What's planting now?

Can you guess what kind of seeds those are? Here are a few hints:

1. You can eat the leaves, stems, and roots. 
2. People used to call them "Blood Turnips." 
3. Some varieties can be used to make sugar, as an alternative to sugar cane.
4. I grow them every year.

Think you know?

Millet risotto with butternut squash and purple cauliflower

Last week I found a bulk bag of millet tucked into the corner of the freezer, where it had escaped notice after the Terrible Pantry Moth Infestation of '12, when all new grain products were quarantined in cold storage.

I'd scrawled "1:2.5 / 25" on the twist-tie — the notation I use for bulk-bin grains to indicate the ratio of grain to water (1 cup grain to 2 1/2 cups water) and cooking time (25 minutes). I've never made millet before, so I don't know if my numbers were wrong or if the prolonged freezing did something to the grain or what, but instead of cooking up fluffy and nutty and delicious, it came out kind of gummy. 

Unfortunately, I'd made a lot of it. 

Local Event: Seed Swap @ Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (BASIL) on Feb 15

I went to the seed swap at the Berkeley Ecology Center last year, and it was a blast. Potluck, meeting other local gardeners and urban farmers, and a whole room full of free open-pollinated and heirloom seeds, many for varieties I'd never heard of.

Some of the seeds came from local seed libraries, while others were commercially grown packets that people hadn't gotten around to using, or didn't use up. This is one of my favorite things about both seed swaps and seed libraries. In a little urban garden, a packet of 30 seeds is often too many. You don't have room for thirty tomato plants, and certainly don't want that many of the same variety (unless you want your entire summer's harvest to ripen the same week).  

Seed swaps and seed libraries let you take home just the seeds you need. Signs at the swap suggested 2-3 seeds for each plant you want, to allow for some not sprouting. This means you can easily try a lot of different varieties, without buying and wasting 90% of the seeds in each packet. After last year's seed swap, I grew four kinds of cucumbers, eight kinds of tomatoes, six kinds of peppers, and so on. It turns out that some of the results weren't quite what I'd hoped for, but that's okay: I had plenty of other ones to choose from.

(Sorry about the quality of the photos; I took them with my phone.)

Beer tasting at the yeast factory

Some time back, my husband expressed an interest in homebrewing. A bit later, I saw an infographic of America's beershed in Food, An Atlas, and learned that most of the world's brewer's yeast comes from just a handful of labs, one of which is located in San Diego, CA. And shortly after that, we happened to make a trip to San Diego to visit some family. Obviously, a visit to White Labs was in order. 

If you're a home brewer (or just a beer geek), White Labs is absolutely worth visiting the next time you're in the San Diego area. Don't expect a Willy Wonka experience — there's no dipping into the vats or licking the equipment. The tour gets a peek at the production area, but no entrance to the sterile labs, where yeast strains are isolated, banked, revived, and grown to supply the world's breweries, wineries, distilleries, and hobbyists. 

But there is a tasting room. And it will change the way you think about yeast.

Growing my own potatoes, year 2

A friend recently mentioned that he was growing potatoes. I got very excited and asked if he was growing them in towers, potato bags, raised beds, or hill-and-mulch. 

He looked at my blankly for a moment, then explained: "Whenever a potato starts growing, we throw it in the side yard. They're growing."

"Cal White" seed potato

MLK Day Volunteer Events with Urban Tilth

This Monday, people all over the country will be volunteering in their communities as part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service. You can find local volunteer opportunities at: http://mlkday.gov/

If you're local and want to spend a few hours working for food justice and sustainability (or just enjoy gardening, music, art, and community), consider joining Urban Tilth and a few hundred volunteers at the Richmond Greenway to plant fruit trees, build a market stand, plant spring gardens, rebuild a medicinal garden, and more.

Garden planning: Test your soil for lead

Spring is on its way, and you've decided that this is the year you're going to plant a vegetable garden. You've even picked out a nice sunny spot in the yard. But before you start digging up your lawn, there's something very important you need to do:

Test your garden soil for lead.

Lead contamination in backyard soil is common, and lead is toxic. Even at low doses, it can cause brain damage, nerve disorders, muscle pain, reproductive problems, and other serious health issues — especially for babies and children, whose nervous systems are still developing. 

It can take a few weeks to get the results back, so if you do the tests now, you'll have the results in plenty of time to fix the soil and plant your garden. (If you live somewhere with "real" winter, feel free to wait until the ground thaws first.)