Now is the perfect time to plant pumpkins…. the seeds take 3 months to grow, and Halloween is 3 months away!

Here are my Top Ten Tips for perfect organic pumpkins:

1. Choose a sunny place for your pumpkins, with at least 6 hours of full sunlight.
2. The spot needs to be at least a 4′ x 4′ area of soil.
3. First, dig the soil a little to loosen it up so the roots will be able to grow healthily.
4. Add organic compost to the soil and mix it in with a garden fork or your hands.
5. If your soil is not great, also add some organic fertilizer, like Dr Earth or manure.
6. You can plant the seeds directly into the ground now, but they’ll get a head start if you plant them in pots first, and then re-plant the seedlings when you can see a pair of leaves.
7. Cover the soil with a mulch of some kind, like straw, alfalfa, or wood shavings.
8. Keep the soil moist… make sure you water the plants every day, around 6 p.m. is best.
9. When the plants grow flowers, notice which flowers have a bump at the bottom. As the bumps grow, choose your favorite one or two and snip off the others so that the plant can concentrate on making one or two super special pumpkins.
10. Put the little pumpkins on a stage of some kind, like a low box or some straw, so the underside of the fruit doesn’t get wet and mushy.

It’s totally fun and easy for children to grow them. If you have any questions as they grow, drop me a line

Robert Williams spends a substantial amount of time in Ecuador’s Amazon Basin. He’s a cacao hunter. He finds the purest, richest sources of cacao beans on Earth, which is the Criollo Arriba Nacional Fino De Aroma variety and offers them through his company, Ultimate Superfoods. He insists on heirloom beans, and only offers one variety: the criollo bean. Criollos are the original and best cacao beans, as all the other kinds were developed with practical considerations in mind, like high yield. Heirloom criollo beans are all about flavor, and flavor is based on the wide profile of micronutrients naturally in the beans. Robert oversees harvesting and production in South America for Ultimate Superfoods, so you can imagine, he has a rich knowledge of all things cacao.

Robert also sources other extraordinary ingredients, including the only agave nectar I eat. Offered under the company’s Ojio brand, Robert’s agave nectar is the only agave that I trust is totally organic, raw and unadulterated agave. They squish pulp and bottle it in glass. Nothing refined, nothing hidden. You can taste the difference immediately. I hate the flavor of every brand of agave except Robert’s.

So, every day around 4 p.m. I give my afternoon a little lift by enjoying a delicious superfood smoothie using my friend Robert’s incredible ingredients. The recipe and quantities vary, but the general recipe is this:

1 tablespoon ground cacao
1/2 tablespoon cacao nibs
1 tablespoon agave nectar
2 tablespoons mesquite powder
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 tablespoon flax seeds
1 tablespoon hemp seeds
1/4 teaspoon shilajit powder
1/4 teaspoon amla powder
1/4 teaspoon powdered reishi
1/2 teaspoon local bee pollen
1 banana
4 cups / 1 liter good cold water

Then I’ll throw in something else, like 1/4 vanilla bean pod, some soaked gojis or half a dozen fresh, ripe berries. Other brands of cacao taste nice, but Ultimate Superfoods cacao tastes better. Hit the blender and you’re set to enjoy the ultimate superfood smoothie!

I’ve recently come across two organizations who are helping veterans from the US military experience the healing that comes from growing food.

The first is the Farmer Veteran Coalition, a California based non-profit that aims to help veterans get employment on farms in rural California. Farmers find it hard to get high quality workers for many jobs, including growing and harvesting. Organic farming is by definition more labor-intensive than chemical farming, so organic farms need more workers. Organic farms are also more healing places to work, as they don’t spray poisons, so it’s an ideal match. Veterans are super disciplined workers because of their rigorous training, and benefit immensely from working on the farm. It’s truly rewarding work, and it helps them make ends meet on their post-military pensions.

Another project that links veterans with the healing power of gardening is Strawberry Flag. Founded by artist Lauren Bon, Strawberry Flag is an art project run by veterans at the Veteran’s Association of West Los Angeles. The concept is a stars and stripes American flag made up of strawberries and vets. The strawberries are grown hydroponically in long white tubes that make up the stripes, and the stars are, of course, the vets themselves. All the strawberry plants have been donated by local commercial strawberry farms, who always discard the plants after the first year of use, as they become less productive. However, there are plenty of strawberries left in them, especially if they’re grown hydroponically. The veterans them pick and preserve the strawberries, and sell small batches of strawberry jam to raise money for their own care. It’s a beautiful project.

Celebrate Memorial Day by buying veteran-made strawberry jam from Veteran’s Preserves.

And if you’re in the position to employ veterans in agricultural work, come meet them at the first Southern California Food and Farming Veteran Career Fair in Santa Monica. It’s June 30th at 10 a.m.

Organic gardeners are happy to see bugs! Non-organic gardeners reach for the chemicals, but organic gardeners know that where there’s bugs, there’s life. It’s called an eco-system for a reason… it’s a community of living things, plants and bugs and birds and mammals, all living as a vibrant community in the great outdoors.

One man’s pest is another man’s dinner, and that man might well be a ladybug. This caterpillar is generally a reason to pull out the Roundup, but for me, it’s proof that my soil is fertile, the plants are delicious, and that either this spooky guy is going to become a beautiful pollinating butterfly, or another beneficial bug is going to have a big fluffy caterpillar dinner real soon.

Yum!

The blueberry bush is a native American plant, and although it has a reputation for being difficult to grow, I’ve found it to be easy peasy to grow here in Los Angeles. They like sun, and we have plenty of that. They like warmth, and they like an acid soil. You can make your soil acid by mixing an organic acid planting mix into your existing soil, such as a bagged soil that’s made for azaleas. You can also use pine needles and oak leaves as a mulch, as they both raise soil acidity simply by living on top and decomposing into the soil.

I’ve planted many different varieties of blueberries, and while there’s some variation in when they start producing berries, and in the shape and size of the bushes, they’ve all ended up with tons and tons of delicious berries at a height that’s perfect for the children to pick. As the blueberry bushes I grow are never ever sprayed with nasty chemicals, they’re safe to eat without washing. The berries on each buch ripen at different times, so you have a generous supply of berries over a long season, from March until October here in Southern California.

Just reach out, pick and pop in your mouth, or add them to salads, muesli and pies. Blue-tastic!

Detoxing is what humans are designed to do in Spring. We eat more in winter in an attempt to keep the cold at bay, and we shed the accumulated toxins and excess weight in Spring. Mother Nature knows this, and so she gives us artichokes in Spring. Artichokes are full of natural beneficial chemicals, including cynarin and silymarin. Both of these compounds support the liver and the gallbladder in doing their jobs, cleansing the body of toxic stuff. Artichokes also help stabilize blood sugar levels, so they’re great for people with diabetes and hyperglycaemia. As you can see from the photo of this beautiful artichoke in my garden, they are basically the flowers of the most enormous thistles. The plant is pretty mean looking and gigantic, so the space to produce ratio is fairly slim. But boy, do they taste good!

Or ladybirds… whatever you call them, they are a welcome sight to organic gardeners. They eat aphids (greenfly), and their larvae are even more voracious aphid eaters. The bug in the photo is a larva, and as you can see, it doesn’t look anything like the familiar adult insects with their bright red shells and black spots. Before they’re larvae, they’re yellow eggs
that are laid on the underside of leaves. You may have see these on organic lettuce bought from the farmers’ market, or if you’re lucky, you’ll see them in your garden.

I’m excited about this larva, because I released about 1500 ladybugs into the garden last week in the hope that some of them would create some. They prefer to be released late at night, so I decided to potter around the garden at 11 o’clock last Friday night, setting the scene for my insect friends to have a little romance. Et voila! It seems the plan worked, we have larvae! Which means less aphids for the citrus and apple trees to fight off.

Fresh for Spring 2010, I’m going to show you how I grow organic food in a home garden. Spring comes early here in L.A. As I write, it’s cloudy and overcast, around 60 degrees with a light breeze. Yesterday was the same, and tomorrow we’re expecting thunderstorms. But last week, it was very warm and sunny, and as soon as the storms have passed, it will be very warm and sunny again. Los Angeles isn’t quite the zero-seasons, constant sunshine location depicted in Hollywood myths, but it’s close. The sunshine is always close at hand.

And so I can plant summer crops now, confident that there’s absolutely no frost in sight. I’m planting a very first round of heirloom cherry tomatoes in red, yellow and black ready for small hands to reach out, pick and enjoy fresh from the vine. I’m planting Genovese basil to keep the tomatoes happy. When you plant tomatoes and basil together, both crops are tastier than if they had been planted in separate beds. They also protect each other from pests in a mutually beneficial arrangement that will ultimately lead to an awesome tomato basil sauce or tri-colore salad.

With the children in mind, I’m planting Alpine strawberries, a special wild variety with very small and tender fruits that are sweet sweet sweet… Alpine strawberries are a great reason to get planting. Even your local farmer’s market isn’t able to offer you these fragile gems. Their fragile skins and juiciness don’t allow the fruits to be transported further than from the plant to your mouth. In addition, I’m planting a few varieties of strawberries that bear giant fruit, just for fun. It’ll be cool to see baby Alpines on a platter alongside giant Fragrarias, especially with luscious organic cream on the side.

I’m excited about the blueberry bushes too. I’m planting a mixture of early ripening varieties which should be offering ripe blueberries for breakfast by early June. I’ve planted them shallowly, adding gypsum to the existing garden soil to loosen the clay clumps, and amending the soil further with an organic acid potting mix.

And last but not least, the tender greens bed. There’s a small area of ground that doesn’t get much sun, and I hate to see it lying empty. Lettuces and gourmet greens prefer to have some bright sunlight, which helps define their rich array of hues, but they’re content enough to make do with an area of soil that doesn’t get that much sun. I’m going to plant a bigger bed of lucky lettuces in another location, but for now, I’m planting this small shaded area with salad greens because it’s empty which won’t do, and because it’s right by the children’s favorite corner of the garden. They’ll be able to watch them grow quickly, because it takes between three and four weeks for them to grow from seed to totally eatable baby greens. Now that’s exciting!

You can make this bread at home, and I included a recipe for it in my cook book ‘Fresh & Wild: A Real Food Adventure’. It’s fairly time-consuming to make, and involves forward planning, as you sprout the grain for a week, and then bake it overnight on a superlow heat.

Manna Organics offers nine varieties of ready-made Manna bread, from cakey flavors like Carrot and Raisin to the more savory Whole Rye and Multigrain. My favorite is Fig Fennel Flax for it’s originality, and I love Fruit and Nut too. They’re all good, in fact, they’re just as good as my own home-made Essene bread.

The family-run company also offers a variety of sourdough breads that are as dense and beautiful. Like manna bread, the grains are fermented while they sprout, naturally releasing vitamins and other nutrients and partially breaking down the starches. This makes all their breads low glyceamic, which means they’re won’t give you a sugar rush.

Instead, they’ll gently sustain you until it’s time for you next meal, nourishing you with a complex array of naturally occurring micro-nutrients and enzymes. They’re yeast-free, sugar-free and salt-free, contain no flour, no oils, no fats or sweeteners. Of course they don’t contain any chemical additives, and they’re very high in fiber and protein… and did I mention they taste great?!

Preserving lemons is one of the most simple and fun ways to start home preserving.

Only organic lemons have skins that are guaranteed free of waxes and preservatives, so making them out of organic fruit is essential. With the final preserved lemons, only the soft and delectable skins are eaten, so it’s absolutely essential your little tart treats are totally safe and healthy and not covered in nasty pesticides or gunk. Preserving home-grown lemons is a perfect thing to do if you live in Southern California like me. The lemon varieties that thrive here are similar to the varieties that grow in the Mediterranean, so the finished preserved lemon flavors are more authentically Moroccan-style. But any lemons, homegrown or store-bought, are delicious when they’re preserved in this time-honored method. Just as long as they’re organic.

This is the most delicious and indispensable everyday ingredient that you’ve yet to taste. Once you have made preserved lemons from scratch, you won’t know how you ever made delicious things without them. Salty, citrusy, strongly-flavored and tart, they’re a central ingredient in Moroccan cuisine and also show up now and then in South East Asian foods.

Maximum taste to preparation time benefits ratio… Here’s the process:

1. Carefully boil a big glass canning jar to sterilize it, then leave it to air-dry upside down on a clean cloth.

2. Wash and dry five big juicy lemons.

3. On a chopping board, cut each lemon into quarters lengthwise, from the stem to the pointed end… But, leave them attached at the stem end so that the quarters hold together.

4. Using your fingers, stuff each lemon with about one tablespoon of sea salt or kosher salt. Don’t use regular table salt, as it has added iodine so won’t pickle the lemons properly.

5. Squash all the cut, salted lemons inside the jar, pressing them down.

6. Close the jar, and leave in a dark, cool cupboard for 3-4 days, depending on the time of year and heat in the cupboard.

7. When you open the jar, the lemons will be softer, so you will be able to squash them down more, squeezing juice out of them as you do so.

8. Add the juice of about 5-6 more lemons so that all the lemons in the jar are covered.

9. If needed, add a weight of some kind, such as a saucer, to keep any bits of lemon from bobbing above the surface. They need to be fully immersed in the salted juice.

10. Back into the cupboard for at least a month and up to one year. Pull off quarter segments as needed, using a knife and fork to keep your fingers out of the liquid.

The liquid gets better and better over time. Little clumps of white stuff arrive after a while, but it’s completely harmless, like the dusty white stuff on the outside of grapes or the bloom on cheese. Feel free to throw more lemon peels into the juice for up to a year. Just remember somehow which peels are new to the pickle jar, and which ones have been in there for a month or more.

To use your preserved lemons, discard the pulp. Then rinse the peel with fresh cold water if you want to remove the brine for a less salty taste, or leave them unwashed if you want more punch. Either way, mince the peels finely, or try them thinly sliced. You can add the peels to sauces, condiments, pastes, sandwiches, salads or any recipes that would taste great with a salty, pickled peel.

Think of them like olives, capers or anchovies. Preserved lemons are great minced and added to fish dishes, smeared onto meats that are being roasted, or added to fresh pesto, baba ganoush or humus. Pretend it’s a pickle and – sliced finely – it adds zest to a massive range of sandwiches, from smoked salmon and cream cheese to an un-classic Reuben.

Add them to vinaigrette, or just roughly chop and throw in a salad to replace olives as a spin on a tuna nicoise. Try a sliver in a martini, or stuff a little into a date and bake wrapped in bacon.

You get the idea… go wild, get zesty!