"Gardening" news and stories

This fall, a tour of the White House is, once again, going to get a little earthy, according to Obama Foodarama. First Lady Michelle Obama's 1,500-foot Kitchen Garden was such a hit as part of the spring Grounds and Gardens Tour that fall's rapini, sweet potatoes, and other crops are being featured in this season's walkabout, to be held October 16 and 17. (Does it trump the Rose Garden? You decide.) Tickets are free, and being distributed now by the National Parks Service, but reservations are required.

Want an idea that's ripe for the times? Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on ornamental plants for your yard, spend it on edibles -- let those orange squash blossoms, red tomatoes, and purple cabbages be the main event.

Edible landscaping, as it's called, is a trend that speaks to many current food issues. Want fewer pesticides in your salad? Done -- you know exactly what did (and didn't) go into growing this stuff. Want to keep your food supply local? You can't get much more local than your front walkway.

The concept isn't new, of course -- kitchen gardens predate the kitchen, when you think about it. But the push to bring the edible stuff out of the backyard and into the front is very hot right now, with websites and books devoted to the topic. Advocates point out that integrating vegetables into the rest of the greenery actually promotes both healthier diets and healthier gardens. "[It] works well because, if you're mixing in with flowers, it attracts pollinators," Susan Littlefield, horticulture editor at the National Gardening Association, told the Columbus-Dispatch. Planting this way also creates more flow in the landscape. "You don't have to think about digging up the yard and putting in a big rectangle," Littlefield pointed out.

While Arab traders helped facilitate the exchanges that shaped cooking in sub-Saharan Africa, pre-Columbian cuisine of the Middle East often gets short shrift in South Carolina, a noted outpost of African Diaspora foodways.

According to Stephen Sheehi, associate professor of Arab Studies at the University of South Carolina, the Arab world was responsible for cultivating emmer wheat and introducing enslaved Americans' ancestors to bananas and peanuts.

"In that respect, there's always been a tie," Sheehi says.

Exploring Arab contributions to Southern cookery is just one objective of Sheehi's new class, which he warns can't be reduced to a soundbite. The syllabus is also designed to introduce students to concepts of land management, local food and sustainability. Sheehi's students are planting an Arab garden on their campus in Columbia, S.C. and preparing to build a tandour oven, with the resulting bread and veggies pledged to a nearby chapter of Food Not Bombs.

Prosciutto from Big Boy the pig. Photo: Rebecca Winters.

"What happened to the rats on your property?" someone asks urban farmer Novella Carpenter.

"I have a theory that my pigs ate the rats," Carpenter says. Realizing that her audience has been munching on slices of said pig's hindquarters, she laughed. "So enjoy some delicious prosciutto!"

Farmers are reputed to have a tough streak. They step over piles of excrement, battle gargantuan hogs and, of course, have to earn a living. Carpenter, author of "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer," seems no exception. She lives in the city, not the country, "so I can get Chinese food at 2 a.m."

The two 300-pound hogs she raised in what she calls the Oakland, Calif., "ghetto," also enjoyed Chinese takeout. She read about her adventures in urban farming on a Brooklyn, N.Y., rooftop adjacent to a 6,000-foot, 30-crop rooftop farm built by Goode Green and tended by farmers Annie Novak and Ben Flanner.

Dumpster diving, fish guts and the cost of rooftop farming, after the jump.

• From pig to prosciutto -- how dry-cured hams can offer the most rich and rewarding flavor.
• New York is awash in speakeasies. They might not look like the bars of Prohibition, but the same hidden doors and password rigmarole applies.
• A look at Zach Brooks and his Midtown Lunch Web site, which is dedicated to finding decent and reasonably priced lunches in, of course, Midtown Manhattan.
• Stop! That white wine in your fridge should never be served super-cold.
• Per Se, Thomas Keller's famous Manhattan eatery, has one heck of a saucy kitchen.
• Organic dairy farmers are in dire straits thanks to the recession's harsh impact.
• Ballparks might not be going gourmet, but the fast food has been given a haute twist at hotspots like Yankee Stadium and Citi Field.

More news after the jump.