August Refresh

Beat the heat for fall freshness

By Jan Leitschuh

August invites beach breezes, gauzy cover-ups, bodies of water and icy little umbrella drinks. Not skeeters, weeds, arc-welding heat and dry, sandy soil. And yet, the time for fall planning and planting is right now.

Aargh! What price homegrown flavor?

The effortless itch of delirious spring planting has yielded to the August flogging to get a move on.

After yielding its April-through-July abundance, the garden now looks pitiful and straggly. The bugs have chewed up the eggplant leafs, the zucchini has long since been felled by the stem borers. The aged tomatoes look awful, offering up the tease of two or three remaining undersized tomatoes. The basil has gone to flower, and the okra got a bit long in the tooth and is now inedible. The greens all went to seed at the end of June.

You need a weed-eater to get in there.

Who would want to wade into that? And yet . . .

Fall is a great time for growing a garden around these parts. The severe heat eases off at night and then tapers off completely in mid-October. You can water a garden and it stays watered for longer than it takes an egg timer to run out. The intense bug pressure is past. And cooler nights invite a renewed zest for life, both plant and human.

We can have another go. But first we have to steel ourselves and get out there early one morning in August. Pull out the old, non-productive plants, fork over the weeds and amend the soil with some good compost (yes, we added compost in the spring, but organic matter burns up fast in our heat).

Right now, you still have time. Until mid-month, you can put in some of your summer favorites for another round. You’ll want sets, to get a running start, as opposed to seeds. You’ll make friends with the watering hose.

Through mid-August, put in some stringless green beans for a fall supper. We can set out some yellow summer squash and zucchini plants, and avoid the worst of the pest pressures that plague them (a friend of mine plants his in 4-inch PVC rounds sliced from a pipe and says it does a good job of discouraging borers, for a time). You can still plant cukes if you do it right now. And fall tomatoes are a real treat — it feels like cheating to eat a fresh, homegrown tomato in October.

If you prefer fall crops, go ahead and try planting a row of carrots in late August. The seed is very tiny, and it only takes one hot day to destroy the germinating sprouts. So the secret is water — soak them heavily in the morning and cover the row with shade (like a board), checking daily. Once the seeds manage to sprout, uncover and water twice a day that first week (barring rain), and then taper off to whenever the soil is dry.

Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants will start showing up in garden centers, and not long after, collards. You can be eating well at Thanksgiving with a little action now. Put in a row or two.

From now to mid-September, you can direct-seed other fall crops, such as a variety of greens like arugula, lettuce mix, bok choy, yukina and, later in August, spinach and chard.

Lettuce, spinach and its relatives Swiss chard and beets, can be a little tricky to germinate in the heat. After all, they usually jump to life in the cold spring. To fool your seeds, sprinkle a measure of seed on a soggy paper towel and roll it up. Stick your seed roll in a bag or cup in the fridge for three days, then plant and water as usual. Your fridge tricks the seeds into germinating, just like spring. Surprise! It’s hot out! Keep the water coming until established.

Cool weather herbs like cilantro, parsley and dill can also be planted at this time.

If you want to wait until mid-September, you have a month to plant onions. It’s also the time to plant your garlic cloves tip-end up, for a nice March-April crop of green garlic and June-harvested mature heads.

Like a few flowers mixed in your vegetable plot? Mid-September is also the time to put in a row of larkspur or snapdragon for lovely spring blooms. If you sow rye or crimson clover as a winter cover crop for an organic green manure, the second half of September is prime time to do that. Their actively growing roots will help keep your soil life diverse and healthy.

Are you a fan of Sandhills strawberries, those delectable and tender red nuggets of spring’s first fruits? Prepare your soil and plant in October. Set the crowns even with the soil, not too deep. As with anything, water them well.

If you love fresh-eating, fall-feasting and homegrown picked-at-peak-ripeness produce, then you do what you gotta do in August. You tell the beach dreams to hang on, and you get out there and renew your garden, girding it for fall.

After a few mornings of healthy sweat, those little umbrella drinks taste all the sweeter.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

The Kitchen Garden

Bring on the Basil

The king of herbs spices up summertime

By Jan Leitschuh

Many of you are eaters of fresh produce, not growers. I get that.

However, if you grow nothing else, you can grow basil. Fresh basil is the classic fragrance of a foodie’s hot-weather feast, the symphonic notes in the Sandhills’ summer bounty. Food writers call basil “The King of Herbs” for the commanding accent it brings to seasonal food.

A cool plate of juicy heirloom tomatoes sliced simply with fresh mozzarella and topped with fresh basil, cracked pepper and balsamic is about as good as it gets in July. Unless, of course, it’s a fresh peach, goat chèvre and basil salad . . . or a pizza margherita with fresh basil leaves . . . or basil chicken with lemon . . . or a cucumber, basil and lime gimlet . . .

You see? No mention yet of pesto, which is delicious nonetheless.

Yes, you non-kitchen-gardener you, you can grow basil. Just buy a 4-inch pot and set it in a window box. Or in a planter. Tuck a plant outside your back door, right in the dirt. In fact, if you have a sunny window, you can even grow it indoors. The store-bought fresh packs are convenient but costly, and, if you are a basil lover, insufficient. Just grow some already.

For so much flavor, basil’s wants are simple: sunshine and lots of it. And warmth. Water when the soil gets dry which, in a full-on Sandhills summer, can be daily. 

With a little pinching — or rather, harvesting — of a few pungent, glossy leaves, sweet basil will grow into a vigorous bushy ball, about a foot or two high.

And while we savor the Mediterranean notes that basil brings to our summer tables, it turns out it’s also a very healthy addition to our diets. Basil is a brain enhancer. Certain antioxidants in basil are considered protective shields for the brain, preventing oxidative stress. Eating basil, which contains minerals like manganese, may be useful in preventing cognitive decline.

Anti-inflammatory elements of basil help quell the burning of arthritis, or soothe the acid indigestion you’ll surely get from scarfing that whole pizza pie. A great source of vitamin K, basil also helps build strong bones, and its phenolics and anthocyanins make it a useful addition to a cancer-fighting diet.

Beyond the sweet or Genovese basils, you can find the beautiful purple-leaved basils such as Red Rubin and Dark Opal. These dark lovelies are garden accents in and of themselves. Other cultivars are available with different tastes, including cultivars with cinnamon, clove, lemon and lime notes. Holy basil, or tulsi, is another flavor altogether. Start with the tried and true sweet basil, and branch out from there.

Potted plants are readily available in the spring, but basil is easy and inexpensive to start from seed. Press a few seeds into a pot and water. You can do this monthly to ensure a continuous supply.

As the daylight shortens, your basil will try to flower. Pinch these off immediately. You are trying to keep it in the fragrant vegetative (leafy) state, not allowing it to send its energy into reproduction (flowers and seeds).

To keep cut basil fresh in your kitchen, treat it like the lovely bouquet it is. Trim the stems and put them in a jar or glass of water on your counter.  Cover it with a loose plastic bag if you want. Never put fresh leaves in the fridge, where they will blacken.

At some point in the summer, you will have a lot of basil. This is a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say. Think ahead to those basil-less winter pizzas, fish dishes and pastas (sad trumpet sound). How do you think pesto got invented? It uses scads of basil. If your summers are busy and you don’t have time to combine with pine nuts or walnuts, and pecorino cheese, just rinse off a batch and whir it with simple olive oil. Freeze in ice cube trays and re-bag. Pull out a basil cube on a joyless, sunless winter day when you need to remember the sunshine.

Or, using the bounty of July, serve up something cool:

Tomato, Basil and Watermelon Skewers

Alternate squares of watermelon with feta squares, basil and halved cherry tomatoes.

Arrange on a platter, drizzle with EVOO and a good balsamic vinegar. Have a party and share the flavor.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

The Deer Departed

At least, that’s the plan

By Jan Leitschuh

I have chronicled the ravages of Southern white-tailed deer here at Cottage Garden Farm, as well as the myriad methods used to discourage our cloven-hoofed neighbors from ravaging not only the vegetable garden but stripping out the tasty pansies, roses, zinnias, daylilies, sunflowers, hostas and more.

Last summer, it got so bad I actually considered giving up growing vegetables. The magnitude of that discouragement still stings. Vegetable gardening is something I’ve done since childhood when my parents, retaining a Victory Garden habit from the war years, taught me the pleasures of coaxing edible life from the soil. I can imagine few more graceful pursuits than the quiet peace of growing fresh, clean, delicious food.

But after following the call of spring last year, the largest horde of deer yet swooped in and savaged the entire garden. Before, it might be a ripe fruit taken here, an okra plant nipped there. Now, healthy cucumber, squash, sugar snap pea, pepper and tomato plants were taken to the ground. Laid waste. Little but rosemary was left standing.

I may have a solution. Call me hopeful, more hopeful than I have felt in years, thanks to a tip from a fellow plant enthusiast from Greensboro, garden educator Ellen Ashley.

You can’t blame the deer. They only do what deer do — smell out a good thing and eat it. With the efforts we have made to sweeten and enrich the garden’s soil, one could almost take it as a backhanded compliment. The deer equivalent of the cereal commercial: “Mikey likes it!”

We tried an electric fence wire. Nope, over they hopped. We hung the wire with little peanut butter-smeared foil “tags,” hoping to tempt the deer to lick them, and training them to stay away because of the mild electrical unpleasantness. For a variety of reasons, that didn’t work either (plus it was difficult to keep the wires from grounding out). The vegetables fattened happily on their parent plants, and just when you’d think “one more day to perfect ripeness,” the keen-nosed deer would make the same assessment, whisking in and making off with the season’s first tomato, flattening the okra or decimating the green bean patch — and ignoring the peanut butter.

Scent is key. Some studies have estimated that the white-tail deer’s ability to smell is about 10,000 times stronger than a human’s. In a deer, more brainpower is dedicated to analyzing odors than any other brain function. They have a secondary odor detector in the roof of their mouth. A buck can smell a doe over a mile away.

For deer, smell is the information highway, and a dinner menu.

Many anti-deer strategies try to use their sense of smell against them. I have tied pungent soaps in little hosiery bags around the garden — we should have bought stock in Irish Spring that year. Nope. I clipped the dog and sprinkled his winter fluff about the perimeter. No luck, although area bird nests that year had fluffy, soft, blond golden retriever linings. (The dog himself was useless, camping at night at the foot of our bed.) No dice with human hair collected from a hairdresser, either.

I casually suggested to my husband that he make his way to the perimeter of our secluded garden to kind of mark his territory in a sort of Y chromosome wilding activity. He was not amenable, noting that the toilet was much closer and less likely to get him arrested for indecent exposure.

Last year, taking a cue from Karyn Richardson of Eagles Nest Berry Farm, I invested in a tall, see-through plastic netting that blended nicely into the background. Deer can jump seven feet, so a fence must be high. Karyn has surrounded her blueberry acres with this fence and high poles, and from a distance, one can hardly see it. She did find the deer were sneaking underneath the fence, so she pinned the bottom.

I did the same, using bamboo poles to extend our stakes. The fence took tremendous effort to erect, was costly, a pain to weed-eat around and move wheelbarrows through, but what price peace in the garden?

It should have worked. Yet in the morning, there would be multiple deer inside our small garden and I’d lose my mind. In carelessly leaping out, the deer would tear down a whole netting wall. And the garden mess they left behind was heartbreaking. This winter we took the fence down completely. The deer were just too accustomed to visiting our flavorful patch. Was this the end of my love affair with garden veggies?

For years I had been protecting choice plants like pansies and hydrangeas with an expensive store-bought deer repellent spray. It did work — rather well, actually — but was too expensive to justify for a whole garden, even for a few fresh beans or young zucchini.

Which is why I sat up in my chair when Ashley spoke at Weymouth this April, at a public lecture sponsored by The Garden Club of the Sandhills, and declared she had a sure-fire deer repellent. “This will work! And I’ve tried everything!”

Ashley teaches regular gardening classes throughout the Triad on a number of topics like shade garden planting, cutting gardens, rock gardening, pruning, pest control, edible gardening, and more. It must have been fate that brought her to the Sandhills, and me to her lecture.

She noted that commercial sprays are effective and convenient if you only have a few plants in need of protection. “But they are expensive,” she said. “And I had 10 acres. And when you drove in, you’d see eight or nine deer on the driveway.”

Ashley’s challenge was to protect thousands of plants in more than nine different gardens, including woodland gardens, a “tropical garden,” a conifer garden, a rock garden, a cutting garden and an edible garden filled with fruit trees, berries, vegetables and herbs. “I used many things that were the solution,” she said.

Like me, she tried strategies like pungent soap in bags and human hair. She also tried mothballs, and 2-foot stakes with saturated cotton balls positioned every 15 feet around the garden. “It all worked until it didn’t.” 

She experimented with fox urine, also expensive. “You drip it around your garden and nothing is supposed to come near it. Including you. It was so nasty you never wanted to come near your garden.”

The commercial products “Deer Fence” and “I Must Garden” did work, but were still too expensive. “I noticed the common ingredient in these products was egg,” she said. “I added egg to my sprayer, but it kept gumming up the nozzle. So I separated the egg from the yolk, and just used the yolk. It worked beautifully.”

Ashley advised that the gardener should keep tabs on new growth. “The deer have such sensitive noses, they will know exactly which leaves you have not sprayed,” she said. “They will eat the five inches on top you have not sprayed. And if you don’t spray everything, they’ll just turn from their favorite to their second- or third-favorite plants.”

So I’ve taken the leap of faith. Yesterday, I mixed up a batch for a simple, inexpensive 1-gallon sprayer. I beat the egg yolk and peppermint oil together in a bowl with a bit of water and, innovating, added a small squirt of dish soap to help with the emulsifying and sticking. It did not smell bad at all, thanks to the peppermint.

I installed my tomato, squash, cukes, okra, eggplant, beans and pepper plants, and then liberally sprayed the still-surviving lilies, hostas, cosmos and pansies. Because, I must garden. 

Ellen Ashley’s Deer Repellent Recipe

Whip 3 egg yolks with 2 teaspoons of peppermint oil. Beat that into a gallon of water, and spray onto vulnerable plants. “It may smell funky to you, though it does seem to work while the eggs are fairly fresh,” says Ashley. “The stuff doesn’t go bad, it’s already bad. The longer it sits, the more pungent it becomes. I spray it when I’m about to go inside for the night. By the end of the next day you can hardly smell it.” Spray more frequently in spring, or after a hard rain.  PS

For lectures or courses, contact Ashley via her website http://www.learntogarden.net, or email ellen@learntogarden.net.

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

The Edible Schoolyard

More than just a cute idea

By Jan Leitschuh

The Power of the Garden — it can teach food literacy, bring people together, and teach respect for food as well as the challenges of growing it. In the garden, place-based learning makes it real, relevant and oh-so-remarkable. — from “Musings from a Garden Educator: Sowing the Seeds of Wonder!” by Kathy Byron

April showers might bring May flowers, but local veggie gardens thrive, too. From parsley to asparagus to sugar snap peas, Swiss chard to radishes, strawberries to baby salad greens and green onions, a veritable cornucopia of nutritious produce is coming to fruition.

In schoolyards scattered across Moore County, a different sort of kitchen garden is prospering right now. Picture a successful produce gardener — does the image of a child come to mind? Yet the gardeners are children. Come spring — and, a bit later, autumn — one of the most productive crops might actually be the cultivation of young minds.

“The kids are the ones who plant the gardens,” says Kathy Byron, a former pediatric nurse, longtime Moore County Master Gardener Volunteer and director of the innovative Good Food Sandhills program, an entity of Sandhills Community College (and formerly, the FirstSchool Garden Program). “We use those things they grow for food activities and nutrition education, inside the classroom and out, in school and after school. And then we operate in the community.”

Over more than a decade, deploying the principles of The Edible Schoolyard model, “we outfitted over 61 percent of Moore County schools with school gardens, so over 4,000 kids have access to a school garden,” says Byron. “Currently, we have intensified these efforts in two of our schools that have the highest percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch programs. We have honed our current efforts down to the most high-need youth. “

School gardens tap an innovative principle. “An environment-based education movement — at all levels of education — will help students realize that school isn’t supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world,” writes Richard Louv, author of the best-selling book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Byron would add “and wiser nutritional choices” to the wider world idea.

Louv, Byron and others are at the forefront of an awareness that children need a connection to nature. This awareness has historical echoes. “Man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; [the Lakota] knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too,” said the Oglala chief and Native American author Luther Standing Bear, who lived from 1868 to 1939.

Leaving the confines of a school classroom and the climate-controlled halls, elementary students file out into the garden feeling the sunshine on their face and the breeze in their hair. The smell of sweet lavender fills the air, with the ever-constant din of traffic on 15/501 as the background noise for this outdoor classroom. Students’ happy banter, combined with a skip in their step, just confirms their excitement to be in this living laboratory! — “Musings from a Garden Educator”

These gardens generally take the shape of a raised bed or three. Filled with nutrient-rich soil and compost, they can be planted with seasonal vegetables. Planting “season” can happen all year, with collards, kale, spinach (under covers) and parsley in the winter. Cool season veggies such as radish, green onions, peas and salad greens can be added at the appropriate time, followed by a special warm-season planting. That produce is harvested for food-insecure families. In the fall, the cycle begins again, with cool-season veggies.

“Often, we plant butternut squash in summer to harvest in the fall and use through the winter. We use a lot of butternut squash,” says Byron with a laugh.

Fig trees, blueberries and muscadine grapes are also planted in the surrounding garden area. Besides seasonal vegetables and perennial fruits, every garden is planted with perennial herbs and a pollinator garden.

Pollinators and other beneficial insects become our friends and collaborators in making the garden healthy, full of life and amazement. Respecting spiders, ladybugs and assassin bugs as warriors in this ecosystem are some of their first lessons about respect of living things in the garden. Starting from the ground up — soil becomes the medium for planting seeds and seedlings, searching for microbes and inspecting under the microscope to see the world beyond the naked eye. Adding soil amendments such as blood meal and bone meal expands their understanding of nutrients plants provide us through the food we eat. — “Musings from a Garden Educator”

Math and science lessons have been held in the school gardens on nice days. Science and language activities hold interest while practical lessons slide in on the breezes of enthusiasm. “When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning,” writes Louv.

They dig deeper into science and math through hands-on learning activities that allow them to use garden trowels, stinky fish fertilizer, Chromebooks for research. They cuddle chickens and extract DNA from a strawberry. Fractions are fascinating when making garden recipes like veggie tortillas, kale pesto or solar cooked pizza. We congregate around the picnic table to discuss the day’s activities, break into small groups and gather tools for our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Lessons. They fan out throughout the garden with a purpose to complete tasks that enrich their learning in real time. The garden is the premier STEM tool — as old and diverse as humankind and Mother Earth. — “Musings from a Garden Educator”

Movement is an essential component of learning, argue many experts. “A generation of children is not only being raised indoors, but is being confined to even smaller spaces,” writes Louv. “Jane Clark, a University of Maryland professor of kinesiology . . . calls them ‘containerized kids’ — they spend more and more time in car seats, highchairs, and even baby seats for watching TV. When small children go outside, they’re often placed in containers — strollers — and pushed by walking or jogging parents . . . Most kid-containerizing is done for safety concerns, but the long-term health of these children is compromised.”

Children’s health is a big driver for Bryon. School gardens are more than a cute idea, she argues. The stats are sobering. In 2007, North Carolina ranked fifth in the nation for childhood obesity; 42 percent of Moore County students were overweight or obese. Facts such as these moved the pediatric nurse in Byron to action. She observed that Moore County is populated by many low-income communities struggling to access healthy food. 

Over a decade later, Byron’s food concerns remain: “Things move slowly. One in four children in N.C. is food-insecure. And despite being an agricultural state, we are eighth in the nation for food insecurity. We work deeply in schools with free and reduced lunch programs, in low-income, high-needs schools. One of our principals noted, we bring experiences to children they would get nowhere else.”

Her work extends to developing local food systems addressing food justice in under-served communities. Through Sandhills Community College Continuing Education, Good Food Sandhills provides a holistic approach to linking the environment, healthy food and people from seed to table, classroom to community.

Respect for life, environment and one’s community evolves naturally as children explore and assimilate the implications of the web of life.

“Passion is lifted from the Earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save . . . the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature,” says Louv. “We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole.”

“Planting, tending, harvesting and tasting what is grown in the garden changes a child’s relationship with food. It broadens their palate, ties it to their heritage and makes them a partner in the growing process. It is their broccoli, their kale, their radish…and they love it! As Cicero (106 B.C. — 43 B.C.), Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer and orator so eloquently put it . . . If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” — “Musings from a Garden Educator”

For more information on school gardens, or to volunteer, contact Kathy Byron at kbyron@nc.rr.com. PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

Breath-Holding Time

The perils of a warm winter and protecting tender plants

By Jan Leitschuh

March, they say, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. But spend a few springs in the Sandhills, and you’ll learn that’s not always true. These are the days that give local farmers pause.

Sometimes a Sandhills March is as soft as a calico kitten. Then, having playfully coaxed the spring-blooming fruits out of their winter dormancy . . . whammo! A late, hard frost slashes vulnerable blossoms and blackens infant fruits. Thought it was spring? April Fools!

Who doesn’t love farm-fresh Sandhills produce? Juicy peaches, tender Sandhills strawberries, sweet blueberries, fall apples? While most of us won’t set out garden plants till mid-April, area fruit producers are “planted.” Our growers hold their collective breath from mid-March to the first two weeks of April, dreading a killing frost. The future of their 2018 crops depends on their ability to thwart the cold.

And yet, “It’s not the cold that we’re worried about so much,” says John Blue of Highlanders Farm, a seventh-generation heritage farm on Highway 22 in Carthage.

“It’s not the cold,” agrees peach and apple producer Ken Chappell of Eagle Springs. “There are peaches that can withstand minus 15 degrees, and produce fruit as far north as Canada.” Plants have a winter-protective mechanism called dormancy. It allows them to withstand bitter, low temperatures. Lengthening days and warm sun awaken the plant to a new season. It shoots out blooms and tender new growth.

It’s when Sleeping Beauty awakens that things get tricky. Timing is everything in fruit production.

“The warm winters of the last couple of years have broken dormancy early,” says Blue. When that happens, the fruit producer has to be super-vigilant in protecting the vulnerable new growth. That can mean extra labor and long, exhausting — even wet — nights until the last frost date has passed.

It’s not unusual to get those late March and early April frosts, but with a warm winter, strawberries and other fruits will bloom early. The plant itself can take a lot of cold, but the blooms are fragile and more prone to freeze than the plant. “When the strawberries bloom in February or even January, they’re just too advanced to hold,” says Blue.

Highlanders Farm grows roughly three acres of strawberries for the pick-your-own market, their own farm stands, value-added ice creams and jams and for the Sandhills Farm to Table produce boxes. Strawberries are a high-value crop per acre, but they are costly to install and maintain — and, potentially, lose.

Damaged blooms mean less fruit so it’s rough on the bottom line. Besides reduced yield, frost kills deliver another economic whammy. “If blooms get damaged we need to pull them off the plant to reduce disease potential,” says Blue. “So, you have time and another labor expense for cleanup.”

For those with pick-your-own fields and farm stands, weird weather can spin the calendar a bit. Mother’s Day is the typical peak of strawberry season. “Some of these strange years throw the picking off,” says Blue. “In a strange year it’s probably peaking a week or two early.”

Luckily, strawberry farmers have a few tricks up their sleeves to hang on to future strawberry shortcakes. Most Sandhills producers use white row covers for frost protection. These spun
poly fabric strips  “get you about five-seven degrees of protection,” says Blue. “You can
use a heavier one, but it lets in less sunlight,” also needed for plant health. Still, “most people are going to a heavier one after the last several years.” Cue the on-and-off row cover dance
on especially warm days. Wind makes the
process even more exciting.

Sprinklers can also protect blooms when temps plunge. Paradoxically, an ice encasement holds tender blossoms safely.  But the intervention takes a lot of water. “Once you start, you don’t want to cut it off until the temperature comes up,” says Blue. “It’s nerve-racking, you can’t risk a machinery breakdown. Last year some were running 12 hours a day for a week or so.”

Eagles Nest Blueberry Farm in Jackson Springs was one farm that used water to protect blueberry and blackberry crops last April.
“The  Southern highbush blueberries are a
little bit hardier than the rabbiteyes, but they also bloom earlier, and sometimes we lose those,” says producer Karyn Ring.  “This year, we’ve already reached our chill hours (the required number of cold temps to set a crop) and they are ready to bloom in early March.
In 2007, with that April freeze, we lost everything — blueberries and blackberries. Since 2007, there’s been a 50-50 chance you’re going to lose 50 percent of your crop.”

This year, Eagles Nest is experimenting with row covers for its blueberries. “We won’t do it on all three acres of the berries,” says Ring. “We’ll try them on the Southern highbush, and attempt to cover one row of two rabbiteye varieties just to see — no point in buying all this fabric if it doesn’t work. “

Chappell Orchards also deploys protective strategies — wind machines. “We have four,” says Chappell, who grows 35 acres of peaches and six  of apples, “but they are only protective when the air is still. Then you can warm four
to five degrees. “

The first two weeks in April “is when we get our damage,” says Chappell. “Last year, it was late March due to early bloom. Two years ago, we managed a third of a crop of peaches, but the apples were damaged. Apples have five seeds, but some got only one due to poor pollination.”

Ah yes, the bees don’t like to fly in cold, wet and windy weather. Toss in another challenge for Sandhills fruit.

And it’s not just fruit. Billy Carter of Eagle Springs likes to roll the dice on a March 10 planting of a cold-hardy variety of sweet corn, planting a heat-loving crop very early to capture the late spring craving for sweet corn.

“It’s a gamble, and the largest portion of the time you’ll make it,” he says. Three years ago, that first planting got wiped out in an April 10 freeze. “The corn is not inexpensive to lose, but you’re making eight to ten successive plantings,” he notes. “With strawberries, you have so much more in that one planting. Corn costs you $125 an acre at that point, where strawberries are a $10,000 investment.”

Not until tax day do area fruit producers let their breath out. “If there’s no freezing weather in sight by April 15, then I feel pretty confident we have that crop of peaches,” says Chappell. “So the first two weeks of April are critical.”

You can fight, but ultimately only do so much. “At a certain point,” says Blue with a rueful laugh, “you just have to go with what’s happening.”

Here’s hoping!  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

The Allure of March

On the cusp of good eating

By Jan Leitschuh

March can either frost us or tempt us with promises of spring. Dreams of fresh produce awaken the taste buds. It’s a good time to clean up the garden, even plant a few items.

Early March, we can put in the sugar snap peas, some beets, carrots, spinach, radishes and Swiss chard. Your odds are good. Tough transplants of broccoli, cauliflower, parsley, cabbage, chives and onions can go in now if a glance at the weather forecast looks promising. Set out your potatoes. Hold off till at least month’s end (if not longer) for corn, tomatoes, squash, peppers, eggplant, basil and cucumbers.

Have a cover ready for that inevitable night in the mid-20s. Cross your fingers, and hope the deer and the bunnies steer clear.

Yet we know that many here in the Sandhills will never plant so much as a seed — and that’s fine. Life is busy, your soil is poor, there’s little interest, the neighborhood or the sun exposure doesn’t support the growing of produce, the old knees aren’t what they used to be. But, if you still love a strawberry, those sweet early greens, juicy fresh peaches, spring asparagus and tender sweet corn, the next best way to experience the freshest tastes is to buy just-picked produce from a Sandhills someone who did.

With the advent of produce programs outside the area, including Amazon moving into the fresh food space, it’s good to distinguish items grown right here by our fellow citizens, enriching our local economy and preserving our local green spaces.

“For every dollar you spend on truly local produce, it circulates within our economy,” says Lorraine Berman, acting general manager of Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative (SF2T). “If we buy local produce, and the farmer hires and spends locally, well, it really contributes a lot more than if you spent those food dollars outside the area.”

Besides, she adds, “Fresh, local produce just tastes amazing.”

I’ve said it before, but the in the early decade of this century, Moore County virtually led the nation for loss of farmland. This tide has stabilized, in part due to the support of the community in creating a market for local tastes. In fact, one essential aspect of the new 2018-2020 Moore County Economic Development Strategic Plan is simply “to keep Moore County farmers farming.”

“Because agriculture is 25 percent of our local economy,” says Pat Corso, executive director of Moore County Partners in Progress.

Your support does this. You provide the markets that keep Sandhills farmers farming.

There are a number of ways to enjoy the tastes of the Sandhills. Finest of all is to visit a local farm during fruit-picking season. Strawberries top the popular list in mid-April, and in the giddiness of early spring, what could be finer than taking the kids to a pick-your-own field? A month or two later, you can find pick-your-own blueberries, blackberries and maybe even grapes during the summer season. Don’t delay; the season for any juicy fruit crop is short. A farmer’s own stand will offer a cornucopia of summer bounty.

Another way is to visit local farmers markets for a variety of seasonal treats, meats and cheeses. At peak season, you can buy fresh almost every day of the week. You can speak to your producers directly, pick up preparation tips, learn something about how your produce was grown, run into your friends and neighbors. Local farmers markets also kick off in April, with the market on Morganton Road open Thursdays throughout the year with meats, greenhouse produce and more.

Another program with genuine impact on the local farm economy is the Sandhills Farm to Table box program, distributing the full bounty of the Sandhills season. Entering its ninth year, the community-owned program requires a certain number of subscriptions by April each year to remain viable, but the positive impact on local farmers is undeniable. “It makes a difference,” says John Blue of Highlander’s Farm. “It really does.”

Many Sandhills farmers enjoy picking a crop the afternoon before, or even that morning, and delivering wholesale quantities to the SF2T packing house, getting better than wholesale prices for their labor and the day free to do what they do best — grow food. They take their stewardship of the land and “their” subscribers very personally, going the extra mile to replace any item (packed by community volunteers) deemed sub-optimal after delivery.

This year, SF2T will kick off its subscription drive March 1, with a public community celebration at the Sunrise Theater, screening the film Sustainable, followed by local bites and spirits at 305 Trackside. Tickets for the movie-and-food event are available at the Sunrise website. Subscription to SF2T boxes of weekly or biweekly produce is available at the movie event or email info@sandhillsfarm2table.com.

“We are often overwhelmed by the news and problems of the world, convinced that we are helpless to effect change,” says Berman. “But all things large start out small; every marathon starts with that first step. Eating local food and subscribing to Sandhills Farm to Table is that first step toward better health, to protecting the environment, toward improving our local economy, and toward a kinder community and better quality of life.”

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

Cuppa Your Own

Tea is a natural in the Sandhills

By Jan Leitschuh

Dark, wet days brighten considerably with a “cuppa,” warding off chilly winds and damp spirits. The Brits have long known the restorative power of tea.

I had a chance to hike the Great Glen Way in Scotland a few years back — we did it in a civilized fashion, stopping at bed-and-breakfasts for the night. Always, waiting for us, was a tea setup in the room, and always, we made a cup after a long day of walking. The tea never failed to work its magic reviving tired hikers.

While we associate tea with the United Kingdom, it actually originated in the Far East, as in “all the tea in China.” Few realize the tea plant also grows well in many parts of North Carolina. Old plantations in South Carolina are often found to have a few old plants. The gardens here at Weymouth sport a healthy specimen, too. 

Surprised?  Yet no one is surprised that camellias live in the Sandhills.

Tea does indeed come from a camellia plant, and that variety is Camellia sinensis, the tea camellia.

Seems like a kitchen gardener could have a little fun with tea.  A few years back I bought a plant on a visit to Charleston, South Carolina, and installed it in my yard. When I had the good fortune to meet enthusiast and prominent North Carolina tea grower Christine Parks last month, I pumped her for further instructions.

The owner of the garden club mecca Camellia Forest Tea Gardens, Parks grows her artisanal teas near Chapel Hill.  Delving in after first exposure, the more Parks learned, the more she was hooked. She was seized with the notion of teas, and growing the tea plants. Here, she thought, “was a passion that would keep me learning for the rest of my life, growing the plant, processing the leaves, the history and culture. More importantly, I just love working with the leaf, the aromas of the leaf — from the plants warming in the sunshine and the leaves drying.”

Popular in springtime for tours, Camellia Forest Tea Gardens has about half an acre in tea, “with hundreds of plants and many different varieties collected from all over the world, especially cold-hardy varieties that do well in our climate and throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states,” says Parks. 

A prominent North Carolina tea expert, Parks offers hands-on workshops. “(Husband) David’s family has been growing tea in their Chapel Hill garden for more than 35 years,” she says. “We started this current garden in 2006 to test new varieties and to provide a resource for gardeners who were interested in growing tea.”

No bright, showy blooms for the tea camellia. While its flowers are pale, small and not particularly showy, its green matter is highly valued. A bushy evergreen shrub, sometimes even a small tree, this plant’s leaves and leaf buds are harvested to produce tea. From this species of camellia comes white tea, green tea, oolong, black and pu-erh teas. The plant matter is processed differently to produce varying levels of oxidation, which gives us those different types of tea to drink. 

Camellias prefer Zones 7-9, and here in the Sandhills, we are 8a. Tea plants are best in semi-shade, though commercial growers use full sun and drip irrigation. A half-day of sun is probably ideal. They love sandy, slightly acid soil — sound like any place we know? — with lots of organic matter, similar to azaleas.  Mulch and regular water are essential to helping a new plant get started. 

Fifty inches of rainfall a year, or more, with a little help in dry times, is preferred. The shrubs make screens or background plants, and the plant is mildly resistant to damage by deer. They grow a strong taproot, and are unaffected by strong winds. The small flowers are a useful source of pollen to support bees over the winter.

Tea plants will grow into a tree if left undisturbed, but cultivated plants are pruned to waist height for ease of plucking. Fertilize lightly in spring with a balanced fertilizer, but if more growth is desired, don’t over-fertilize — more water will bring on new growth. Skip harvest the first few years to give the plant a chance to establish itself.

The young spring growth that the bush produces in “flushes” is prized for tea, and this is the season that draws the garden clubs and other visitors to Parks’ tiny tea farm. These “flushes” are harvested for processing. Plucking stimulates new growth in a few weeks. Fresh leaves contain about 4 percent caffeine, as well as other mildly stimulating compounds, including theobromine. The young, light green leaves are harvested for tea production — look for the short white hairs on the underside. 

Home gardeners picking for the first time might aim for the first two leaves and the unopened bud at the end of a twig. Older leaves are deeper green. Different leaf ages produce different tea qualities, since their chemical compositions are different. Usually, the tip (bud) and the first two to three leaves are harvested for processing. 

A palm-full of fresh shoots should yield a cup of tea, when dried. It takes many shoots to make a pound of tea. 

White tea may be the easiest to start with, since it is the least processed. Harvest one bud, or a leaf and a bud. Choose an area with good circulation, warm temperatures and about 65 percent humidity, explains Parks’ informative website, teaflowergardens.com. Let the leaves wither in the shade, until they look like they are starting to dry out, then complete the drying in an oven with very low temperatures — 170-200 degrees. This might take 15-20 minutes, so stay close. Store in an airtight container for up to a year.

Green tea is also worth trying. “The least oxidized tea, leaves are heated to inactivate enzymes that transform tea catechins into theaflavins and thearubigins. These components are part of what contribute to the unique flavors of green versus black and oolong,” according to teaflowergardens.com. Harvest two leaves and a bud in the morning, and spread out on a tray with good circulation. Heat the leaves for about 3-5 minutes using either steam (a vegetable steamer will do) or by stirring the fresh leaves in a dry pan until they are moist and hot. Depending on how much you have, roll the leaves in a clean cloth (or your hands for smaller amounts) to release the juices. Dry in an oven at a low temperature, as with white tea.

Parks still finds the process captivating: “I was hooked by the aromas of the leaf — fresh in the sunshine and as it went through processing to tea.”

Processing the tea leaf promotes the development of new chemical compounds which alter its taste as well as its properties.  It can be difficult to generalize by type of tea as to the health benefits of each, and there is some overlap. 

Over 4,000 years ago, tea was drunk strictly as medicine, to both stimulate and detoxify. Gradually, it became popular as a delicious, bitter beverage consumed for its own sake. The health benefits still exist, with today’s science validating its original use. Besides comfort, the leaves have been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat asthma, acting as a bronchodilator. Due to its antioxidant powers, tea is being investigated for benefits in relation to cancer prevention, weight loss, strengthening the immune system, preventing cell mutations and in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. 

The best time to visit the garden, says Parks, is when tea is growing from early May through October. With a nominal charge for tea tastings, along with more formal workshops by request, Camellia Forest Tea Gardens offers tours by appointment for groups and individuals. Two popular free open house events in late May and October highlight the tea garden.

“We love to learn, and share our experiences growing tea in North Carolina,” says Parks.  PS

Parks can be reached by email at teaflowergardens@gmail.com, through the website at www.teaflowergardens.com or on Facebook (Camellia Forest Tea Gardens). To order tea plants, contact the nursery directly at www.camforest.com.  

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

Fruit of the Gods

December pomegranates

By Jan Leitschuh

Ruby red
pomegranates are starting to appear in groceries now as a seasonal item. Their cheerful rosy husks evoke a sense of Yuletide feasting and decoration. Their origins are Mediterranean, and exotic. 

Pomegranate fruits are actually berries, filled with hundreds of jewel-like seeds, usually dark red. The sweet, fleshy, juicy coating surrounding each seed, often referred to as the aril, is the edible portion. 

Are you surprised to learn that these juicy, seedy delights are not only wildly healthy — more so than red wine or green tea — and have even been grown in our area by devoted gardeners? Who knew? That info sent me scurrying to research.

Generally thought of as a fruit of hot, dry climates, I was excited to learn of certain specimen pomegranates growing in our area. While no farmer would undertake to push the envelope on a marginally hardy and less-than-productive Mediterranean fruit, lots of backyard gardeners might want to experiment with a lovely and exotic “pet” that actually produces fruit and gorgeous flowers.

An old pomegranate used to grace the Southern Pines backyard of Beth Carpenter, local resident and North Carolina native. “We live on Orchard Road, and we had an old pomegranate and a big fig tree on our property when we bought the house 30 years ago,” said Carpenter. “Someone told us this is called Orchard Road because it was the orchards of the old Boyd estate. It makes sense. Who else would have done it?”  The Boyds were noted for their interest in local agriculture, and horticulture.

Local gardeners wishing to experiment, as the Boyds did, may not get the heavily laden crops found in Mediterranean climes. Carpenter said, “It was a normal pomegranate, and had fruit just like you find in the store. But not many, only one or two a year.” The best chance for fruit production and ripening is in areas south and east of Raleigh.

Though this old tree had weathered many a Sandhills season, it is no longer. A winter storm got it.

A wonderful fruit-bearing specimen continues to thrive in the slightly colder climate in Raleigh at the North Carolina State Arboretum. Though pomegranates often take the shape of a large shrub, this one is trained into a small tree shape, well over 8 feet tall. It blooms with exotic, hibiscus-like red flowers before setting fruit. Hummingbirds and butterflies love the highly attractive, open red flowers. There are even double-flowering varieties that resemble carnations.

A third pomegranate specimen has grown on the farm of my friend Linda Fisher of Red Oak, near Tarboro. She remembers the bush — likely planted by her mother or aunt in the ’50s — from her childhood and says it still produces a few fruits every year. Fisher told me it gets no care, water or attention, lives in dry, poor soil, and still thrives. She said they have a little year-end ritual, eating a few of the seeds every winter “like the Greeks.” 

In Greece, the fruit is closely associated with winter and the Demeter myth. Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, was captured by Hades and stolen away to the Underworld. Demeter, goddess of agriculture and spring, begged for her daughter’s return. Alas, Persephone had been tricked into eating six pomegranate seeds in the land of the dead and was permitted to come back for only part of the year, in spring and summer. The quiescence of fall and winter is recalled in the ritual of the seed eating.

Many pomegranate varieties can tolerate temperatures as low as 10 degrees Fahrenheit, which certainly makes growing in the Sandhills a possibility. Timing of the hard freeze is critical, though — if they are in the stage of producing new growth, a frost can kill them. Some cultivars are specifically bred to cope with this possibility of late spring frosts. Plants are not uncommon in South Carolina, often found around old home sites and plantations, especially in the Midlands and Coastal Plain. While they grow and flower well there, just like in North Carolina they tend to fruit poorly in our humid climate.

Pomegranates (Punica granatum) have been popular fruit throughout human history. They are experiencing a surge in popularity now due to the health benefits associated with their juice. Pomegranates, high in vitamin C, also produce a unique and powerful antioxidant called punicalagin. There are also several useful phytochemicals in pomegranates. 

The juice has been shown to have greater antioxidant capacity than such common health beverages as green tea, red wine, grape juice, cranberry juice or acai juice. If you want your own pomegranate “pet,” there are internet sources for plants. I’d suggest calling the company to discuss your growing conditions. Ask for a cultivar recommendation. I planted the variety “Wonderful” when we began our cottage garden, and while it did not survive that first hot summer, it may have not had optimum attention and water to establish it. In good conditions a mature tree can grow approximately 10-15 feet tall and 5-10 feet wide. Pomegranates love to sucker with slender, thorny stems, but could also be trained into a tree like the North Carolina State Arboretum specimen.

First, the growing basics. Your tree will need at least 8 hours of direct sun in the growing season (and more is better) in well-drained soil and a sunny area. You’ll probably need to add lime, phosphorus and potassium to your soil. A pH of 6.5 is about perfect. Pomegranates are self-pollinating, so you only need one, but fruit production is greater with two plants.

You could also grow one in a pot like your pet citrus, or in a sheltered area. Inquire about the more compact forms, if a pot is the ultimate home. Growth is moderate, and should bear well three years after planting. While some European pomegranates are over 200 years old, vigor may decline into the second decade.

In the fall during years that climatic conditions allow good fruit set, the globe-shaped fruits can be striking, resembling Christmas ornaments.  Fruit typically ripen in September to November. Pomegranate plants are said to be well-suited for the shrub border. They make a great backdrop for small shrubs and perennials and good screens. They benefit from a 2-to 3-inch layer of organic mulch.

If fruit production is desired, irrigating to provide even soil moisture will reduce fruit drop and prevent fruit splitting. Additionally, fertilizing plants in March and July with 1 pound of 10-10-10 for every three feet of plant height will aid in fruiting.

Or, you could just buy the attractive fruits in stores right now, and enjoy their sweet health benefits yourself.

The pomegranate season is short, so grab them this month while you see them.

Pomegranate and Pear Salad

3 cups green leaf lettuce, rinsed and torn

1 Bartlett or Anjou pear

1/3 cup pomegranate seeds

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon pomegranate juice

1/2 tablespoon honey

Fresh-ground black pepper, to taste

Divide the lettuce between two bowls. Halve and core the pear, then cut each half in slices. Divide the pear slices and pomegranate seeds between the two bowls and mix gently. Combine the vegetable oil, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, mustard, honey and pepper in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat; reduce heat and simmer, stirring frequently, until the dressing thickens slightly, about 2 minutes. Pour the warm dressing over the salads and serve.  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

Floured Hands

Thanksgiving recipes and Moore County memories

By Jan Leitschuh

Holiday and family memories are so often shaped by food. 

The smells of baking pies, ham, turkey and all the sides, a whiff of browning biscuits or cornbread, the sight of the sideboard stuffed with good things to eat — these things can whisk us right back to an earlier time, to loved ones no longer with us, to new bonds with those with whom we now celebrate.

One of my Southern husband’s earliest memories is seeing his Grandma Miller cut out biscuits on the floured surface of an old oak table. She used an old orange juice can to get the perfect cut. He now owns that old oak table. The memories are his connection to an earlier generation. But Grandma Miller’s favorite biscuit recipe is gone.

A new cookbook preserves the memories of Moore County meals past. Gathered from the clean-out of a 200-year-old home, added to by Sandhills women with recipe collections dating back 70 years, the new cookbook brings together older family recipes from the women of our community.

“We had Christmas lunch at one grandmother’s, and Christmas dinner at another, with two or three cakes on the sideboard, pies, cookies and the meats . . . turkey and Scottish lamb,” recalls Patti Burke of Carthage. “That picture you see when you walked into your grandmother’s, where the desserts were alluring, and you wanted to eat those first.”

The community cookbook, Generations of Floured Hands, recalls a slower-paced time, one with women in the kitchen, men on the land, food made from scratch with simple ingredients. It recalls family gatherings on Sunday, after church, or the kind of meals we generally make today only for the holidays or special family occasions. 

Food ties memories and generations together. “That’s when you talk,” says Burke.

Sisters Burke and Mary Ruth Whitaker started cleaning out the old Blue house five years ago, when their mother died. “The family has been in the house for 200 years,” said Burke. “And they kept everything. Everything!”

The sisters are the sixth generation to grow up on this land. “This land” is the very pretty Highlanders Farm off Highway 22, near Carthage. Their ancestor, River Daniel Blue, voyaged from Scotland in 1800. He and his brothers boarded ships in the Old World to start anew, only to be separated when a storm blew his brothers off course to New York. There, they settled. Only River Daniel landed in North Carolina, to travel up the Cape Fear and into the Sandhills.  

In 1804, River Daniel settled in what is now the Blue family house, which still displays a framed land grant from the king. All River Daniel brought with him was a Scottish pot (now one of only two in the world), a Gaelic Bible and a trunk. “Generations lived in that house,” said Burke, caretaking the family history. “There’s even a teapot there from General Patton.”

In cleaning, Burke and her sister came upon a treasure trove of old family recipes. “My Grandmother Blue loved to cook; she lived on the farm, right behind us. At noon, she would watch this Lady Cook show and be writing these recipes down as they scrolled by.” The sisters enjoyed reading the scripts of meals past, in their mother’s and grandmother’s writing. And they found even older recipes, carefully saved. The recipes were much used, well-loved, often spotted with grease from buttery fingers. There were instructions on how to make “snuff,” and salt-rising bread.

The sisters took their finds to their local Extension Community Association (ECA) Club. ECA, formerly the old Home Demonstration Club, began in the late 1920s. Sponsored by the government’s Extension Services, the clubs quickly spread across the U.S. and were designed to assist women in “making” a home. 

“ECA was very popular once,” said Burke. “There were 66 clubs in Moore County at one time. The women didn’t work outside the home, and this was their social life, a chance to gather with other women. The purpose was to learn home skills, how to make mattresses, curtains, things to build a more quality life.”

Besides homemaking, the clubs worked up a head of steam for needed community projects. “They worked for healthy children, vaccinations; they wanted to improve family life,” said Burke. “And I think they wanted a purpose; they wanted to have a voice. This way they joined together and were stronger than being at home alone. And they were instrumental in a lot of things in Moore County. They were responsible for the first lunches in school — they brought in home-canned tomatoes at the start. They were instrumental in getting the first libraries.” 

ECA Clubs declined as women began to go off to work. “And there are lots of service-type clubs now, where before there weren’t,” said Burke. “So I think it splintered.”

ECA still survives locally, in a smaller fashion. Patti Burke keeps going because of her mother, and also “because it brings together different, interesting people you might not otherwise meet.”  PS

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

The Kitchen Garden

The Root Doctor

How a Pinehurst endodontist created a produce paradise

By Jan Leitschuh

As a successful health professional, he deliberately chose to live here, in the heart of one of the nation’s foremost golf-mad regions. He and his wife found a graceful, red-brick house off the traffic circle, one that backs right up to the National Golf Club.

But while “keep your head down” might be common advice in the Pinehurst ‘hood, Dr. Jim Corcoran is looking down at green beans and garlic, not golf balls. When he speaks of cabbage, it ain’t deep rough. His garden spot has nothing to do with a tee shot. This Pinehurst endodontist does not golf for leisure. He grows vegetables. Passionately. Wholeheartedly. Pulling roots or performing root canals, here is a man who enjoys working with his hands.

Step through the tall pines, past a child’s dream of twin tree houses, the playground for his brood of three. Open a trim gate to a garden where luxurious foliage overruns neatly-aligned, raised beds. Vines crawl up a side fence line, blueberries hedge the back, and hanging gutters of strawberries fill up the vertical space. A resident Eastern box turtle patrols, eating bad bugs and discarded strawberries. “This is a working turtle,” Corcoran says proudly. Calmness descends, quietude sings. The effect is peaceful — and productive.

Welcome to the green retreat of a busy professional. Not a golf ball in sight. The garden is a restorative, neatly fenced, 30-foot by 40-foot horticultural meditation on the nature and cycles of life.

“It’s as much therapy for me as it is for the vegetables,” he admits. He’s a fan of Dawn Patrol: “I’ll get up early on a weekend and come out here with a cup of coffee and putter. When the kids wake up, they know to come out here and find me.”

It’s also a peaceful space for cultivating privacy and marriage. As a member of Pinehurst Endodontics, “I work just on the other side of the traffic circle,” says Corcoran. “I’ll come home for lunch, and Amy (his wife) and I bring our meal out here, sit down in the shade, and talk.”

Not that the produce itself isn’t also welcome. In season, says Corcoran, “I love to steal my wife’s salad bowl every night and come out here, and fill it up with blueberries. I leave it on the kitchen counter, and the kids grab a handful for snacks until it’s gone. And then I fill it up again.”

Tomatoes climb skyward, and potatoes, cucumbers, squash and pumpkins spill over the sides of this modern-day Victory Garden. Herbs grow neatly in pots at the back, along with a few creative bonsai. The soft greenness disguises the hard work and daily discipline within.

“I’m still very much a novice at this,” he says modestly, amidst the verdant abundance that is his backyard garden. But despite his protests to the contrary, he’s evidently no duffer. “I’ve had good teachers,” he insists. “My neighbor. Joe, and dental patients that are gardeners — I’ll pick their brains.”

“More than anything,” he says, “having a neighbor like Joe made the difference, encouraging us to come out here and do this.”

That would be Joe Sullivan, the garden mentor next door, Corcoran’s horticultural Bagger Vance helping him find his “authentic swing” in the garden.

Sullivan’s elegant, diverse and well-planted backyard adjoins the Corcorans’. “He’s like the Irish version of Clint Eastwood, “ says Corcoran with a chuckle. “He’s super-cool.”

It all started when Corcoran was helping Sullivan clear out a tree that blew down in a hurricane near the back of their joint property line. Looking at the newly available sunlight, Sullivan said, “You should have a garden here. Do you want to get a garden together?”

So Corcoran pulled the pine straw away and turned over the sand beneath, planting peppers and tomatoes into his new little bunker.

How did that work out? “Best weeds I ever grew,” he says with a grin. “Maybe I got one small tomato.” It was, in his view, an unplayable lie. “I decided to work with Nature.”

A handy sort, Corcoran installed some raised beds in 2012. Pressure-treated 2×10 inch pine, stained brown, made attractive beds 20 inches high. He determined the spacing between boxes by trundling a wheelbarrow through his staked-out beds. Aisles were filled with pine straw mulch to squelch weeds.

Now, seven boxes worth, his raised beds range from a small 6×8-foot bed to a longer 6×22 feet. “Six feet is about the length of my reach, so that became the bed width,” he says with a laugh. Simple, practical planning, grounded in reality, became a theme.

Quality soils were brought in by a family pickup truck — he estimates 15 trips — that he and son Robert unloaded into the beds. Hard work and discipline. Forget golf — who needs a gym when you have a garden?

“The garden is great for the kids too,” he says of his three children. “They see the hard work and then the results.”

That hard work sometimes entails delayed gratification. Three years ago, the family went to the beach. The garden was peaking, lush with almost-ripe harvests. Upon his return, Corcoran immediately went straight to the garden. When he didn’t come back inside, Amy came looking. Jim was standing among green nubs. “The deer had mowed it all down. They had eaten absolutely everything. Amy got worried because I was gone so long.”

After some experiments with rabbit fencing, last year Corcoran took a mulligan and put up a 7-foot deer fence and installed gates. The deer are at bay at last.

Corcoran’s strawberries — plants donated by neighbor Sullivan — grow in rain gutters from Lowe’s Home Improvement. No slouch with a drill, the endodontist-gardener drilled holes in the bottom for drainage, then lined the gutters with landscape fabric, and filled them with quality soil. “Irrigation is the key there,” he said of the shallow containers hanging vertically, and so installed a simple system to deliver water. The raised beds were also irrigated.

This spring, neighbor Sullivan issued the challenge to young Robert: “Let’s have a pumpkin-growing contest.” Generously, Joe shared some seedlings of plants that he said would grow to 300 pounds. But the Corcorans have a twist — they also found a packet of prize-winning  pumpkin seed stock from Weeks Seed Company, some of which have grown up to 1300 pounds.

“That’s our secret weapon,” says Corcoran, chuckling.

“And Miracle Grow,” adds Robert.

“And Miracle Grow,” agrees his dad. “Lots and lots of Miracle Grow.” They plan to switch to potassium as the flowers set and start making pumpkins, then trim down to one pumpkin per vine, the best one, so the vine can pour all of its nourishment into what they are sure will be their prizewinner.

Corcoran is no stranger to hard work and discipline.

He was in combat operations in Operation Desert Storm at age 19, then stationed at Fort Bragg for a year, exposing him to the glories and beauty of the Sandhills. Following a three-year stint as an airborne ranger, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, he went to college on the GI Bill, completing undergraduate studies in three years at the same time he was working construction 30 hours per week.

“Part-time construction worker, full-time student,” he jokes.
Dental school was on an Army scholarship. From ‘97-’01, he attended University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Dentistry where he met his wife, Amy. They moved to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on active duty for his residency. A second residency to study the specialty of endodontics followed in 2003 at Fort Bragg. 

“That’s where my wife and I really fell in love with the Sandhills,” he says. Later, he taught endodontic dentistry to general dentistry residents at Fort Campbell for another three years.

“I got out and came running back here,” he says. In June of 2008, he joined Pinehurst Endodontics. He loved the small but vibrant towns in the area: “It’s such a fantastic place. A small town, family, friends, great schools, the talent here, and quality of medical care. And I don’t even play golf!” 

He is, however, an avid runner. During a marathon in Myrtle Beach  at roughly the 18-mile mark, a man ahead of  him fell. As Corcoran approached, it was clear the man was having a heart attack. Corcoran began CPR, an exercise he performed for a full 11 minutes until the ambulance arrived.

“I broke his ribs with the CPR,” he says, ruefully. But the man, a veterinarian from Knoxville, Tennessee, survived his coronary blockage and eventually connected with his Good Samaritan for an emotional phone call.

Garden drama happens on a much quieter scale. Plants flower, fruit and bear. They are pulled and laid down to compost. It’s his happy place.

“Gardening is a lot like dentistry,” he says, “finding the right therapeutic dose to get the results you want. Everything worthwhile in life requires effort. It’s a wonderful thing for my children to experience, to see the hard work and then results.” The freshest produce around.

Retreat, role modeling, and fresh veggies. Such, he feels, is his horticultural equivalent of a double eagle.

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.