Happy New Year! We’re starting the 2010 growing season today in our backyard in Upstate New York.

Sure,  the calendar says the new year is three and a half months away. And we understand the raised eyebrows about planting as the days get shorter, the nights get cooler and memories of snow drifts return. Our new year, however, starts today.

More specifically, we’ve sown spinach seeds with the expectation that we’ll get hardy plants going before it’s really too cold, we’ll protect them in cold frames over the winter, we’ll see growth resume in mid-February and we’ll be harvesting in mid-March. And we’ll get a few other hardy salad greens in over the next couple of days.

We know from last year’s experience that this can work.  We still have plenty to learn, however, before we can claim that it makes economic sense.  At the hands of unskilled carpenters who waste lumber with each mistake, cold frames cost about $25 in materials.  It remains to be seen how many seasons they’ll last.  We added piles and piles of organic material to our heavy clay this summer in preparation for this day. But perhaps more would have been better.  The spot we picked gets a pretty lot of sun. But more certainly would be better.  Having neglected to procure more seeds until calling an expensive mail-order place the other day, we’re starting with seeds left over from last year. They may still be fine. But then again, they may not be.  And although we’re starting two weeks earlier than last year, still earlier might have been better.

The challenge is getting the most out of soil where growers can’t count on more than 120 days between the last frost in the spring and the first one in the fall. Success would mean a bit less reliance on an energy-intensive agri-business system that damages the environment with its heavy use of fertilizers and that sells us produce containing pesticide residues.  The difference may be tough to quantify, but getting ourselves outside and eating locally and organically grown food ought be good for us and our surroundings.

The woodworking project pictured here is construction of a couple of cold frames.  Basicially, they’re really small unheated greenhouses made out of boards and old windows.  The overall purpose is to extend our brief growing season.

Sun shining through the windows on a bright day will warm the soil inside quite a bit.  The structure won’t retain heat after sundown, but it still will protect plants from harsh winds, standing water and a bit of freezing and thawing.  Enough, in our experience, to get spinach through the winter. Our plan is to get some planted any day now.

It’s worth noting, however, that at about $20 in lumber and hardware, coldframes only are economical if they’re built well enough to last a few years. It was great picking spinach in March, April and May of this year.  But we didn’t get that much. Note also that the back is higher than the front. The idea is to capture as much sun as possible. The back of the box will lie to the north and the front will lie to the south.

A couple of items in The New York Times in the last few days acknowledge one of the important reasons for planting vegetables in our backyard, but suggest very different paths to addressing the basic challenge of feeding the world’s growing population.

Monsanto, the big agrichemical company, says in a big image advertisement, “Non-irrigated agriculture produces 60% of the world’s food. It will need to do more.” The company explains that forecasters believe we’ll need to double food output by 2050 to keep up with population growth and that increased use of irrigation is unlikely to play a big role. That’s because irrigation for agriculture already consumes two-thirds of the world’s fresh water. The solution to a fairly real concern about food shortages, according to Monsanto, is development of plant varieties that don’t need as much water. Leave it to the scientists to figure out how to do that, the ad more or less says. Now, some would argue that some  of the great scientific developments in agriculture, like chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, have either produced or contributed to some rather troublesome unintended consequences, like nitrogen-induced dead zones in our oceans, heat-trapping carbon concentrations in the atmosphere and tomatoes that don’t taste like tomatoes in January. But the ad doesn’t suggest any reason to be concerned about anything like that.

Then, Columbia University professor Dickson D. Despommier wrote the future of farming is in urban hydroponics and aeroponics in specially designed high-rise buildings. We’re talking about growing plants without soil.

For all we know, one of these approaches may work. Let it be said, however, that we’re contributing today in our backyard, where the tomatoes look beautiful and taste like tomatoes, and where the squash and cucumbers and beans and carrots and potatoes are flourishing. On top of that, we don’t even have to wait 20 years to find out if the scientists can prove that it works. We didn’t need a Ph.D. And other than cold frames made from old windows and boards, we haven’t done any construction. The sunshine is free. The compost takes labor. Buying seeds is optional.

There is a growing view that sustaining our food production and distribution system is going to get difficult in the years ahead – that energy prices or environmental degradation or safety issues or nutrition concerns are going to undermine a system in which food in mainly produced on very large and very specialized farms that make great use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides then is trucked as far as necessary to reach our supermarkets. If you buy this line of thinking, you might appreciate the Close to Home program at Hannaford supermarkets, a chain that serves a bit of Upstate New York and a big swath of New England.

Here’s what the company’s president and chief executive, Ron Hodge, says in a flyer about the program: “Not only does [sourcing produce close to home] help us discover and share great local legends, it lets us do our part to reduce our carbon footprint. By sourcing more local products, we reduce our emissions and contribute to a better planet. When you shop Close to Home, you support our local businesses and reduce your impact on the environment.”

Shoppers will decide for themselves whether the company’s actions match its words and whether the cost is worth it. We thought, however, it would be interesting to simply take a look at the produce section in mid-August, when New York and New England farmers are really humming.  We’ll try to take a look elsewhere as well in the next couple of weeks. And we note that Hannaford, owned by Belgium-based Delhaize Group, is one of two big chains in Albany, N.Y., where our backyard vegetable patch is. The other, Price Chopper, actually is much larger and makes its home around here.

The closest table to the door at a spacious Albany store seems to represent the Close to Home selection. Nice looking apples from a farm just miles away are in homey-looking paper bags. Beautiful basil from two counties away nearly shouts, “buy me.” Tomatoes, green and yellow squash, eggplant and green peppers sit here, too. This table might be 5% of the produce section. But then again, it might be less.

As for the rest of the produce department, organic labels are all over the place. A handful of products seem to be grown within perhaps 200 miles of here, like some grape tomatoes from Chelsea, Mass. Most, however, and remember, it’s mid-August, not January, are not from anything remotely close to home, to the extent that it’s possible to find information at all.  And some packaging claims might raise a few eyebrows. The paper label on the hard plastic box holding Tanimura & Antle lettuce, shipped in from Salinas, Calif., says “sustainably  grown.” And perhaps it is.  One might ask, however, about the sustainability of thick plastic packaging and cross-country shipping.

First pumpkin of the season

August 13 seems early for the big orange object to the right, which was discovered in the backyard farm this morning.  More evidence probably  that the weather has been really unusually this so-called summer.

Hope we don’t jinx anything by giving the world a peek at these plump green tomatoes. We’re watching nervously for signs of late blight, which is destroying tomatoes throughout the Northeast. And it’s been so cool and wet that we wonder if these will even ripen.  Seems like it’s already getting late in the season without many tomatoes in our yard turning red. But they are big and we have some on so many plants that we’re feeling just a little bit hopeful.

If home growers take a step beyond vegetables and fruits, it’s probably going to be to raise hens for the eggs. There have been quite a few accounts in the media about this in the last year or so, including in this morning’s New York Times. And then the next step for some is raising chickens for slaughter. One problem, however, according to this article,  is that it could easily cost more in feed than a chicken will fetch on the open market. That looks like a losing proposition.

There still might be an argument for giving this and other currently losing propositions a try:  Skills acquired today could prove valuable if the price of commercially produced food rises enough some day, perhaps due to energy or environmental cleanup costs. Think of it like insurance. Except for whole and universal life, we generally don’t get a return on our investment in insurance coverage. But we buy it to protect ourselves in the event of an automobile accident, disability or untimely death.

This may seem odd to some, but the fact that food does not actually come from supermarkets and restaurants was not entirely clear to this writer until well into adulthood. And if you think about it, such ignorance is understandable.

If we wanted to stock the cupboard, we went to the store. If we didn’t want to prepare food ourselves, we went out, sometimes to places with drive-through windows.

Unfortunately, chances are that this line of thinking leads straight to a couple of the world’s most vexing problems: 1) All the king’s men and all the king’s technology can’t seem to stop us from packing on too many pounds. We have an obesity epidemic that is undermining everything else we know about health. 2) Oxygen depletion has just about eliminated all life from dead zones in the oceans – 405 of them as of August 2008, according to Scientific American. These zones primarily result from nitrogen-rich fertilizers washing from croplands into waterways. 3) We seem to be warming the atmosphere with our carbon emissions. 4). We’re eating more than we’re producing worldwide, according a June 2009 National Geographic article and thus drawing down our stock of food supplies.

Solving these challenges just might be slightly easier if more people understood more about where food comes from before it gets to the store or restaurant. Maybe, just maybe, some exposure to the taste of really fresh fruits and vegetables can stimulate some new thinking about how we eat. Combine that with exercise required to tend an organic garden and we might even improve a few people’s health. A few lessons in school about the composition of healthy soil and the requirements of different plants along with a bit of experience planting seeds and watching plants grow could give some of tomorrow’s scientists some of the perspective they’ll need to tackle the big issues ahead.

Mostly we think of agriculture-related courses as something for rural schools. Maybe we should adjust that notion some.

A late July harvest

We’re a long way from feeding ourselves from our backyard garden. But pulling potatoes and garlic from the soil and picking zucchini, cucumbers, beans and lettuce on a sunny July morning at least suggested that good things are possible.  We harvested a couple of carrots and onions on the same day, but they didn’t show up in time for the photograph. And we actually have a ton of swiss chard still growing. We’re not big fans of it, however, and don’t think we’ll plant it again and therefore didn’t invite it to the picture-taking session.

The vegetable pathologists at Cornell University are getting their 15 minutes of fame (see Andy Warhol) this summer. Reporters far and wide are turning to these scientists for a take on the late blight that is decimating tomato plants in the Northeast.

Generally, they recommend spraying with chlorothalonil to protect plants from the fungus that causes the blight and prevent its spread. Sometimes they note that organic growers generally restrict themselves to a number of copper-based formulations. But they don’t explain the reluctance of organic growers to use mainstream herbicides and neither do typical news accounts.  So here’s what the organic crowd seems to be saying, though its members certainly don’t have as big a megaphone as the Cornell folks do: Eating vegetables sprayed with toxins just doesn’t feel right, especially when recommendations for their use come with underlined, boldfaced capital letter warnings like this one from a recent Cornell fact sheet: READ THE LABEL BEFORE APPLYING ANY PESTICIDE.

The scientists say the toxins will be washed away before the tomatoes are eaten, that we won’t ingest enough of it to do any harm and they’ll break down in our soil reasonably quickly. The organic folks say 1) you’ve got to be kidding and 2) I don’t want that stuff in my soil, or perhaps worse, washing off my soil into a water supply. And they’re not all comfortable with the copper products either. Fox Creek Farm, a community-supported agricultural operation in Schoharie, N.Y., told its members this week that it would not use copper hydroxide. Its owners  wrote, “For up to seven days after application, the copper hydroxide residues can cause irreversible eye damage by corroding  the mucosal membrane in the eye.”

This isn’t a treatise on science here. We don’t have the expertise or the time or inclination to acquire the expertise to come up with an evidence-based course of action for our 12 tomato plants. At the same time, however, we don’t feel completely reassured by the scientists’ reassurances.

We’re cutting yellowed leaves from our plants right now and crossing our fingers. It’s raining like mad in Albany today, as it has so many days in the last month, which creates good conditions for growth and spread of the fungus Phytophthora infestans. It would be sad to go a summer without tomatoes plucked moments before eating. But we’ll pull all the plants out if we have to. We’ll survive because unlike the geniuses at the recently departed Lehman Brothers, we have a diversified portfolio. We have squash and cucumbers and garlic and onions and beans and potatoes and herbs. It’s been such a cool summer that we still have spring lettuce. And it won’t be long before we plant fall lettuce, peas and spinach.