Planting Seeds: A reading list about growing things
Plus recipes for Rainbow Roots Soup Starter and 3 Root Paste, my go-to quick meal staples
At last, it's Spring: Time to plant seeds (or time soon, for more northerly readers), and anticipate the harvests ahead. This time of year always fills me with excitement: The air smells heavy with possibility and warming soil, and everyone, from my friends to my mechanic, is talking about what they're growing.
I think of all the wonderful things I'll be preserving and pickling, particularly this year as I wrap up the long-awaited Essential Preserving Handbook and hand it in to my publisher.
I also think of the regenerative cycles of my home garden: How those bits and bobs from my preserving practice make it into my compost (here’s my composting guide, if you want to learn how!), which turns them into new soil to continue nourishing me and the land as the cycle begins anew.
As I'm in a transitional phase this year: Moving towards a life lived abroad (and in a different growing zone) as well as here with my established garden in Atlanta, I'm having to rethink what and how I plant. I'm opting for many more perennial herbs and shrubs, for example, and sadly keeping a lot of my annual fruit and veg planting more subdued than I'd ideally like.
But I'm still thinking a lot about plants, and frankly still growing a ton of them, even if I've scaled back, and each year I find such incredible joy in meeting and re-meeting my friends as they emerge from the soil.
This springtime reading list is in their honor, with some of my favorite reads for curling up with in the sunshine or after sticking my hands in the dirt.
Many of you are probably familiar with Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, which I love, but I also encourage you to explore her book Gathering Moss. It's such a moving, beautiful exploration of the small, often overlooked, but oh-so-important beings in our ecosystems.
Eoghan Daltun’s Irish Atlantic Rainforest is a perennial favorite, a love letter to place but also a love letter to the changes of place at it becomes more itself. Daltun’s rainforest land is such an inspiration for our 10-ish year plan in Ireland: To care for (and rewild) acres of land in West Cork, while continuing to care for the acres here in Georgia.
In my to-read and to-reread pile currently on this topic, I have What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses by Daniel Chamovitz, which explores how plants experience the world with their senses and which scratches a few itches for me: Both my desire to learn about the science of botany but also to learn that science in aid of connecting with plants more deeply.
And finally, I’m currently reading Manchan Magan's Listen to the Land Speak, which explores the ways the Irish landscape has shaped Irish myth and identity.
As I deepen my connection to the two once-connected places (the southern Appalachians and Ireland) I call home, I'm also deepening into learning about the spirit of the land itself, and its influence on us humans. In particular, how the land has shaped us over time, in the same mountain range stretched across two continents. And, perhaps, how that learning can help us take better care in return.
I know some of this for the Appalachians, having family rooted in the region (though I'm always learning more!) and I'm so curious to further explore the overlaps between here and Ireland.
P.S. if you're looking for spices for your garden bounty, I'm really proud of this pickling blend I made in collaboration with Burlap + Barrel.
If you add the 1.8 ounce peppercorns with grinder to your cart, you get them for free when you order this (or whatever other B&B spices), too: Just use the code ROOTKITCHENS when you check out!
Recipes
As we transition fully into warmer, longer days, I'm reflecting on the ways I can fully honor the last bits of my root vegetable harvest.
These two recipes, for Rainbow Roots Soup Starter and for 3 Root Paste, are my tried and true stand-bys for quick meals: Toss them in the water you're boiling for pasta, use as the basis for a miso soup, or use them in sauces (the paste is what I use instead of prepared garlic).
Plus, since you make them once and then have lots to last for many meals, getting some healthy, delicious food in your stomach is easy even when your days are super full.