food and drink. It was once seen as the height of food fashion to buy "designer water". It was what the rich and famous did and, therefore the logic goes, what the rest of us should aspire to do. Now, however, tap water is enjoying a renaissance in popularity.
Some of the most chic restaurants in the US - such as Chez Panisse in the Bay Area and Del Posto in New York - now serve only their own filtered still and sparkling tap water. This gushing new popularity comes amidst admissions on the part of many bottled water makers like Pepsi (maker of Aquafina) that their waters do not originate from some pristine mountain spring, but from a public tap as well. Below you'll find The New York Times' take on the issue which, to us, reads like a drink of cool water on a hot, summer day. Tap water, that is.
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