By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator       

This is an exciting time for the Bay Area -- the acacias, magnolias, flowering cherries, and flowering plums are all in bloom!

Sadly, we have none of those in the test garden, and it's as slow as can be out there. To top it off, I'm feeling some disappointment about this year's big winter veggie garden. Last year brought us this looker:

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Every Bay Area gardener knows that, in addition to a copy of the Western Garden Book, you MUST have Golden Gate Gardening in your library. Author, Pam Pierce, has come out with the third edition, and it will be in stores on February 1st.

Look forward to:

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Nothing like a predatory bird to liven things up!

Today we spotted a hawk eating a squirrel on the main lawn. Jim was glad it was a squirrel and not a chicken (actually, Jim wanted nothing to do with today's events. He doesn't do so well with blood and guts). I'm all for hawks controlling the squirrel population. They are they only major pest I've had trouble with in the test garden over the last two growing seasons -- they decimated Team Beer's wheat and snatched some of the baby butternut squash from the vine. Bon appétit, hawk!

Here's my pick for a last-minute gift: Novella Carpenter's Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (The Penguin Press, $25.95). Of all the local-eating guides and tales that have been published this year, hers is still my favorite. 

With total honesty, she recounts the story of how she set up an actual subsistence farm in her dodgy Oakland neighborhood, complete with crops growing in the abandoned lot next to her house, a beehive on the deck, and turkeys, ducks, and chickens in the tiny yard—along with rabbits and two voracious pigs. (Because they can't really afford sacks and sacks of pig chow, she and her boyfriend, wearing headlight helmets, dumpster-dive at night to bring them food.) She manages to keep them alive, too, unlike her predecessor-in-prose, Manny Howard, who inadvertently killed off most of his livestock in his Brooklyn backyard a few years ago.

The book is extremely funny and well written, but what I love most about it is its compassion and its fearlessness. Novella lets homeless people harvest from the garden--in fact, it makes her feel good. She butchers ducks and rabbits for dinner (the pigs she sends off to be dispatched, given their sheer strength), and when her turkey Maude somehow flies into the car yard behind the house and into the jaws of two guard dogs, she scales a razor-wire-topped fence to try to rescue her. (Sadly, the turkey doesn't make it, but Novella gets away unharmed.) One night, biking through an especially dicey area where she gathers weeds for her chickens, she runs into a gang of young kids--one of whom points a gun at her--and delivers a "strange oration, which at its heart was motherly." She tells him, "You have to be careful...I care about you. Please be careful or you'll wind up dead." He walks away, and all she can think about is not her own mortality or desire for revenge but the "stupidity and injustice in this world, the cycles of violence that seem they will never end, and my inability to change anything."

Anyone reading this book can see that it's people like Novella Carpenter, courageous and unsentimental and fiercely energetic, who actually do change things.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

We decided to let our grapes turn into raisins for the fall feast. Actually, Margo decided. I was against the idea. What's the point of having fresh, delicious grapes shrivel into raisins?

Margo told me we'd let the grapes raisinate on the vine. Raisinate. Good word, right? I didn't bother researching. I just left the grapes alone.

This is what we got:

Turns out raisinate isn't really a word. Well, Wiktionary includes it, and the references are indeed to letting grapes shrivel. One catch: it's done OFF the vine.

There goes our entire season's crop. Oops.

Raisins are usually harvested at their peak (late summer) and then laid out to dry for anywhere from two days to three weeks, depending on the conditions and your taste preference. Drying can be done outside or in a dehydrator, depending on the climate. The trick is that raisins need hot, dry weather to suck out all that juicy moisture (we're talking around 85-100 degrees). They're subject to rot and mold if the conditions aren't right (like in our coastal-influenced Menlo Park). Be sure to check them consistently.

There is a method for vine-ripened grapes, called DOV (dried-on-vine). This UC study presents DOV as a labor saving solution. Ripe grapes are left on the vine and collected by mechanized harvesting machines. While they technically dry on the vine, it's no longer attached to a living plant. The point is to increase mechanization and eliminate the need for workers to harvest bunch by bunch. Hm -- not quite the vine-ripened garden imagery we had in mind.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

We harvested and we threshed, but I'd been totally avoiding the next step in quinoa processing because I was scared of making a total mess and losing our seeds. 

Margo came to me and told me what I already knew: It was time to figure out, once and for all, how to separate the seeds from all the leaf and stem debris.

We experimented with a few methods we'd heard about. We tried out every single strainer in the kitchen to see if one was magically the right size to keep the seeds but let the debris pass -- no luck. We tried stirring bowls of the mess to see if the debris would rise to the top -- no luck.

There was no avoiding it -- it was time to winnow.

Winnow - to separate the chaff from the grain by using air currents

We set up a small fan on the floor and laid a sheet down to catch the debris. We placed a baking sheet a few feet in front of the fan to catch the seeds. Looking back, I'm not entirely sure why we didn't do this outside. One reason may have been that we didn't get to this until 6pm on a Friday night, and it was practically dark out.

We rubbed our hands together, letting the seeds and debris fall downward. The quinoa was heavier than the chaff, so it fell to the baking sheet. And the remaining debris blew onto the sheet (actually, it left a fine sheen over most of the test kitchen. We turned the sheet into a U shape by draping it over chairs on either side...that helped some).

I don't know why I'd been so scared. It worked marvelously. 

We only got through about a fourth of our harvest, but in that hour or so, we became successful winnowers. Our quinoa began to look like something you could buy at the store.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

It's true -- our chickens are overweight. The vet told Elizabeth that part of the reason Alana got so sick was obesity and that our birds would benefit from some exercise.

Margo approached me about how to get our flock into shape. I didn't tell her at the time, but I immediately thought of the book Yoga for Chickens, by Lynn Brunelle.

Seeing as a yoga class for chickens would probably be pretty ineffective I decided to go another route. I used chicken wire and rebar to fence off an area in the garden and let them spend the day free-ranging and enjoying the change in scenery.

Ruby, so excited by all the new dirt, forgets to wipe her beak.

Smart chickens know it's important to stay hydrated while working out.

Hopefully between increased exercise and some potential diet changes (like not having food available 24/7) our girls will stay healthy and shed those extra pounds.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

This season's crop of butternut squash is growing up a metal arbor. The trellis is thick enough to support the weight of the squash without buckling, and the squash are holding on without any help. I'm pretty in love with how well it's worked.

I'm really posting just to share the picture of the one, little squash, totally stuck in the trellis. He's wedged in tightly and won't budge.

He makes me smile. Poor guy.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator    

Our quinoa harvest dried down quite nicely and it was time to get our thresh on. The goal? Separate the quinoa seeds from the stalks.

Here's Margo explaining our various techniques:

Yes, my bag was much fuller than Margo's, though I did manage to practically have an asthma attack from all the particulate matter I generated. You can hear me hacking up a lung at around :05.

The real challenge, we've decided, is the next step. How exactly do we rid the quinoa from all the dust of crushed leaves and stems?

Here are several options we're contemplating, and we'd love to hear your ideas:

• Will rinsing it work? We have to wash it anyways to remove the saponin. Will all the powder just rise to the top?

• Should we find a screen that is the perfect size to let the dust through but retain the quinoa?

• Should we follow the advice from Seeds of Change and setup a fan to blow away the dust while praying that the quinoa drops into a container?

We're going to figure out the best method in the next few days and then proceed. This is labor intensive! I might be changing my tune on whether or not it's a good idea to grow your own quinoa at home.

Until then, here's what Associate Garden Editor, Julie Chai, has to say about quinoa:

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

The quinoa had to go. It flopped over, dried out, and just looked ready. (Click here for a refresher on quinoa.)

The seed packet listed the days to maturity as 100-110. It had definitely been that long, but I hesitated in harvesting because the seed packet also said not to cut the mature seed heads until after a frost. Did the crop somehow need a frost to fully mature? I called up the pros at Seeds of Change and spoke to Emily. She said that the seed packet is a bit misleading -- the crop is ready in September or so. Not all climates have a frost by then, so if it's looking ready, then it probably is.

Step one - Cut off all the seed heads

Step two -- Lay them inside and let them dry down completely (including stems and leaves)

Step three will be threshing. Emily suggests putting on gloves and rubbing the seeds heads together over a bucket.

Step four will be removing the leaf and stem debris from the seeds. Emily sets up a fan and has a container to catch the quinoa. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, so I think I'll probably call her to flush out the details when we get closer to that time.

And the final step will be adequately soaking the seeds to remove the saponin, a tannin that tastes bitter.

More on each step as we get there...

So far I'm totally stoked on growing quinoa. We're getting far more than I expected. Emily tells people that they'll get about a cup per plant, and I think her estimate is seeming pretty accurate. We were able to grow 54 plants in a raised bed measuring 4ft. by 8ft. (the plants require spacing of 6-8 inches). It's a great crop to grow in that it's super unthirsty (10-12 inches for the entire season), low-maintenance, and stores well for months (a year?). The threshing seems to be the labor intensive part, but I'm excited to do it, and I imagine that anyone growing their own quinoa would probably be up for the challenge.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Sara Schneider, our wine editor, tracked me down the other day to give me a gift. She found me chatting with Elizabeth Jardina, researcher-extraordinaire, and Alan Phinney, managing editor (also extraordinaire, of course) and handed over a nice, sleek cardboard box. You can imagine how special I felt being singled out by the wine editor, of all people, and being handed a gift. Who me? Gosh, thanks.

Was it special wine from an amazing organic vineyard? It didn't feel heavy enough to be a bottle. Magical seeds she'd procured?

I opened the box and instantly choked on a cloud of particulate matter. Ok, a slight exaggeration, but I essentially opened up a box of finely decomposed cow manure and a big 'ol cow horn. Um, thank you?

Sara had been given "horn manure" from  Paul Dolan, a partner at Mendocino Wine Company. The tradition of horn manure (cow poo fermented underground in a cow horn) comes from biodynamic farming.

This is what I understand about biodynamics:

• It comes from a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner back in the '30s (Steiner also gave us  Waldorf education).
• It involves paying very close attention to your land.
• There are a lot of compost preparations, such as stuffing a cow horn with cow poo and burying it under your ground for a winter.

This is what I've never understood about biodynamics:

• Stuffing a cow horn with cow poo and burying it under your ground for a winter

Listen, I am not meaning to poo-poo biodynamics (heehee). It is not a method of farming with which I am familiar. And yes, from the outside it seems very woo-woo. But I'm open to learning. I swear. I'm even going to make compost tea out of the horn manure and irrigate my crops with it.

But back to my story. The gift. Of horn manure.

So, Paul Dolan gave Sara his old horn manure. And then Sara gave it to me. And then I went home and thought long and hard about the decisions I've made in life to have reached this moment. The moment of being given the gift of cow poo in a box.

See what else our wine editor is up to here.

And learn more about the One Block Diet here.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Even though I knew that going to see the movie Food Inc. would not be mind-changing for me--I mean, talk about preaching to the converted!--it's so worth seeing, even if you've been a Michael Pollan fan for the past 10 years and can recite passages from Fast Food Nation. My top reasons:

* It communicates the difference between mindless slaughter and careful harvest of food animals. And it does so without making you want to run out of the theater clutching your stomach. In fact, the industrial feedlot scenes are the least gory.The bloodiest scene (and it's not that bloody) takes place in the most humane setting: a great farm, run with respect for animals—Polyface Farm, in Virginia. 

* It makes the best case for avoiding GMO crops (like most of the large-scale corn and soybeans grown in this country). Not necessarily because they're intrinsically harmful to the human body, but because the seeds are patented by enormous corporations—and are considered intellectual property. If farmers harvest seeds from their new crop for replanting the following year, as they've done for centuries, they violate intellectual property law. So they're forced to buy all new seed from the company. This is like having to pay for rain, or sun. 

* It tells the story, compellingly, of ethical farmers who challenge giant corporations and get squashed--easily, because our laws totally support the corporations. These are very courageous people who lose everything for the sake of doing what's right, and were it not for this movie, would probably have gone on living in obscurity: the poultry farmer, a haggard woman with a vestige of beauty, refusing to enclose her grown-for-Purdue chickens (already dying by the dozen) in lightless sheds; the seed-cleaner, a man forced to give up to Monsanto the names of his customers—for whom he'd clean seeds so they could be planted in the spring. Doubtless there are hundreds more like them, unseen, unheard, and heroic. (FYI, filmmaker Robert Kenner told NPR's On the Media that his legal fees for Food Inc. were more than those for his past 15 films combined. And remember Oprah's legal struggle over her on-air hamburger-disparaging comment?

* It points out how easily our food supply can be contaminated when it's run like a giant machine. One example: Industrially raised cows, fed grain (largely corn) instead of the grass they're actually built to digest, have developed a whole new (and especially virulent) form of E. coli bacteria in their intestines called E. coli 0157. This strain is the one that's been causing so many of the foodborne illnesses in the past few years: hamburger (several times), spinach, even frickin' cookie dough. 

* One good way to fight food inc.? The One-Block Diet! Seriously, any form of local eating—whether you're raising crops yourself or supporting your area's farmers--will be better for your body and your community; and it will nearly always be fresher and taste better. For more ways to take action, see these 10 tips from the moviemakers themselves.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

My sweet gardeners, please help.

Problem #1 - Radicchio
This is what I planted:

See the nice red leaves? The thick white veins?
This is what mine looks like:

Where are the nice red leaves? Where are the thick white veins?
There is a hint of possible reddening:

 

Can I really expect the entire plant to change color so drastically so as to resemble the seed packet by harvest time? That seems unbelievable!

Problem #2 - Floppy quinoa

Believe it or not, "floppy quinoa" doesn't garner very helpful advice on a google search. Thus, I turn to you. My quinoa is beautiful. It looks like the seeds are finally starting to form:

It's also starting to flop over:

It's especially severe in the center of the bed. It looks like a giant took a step in the middle of the bed. I've got no problem staking -- it's just that I wasn't expecting to have to do so, and want to make sure that everything is copacetic with my quinoa. Thoughts?

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Two summers ago, when we started this one-block diet, I dreamed of growing something I'd had from a street vendor in Turkey: fresh chickpeas. He sold them off the back of a little wagon, a huge bundle festooned with pods. I sat and popped them open, one by one, gobbling the sweet, almost peanut-like morsels inside.

So we tried. Dismal failure. 

And then this summer, we tried again. Success! Why? Because this time, we planted them in spring, before scorching weather set in. 

Team Kitchen harvested a few and tried them (that's Stephanie Dean, our test kitchen coordinator on the left, and Amy Machnak, our recipe editor, on the right). 

We didn't have many, but they tasted nearly as sweet and fresh as I remembered. 

However, I don't remember them looking like tiny green brains (see below). Maybe I'd been eating them too fast.

If you're curious and would like to try these little nuggets, look for them at Mexican and Indian markets starting in early summer. Or grow them yourself! As long as you plant them early, they're really not so hard to get going.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Cipollini onions are on the menu for the fall feast. We ordered plants from Territorial Seed Company last April, and they arrived as baby plants. They were maybe three inches long, rubber-banded together and packed in a box.

I'm horrified to admit this, but I stashed them in the tool shed and accidentally forgot about them in the midst of all the Celebration Weekend prepations.

I uncovered them two weeks ago, shriveled and dry, still rubber-banded in that little box. There was just a bit of green in some of the stalks, so I figured I would put them in soil, give them some love, and see if they would possibly come back to life.

Here's how they look now:

I'm totally shocked that they survived after a two month stint in the shed! I'm going to plop them into the soil and see if they'll continue to behave and bulb up properly.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Hank Shaw in his garden, in front of a gigantic cardoon.

Handmade boar salami....home-cured olives...wine grown in the back yard....fat, juicy venison sausages.

We ate this—and much, much more—on Saturday at the home of Hank Shaw, a political writer, and his partner, Holly Heyser, a journalism professor at Sacramento State.

Hank was also nominated for the James Beard blog award this year. We shared a table with him and Holly and his mom at the awards ceremony in New York back in May, and really enjoyed their company and like-mindedness. Hank writes fascinating accounts of making food from scratch, which in his case involves hunting and fishing as well as gardening. Holly grew up hunting in Minnesota and has a blog of her own about, as she says, "acquiring food the hard way."

Talk about a gracious guy. Even though he lost to us, he invited us to a cookout at his place on the east side of Sacramento. 

Dinner fell on what turned out to be a fearsomely scorching day in his neighborhood—as in, 108 F°. Nonetheless, a small group of us One-Blockers left our cool coastal habitat behind, lured by his promise of wild game.

A Wild Feast

The minute we walked in the door, Hank had his homemade and very respectable sangiovese ready for pouring, and a glistening array of things to eat:

* Good home-cured olives, which I found impressive since we've tried to make them ourselves, without success (yet!)
* Hank's own pickled beets, carrots, and sunchokes
* Totally delicious shad rillettes—a sort of loose pâté, traditionally made with pork or rabbit but here with  tasty local shad that Hank caught with his dad recently on the American River. I had no idea that shad existed in the West. I thought they were strictly an East Coast species. Now I'm hankering to catch some shad myself. (Their roe are particularly amazing, fyi.)
* Excellent saucisson sec, a dry salami from a wild boar Hank bagged in Monterey County. Secret ingredient: 1974 Heitz Cellars Angelica, made from Mission grapes. This fortified wine was the first wine made in California back in the 1700s.
* Lonzino, air-cured from the loin of above boar—more delicate and thinly sliced, so it looked like rose petals
* Fennel- and ouzo-cured salmon, made with an Alaskan pink salmon caught by one of Hank's friends

Bear in mind, these were just the appetizers. I hadn't seen snacks so hefty since my New Year's in Moscow, when I noshed on an enormous spread of zakuski.

After a fully appreciating all that was on the table, we presented Hank with a couple of just-baked fruit pies, plus gifts from the One-Block Diet: last year's honey from hive Veronica and this spring's honey from Midge, plus a bottle of red-wine vinegar and some fresh eggs from the flock.

Then he took us on a tour of their abode.

The Tour

The first guided look-around of a person's house is always fun, isn't it? It's especially interesting when the place is full of strange and quirky stuff. Hank and Holly live in that kind of house, and seeing how Hank makes his food only increased our pleasure in eating it.

Hank's homemade wine, hanging out with the books.
Each carboy holds one varietal; included here are
Tempranillo, Sangiovese, and deep, dark
Portuguese Touriga.The two tiny carboys in back are
Zinfandel, which Hank made from his own grapes
(the rest used grapes he bought).

The garden, where Hank grows everything from beets
to heat-resistant romaine to salsify. 

It occupies a chunk of their 1/4-acre back yard,
but there's plenty of space to grow more stuff. We
semi-seriously suggested he try growing wheat—
since he actually has the space for it.

A few of Hank's vines (I think these are mainly Zinfandel).
More grapes grow against a far wall.

In the garage, garden zucchini dry on a rack.
Several ripe figs were set out to dry on a work
surface nearby.

And best of all...

The "curing fridge"—a battered but useful appliance
in the garage, equipped with a thermostat control
and a teeny humidifier (at bottom right).

Hank at the grill while we gab under the tree.

Hank slowly and tenderly grilled a slew of those venison sausages until they were shiny, taut, and on the verge of bursting. The rest of us sat around under the big shady tree just beyond and gabbed for a while.

The Dinner

We went indoors—merciful air conditioning!—and feasted on those sausages, stuffed into giant buns with homemade pickles; firm, meaty marinated octopus liberally seasoned with paprika; two pasta salads—one with the couscous-like Sardinian pasta called fregola, studded with bocconcini (tiny fresh mozzarella balls), and the other with barley and sundried tomatoes—and a lovely, simple little beet salad with feta cheese and lovage. So much care and generosity went into this dinner. Hank even made the paprika. As in, he grew the peppers, dried them, and ground them. Having made our own salt, we knew this wasn't as crazy as it sounds. These kinds of things are worth doing, if for no other reason that it makes you really, really appreciate paprika and salt.

Hank served his honey lemon-verbena ice cream, I cut up the pies, and we chewed our last bites in a semi-stupor. Hank brought out some little glasses filled with that precious 1974 Heitz Angelica, which tasted surprisingly similar to Italian nocino, a walnut liqueur. Delicious. 

Then Hank and Holly, pied pipers that they are, ushered us into what they proudly call their Opium Den. It's a library with deep pink walls, a comfy sofa, a fireplace, and a mantle adorned with bare skulls of past game. As we sank into the sofa, Hank plied us with homemade absinthe. Yow. You could practically see the fumes emerging from our lips as we tried it. It only took a couple of sips to finish us off.

We eased into our cars and drove home, sated from head to toe and marveling at all that Hank and Holly do. Before we left, they accepted our invitation to munch freshly baked pizzas from our brand-new wood-fired oven, topped, naturally, with whatever will be ripest and most flavorful in the One-Block garden. Coming soon.

UPDATE: Here's what Hank wrote about the evening (and you can see the food he made, too).

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Last February I introduced quinoa as one of our potential one block crops and explained what goes wrong when planted at the wrong time of year.

We've tried again, this time sowing the seeds in April, and the results are much more successful.

Here is what the plants looked like about a month ago:

And here are a couple of shots from today:

Here are answers to the most commonly posed questions by visitors:

1. What is that?

As I wrote in February, Quinoa is a staple to Andean cultures. It is grown mostly for its edible seed (not a grain, as it is often mistaken, because it is not from a grass) though the leaves are also edible. It is a complete amino acid and is unusually high in protein for a seed.

Here is a link to Sunset recipes with quinoa.

2. I never knew you could grow this in your garden. Is it a good idea?

You can absolutely grow your own quinoa. I recommend Faro, a variety bred for sea level.  It's probably not the most realistic endeavor since our entire bed (4ft. by 8ft.) will likely yield a serving or two (and some say I'm being optimistic). We're doing it for fun. Many of us are of the mindset that it's exciting to grow anything once, even if it's not the most logical use of space. It's the same reason we're growing our own chick peas.

3. Why is that bed of lamb's quarters being allowed to go to seed?

Great question! Quinoa resembles lamb's quarters (or pigweed) because they are in the same Genus, Chenopodium. Lamb's quarters can also be used for their edible leaves, but if you're like me, all you've ever done is weed it.

4. How will you harvest it?

Having never done this before, I'll follow the instructions on the back of the seed packet: Cut mature seed heads after frost, and dry in an undisturbed place. Thresh when completely dry. Rinse well before cooking. Store seeds in cool, dry, dark conditions.

I've always wanted to thresh something....

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

My beloved garbanzo beans have grown fuzzy, adorable seed pods.

This is another first time crop for me, so I'm anxiously tending to them and gently trying to coax them into maturity (mostly by talking to them and reading up on growing conditions).

I'm trying to figure out when they're ready and am getting a bit confused. The horticulture department at Purdue (high up in a google search) says they are ready between 3 and 7 months. How helpful! The same site lists the traditional medicinal uses as, "aphrodisiac, bronchitis, catarrh, cutamenia, cholera, constipation, diarrhea, dyspepsia, flatulence, snakebite, sunstroke, and warts." Impressive -- I don't even know what a few of those conditions are!

On second thought, the 4 month range might have something to to do with the fact that you can eat them fresh when they immature, or wait until the plant browns and eat them as dry beans. I like these instructions: Chickpeas for fresh eating can be picked when pods are still immature and green; they can be eaten like snap beans. For dried chickpeas, harvest the entire plant when the leaves have withered and turned brown; place the plant on a flat, warm surface and allow the pods to dry. Collect the seed as the pods split. Seeds that will barely dent when bitten are sufficiently dry.

I will graciously accept any advice from you, dear reader. Do I cut the water in order to get them to brown? Dried versus fresh? It's my gut to eat them fresh since that seems to be a major perk of growing them.

Side note: I found an empty garbanzo bean pod on the ground after Celebration Weekend and nearly cried. Garden etiquette, people! I had one man PLUCK more than a few leaves of my tarragon to ask me for a plant ID. Now I know none of you would ever do that, right? Especially in the test garden, where everything has the intention of being photographed for the magazine.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Behold our new outdoor kitchen. It was finished about 10 minutes ago. Frankly, I'm dazzled...I have to restrain myself from running out there to admire it yet again. Not only does it have a stately pizza oven (that large red item at the back), a snazzy cocktail/wine bar (in foreground), and a long counter inset with multiple grills and a ferociously hot wok burner, it also has...

By Elaine Johnson, Sunset associate food editor

Photos by Kimberley Burch, Elaine Johnson, and Margo True

We have a tough job here. Really. Well, maybe not so tough. We just raised our glasses to the spring harvest with a beautiful lunch featuring our own produce, eggs, Chardonnay, beer, and honey. Team Kitchen did the cooking.

Test kitchen coordinator Stephanie Dean and recipe editor Amy Machnak put the finishing touches on the table. In front, you can see Grilled carrots and green onions with fresh thyme.

 

 

We started with Favas and ricotta on homemade wheat crackers and Radishes with fresh butter and sea salt.

Art director Jim McCann and test garden coordinator Johanna Silver try the crackers.

 

That’s me in the middle sampling the Sunset Chardonnay. It’s really mellowed from the crisp green-apple character it was showing last summer. Now it’s a lovely, full aromatic white. (In fact, wine editor Sara Schneider is scheming to slip it into our upcoming Western Wine Awards to see how it fares.) Photo director Yvonne Stender is on the right. She and Johanna (on the left) might be making faces about the beer. Still bad news, like Crayola crayons. Noble effort, though.

 

Managing editor Alan Phinney, associate garden editor Julie Chair (left), and Sara Jamison liked the wine, too.

We sat down to a table of pinks and greens. The Strawberry-honey lemonade (the pink drink in the glasses) was so refreshing. Plus, the color matched Johanna’s garden flowers.

The bulls-eye Chioggia beets looked stunning on the mesclun salad.

 

We also feasted on Spring greens quiche (made this time with spinach, but also delicious with sautéed fava leaves) and Grilled carrots and green onions with fresh thyme.

 

For dessert, another taste of spring: Fromage blanc with strawberries and lemon honey.

It’s incredibly satisfying to eat good food that you’ve raised and cooked yourself.

Here’s the recipe for the lemonade. We’ll try to catch you up on the rest of the recipes in Sunset or in a future blog. Happy spring!

Strawberry lemonade

MAKES About 2 quarts

1 qt. strawberries
¾ cup honey
1 cup fresh lemon juice (from 5 to 6 lemons)
Ice

Whirl strawberries and honey in a blender until puréed. Pour through a fine strainer set over a bowl, rubbing to extract liquid; discard seeds. Stir in lemon juice and 1 qt. water. Pour over glasses filled halfway with ice.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Things are crazy in the test garden as we prepare for Celebration Weekend, but I wanted to take a quick minute to keep you posted on my ever growing interest in Team Escargot. Turns out Sunset wrote the book (er, article) on homemade escargot back in May of 1988. Check it out:

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Our little spring garden is ready for showtime--in other words, lunch.

Yesterday morning, Johanna got down on her heels in the garden (our spring crops are very short) and clipped mesclun and a whole mess of herbs, yanked up green onions, and pulled three colors of beets and some carrots and baby radishes for Team Kitchen to cook with. The crooked carrot, which you can see it in the basket above, got that way because it had to grow around a rock. That's why you want nice, loose, fluffy soil: so you can have nice, straight carrots.

Not pictured here: the favas (which got ripe all at once a few weeks ago, as they tend to do, and so had to be harvested) and the strawberries, regular and tiny Alpine, which are growing separately in planter boxes. There are bunches of herbs here, too, but they're hiding under the lettuce.

I sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of water for swishing and a knife for root-trimming, and chomped warm vegetables from the basket. Everything was sweet and juicy, especially--surprisingly--the green onions; they had only a hint of heat sneaking in toward the end of the chew. Even the over-large mesclun had managed not to get bitter or leathery, as overgrown lettuce is prone to do. And the chervil, although slightly scorched (it's a delicate little frilly herb) had a clean, good flavor, like a refreshing licorice candy.

The only disappointment was the Russian tarragon (Artemisia dracunculoides), which we accidentally planted instead of lovely and sophisticated French tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus)--they're really hard to tell apart. At first it tasted like nothing at all, and then it tasted like pine tar. Well, we just won't use it. Luckily we have plenty of other herbs to choose from.

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Last Sunday, Erika Ehmsen, Johanna Silver, Amy Machnak, and I sat in a darkened theater at the Millennium Broadway Hotel, nerves tingling. As some of you know, we'd been nominated—along with fellow one-block-diet bloggers Elizabeth Jardina, Rick LaFrentz, and Margaret Sloan—for a James Beard Journalism award.

Since we were sitting at a table near the exit sign, way way at the back, I was sure we wouldn't win. After all, no one would put us here if we were actually meant to get to the stage in any reasonable amount of time. I gently suggested that everyone just relax and enjoy dinner and give up the dream of winning an award.

So we did, and got to know our tablemates—fellow nominee Hank Shaw; his wife, Holly; and his lovely mother--all come from Sacramento. Hank writes a very entertaining, knowledgeable, pull-no-punches blog called Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Like us, he's trying to show how possible it is for you to make your own food — from scratch. He tends to hunt and forage, we tend to garden and make wine, but the intention is very much the same. We felt glad to be sharing our table with a kindred spirit.

Then Kelly Choi, announcing the winners for the award ahead of ours (for Audio Webcast or Radio Show), accidentally opened the wrong envelope. "Erika Ehmsen, Elizabeth..." Oh, my lord. She'd flubbed, but we knew we'd won. Whoever got the Audio Webcast award, well, sorry, dude, our screaming completely drowned out your moment. Then we ran to the stage. (Ok, Erika walked. She's pregnant and wise.)

Hank Shaw's mother very kindly took this picture of us accepting our award:

 

Left to right: Johanna, me, Amy, and Erika, beside ourselves with joy.

And moments later, in the lobby:

Courtesy Hanna Lee

The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur. Some very fine journalists won awards, including the multiple James-Beard award winner Alan Richman, of GQ magazine, and we cheered them all. For the full list, click here. Erika, bless her, was Tweeting like mad the entire time.

The next night, we put on our fanciest duds and went to the chef awards, at Lincoln Center. What a scene. We were quietly ushered around the red carpet, ah well. Amy's shoes deserved to have a prance before the papparazzi!

Amy's shoes. Actually, she had to mince, not prance.

The awards ceremony, which this year honored Women in Food, lasted three and a half hours, and although many deserving (and terrific) chefs won (including San Francisco's Nate Appleman and Maria Hines of Seattle), we were as famished as wolves by the time it was over. We dashed out and devoured tidbits put out by some of the top female chefs in the country (my favorite: Anita Lo's steak tartare with anchovy broth).

It was Quite a Scene. Besides the best and most celebrated chefs in the country, we spotted Salman Rushdie (we unabashedly had our pictures taken with him, on a camera that, alas, was lost at JFK).

Amy, Johanna, and me in the thick of it.                                   Top Chef Jeff McInnis and Erika.              

We had a very, very good time, piling happily into taxis for an after-party at Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton's tiny, excellent, jewel of a restaurant down in the East Village. (She'd been nominated for Best Chef New York City.) Gabrielle makes the best hamburgers EVER, intensely flavorful and so juicy they squirt.

I remember the clock saying 3:30 when I closed my eyes.

--------

Now, back we are at Sunset with all of us winners together, in front of the crazy-tall hops that we'll be using in an upcoming batch of beer:

Left to right, Sunset's Beard-winning bloggers: Elizabeth Jardina (with Honey), Rick LaFrentz, Amy Machnak, me (with Ophelia), Johanna Silver, Margaret Sloan, and Erika Ehmsen.

and because they were part of it too...the very patient Honey and Ophelia, representing the coop:

:

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

I mentioned in my last post that I was concerned that the tarragon I seeded wasn't actually tarragon. I'm still very confused.

This is tarragon:

This is what's growing from the tarragon seeds I planted (bordered by dill above and parsley to the right):

Here is a shot of the container next to my seeds. The plants are definitely not identical but also aren't so completely different from one another:

Look at the leaves side by side (store bought plant is on bottom):

See what I mean? Is it or isn't it tarragon? The one I'm growing is much lighter and a bit less fleshier than the plant from the nursery.

A taste test has also been somewhat inconclusive. I asked recipe editor, Amy Machnak, to chew on a few leaves I plucked from the plants I grew without telling her what she was eating. She (very trustingly) munched away and said she was getting hints of "tarragon, spinach, and arugula." OK, so it seems that these plants are more tarragon that anything else, but I'm perplexed at their lack of delicious tarragon flavor and their odd appearance. Did I buy bad seeds? Is it something in their growing conditions? Has anything like this ever happened to you, dear gardeners?

By Erika Ehmsen, Sunset copy chief

We’re looking over a four-leaf clover that Chicago’s French Pastry School sent to wish us luck at this Sunday’s James Beard Foundation Awards. (Thanks, guys!) Four of us are headed to New York for the ceremony, and we’re excited and nervous—and not just about what to wear!

Our One-Block project is in great company in the Best Food Blog category: Our fellow nominees are Bon Appétit columnist Andrew Knowlton’s The BA Foodist and Sacramento omnivore Hank Shaw’s Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, which takes locavore to a near-complete DIY level. We’re looking forward to swapping stories with Shaw, Knowlton, and all of the other food and wine writers we’ll be meeting this weekend.

Want to hear who we’re talking to and find out if we win? We’ll be posting live updates from the Media Awards ceremony on Sunset’s Twitter page. Sign up to follow us by clicking here—it’s free, easy, fun, and admittedly a bit addictive. Wish us luck, and see you on the Interweb!

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator   

The spring garden is filling in nicely (for the most part).

I thinned the dill (back right) after I took this picture, but I was loving the way it looked as a soft mass.

There are tarragon sprouts in the back left corner, though you can't see them in this picture. One problem - they don't taste like tarragon. Has anyone planted tarragon from seed? Does it take a while for the plants to start tasting like they should? They totally look like tarragon. I'm going to be really embarrassed if I'm nurturing a weed.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

I am so relieved. So far SIX of the garbanzo beans I sowed in the ground have germinated. That's not a great count considering I probably sowed 50 but I'm still pleased because more might very well be on their way.

Here they are, doused in Sluggo because last night was their very first night without floating row cover, and I was so scared that the slugs would devour them. Sluggo was a quick fix as I ran out the door last night, but there are heaps of less-expensive and less-manufactured solutions.

We were incredibly lucky to be able to harvest all of our winter crops at the same time. It'll be a bit more of a challenge with these crops, but I think we'll be able to pull it off with one major exception - the garbanzo beans. While they need cool soil to germinate, they also need a very long, warm growing season of around 120 days. We'll have to wait for summer to enjoy them.

The fava beans are almost ready (as they were originally planted last fall as cover crop). Some of the radishes are also ready (so speedy!). I can sow another succession of radishes before the weather gets too warm, but we've still got a ways to go on the other crops.

 

In order to eat everything as one big feast, we will likely be having baby beets, carrots, and scallions. But that's ok, we'll just say they're gourmet.

 

Excuse us while we do a little crowing.

We've been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award! Yes, this very blog.

The category is: Blog Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurants, or Nutrition. (Yep, that sounds like us.) The winner will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on May 3.

And this is right on the heels of the news that our One-Block Feast story from August '08 was nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals award.

Spring is feeling very springy indeed.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

We've still got quite a ways to go, but everything in the spring plan has been planted, and all but two crops (tarragon and chervil) have germinated.

Here's the difference 11 days makes:

I broadcast the tarragon, dill, parsley, and chervil, while I sowed the beets, carrots, scallions, radishes and mesclun mix in rows. I am sort of wishing that I had broadcast everything, as I think that would grow to be a fuller, bushier look. But we'll see. Learn the difference between broadcasting and rows here. 

In other news, I sowed chick peas in a nearby bed. The team tried growing them way back when and had little luck. I'm hoping that soaking the seeds in water for 12 hours before planting them will do the trick. I will let you know!

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

We hinted of it here and here, and now it seems there will actually be an organic veggie garden at the White House.

The White House has even released the planting plan. Looks great!

I'm disappointed Obama confessed to disliking beets. Who dislikes beets?! Then again, it seems like an easy out for a disliked vegetable. Can you imagine the uproar from mothers across the country had he chosen broccoli?

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Good news! Our print story last August about our summer one-block feast, We Had a Dream, has been nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) journalism award.

To read our story, click here.

We're thrilled about the nomination, since the IACP has thousands of members—and other nominees include such food-magazine luminaries as Gourmet, Saveur, and Food & Wine. The winners of the awards will be announced at a gala ceremony in Denver on April 4.

We'll let you know how we do!

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Margo spoke with me a few weeks ago about some (relatively) quick growers that she wanted sown for a spring feast. Her vision was to have them planted in a cohesive little garden, much like the winter crops.

I thought I'd share my garden plan, incomplete as it may be. Some seeds have already been sown, others are in the mail, and I'm still trying to track down a few.

Each section is 2'3" x 24". The whole garden is planted in a bed that's 4'6" x 10'. There will be a few more crops (shelling peas, chick peas, strawberries, and mint) scattered in other parts of the test garden.

Here's how it looks so far:

Not very impressive, but it'll be neat to post pictures as it all comes together.

Lastly, I never tire of taking pictures of baby seedlings:

Beets (just breaking out of their seeds!)

Baby lettuce

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

We began with salad, wheatberry ciabatta, and homemade butter.

Our winter feast started with a happy accident.

Back in September, Team Kitchen and Team Garden drew up a list of cool-season crops that would do well in our area, and planned a menu around it. First we'd have a salad of Belgian endive and escarole, with a fresh poached egg on top and croutons from extremely homemade wheat bread (as in, we grew the wheat and ground it).

Well, the endive never sprouted. And we couldn't find escarole seeds. Who knew there'd be a run on escarole seeds?

Moral: Be flexible. Johanna, our test garden coordinator, had also planted some red butterhead lettuce and arugula, so Team Kitchen adapted.

It was easy; the lettuces were beautiful. We hardcooked the egg instead of poaching it, because a liquidy poached yolk, great on crisp endive and escarole, would've turned the tender lettuces into a sticky clump. We added small chunks of sweet, juicy tangerines from our tree, garlic-rubbed croutons, and a vinaigrette made with tangerine juice, our olive oil, and sea salt.

Red butterhead lettuce and arugula salad with tangerines and hard-cooked eggs.

We had plenty of wine to go with the food. The Syrah was in bottle at last and had recovered from its bottle-shock; it was back to its original blackberry suaveness. The Chardonnay still tasted fine—like a crisp green apple.

Sunset Chardonnay and Syrah, left; right, wine editor Sara Schneider sips the white as managing editor Alan Phinney tears off a chunk of ciabatta.

The stunning brassicas from the garden—cauliflower, broccoli romanesco, Savoy cabbage, kale, broccoli rabe, mustard greens—gave us our main courses: a winter vegetable chowder and spicy braised greens with preserved lemon.

Winter vegetable chowder. On top: yellow broccoli rabe flowers and purple rosemary blooms. 

Braised Savoy cabbage, mustard greens, and
Tuscan kale with preserved lemon and chile.

The broccoli romanesco was so beautiful and strange that we used it as decor, too.

SO WHERE ARE THE RECIPES?

They and the story of how we raised the ingredients for this winter menu will be showing up in larger form at some point in the months ahead.

For now, please have some salad. It's hearty enough to eat when it's cold, but bright and lively, too—which suits our California March, the month when winter slides into spring.

Red Butterhead Lettuce and Arugula Salad with Tangerines and Hard-Cooked Eggs

MAKES 6 to 8 servings TIME About 1 hour

We used our own chickens’ eggs, but we let them sit in the fridge for at least a week to let the air pocket inside each shell expand and make the eggs easier to peel.

6 to 8 eggs (not super-fresh)
2 tsp. fresh tangerine juice
1/2 tsp. each finely grated tangerine zest and sea salt
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3 to 4 thin slices wheatberry ciabatta or other whole wheat bread,
     cut into 1/2-in. dice (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 cloves garlic, mashed to a paste with 1/4 tsp. sea salt
5 loosely packed cups arugula leaves
6 loosely packed cups red butterhead lettuce leaves
     (about 1/2 small head)
2 large or 4 small tangerines

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Put eggs in a small pot and cover with about 1 in. of water. Bring to a boil; immediately lower heat to a simmer and cook 10 minutes. When eggs are finished, transfer to ice water; let cool 1 minute. Crack eggs all over on counter and return to ice water for 5 minutes. Peel under cold water. Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, whisk tangerine juice, zest, and salt together in a small bowl. Whisk in 1/4 cup olive oil. Set aside.
3. In a heatproof cup, microwave remaining 1/4 cup olive oil with mashed garlic for 10 seconds. Put bread cubes on a baking pan and drizzle with garlic oil, tossing to coat. Spread in a single layer and bake about 15 minutes, or until crisp, stirring once or twice. Set aside.
4. Rinse greens and dry twice in a salad spinner. Peel tangerines and remove thready white pith; then cut fruit crosswise into chunks, removing any seeds.
5. In a large bowl, toss greens gently but thoroughly with only enough dressing to coat. Add tangerines and croutons and toss just to mix. Divide salad among plates. Add a quartered egg to each plate and drizzle eggs with a little more dressing. Or pile it all on a platter if you like, so people can help themselves.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

I'm not sure that every gardener would consider photo shoots to be perks, but I love them because they are so different from my day-to-day.

I get to fluff my veggies and my hair, and have some fun.

Today we shot the cool season crops for the One Block Diet, specifically how to harvest.

Much against his will, I coaxed staff photographer, Tom Story, into demanding, "Give it to me," just like the movies (though it was somewhat unclear as to whether he was addressing me or the arugula).

And I pretended that photo editor, Linda Lamb Peters,was my stylist.

After the fun and games it was time to get to work harvesting the bed for Margo and her team of chefs. It looks so barren!

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Four of our chicks at about two weeks old, back in August of 2007.

If you've been enjoying our blog posts about our various one-block feast projects, and don't yet know about our downloadable how-to guides for each, check them out by clicking on the one that interests you.

The Guides:

How to Raise Chickens

How to Make Beer

How to Make Olive Oil

How to Raise Honeybees

How to Make Wine

How to Make Vinegar

How to Make Salt

How to Grow Summer Crops

How We Made Cheese

How to Attract Beneficial Insects (we threw this one in just for fun, and because it's helpful)

Send us your comments, if you like...and stay tuned for the launch of new projects as we head into spring.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

A little background in case quinoa is not yet a staple in your diet:

Quinoa is a wonder food. It is grown mostly for its edible seed (not a grain, as it is often mistaken, because it is not from a grass) though the leaves are also edible. Loved by many because it is a complete amino acid, quinoa is unusually high in protein for a seed.

We wanted to experiment with including some as part of a winter feast.

Quinoa is indigenous to the high, dry climate of the South American Andes and thrives in places where the temperature stays under 90 degrees.  So while Menlo Park isn’t necessarily high, it is moderately dry and definitely mild. Additionally, Seeds of Change has developed a variety, Faro, which is particularly well suited to sea level.

The problem? We didn’t realize we wanted it until September and quinoa is best planted in April or May.

Being the test garden we thought, why not give it a go?

Here’s why:

A few things went wrong:

1. The frost hit hard.  Quinoa can endure a light frost, but the plants are usually much larger by the time the frosts roll in. These were mere pups when the cold came. I don’t think they could handle the chill on their baby stems.

2. Quinoa is sensitive to day length. The foliage grows and grows while the days get longer, and seed formation (reproduction) is triggered after the summer solstice, as the plant prepares to die. Planting it in September threw them for a loop. They only grew about two feet before forming seeds, but the seed head was small and not very robust. (They'll grow over four feet tall if planted properly.)

I guess that’s why we call it the test garden.

Lesson learned: Don’t try to cheat the seasons. Plant your quinoa from seed in April or May.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Who says that a watched broccoli never ripens? All my peeking and poking hasn't hurt the "romenesco" one bit.

Just look at this crazy, psychedelic, head of broccoli:

It's part of the cool season edible garden that has grown from seed into this:

Incredible to think that in a few days it will go from the ground to the kitchen.

I think I'm feeling slightly attached to this garden -- not a good habit to get into.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Being a gardener, I am used to a bit of given thievery:

But a funny (or not-so-funny) thing happened in the test garden the other day. I am not always out there during this time of year but popped out to water the seedlings. There was an elderly couple out there, and something struck me as off about the woman. Namely, she was making a b-line for the chard plants. I'm used to visitors moseying about, pointing and pausing -- not speed demons.

May I help you with something? I asked.

Just looking, she said.

Apparently her "just looking" involved a paper bag and pruners.

WAIT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

She told me that she had an agreement with the gardener from "many, many years ago" that she can come and take whatever she pleases.

I told her that I was very sorry, but that this garden is specifically for the magazine. The very plot from which she was about to pluck is being prepped for its photograph right now! I have editors scouring over empty spaces and leaf formation.

I couldn't believe it! It's such poor garden etiquette to harvest someone else's veggies. It's even poorer form to tell me that you're just looking.

The real kicker is that I waited outside for a few minutes weeding something or other to see if she would come back. Sure enough, she did -- peeking her head around the bend to see if I was still there!

Truth be told, I have totally mixed feelings about the incident. What I love most about gardening is feeding people and sharing the bounty. And there is a Jewish tradition of pe'ah, leaving the corners of your fields unharvested for the hungry to eat. This approach appeals to me. It rings true with the type of gardener I want to be.

But let's face it: This ain't that garden. This is the Sunset test garden! Sprouting, growing, and ripening for our beloved readers!

Translation: HANDS OFF!

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator.

I just received my monthly online newsletter from Garden for the Environment (SF's jewel of a demonstration/educational garden) and got wind of the new San Francisco Garden Registry.

Some of the same folks that dreamed up the Civic Center Victory Garden (namely, artist/garden goddess, Amy Franceschini) have now launched an online "survey of urban food production zones."

This is too cool.

Wow. It's brand new and will take time to fill in, but I've already found a few gardens in my neighborhood that I never would have known existed. Hopefully people will use the "grower with surplus" feature, and I'll get to reap some of the benefits.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Planting cucumber seeds was one one of the first tasks given to me during my starting week at Delaney Community Farm outside of Denver, CO. They were the first seeds I'd ever planted, and I was to drop them in several 30 foot rows that I had just carved with a hoe.

I was horrified at the idea of releasing these tiny, baby seeds into that dry, crumbly soil. It seemed simply impossible that they would know how to grow and survive in such seemingly harsh conditions.

Sure enough, they sprouted, grew, and matured into fabulous slicers and picklers. And with them grew my fascination with the knowledge that I can really grow something big from a tiny seed.

I highly encourage you to plant a few of your vegetables from seed this spring. You can expose yourself to far more variety than what's available that week at the nursery. It can be cheaper than buying seedlings, though potting soil can add up as an expense. It's also a fascinating science project and an exercise in patience and care.

This is a great time to plant one final succession of cool season crops in the Northern CA area (though this weather is making me want to start the tomatoes and melons!). Don't have a greenhouse? Try a windowsill.

Tips for starting veggie seeds:

• Seeds are dormant until placed in an environment that encourages germination - essentially a dark, moist place. I either start mine in recycled cell packs in the green house or sow them directly into the ground, depending on the time of year and preference of the crop. Read the back of the seed packet to find out specific instructions.

• The general rule of thumb is to plant double the amount of seeds that you think you need. For example, sow 8 tomato seeds if you want 4 tomato plants. This is useful in case any of the seeds fail to germinate. You can always gingerly separate the starts, pot them up, and pass along to your neighbor.

• Another general rule is to sow seeds twice as deep as the seed is wide. This means barely under the surface for tiny seeds like lettuce or carrots, and about 1/4 inch for crops like squash. You don't need to pat down the soil. It really is OK just to sprinkle soil on top of the seed.

• Make sure you use potting mix or potting soil instead of planting soil or compost. Potting mixes/soils contain all the necessary ingredients (perlite, vermiculite, peat moss, etc.) to stay light and fluffy, and drain properly.   

• Water gently and thoroughly. Be extremely diligent about keeping the seeds moist through germination. I like to cover them with floating row cover to help contain moisture.

Check out more information about starting seeds indoors from Sunset or Renee's Garden Seeds.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Thinning crops is often a difficult task for new gardeners. It's hard to avoid the feeling that one is wasting potential food, but really, it is a totally necessary step to make sure that each plant has enough room to form properly. And depending on when you do it, you might get some baby (read: gourmet) vegetables out of the process.

I planted carrots a while back in the test garden. I seeded them pretty heavily in case there were any problems with germination. Here is how they grew:

A good time to thin is when the tops are a several inches high. You want to wait until they are established and healthy, but not so long that the roots get in one another's way. Anywhere from 2-4 inches sounds about right.

This shot really reveals why thinning is necessary. These carrots would not have room to size up:

Be sure to thin gingerly, trying to cause as little disturbance as possible to the surrounding plants. Then again, don't worry too much. Plants often look a bit droopy after being thinned, but they usually recover.

Thin the seedlings to approximately 2 inches apart. This gives each carrot about 1 inch on either side to grow.

These are on the smaller side, but as I've mentioned to in the past, I'm not the world's most patient gardener. Waiting would have set a better example, but I'm happy to announce that these shots are from a few weeks ago and the carrots are coming along nicely. It just goes to show that you should always be free to experiment in your own little plot of soil.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Our cool season edibles are coming along at a snail's pace. We can raise vegetables year-round in our mild, Menlo Park climate, but things are definitely growing a lot slower than in the summer.

These brassicas look unassuming enough, but I've been keeping a close eye on the ones in the row closest to the camera. 

They finally looked like they were forming heads, so I reached my grubby hands down to peel back the center leaves of one of the plants. Sure enough, the most beautiful head is taking shape. Growing food is so magical, especially when the vegetables look like this.

This is a variety of broccoli known as "romanesco." This is the first time I've grown it. Hopefully I can keep my hands off it long enough for it to reach full maturity.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Backyard composting is one of the most rewarding aspects to gardening. It plugs you right into the cycle of life, transforming garden debris into gold.

Sunset has covered composting for decades. Here are links to a few helpful pieces on our website:

The secrets to perfect compost

Composting basics

I also recommend checking out any of the composting techniques at Instructables (this is a fantastic DIY website, by the way).

Composting goes in and out of style in the test garden, depending on what we're working on and how much space we have. I am currently testing out the Sun-Mar 400. Though I am more of a purist when it comes to compost (preferring to build a pile on the ground and turn it by hand), I am rising above my skepticism to give this above-ground tumbler a fair shot.

The idea is that you feed it yard scraps, pour a diluted microbial solution in it (an 8oz. bottle of Compost Swift is included in purchase), turn it often, and harvest finished compost out of the center chamber.

I love building a bicep rather than breaking my back, but I'm not having great luck with perfectly finished compost coming through the center chamber, as is pictured above (photo not taken in our garden). My chamber spits out a mix of compost and yet-to-decompose yard waste. Supposedly it can take some time to start working properly. I will keep you posted.

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Here's what we're giving for Christmas this year:

Photograph by Spencer Toy

Yes! The fruits of our summer one-block diet.

Happy Holidays, everybody.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Last night was unbearable! My mom didn't want to hear about it, considering she was experiencing -8 degrees in Denver and we only fell to 39 (but that's so cold for us!).

Here are some photos of frosty lettuce, the morning after a frigid night.

This was nothing to worry about -- crops such as beets, carrots, lettuce, chard, and potatoes can withstand a light frost. Hardy, cool-season crops, such as cabbage, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi can even withstand a light freeze.

There is a widely repeated rumor that a cold snap can even make certain crops taste sweeter because of the sugar that's produced as a defense, but I am unable to verify this despite having asked a couple of expert farmers as well as Kathy Brenzel, senior garden editor at Sunset.

Warm-season crops (i.e. tomatoes, peppers, melons, cucumbers, eggplant) don't fare so well in the cold. Sometimes only the upper or outer foliage are damaged in a light frost and the plant may still continue to produce. You can take preventative measures to extend the season for warm-season plants by keeping them well mulched and covered if you know a frost is on the way. Cover plants or rows with blankets, tarps or floating row covers.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

In mid-September, I picked our last few trombetta zucchini for the season and commemorated them in brine. I.e., I made pickles.

Zucchini don't usually make good pickles—they're too soft and mushy—but I had high hopes for the trombettas, because they're firm and crisp, like cucumbers.

And you know what? They make fantastic pickles. Snappy in texture and tart-sweet. I've been eating them with burgers, grilled steak, and pan-seared fish.

Trombetta Zucchini Pickles

MAKES about 4 cups TIME About 30 minutes

2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. turmeric
5 whole cloves
2 tsp. yellow mustard seeds
1 tsp. celery seed
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. red chile flakes
2 tsp. salt
1 onion, sliced into half-moons
1 lb. trombetta zucchini, cut into 1/4-in. slices

1. Put all ingredients except the onion and the zucchini in a large saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to maintain a steady simmer; simmer your pickling liquid for 10 minutes, then return the heat to high and bring back to a boil. Add onion and cook 1 minute. Add zucchini, bring to a boil, and cook for 2 minutes, pressing slices down under the surface of the liquid with a spoon. Remove from heat and let cool.
2. Transfer pickle to 2 very clean pint jars. Pickle keeps, chilled, up to 4 months. 

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Let me know if you're in need of someone who meets that description. I think I can find her.

Help out a lefty

I just stumbled upon Felco's left-handed pruners. I had no idea that these were made! They would surely help alleviate the crazy blisters we lefties get from gripping tools not meant for our hands.

Make a garden-gal's day

Carhartt now makes pants specifically designed for women. Buy a pair of the traditional fit, boot-cut jeans for the garden-ista in your life, and she can stop sacrificing fashion for pants that keep up with her hard labor.

Stay fashionable while trudging through the rain or snow

Consider snagging someone a pair of rubber boots from Target this season. They are fashionable, functional, and affordable (I should know -- I have them!).

Daydream of spring

This is an obscure gift that will surely bring a good laugh to the special vegetable grower in your life. I once bought a membership to Wood Prairie Farm's Potato Sampler of the Month Club for a farm manager of mine. She loved it, as will your favorite gardener -- especially during the winter months when all we can do is daydream about what varieties to plant in the spring.