Fall Fun on the Roof

Autumn winds have blown into DC and we’ve been getting the Georgetown Rooftop Food Project ready for cool weather. Aside from gorgeous views like this one:

there are the regular fall garden tasks to check off the list. First things first—getting a new round of cold-hardy crops planted. On October 1 we sowed seeds for Encore lettuce mix, Ovation greens mix, Minutina, Mei Qing pac choi, Mokum carrots, Merlin beets, Hakurei turnips, and three kinds of radishes (Miyashige, Red Meat, and Easter Egg). Now, a few weeks later, we have cute ruffly rows of baby greens and root crops.

Another fall job is saving seeds to squirrel away for next year’s plantings. Sunflower seeds are easy—you just pry seeds out of the dried up flower head and pick off the husks.

Tomato seeds take a few more steps. After scooping the seeds into a bowl, you have to let them ferment for a few days until moldy, then rinse several times in clean water, which washes away the poorer quality seeds and leaves the viable ones. Good step by step instructions for saving tomato seeds can be found here.

With tomato production winding down and first frost on the way, it’s time to clear spent vines and sow cover crops! It’s fun to cast handfuls of winter rye, hairy vetch, and spurs oats seeds across the cleaned up beds. These cold-hardy cover crops will protect the soil from wind and rain and help build nutrient levels for next season. This site gives some good pointers on maintaining soil fertility in raised beds.

And to help with autumn clean up, we assembled two new compost bins so we can turn our garden “waste” into a nutrient goldmine right on the roof!

An Ode to the Chefs

September came and went in a caffeine heartbeat, and with October comes a slower pace in the garden. It also marks the beginning of my eighth month as the coordinator of the Local Food Project and gives me a healthy chunk of weeks to reflect upon. Growing food in the Virginia summer has its ups and downs. Well, I can really only think of one down: the unbreakable heat of July, August, and early September.

The ups come in bushels, however, and one up that immediately comes to mind is working with the amazing culinary staff at Airlie. The LFP is an unusual garden in that all of our produce is grown for and sold exclusively to the Airlie Center kitchen. It's certainly an advantageous position to be in as a food grower: we can get away with a spot or two on our peppers or a worm bite or three on our tomatoes. The chefs pickle, mash, slice, and carve away the blemishes that come with growing produce organically.

More impressive than their magician's touch with spots and blights, though, is their sheer excitement to be using fresh ingredients from our garden. When we harvest 80 pounds of summer squash, they'll find a way to incorporate it into the menu. When we bring in 50 pounds of garlic, they'll take it all and use it in breads, sauces, or pastas. They're always willing to work within the ebb and flow of the growing season because, for them, the freshest ingredients make the best meals. Airlie guests would agree, I think.

A few weeks ago, I ran into one of our chefs while delivering zucchini to the kitchen. "I loved that basil you brought us last week," he said excitedly. "It was so fragrant, I just wanted to take a nap in it!" Guests will be happy to learn that he didn't actually make bedding out of the basil, but that's the level of excitement I witness every week when I deal with the culinary staff. And their enthusiasm is contagious. When we're on our hands and knees in the garden, weeding a lettuce bed perhaps, it's exciting to think of the care and appreciation our produce receives all the way from the soil to the tables in the guest dining room. It has definitely made my first seven months here at the LFP more worthwhile. So to Jeff, Jeremy, Barry, and the rest of the kitchen staff: a giant THANK YOU from the LFP.

Fall Arrives to the LFP Garden

Torrential downpours last week brought the end to a serious dryspell in the region, and a swift end to one of the hottest seasons in memory. Last night I was convinced we would have a frost, considering my sensation of 'shivering chilliness' as winds blew across the Piedmont foothills.

Much to my surprise it was still in the upper 40's this morning, not even close to a light frost! I then realized that my perception of 'frost in the air' was relative to the oppressive heat of the summer, and in fact what we had last night was just the typical cool of fall.

In other words, the heat of the season had turned me into a cool-weather softy, not unlike someone who moves to Florida and after a while considers any temperature below 80....cold!

Now is the time when cool weather crops like lettuce thrive, still getting plenty of sun, but growing rapidly with the moist soils and damp, crispy evenings of fall. The cool weather concentrates sugars in crops like beets, radishes and asian greens, and sensations of bitterness that prevail in these crops during the stress of summer heat give way to the sweetness of fall.

We have been enjoying meeting in the middle of the organic corn maze at Airlie, the perfect place to brainstorm on LFP programs and production for the next year...