Food Bank - Christmas Eve

Hello neighbors in the Willamette Valley,

 
It is a pleasant coincidence that the Monroe Food Bank will be open next week on Christmas Eve. What better time to share from the blessings each of us have been given with those who may be less fortunate at this time. The Food Bank will be open from 10:00 to 12:00  on Thursday, Dec. 24 in the garage and covered car-port behind the big, white Methodist Church in Monroe. Farmers/gardeners, if you have a surplus of potatoes, winter squash or other bounty from your garden, these donations would be welcome. I can't imagine many people's winter-crops survived last week's freeze but greens, beets, carrots or other fresh produce would be a special treat for those at the food-bank, at this time of year.

Canned goods, and dried goods and other commercially prepared foods are all welcome as well.


Thank you for your generosity and may this season of light touch you in miraculous ways,

Llyn and Chris
Alpine Food-Sharing Garden

Bean Here Now

It's difficult to show the evolution of the garden because of its size (80'X 100'). Pictures taken to capture the whole garden just blur into a lot of undistinguished greenery and its easy to lose scale. Here's a short photo essay that shows the progress of one aspect of the garden; the pole-bean tipi that we made and planted in late May.

We began by prepping the soil, fluffing it up with a spade-fork and digging in rabbit manure. Beans don't need a lot of fertilization as they are able to "fix" nitrogen from the air. We mounded the soil into a ring and lay down a heavy bed of straw in the middle (6" thick). Next we chose three stout, straight bamboo poles and tied a knot around them about six feet from the ground. You want to place your knot lower than the height of your shortest other poles as they need to be able to lay in the crotches formed by this tripod. Spread the three tied poles into a tripod with the legs equal distance apart. Lay the other poles in the spaces between these main poles so that you eventually end up with your poles 4-5 inches apart at the bottom. Work your way in a spiral laying a new pole between these original 3 poles in a circular direction. Be sure to leave space for a door. Later in the summer, the tipi provides excellent shade and it's easiest to harvest the beans from within.

Here's the tipi's top after all the poles have been placed:


Plant the beans about 4-5 inches apart. Beans are a large seed so you don't have to groom the soil as much as for small seeds such as carrots or basil.


Here's the tipi about three weeks after we built it and planted the beans:


This picture was taken about eight weeks after planting:


Here's Llyn in the door of the tipi almost 10 weeks after planting, in late July (those are buckets of manure tea in the lower right-hand corner):


We harvested beans off the tipi for several weeks and yielded many, many pounds which we took to the food bank. It was relatively easy to harvest the beans because they hung down into the center of the tipi. Next year we're going to grow our cucumbers on a slanted trellis so they will hang down and be easy to harvest as well. This next picture was taken in late September just a week or so before we had a killing frost. Here's Llyn harvesting the dried bean-pods to thresh and save the seed for next year's garden.

Bean pods should be brown and mostly dry to the touch before you harvest them for seed. They won't develop much at all after you pick them and so you want the ripest, fullest bean-pods to ensure the most viable seeds. Here are a few ripe ones below: This variety is called "Blue Lake" pole beans. ("Blue Lakes" also come in a bush-variety that won't vine up the poles.)

This last picture was taken in mid-October, a few weeks after the killing frost. That's a giant artichoke plant in the foreground (started from seed last March! - It had it's roots in a pile of seasoned rabbit manure.) One quarter of the garden is behind the pole-bean tipi and to the left.

Our garden has mostly been put to bed for the winter. We have some winter greens planted, some carrots and beets. We'll continue to harvest and share these as they ripen. The days are getting noticeably shorter and the winter rains have begun to fall in Oregon.


Thanks for following along on our garden adventure and much thanks to the many of you who have contributed to the success of the garden in any way (you know who you are).


Llyn and Chris

Alpine Food-Sharing Garden is Done; Food Bank still needs donations

The Alpine Food-Sharing Garden had a killing frost over a week ago. It came on rather unexpectedly and it put an end to just about everything in the garden except the winter crops we planted in early September: kale, brussels sprouts, peas and a few other things. These are quite big enough to bring a harvest to the food-bank.

If your garden is still producing surplus produce, and you'd like to bring it to the Monroe Food-bank, the people there would be very grateful. Though on third Thursdays (tomorrow) the food-bank isn't open till 5:00 pm, you can still bring your donations by at any time in the day. Leave them on the carport behind the big, white Methodist Church on Orchard St. Other weeks the Food Bank is open 10:00 - noon. They are open year-round.

Thanks so much for your support -

Chris and Llyn
Alpine Food-Sharing Garden

Saving tomato seeds

One of the missions of the Alpine Community garden is to educate people about the importance of seed-saving and to offer techniques to demystify this process. Today's blog covers the practical steps necessary for saving one of the home-gardener's favorite fruits: the tomato!

In order to save seeds that will "grow true" and produce fruit similar to the one you saved seeds from, you must start with an "heirloom" or "open-pollinated" (OP) variety. Hybrid seeds are artificially created by seed companies to produce plants with unique qualities (early ripening, bug resistance etc). The problem is that they don't "breed true". If you save seed from hybrids, next year's plants may or may not be what you want. If you wish to save seeds, choose seeds or starts that say "open pollinated", OP, heirloom or non-hybrid.

OK, so lets say you have grown some beautiful heirloom tomatoes and you're ready to save seeds. If you have more than one plant to pick from, choose the plant that is healthiest, most robust, earliest to ripen and with the best-tasting fruit. Then, pick one or two fruits that are the best examples of these same qualities.. If there are other people who harvest from your garden, put a twist-tie, or in some other way mark the fruit so no one picks it prematurely. Let the fruit come to fullest maturity possible. It's OK even if it starts to rot a little.

Here are two heirloom tomato varieties we saved for seed this year. We saved them as beautiful examples of color, juiciness and size. That's a Black Krim in the lower-left and a Striped German in the upper-right.

In saving seed, you wish to mimic nature's process. Have you ever noticed what happens to the tomatoes left in the garden after the first frost? They turn to a slimy mush, with the fruit eventually dissolving away from the seed. In the following year, robust little volunteers emerge from where the tomato rotted. The way we mimic this process: Cut open the chosen tomato and put it in the blender with about the same amount of water as tomato pulp. Whiz it in the blender for about a minute, so all the flesh separates from the seeds. Don't about the seeds. They have a protective gel that keeps the blades from harming them. Pour them into a wide-mouth glass jar. Be sure to swirl the blender as you pour the last liquid out so no seeds are left in the bottom. If you're processing more than one tomato variety in a row, rinse the blender well so you don't mix seed varieties. Label the jar so you remember the variety of seeds you're saving.

The next step is to leave them to "rot". Leave them in the open jar for 4-7 days. When it's warm outside, the process will go faster. Stir them once or twice a day with a chopstick to help separate the seed from the pulp. (If fruit flies are a problem, cover the jar with cheesecloth during the fermentation process.) The pulp and non-viable seeds will form a layer at the top. The healthy seeds will sink to the bottom. Look for a nice scum to form on the top. Mold is OK. The picture on the left is of two varieties of tomato seeds in process. The ones on the right were just blended so no layers have formed. The ones on the left have been sitting a few days. The other picture shows the quality of the scum that has formed on the tomatoes once they are ready for the next step. Notice the bubbles which indicate a mild fermentation process.















The last step is to dry the seeds. Spoon out the scum and pour off most of the water. Add more water and stir them to loosen any remaining flesh and carefully pour off the excess water. Repeat this process till you've removed the majority of the flesh. Then pour the seeds through a fine-mesh strainer and rinse them in the strainer. Let them drip-dry and then tap them onto a piece of tin-foil, a jar-lid or other non-porous surface. Seeds will stick to paper towel or napkins. Transfer your label to the drying seeds and leave them to dry for a week or so. Be sure they are thoroughly dry before storage so they don't mold in the bag, envelope or jar.

Each seed-saver has his or her preference for containers to store seeds in. We use clean, small plastic bags or recycled plastic pill-bottles or other small jars. The most important thing is to keep your whole seed collection in a dry, dark environment with moderate temperatures. Avoid freezing or excessive heat. Stored well, seeds can remain viable for many years.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

It's been awhile since we've reported on the progress of Alpine's Food Sharing Garden. We've been as busy as nut-burying squirrels - harvesting the garden, sharing the harvest with the local food-bank and canning and drying some of the surplus. Just last week we began planting our fall/winter crops of greens, cabbage and brussel sprouts.

On average we take a well-mounded wheel-barrow full of produce to the Monroe Food Bank each week. Chris and I (Llyn) still do most of the garden's tending but the word has gotten out that Thursday is harvest day and we have volunteers showing up most weeks to help with the harvest and assist with other projects as they arise. Here are a handful of pictures that show our harvest and volunteers at "play".

Llyn Peabody with our first week's harvest:


Eva Riedlecker harvesting beans inside the tipi:


Steve Northway and Chris Burns planting fall crops:


We love growing food for people and we're already preparing for next year's garden. We'll have the luxury of having beds prepared and the fence built. We now know which produce is most popular at the food-bank so we're planning the garden around this information. Here's an overview of one of the lushest areas of the garden. That's the pole-bean tipi on the left and to the right is the 50' x 25' NE section of the garden with tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, kale, collards, chard, raspberries and sunflowers. The picture was taken a month ago so things are even lusher now!

Harvest Time - Thursdays 9:00 - 10:00

We are grateful to our new Alpine-ian friends Eva and Jesse for their volunteer help in the garden. Here's a picture from last week of Eva harvesting beans inside the bean teepee.

The garden is coming on strong now. We still have lots of greens: mainly kale and collard and the 80 tomato plants are all in various stages of ripening.

We have a request for those of you who are picking from the garden for your own needs: please let us know if you have needs for large quantities of anything, or if you wish to pick something other than tomatoes and greens. Some of the plants are being saved for seed and some of the bean varieties are meant to dry on the vine.

You can reach us at 847-8797
Llyn and Chris Garden Coordinators

3rd Thursday - Food Bank open 5 - 7:00 pm

The Monroe Food Bank is open from 5:00 - 7:00 pm this Thursday - August 12. Thank you to everyone who has been bringing their surplus garden produce to the Food Bank. You can drop it off any time during the day. Leave it under the carport behind the Methodist Church in Monroe.

Llyn and Chris
Alpine Garden Coordinators

Monroe Food Bank - Thurs. 10:00 - 12:00

Thank you to those of you who have been bringing your surplus garden produce to Alpine Park and directly to the Monroe Food Bank. It's a wonderful feeling to see the eyes of the recipients light up when we arrive with bags full of farm fresh goodies!

Chris and Llyn will be at the garden this Thursday morning (July 30) between 9:00 and 9:45 to harvest. If you have surplus, you can bring it there, or take it directly to the foodbank behind the Methodist Church in Monroe.