I think that we can wait a week for planting, as the winter storms have hit anyway. Most of my time will be spent shoveling snow over the next couple of days anyway. Today’s post will focus on something I feel strongly about, and that most people aren’t aware of. The importance of seeds.

Every person should buy heirloom organic seeds if they don’t want to support a corporation that pushes a GMO agenda.

I have a bit of bad news: Simply buying a cheap packet of seeds, or a seedling from the nursery lot can have the gardener unknowingly voting in favor of that corporation.

The good news is that anyone can save heirloom varieties by seed cataloguing, buying heirloom varieties, and saving their own seeds.

I will admit that I had no idea how important this was until I started researching seed catalogues. Yes, I am a chef that is deeply concerned about GMO products and corporations lobbying governments to regulate what food I am allowed to eat. I am concerned with nutritionists/scientists f#*king with my food. Never once did I consider that by purchasing a packet of seeds, or that seedling, that I was indirectly funding those same companies and people.

I found out that I had no idea that our food system is being slowly eroded by corporate interest. Perhaps it may even become illegal to do what my Grandfather used to do – save his own seeds. I know that sounds like tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theory – but if a corporation can patent a seed and go after an organic farmer for “patent infringement,” then it’s not too far down the rabbit hole to see that happening to the public at large.

How Do We Solve This Problem?:

Corporations aren’t evil – only people are. Corporations are made up of people, but as an entity, they are not human. The sole reason they exist is to make money for their stockholders. I believe that right there is the key to solving the problem of GMO products in our gardens.

Corporations are all about the bottom line, and when something doesn’t remain profitable, then it is usually dumped. In the case of seeds for our garden, a vote for a mega corporation is by buying the seeds from a company that it owns, or supplies seeds to. If the demand for those seeds goes away, the product becomes a liability, and the corporation must explore other avenues for profit building.

This is why it is important to buy heirloom, organic, or from a seed purveyor you can trust. If you are unsure about whether the supplier is aligned with a corporation that you don’t trust, the best way to find out is by researching online before you buy the seeds, or the seedlings. Ask your nursery if you are unsure about what seeds were used. (In the above picture, McKenzie seeds are NOT affiliated with a GMO corporation. In fact, they are owned by the Jiffy Corporation.)

Save your seeds for next year and plant your own. Our grandparents did it, so can we. It may become impossible to do so if the seeds are genetically modified to not sow to seed, as with some GMO products. Worse, you might be breaking the law in some cases in the future by doing so, if the past has any prediction in the future.

Conclusion

No one can tell us what we can and can’t grow – unless they have a patent on the seeds. We ultimately have the power to decide by voting with our dollars. If we chose not to purchase our seeds, (or plants,) from a company that patents life, then we are speaking to the only thing that the corporations are set up to understand; our almighty dollars. The best way to do this is by doing our research before we buy, and by saving our seeds.

Your Turn

How are you going to buy your seeds or seedlings this year? Are you interested in an article about resources for that? Let me know in the comments!

Connect with the Well Done Chef

Don’t forget about our BlenderBottle Giveaway! Contest ends March 1st, at 23h59.

I am never far from that sucky string called the Interwebs. You can get a hold of me many ways:

• Follow @Jason_Sandeman on Twitter.
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• Add the Well Done Chef! to a Google+ page.
• Ask me a question from my Ask the Chef! page.

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I know, it seems early that we are all into this gardening stuff, as we can’t even plant most stuff up here until after May 4th. What are we to do then, with February almost to a close? The answer is, wait. And drool over stuff. We have a great tool to discover exactly what we need, and that’s the handy planting guide from the Garden Planner at Mother Earth News Magazine. At the time of this writing, I couldn’t print the plan out without the application crashing – so I did the next best thing – I grabbed screen shots and stitched them together. Let’s see what it spit up for us, shall we?

Now, that’s a handy list! In the past, I just sort of went to the nursery, and bought whole stock loads of plants, without any sort of plan. It usually happened around the end of May, or closer to the beginning of June. We are talking about $200 in plants, and usually only what caught my eye at the time.

How is this list going to help us? First, it gives a good sense of what we need to be doing right now. February is a dead month. Here is what needs to be started indoors, or under cover:

Chives, Echinacea, Onions, Green Onions

The chives and Echinacea are already in the ground or in a pot, so that is taken care of. Green onions are nicely sprouting on the bay window:

How does one do that? It’s real straight forward: next time you buy green onions, cut the tops off them and leave the whites, (and roots) in a glass jar with clean, tepid water. You have to change the water ever couple of days, and rinse off the roots. What will happen is the roots will flourish, and the tops will pop up constantly. I have cut this back twice in two weeks. Not bad when they are 2 bunches for 0.99$!

So, that leaves us with the other fun part, an excursion to the local store to buy some seeds and a starting kit. I love how the store has all sorts of cool packets for their seeds. I am interested in the heirloom brands, and my son likes the cartooney packages below them. I say – whatever gets my son in the garden is a good thing!

Next week, we will look at the actual planting of our onions, chamomile, peppers, sage, and tomatoes. I plan to do this as a project with the little one, so it should be fun. Stay tuned!

Your Turn!

Tomatoes were the winner of last week’s poll. Now to get more specific. I have 8 spots available for tomatoes – tell me what kind you would like me to grow by answering the poll below. (Or, to the side when I get it into there.)

Connect with the Well Done Chef

I am never far from that sucky string called the Interwebs. You can get a hold of me many ways:

• Follow @Jason_Sandeman on Twitter.
• Like the Well Done Chef! on Facebook.
• Subscribe to the Well Done Chef’s YouTube Page
• Add the Well Done Chef! to a Google+ page.
• Ask me a question from my Ask the Chef! page.

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This post is a little late, I know. I have just finished digging through an awesome prize I received from Marisa over at Food In Jars – The Fresh Girl’s Guide to Easy Canning and Preserving. The book is awesome, even if it’s not directed at my demographic. Get yourself one Stat! (Through my link of my Amazon Store of course!) Thanks to Marisa again for the lovely prize!

The Garden Poll Results:

For all of those who participated in the poll, thank you very much. It was very cool to see in real time how the produce would line up. I was a bit surprised at the results. Some things were a no-brainer, (tomatoes,) but others… a nice surprise.

Based on the results, it looks like I will be growing what The Fresh Girl’s Guide to Easy Canning and Preserving book calls a “salsa garden.” The corn will go – but I am going to leave one row for my wife, so she can have a little bit of it, and to prove it isn’t a waste of time like last year.

The Finalized Plan – For Now

So, now all that’s left is to figure out what, and when to plant. More on that in the next weeks post!

Your Turn!

How is the garden shaping up? Let me know in the comments!

Connect with the Well Done Chef

I am never far from that sucky string called the Interwebs. You can get a hold of me many ways:

• Follow @Jason_Sandeman on Twitter.
• Like the Well Done Chef! on Facebook.
• Subscribe to the Well Done Chef’s YouTube Page
• Add the Well Done Chef! to a Google+ page.
• Ask me a question from my Ask the Chef! page.

Subscribe to the Well Done Chef by the RSS feed or subscribe to Well Done Chef! by email.

Last week I talked about planning action steps for your garden, and the week before  about setting your goals for the upcoming gardening season. Now that you are done that, where do we go from there? Today we are going to look at some tools that we will use to design the layout of our garden, where the veggies will go, and that way we will be able to plant some seeds!.

Why a Garden “Floor” Plan is Important

As I have spoken about before, it’s best to know what you are going to be planting, so you can have a plan, then execute it. The best way to do this is to draw it out. Once you get a visual of where the plants are going to go, it is easier to make changes on paper than if the plants are in the ground.

The Garden Design:

Annie over at Annie’s Kitchen Garden has been planning her garden over the last couple days with some graph paper and cute little icons she found online. She told me it was all pieced together by her paint program. Wow, that is total dedication.

I originally thought that she was using the Grow Planner from Mother Earth News. Lucky for me there is that awesome app, so I decided to give it a try. You can see the plan as it is for this week here:

Here is a photo I cropped. Notice the spaces aren’t full yet – I am waiting for the results of the poll. Get your votes in today!

Help me fill up the empty spaces, VOTE today!

Some resources to get you planning:

• Mel’s Book The All New Square Foot Garden (link goes to my Amazon Store)
• Annie’s Kitchen Garden
• Organic Gardening Magazine
• Grow Planner from Mother Earth News – and they have an iPad app as well.
• Seed Starting Sites: Vesey’s Canada, or Vesey’s USA

Your Turn

We are into the second week of the garden poll. You tell me what to grow – there have been some entries so far, and I’ll let you know the winners next week.

Connect with the Well Done Chef

I am never far from that sucky string called the Interwebs. You can get a hold of me many ways:

• Follow @Jason_Sandeman on Twitter.
• Like the Well Done Chef! on Facebook.
• Subscribe to the Well Done Chef’s YouTube Page
• Add the Well Done Chef! to a Google+ page.
• Ask me a question from my Ask the Chef! page.

Subscribe to the Well Done Chef by the RSS feed or subscribe to Well Done Chef! by email.

Last week I talked about setting your goals for the upcoming gardening season. Now that you are done that, where do we go from there? Today we are going to take a baby step closer to our goal of having a functional, practical kitchen garden. We are going to plan out a set of action steps to accomplish for February.

My Past Routine, and What’s Different This Time

If you are like me, just throw a bunch of stuff in the garden, which ends up costing more in the long run.

Without a plan, there is a lot of waste in the garden. Plants may not grow, bugs may eat half of your crop, you may even get really lucky and have too much produce, and not enough family or friends to give it to!

My garden was okay last season, despite a lack of planning and a pile full of neglect. This year I decided that by having a step by step plan will help the execution of the garden – sort of like a road map

February’s Action Steps:

• Read Mel’s All New Square Foot Gardening. The method I will use is almost exclusive to the award winning program.
• Decide what I want to grow – and why. I already know what I want to grow for the whole family, but for the purposes of this blog, we will have ourselves a poll. That’s right, I’ll grow what you like!
• Decide where to plant, Design a garden. We will be drawing out the spaces for planting, using  the guidelines in Mel’s book. I will be working off my notes from last year, but if this is your first year, working with your goals will give you what you need.
• Order seeds. I have a bunch of seeds I saved from last year. I plan to order some others. I will put a few links at the end of this post.
• Make new soil mix. I will be using the formula for Mel’s mix.
• Start seeds – I will be starting these out in a couple of weeks. It will be the first time I have ever grown from seed, so it should be interesting.

Some resources to get you started:

• Mel’s Book The All New Square Foot Garden (link goes to my Amazon Store)
• Organic Gardening Magazine
• Seed Starting Sites: Vesey’s Canada, or Vesey’s USA

Your Turn

Here I have my first ever poll on WDC. Tell me what you want to grow! Once I figure out how to put the poll in the side over there, you’ll be able to vote there too.

Why would I have a Garden update in the end of January? Hear me out here – I know it sounds a bit premature, but by the end of this post, I will show you how to fashion a set of clear goals so you can get the most out of your upcoming gardening season.

This turned out to be a good producer... now - had I really planned things out...

I have always had a haphazard method when it comes to gardening.

My method and plans were simple:

• Once the grounds warm up – go to the nursery, Wal-Mart, or wherever – and look at a bunch of plants.
• Ohhh! Shiny! Spend around $100-$200 on plants.
• Spend another $50 on compost, fertilizer, and “black earth.”
• Fix or replace all of my broken “gardening” tools, or buy something else that’s shiny this year. (Like a nifty seed starter!)
• Justify to the wife all the expenses, with the lame, “We’ll be saving money!”
• Plant my seeds – with the best of intentions of course!
• Watch the seedlings grow with baited breath.
• Plant the tiny seedlings with a careful, tender hand, and a prayer.
• Later, curse as the plants die off, overtake the area, or refuse to grow.

I did a little better last year after reading the new Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening. I had a bit of a plan – complete with building some nifty little gardening boxes. Lucky for me, the system is pretty hands off – I managed to get quite a gardening haul despite the neglect I showered onto the unfortunate plants. As you can see in the photo above, watering was optional.

This year I am plan to do a lot better – by setting some goals.

• By setting some clear goals, I will have a sense of what I want from my garden.
• Having the end in mind first will help me make the roadmap to get there.
• Week by week I will be able to see what is working, what is not, and troubleshoot.
• There will be less waste of time, energy, and money by knowing what the goals are.
• I will save a ton of money by pre-planning.
• I will have a clear understanding at the end of the season whether the goals were met or not, and what to fix for next year.

How do you go about setting these goals?

Grab a pen and paper, and ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I ultimately want with my garden? What is the raison d’être? It could be to feed your family, to eat healthy, to make a gift – or anything you like. You are about to drop a lot of time and effort to this project, so having the reason why is the first step to your success.
2. What do I need to get done so I can succeed this year? Do you need to build raised beds? Read up on how to garden? Perhaps you need to have a compost bin set up, your earth tested, order some seeds – this is where you lay out the major points for your overall success.
3. Are there any areas that I need to look at that didn’t work out last year? (Or, if this is your first season, then think of what might come up.) An example of this is I grew a lot of tomatoes last year, but I only harvested 50%. I found the other 50% while picking up my dog’s waste in the back yard. This year I’ll make sure he can’t reach the tomatoes.
4. Is there anything that I am interested or excited about trying? Have you always wanted to try growing rosemary? How about Thai Birdseye chilies?

Here are my goals for this season in gardening:

1. Grow my own food for eating healthy in the summertime.
2. Grow enough for canning for the winter.
3. Grow enough herbs for dried herbs.
4. Grow enough herbs to make gifts this year.
5. Read up on Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening.
6. Find seed catalogs and order the seeds I do not already have.
7. Plant the seeds I have indoors so I don’t have to drop a lot of money down in May.
8. Design a pleasing arrangement that will allow room for my child to play.
9. Make some flower boxes for the wife so she can have her garden area as well.
10. Keep the dog away from one of my growing areas so I can actually get my full tomato harvest.
11. Branch out with newer stuff, like garlic and ginger.
12. Grow grapes and possibly make wine.
13. Grow raspberries and blackberries.

Your Turn

Alright, so that is how you make your goals for the Garden this season. Next week I will get into designing an attack plan for the upcoming season.

So, what are your goals for the coming garden season? Let me know in the comments!

Winter is coming… and I have a problem

I guess I can count myself lucky that I live in southern Quebec. Here I am in the second day of November, and the temperature is still a balmy 7 degrees outside. (44 Fahrenheit for the Americans out there.) Rosemary is a hardy herb that does not survive the harsh winters we have up here in igloo-land. What’s a chef-writer to do?

I watched my garden patch as the days of November slowly approached, sneaking up on me like the mornings that greet you without sunlight, worried about the branches of rosemary awesomeness. Bringing the plant inside has never worked for me. It seems the shock is always too much for the fragile evergreen to bear. I’d have to endure the mutterings of my dearest lamenting about “another plant” inside the house.

Sure, drying the herb is an option – but I have never been satisfied with the results. The oils lose their potency over time, and all of the awesomeness that is rosemary is just … gone. If you want to see what I mean, go buy a jar of rosemary leaves. Open the bottle; there’s no distinct floral, pine scent to seduce your nostrils. Your mouth won’t water, expecting to be tantalized with promising combinations like lemons bursting with its acidic tones, or the earthy aroma of potatoes, roasted garlic, and the fruity, heady smell of a extra-virgin olive oil.

No, you’ll be greeted with a reaction-evoking smell – factory dust. Or, perhaps you are lucky – you’ll smell the same smells I was greeted when I first raided my mother-in-law’s spice rack – nothing.

I’ve read about people that chop up their herbs and freeze them in ice trays. That’s certainly a way to go if you are making a pesto, or a puree. With rosemary, though, the French have a saying, “ça va pas marcher.” (That won’t work. When you hack up rosemary, the oils inside are volatile and oxidize quickly. That’s why the works turn into a mess that looks like you are chopping through twigs, bark and mud on the cutting board. It’s hard enough getting a picky family to eat something new, want to try something that looks like it was accidentally dragged through your back lawn?

The solution

Then, as luck had it, I found a post over at Kalyn’s Kitchen on how she freezes rosemary, written in 2006. What struck me most about the method is her picture of rosemary after a year of freezing. That is something I can totally get into!

I am trying out this method, and I will let you all know how it goes. Anyone who knows me, knows that rosemary is my favorite herb. If this method turns out to be the bomb, then my thanks go out to Kalyn for introducing me to it.

Freezing Rosemary

1. Cut the rosemary branches right down to the roots. The roots will be going into compost anyway.
2. Cut the rosemary into six inch sprigs. Any longer than that and they wouldn’t fit into the freezing bag.
3. Place into a freezer bag with a zip-top (you know the brand,) and packed them in as nicely as I could.
4. Close the zipper until an inch is still open; gently force the air out of the bag.
5. Close the zipper all the way and fold the remaining plastic over to make a nice package.
6. Place in freezer for 1 to 2 weeks, or until needles are frozen completely.
7. Pull out bag from the freezer, strip all needles from the branches. (I like to keep the branches for soups and stews – why waste all that is good from the plant?)
8. Put needles into a glass jar, cover, and keep frozen until you need them.

I am a day behind due to an internet SNAFU. No worries though, the garden is coming along nicely! Here’s my progress for the family Victory Garden

It has been constantly raining over the last week. I chalk it up as good, except I have not been able to get outside to build my boxes. It looks like I will have to resort to building them inside!

As per the instructions on the package for the herb garden, once the “true leaves” make their appearance:

Isn’t that pretty? You should smell it – a sweet hint of coriander. Now comes the tough part:

Oh my, but how that hurts! No worries though; I will make sure these micro basil will go into a Caprese salad for lunch!

Finally, I want to leave you with a project that I have on my hands, and if it ever stops raining I will get out and take some pictures of the compost bins I plan to make with these little gems I picked up:

It seems that the nursery is just giving them away? I plan to build a nice, simple 2 compartment compost bin. No worries, there will be a tutorial for that!

That’s all for this week. If you are interested in finding out about more Square Foot Gardening, please visit my store link over at Amazon and buy the book so I can have a half cup of tea.

Wednesday has rolled around, and that means I will be updating you on my progress for the family Victory Garden. My oh Nelly, there is a LOT of work to do:

Honest, if it stops raining for any amount of time, my butt will be back there, for sure! I am going to be rocking the Mel Barthalomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening. (The link will take you to my Amazon store where you could purchase it and I can get a half cup of tea!)

Of course, that mess will have to be cleaned up!

Here is how our plants are doing:

Sweet baby oregano:

Now some baby thyme:

Beautiful parsley:

Majestic coriander:

Gorgeous basil:

Now that it has started, I find myself reluctant to thin the babies out. Mel warns about this in his book. It is necessary for the herbs to grow, so I will have to bite back my pain. After I finish this post – snip, snip, snip!

You know what is totally NOT fair? My wife doesn’t even have to try to have her garden section grow. She is much smarter than me; she planted perennials. Of course, you can’t eat what she planted, but hers IS effortless.

Here are tiger lilies coming up:

The problem with those little buggers is they invade all parts of your garden. When we first moved into this house, they were everywhere. Yes, they are beautiful, but they are a major Pain in My Ass.

In the front of the house, effortless tulips!

Again, a little work in the fall a couple years back, and that is what she gets. Small consolation: they will be gone by the time I can transplant the herbs into the garden. How about a money shot on that tulip?

Here is another set of effortless plants, but I have no idea what they are. I will have to ask the wife what they are:

That’s all for this week. If you are interested in finding out about more Square Foot Gardening, please visit my store link over at Amazon and buy the book so I can have a half cup of tea.

It has been 2 weeks since my son and I planted our fresh herbs for the victory garden. I thought an update and a couple of pictures were in order:

Now the seeds are nicely sprouted, so it is time to take off the cover and set the planter in a sunny spot.

Isn’t that some lovely basil? I am supposed to wait for the “true leaves” to appear before I snip the seeds back to one or two per square. Don’t worry about the waste though, micro basil is lovely!

Hard to believe that this will become thyme! One of my favorite herbs by far, I wonder what micro thyme tastes like?

Lovely, majestic coriander. This will be so lovely in my Thai Curry Soup.

So far it has been a lovely project to do with my son. The anticipation, the wonder when we propped the lid off far outweighs the 15 dollars spent on the project. Being able to grow your own? Priceless.