Sustaining My Health, My Soul and My Sanity by Patty G. Leander

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Jay White

Save seeds from this year’s crop or order from seed catalogs for planting next spring

There is a lot of talk these days about sustainable gardening – gardening in a way that builds soil, is gentler on the environment and makes the most efficient use of resources. But after a crazy, busy and hot summer that involved relocation moves for my daughter, my niece, my mother and my in-laws, followed by my husband’s back surgery and topped off with an emergency room visit for my father-in-law, I barely had the time or energy to work on sustaining my vegetable garden. But I was amazed – yet again – at how my garden sustains me.

‘Calico’ crowder (also known as Polecat)

Because of some unanticipated – but completely appreciated – rain in July (almost 8” in my south Austin backyard!) my garden was producing a decent supply of okra, eggplant, crowder peas, butter beans, Malabar spinach and winter squash. By August the rain tapered off and when we left for South Carolina to help with my in-laws’ move to Texas, I figured that was the end of my summer garden. I didn’t have the heart to ask a neighbor or even my daughter to go out and tend my vegetables amid the mosquitoes and the heat, and I was prepared to let it all go in anticipation of a re-start in fall.

Southern peas (left) and butter beans (right) are allowed to dry on the vine, after shelling they are ready for cooking or storage

Not surprisingly, upon my return, the okra and eggplant had withered (they were in pots and never really had a chance) and the winter squash was overcome by squash vine borer damage, but miraculously the crowder peas and the butter beans continued to yield. The pods were not as plump and numerous as production in early summer, but still they kept coming, and I kept picking. Every few days I’d have enough for a small meal, and even after I had picked the last of the green pods, there were plenty of dried pods on the vines.

A mix of ‘Jackson Wonder’ butter beans and ‘Dixie White’ butter peas

Shelling peas takes a little time but the results are well worth the effort. And cooking field peas is a cinch – they require very little preparation and as they simmer they create a rich potlikker that is nourishing and delicious. Dried peas can be stored in glass jars, plastic bags or any other airtight container and should be consumed within a year for best quality. Believe me, a meal of crowder or black-eyed peas, home-grown and dried from your own garden, dished up with a slice of hot, buttered cornbread in the middle of winter, is really a treat and will garner all kinds of compliments. Serve with a side of simmered collard greens (from your fall garden, of course) for a down home-taste of Texas terroir.

Plain and Simple Southern Peas

My dad used to say that “everything tastes better with a little pig meat” and it certainly applies to these Southern peas. He grew up in a time when families subsisted on what they produced from the land and nothing from the farm was wasted. As a result, all kinds of vegetables prepared in southern kitchens were flavored with bacon or ham hocks, which add a hearty goodness. But if you are not a fan of bacon you can sauté the onion in olive or vegetable oil or just throw all the ingredients into a pot and let them cook together until tender. They are so good they practically cook themselves.

2 slices bacon, chopped

½ cup chopped onion

2 cups dried Southern peas (crowder, black-eyed, cream, purple hull)

4 cups water

1 tablespoon white vinegar

2-3 teaspoons sugar

1-2 teaspoons salt

1-2 teaspoons pepper

Cook bacon until crisp; remove from pan and set aside. Sauté onion in drippings. Add remaining ingredients, adding enough liquid to cover peas by one inch. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer about 2 hours, until peas are tender and liquid has deepened in color and flavor. Add more liquid and adjust seasonings if necessary. Serve with crumbled bacon, chopped onion or chow-chow, if desired.

Yield: 4-6 servings

Why I Grow Lettuce and Spinach

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Jay White

Last night, just as it was getting dark, my wife was hand watering our trees . Suddenly something small and furry shot out of the grass and gave her a bit of start. She shrieked and I jumped into action. I bravely chased down this furry little flash and quickly discovered it was a very frightened baby cotton tail.

The poor little thing was scared to death. It’s tiny little rabbit heart was pounding out about a million beats per minute. I picked it up and held it close. I gently rubbed its little head and rabbit ears and it slowly calmed down long enough for us to get some pictures. After we took the attached pics, we took it back out to its burrow.

This rabbit burrow was very interesting to me. Somehow the mom had hollowed out a den by burrowing under bermuda runners. She had lined this with her fur. All of this was neatly camoflagued under a pile off dried grass that was left over from our last mowing and weed eating.

Since we just mowed a couple of weks ago, and this little guy looked half grown, I was curious about how quickly rabbits mature. According to the National Geographic, cotton tails are born completely helpless. In fact they are so helpless that only about 15% of all babies born survive. The ones that do are weaned at three weeks and leave the nest at seven weeks. So, I guess we won’t be mowing around that tree for a while.

All the time that I was holding the little bunny, my country mind kept telling me that I should make this little guy one of the 85% of bunnies that don’t make it to adulthood. But I knew I couldn’t do it. Eventhough I know that in about four weeks this little guy and his siblings will be in my garden eating my lettuce and spinach shoots I am just going to let it happen. Watching the few rabbits I have on my property gives me almost as much pleasure as growing the vegetables that they feast upon. And, since I don’t really rely on the garden to feed me, I don’t mind sharing my harvest with a couple of bunnies.

Chainsaw ART-IS-TREE by Clayton Coss

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Jay White

Losing a beloved tree is a heartbreaking experience. Because of last year’s drought many homeowners have experienced the feeling of loss, and the very big cost, that usually accompanies the death of a mature tree. Until my recent vacation to Tulsa, I thought the only option available to people with a dead tree in their yard was to call in the pros and watch sadly as they turned it into wood chips. However, thanks to a good friend, I now know that if you live in Tulsa, you have another option when it comes to dealing with your dead trees.

Clayton Coss is a sculptor whose skills with a chainsaw have made him a bit of a celebrity in the Tulsa area.

Clayton Coss is a sculptor from Tulsa. For the past 26 years he has made a living turning tree tragedies into works of art. Clayton is a skilled carver that can convert your dead tree into a portrait of your kids, Mickey Mantle, Ben Franklin or anything else you can dream up. While there are many sculptors out there that can carve figures out of a piece of wood, there are very few that can do it with a chainsaw. That’s right, I said chainsaw. Now I know what you are thinking but trust me; Clayton is not your run of the mill, road side sculptor of bears and totem poles. No, Clayton is a very talented artist that has been able to turn American kitsch into his own brand of fine art.

I would have never believed a bust this realistic could be carved with a chainsaw

I met Clayton while visiting with our friends Mark and Margaret Hartley. The Hartley’s recently moved into an absolutely adorable Tulsa neighborhood and Clayton was in the process of finishing two sculptures in their new neighborhood. Bobby and Jonas Woolslayer commissioned Clayton to carve a large bust of Ben Franklin and another of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ in their front yard.

Margaret knew I would be interested in Clayton’s work so we walked over to the Woolslayer’s almost as soon as we arrived. When I turned the corner and saw Ben I was literally speechless. Never in my wildest dreams would I have believed that someone could have carved such a striking likeness of a human head with just a chainsaw. I truly thought the bust was outstanding.

This lovely lady is one of four Coss originals you can find in Uttica Square

Clayton is a quiet and humble man and I enjoyed visiting with him immensely. Since chainsaw artistry is kind of an obscure art form I had to ask how he got started. He told me that several years ago a friend showed him a few tricks. Since he enjoyed it, he just stuck with it. His practice and perseverance has paid off. His talents are in high demand and have now made him a bit of a local celebrity.

Clayton’s work can be seen all over Tulsa.

If you want to see more of Clayton’s work, just drive around Tulsa. You can find his work in neighborhoods, local businesses, public places and even the upscale and very swanky Uttica Square. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon exploring Tulsa while conducting a scavenger hunt for his many sculptures. If you would like Clayton to turn one of your dead trees into a Coss original contact him through is website “Chainsaw Artistry”.

A whimsical Coss creation in Uttica Square

P.S. If you don’t live in Tulsa, please remove dead trees from your property as soon as you notice they have died. Yesterday I read a very sad story out of Houston. During a backyard family gathering, a pine tree that died in last year’s drought fell and killed a mom and seriously injured her 13 year old daughter. This would not have happened if the neighbor with the dead tree had done the right thing. Sorry to sound a little preachy but it really is important to remove dead trees. If you don’t and your tree falls on someone else or their property you will be held responsible.

2012 Fall Gardening Tips

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Jay White

Right now it is so hot outside I work up a sweat just walking to the garden. Photo by Heather White

August 1 is the official kick off date for fall gardening in my part of Texas. In reality, I actually start working on my fall garden around the middle of July. Like most of us in zones 7-9, my tomatoes are basically done by July 4th. When your spring tomatoes stop setting fruit you have two choices. Pull ’em up and replace with new plants in August, or trim your exisiting vines up, give them a little shade, a few nutrients, and wait for the temperatures to drop.

In my opinion, the best way to ensure a fall tomato harvest is to keep your spring plants alive through July and August. These mature plants will flower and bloom much faster than new plants put out in August.

Ever since the November night that I was late to my anniversary party because I was building cold frames out of old windows around the tomato plants I planted in August, I have been in the tomato trimming group. Little tomato plants planted in the 100 degree August heat will not always produce red ripe tomatoes before our first freeze. Because of this, I try and keep my spring tomato plants alive through July and August. To keep my spring tomato plants alive, I prune them by about a third to a half in mid-July. I then add a thick layer of composted chicken manure, mulch and put up some sort of shade. For me, this has been the best way to ensure a harvest of a few fall tomatoes.

While I am out trimming tomatoes I also do a good garden clean up. July is when I pull down any vines on my trellises that have stopped producing. This can included beans, gourds, cucumbers, cantelopes and squash. I also pull up any old mulch that is still lying on top of the ground. I take all of this dead vegation directly to the burn pile. Many of those bugs that caused you so much grief earlier in the year are sleeping and laying eggs in the mulch and plant liter under your plants. Because of this, removing it and burning it twice a year is a good pest control measure.

Put out a fresh layer of compost on your clean Fall beds. Animal manures like cow manure and chicken manure are a little higher and nitrogen than the palnt types. I use these to give a boost to my newly trimmed tomatoes.

After my beds and trellises are clean, I amend the soil. I add about 3″ of whatever compost is on sale to the tops of my beds. I don’t usually till this compost in. I actually kind of use it as mulch. The compost will eventually get worked in when I plant or it rains or through the natural processes of all of the tiny little animals in the soil that feed off of the compost.

Finally, to conserve moisture, cool remaining roots and protect all of those micro-organisms in the soil I add a fresh deep layer of hay mulch. If you mulch with hay you need to be careful. Alot of herbicides that farmers use to control weeds in their hay crops are very persistent. There can be enough residue is some hays (particularly bermuda hays like coastal, Tifton and Jiggs) to kill your new plants that are trying to germinate or become established. I typically use rice straw as my mulch. In my experience rice hay has no residual herbicides and very few weeds.

A large $70 roll of rice hay will supply me with all of the mulch I need for an entire year of gardening

After doing all of this prep, I spend a lot of time on the internet figuring out what I am going to plant and when I am going to plant it. This year, I found the best planting guide/calendar I have ever seen. This guide is on the Austin Organic Gardeners website. (they also have one for herbs). Instead of a list of dates, this calendar is a graphical representative of the entire year. It’s easy to read format allows you to quickly look up any plant you want. The headers show every month broken down into weeks and the rows are an alphabetical listing of all of the vegetables we can grow in this area.

This very good planting guide is on the Austin Organic Gardeners website. This graphical guide is the easiest to use that I have found. They website has one for herbs as well.

My grandmother used to say you could find something nice to say about anything. So, I am going to say something nice about Texas summers. Even though it is 106 in the hot Texas sun right now, that sun is what is going to allow me to grow some of my favorite vegetables over the next six months. I know it is hot out there, but now is the ideal time to get that fall garden going. All of the sweat of July and August will pay off big in September and October. So suck it up and get busy. You will forget all about how hot July was when you are OUTSIDE in your garden harvesting broccoli, cauliflower, collards, and cabbage in January!