Fleur-de-MustardMagic

A few weeks ago I got an email with the following subject line: APD Volunteers Needed!

I was scratching my head. Anyone who has spent time in Kutztown knows that APD is the Airport Diner – the only all-night eatery in that corner of Berks County. (I never could understand why the Airport Diner was referred to as the APD and not just the AD … but then I’m not Kutztown-born.) But when the kids and exchange kids thought they were old enough to go carousing at night without telling Momma, the APD was on my rounds, yes, in my pajamas, to check that they were safe.

The email was puzzling, though, because it had Centre County origins. Turns out that APD in these parts means Ag Progress Days.  So last week, I volunteered at Penn State’s Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs, location of APD, for PASA (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture), PCO (Pennsylvania Certified Organic), Penn State Pesticide Education, and Penn State Potatoes. Lots of Ps.

I was in my element, rubbing calloused elbows with farmers and gardeners, chatting about pollinators, and sipping on Pennsylvania maple milkshakes. I was supposed to be there as a volunteer to teach and explain, but as often happens, I finished the three days with a learning high.

At the Penn State Potato plot, I learned about a wonderfully simple technique that I have to share with all of you gardeners out there. I’ve grown cover crops and I’ve tried to steer clear of fungicides (chemicals used to reduce fungal diseases), but it wasn’t until last week that I learned about biofumigants – plants that naturally fumigate the soil, suppressing harmful nematodes and diseases.

In the last several years, potato experts in Maine, Michigan and good old Penn State have been studying the effects of growing a mustard seed mix the year before planting potatoes, and they’ve found that when chopped up and mixed into the soil, mustard greens release gases that can suppress harmful nematodes, insects, weeds, bacteria and fungi in the soil. And, at the same time, mustards serve as a green manure, enriching the soil with nitrogen and thus improving potato yield by as much as 8 percent.

It turns out that the disease suppression of Oriental mustards or Brassicas is associated with the amount of glucosinolates in the tissue of the plants. (These are also the compounds which create the hot taste of mustard). Mustards are native to the Mediterranean and were domesticated about 4,000 years ago as a source of oil, spice, and medicines. Today, researchers using these mustard seed mixes are finding that the naturally occurring biofumigant properties of mustard are only part of the story.  Mustards also improve soil structure and fertility, reduce erosion, stimulate growth of beneficial microbes, draw in dozens of bees and butterflies, and, for you poets out there, they’re beautiful!

If you have an area in your garden that you are having trouble with, or were planning to let go fallow for a season, this is where you plant your mustard cover crop. Penn State plants it after a wheat rotation, cuts it just after Ag Progress Days, turns it into the soil, and then plants potatoes in that spot the following spring. I also think it would be a great cover crop after harvesting garlic in early July. It could also be grown in the fall, but I think we’ve missed the planting window for this year.

1. So, for next year, order Caliente199 from Rupp Vegetable Seeds or anywhere else you can find it. Caliente 199 mustard seed mix produces the highest amount of biofumigant gas when chopped.  (3 oz. seed packet covers about 850 square feet.)

2. The tiny seeds germinate rapidly, in 5 to 10 days after planting, and will germinate in soil temperatures as low as 40 degrees. In four to five weeks the plants will completely cover the ground, and soon will produce flower buds, with yellow flowers bursting forth a week later.

3. At maturity, the plants will be three to four feet tall, with deep taproots.

4. The biofumigation properties of mustard residues are highest if plants are mowed or cut into small pieces and rototilled into moist soil around the time of full flowering.

5. Smile, knowing you did something good for your soil, your garden, and the planet. And give a nod to Mother Nature, who, it seems, thought of everything.

Here’s to your field of dreams! Laurie Lynch

Fleur-de-Landmark

 

Somewhere in my adulthood I began taking notice of personal landmarks. There was the magnificent gingko South of Broad in Charleston, SC, and the causeway to Sullivan’s Island. In Pennsylvania, the landmark was a section of undulating fields cutting into the bare Maxatawny sky. And, although this is the third time I’ve lived in State College, this is the first time I’ve adopted a personal landmark here: Mount Nittany.

To me, a personal landmark is a place that changes from hour to hour, day after day, season to season, yet remains a constant presence. I always thought, “That would make a great calendar – 365 views of the same tree/marsh/field.” And then I’d quickly tell myself, “Anyone else would think it boring – 365 photographs of the same landscape.”

Mount Nittany seems like a no-brainer, but every other time I’ve been in Happy Valley, the symbolic mountain has simply been background scenery. This time around, every morning I take a bike ride and sit on the Slab Cabin Run bikeway bench that faces the backside of Mount Nittany, I feel centered.

So I have adopted the Mount of Princess Nita-nee, but I’m such a latecomer. The Algonquian Indians named the mountain Nit-a-nee, meaning “single mountain”. By the 1700s, colonial settlers were using the slight variation, Nittany Mountain, and in 1903, folklorist Henry Shoemaker wrote a tale of Princess Nita-nee, who the story led her tribe to the safe haven of the Nittany Valley. When she died, the mountain rose from her grave. (However, from my vantage point, not the Beaver Stadium view, I swear Princess Nita-nee is carrying a little papoose on her back … perhaps fuel for another tall tale.)

Fifty years or so after Penn State was founded, the Nittany Lion mascot arrived on the scene and soon the story of Princess Nita-nee included an Indian brave named Lion’s Paw (gimme a break!).  In 1945, when the owner of the mountain was preparing to sell the land, alumni with the Lion’s Paw Senior Society took an option to buy Mount Nittany. By 1981, the society formed the Mount Nittany Conservancy to preserve the pristine beauty of the fair mountain maiden.

To me, the beauty of a personal landmark remains the paradox of ever-changing consistency. One morning, Mount Nittany appears to float on a golden shimmering lake, surrounded by an ice flow. The next, she is wrapped in an apron of fog as the sun burns through the dawn. Another morning, she sits blue and heavy, in a steaming cauldron of clouds. Just the other morning, the entire mountain was erased by mist into a chalky nothingness.  Then, on a clear and cloudless morning, I hear a slightly familiar “whoosh, whoosh” as I pedal up the bike path hill — a hot-air balloon hovering over my shoulder. A downhill plunge and I whiz ahead. When I arrive at “my bench” I sit and watch as the balloon, colored with a Lego pattern in green and yellow and violet and blue, lowers over Lemont. Then flames lick and spit, sending the balloon straight up over Mount Nittany. Picture perfect. Laurie Lynch

Good Eggs: Well, I admit it. After 14 years of having “farm-fresh eggs”, the Egg Lady got a little jaded with the orange yolks and substantial whites, and sometimes thought customers eggsaggerated about the quality of our hens’ eggs. Now that I’m a consumer and not a producer … well, I haven’t seen a good egg since. It will take time to track some down, but I will. The supermarket brown-Organic-Cage-Free-Omega-this-and-that eggs are pale by comparison.

Name Game: No longer the Egg Lady, I’ve been thinking of a new moniker. Bike Lady had possibilities until Crash Lady appeared. Then, an old buddy from Philly emailed. “Yo, Fleur,” his message started. I sat there and said, “I like it!”  It makes me feel like a schoolgirl at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts and proves that Fleur-de-Lys is not a farm, it is a state of mind.

Caring and Sharing: A certain nephew of mine called his mom, quite concerned, about AL No. 1 (that’s my niece/nephew nickname). There are five of us Ls – Laurie, Lisa, Lee Ann, Larissa, and Leslie – and I, being the oldest, was named Aunt L No. 1. “She really should carry a cell phone on her bike rides,” he said. Well, AL No. 1 wasn’t born yesterday and after her first trip to ER figured that out too. And, at the risk of totally embarrassing NL No. 1, I’ll share with you all that I now carry a cell phone close to my heart on all bike outings … that’s why God gave women cleavages!

Good Eats: Chef Wille, another nephew, offered to make dinner the other night. For those of you with late summer beach plans (or a good seafood store nearby), here is a novel way to celebrate those lovely cherry tomatoes that are weighing down your garden plants.

Wille’s Drunken Mussels

Saute sliced Vidalia onions in a large frying pan. Scrub, de-beard (if they haven’t been cleaned already) and rinse a pound or two of fresh mussels.  Remove any mussels that are open and do not close when you press on them. Toss cleaned mussels into the bed of onions with a nob of butter, a couple handsful of cherry tomatoes (Wille used Sungold, a nice color contrast with the black shells), and a splash of beer. On a medium-hot burner, cover pan and steam until mussels pop open (3 to 5 minutes). Ladle mussels, onions, tomatoes and broth in individual bowls, accompanied with slices of toasted whole grain bread to sop up the delicious broth. (Be sure to place several empty bowls on the table for the shells.) Mmmmmmmussels.