Growing for food security in the 21st century.  To celebrate the launch of the new and improved Freedom Gardens we will be giving away 5 "Five for Fall Collection" of Freedom Seeds

That's right there will be FIVE lucky winners!

The seed collection will include five fall veggies (cabbage, mizuna, beets, peas, carrots)

MANDATORY ENTRY

1. Visit the Freedom Seeds store  (1 entry)

*You must do the first entry first to qualify for bonus entries.

Please leave a comment [on this blog post ONLY] for each entry — If it says 3 entries then leave 3 comment.

eg. If you sign up for Facebook enter TWO seperate comments saying "I'm a fan on Facebook"

NOTE:  If you have already done any of the steps below, you may still leave an entry -- eg. "I'm already a community member"

BONUS ENTRIES

1. Become (or are) a Facebook fan of "Freedom Gardens" (2 entries)
2. Sign up for a free account at the community (2 entries)
3. Follow "Freedom Gardens" on Twitter (1 entry)
4. Add the “Freedom Gardens” blog to your blogroll (3 entries)
5. Write about Freedom Gardens on your blog. Don’t have a blog? Then share "Freedom Gradens" with sites, blogs/bloggers that you visit or on message boards, facebook, twitter accounts. (4 entries)
6. Support by giving a $5.00 tax deductible donation (5 entries)

This giveaway valid only in the United States. will end on 9/15/10 at 10 PM PST.  Open to all persons, even contributing authors of this blog.

Winners will be chosen by random.org and will be e-mailed. The winner has 48 hrs. to respond to e-mail or another winner will be chosen. Winners will be announced on this post.

To introduce myself: I am a British-born, stay-at-home mother of two, and I'm an impostor here. Unlike others who contribute to this site, I'm only a beginner when it comes to growing my own food. I have a tiny vegetable patch in the back yard of our rental home (although I have embarked on a long-term campaign of sweet-talking my landlady in the hopes of persuading her to allow me to extend it in the future) and I have been cultivating it for less than two years. But everyone's got to start somewhere.

Of course, as a beginner, I have yet to learn the fine art of judging the appropriate number of plants to feed my family without undue waste. Which, of course, brings me back to tomatoes. Bushels of them.

We have juicy, red full-flavored Celebrity, tangy, salty little Gardener's Delight, and tiny, yellow, sweet and spicy Sun Gold. We have eaten tomatoes until they bloat our stomachs and ooze out of our pores. I have strip-mined the canon of classic Mediterranean cookery and made ratatouille, gazpacho, pizza, greek salad, pasta alla puttanesca (literally translated as "whore's pasta"!), bruschetta con pomodoro and insalata caprese, and still we have more of the things. Last night, for the first time in weeks, I discovered we had actually used up every tomato in the house - and went out into the yard and found another pound on the plants ripe for picking.

When you're short of freezer space, tomatoes can be tricky little whatsits to preserve. Unlike most fruit, tomatoes can sometimes have a pH higher than 4.6, which means that they could potentially provide a breeding ground for botulism when canned, and which is why the USDA recommends adding some form of acid to canned tomatoes and using a pressure canner to process them. I don't have a pressure canner.

I do, however, have a British heritage, and a visit to an old friend in the UK with a pantry full of home-made preserves reminded me of a classic English dietary staple - the chutney. Harking back to the days of the British Empire, these delicious Indian-inspired condiments complement cold meat, sharp cheese and curries. My friend gave me a sharp cheddar and tomato chutney sandwich and with one bite I achieved gastronomic nirvana. What's more, with so much vinegar in them, chutneys are technically a pickle and most do not need to be pressure canned.

Tomato Chutney

3 lbs tomatoes, either peeled and diced, or unpeeled and roughly blended in a food processor
3 oz fresh ginger, finely grated
1 ¼ c soft brown sugar
1 red onion, diced very small
4 cloves garlic, minced
¾ c apple cider vinegar
¾ c balsamic vinegar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground cloves
1/3 cup raisins

Simmer everything but the raisins in a heavy pan over a low heat until reduced to a thickish sauce. For large quantities this may take as long as two hours. Add the raisins and cook for a further ten minutes until plump.  Can and process as advised by the USDA. Please note that this recipe is not one of the tested recipes on the USDA website. I believe that it contains enough vinegar to be safely canned, but you may wish to do your own research to confirm this. Tomato chutney can also safely be kept for short periods in the fridge, or frozen.

Plots of opportunity on urban eco-farms (The Natural Food Merchandiser)

by Vicky Uhland

The Dervaes family's 1,500-square-foot vintage Craftsman bungalow, set on a standard city lot a mile from downtown Pasadena, Calif., is an unlikely homestead for a working farm. And yet Jules Dervaes and three of his children manage to grow 350 varieties of plants and more than 6,000 pounds of organic produce each year on their fifth of an acre—with enough space left over for the family's chickens, ducks, two cats and a pair of goats.

The Dervaeses' urban farm not only provides 55 percent to 90 percent of this vegetarian family's food, depending on the season, but it also supplies three local restaurants, a catering company and a nearby country club with fresh produce and eggs. Years ago, the family also sold edible flowers to a Wild Oats store in Pasadena. They use the profits from their Dervaes Gardens business to make their lives even more sustainable—buying solar panels and energy-efficient appliances for their house and a biodiesel processor for the garden.

"We like to think that everyone is in this together—the business of growing and getting good food," says Jules Dervaes, a 60-year-old former teacher, beekeeper and leather crafter. The Dervaes family is only one of the many gardeners who are turning city lots into city plots, growing organic or natural produce. These urban farms and community gardens—where dozens of city dwellers farm small plots in gardens the size of a city block or larger—give natural foods retailers, particularly smaller, inner-city stores, another way to join the local movement.

...

The farmer in the 'hood

While stocking produce from gardens that are literally blocks from your store sounds appealing, the reality can be daunting. Short of peering over your neighbors' fences, it can be difficult to find urban farms, particularly ones that are willing to sell their excess produce. Dervaes turns away would-be customers because he can't guarantee he can provide all the food they want. "We can't just go over to our ducks and say, ‘Lay!'" he jokes. But at the same time, he realizes that urban gardening is a balancing act. "It's a hard thing to grow a lot but not sell a lot."

When he does have excess produce to sell, he posts a notice at www.localharvest.org, a clearinghouse for small, local farms, including urban gardens. You can also find nearby community gardens through the American Community Gardening Association, at communitygarden.org.

Waste not, want not

The key to working with urban farmers is flexibility. Unlike other farmers, their primary motivation is to grow their own food, not supply your store, so they may not always have the type or quantity of produce you want. "My favorite chef who buys from us tells us to just bring what we have," Dervaes says. But other restaurants place specific orders twice a week or more frequently, most often for salad greens and eggs. Dervaes likes this system as well. "The restaurants order only what they want, and then we go out and pick it. It's a no-waste system—they get the finest of our produce with none of it going to waste, and we get paid for what we pick so we don't waste our labor."

The same system could work for a natural foods store, Dervaes says. To get the most marketing bang for its buck, a store could set aside special sections of the produce department for each urban farm or community garden it deals with, while making sure customers know just how local that tomato they're holding really is.

"The key is to communicate that local connection well. If your only form of communication with your customers is a weekly circular on Thursday and the urban farm information is buried somewhere in the middle of that, that's not going to work," says marketing consultant Jon Schallert, president of Longmont, Colo.-based The Schallert Group.

Schallert recommends customer e-mails, fliers or signs in stores highlighting local produce. "Something along the lines of ‘in our store today' or ‘in our store this week' would work," he says. "It really takes very little marketing to have an impact and to make your customers' whole shopping experience more personal."

Safety issues

If salmonella or E. coli scares have made your store loath to buy produce that hasn't been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dervaes can put your fears to rest. One of the benefits of urban gardens is that the farmers almost always do their own processing and delivery. "At our farm, the person who picks the produce hands it over to the person who buys it, so it can't be contaminated in transit," he says. "Every person who lays a hand [on fresh food] is a possible contaminant, but here, you know exactly who to talk to if you have a problem: Me. So it kind of keeps me on my toes." Dervaes says he carefully inspects his produce and washes it before he sells it. In addition, "Some of our chefs come out and visit us so they can explain to their customers that they've actually seen what they're eating right there in the fields."

Vicky Uhland is a Lafayette, Colo.-based freelance writer.

GYO

Fed up with food prices, food miles and foreign oil? Take back your food, take back your life and join thousands of fellow Freedom Gardeners who are growing freedom plots across the world.

The Freedom Garden
Courtesy of GRIT MAGAZINE
by Paul Gardener

The place of the American garden, at least inasmuch as it has become a societal movement from time to time in our history, was outlined beautifully by GRIT editor Hank Will in his blog post on how gardening is good for the soul. The point as I saw it, of the article, was that there is just something about being able to get our hands into the soil and to coax from it a thing as tangible and basic to life as healthy, nutritious food for very little cost, that is good for our soul. I couldn’t agree more! As he outlined our recent history of war gardens, victory gardens and urban collective gardens I found myself thinking that this has been a phenomenon that has largely come about since the time of the industrial revolution when we, as a nation, began to separate ourselves from our agrarian roots. It was natural then, when wars or depression or economic necessity dictated it, that we would gravitate toward something that could bring us together and provide us comfort. Being able to feed ourselves and being able to bless others with food can do this like few other things.

Hank made the statement, in his previous post, that he didn’t “know what to call the new wave of gardening frenzy, but [does] know that it is exciting, and will, no doubt, play a role in healing our culture.” To this I replied “Freedom Gardens” and it has sparked a great conversation I think. He’s asked that I give a little background on how this name for a movement came about so I’ll do my best.

Let me give you a little background. In my first post here at GRIT, I talked about how I had had an awakening within myself. When I realized that, while I was depressed about not being able to drop everything and move to the country and have myself a farm, I was squandering the land that I already had right in my backyard. That epiphany changed the whole way I looked at gardening. My mind had been limited to growing a garden as merely a hobby, while the “real” farming required having acres of land and tractors and so on. The ability to look at my own small .25 acre suburban lot as an urban farm of sorts came about quite by accident when I stumbled onto the website of the Dervaes family in Pasadena CA called Path to Freedom. There I found the story of a family that not only gardened on their tenth of an acre lot in the heart of Pasadena (hardly the country) but was actively supporting themselves through their efforts both physically, in that they largely ate from their garden, and financially in that they had a thriving niche market selling their excess to local markets and chefs. That’s right, excess food from a 10th of an acre lot. It’s not unimaginable when you consider that they regularly average over 6000 lbs of food from that same 10th of an acre.

As we faced issues at the beginning of 2008 of global climate change, increasing costs of oil (which by the way is the basis of all of our commercial “inputs” like fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), regular warnings about tainted foods in our stores and economic pressures that were starting to limit our food buying power the Dervaes family launched a site called “Freedom Gardens” and with it put a name to a movement that was already beginning to form not only here at home, but world wide. Whether you’re a young family trying to make ends meet or a rural farmer that want’s to not just grow commercial crops but actual food as well or a suburban parent worried about the future of the earth for your kids this is a movement for you. If you’re a city dweller who wants to eat organic foods but can’t afford the exorbitant costs at the whole foods stores or someone worried about providing consistent, healthy food to your family in the event of a crisis then this is a movement for you.

The point, I think, is this; gardens ARE good for our souls. Not merely because they’re therapeutic or because they provide healthy foods or even because they give us a hedge against lean times but rather because, if you look at the big picture, they offer us that thing that we all crave so dearly. They offer that thing that drove our founding fathers to strike out on their own. They offer Freedom.

If I sound a bit zealous, well, that’s because I am. I was able to have my eyes opened for me to a world of possibilities a few years back, and returning the favor has been a large part of the reason I write. I hope you find success in your own freedom gardens no matter the size or scope and would love to hear about your efforts. In the event you decide to check further into the Freedom Gardens online community (which is totally free btw.) please drop by and say hi to me. You can find me there as “CornerGardener” and I’d love to help you find your way around.

P~

You can reach Paul Gardener by email, or check his personal blog at A posse ad esse

MergingLight you have been selected to be the "Freedom Gardener of Month!"

Location: Gravette,AR
Plant Hardiness Zone: 6-7
Acreage / Lot Size: Half Acre

(Freedom Gardens) Tell us a little more about your garden/ farm, what you grow, etc.

MERGINGLIGHT: We have a backyard garden, spread out amongst several small patches where we grow mostly heirloom plants in an all organic setting in the hopes of learning how to companion plant and to save seed. We hope to keep expanding the size of our garden every year, adding new types of heirloom vegitables, fruits, herbs and flowers. I believe that seeds and knowledge of gorwing your own food and sustaining daily life without outside help are our future and have been really trying to learn how to encourage the plants to produce healthy foods, which will bring healthy seeds.

(Freedom Gardens ) Behind every garden, there must have been blood, sweat and tears. What have you felt was (is) the hardest thing you’ve faced (or are facing) in your gardening? Would you care to share a story?

MERGINGLIGHT: The hardest thing I face is my own lack of understanding and knowledge of what to do to help the plants do what they naturally do, and that is to grow, in depleted, compacted soil while I find resources and time to keep adding nutrients. That being said, I find it incredibly fulfilling, learning how to garden the way it was done before modern chemicals became the standard in gardening. As well, gardening in my backyard has also brought me closer to a simpler way of life that is highly appealing to me, one that brings inner contentment. Aside of that, trying to find a natural way to keep plant eating insects and four legged critters away from the produce is a constant.

(Freedom Gardens ) What do you feel is the most important thing in gardening?

MERGINGLIGHT: That's a difficult question to answer because there are many stages and processes throughout a years time that are equally as important as any other stage or process. Suffice to say, there will be a lot not said on that at this moment - but the one thing I can say is that one of the most important things in gardening is to simply be present in the moment and aware of what's happening in the garden. I tend to think that someone who enjoys gardening knows that most things are NOT an overnight process, so, try researching your plants and finding out what you need to do and when, for the soil they grow in and for the plants themselves.

(Freedom Gardens) They say that “when you garden, you grow.” Have you changed – emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually – since you’ve starting growing food?

MERGINGLIGHT: I'm probably not the only one who is smiling at being asked this question. I've always been a bit of a naturalist, but when I really began to take an earnest interest in growing my own food, I began to 'feel' how plants are our partners in life. Even how earth and all natural things are a necessary part of life.

(Freedom Gardens) Has this social network (freedomgardens.org) helped you with your garden?

MERGINGLIGHT: Oh my gosh, thank you for asking! YES...infact, I can say in all honesty that Freedom Gardens is mostly the reason I've learned what I have about gardening. I've never felt so a part of a community before as I do now with FG, if I haven't learned how to do a thing I needed to know from FG, then I was inspired by someone within the FG community to learn more. Thank You FG and everyone who networks here

( Freedom Gardens) Anything else you’d like to share with other freedom gardeners?

MERGINGLIGHT: One of my personal goals is to convert every inch of our very large lawn into a garden. This doesn't happen over night when resources or the lack of them is a constant issue (one of the reasons you feel fulfilled is because you find ways to do what needs done on little or no money), over time we are slowly doing it. When I drive down the street or road and see a new garden where there wasn't one last year or the year before and it's in someone's beautiful lawn, I feel personally uplifted by that somehow and so I encourage everyone to consider planting more garden and watering less lawn.
Happy Gardening!

(Freedom Gardens) Thanks for taking the time from your busy life to share your gardening experience with us.  Happy growing!

Check out MERGING LIGHTS Freedom Garden profile

-- Lyrics courtesy of HOMEGROWN TOMATOES

Nothing says summer like homegrown tomatoes - eat 'em raw with a bit of salt. Bliss!

Tomatoes have a right to have an entire post of their own don't you think?  We grew some beauties this year and so I figure on showing them off. To help get you in the "tomato fashion show" mood: sit back, sip your cuppa, play the little ditty and feast your eyes... coming down the runway now are some plump, well rounded homegrown beauties.

What's your favorite tomato or heirloom?

Like to have a few quawkers of your own? Check out our online seed company at www.FreedomSeeds.org

Not everyone has the space, time or oppurtnity to "grow their own" and folks are flocking to farmers markets. As the the local food movement gains momentum as people start "knowing their food", but do we really "know the farmer?" 

Don't Be Fooled By a Farmers' Market Without Any Farmers

As the food movement continues to gain momentum, demand for local, seasonal fare increases exponentially. But just as all this sustainable food crops up, another entity rears its ugly head: We're seeing more and more attempts by unscrupulous companies to cash in on the movement's popularity by "greenwashing" (or "foodwashing" perhaps) their unsustainable products. Sometimes this insidious technique succeeds in conning well-meaning consumers out of their hard-earned cash. Other times, it's just laughably transparent.

In an example of the latter kind, a Safeway in Kirkland, Washington recently set up tents in its parking lot and hung a huge, yellow banner advertising a new "Farmers' Market". Martha Tyler, manager of the local Redmond Farmers' Market, noticed the setup and stopped by, excited to see which farms the business was promoting. Unfortunately, actual farmers were conspicuously absent. Safeway had just moved their regular produce outside to be sold "farmers'-market style."

Read full article

Last Fall, I had the chance to visit northern Italy with my family.  One of the outings we took one morning was to the local farmers market on the edge of town.  Here we were in October at the base of the Alps and the venders were hawking bananas, mangos and avocados!  What, how can this be?   Something is wrong with this picture! Where was the local foods?  Were we  considerably shocked and disspointed as we walked down the spendidly colorful rows of tables to only find tables full of foods from Chile and California. 

Some tips to help you navigate the world of Farmer's Markets

Warnings signs that the food is not locally grown

beware of stickers
produce out of season: ie corn in december
too much surplus
constant supply - all food all the time
when you ask questions the folks behind the table about the location of farm, they look at you like "farm what farm?"
if you ask to visit their farm and they beat around bush

“All you gentlemen have to do is to induce the American people to change their ways of living — that's all.”
— John S. Pardee, chief of the Publications Section of the Food Administration, addressing State Educational Directors, with irony, 1917

Cory Bernat has curated an extensive online image gallery  of war-era government posters related to food, food production, farming, backyard gardening, and rationing. The images come from the US National Agricultural Library.

Victory gardens were established by nearly 20 million Americans and produced up to 40 percent of all the vegetable produce consumed nationally. Incredible isn’t it?

"Through posters, the United States government attempted to capture the public's attention during World Wars I and II as it sought public support and a cooperative homefront willing to put the needs of the nation before their own.

...Wartime posters in this collection conveyed messages about the vital need for food conservation, rationed goods, meatless and wheatless days, home gardening and canning.

...This exhibit of posters from the Special Collections of the National Agricultural Library asks,

    * What did these urgent war messages about food look like?
    * What type of homefront behaviors required modification?
    * What do the messages tell us about the needs of a government in a time of war and its relationship to homefront populations and private businesses?

In addition, by displaying posters from two different wars, this exhibit encourages us to compare and contrast of wartime messages, poster styles and historical contexts.

    * What changed in the posters from two time periods?
    * In what ways did they stay the same?

Many illustrations, messages and sentiments that we associate with World War I and World War II are famous because of posters. By revisiting some of the images and messages disseminated at home during both wars, visitors to this exhibit can ask, Are these the wartime images and messages we “remember?”

Check out the entire poster collection here

Vintage Flapper's Garden

Freedom Gardens: Hi VintageFlapper congratulations! You have been selected to be the Freedom Gardener of January 2009!

Tell us a little more about your garden.

VintageFlapper: Thank you so VERY much for this honor. I am seriously excited about this, and it totally made my day.

In 2008 I had gardens in two locations, in 2009 it will expand to three locations. First, my small main garden is at my home. I live in a housing co-operative and we are allowed a small front and small back garden area for our use. The past four years I have gardened in large and small containers on the 100 square foot backyard deck and also on the 100 square foot of land surrounding my deck. In 2009 I will continue gardening in the back area and am planning to try to extend my edibles into the front garden area (roughly 150 square feet).

My second garden is at my rural parcel nearby. I have a 1.5 acre parcel with a pole barn and a large fenced area for my rescue dogs to run around and play in when we visit (there is no fenced yard at the co-op). In 2008 I also had a 1000 square foot fenced garden at the land. In 2009 we will be adding a second 1000 square foot fenced garden area. The parcel is also edged with grape vines on 3 sides and provides us with a number of small grapes for fresh eating, jams, jellies, etc. We also have a number of black raspberry plants growing in the rear of the parcel.

In 2008 we found that, while having the garden at the parcel was nice, we probably should've planted less time and water intensive plants there. We also found out, the hard way, that our parcel is actually in a "cold pocket" in the area. We lost the majority of our tomato harvest and summer squash to an early extreme dip in temperatures, far colder than had been forecast. As we try to live as car-free as possible, we were only able to take trips out to the parcel once or twice a week, and that just wasn't often enough for optimal watering and weeding of the garden's "prima donna" summer vegetable plants. We decided that in 2009 we will focus on growing more easy root veggies & pumpkins out at the parcel, and will move the tomatoes, summer squash, and other more labor intensive crops to a plot in the community garden within walking distance, pretty near my bus stop. This will be our third garden.

We generally grow tons of heirloom tomatoes (my favorite!), herbs, greens, peas, beans, potatoes, spaghetti squash, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, and summer squash. I like to try my hand at growing new-to-me and unusual things, like rice beans, or long keeping storage tomatoes, so I always have a number of "experimental" plants in my garden at any time. In 2009 we will be adding beets, radishes, turnips, pumpkins and possibly more. Our big 2009 experiment will be growing a small crop of sugar beets at our rural parcel & making a smal batch of sugar out of them. I am very unhappy about the decision to allow GMO sugar beets to be planted and am attempting to, as a long term plan, incorporate more honey and homemade sugars into my diet.

Freedom Gardens: Behind every garden, there must have been blood, sweat and tears. What have you felt was (is) the hardest thing you’ve faced (or are facing) in your gardening? Would you care to share a story?

VintageFlapper: The biggest difficulties are witnessing plant dying and crop failure (like our big freeze out this year, or the powdery mildew problems of 2006). It's also difficult to schedule enough garden time while not neglecting the rest of my life. My friends now know that if you want to hang out with Meg in the spring/summer, you need to go to the garden, or if you want to hang out in the fall, you'll probably have to do so while working in the kitchen helping to preserve the harvest! I commute via a combination of walking and bus riding, and this eats up a lot of my time as bus schedules often conflict with work schedules. I feel that it is important that I support and promote the idea of commuting without a personal auto (I've been doing it for a decade now), and it is also key for me that I have the "down time" in my commute to read, listen to audiobooks or music, work on to do lists, etc. It is also a challenge to garden productively at my home while still meeting the co-op's requirements that the garden be "aesthetically pleasing" as I am one of very few gardeners here who incorporate any fruits/veg into their gardens. In fact, I believe I may be the only one in the co-op who gardens exclusively with edibles! It is a challenge, for sure, to keep the garden both pretty and productive at the same time.

Freedom Gardens: What do you feel is the most important thing in gardening?

VintageFlapper: To me, the most important things in gardening would be a) delicious organically grown produce, of whatever varieties I want, for very little cost and b) the fact that through gardening I can further my goals of living a more self sufficient and sustainable lifestyle.

Freedom Gardens: Have You Changed – emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually – since you’ve gardened?

VintageFlapper: I've always gardened (mostly helping out my stepdad or his parents in California as a kid and teen, and at least a little bit of container gardening on decks, if not full out gardening in my adult years), but I've been taking it more seriously and trying to be more self sustaining with my gardening choices. Since I've been focusing on learning more and growing more intensively I've developed a big sense of accomplishment and pride in what I do. It's also helped train my brain towards a more seasonal eating cycle.

Also, I tend to be a very busy, constantly on the go sort of person and two things have really helped me slow down and enjoy life more...one is gardening and the other is working with special needs rescue dogs. Both have taught me to focus more on the moment and enjoying my life as I have it now. In 2007 I was diagnosed with a major heart defect and a major lung problem caused by the heart problem for which there are no cures. I found that my lifespan will be greatly reduced as a result of these illnesses. Thank goodness for the life lessons I learned from my dogs and my garden, or this terrible time would've been much worse for me. I was already so much more focused on living in the now and enjoying what I had at the moment that it's been an easier transition for me. As far as physically...the garden really helps me keep in good shape. I am limited to what I can do, exercise-wise, but most gardening work and walking are still open to me, so I do them happily. My doctors say this is basically the exercise plan they would prescribe for someone in my situation, if I weren't doing it already!

Freedom Gardens: Has the website (freedomgardens.org) helped you with your garden?

VintageFlapper: Both the Freedom Gardeners site and the Path To Freedom site have been a major help. The Freedom Gardeners is great because I have learned so much just browsing the boards, gotten great ideas from listening to other peoples' plans or looking at their garden photos, and from the information and idea exchanges constantly going on. I also love sharing info I have with others. I've met some really great, likeminded people here, which is awesome, and I must say that the Homesteading Newbies group is GREAT! Where I live (southeast Michigan) most people I meet can understand the concept of gardening for fun and a little extra produce, but think I am really wacky because I do not store buy bread, but make it....because I can and freeze food and am excited about the idea of drying/dehyrating food. They think I'm odd because I believe strongly in supporting the local farmers and local food economy and, thus, refuse to buy sugar grown out of state, refuse to buy potatoes, apples or berries/cherries grown out of state (all of the above are big Michigan crops), and generally try to make most of my non-homegrown produce, wine, and food purchases from in-state growers/producers. No one I have talked with locally is as interested in food security issues or self sufficiency/sustainability issues as I, yet here on the Freedom Gardeners there are a lot of us for whom these things are of key importance. I think this is great!

The Path to Freedom site made me realize it *is* possible to be more self sufficient and live more sustainably while living in a city. They also made me realize that, yes, I can live as frugally as I do and am not really weird because I don't believe in spending tons of money. The inspiration I got from that site helped me formulate my long term plans to move to Alaska to garden and work with rescue dogs in the Mat-Su Valley (the agricultural capital of Alaska). It also helped me feel that, yes, I can quit my higher paying, but stressful job and do something I like more that pays less. I really needed a wakeup call on that one, and the Path To Freedom ideal of working at something you love and enjoy helped me to quit my stressful job this summer and make a career change to a field I enjoy more. It's less prestigious and the pay is less than 2/3 what I had previously, but I am much happier *and* the key rush/busy seasons are in the winter, versus my former job where I busy time was at harvest time, so I am much less stressed during the busiest garden/harvest seasons now!

Freedom Gardens: Anything else you’d like to share with other freedom gardeners?

VintageFlapper: : I seriously want to tell people who aren't familiar with it that solar cooking is not as weird, scary, or hard as it may sound. Like PTF I've been solar cooking for years (right around two decades now, plus or minus a couple of years) and I found it much simpler and easier than cooking on the stovetop or regular oven. In the summer, when my mom and stepdad were busy with garden harvest and preserving, it was not uncommon for me to be the person in charge of dinner....back when I was a pre-teen and teenager. It's that easy. It is pretty simple, basic, and fun method of cooking and the food tastes fabulous.

I've posted a bunch of general info and some recipes over in the Homesteading Newbies group, and anyone/everyone is welcome to stop by and gather info. My current solar cooker is the Sport Solar Oven I bought from PTF's Peddlar's Wagon store, and I am extremely happy with it. I hope to add one of their fancier versions in the shop now once I've relocated to Alaska and will have even more summer sun to work with, as I know I will probably be wanting to cook more than 2 dishes at a time and would need more than one oven to achieve this. For now this one works great for our basic household needs. You can even cook with it in the winter when the sun decides to pop out for a day or two, which is great!

Thanks again to all of you for selecting me for the Freedom Gardener for the month, I am so very pleased and excited.

Freedom Garden: Thanks, VintageFlapper for sharing your growing experiences with us. It's always fascinating to read about other's gardening journey and especially how gardening has had a positive effect in both your life and health. Even more exciting was to read about your low impact cooking methods and long term plans - a move to Alaska!

If you haven't had a chance check out Vintage Flappers photo gallery it's full of wonderful snapshots from her urban homestead.

All of us at Freedom Gardens wish you a productive, bountiful and healthful new year.

Be sure to visit VintageFlapper's profile to make a connection with this homegrown revoluntionary.

Freedom Gardeners of the Month receive a gift from the online store Peddler's Wagon - Green Goods for the Good of the Planet. (Please support Freedom Gardens and help us grow by purchasing from our store)

Freedom Gardens: Hi SoCalDan congratulations! You have been selected to be the Freedom Gardener of  December 2008! Tell us a little more about your garden.

SoCalDan: My garden was inspired by the Dervaes’s family garden. I first stumbled onto their website around two years ago while searching for edible landscaping ideas. When I saw the pictures of their garden and read accounts of what they had done, I was utterly amazed. I always assumed that a large vegetable garden would be look utilitarian and ugly. Their garden was just the opposite, it was a wonderful balance of beauty and practicality.

It was then that I decided to model my garden after theirs. Since 2005, the garden in our backyard has tripled in size to 1200 sq ft and should nearly double again by the end of next season. A number of fruit trees will go in mid January, the beginning or our bareroot season. After that, we’ll have a little more in the backyard to complete before we begin the front yard.

Currently, growing in the garden I have: carrots, beets, broccoli, chinese broccoli, swiss chard, turnips, peas, kohlrabi, kale, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, cabbage, nappa cabbage, spinach, lettuce, tatsoi, mizuna, daikon, burdock, garlic, zucchini and other chinese greens.

Our harvest so far this year is about 1300 lbs, much more than we were anticipating. Still, there were mistakes and some major disappointments, especially with our tomato harvest. We are hoping for 2000 lbs next year.

The harvest still takes big swings up and down transitioning between seasons. I still need to work on this to produce a more consistent harvest year round. I anticipate that once the kinks are worked out, our harvest will consistently out produce our needs. Initially, we considered selling the excess to supplement our income. We may do this someday, perhaps when we retire. But, we have found that sharing our harvest with others to be much more rewarding.

Freedom Gardens: Behind every garden, there must have been blood, sweat and tears. What have you felt was (is) the hardest thing you’ve faced (or are facing) in your gardening? Would you care to share a story?

SoCalDan: For most gardeners, late summer is best time of the season with harvests in full swing. For me, however, July and August are the most difficult months. It’s a time when the disease, weeds, insects and heat are at their worst, often devastating the garden. During the rest of the year, insects and disease are rarely a problem, any damage is usually minor and self limiting. It’s only during the heat that the insect numbers explode and infestation often becomes severe. This is also the time when powdery mildew is most malignant spreading through the garden.

It’s difficult at times when large swaths of the garden which has grown so healthy and strong all spring wither and die in 6 weeks. This combined with the heavier workload of the summer harvests, more frequent and longer watering and controlling the weeds that seem to accelerate in the heat makes July and August maintenance extremely trying. A few times the work and damage were so overwhelming that I just quit and left the garden to the weeds

Last year was especially rough. I missed the mites on the tomato plants. By the time I caught it, it was too late. The infestation severely damaged the tomato plants, prematurely terminating our best harvest ever in mid season. Powdery mildew – it’s especially brutal in So Cal - had swept through the garden for the second year in a row. Despite all my efforts I lost all the cucurbits (zucchini, melon, squash, cucumbers) – a fifth of the garden - in August.

This year is much better; I think we’ve finally turned the corner. We sailed pretty smoothly through the season. The damage from powdery mildew was mild. Perhaps some adjustments to the cucumbers and zucchini planting and spraying very, very early with Serenade did the trick. Summer maintenance is much easier now that we installed an automatic drip system and framed each bed (raised bed) with 2×6’s. These two changes have saved hours of work each week by eliminating watering (drip) and reducing weeding by 80% (drip and frames).

I’m optimistic, my wife, Kathy, is now involved. Before, although she relished the harvest, she was content to sit back and let the garden rest on my shoulders alone. Initially, she started out here and there to help me out. But, now the garden has gotten into her blood. Everyday, she enjoys stepping into the garden now. She’s become the chief harvester, gathering up all the vegetables and deciding what to make for that day’s meals.

Freedom Gardens: What do you feel is the most important thing in gardening?

SoCalDan: For me, it’s the soil. I guess it’s because I started with such poor soil and saw the difference soil improvement had on the quality and vigor of the plants. Our home was situated in a new development where the builder had stripped the topsoil in grading the hillside into a stair-step of quarter acre flat lots. The land was gritty and hard – rock hard. When dry, you needed a pickaxe to loosen the soil. When the ground was thoroughly soaked, you could dig, somewhat, down to about 12 inches. There you would hit the hardpan, dirt so hard and compacted like concrete, created from the weight of the earthmovers that carved the hillside.

The first garden was pretty sad. I didn’t know much about gardening and did minimal if any soil improvement before starting. My first tomato plant grew to a whopping 2 feet and looked a lot like a green stick with a few leaves; for those that remember, a “Charlie Brown Christmas tree” would be a pretty good analogy. My first fixes were with Miracle Grow and 15-15-15. The plants did grow bigger initially but looking back, they probably caused more problems than they solved.

I started reading garden books and began to realize the importance of soil. One book in particular “The Soul of Soil” by Grace Gershuny stood out. It explained not only why but also how soil is important. Soil fertility is more than providing N, P and K. It is about humus, tilth, aeration, CEC, pH, macro and micro nutrients, actinomycetes, bacteria and fungi. It’s about managing all of these as a living ecosystem; which when fully functional, is soil fertility. You don’t feed the plants rather you feed the soil which in turn feed the plants.

As I fed the soil, the soil changed; the tilth has increased, becoming softer and fluffier; it holds more water; it’s darker and smells richer. The plants grow very well now. This year the tomato plant hit the 8 ft mark.

Freedom Gardens: Have You Changed – emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually – since you’ve gardened?

SoCalDan: I was aware of environmental issues such as global warming, soil loss, peak oil, and peak resources but since they hadn’t directly impacted our lives the urgency was lost. Ambivalence has been great, it permitted us to live our mainstream American consumptive lifestyle guilt free.

I see the world differently now; Omnivores Dilemma, One Man One Cow One Planet, We Shall We Gather By The River and The World According to Monsanto have seen to that. Together, they paint a painful portrait of corporate exploitation of man, plant, animal and environmental destruction that is hard to ignore.

My garden, much larger this year, has also made it more personal. The volume of time, thought and energy that we spent in the garden and the daily harvest that we came to depend on for our meals, drew us me much closer to the process of growing food. The direct link to our food source increased the perception of vulnerability to threats from global warming, genetic loss and GMO seeds.

This has forced deep introspection; I’m no longer comfortable with the status quo. I am beginning to realize that as a society much of what we choose to purchase inflicts severe damage to our environment. I’d like to say that I am reformed, that my carbon footprint is minimal, but I can’t, fifty years of habits are hard to undo. I am changing however, making a number of small changes: cfls, powering down, organic and local when available, and simplifying. It’s a start – wish me luck.

Freedom Gardens: Has the website (freedomgardens.org) helped you with your garden?

SoCalDan: Gardening is all about experience; gathering more of it each season tending the garden then applying that wealth of knowledge to each successive garden.

Absolutely. I enjoy reading and participating in many of the discussions. It’s allowed me to tap into the experiences of many of the participants and introduced me gardening topics that I was unfamiliar with. Thanks to a thought provoking post by AgrarianLife on the tragic erosion of our genetic seed heritage and many encouraging post by GirlGroupGirl and others I have begun saving seeds this past season.

Friendships and sharing experiences is another reason why I enjoy it here. I’ve had some great discussion with many gardeners. One person in particular is FarmerAmber. It has been amazing, although we live half a continent apart, our paths in gardening has been almost identical over the past few years. From the start, to the inspiration, expansion, size, trials and successes the similarities have been uncanny.

Another great part of FreedomGardens that we have been able to form a nice network of local gardeners in the greater LA area. Many of us have been able to meet and get familiar with one another at local gatherings. StacyMckenna’s acorn flour at the last gathering was a standout. Her muffins and cookies were delicious. It’s turning out to be a great on and off line social network.

I anticipate the local network will be a greater asset come spring. It will so helpful to exchange observations effects of local conditions, diseases, resistance, insect outbreaks and remedies.

Freedom Gardens: Anything else you’d like to share with other freedom gardeners?

SoCalDan: I guess it would be my motto; it’s what my garden has taught me:

Patience Persistence and Humility

Patience –  Growing a garden, everything takes time. I’ve learned not to try and rush things but to be patient, observe and enjoy process. It’s not only the plants that need a season to go from seed to harvest, but the soil – if yours is poor – that may take years to mature. It’s also the garden, which with proper care evolves from a bed for vegetables into a healthy, diverse ecosystem.

Persistence – Gardening has always been two steps forward and one step back. You must learn to take the setbacks in stride and push forward; it is part of the process. The value is what you learn overcoming these problems.

I, now, approach each setback/failure as an opportunity to learn. It’s a puzzle that I need to find the solution to. I try to analyze it; why, how did it happen, what contributed to it, how can I fix it. I try different fixes, sometimes it works many times it doesn’t, but I keep trying.

Humility – No matter how successful I have been or how good I think I get. Mother nature never fails to remind me who really is in charge. I always try to remember that I am just the caretaker and the harvest is a gift from God .

FG: Thanks for taking the time from your busy urban farm life to share with us your insight, SoCalDan  We were thoroughly impressed with your harvest tally!  Way to GROW!   It's often said that when you garden you grow and you have shown us a shining example of that motto with your Patience, Persistence & Humility sentiments.

Be sure to visit SoCalDan's profile to make a connection with this homegrown revoluntionary in Corona California.

Freedom Gardeners of the Month receive a gift from the online store Peddler's Wagon - Green Goods for the Good of the Planet. (Please support Freedom Gardens and help us grow by purchasing from our store)