How are we celebrating the Fourth of July up in Bernal? We're harvesting the tater bucket! You might recall, back in the early, chilly days of spring, right around St Patrick's Day, a handful of ugly sprouting potatoes were thrown face-down in a bucket of dirt, given their chance for producing the next generation. And now, the resulting crop of new potatoes has been dug up, rinsed, steamed, browned in butter and chives, and eaten.

To be true red-white-and-blue homesteaders, we could have whisked up some homemade mayonnaise and made all-American potato salad. But the patio potatoes were too few, and too precious, for that. They needed to be appreciated just for their dainty little selves.

You might be saying to yourself, wow, those sure are some small potatoes. And it's true. The original potatoes planted were fingerlings, which are naturally small, but these are rather petite even for those.

What happened was, alas, a fungal infection of some kind. Might have been early blight, might have been a wilt like fusarium. All of a sudden, about a month ago, the lovely healthy leaves got brown-spotted one by one. The brown turned to yellow, and eventually the whole stem got limp and died. The brown turned to yellow, and eventually each cluster of leaves faded and died while the stem below the soil line rotted. And once the leaves were gone, the pizza delivery to the potatoes stopped, so to speak, and so did their growth.

These, then, were my teenage potatoes, kicked out of the nest a little young. I think it was partly my fault, due to some overwatering that probably spurred the blight's progression, since fungal diseases are spread and exacerbated by moisture.

Luckily, though, this happened pretty far along in the tater-growing process, meaning we still got a few good handfuls. And there is something pretty wonderful about harvesting your own dinner--not just picking a few tomatoes or plucking a little basil but plunging your whole arm past the elbow into a bucket of warm dirt, fishing around for what slender gold treasures might be hiding in there. These were true new potatoes, fresh and moist, their skins tattered off merely by washing. Not to mention really, really delicious, if I say so myself.

And just in case you were wondering what a potato looks like when it's still growing, well, it looks like this, only deep in the dirt. You can see that the potato itself isn't a root, like carrots or beets, but rather a stolen, or swollen stem, branching off from the main stem above the roots.

Since most potatoes take about 100 days from sprouting to harvest, there's still time for another crop before the winter wet weather comes on. Will tater bucket #2 be more successful? Stay tuned!

Photos by Sally Carter

If eating is an agricultural act, as Wendell Berry so famously said, then what better way to celebrate the connection between food and farming than at Dirt to Dining?

Jesse Cool, the down-to-earth owner-cook (don't call her a chef!) of Menlo Park's Flea Street Cafe is hosting this benefit for the Ecological Farming Association right in her own backyard--which just happens to be a bountiful edible garden on the edge of the Stanford campus.

Cool, well known for her longtime dedication to seasonal, locally-sourced and sustainable cuisine, is opening up her address book, too. On hand to nosh and chat will be dozens of organic farmers and winemakers, including those from Full Belly Farm, Frog's Leap Winery, Green Gulch Farm, Live Earth Farm, Swanton Berry Farm, Robert Sinskey Vineyards, Frey Vineyards, and more.

And of course, going along with the garden tours will be plenty of delectable food and wine. That fava-bean canapé? Probably made from beans grown by the guy sipping sauvignon blanc right next you. Never seen a fava bean in its natural habitat? It's over there, hanging on vines right next to the carrots. Dining doesn't get any dirtier than that.

Dirt to Dining: A Day in Jesse Cool's Kitchen Garden
Sunday, June 7, 2009
2pm-5pm
2150 Amhearst Street
Palo Alto, CA
Tickets: $75

How do you grow a farmer? You start with dirt and seeds and water, of course. But just like good vegetables also need mulch and worms and pollinators and beneficial bugs to chase off the pests, a farmer learns not just through her own experience but through the hard-won experiences of other farmers, a whole long bloodline of observation through years of harvests and springtimes, of rain slicing down into mud and hot sun swelling the tomatoes sweet, of aphids clumping up inside the broccoli and leaf miners boring wiggle tracks across the chard.

That's great if you come from a heritage of family farmers. But what if the closest you have to a back forty is a pot of basil on steps? Or what if your family's farm is corn and soybeans, and you want to grow organic lettuce? If you're young and hardy, you can rent yourself out as an unpaid intern or WOOFer, and hope you get to do more than just water and weed.

Or you can dig into a hands-on, intensive program like the one at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz. For a six-month growing season, you'll live, learn, eat, sleep, and farm on a beautiful 30-acre spread of organic educational farmland.

Graduates of this program, which has been running for over 40 years, are the farmers feeding you now. They're the ones building school gardens and working on food justice and sustainability issues all around California and beyond. For a program that graduates just 35 to 40 farmers a year, its impact on the organic movement has been both broad and deep. As a graduate myself, I've met countless farmers and food people over the past couple of years, only to find out that they, too, are former "farmies."

And now it's time to help the farm grow its farmers. What the program needs is housing. After several decades of letting apprentices live rent-free in tents (and before that, teepees) while in the program, UCSC is now demanding that proper temporary housing be built on the farm. The result? Some $250,000 needs to be raised by mid-summer, or the program will have to go on hiatus next year.

Hence, the campaign to Grow a Farmer Campaign. Throughout May, participating restaurants and businesses around the Bay Area are donating 10% or more of their sales on a particular day to the campaign. If you're a chef or restauranteur, you can sign up here. If you're a happy eater, check out the list of events for this month.

Because who will grow your food if you don't help grow your farmers?

The Garden is a documentary film about the life and death of a community garden in Los Angeles. After the 1992 Rodney King riots which fractured the South Central Los Angeles community, the City of Los Angeles allotted a 14-acre piece of property to the community, allowing them to create farm plots for 347 families on the corner of 41st and Alameda (two miles from the location of my grandfather's restaurant). The creation of this garden made it the largest community garden in the United States.

In 2003, after the garden had been in existence for eleven years, the City sold the property to Ralph Horowitz in a secret deal, and the new owner attempted to evict the farmers. The battle went back and forth for several years before the farm was bulldozed in a dramatic action in 2006. I am simplifying this story greatly -- it involves backroom deals, corruption, the promise of a soccer field, infighting among the farmers, inexplicable court decisions, celebrities helping to save the farm and a furious rant by the landowner who ultimately refused to sell the property to the farmers at any price.

And interspersed between all of the drama to protect this property, we see a beautiful, peaceful garden where the families grow bananas, papayas, guavas, nopales, cilantro, and many other crops for their families. It's calm among the chaos that creates a perfect foil for this story.

I can't remember the last time I was so affected by a scene in a movie as I was watching the scene where the garden was destroyed after the final eviction notice was served. In front of the eyes of the farmers who had worked the land for 14 years, after innumerable fights, the garden was destroyed. Ralph Horowitz has not developed the land, and as of the time of movie publication it was still a vacant lot.

The community that developed around the garden is still going strong -- they are looking for land in the area, and have started an 80-acre farm in Bakersfield that sells to Southern California farmers markets, and provides a CSA for local customers.

I highly recommend seeing this film while it's in theaters, and I hope that it gets a wider release. The Garden is now playing at the Landmark Lumiere in San Francisco and the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley.

Other resources:
The Garden on Facebook
Huffington Post interview with the Director
Chicago Tribune profile

When my friend Natalie asked me if I had any plans for Easter weekend, I was mildly embarrassed to admit that I hadn't. I just hadn't given it much thought this year.

"Well, you do now," she said. "Want to help plant a farm?"

Plant a farm. I couldn't think of a good reason not to. I welcomed the excuse to get outside and do something interesting, something for free. Something more than a little dirty.

It had been a while since I've weeded, hoed, or lugged 4 cubic yards of soil, but I was game for it. I just wasn't sure what I was going to wear. I haven't owned a pair of overalls since the 1980's.

It seems Natalie has gotten herself involved with an organization called MyFarm-- a business that specializes in decentralized urban farming. It's a Community Supported Agriculture organization with heavy emphasis on community. In fact, every herb and vegetable grown comes directly from community members' backyards. Want to know where your mustard greens are really coming from? Well then, go ask your neighbor. With 71 MyFarms planted at the time of this posting, you are likely to know someone who's got one.

When we arrived at the site, we were introduced around to the various MyFarm staff members and volunteers, one of whom came all the way from Santa Cruz to help.

Fortunately, there were a good many people volunteering for the day's planting. With lots of farmhands, well, on hand, the work was swift and enjoyable. I was especially grateful for our numbers when it came time to move the small mountain of soil from a gigantic pile dumped in the driveway to the garden awaiting it in the back-- through the garage, one bucket at a time. At times I pretended I as though I were an ant-- a cog in a great earth-moving machine, but without the ability to lift 25 times my own body weight or smell things through antennae. Of course, in the unseasonable warm April weather, it sometimes felt as though a large bully were holding a magnifying glass over me, trying to set me on fire.

The next time you see me, please feel free to compliment me on my newly-found shoulder muscles and red, red neck.

I was rather stunned by how smoothly everything went. From start to finish, the garden was weeded, top-soiled, dug, irrigated, and planted in less than five hours.

We were a well organized, well-oiled, and well-hydrated team-- the couple hosting the garden kept a blender of filtered water filled for us at all times. I was certain the water was placed in a blender because it was made of non-breakable materials, but I couldn't look at it without thinking that whenever I took a sip, I was drinking a water smoothie.

It was a great day spent outside. I highly recommend it to anyone with a strong back and a good attitude.

And I don't care that someone can't spell Kohlrabi, I'm just glad someone is actually planting it. In an effort to add my own special skills to the endeavor, my pleas for matching font styles on the planting tags went unheeded.

Until the next time, that is.

How MyFarm Works:

MyFarm's Vision (from the website):

At MyFarm it is our mission to make growing food and growing community one in the same. We believe in the power of the individual. But we believe true power comes from working together towards a better future for all.

We want to offer everyone in our community a chance to participate in achieving greater personal sustainability by installing local organic gardens, selling organic vegetables to neighbors and continually seeking ways for others to lend their ideas, their time and their hands to our growing organization.

Interested in hosting a farm?

Their complete list of services include:

* Initial garden set up and weekly follow up to keep your space growing.
* Organic techniques to grow nutrient rich vegetables.
* CSA style pickup a weekly box of very local edibles from a nearby neighbor.
* Permaculture techniques implemented to beautify in a sustainable way.
* Garden design consultations and networking with high quality suppliers.
* Local food feasts with chefs featuring foods from your backyard

Sign up today to host your own garden or volunteer your time-- the kohlrabi and your neighbors will thank you.

It's true: these are some ugly-looking potatoes. Back in December, though, they were sleek, alluring even, a pound or two of organic fingerlings that came as part of a mystery box of roots, tubers, and greens from Mariquita Farms. Somehow, though, they got muscled to the back of the pantry by the 20 pounds of russets bought for holiday latke-making at the same time. By the time I could even think about eating potatoes again, my taters had only baby-making in mind.

These were potatoes hellbent on reproduction. Snaky white shoots were twining out of the eyes, and the shriveled potato meat was just a backpack of snacks for the next generation of tubers-to-be.

Now, I love my city-mandated green-waste bin. But could I really let such determination end up in a compost pile in Vacaville?

During my six months as an apprentice at the Farm & Garden Program at UC Santa Cruz, I had planted dozens of fancy seed potatoes that looked a lot like these. They had produced prodigiously, feeding 50 hungry farmers nearly every day, along with the customers at a 120-member CSA and a twice-weekly farmstand.

Would a handful of sprouters grow just as well in a bucket in Bernal Heights? After all, if Love Apple Farm's potato buckets were good enough for David Kinch, wouldn't a plastic pot do just fine for me? (Cynthia Sandberg must know her stuff; her tiny Love Apple Farm is a kitchen garden whose kitchen just happens to be Kinch's restaurant Manresa.)

And what better time to plant than right around St. Patrick's Day? It's easy to remember, after all, and the closeness to the spring equinox in our climate pretty much ensures frost-free nights from now on. A beautifully informative essay on the role of potatoes in rural Irish life can be found in John Thorne's Pot on the Fire; at the end of the chapter he has recipes for both champ and colcannon, two easy dishes of greens (which could be foraged) and potatoes (homegrown), both of which make delicious vegetarian alternatives to the typical corned beef & cabbage.

For champ, peeled potatoes are boiled, drained, and pummeled to smoothness. While the potatoes are boiling, tender spring greens--nettles, spinach, turnip or radish tops--are gently simmered in milk. The greens (and the milk) are tipped into the potatoes and vigorously stirred together. A bowlful with a pat of butter makes a meal.

Colcannon uses slightly tougher greens, like kale and cabbage, and the mixture is stiffer, made firm enough to pat into a flat, thick pancake in a skillet and fry in butter until both sides are crisped up and lightly browned. (You can find boxty, an equally filling Irish potato cake, on the menu at The Liberties at 22nd and Guerrero Sts in the Mission, even if they do California it up with roasted red peppers and feta cheese.)

No plans for a champ-cam trained on the potato bucket yet; after all, most of the action during the next few months will be happening underground. But until then, you can browse the greens reappearing from the earth and dream of harvesting your very own patio potatoes.

I'm going to make just one prediction for 2009:

Urban gardens will become as de rigueur as weekly trips to the farmer's market.

Of course, I'm not the first to notice the idea of urban food production coming into the forefront. Last year saw the launch of San Francisco's Victory Garden pilot project and Wired magazine had an article on Urban Farming as well. Most likely you saw Slow Food Nation's Victory Garden at City Hall or you may have even heard about Graze the Roof, a Summer rooftop edible garden at Glide Memorial. While those projects are over, the idea of producing food in an urban setting has only just begun.

If you want to become an urban farmer, consider enrolling in Alemany Farm's Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture. It's a year long hands-on program that will teach core principals of food production such as soil fertility and composting, propagation and planting, seasonal tree care, water-wise irrigation, plant identification, integrated pest management, and crop planning.

If becoming a farmer is not quite your thing, but you still want in on the conversation, check out OPENrestaurant at Yerba Buena. Join members of Slow Food Nation and the urban farming community for OPENrestaurant, a socially engineered informal dinner created by a collective of restaurant professionals. Share a simple meal while chewing on the question: How can the urban landscape be productive? Buy a meal ticket and enjoy dinner and a glass of wine while learning more about urban farming, foraging and gleaning from people directly involved in these practices or simply show up for the discussion.

What: OPENrestaurant with Slow Food Nation, a discussion and dinner prepared by Jerome Waag and Stacie Pierce of Chez Panisse and Chris Kronner formerly of Serpentine and Slow Club.

Where: Grand Lobby, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St, San Francisco

When: January 6th, 2008, 7 pm

How: Buy a meal ticket, $20 or $15 for Yerba Buena members. Or call the box office at 415.978.2787. The discussion is free for those who do not choose to dine with the group.

Why: Get a head start on planting for Spring, receive seed packets and enjoy local beer and wine, white beans and greens from city farms, pork rillettes, bread from Tartine and dessert.

My gardening skills are mediocre, at best. Sometimes my plantings are successful, but more often than not, I get aphids or white flies, the cats pee on the lettuce, or I neglect to water something and rediscover its dried twig skeleton after it's too late to revive. Between taking care of my kids, walking the dog, and, oh yeah, working, tending the garden is an afterthought. This is why I like independent plants. I love growing tomatoes and roses because they can persevere for a few days, even when I forget to water them. I also like old fruit trees that seem happy without any care other than the occasional winter pruning. My new favorite plants, however, are my raspberry vines. They are able to thrive with little tending and I get the payoff of lovely little sweet berries.

My love for growing berries started about ten years ago when my husband and I bought our house and discovered a rambling blackberry patch just beyond the cement of our driveway. Each summer we were given the gift of hoards of dark juicy blackberries. I say gift because we did little to deserve them. We would only minimally cut back the bushes in the winter; just enough to be able to walk past them without getting caught and trapped in a thorny mess. I never tied them up and, I'm embarrassed to say, I didn't even water them. Every July we would then have enough berries to can several jars of homemade jam on top of the numerous berry crisps and pies I would bake. But then a sad thing happened: we remodeled our house and the city forced us to shore up our driveway with a cement curb. This made our backyard look less decrepit, but it covered our lovely prolific blackberry patch.

Now, my backyard is not huge. It's not even medium-sized. By most standards, it's on the smallish side, and much of it is cast in shade by the surrounding detached garages (my own and my neighbors') and some towering wild plum trees by the back fence. The driveway was pretty much the perfect spot to grow berries, but that spot has been overtaken by the aforementioned city-mandated cement block. About two years ago, in a moment of berry desperation, I convinced myself that the opposite corner of the yard, which gets only filtered sun, might grow fruit. It was this turn of events that led me to our local nursery in search of berry vines. As the blackberries sat in a bunch with the raspberry vines, I decided to purchase both varieties. It took only a moment to discover, however, that you can actually get thornless raspberry vines. Although I love blackberries, I adore raspberries just as much and the idea of not getting thwacked in the face and arms by jagged thorns was pretty enticing. The planting directions advised setting plants a couple of feet apart. As I had only a small planting area, I decided to purchase only one thornless raspberry vine to see if it would grow in the new location. After planting it, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Little did I know that a couple of years later, I would have a ten-foot spread of healthy vines, laden with ripe raspberries.

Right now, our raspberries are ripening on a protracted schedule, which is just fine with me. Each day we have about ten mature berries. My daughters love going outside, standing in the raspberry patch, and talking about their day while they gobble up the day's ripened crop. Although we don’t have enough raspberries to make jam, we have enough for a snack each afternoon while we hang out and chat. I also have hopes that in a few years, as the vines age, we'll have enough berries to make pies and jam. Raspberries grow on the previous year's canes, so each year you get more "old" vines for the next year's crop. This is why I don't care that the patch is growing beyond its designated area. It's starting to overtake the camellias, but as far as I'm concerned, those camellias only give flowers, and I'll take berries any day instead.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the yard, our blackberry vine has popped up about twelve feet from its previous location in a small open area near our back porch. It's the beast that won't die, and that's just fine by me.

Following are some links to find more information on growing raspberry or blackberry patches. I think they suggest a bit more work than is necessary, but then again, I'm a minimalist when it comes to gardening effort.

• Backyard Gardener
• Beginner Gardening

Note: Thornless blackberries are also available for purchase. They didn't have them at my local nursery when I bought my raspberry vine, but I've seen them since then.

Every summer I spend way too much money on cranberry beans. If you know me, you might also know that they are my hands-down, number one, absolute favorite bean. I would even go a step further and extend that statement to the entire legume family.

What are cranberry beans you ask? Well, they are not cranberries, nor beans crossed with cranberries, or even sweet or tart, or really very red. The pods are kind of mottled with a cranberry color, which is I suppose where the name comes from? Beats me. Anyway, they are shell beans, just like cannelloni, flageolet, or pintos. They grow in a pod, and you can buy them fresh or dried, but like most things, you can't beat the fresh version (however, if you do buy dried I highly recommend the excellent Rancho Gordo beans).

They taste incredible: smooth, velvety, creamy, and plump. And they are perfect in nearly any brothy soup. I often use them to make pasta e fagioli or a simple vegetable, farro, and cranberry bean soup. You can cook them with some pancetta and onion and toss them with pasta to make a simple and delicious sauce.

The freshies have a fleeting season--in the Bay Area you can find them in late summer at the farmers' market. And one thing that I've discovered about cranberry beans, is that they freeze remarkably well. So I've been known to buy very large bags of beans, and spend a pretty penny on them too, which brings me full circle.

When my mother announced recently that she was growing cranberry beans in her garden, not only was I jealous but also determined to find a way to grow them myself. Which actually turned out to be incredibly easy. All you need to grow beans are some dried beans, soil and a few little pots. I felt like I was back in elementary school, poking seeds into soil-packed egg cartons, watering them religiously, keeping them warm. Anyway, last weekend I planted them, and they are already 6 inches tall!

Here's how you do it...

Grow Some Beans

Ingredients:
1 small pot for every coupla beans you want to plant (little seedling pots or even an egg carton works fine, but if you use the carton only use one bean per cup)
Some good potting soil
2 dried beans (of your choice, but I recommend the cranberry!) per pot
Water
Plastic wrap
A cake pan or small rimmed tray that will hold all your pots
A warm sunny spot

Preparation:
1. Fill each pot with potting soil.

2. Press a couple of beans just under the surface of the soil, about 1/2-inch down. Water the soil well, and let drain.

3. Set the pots in the pan or tray and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Set the pots in a warm sunny spot.

4. Water the beans every day and keep checking them. When they start to pop up you can remove the plastic wrap and let them go! Let them grow to about 6–8 inches and then re-pot them into a bigger pot, such as a soil-filled half wine barrel (I haven't gotten to that part yet).

Good luck and happy gardening!

An update on my tomatoes: They are growing like mad! The Early Girls are taking the lead, but I have to say the Sweet 100s aren't far behind. They are all doing relatively well, but I seem to have a little tiny itsy-bitsy white bug problem. Not aphids, cause I've been flicking those off my beans. Any suggestions?

I grew up in the 1970s in Dallas, Texas, at a time when processed food was the hot new thing (think Funyuns, Cap'n Crunch and Velveeta, and the list goes on...). So you can imagine what I must have been surrounded by foodwise.

Fortunately, my mom was a foodie at heart—she baked loaves of bread, cultured her own tangy yogurt, and not only grew a good-sized vegetable garden, but maintained a healthy compost pile. She was no doubt considered "weird" for the time and the place, and I for one have never stopped appreciating her weirdness.

My mom's garden was really sweet, and gave me a whole new appreciation of fresh vegetables as a kid. I remember once she grew a cucumber that was nearly as tall as my younger brother. We were in awe. I also remember stealing plenty of tomatoes, fresh off the vine and warm from the sun. And I still think that there is probably no better thing in the world that you can eat than a freshly-plucked tomato at the peak of ripeness.

Up until now, I haven't really been in a place where I could easily grow my own vegetables. So, a few weeks ago, on a whim, I decided to buy a few half wine barrels and start my own urban garden. I managed to find 4 barrels for only $20 each with free delivery on craigslist . What a steal! Finding the soil and then lugging it up our steep flight of stairs to the front of our house wasn't quite as easy, but somehow we managed.

I have to admit I went a little overboard and bought 9, yes NINE, tomato plants and planted 3 in each barrel (I'm saving one barrel because my mom is bringing me cranberry beans to plant this weekend). If they actually work out, I'll be swimming in tomatoes, but that's ok. I love them. Especially plucked right off the vine.

How to Make An Urban Tomato Garden

Ingredients
1 half wine barrel (make sure it has a few holes drilled into the bottom)
A warm, very sunny spot
3 bricks
About 6 large handfuls of large pebbles or rocks or broken terra cotta pots
2.5 cubic feet of good-quality, preferably organic, soil
.5 cubic feet of compost
1/4 to 1/3 cup organic vegetable plant food
2 or 3 tomato plants (I chose brandywine, early girl, beefsteak, roma, and sweet 100s)
A tomato cage
A hose for watering
Gardening gloves

Preparation
1. Put the wine barrel in your sunny spot. Perch the wine barrel atop your 3 bricks so it's stable and not wobbly.

2. Get all your ingredients gathered round and put on your gardening gloves.

3. Cover the bottom of the wine barrel evenly with the pebbles.

4. Add enough soil to fill the barrel about 2/3 full. Water the soil and mix it around with your hands.

5. Add the compost and more soil, and mix them all together with your hands to make a nice, rich base for your tomatoes.

6. Water the soil again, and mix together.

7. Sprinkle the plant food over the soil and mix it in.

8. Place the tomatoes on the soil in the spot you want to plant them. Try to position them so they are evenly spaced from one another, not too close to the outer edge or the center.

9. Dig a little hole for each tomato under the spot you placed them. Remove the tomato plant from it's container (gently!) and (gently!) loosen it's roots.

10. Place the tomato plant lovingly into its hole and pat the soil around it so it feels all snug and tucked in. Water the plants again.

10. Position the tomato cage so the tomato plants can grow up and around it. You might have to tie them as they start. Make sure to water them, not too much and not too little. And give them lots of love and care, and hopefully you will get loads of flavorful, succulent, juicy tomatoes.