Dig Magazine

What better way to help children learn about gardening than to encourage them to grow plants themselves? That is the idea behind the GrowLab program for school children sponsored by the National Garden Bureau (NGB) in a joint venture with the National Gardening Association and the National Science Foundation. In a matching funds program, NGB and participating seed companies donate 6 GrowLabs per year to schools (K-8) across the country. Each GrowLab is accompanied by a complete starter kit containing pots, potting mix, labels, fertilizer, insecticidal soap, watering can, and seeds.

NGB also provides recipients of GrowLab units with supporting curriculum materials such as videos and follow-up newsletters, and arranges for a local seed company or expert to “adopt” participating classes. These mentors are available as a resource for the teacher, offering advice and information in addition to replenishing seeds as needed.

Kinder “gardeners”

Brenda Kukay, a kindergarten teacher at the Mitchell School deep in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, has had her GrowLab for almost 6 of the 11 years she has been teaching. Hers was the first school district to participate in the NGB program, and she was among the teachers sent from 5 schools for training in Vermont. Partnered with the world famous Missouri Botanic Garden, over the years she has integrated the GrowLab into her science curriculum to the delight of classes.

Brenda introduces her kindergartners to science with GrowLab activities around seed planting, germination and plant growth. Her tiny ones learn by the inquiry method to ask good questions and then set about to answer them through a hands-on science experience. They sharpen observation skills as they watch for lettuce seeds to sprout. Then, when they harvest their lettuce crop, they enjoy eating the salad. They also plant peas, beans, corn, and other greens, depending on what seeds are available. In the spring they plant their young seedlings outdoors in a garden tended by the summer school students who plan to sell them to raise money for the program.

Brenda has a longtime interest in gardening and has cared for the ornamental garden areas at the school in her spare time. With this enthusiasm and the support of the periodic GrowLab newsletter, she guides her charges through the joys of growing. Of course, they are simultaneously learning other things. They learn math by measuring, estimating, and creating graphs and charts. Their writing skills are enhanced as they record their activities in their science journals. When publication resumes, they will write articles about their seed growing activities for the school newspaper.

Lots of Learning

In Brenda’s experience this is a program that teaches both students and teacher. She feels she is exposing some of her class to a totally unfamiliar world. She has discovered that some of these apartment-dwelling city kids are so removed from the natural growing cycle that they have trouble conceptualizing the future of the seeds they plant. She reports that, when asked what will be the result of planting tomato seeds, for instance, some students will venture guesses as wide-ranging as corn, beans, even a dog! She has had to do some research, herself, to master the technical intricacies of providing appropriate amounts of light for various crops.

The GrowLab program has had a halo effect at Mitchell School. Many of Brenda Kukay’s colleagues have shown an interest in what she does and are considering the potential of a GrowLab in their classrooms. The two official ones in her building are proving to be so popular that 3 more homemade versions have appeared in other classrooms. She, herself, is hoping to have a wheeled model that she can move about the room easily. One teacher, whose classroom lacks the space for a GrowLab has found room for a worm composting operation for her students. Their product is contributed to the growing activities in Brenda’s room. Teachers like the flexibility of the GrowLab units. They are useful at almost any grade or ability level. They can be integrated into various study units, or used as separate study units or for after school clubs.

The GrowLab program has influence beyond the school walls as well. Occasionally parents report that the children are asking questions at home and taking an interest in plants. Some kids are strengthening bonds with gardening grandparents. Ultimately, students who learn with GrowLabs learn a lot more than just about plants–or even science.

For More Information

The National Garden Bureau considers children’s gardening one of its most important missions. The non-profit organization intends to continue donating GrowLabs to schools throughout the 21st Century. The Bureau and member companies have placed 21 GrowLabs in schools, and will donate an additional 6 labs this fall.

For more information about donating a GrowLab and other educational programs, please contact: The National Gardening Association, 180 Flynn Avenue, Burlington, VT. 05401 phone: 1-800-LETSGRO. Or visit their excellent website at WWW.garden.org where each month the kids and classrooms section features new lessons and articles from the Growing Ideas educators’ journal. The site highlights curriculum resources that support garden based learning, connections with e-mail pals in growing classrooms, and links to other plant and garden based sites.

What is a GrowLab?

GrowLab units donated to classrooms across the nation are commercially designed and constructed for self-contained, tabletop seed-starting and seedling management. Essentially a metal frame that supports two 4 foot long easily adjusted fixtures that hold fluorescent growing lights, each unit is 52 inches wide and 23 inches deep, 39 inches tall. Each is equipped with a timer, convenient trays to hold seedling containers or potted plants and a tent-like cover to help regulate humidity.

GrowLab activities

Suggestions for integrating the GrowLab into a science curriculum are provided in the materials that accompany the unit and subsequent issues of the newsletters. However, the only limits on its use are the imaginations of the teachers and students.

Propagation: germinating seeds, growing seedlings, rooting cuttings, repotting

Experimentation: with fertilizer, light, humidity, growing media

Production: bedding plants for sale or gifts; vegetables for eating

GrowLabs Promote:

Art
Botany
Business skills
Chemistry
Environmental studies
Geography
Mathematics
New foods
Plant identification
Recycling
Responsibility and follow through
Self-esteem
Scientific observation
Teamwork
Time management
Writing

Spring is here and our lawns look like they have the horticultural counterpart of the measles, but the spots are yellow, not pink. This leads to the stratification of gardeners into three groups. There are those who reach for an herbicide to get rid of dandelions, then the more environmentally concerned who pinch off seed pods and dig up what they can – and lastly those who simply accept things as they are since after all, it’s only Taraxacum officinale, alias dandelion. The first group of gardeners may receive some relief as a result of what American ecologists saw at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in England. They noticed there was a mosaic of plots in this grassland. Some plots, yellow with dandelion blooms, were bordered by plots where dandelions were almost absent despite the heavy rain of dandelion seed received annually. They found that the dandelion population was related to whether potassium had been applied.

Following tip on this observation the Minnesota group studied the effects of potassium on dandelions and five lawn grasses in a greenhouse environment and the relationship between the amount of potassium in plant tissue and the density of dandelions of lawns in Minnesota. In the greenhouse study potassium was highest in dandelion tissue, suggesting dandelion has a hearty appetite for this element. They also found that in pots given a low potassium fertilizer the dry weight of dandelion, fescues and orchard grass all decreased BUT dandelion suffered the greatest loss, down to 81% of its weight in pots given a complete mineral supplement.

The lawns selected for study were restricted to those that had not been fertilized, treated with herbicide or hand-weeded for several years. The amount of cover as well as the density of dandelions correlated with the tissue potassium content. When the plant tissue level of potassium was low, the dandelion density and cover in the lawns was low. Based on these results it is suggested that one step gardeners could take right now is to use a fertilizer of ammonium sulfate or ammonium phosphate, However, this would not be good for lawns of Kentucky bluegrass which is almost as greedy for potassium as dandelions.

At this time it is unclear how widely applicable the strategy of controlling weeds through nutrient limitations will turn out to be. In the opinion of agricultural and weed scientists, it appears to be an area that is worthwhile to follow up, for the relationship between soil characteristics and weeds is only beginning to be understood.

There is no more delightful decoration for a garden than nature’s own–butterflies. On a warm sunny day these visitors provide color and motion that doubles the pleasure of gardening. How fortunate for the gardener that it takes very little effort to make the yard attractive to butterflies!
Butterflies will visit, and possibly stay to lay eggs, wherever there is a variety of plants for food and shelter, some moisture, and an absence of pesticides. While there are typically more species in warm climates than in cooler ones, there are butterflies almost everywhere in the country. Their appearance in your backyard ultimately depends on whether their favorite plants are growing there–certain ones to support their larvae, many others to support adult butterflies.

Larvae (Caterpillar) Host Plants

The typical garden is not likely to incidentally have plants that host the larvae of most butterflies. The caterpillars of each species are usually are pretty picky, favoring the foliage of specific plants or plant groups at this stage of their lives. Larval host plants are often unattractive, weedy and wild, generally unfit for cultivated gardens [see box]. Yet, adult female butterflies choose these particular plants (Monarch moms must have milkweed!) to lay their eggs on. This assures that newly hatched caterpillars have appropriate food immediately at hand.

Typically, young caterpillars begin voracious feeding immediately after hatching, virtually skeletonizing host plant foliage. Watch a parsleyworm, (a swallowtail caterpillar) devour the foliage of Queen Anne’s Lace, carrots, or parsley! Butterfly larvae grow as they eat, shedding their skins 4 to 6 times before achieving maximum size for pupating. Only then do they desist, becoming immobile in a hard chrysalis suspended from a leaf or stem of the larval host plant until emerging as an adult butterfly.

All-time Butterfly Flower Favorites

-Aster
-Black-eyed Susan
-Butterfly bush
-Butterfly weed
-Coreopsis
-Joe-Pye weed
-Lantana
-Liatris
-Pentas
-Purple Coneflower

Butterfly Host Plants

Fortunately, adult butterflies have more cosmopolitan palates. The flower nectar they need for energy is available in lots of different flowering plants. They will visit your yard in search of those that are most easily accessed by their long, coiled tongues, or proboscis, which enables them to reach deeply into the center of flowers where the glands that produce the sweet nectar are located. They are particularly attracted to hot-colored, fragrant flowers. They get further nutrition from moisture from puddles and raindrops, rotting carrion and other liquids–even human perspiration if you stand very still–that provide traces of minerals and nutrients not in nectar.

Butterfly Garden Design

The butterfly gardener’s challenge is to provide diversity of plants in communities throughout the property to support both larvae and adults. Variety is the key. Choose lots of kinds of plants–herbs, annuals, and perennials as vines, groundcovers and in beds, plus shrubs and trees. Wildflower meadows featuring native plants are ideal. Food crops add to the diversity too. Assure that blooms are available to visiting butterflies for the entire season. The greater the variety of suitable plants, the greater the potential number and variety of types of butterfly visitors.

It is not necessary to integrate larval and adult plants throughout landscape. Just allow some part of your yard or nearby property to remain weedy and undeveloped to lure female butterflies to lay eggs. Somewhere in the yard, let fresh water accumulate to support communal “mudpuddling”, so butterflies get soil salts and minerals as well as moisture. Overripe fruit that has dropped from trees also provides nutritious moisture. Finally, butterflies like some flat stones for basking, or sunbathing, to gather warmth to power their wings.

Butterflies visit flowering plants that are in full sun and in sites sheltered from wind in beds or containers. Protect garden beds exposed to the wind with a hedge of glossy abelia or butterfly bushes or a wall or pergola covered with honeysuckle or passionflower. Flowering shrubs provide shelter for roosting too. The more fragrant, the better. Plant at various heights, because like birds, certain butterfly species prefer to feed at certain heights. (Some species are even quite territorial and try to chase others from favorite plants).

Finally, unlike the famous monarchs which migrate to Mexico and other points south, most butterfly species overwinter nearby. This means that their eggs, chrysalises, or larvae are likely to be in or near your yard during the non-gardening months. Some will even hibernate as adults. Do not mow weedy sites and dismantle woodpiles which provide them safe shelter in the off-season.

Caterpillars: Distinguishing Friend From Foe

Butterfly larvae tend to be solitary, or sparsely distributed, whereas pest caterpillars such as fall webworm make tents and hatch in the hundreds. The latter are best handled by pruning the tent out of the tree or breaking it open so that the birds can eat the immature larvae.

However, even in sparse numbers butterfly caterpillars can damage ornamentals or food plants. For example, the ubiquitous white cabbage butterfly lays lots of eggs that turn into destructive green worms which devour cabbage and broccoli and their relatives. An insecticide product containing Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) sprayed onto plant foliage will handle feeding worms that threaten to destroy crop yields. In the case of parsleyworms on parsley, simply moving them to a non-essential plant such as wild carrot will both save the crop and preserve the eventual butterfly.

Favorite Larval Host Plants:

-Asters
-Bermuda grass
-Clover
-Hollyhock
-Lupine
-Mallow
-Marigold
-Milkweed
-Nettle/thistles
-Parsley
-Passionflower
-Plantain
-Snapdragon
-Sorrel
-St. Augustine grass
-Turtlehead
-Violet

The Best Butterfly Blooms Are:

-composites, umbels, and panicles, whose clusters of small florets provide many sips plus a place to pause. -brightly colored in lavender, purple, red, orange and yellow. -single-flowered types where the nectar is more accessible. -flat or tubular in varied lengths. -planted in drifts and clusters for efficient grazing. -fragrant.

Flowering Plants Whose Flowers Attract Adult Butterflies:

Common Name Botanical Name
Aster, New England Aster novae-angliae
Beebalm Monarda sp.
Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia sp.
Blanket flower Gaillardia sp.
Blazing star Liatris sp.
Butterfly bush Buddleia sp.
Butterfly weed Asclepias tuberosa
Candytuft Iberis sempervirens
Cardinal Flower Lobelia Cardinalis
Catmint Nepeta
Coneflower, Purple Echinacea purpurea
Daisy, Ox Leucanthemum sp.
Gas plant Dictamnus Fraxinella
Goldenrod Solidago sp.
Globe thistle Echinops Ritro
Hyssop, Anise Agastache Foeniculum
Joe-pye weed Eupatorium purpureum
Jupiter’s beard Centranthus ruber
Lantana Lantana Camara
Lavender Lavandula sp.
Lupine Lupinus
Milkweed, Swamp Asclepias incarnata
Milkweed, Common Asclepias syriaca
Mountain bluet Centaurea sp.
Pentas Pentas lanceolata
Phlox, Garden Phlox paniculata
Sneezeweed Helenium autumnale
Sage, Scarlet Salvia coccinea
Tickseed Coreopis sp.
Turtlehead Chelone glabra
Verbena Verbena bonariensis
Yarrow Achillea sp.
Zinnia Zinnia sp.

Provided by the National Garden Bureau www.ngb.org.

“Until the advent of the photograph, the mainstream of Western art was intentionally figurative. Photography reproduced figures more successfully than art, potentially a devastating blow to art. Some artists reacted by seeking to redefine the purpose of the figurative as the representation, the emblem, of feelings. Other artists point blank rejected the concept that the figurative was the intention of art, and declared that the intention of art was to be non-figurative. They said art didn’t represent anything outside itself-art is for art’s sake.

For a hundred years artists working in the shadow of the photograph have consciously tried to do what a photograph can’t do, even as the photograph was evolving the capacity to do what the artists were doing. Unconsciously, in fighting the photograph, artists were learning to see in ways artists had never seen before. Primarily, the photograph radically altered how artists see foreshortening and perspective. In effect, photography flattened the image of reality. Without the photograph, there never would have been Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, ,and so on.

One can say that the last one hundred years have been a period of Research and Development in the techniques of art.

This period is now over. Art has now passed over the wall the photograph represents. The challenge is to know what comes after, or beyond, or on the other side, of the photograph. The anatomy of the new art is pattern. There is no foreshortening in pattern. There is no perspective. There are only two dimensions, the dimensions of pattern. Technologies developed over the last hundred years offer to the artist a treasure trove of techniques with which to express his/her view of the new art.

This period is now over. Art has now passed over the wall the photograph represents. The challenge is to know what comes after, or beyond, or on the other side, of the photograph. The anatomy of the new art is pattern. There is no foreshortening in pattern. There is no perspective. There are only two dimensions, the dimensions of pattern. Technologies developed over the last hundred years offer to the artist a treasure trove of techniques with which to express his/her view of the new art.

The art of the last century hasn’t, however, altered the intention of the thousands of years of art that preceded it. Art seeks to affect the viewer.How does the artist of today fulfill that figurative intention? How does the art of today rejoin the mainstream of Western art? That’s the question I seek to answer.”

“Art is as native to the parcel of earth on which it is conceived as the vegetation that naturally grows there. One culture does not transplant to another culture. There are Italians in America but no American-made Italian art. And though we were originally formed as a nation by transplanted Englishmen, we have not produced another English Shakespeare. As potatoes and tobacco are native here, so are comic strips and jazz. As corn is All-American, so is the American movie.

And, as the potatoes, tobacco, and corn plants that were originally weeds through cultivation have become the staples of life we now know and grow, so it is with culture. Native cultures are cultivated from weeds that originate as folk art. Jazz, the comic strip, and the movies are the cultural weeds, the folk arts of America.

Where previous cultures have had folk tales, Americans have movies. The movies of the l930s, l940s, and early 1950s, are folk tales. As folk tales, they deal with the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil. As folk tales, they tell us, Americans, who we are. I, who grew up as an ardent member of the movie generation, have been painting the faces of some of my favorite stars of those early films.

What is distinctive about those faces, what is in fact their star quality, is their reflection of the then American perception of itself as a God-given manifestation of inviolate innocence.”

Art deals with concepts of reality. The last great concept of reality was introduced in the Renaissance. It was the reality of matter. The most influential architect of the three-dimensional reality was Leonardo da Vinci.

The stuff of our 1994 reality, the reality of this Computer-Space-Age, is not matter but ideas. The visualization of an idea is pattern. As a matter of fact, we don’t see three dimensions. We see patterns.

The new anatomy of art is that of pattern.

The evolution of my art has been the evolution of the use of pattern in an effort to picture the reality of our time, Mind.

A cookbook that puts you on the front porch, snapping beans, sipping iced tea, and waiting for your peach cobbler. In this definitive cookbook, Ronni Lundy draws upon her Kentucky mountain roots and on the recipes and food passions of the fellow Southerners-from home cooks to a new generation of professional chefs-she met in her extensive regional travels.

Lundy cooks her way through the bounty of the Southern garden, from succulent purple speckled butter beans and lady cream peas to corn and greens, muscadines, Georgia peaches, figs, mayhaws, and watermelon. She visits farm markets and festivals, finds heirloom-seed growers, and provides mail order sources for everything from sweet-potato chips and “old-fashioned whole heart” grits to fiery-orange HoneyBells.

Check out an excerpt from the book:

It was likely June when Faulkner and Porter had their historic conversation. At least that’s when the butter beans, the speckled ones, come in around Mississippi, Faulkner’s home. Wylie Poundstone, the chef at King Cotton Produce Company, a combination produce market and restaurant in Montgomery, Alabama, says, “It takes awhile for butter beans to grow, but if the weather cooperates, we can have them from June right on through the fall.” Bob Gulsby, one of the four owners of King Cotton says, “As long as we’ve got ’em, we’ll ship ’em fresh to anybody who wants to order.”

Those who do are often transplanted Southerners longing for the taste of a vegetable as common as July fireflies where they grew up, but hardly known elsewhere. My experience has taught me that asking for butter beans north of the Mason-Dixon is apt to get you a bowl of thick soup made from very large, dried lima beans. It’s tasty, but a bit on the brackish side and doesn’t have the sweet, creamy flavor of a Southern butter bean at all.

The term “butter bean is used to refer to lima beans, which fall roughly into three categories. First it refers to fresh limas, with the most prized being those with beans of the “baby” variety-small (about the size of your thumbnail) and very tender. Such beans can be found “throughout the United States either fresh (in season), frozen, or canned.

Second, a distinction is made in many regions of the South between this already small lima bean and even smaller ones. These smaller beans may go by different colloquial names. They are known as butter peas in the Montgomery area but may be called “sieve” beans in other parts of Alabama or the South. This is also the bean prized as the “savvy” of Charleston and the surrounding Low Country area of South Carolina. Joe Kemble, assistant professor of horticulture at Auburn University, says the common names are a corruption of the more proper name, sieva bean. Sivvy beans are prized for their sweetness but, alas, don’t ship well.

Third, the speckled butter bean is a variety of lima with a colored, mottled ,skin-usually a deep purplish brown and green, or black and green. Speckled butter beans have a creamier texture and more buttery flavor than their green lima cousins. 1, like my mother before me, watch religiously for speckled butter beans in the very brief period in the summer when they may show up shelled and fresh in the produce department of local supermarkets. Although the farmers in this part of Kentucy don’t grow them commercially, speckled butter beans are a summer staple in farm markets throughout the deeper South, and if you drive the noninterstate highways in June, you are apt to see hand-lettered signs on the side of the road preferring “fresh speckled butter beans-just in.” Most commonly, though, I come by these beans frozen, and sold throughout the year at supermarkets here. They are very nearly as tasty frozen as they are fresh.

Like sieva beans, speckled butter beans sometimes go by colloquial names. For instance, Wylie Poundstone says lots of folks around Montgomery call them rattlesnake beans. And elsewhere a lima variety with cream and maroon speckled skin is called the Christmas bean.

Technically, you can interchange the more widely available baby lima beans for the speckled butter beans in most recipes, but the flavor will be different. All of the beans are delicious, however, and, as Wylie says, “You can do so much with them. They’re some of the most versatile vegetables in the Southern kitchen.”

Remember to go easy on seasonings when you cook butter beans, since it’s the beans’ own subtle flavor which you want to emphasize.

Classic Southern Butter Beans
Serves 6 to 8

This is the fundamental recipe for fresh shelled butter beans. If you’re accustomed to limas cooked in very little liquid (seasoned with a pat of butter and dash of salt on the way to the table), this may seem like a lot of water for cooking, but you want the dish to yield some sweet pot likker to be sopped up by Real Cornbread (page 103). If you’re eating Low Country-style, serve the beans over rice.

2 quarts water

1 ham hock

6 cups (about 2 pounds) fresh shelled baby lima or speckled butter beans

salt

In a large pan, bring the water and ham hock to a boil. Cook, partially covered, at a low boil for about 30 minutes, to season the water. Add the beans and bring the water back to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes to 1 hour (see The Time It Takes, below), until the beans are tender and creamy inside. Remove the hock and add salt to taste. Serve immediately or keep refrigerated for 2 to 3 days. Reheat thoroughly before serving.

Note: Frozen speckled butter beans or baby lima beans may be used. When you add them to the water, use a wooden spoon to gently break apart clumps.

The-time-it-takes

Southerners cook butter beans anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours. The choice depends somewhat on the size and freshness of the beans (the larger or older they are, the longer they take to reach tenderness). Some folks like butter beans just at the point when the inside is tender but the skin still pops when bitten. Unless you are making a salad or relish with the beans, I think that’s missing the point. Perfect butter beans are cooked until the insides are quite creamy-the reason for the ‘butter’ in their name.

In most of the recipes for butter beans here, you will find estimated cooking times with a wider variance than is usual in a cookbook. Experiment until you discover what degree of tenderness you prefer, and be aware that even the same type and size of bean will take a different amount of time to cook from one batch to another, depending on the freshness of t e beans. If you want to serve butter beans for a dinner that requires precision timing, cook them to doneness a day or two before, refrigerate them, and reheat thoroughly at serving time.

Jerry’s Speckled Butter Beans
Serves 4

My mother loved to cook frozen speckled butter beans in the winter when their rich, creamy texture and nutty flavor were salve to the soul. We made many a meal of these beans, her mashed potatoes (page 171), and Real Cornbread (page 103), and thought ourselves supremely well fed.

2 cups water

16-ounce package frozen speckled butter beans 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons half and half salt

In a pan with a lid, bring the water to a boil and add the butter beans, stirring gently with a wooden spoon to separate. When the water returns to boiling, reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 30 to 35 minutes, until the beans are tender. (You may need to add a little water near the end of the cooking time to keep the beans from sticking, but you want most of the water to cook away.) Add the butter and allow it to melt, then add the half and half and stir. Cover and simmer for another 5 minutes, then add salt to taste.

Speckled Butter Beans and Country Ham in Lemon Veloute
Serves 6 to 8

I never thought I’d taste a dish with butter beans as blissfully perfect as my mother’s, but this one is its peer, with a velvety texture and the perfect marriage of complementary flavors in the beans, tart sauce, and tangy ham.

Butter Beans

21/2cups water

5 cups fresh or frozen speckled butter beans

1/4pound country ham with fat removed, cut in small pieces

Lemon Veloute

11/2cups chicken stock

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon

juice

salt

In a heavy pan, bring the water to a boil and add the butter beans. (If using frozen beans, use a wooden spoon to gently break up clumps.) When the water returns to a boil, turn the heat down and let the beans simmer for about 45 minutes, or until the skins are tender and the insides creamy, and most of the water has boiled off.

While the beans are simmering, make the lemon veloute’. In a small pan, heat the chicken stock. Fill the bottom of a double boiler with water, and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, in the top of the double boiler, set directly over low heat, melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Cook, whisking, for five minutes, then slowly whisk in the hot stock. Place over the boiling water and cook for 45 to 50 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep a crust from forming on top.

When the beans are done, add the country ham pieces and cook until the ham is just warmed. Meanwhile, remove the veloute from the heat, add the lemon juice, and salt to taste. Remove the beans from the heat, pour the velout6 over the beans, and mix well. Serve immediately.

Steam Beans

If you should luck upon a crop of fresh sivvy beans or butter peas still in their pods, and they are truly fresh and very young, you may want to try something my friend Don Nobles of Montgomery, Alabama, recommends: ‘I’ve had butter peas steamed still in their little pods when they are very, very young. Just steamed for a few minutes until they’re tender, and then served with salt and butter They’ve a flavor in between an English pea and a snow pea. Truly splendid!

Copyright © 1999 Ronni Lundy

Back in the 1970’s the average backyard vegetable garden was about 1000 square feet. Now it is typically 200 square feet. New houses tend toward smaller yards, so the farm model of growing food and the generous space it required has become obsolete. Contemporary vegetable gardening borrows the best design ideas from the past, while incorporating new technology and materials to make smaller vegetable gardens easier to manage, and more productive.

Two ways to coax more production from limited space is by borrowing from old cultures the concepts of raised beds and vertical growing. Shifting a garden layout from rows to raised beds almost doubles the available growing area, as most of the ground formerly devoted to paths is dedicated to production. Growing food vertically to exploit the airspace above the garden again almost doubles its effective production area. This configuration facilitates the use of soaker hose irrigation, woven fabric mulches and other space age materials to dramatically reduce the amount of work involved in producing crops.

Raised Beds
Raised beds are permanent, rectangular plots holding soil that remains loose and rich because it is never compacted by foot traffic. Paths between the beds are also permanent. While they require a significant investment of physical labor to dig and box, they do not have to be dug again every year. Raised beds promise years of virtually instant bed preparation and easy planting each spring. Try one bed at first. Dig it in the fall when the weather is cool, then add more beds over time. Because their excellent soil permits intensive planting, it will not be necessary to have as big a garden overall as before.

Making Raised Beds
Lay out the bed’s dimensions with stakes and string. A width of 3 or 4 feet is a comfortable reach from either side for most adults. Lengths of 8 or 12 feet (conveniently allowing for evenly spaced trellis supports every 4 feet) are most adaptable to the typical backyard.

Begin digging within the string at one end, cultivating the soil to a depth of at least a foot-deeper is better. If working in a turf area, put aside pieces of sod for the compost pile. Working backward to avoid stepping on newly dug soil, turn over shovels full of soil and mound them in a loose pile within the measured dimensions of the bed. This is a good time to incorporate organic material such as compost, peat moss or chopped leaves into the soil. Overachievers may wish to double dig the bed, but it is not required.

Designate at least 3 feet for path area around the bed. Scrape off the valuable top few inches of topsoil from the paths and mound it on the newly dug bed to increase its height, then spread wood chips or gravel, or lay bricks in the path area to eliminate future problems with mud. Rake and level the surface of the mounded soil in the bed and it is ready for planting.

A layer of straw or chopped leaves will protect the soil over the winter and discourage erosion of the mounded soil into the paths. While it is not necessary, boxing each bed with 2 by 10 inch wooden planks prevents erosion most effectively, makes beds easier to manage and looks more attractive. Boxed sides also pro vide a place to fasten fixtures to permit quick attachment of sturdy vertical supports for various crops.

The Value of Vertical
Another way to maximize production in limited space is to exploit the air space above the garden bed. Combined with raised-boxed beds the potential for dramatically increased production with vertical growing is enormous. Plants grown vertically can be planted more closely together and produce more in the rich, friable soil of a properly managed raised bed. Because they take up only a few inches of surface soil, there remains lots of bed left to be intensively planted with low growing vegetable plants. Orienting beds on a north-south axis assures that plant-laden trellises do not block the sun from lower growing plants as it moves from East to West across the yard during the day.

Erecting vertical supports is always a time consuming problem. Freestanding ones provide flexibility in placement, but are precarious, tending to collapse part way through the season from the weight of maturing crops. The planks that enclose a raised bed offer a convenient place to attach year round fixtures that make setting up and taking down trellises quick and easy. They make it possible to have a flat trellis system that runs along either side of the bed that is stable, yet easily reconfigured to facilitate crop rotation.

Establishing a Trellis System
There are lots of ways to fasten trellis poles to the wooden planks of boxed beds. One tried and true method is to fasten 12 inch lengths of PVC pipe, 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter, with plumber’s brackets at four foot intervals along the insides of the long sides of the bed. Dig the PVC pipe into the soil so the opening is flush with the top of the board. Sturdy vertical poles, wooden or PVC, up to 8 feet long, fit easily and quickly into the PVC pipe fixtures for instant stability. Since their first 12 inches sit in the fixture below the soil level, the trellis will actually be 7 feet tall, about maximum reach for most adults.

Next, cut 4 foot lengths (the between the vertical poles) of strips or similar I by 2 inch slats, crosspieces to make panels of trellis fasten to the vertical poles at top tom. The trellis material itself hand-strung wire or twine, or co netting made of nylon or plastic with 4 or 6 inch holes allows for access when picking large vegetables as tomatoes. Fasten it to the crosspieces with a staple gun to form panels easily mounted and removed from a poles, rolled up and stored year. Drill holes at the ends of pieces and at the tops and base poles for attaching panels of trellis beds. One tried and true method is to with screw bolts and wing nuts.

Veggies That Grow Well Vertically:
Beans, Lima Pole
Beans, Pole
Cucumbers
Melons
Peas
Squash, winter varieties such as acorn, butternut Tomatoes, indeterminate
Benefits to Vegetables of Vertical Growing:
Better air circulation
Better access to sunlight
Less exposure to soil pathogens
Easier to harvest
Dry off faster after rain Less likely to be curled or deformed

Reasons to Use Boxed Raised Beds:
Save space
Maintain soil texture
Do not need annual digging
Heat up earlier in the season Use water and fertilizer more efficiently
Improve soil drainage
Permit intensive planting
Are neat and accessible
Support trellises securely
Permit use of shade cloth or plastic tents
Avoids soil compaction due to foot traffic

Provided by the National Garden Bureau www.ngb.org.

What a wonderful world it would be if we could discover the lawn grass that stayed green year-round, never had to be watered, fertilized, or sprayed and only occasionally mowed. While the cruel side of Mother Nature probably won’t ever allow such a thing to happen, there is a lot that we can do now to come closer to that low maintenance lawn. While a fortunate few homeowners who are just starting to establish a lawn can come closest to a low maintenance lawn, even the majority of people who have to contend with a lawn planted well before they bought the house and yard can gain some advantages.

From the Ground Up
Low maintenance lawns begin with almost compulsive attention to the site’s soil and most likely the need for its improvement, according to Doug Fender, director of the Turf Resource Center. “For new lawns”, he points out, “an essential first step is soil testing followed by incorporating whatever amendments are called for to create the proper pH and physical characteristics. For existing lawns, the only practical way to modify the soil is with seasonally repeated aeration and light top-dressing with high quality, mature compost or other soil test-determined amendments. Without good soil, even high maintenance lawns will have problems.”

Good soils accept and retain moisture, while allowing adequate drainage and providing sufficient air space to permit roots to penetrate, absorb moisture and nutrients and exchange gases. To the degree that the soil can be improved, the lawn’s overall maintenance will be reduced. Conversely, the poorer the soil, i.e., compacted clay or 100 percent sand, the more the lawn will require energy, effort and maintenance, in the forms of water, fertilizer, pesticide and probably even mowing. Yet, high maintenance in poor soils will return only high levels of frustration.

Selecting the Right Grass
After soil preparation, the next step is to understand and recognize the need to balance desires for low maintenance with the actual uses that the lawn will have. Growing prize-winning roses in a battlefield is impractical, so too is hoping for a low maintenance lawn that must endure high traffic use For example, in cool-season areas, fine fescues (hard, chewings and red creeping) are generally recognized as low maintenance grasses, compared to many varieties of bluegrass. But, if the lawn is subject to heavy use, fescues don’t have the capacity to recover from wear as rapidly as bluegrasses. So the low maintenance advantages and slow recovery disadvantages of fescues would each have to be weighed against each other. Which is better, re-seeding and restricting traffic on a fescue lawn, or going with bluegrass and achieving reduced maintenance in other ways?

In selecting a grass specie and variety for a low maintenance lawn, search-out those that have undergone multi-year tests for water and fertilizer requirements, plus consider more strongly those grasses that contain beneficial fungi called endophytes. Present in ryegrasses and fescues, but not yet in bluegrasses, endophytes offer increased resistance to surface feeding insects and seem to better tolerate heat, drought and many diseases. As turfgrass breeders expand their knowledge and abilities, expect to see more grasses with endophytes in the future. Turfgrass sod producers, whose business success depends on satisfied customers, spend a great deal of time reviewing the special attributes of new grasses and their suitability to the producer’s climate before determining which they will select for their sod fields. Homeowners can choose to do their own seed selection research, or utilize the expertise of a sod producer and gain an instant lawn. While the initial cost for sod will be higher than seed, the establishment routines required for seeded lawns are far from being a low maintenance process.

Maximize the Return on Every Effort
Compared to the hand-weeding, watering, fertilizing and spraying that most flower beds or vegetable gardens require, a sound argument can be made that on a square-foot for square-foot basis, lawns are naturally a low maintenance landscape feature, they simply take up more square-footage. But moving beyond that potentially endless argument, homeowners striving for a low maintenance lawn should try to maximize the return on every bit of time and energy they expend on their lawn. Here are some tips every homeowner can use to increase the return on their lawn maintenance investment:

1. Water as early in the morning as possible, when winds are calmest and temperatures lowest.

2. Water only when the lawn is dry and then apply an amount that will soak in deeply.

3. If there is an in-ground sprinkler system, adjust it to the seasonal needs of the grass plant, don’t just “set it and forget it.”

4. Mow frequently enough so just the top third of the blade is removed, and leave the clippings on the lawn. (Clippings provide nutrients, a small amount of moisture and do not contribute to thatch.)

5. Fertilize when the grass plant can use the nutrients. For cool season grasses that would be in early spring (when soil temperatures are 50-degrees or higher) and late fall. For warm season grasses, fertilize lightly through the peak-growing season during the summer. Avoid fertilizers that are not slow-release or those with a very high percentage of nitrogen because that leads to more mowing.

6. Apply pesticides only to those areas that require them. Weeds can be pulled or spot-sprayed. A dense, vigorously growing lawn will crowd out weeds and be able to out-grow many insect and disease problems, so one of the benefits of proper low maintenance lawn care is that many of the high maintenance jobs of spraying insecticides, herbicides and fungicides won’t be necessary.

Finally, while low maintenance lawns can be every bit as beautiful as high maintenance lawns for much of the year, the stresses of summer heat and drought can cause them to go dormant, particularly if water is not applied. No one hangs leaves on their deciduous trees after autumn, because it’s an accepted part of nature. Why then should a homeowner attempt to keep a low maintenance lawn dark green during the heat of summer, when the grass plant’s natural tendency is to be less active and somewhat dormant?

When temperatures start to drop and fall rains increase, the low maintenance lawn will recover, particularly if it’s been started in good soil and treated properly the rest of the year.

You don’t have to cut down the grass area to have a low maintenance lawn, just cut down the unnecessary and unproductive maintenance habits that have become all too common.

The lift I feel now that I wake to sunshine pouring through the windows and a sky the blue of a robin’s egg reminds me of the literal lightness of being on planet earth. Light has everything to do with how we feel and how our gardens grow. There are rules about how much light plants need, but you have to use your head.

I’m planning flower and vegetable gardens for our new home, a property with a lot of big old shade trees. It’s difficult to judge where there will be enough light for either when the sun moves to its overhead summer position. Most flowers and vegetables need eight and can take twelve hours of light.

You can find out the light needs of a plant by looking at the light symbol on the plant tag or seed packet:

Full sun: the plant can take light from sunrise to sunset, will be just fine with eight hours, and can make do with six hours of direct full sun.

Semi-sunny or part shade: the plant will do well with four to six hours of direct sun, or dappled light all day.

Shade: the plant can succeed with only two to three hours of direct sun a day, or half a day of bright dappled light.

That’s useful information, but the light in your garden, your region, and the inside of your house for that matter, never fits these descriptions exactly, and anyway, light varies from month to month throughout the year.

In spring the sun not only rises earlier and earlier, it also moves from fairly low on the horizon toward an overhead position. So the light available in any given spot — except one out in the open with nothing around to cast a shadow, changes with each season of the year. And the intensity of the light (and heat) also differs from region to region. Sunlight in the South West is more intense and hotter than in the North East, one reason native vegetation differs from place to place.

You can use the knowledge in that table to decide how much “extra” sun or shade your plants can take. A tropical plant said to need part sun is apt to accept more direct sun in a window in Chappaqua, New York, than in a window in Orlando. Pansies said to thrive in full sun cooked to death in my warm Washington, DC, garden by mid May. Planted in the dappled shade of a flowering cherry, and growing in moist humusy soil with a mulch cover lasted longer. Here in Connecticut they can go all summer in the sun.

There are so many other variables the “rules” sometimes hardly seem like rules. In the North, plants growing in full sun often can stand the cold more than plants in part shade. Snow cover is tremendous protection from cold. Deep snow cover allowed the tuberose in my Vermont garden to survive winters that killed them in Washington where there was much less intense cold, but almost no snow. Moist humusy soil and a layer of mulch enabled plants in DC to stand more intense sun and heat than if they were growing in porous, sandy soil without mulch.

So what’s for real? The plants themselves tell the tale. Out in the garden not enough sun can make plants grow tall and spindly, fail to flower or fruit, and flop forward. Too much direct sun can cause sunburn in plants as well as people — the green leaves turn whitish and wither.

The same thing happens indoors where the plants have the advantage of steady temperatures. Seedlings waiting for time to move to the garden grow tall, thin, and tend to flop over at the slightest provocation unless they have at least 12 hours of good direct light. Growing 18 hours a day under grow lights they grow stocky, sturdy and dark rich happy green. A glassed-in sun porch facing south is second best: it admits as much light as a greenhouse from the side, but less overhead.

And yet, some flowering plants we associate with the outdoors do very well in the light that comes through south clean windows. In the early fall I plant petunia seedlings in a south window and they bloom all winter long.

Houseplants are tropicals, plants that evolved in a climate of steady year round warmth, that come from the understory of jungle-like areas. They do well with relatively low light levels. Recommendations to grow a plant in a North window has nothing to do with geography; it is a call for a cool situation and indirect light. A recommendation to keep a plant in an East or West window means it needs diffuse light all day, or direct sun half the day.

But even indoors light and the heat that comes with it changes with the seasons. In hot weather, the East window is best for plants that like to be cool because afternoon sun is hotter than morning sun. A South window provides the longest hours of direct sun available which helps most flowering plants. But the closer you get to summer, the hotter the south window becomes. I handle that by moving plants that need part shade, African violets for example, back a foot or two from the window as the sun heats up. The seasonal variation is the position of the sun in the sky also affects the light your houseplants receive. Since in summer, the zenith of the sun’s trip across the sky is higher than in fall or spring, it is less likely to shine directly into a window. Especially a window with an overhang or near a tree. That protects sun-tender plants, but can rob sun-loving plants of light.

And, summer and winter, mirror and white walls bounce light and may be adding to the levels on the sill. Interior lighting also affects the plants — fluorescents, especially if they are less than a year old, add to the footcandles the plants receive. So do ordinary incandescent bulbs. African violets have flowered under my little old desk lamp.

To sum up, I find plants forgiving and wildly unpredictable in their responses to environment. A baby ficus tree I bought in a southern nursery grew up to be a ceiling high tree living in Washington, DC, in a dark corner of a room papered in Chinese red. The usual recommendation for a ficus is good light in a window facing West or East. What was different about this plant’s situation is that it spent six months of the year on a covered porch. That saves a lot of light-deprived houseplants. And also maybe that, having starting out as a baby with low light, the plant adjusted to it.

Plants will tell you right quick if they are getting enough light. A ficus drops its leaves. If you improve the light by adding floods, or moving it closer to a bright window, or moving it back from light that is too bright, it will stop dropping leaves. The real answer to how much light does my plant need is: consult the plant.