Top 3 Veggies for Small Spaces

It’s the most WONDERFUL time of the year! The sun is out, birds are chirping, and these little guys are making a break for it.

Last year I broke up one big rhubarb plant into 7 separate crowns and now it’s going to be rhubarb for days. Days!!

But the real joy of this time of year is planning the garden. I have about 1000 sq ft of garden to plant this year, which is a little bit more than most of my friends. 

I know one 10 year old that is working on his hole digging skills!

Here in Alberta there are some limits to what can be grown outdoors: no tomatoes, but lots of kale, not pumpkins but lots of Mandan squash… I aim for indigenous varieties when I can and climate suitability otherwise. It’s time to sit down with a big jug of coffee and browse through the magazines. 

Ahh, the perfect day :)

Last night my friend Sarah was asking what she could grow in her little planter box. While small in surface area, the real challenge is the depth, or lack thereof. And for a lot of friends in Calgary this barrier, of limited growing area, stifles the dream of semiannual vegetable self-sufficiency. But I wanted to share what I see as the biggest bang for buck in small growing spaces.

Top 3 Veggies for Small Spaces

(an anecdotal list with limited evidence base)

*NOTE: this list is for the prairies and so excludes tomatoes. Also, I only start from seed.*

Bush Zucchini.

Everyone gives zucchini a hard time, but it is one of the most versatile vegetables you can grow. In a small space you can grow a bush type zucchini in a pot, or grow a regular zucchini plant and train it up a trellis. Zucchini is great for black bean chilaquile, frittata, salsa, and zucchini relish, along with the standard chocolate cake. People joke about having too much zucchini but I just don’t think it’s possible. Store the surplus by chopping and freezing and adding to meals all year long. If you see flowers dropping off rather than pollinating, you can gently pollinate them when they open by dabbing stamen with a cotton swab and spreading pollen between them, like a super hip zucchini love doctor. (Photo stolen from the internet)

Bush Beans.

Green beans in general are PROLIFIC and are a great to have growing if you have kids around (or enjoy snacking outside) as a help yourself treat. Also VERY popular at home are dilly beans, the delicious pickled version. Bush beans are the same delicious green bean, but don't require the space to wander around. Green beans are great in casseroles too, and I love them flash fried in Chinese stir fry. Ooh, and with candied walnuts and a maple glaze! Beans all seems to come to fruit at the same time and then there is a surplus, so I am trying to plant mine in succession this year with a few plants going in the dirt every week. (Photo stolen from the internet)

Kale or Chard.

Kale gets a bad rap as a health food and I completely agree. For looks and usefulness, though, it’s hard to avoid. I’ve learned to love kale and chard by not overdoing it, not using too much, and finding out how I like it. Finely chopped kale massaged (ew, sounds gross) with pureed garlic and olive oil are a fantastic salad base (mm with cranberries and roast chicken on top). And have people seen kale slaw at the grocery store lately?? And chopped kale and be portioned and frozen and used through the year in pasta sauces, soups, stir-fries, and casseroles. Just pick it when it’s small so it doesn’t get too woody. I like to get a few different kinds (black, common curly, and red Russian are the most popular) and I LOVE to grow some ornamental varieties because they get so big and colorful and stay pretty so long!

The End. 

My faithful planting companion and I wish you all the best this planning and planting season!

How to Not Pay Credit Card Interest

The thing about credit cards is that they will sink you if you carry a balance. So far I have never carried a balance and NEVER paid interest fees. Till today.

Credit card debt has been rising modestly in the throws of this, our oil patch economic downturn. Families use cards to stay afloat when the patch dries up and job use layoffs and salary roll backs to stay afloat. The last quarter of 2016 saw Albertan credit delinquencies rise by 23%. Albertans carry, on average, over $25 000 in consumer debt. And nearly half of all Canadians carry some amount of credit card debt specifically. What? How? How can people access so much money to spend on consumer products? Also in reading this I learned that the minimum age for credit cards in Canada is 18 (except for East coasters). Just as an aside, I don't think ANY teenager should have a credit card. It's a bad idea.

I've heard a lot of different opinions on credit cards. Some people think they are great for tracking expenses, others see them as the devil in the wallet. I am a big fan of credit cards. I have two actually, and use one of them for almost all of my purchases. Once is a cash back Visa, the other is a WestJet Mastercard which accumulates cash for flights and gets me an annual companion travel voucher. These cards have subsidized purchases, and twice been responsible for cheap flights for me and a friend. I pay off all my balances almost as soon as I make purchases to free load of the credit companies.

However, as with most things, the devil is in the details, and I was a bit fuzzy on those with my Mastercard. My Visa charges interest for any outstanding balance not paid within 4 weeks. As I found out today, my Mastercard charges interest on the whole balance that was due, not the outstanding portion, after 21 days. So, while i had paid the most of the balance immediately and the remainder within 4 weeks, I was charged interest on the entire balance after 21 days. Which sucks, because I had just spent over $2000 on the card.

Infamous West Jet Mastercard. Decent rewards IF you stay on top of a 21 day billing cycle. 

$57 doesn't sound like a lot for some but to me it is completely unacceptable. I didn't get anything for it!! Why would I pay it? $57 is more than my monthly clothing budget (fair, that budget is $0, but still). I could have so many things for $57. So I did what I needed to do- I called them up for help.

People are generally helpful, even credit card call centre people. And credit cards companies need customers, so they generally try and be nice. So I called up the company and asked them, honestly, to explain how interest worked. Why, when I owed $200, was I charged interest on the whole amount? This is good to keep in mind with any financial institution -  they need customers. With a simple keystroke they can keep them a lot more easily. So be sure to call them if you are not thrilled about charges!


The call went something like this:

Me: I see that I owe a bunch of interest on this statement. Could you please help me understand that?
Them: Yes ma'am. You were charged interest on the amount you billed in the last statement. You had $2000 on the card and were charged interest on that amount.
Me: Okay. How dies it work that I paid off most of that the same day and the rest within 4 weeks?
Them: We have a 21 day cycle that it must be paid within 21 days.
Me: Okay. So I paid most of it off, how does that work?
Them: Yes ma'am, what happens is that you pay interest on the full amount, not just what is left. It must be completely paid by the date on the statement.
Me: That's my bad, I didn't review the fine print. Just so this is crystal clear, I have to pay it ALL off by the date shown.
Them: Yes ma'am.
Me: I think I understand that. Is there anything you can do for that amount of interest? It's my fault, I just didn't understand.
Them: Hmm I cal check. Can you hold?
Me: For sure.
-- 5 minutes later--
Them: Alright ma'am, I've reversed the interest charges as a one time consideration. Is there anything else?

Thanks and pleasantries followed.

This isn't the first time I've done that. Unfortunately I had a similar issue when I was living overseas and couldn't get on the internet to pay my Visa.

Having a credit card is really helpful, but paying interest feels like a complete admission of failure. Always take time to call a credit company if you find an occasion where you've messed up. This works for banks and bank fees too.

$1 Tomato Soup

Dear Meg-
I am writing to you because this may be the only way that I bring myself to write.
Every day as I grow deeper and deeper into my values, and they into me, I struggle to keep quiet this compulsion to evangelize for less. Less purchasing, less debt, less work, less waste... And in all of it, comes a life of less labour and more creation. Lucky for me I see gardening and food gathering as part of creation.

I'm reading some John Ralston Saul right now on the Collapse of Globalization. While he is speaking to societies, in each idea he speaks to you and I. The gusto of this current chapter is set on choice, and how more of us have the self-confidence to make choices than are willing to admit, and most of us with that self-confidence have been continually preached the inevitability of world markets, systems, and governments, and so are disengaged from the very structures through which we could almost imagine exercising choice: government. And all this got me thinking about tomato soup.

Making tomato soup is an edible representation of my choice for a marginal existence. There is so much waste in the systems that organize our lives that I find myself doing all I can to avoid contributing. I've all but stopped purchasing clothing. I grow food when I can, I walk as my primary means of commute. I reuse and recycle, but hold most strongly to the long forgotten first R: reduce.

The tomato soup that I made tonight was a different beast of consumption. I didn't purchase greenhouse tomatoes. Instead, I saved them from needless destruction and liberated them to their true calling- deliciousness! And how did I liberate them? A little exercise known as dumpster diving.

Where I live we have a few great dumpsters that are easily accessible. And while lately security guards have been piling palettes on top, in the last few visits I've scored a lot of really great vegetables. Between my garden and the dumpsters I visit I don't buy any produce over the summer. And now, in the tail end of winter, I'm using the last of my tomatoes to make room for next year.

I was actually surprised by how much I liked this soup. After having only canned soup for so long I thought this would be too tart but a little sweetener cuts that back substantially. It was so super tasty that I'm revved up for saving more tomatoes from their terrible fate. Tomato soup is delicious already, especially this recipe, and even more so when it was just about free.

$1 Tomato Soup

Ingredients
One freezer bag mostly full of frozen tomatoes of varying quality
One onion (paid for)
One or two carrots (paid for)
One wilty stalk of celery (paid for)
4 cups of stock (homemade)
Basil, thyme (or Italian spice blend), lime or lemon juice, sweeter (I don't cost out spices but more on that later)

Instructions
Collect all your tomatoes through the year that are too soft to eat or have been scavenged from the corporate food system. Wash them and freeze them whole. Freezing whole is way easier than the alternative. Put all your tomatoes in a big bowl of piping hot water.

So many tomatoes!

As they soften, gently squeeze them so the flesh pops out of the skin. It's so cool how it easily slides! Grandpa taught me that. Allow them to continue to thaw in the water.

Looks gross, tastes great. 

Chop the onion, carrot, and celery, and heat with an oil till they become the onions are translucent.
Add the whole skinless tomatoes and a litre of stock to the pot. Adjust the fluids by adding water if necessary. In fact, start with less stock to make sure your soup isn't too watery.

Looking in the pot as it came to temperature. 

Add a palm of basil and a palm full of Italian spice blend. The original recipe called for thyme but I got a giant Italian spice blend from a dumpster last summer and used that instead.
Heat for 20 minutes till everything is soft.

After bubbling for 30 minutes the tomatoes had softened to a pulp. 

Let it cool for a bit, then blend with the immersion blender. (I am not patient enough to wait for it to cool but I should say that).
Add a squirt of lemon or lime, a tablespoon of sweetener (brown sugar and honey are great), and salt to taste.

Brown sugar not shown. Remember, lime is for eating, lemon is for cleaning.

Top with sour cream and black pepper. Do not add cream for creaminess. It curdles. Ask me how I know.

Yes please!

This soup is delicious and I feel great about using ingredients that took carbon to grow and would have produced methane if left to decompose anaerobically in a dump. But maybe I shouldn't talk about dumps and dinner in the same sentence :)

Seriously, make this soup. So good! Only problem is now I have a huge pot and only one tiny mouth!