I first learned about the odd ownership situation while researching a particular carrot variety that I was given as a gift over the holidays.  That led me to this post on Homegrown Evolution about the precocious Purple Dragon carrot.  A follow up post on the same website offers more information from people on both sides of the argument and can be found here.

As for me, I have made a conscious decision to give my business to good companies doing good things, not the good things that bad companies are doing in the name of public relations while it is the in thing.  As a result, I will buy seeds from other sources and continue my own seed saving and seed trading efforts to ensure that private people still have open pollinated, genetically pure seed from which to feed their families.

If you are not yet a member of the Seed Savers Exchange, I strongly recommend it.  Even if you don’t become a member you have access to thousands of great seeds through their online store, but as the site touts, members have access to 12,613 more varieties!

What are your favorite sources for organic heirloom seeds?  Leave a comment and be sure to include a link!

Ever since childhood I have had one true love from the garden – tomatoes.  In the interest of full disclosure there isn’t much from the garden that I don’t adore but tomatoes grow at home have a noted advantage over anything you can buy in the supermarket; it’s called taste.

After our recent trip to Portland I returned home to a huge number of my beloved heirloom tomatoes ready for picking even after asking neighbors to take whatever they could use.  The colander was overflowing with gorgeous ripe heirloom tomatoes from six different varieties and I was ready to make sure I didn’t lose a single one!

One particularly beautiful specimen was sliced and found its way onto our breakfast plates this morning while the rest (as seen in the photo above) were chopped and pureed, combined with a healthy bunch of fresh picked herbs, peppers and onions and are now simmering the rainy afternoon away in my crock pot.

There are lots of recipes and schools of thought about how to make this or that the right way but to be honest I am almost entirely self-taught in the kitchen and I have discovered that the only right way is the way that works best for you.  If you are the type who feels more comfortable following recipes to the letter then by all means, do it!

I tend to be the look-cook-taste type, meaning that I look at a recipe to see what the general ingredients list is like then I combine the ingredients my way, tasting as I go and adding a bit more of whatever my taste buds tell me is called for.  That said, here are the ingredients in my crock pot tomato sauce and the general guidelines for how I make it happen:

INGREDIENTS (give or take)

• tomatoes
• onion
• peppers (I use both sweet and hot)
• olive oil
• oregano
• sage
• parsley
• garlic
• coarse sea salt
• peppercorns

INSTRUCTIONS (kinda)

First let me say that I don’t remove the skin or the seeds from my tomatoes because I puree them in my Vita-Mix and by the time they make it to my crock pot or sauce pan there is most often no indication of skin or seeds.  Even when I make salsa I leave the tomato skin and seeds intact.

1. Start by adding a Tablespoon or so of olive oil to the crock pot, covering it and turning it on high while you process the ingredients.
2. Coarsely chop tomatoes and onion and toss them in the Vita-Mix, blender or food processor and process until smooth along with your herbs, peppers and peppercorns.  You may have to do this in batches (in my case I filled the Vita-Mix container three times).
3. Add the pureed ingredients to the crock pot along with a good pinch of sea salt and cover.  Cook on high, stirring occasionally and cook until it has reduced and thickened.  This process takes a long time but it is well worth the lack of effort that is required.  In other words you don’t have to do anything but stir it every so often so quit complaining.

That’s really all there is to it, folks.  You can then let the mixture cool and can it or pour it into large zipper bags and freeze it for an ultra-fast meal in minutes anytime.

UPDATE

Wanted to do a quick update to give you a glimpse of the finished product.  First, here is the sauce while it was cooking down in the crock pot after about 12 hours:

And now a shot of my finished sauce bagged up and ready to be frozen:

Footnote:  If you’ve been on the fence about spending the money on a Vita-Mix, you can use the coupon code 06-004453 to get free shipping in the U.S. and Canada (a $25 savings), or just click here.

Especially when they are like the USDA Zone Map when I need to know what the outline of my county looks like to know if I am in a particular planting zone.  If I am being honest, I don’t even know what the name of my county is, much less what it looks like on the map!  Still, there is a lot of important information to be gleaned from knowing your planting zone so there has to be an easier way, right?  Right!

The National Gardening Association has created a section of their website that is tailor made for people like me who can barely even point to the state I live in (that’s the state of Georgia, not the state of confusion).  See, all you have to do is go here and enter your zip code.  Not only will this site tell you what your planting zone is, it will also give you a regional report, a link to public gardens and events in your zip code and even a list of plants that work in your zone.

(HINT: if you don’t know your zip code, look at a piece of junk mail.)

For more information, visit the National Gardening Association’s USDA Hardiness Zone Finder on the web at garden.org/zipzone

I have to admit it is nice to get credit for my online writing!  All too often people have a false sense that anything they find on the Internet belongs to them and they have no need to give credit where credit is due.  While I am an avid gardener I make my money as a freelance writer and a large portion of that is done online.  When people steal the work of other writers like myself they devalue the hard work that we put into what we do.

Thank you to Dr. Carter for crediting my work in her great piece on urban gardening.  I encourage you all to check it out!

In response to the heavy impact of World War II on the U.S. economy, Americans were urged to grow a victory garden (also called a war garden) in 1943. The gardens were planted by about 20 million families and would eventually provide nearly half of the fresh produce consumed during this troubled time. On rooftops, in back yards and even in containers on front porches, Americans produced eight million tons of fruit, vegetables and herbs in their own households.

In 2008, we are once again taking part in a devastating war and once again our economy is in crisis. Our administration still seems oblivious to the profound financial problems with our country as thousands of hard working people are threatened with foreclosure.

New home sales have plummeted more than 26 percent since 2006 and more than 405,000 people lost their homes in 2007 alone. The seemingly never ending rise in the price of oil is may be making oil companies record-breaking profits but it is pushing our country’s economy closer and closer toward another Depression.

The cost of nearly everything on the market these days has increased so much that many families are forced to do without the basic necessities in a vain attempt at making ends meet.

The situation may be complicated, but the average American doesn’t want to understand the politics behind why they can’t afford to feed their families, they just want to eat. It is for this very reason that I offer this solution – Bring Back the Victory Gardens.

If you consider it for a moment, it makes perfect sense. Seeds are inexpensively purchased and with the power of the Internet at our disposal, seed exchanging can be done for just the cost of a stamp. I am personally growing a huge variety of heirloom tomatoes from seeds that I received through my local Freecycle mailing list as well as cucumbers, carrots, onions, green beans and several other easy-to-grow vegetables.

You might think that you need a large amount of space or a lot of money to grow your own vegetables, but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to cost much at all. So far this year I have spent less than $25 on my gardening endeavors and I could have actually done it for much less than that.

While I do have a good sized back yard, I am growing the majority of this year’s produce in containers in order to not only better educate myself about container gardening, but to conserve water as my state of Alabama has been in a state of drought conditions for two years now.

Grow what you use
As I mentioned previously, I am growing a lot of tomatoes this year. Tomatoes happen to be my favorite produce item and I go through several pounds a week. With the average price for a pound of tomatoes at about $2.00, you can imagine how much money I’ll be saving over the course of the year. The tomatoes that are not immediately used will be canned or frozen for use during the winter and early spring months, when others will be paying incredibly high prices for the anemic, pale and tasteless hot house tomatoes offered by the supermarkets during the off season.

If you are new to gardening, start small by picking just one or two of your favorite vegetables and growing them in a container. My tomatoes this year will be grown in 5-gallon buckets that I also acquired for free from Freecycle. If you have limited space, two or three container plants on your back porch will be easy and inexpensive to maintain and won’t take up much of your precious square footage either.

For an expenditure of less than $10.00, you could grow enough produce to feed you and your family throughout the season and for an average sized family of four, that could quickly equate to hundreds of dollars in savings over the course of the year.

It is an election year and the economy may be a primary issue in the stump speeches we see and hear all over the news, but while the politicians are busy talking it is time that we stop talking and get something done.