ALL NEW: CHECK OUT THE MG PUTNAM COUNTY, NY FACEBOOK PAGE

Hello All,

Please note the good news! Master Gardeners of Putnam County, New York now have a FaceBook page where we can post glad tidings as well as informal gardening chats, notices, etc. to one another.

Check it out at:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=181702671506&ref=mf

Or, just log on to FaceBook and search Master Gardeners of Putnam County, New York to become a participating member.

And post something on the wall for us all to see. You'll be glad you did!!

Michelle Obama Reaps Bonanza From White House Garden -- Politics Daily

Michelle Obama Reaps Bonanza From White House Garden -- Politics Daily

NY Governor's Mansion Executive Chef Talks Home Grown Vegetables

Noah Sheetz, Executive Chef of the Governor’s Mansion in Albany New York, was a speaker at CCE/Putnam’s Victory Garden workshop held earlier this summer in Patterson, NY. Master Gardener Tim Fisher had the opportunity to talk further with Noah about his personal interest in growing vegetables for Governor David A. Paterson, himself and his community.

Q. When did the Governor’s Mansion start a vegetable garden?

The Governor's Mansion has had a vegetable garden for more than 30 years - as long as our head grounds keeper Frank Willey has been there. Perhaps even longer than that. Last year we cut another garden on the back lawn. The new garden gets full sun. There are several large pines that have grown up around the older garden and we've found that it is getting too much shade. There's also a large herb garden.

Q. Is it organic?

Yes, although not certified organic. Because we are in the city limits of Albany we can't impose any sort of low input spray program. Which is a good thing but unfortunate to a degree. We also have a small orchard at the Mansion but without a spray program the fruit is generally unusable.

Q. As a chef, what are your thoughts about growing organic vegetables at home or in a community garden vs. what’s available to Americans in supermarkets today?

Garden grown foods are fresher, retain a higher nutritional value than store bought foods and are significantly cheaper. Of course it is unrealistic to assume that we can grow everything but there are many things that everyone can be growing with very little financial investment and energy. I like the example of tomatoes, which practically everyone eats. They can be grown anywhere - in suburban backyards or in pots on terraces in the most crowded of urban spaces. The flavor quality and nutritional value of home grown tomatoes is far superior to anything from California that we buy in the grocery store and the expense is, without question, far less. If everyone grew their own tomatoes in the summer, the money saved and reinvested in our local economy would be enormous.

Q. What prompted you to start your own plot in a community garden this year?

Actually it was my assistant chef's idea. I had proposed going in together on a CSA share but Tom started poking around the Capital District Community Gardens website and before you knew it we were both signed up for plots. Mine has a perfect location - right across the street from the Mansion.

Q. How was/is your harvest?

Wonderful. It’s amazing how much you can grow in a small space. I probably wouldn't have done half as well without the expert guidance of Belo’s - an experimental farm corporation in Geneva that does growing trials for farmers throughout the region. They called and asked if we needed seed/seedlings for the Mansion's gardens. I said yes. I also told Elaine from Belo’s about my latest community gardening endeavor and she offered some amazing guidance. She sent seeds for the spring planting and seedlings for early summer. As a novice gardener I was able to grow kohlrabi, broccoli, spinach, beets, collards, mustard greens, kale, chard, romanesco, radishes, cabbage, potatoes and carrots (tomatoes too but they were afflicted with blight).

Q. What kind of responses do you get from the governor/guests at the mansion to vegetables fresh out of the garden?

Very positive but sometimes it’s hard to tell. I'm back in the kitchen. So I watch plates. If the plates come back clean I know we did well and generally the plates come back clean. I do get direct feedback from time to time and it’s invariably enthusiastic. This is so gratifying but to me not surprising. There's nothing better than really fresh vegetables, like sautéed chard that was just clipped or roasted potatoes that were freshly dug. It’s all about the ingredients - the better the ingredients the better the food.

Q. What rewards do you find in working your own garden plot?

It’s peaceful and there's always something to eat. And sometimes its kind of interesting in that it requires less refrigerator space (for vegetables). I can drop by my garden on the way home from work and harvest just what I need for dinner.

Q. With today’s busy lifestyles, what are some simple ways to start a home vegetable garden?

Of course it does depend on how much time you can spare but there are several low maintenance vegetables like chard, kale, and tomatoes that will accommodate even the busiest of lifestyles. They are amazingly regenerative and can be managed by even the busiest of workaholics.

Q. Have you ever met a vegetable you didn’t like?

No. Although I'm not totally crazy about plain cucumbers. I like them in a salad or marinated in some way. Otherwise I'll eat anything.

Noah Sheetz is originally from El Paso, Texas, and settled in the Hudson Valley to attend the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. While living in New York, Noah has worked in fine dining restaurants, owned a bakery, and enjoyed teaching as a culinary instructor in a federal correctional institution. In April of 2004, Noah was hired as the Executive Chef of the Governor’s Mansion in Albany New York. As the Executive Chef at the Executive Mansion, Noah plans and supervises special events, private dinners, working luncheons, and neighborhood barbecues. In addition to his duties at the Mansion, Noah is involved in community outreach to educate youth in the community with healthy cooking presentations and interactive workshops that promote organic gardening and eating locally. Noah’s philosophy is to buy fresh, local, and seasonal foods. His mission is to work with fresh, high quality produce, buying the same day it is harvested if possible. Noah spends time networking with farms in the area to support and promote local agriculture and to increase awareness of the benefits of eating locally. Noah is currently attending graduate school at the University of Albany in Albany, New York.

Saving Seed

You can save seed from almost any herbaceous perennial, annual, herb or vegetable that grows in your garden. You'll be saving money, participating in a thousands-of-years-old agricultural practice, and learning, learning, learning.

• Take a look around your garden at the flowers you liked most. While you can harvest seed from almost any plant, it's often quite difficult to grow woody plants from seed.
• Take seed on a dry day. Wet plants and seeds invite mold.
• Take one or more entire flowers or seed pods, put them in a brown paper bag and write the name of the plant and the date on the bag .
• Allow the flowers or pods to dry for several weeks. Since we're heading into the holidays, you might forget the bags until after the New Year, and that's ok. The drying process can go on without anything being hurt.
• When you're ready to harvest the seed, prepare by lining a big table with newspaper.
• Collect a few brownie-size baking tins, shoe box lids or similar size vessels.
• Collect small coin envelopes or use empty, cleaned, dry pill bottles.
• Get one or more sieves or strainers with varying hole sizes.
• Open one bag at time and empty the contents into a strainer. Shake to loosen the seeds and allow them to fall through onto the baking tins or show box lids.
• Using a spatula or piece of cardstock, scrape up the seeds and pour them into one of the coin envelopes or pill bottles.
• Write the name of the plant on the envelope or bottle.

When you're ready to start your seedlings, consult a good seed catalog (for example, http://www.johnnyseeds.com/) for sowing depth and germination times for your plants. You can check planting manuals or the Cornell vegetable gardening website http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gardening/homegardening/sceneb771.html for details on sowing times of vegetables.

Plant Garlic in October!
Plant garlic in mid-to-late October for harvest next summer. Purchase garlic sold specifically for planting, or buy organic garlic. Commercial, non-organic, supermarket garlic might have been treated to inhibit sprouting, or it may be a soft-necked, non-hardy variety from California (which is where most garlic is grown). Break the garlic head into individual cloves. Keep the largest ones for planting. (Use the small cloves for cooking!) Plant the cloves about 2-3 inches deep and about 6-8 inches apart with the pointed side up, in rows that are about 15 inches apart. Mulch the bed well with straw. This helps protect garlic cloves from winter freezing and thawing, and suppresses weeds in spring.
Try some different varieties to see which you prefer. German Extra Hardy is one of the best rated by New York State gardeners! Interested in rating vegetable varieties? See: http://vegvariety.cce.cornell.edu/

For More information on growling Garlic:
http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/scene568b.html

http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/yates/mg10.10.01.htm

Should I keep composting through winter?

Absolutely! If your compost pile or bin is active enough, it will continue processing your food scraps and garden debris. You'll need some balance foe all the food scraps, and the piles of sawdust you create when sawing wood for your wood stove are excellent for this purpose. Even when temperatures plummet, you'll still be reducing your contribution to the waste stream if you continue composting. Of course, if your compost area is way at the end of the 'south 40,' we won't blame you for spending more of your winter indoors. For more about composting, go to the source:

http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/compostbrochure.pdf

Are you a teacher? Check out how your classroom can compost, at: http://compost.css.cornell.edu/CIC.html

Late Blight,
And End-of-the-Season Veggie Garden Clean-up.

If you, like so many other enthusiastic vegetable gardeners, watched your tomatoes succumb to late blight this year and melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West, you may wonder what to do to clean up your garden this fall.

The answers may be simpler than you think! Late blight can only winter-over in live plant tissue. In our area the only likely way this can happen is in a potato tuber accidentally left in the garden bed. If you grow tomatoes and potatoes, be especially vigilant in digging up those potatoes!

For more information on late blight, check out this link:
http://www.longislandhort.cornell.edu/vegpath/lbfaq.pdf

For garden clean-up after other tomato diseases, such as Septoria leaf spot, check out the section on http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/scene7af3.html that discusses cleaning up your garden and discarding debris!

It's like a scene out of "Alien"

We cut open a farm stand tomato and, lo and behold, sprouts were already growing inside of it. What could cause this, I wonder? Is it like a nesting doll, only a tomato?

~ CateyM

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