An Interview with book author and blogger Jean Ann Van Krevelan on growing and preserving vegetables.
The Interview was recorded on Saturday, March 27, 2010 at the San Francisco Flower and Garden show where Jean Ann Van Krevelan was a featured speaker.
PlanterTomato (PT): I'm here at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show with Jean Ann Van Krevelan. Jean Ann is a gardening expert and author of several books including "Growing Food: A Guide For Beginners" and her recent book, "Grocery Gardening: Planting, Preparing, and Preserving Fresh Food." She also writes and produces several blogs whose content is nationally syndicated on web sites such as the Chicago Sun Times, USAToday and the Wall Street Journal. Jean Ann, thanks for speaking with us today at PlanterTomato.
Jean Ann Van Krevelan (JAVK): Glad to be here.
PT: Why don't we begin by learning how you personally became involved in vegetable gardening?
JAVK: I became involved in gardening in general about ten or eleven years ago when my grandmother passed away and I had to take care of her home and prepare it for sale. She was a great gardener and I needed to care for the yard.
Through this, I really developed a love for digging and planting and watching things grow. But gardening became meaningful to me in a number of ways and the depth and symbolism of it is what is important to me. I think this is true of most things in life; if you make a certain recipe because it's something your mother always made, it's got deeper meaning.
In the last 3 or 4 years I've planting full vegetable gardens. For many years prior to that, I had inter-planted some vegetables into my flower borders, but I found increased meaning and purpose in growing vegetables because doing so made the food I cooked taste better. I wanted to take the food I made back to the source.
PT: So the vegetables you grew came out of the recipes you were using.
JAVK: Yes and it's absolutely the case that certain fruits and vegetables just taste better when you grow them yourself. There's no magic to this, it's just that the varieties you grow at home are ones that have not had the taste bred out of them.
For example, raspberries are very fragile and don't travel well. The ones you buy at the store have been hybridized to stick together long enough to be sold. Mine fall apart, but they taste fantastic. But remember all I need them to do is to get from the raspberry canes to my back door. Eating my raspberries is like eating a totally different fruit.
PT: I completely agree. Of course many people get involved in gardening but don't go on to write a book. How did that transition occur for you?
JAVK: I followed a logical progression. First I wanted to just grow vegetables so they would taste better. So I started growing my own vegetables. Then I improved on he recipes and decided I wanted to share these recipes with others so that they could do the same thing.
My entree into garden writing was blogging. I knew that eventually I would want to write a book but I didn't know were to begin so I decided to just start writing and publishing it myself. I did that for about six months and then I decided to write my first book which I self published.
The first book was inspired by what I had published in my blog but by then I had a second blog called Portland Foodie which is where I published my recipes.
PT: Lots of gardening and cookbooks have been published, what makes your new book, "Grocery Gardening" different than other books you would find on book store shelves?
JAVK: "Grocery Gardening" is my second book. I combined all the recipes and gardening information in this one book. This book tells you exactly what to do from the time you put seeds into the ground till you put it on your plate.
When we put this book together, we wanted it to be a fresh food book; the conversation is about growing some of your own vegetables, but it you don't grow it, we offer advice on how to make sure it's fresh when you buy it, and also on how to store food so you can have it in the winter.
PT: So if I understand your correctly, your encouraging people to grow as much as they can at home, and if they can't grow it at home, then you give them advice on how to choose the best and freshest produce at the grocery store.
JAVK: Actually, I don't say grow all you can grow. I tell my readers to try to grow something and see how that goes. If that goes well, then add some more things.
In the book, we talk about all sorts of ways to buy produce. Yes, in the grocery store, but also farmers markets, CSA's, co-ops, many different places. Sometimes we forget that we don't always have to go to the grocery store to purchase food.
PT: Let's say I purchase your book, become inspired and decide to become a first time gardener. What advice would you give me about the types of vegetables to grow?
JAVK: The first thing I would tell you to do is to sit down and plan out your garden. Sketch out your garden, list the vegetables you want to grow, think about it, and then cut back the list by two-thirds.
Also, plant things that are going to be an easy win -- lettuce, radishes, beets, even tomatoes can be easy to grow depending on where you live. Beans are also a good choice because they're hard to kill. Plant things that are going to give you some immediate "warm and fuzzies".
Nobody likes drudgery. If you start with too much, that's too hard, then next year you wont' be growing at all.
PT: Let's say I've followed this advice for a couple of years and now I'm a more seasoned gardener, what advice would you give me now?
JAVK: (laughing) Plan your garden and then cut it back by two-thirds! Every year I look at seed catalogs and I want to order lots of seeds. But by the time August rolls around, I'm pretty tired from all the weeding, planting, and it's hot and difficult to garden. My recommendation is to always under plant. Your going to plant more than you need.
PT: I hate to say it, but I'm as guilty of over-planting as anyone. My eyes are always bigger than the amount of space I have to grow things.
Although, for me personally, I don't get too bothered if something I plant doesn't work out. For me, I see the advantage of growing lots of things is that, if any one thing fails, it doesn't really matter very much because there's something else that can be harvested. But I understand your point
JAVK: And keep in mind that when you harvest that food, it's not going to look like the picture you saw in the seed catalog. Those glossy photos that have been retouched, just like super model pictures have been retouched. When you pull some lettuce out of the ground and it has a few holes in it and it's a little dirty, that's exactly how it's supposed to look.
You shouldn't get into gardening with the expectation that everything is going to look perfect, you need to understand that that is not what is really happens.
It's not that you shouldn't grow multiple types of vegetables or multiple varieties, just don't get so overwhelmed by the process that you stop gardening.
PT: A fair point. Is there a vegetable that you think is overlooked or under-appreciated by most gardeners?
JAVK: Yes, there is. My favorite vegetable of all time is kale. What is not to love about kale? Yet, so many gardeners have no experience with kale. It is one of the easiest veggies to grow. You can plant it in late winter and you can plant it again in late summer for a fall harvest. Two crops and all it needs is water and a little compost and it's going to grow.
And is beautiful. There are so many architectural forms of kale like dinosaur kale, Italian kale and other forms of kale. You can eat it when it first comes up in a salad or, when it gets older, you can cook it and add it to all kinds or recipes.
It's one of the greens that's full of nutrition but has no bitter taste, so it's easy to eat.
PT: Well on this one, you're preaching to the choir. Kale is one of my family's favorite vegetables. Our kids love it in a recipe called White Bean Kale Soup. It's a very simple soup to make.
The other thing I like about kale, is that it is so winter hardy that you can grow it throughout the year, especially here in Northern California. However, you can also grow it in the winter in much colder climates.
JAVK: Yes, definitely.
PT: You mentioned earlier that your book also covers preserving food. Well there are lots of methods like freezing, and caning and lacto-fermenting. What advice do you give readers about the ways they can preserve food.
JAVK: The book focuses on canning, freezing, dehydrating, and creating root cellars for storage. If you've never done any preserving before, freezing is pretty easy. About as easy as dehydrating.
But there are a couple of things you need to know when you freezing food. Most vegetables need to be blanched, shocked in cold water, and then dried before freezing. It will be even better if you have a vacuum sealer that will take the air out of the freezer bag. You can store frozen vegetable like this for years and it will be as fresh as when you put it into the bag.
With dehydrating, you want to make sure that you purchase a dehydrator with multiple temperature settings so you can control the heat and also one that has multiple trays so you can expand as needed.
I personally don't use my oven to dehydrate. A dehydrator uses far less energy and doesn't heat up my house.
PT: OK, I'm convinced I need to get your book. Where can I buy it?
JAVK: You can get my book at Lowes, Home Depot, Barnes & Noble, Borders, you can order it from Amazon.com. It's pretty easy to find. And it's also easy to read.
I have three other co-authors who partnered with me on the book and it was our determination that it was going to be approachable. We wanted it to be simple, easy-to-read, and easy-to-use.
PT: Well thank you very much. This has been fun and very interesting.
JAVK: Thank you as well.
You can find additional organic gardening and information at Jean Ann's web site, From Gardener To Farmer.
PlanterTomato shares Jean Ann's appriciation for Kale. For more information about this under-rated veggie, check out my prior postings "From Russia with Love" and "Chard Versus Kale Challenge."
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