TOMATOES part one

It amuses me how fondly I feel towards things that I grow from seed. It’s not like I did anything but place them in moist dirt, put them under lights, and then watch expectantly for signs of life. But when the ground breaks and that green (or sometimes purple) life begins to emerge like a chick from an egg, often still donning the husk of it’s seed like a nightcap, something erupts in me. Is it my ego, my untapped maternal instinct looking for a subject, or is it merely human impulse to feel protective towards something nascent? I don’t know the answer, but I love my tomato seedlings.

I started these babies March 28th. I filled clean 4” plastic pots with sterile potting mix, watered it well, and using tweezers, inserted a seed just off each corner.

I find tweezers pretty indispensable around the house. When I was renovating, I was surprised how many times they were the perfect tool for the job, from removing that last tiny piece of blue masking tape to removing a splinter from under my fingernail. (Doorjamb, scraping.) Now they live in a little box of important tools that I keep in my kitchen. And they come in handy all the time.

According to Clyde, the time to plant tomatoes is May 17th.

Clyde’s garden planner is a really cool tool. I ordered it with my seeds two years ago from Baker Creek (http://www.rareseeds.com). It has a spring side and a fall side. On the spring side, you slide the red line to the final frost date you’re working with, I use the 19th, si indicates when to start seeds indoors and FP tells you your first planting date. Timing is half the battle in gardening and I’ve found that having this general guideline is extremely helpful. And it only cost $3.00!

Clyde recommends May 17th. Last year we planted tomatoes May 8th. This year we planted them May 2nd. This was mostly because as much as I love my seedlings, I’m not a great parent, and I hadn’t thinned them out and given each seedling it’s own 4″ pot in a timely fashion. They were rowdy pre-teens by now, sharing a bedroom and needing their space. It looks like it’s going to be in the 70’s – 80’s for the next ten days with nights from 57º-65º, so I feel safe planting them. I’ll keep an eye on the weather though, and if it looks like nights will get in the mid 40’s, I’ll scramble around and try to provide some sort of protection. It’s always a gamble.

For some people the entire point of having a garden is the tomato. That’s definitely how David feels. Tomatoes are his thing. And like the other things he devotes himself to, he’s good at it.

If he had it his way, we’d grow nothing but, many gardeners do. Unfortunately, because I’ve set up my garden on a four-year rotation, with a quadrants for Leaf, Fruit, Root, and Legume, only a quarter of the garden is devoted to Fruit. Which means we have to cram tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, and okra into a quarter of the garden. We’re talking prime real estate. And because I would not have the garden that I do, if it weren’t for David, he gets a lot of room for his tomatoes.

There is truly nothing like a homegrown tomato.

As Guy Clark sings-

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can’t buy
And that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes

I was pleased to discover that since 1987, the South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato has been Arkansas’ official state fruit and vegetable.

Growing tomatoes is a very personal endeavor. From the kinds you choose to grow, to how you grow them, and what you do with them once they’re ready, every experience is a unique one.

Just to give you an idea, the Baker Creek Whole Seed Catalog has more than 30 pages of tomatoes to choose from! Red and yellow, black and white. Green, orange, blue, and pink. Members of the Seed Savers Exchange (http://www.seedsavers.org) have access to 4,863 varieties!

This year we are growing eight kinds of heirloom tomatoes. That may seem a little ridiculous but considering how many we narrowed it down from, I feel pretty good about it. We are growing four beefsteak, two sauce, one cherry, and one for drying. We’ve grown six of the eight before, and two are new to us. A beefsteak tomato is a large, meaty, slicing tomato. David likes them the best.

This year we are growing Paul Robeson again. This was the favorite in our unofficial taste trials last year. It’s a black tomato with a complex, smoky, sweet, flavor. It’s rich and meaty and special. It’s named after a special guy too. Paul Robeson was a black actor and singer. He was also a lawyer and civil rights activist. He was black-listed during the McCarthy era, but never stopped fighting social injustice. He was a true American hero. Check him out.

Granny Cantrell is new to us this year. According to the Baker Creek catalog, Lettie Cantrell got her seeds from a soldier returning from Germany after WWII. It makes me wonder who he was and how he managed, after what was undoubtedly a harrowing experience, to return home with tomato seeds of all things? Lettie lived in Kentucky and this was the only tomato she grew. This red tomato is rumored to be very productive and in 2006 was named best tasting tomato at the Heirloom Garden Show. I’ll let you know!

We are also growing True Black Brandywine. This is a beefsteak, with what is called potato-leaf foliage. A really beautiful plant. The one we grew last year got uprooted in a high-wind and never produced very well. And it was yellow, which was a surprise. The year before we grew pink brandywine. Such beautiful fruit! My dream vision of a tomato is a brandywine. Perfect in it’s imperfection. This year I’m trying the true black. I didn’t grow this one myself because you can always find Brandywine seedlings at our fabulous Farmer’s Market.

The last beefsteak for this year is Dester. We grew this one last year as well. It’s pink, sweet, and delicious. It’s originally from Germany and was saved by a Dr. Herbert E. Dester in Geneva, Indiana. He gave some seeds to his house cleaner Anna, who brought them with her when she relocated to Seymour, Missouri. We got these from Baker Creek.

I love how people save tomato seeds and pass them around!

San Marzano Lungo #2, is a long cylindrical Italian tomato with thick walls and not too many seeds. It has a long history as a great sauce tomato.

Costoluto Genovese is another Italian sauce tomato. Costoluto means ribbed. These are beautiful tomatoes, they make great sauce and are good for slicing as well.

Principe Borghese is a new one for us this year. It’s famous for sun-drying. Hopefully I’ll have the gumption to make some sun-dried tomatoes this summer.

Lastly, I always like to have a cherry tomato. They’re great to toss in a salad or to sauté for a burst of tomato flavor, but the best way is to eat them in the garden warm from the sun. Last year I inadvertently grew four kinds. A couple volunteers of the pear varieties I had grown the year before ended up in the root bed and I let them stay. And I grew a beauty named Tess’s Land Race Currant. Tess won the race, I could not keep up.

My current favorite, and the only one I’ve chosen for this year, is Cherry Roma. They’re about an inch long and have a smoky, sweet flavor. They’re the perfect size to pop in your mouth.

On planting day, we gathered the chosen together and spaced them about 3′ apart.

We gave them a scoop of balanced fertilizer and planted them deeply. This is always a good idea, especially if your seedlings are lanky. They’ll grow roots out of the buried stem and will be stronger and better able to cope when the weather gets warm.

Tomatoes are either determinant or indeterminant. Determinant tomatoes are bred to grow to about 3-4′ and to produce their fruit all at once. Most heirloom varieties are indeterminant. They are true vines that left to their own devices will continue to grow and produce fruit throughout the season. In the past we haven’t done any pruning and our tomatoes have gotten out of control. This year, I’m looking forward to some selective pruning. The idea with pruning is to allow each leaf its place in the sun for optimum photosynthesis as well as to promote air-circulation to ward off disease. When tomatoes get growing they send out side branches, and eventually these get so laden with fruit that the plant can’t support it’s own weight. If these side branches are removed, more energy is directed into the remaining fruit. I’ll be sure to share my tomato pruning experiences with you.

Last year David made cages out of concrete reinforcing wire. It’s 5′ tall and he cut 8′ pieces of it.

He bent them into a circle and secured them.

They lived like sculpture in the garden all winter and here we are again.

It’s been a crazy week, but at least the tomatoes are planted!

I’d love to hear about the varieties that are your favorites.

25Apr2015

THE HEDGEROW

Posted in Bush honeysuckle, Hedgerow, Invasive plants, Native Shrubs, Sambucus canadensis by jonesamye

So lately I’ve been fantasizing about a hedgerow.

I’d like to create one along the boundary with my neighbor. I’d love for it to create privacy, as well as an attractive backdrop for pictures of my garden. But I also want it to create habitat, attract birds, bats, and other pollinators, and I want it to produce food for them as well as for me. (I recently got a bat house and I can’t wait to put it up and start waiting for bats! More on that later…) I want my hedgerow to look good all year with flowers in the spring and summer, great leaf color in the fall, and berries in the winter. I’d love for there to be raspberries involved and I’d like it to include mostly native species that I can learn from and use in other gardens.

In terms of local boundaries, it seems like most of the property edges in my town, not to mention any forested areas, are thick with bush honeysuckle, which is blooming everywhere right now. Can we just call this Public Enemy Number One? It is the worst. Okay, there are several other thugs out there, including privet, and euonymous, but since this particular punk ass is in bloom right now, it’s a good time to realize how much of it there is to deal with.

You know this guy. Now that it’s on your radar you will realize that it is everywhere. Seriously everywhere. It is so everywhere that it’s hard to envision what it could/would/should look like without it.

Bush honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii is the most common one around here, but there are several other non-native bush honeysuckles including; L. morrowii, L. tatarica, and L. x bella) is a bully. It is incredibly adaptable and grows rapidly, reaching up to 20 feet. It leafs out earlier and loses its leaves later than anything else out there creating dense shade that smothers out native species from trees to wildflowers, essentially eradicating diversity and natural habitats. The plant is spread rapidly by birds that eat the berries for its carbohydrate-rich food. But sadly, it’s like fast food. Its nutrition is not comparable to the nutritional value of native plant species and migrating bird species need all the sustenance they can get for those incredible journeys. Native songbirds that nest in bush honeysuckle are more vulnerable to predation than those that choose higher ground. It’s also possible that bush honeysuckle releases a chemical that suppresses the growth of other plants around it, a biological phenomenon called allelopathy. Plus, because of its branching structure and the longer time that it is covered in foliage, bush honeysuckle makes great cover for deer. And deer carry ticks. And ticks carry diseases that effect humans. Bush honeysuckle really is the worst.

For the record, there are native honeysuckles. They can usually be distinguished from the non-natives by their solid stems while those of the non-natives are hollow. Obviously it’s important to know you have the correct culprit, but unfortunately around here you’re most likely to be dealing with the thug.

Bush honeysuckle is so prolific that removing it changes the nature of a place. People appreciate the privacy that it provides and I respect that. It is my hope that my exploration of the hedgerow will allow me to study replacements for those edges. And these days with the fragmentation of our forests, we have a lot of edge.

So, we agree that it has to go. So how do we go about getting rid of it? One of the only things I appreciate about bush honeysuckle is that its seedlings are easy to rip out of the ground. Now is a great time to do this because they are small and the ground is moist. Once they get bigger they are much more challenging. If you hack them down, which you must, they will only sprout again and you will have to hack them down again, which you must, continuing to rub off their tender new growth, until they run out of steam. Once you cut them, you could immediately paint them with glyphosate, if that falls within your environmental moral compass. An online search turned up a new one for me. Cover the stumps with 2-3″ of soil and pack it down or even cover the stumps in black plastic. It takes a while, but eventually the stump will die and can be removed. Or you could go to the Fayetteville Public Library and check out a Pullerbear, (http://www.pullerbear.com) and rip those beasts up roots and all. But then what?

Well you could start a hedgerow.

The first plant I added to my hedgerow was elderberry (Sambucus canadensis). In fact, I planted it before I even thought of creating a hedgerow. I wanted one even though Michael Dirr, one of our most preeminent modern horticulturalists, calls it “large and scruffy.” As well as, “only suitable for rough areas of the garden.” I planted mine against my neighbors’ dilapidated shed, which seems like a rough enough area of the garden.

I like my neighbors and their shed doesn’t bother me. I know they’ll remove it eventually and that for now it is useful for them. In the meantime I’ll enjoy my scruffy sambucus as he grows. I look forward to its 6-10″ creamy white, flat-topped flowers. It hasn’t bloomed yet, but I’ll be watching for them come June. If they do, in August it will have clusters of purple-black berries. Maybe I’ll harvest those for elderberry jam or make my own St. Germain liqueur (ha!), but most likely I’ll leave them to the birds as numerous songbirds including bluebirds, flickers, finches, jays, mockingbirds, nuthatches, cedar waxwings, and woodpeckers enjoy them. A veritable bird party!

So here’s the site of my future hedgerow.

We can consider this the “before” photo. There’s the sambucus against the shed. He is flanked by (what else?), large stands of honeysuckle, as well as privet on my neighbors fence. I like the way the open space leads into the dark underbrush and I want to enhance that effect with my planting. An invitation to mystery.

Other plants I’m considering for a place in the line-up include:

Viburnums, especially Arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum), which shares characteristics with the elderberry, having similar flowers and berries, and also being beloved by birds. But also Blackhaw (V. prunifolium), Rusty Blackhaw (V. rufidulum – how fun is that to say?), American Cranberrybush Viburnum (V. trilobum), and Mapleleaf Viburnum (V. acerifolium) which likes the shade, so maybe I’ll place it deeper into the underbrush.

Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia), has lovely fragrant flowers in July and August. I grew one in a container in Hoboken and loved it.

Hollies. Common Winterberry (Ilex verticilata), Possum-haw (Ilex decidua), Yaupon (Ilex vomitoria). Berries! Man, I love berries! Especially in the winter. They seriously give me a rush. When I worked in Manhattan, I used to walk to work down 10th Street because there was the most beautiful hawthorn tree. In the winter, when you needed it most, it would be completely laden with berries. I would stand under it, throw my head back, and take in that scarlet constellation like a drug. Perfection. All have great red berries that ripen in September and persist through winter. They are all appreciated by overwintering birds and small mammals.

Serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis) and Downy Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea). I really like multi-stemmed trees and it would be nice to have native replacements for the ubiquitous crape myrtle. Granted they are very different otherwise. These have white flowers in early spring and fruit in June. The fruit start red and turn blue, they are tasty, but at least 20 species of birds are particularly fond of them, so I’ll probably let them have them.

Fothergilla, Witchhazel, Fringetree, Dogwoods, Hawthorns (classic hedgerow plants), Fragrant Sumac, Spicebush, Buckeye, so many more to explore! This is definitely a work in progress, so I’ll continue to share my exploration of the hedgerow.

Incidentally, the history of the hedgerow in Europe is a fascinating one. As I get my head around it, I’ll try to share some of that with you as well. Whenever I decide I want to write about something, I start to do some research and inevitably I discover worlds I never knew existed. (Who knew potatoes created empires?!) It’s been one of the gifts of having this blog. These are explorations you could spend your life on and I usually only have a week or so, so there is frustration as well in wanting to share something of which you’ve only scratched the surface.

In the meantime, things are looking good in the vegetable

and perennial gardens.

Onions are going strong.

Peas are making their way up the fence.

And it’s time to put a layer of straw on the potatoes,

harvest some radishes,

and plant some pole beans! Plus tomato and pepper seedlings are doing well and need to be planted out soon.

Plus I’ve been eating broccoli raab and arugula, two of my very favorites!

I hope you’re all well, have a great weekend!

17Apr2015

THE PERENNIAL GARDEN

Posted in Amsonia hubrichtii, Perennials by jonesamye

By its nature, my vegetable garden changes every year. I don’t know if I’d call it a rule, but everything within the confines of that fence is an annual. It gets its season in the sun and then it’s on to the compost pile. This keeps my rotation intact so that (ideally) diseases and pests don’t build up in the soil and I get to start fresh every year. Tabula rasa. And I must say, it’s amazing to see this –

– turn into this.

And then back again. A perfect circle.

But I also highly recommend having a perennial garden. It’s a very rewarding investment. Perennials are those plants that come back year after year. Their tops die back to the ground in winter, but when spring arrives, their dormant roots come back to life and begin to send up new growth. Having a perennial garden is like working on a long term art project that uses form, texture, shape, color, and contrast as its materials, as well as time and nature. It’s a dynamic canvas that changes through the seasons and evolves through the years. I like to think of it like a slow motion fireworks display. Plus, perennials draw wildlife to your garden in the form of birds, bees, beneficial insects, earthworms, and toads, all of whom benefit from the nutrition provided. My perennial garden reminds me of a group of beloved lifelong friends who get together every summer to celebrate.

I get to watch this (January 20th) –

– become this (April 8th).

And then this (July 29th) –

become this (September 1st) –

become this (September 20th) –

And apart from cutting back the grasses in early March, maintenance is fairly minimal. I don’t look at weeds as a problem. Weeds are an excuse to be in the garden. As the saying goes, “the best fertilizer is the gardener’s own shadow.” I try to mulch in early spring before things get too big. And sometimes there’s some editing to be done. For that, I’ll sit across the street on my neighbor’s curb with a beer and move things around in my mind. Early spring is a good time to do the actual rearranging, while the roots are still dormant. It’s also a good time to add plants because the weather is mild and there’s plenty of moisture for developing roots. Throughout the season there’s some dead-heading to do and I try to cut back the catmint (there at the front) at some point so it will bloom again. But otherwise I just wander around wondering at the miracle of it all.

Right now I’m looking forward to the amsonia blooming. Do you know Amsonia hubrichtii? It’s an awesome perennial that’s native to the Ouachita mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Ironically, the first time I saw it, I lived on the East Coast. Seeing a plant labeled “Arkansas bluestar” was akin to seeing an Arkansas license plate when I lived in L.A. Cause for simultaneous jubilation and homesickness.

Amsonia starts like this…

And then those little knobs begin to sprout…

And eventually in early May it blooms these lovely pale blue star-like flowers.

But that’s not all. The flowers last two to three weeks, but the foliage is great all season. The leaves are really thin which give it a great fuzzy texture.

And then in autumn the leaves turn a lovely golden yellow. Once established, it doesn’t suffer in heat or drought and it isn’t bothered by deer. What more could you want from a plant?!?

I’ll talk more about perennials, design, and inspiration in future posts. As well as all those vegetables we can start planting now that we’re almost past our final frost date!

Namaste y’all!

10Apr2015

SPRING WEEDS

Posted in Dandelions, Spring Weeds, Wild food by jonesamye

It’s such a lovely time of the year. The days are warm and sunny and cooled by breezes perfumed with lilac and wisteria. Everything is in its first flush of green punctuated with the exotic purple pop of redbud blooms and birdsong. It’s not without its drama either. Moments ago we were pummeled with hail.

Color is everywhere. Lawns are seas of purple and blue with sunny bursts of yellow as everyone puts off that first mow of the season.

Aesthetically, I appreciate a smooth expanse of cool green grass as much as the next person, it’s easy to look at, soothing in its monochromaticity, and I especially like the way it sets off a garden. But it’s also the time of year when I make sure to keep Wilson on his leash because I don’t know what people in my neighborhood are spraying on theirs–not to mention what’s being flushed into our abundant local waterways. If I had to choose between chemicals and weeds, I’d gladly choose weeds.

(I should mention that my two neighbors to the left have gorgeous lawns that are serviced by The Organic Lawn Guy (http://www.theorganiclawnguy.com) Their lawns are connected so they are mowed at the same time and it creates this big swath of lush, gorgeous, enviable green. Wilson loves to wallow in it. So it is possible.)

When I first began to realize that what I wanted more than anything was to study gardens and plants and landscapes, I set myself the task of becoming more observant of the natural world around me. It’s something I have actively practiced over the years and while I’m no expert, the effort has without a doubt enhanced my life. In the spring it’s especially rewarding to observe the world as it breaks out of dormancy and comes to vibrant life. Some of the first things out of that gate are the spring weeds.

What is a weed anyway? The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “a plant considered undesirable, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden.” Grass in your lawn is your lawn, grass in your flower bed is a weed. You can hate weeds all you like, but often the first description of where a weed grows is “disturbed soil.” Who do you think disturbed it? We did. Weeds are our familiars. They follow in our wake. And yes, there are horrible, noxious weeds out there. Weeds that poison cattle, choke out native species, and cause huge imbalances in ecosystems, but even those are our doing and our responsibility.

I don’t know about you, but I find a deep comfort in knowing about the things that grow around me, things I’ve planted intentionally and those that just show up. It thrills me to know their names, and knowing them in Latin makes me feel downright erudite. It also makes me feel like I’m taking part in history, sharing knowledge in a line that starts with Linnaeus and connects me to plant lovers and scholars ever since. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned what a poor memory I have, but for some reason, plant names stay with me. I recite them to myself when I walk Wilson. Hello Lamium, what ya knowin’? How’s it hanging Cardamine? You’re looking lovely today Veronica. I like the common names too – henbit, dead nettle, bittercress, dandelion. There’s a shared history there too. What I think is surprising and important to know about many spring weeds is that they are not only edible, but nutritious.

Two of the most familiar spring weeds are in the mint family (Lamiaceae). You can tell this by their square stems.

That’s henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) on the left and dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) on the right. I know you’ve seen them.

Henbit gets its Latin species name, amplexicaule, from the way its leaves clasp the stem. One of its common names is giraffe head, although it reminds me more of a Victorian jester, with lacy ruffs and a silly plumed hat. It’s a sweet little thing. And nutritious too, high in iron, vitamins, and fiber. You can eat it raw in salads or lightly sauteed. It’s also an important early source of nectar and pollen for bees, who need all the help they can get these days. It gets its common name, henbit because it is favored by chickens.

Dead nettle is its cousin, and it’s one of the first plants I can remember being conscious of as a child. I was sitting with a babysitter in the yard of the house I grew up in, watching a storm roll in. She had taken me out there to watch its approach so I wouldn’t be afraid. I remember the storm on the horizon and being surrounded by those funny purple flowers. I was maybe five or six. Like henbit, dead nettle is also nutritious, and useful for bees, although it’s a bit fuzzy, so perhaps try it in a smoothie. And if you cut yourself while you’re out weeding, bruise up some of its leaves and apply them to your cut, as it has styptic properties. Its flower, like many in the mint family, is a verticillaster, which is a fun botanical word for a false whorl. It flowers from March to October.

Wild Onion (Allium canadense) is another common lawn weed that is edible. They are a pain to remove from the garden because the leaves often break off leaving the bulb to send up leaves again. And once you harvest them they are a pain to clean because they are so tiny, but they can be used like spring onions, or the leaves can by used like chives. I put some in tabbouleh recently and they were lovely. Strangely, (maybe its the smell) Wilson seems to favor them as conduits for his pee-mail messages, so keep that in mind and wash thoroughly.

Hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) is yet another spring edible. It’s in the mustard family (Brassicaceae).

It favors moist places, like this storm drain. Some early butterflies are attracted to their flowers. Like the other members of its family, its seeds are housed in what are called silique, long, thin, capsules. These capsules have a mechanism called explosive dehiscence. The pods explode sending seeds far and wide. Annoying, but super cool.

If you don’t want them (or other weeds) in your lawn, you would be wise to mow before they set explosive seeds. All that (pre-seed) nutritional goodness can benefit your compost pile too.

But the king of all nutritious lawn weeds has to be the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale).

A member of the sunflower family (Asteraceae), every part of them is edible and they are ridiculously nutritious. So nutritious in fact that it’s truly ludicrous that they are villified, we should revere them. We should lionize those dandys! Their botanical name can be translated as official remedy of disorders. They are full of Vitamin A and are probably the richest herbal source of Vitamin K, which builds strong bones and is used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. They have tons of potassium, and are a great source of calcium, manganese, iron, and magnesium. They have more protein per serving than spinach. A French common name pissenlit, or piss-in-bed (quaint, huh?), references their strong diuretic qualities. Because of those qualities, they are good for your liver and kidneys, and unlike many diuretics they do not cause a loss of potassium, maybe because they are so full of it. They are also good for your blood and for general gastro-intestinal health. In Chinese medicine they are used to treat lung and breast tumors, jaundice and hepatitis, mastitis, abscesses, and urinary tract infections. They help in weight loss. They are good for your skin. The list goes on and on and on. Seriously.

Dandelion greens can be bitter. Maybe it’s because I’m bitter too, but I like bitter greens. If you’re not a fan, it’s recommended to harvest the leaves in early spring before they flower, or in late fall after a frost when they are less so. They can be sautéed or steamed or made into a tea. The flowers can be batter-dipped and fried or added to pancakes. The roots can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute or sautéed in stir fries. The internet abounds with dandelion recipes. I’ll let you know as I try them.

And what about those perfect spherical seed heads?

How many wishes have you made with those? Merely as an object, they are so perfect. And so transient. And so efficient. Those airborne seeds can travel up to five miles from where they started.

As a consequence of being me and living in these times, I have a survivalist streak. When I lived in Hoboken and worked in Manhattan it got pretty worked up. There’s something about dealing with millions of people on a daily basis, on an island no less, that makes you wonder what would happen if? I had nightmares of suit-wearing Wall Streeters and zombie hipsters marauding through smoky streets sparkling with broken glass. It’s one of the many reasons I moved home. I wanted to be in walking distance from fresh water and loved ones. I wanted to grow my own food and harvest rainwater. And I missed green. Desperately. And as much as I love Netflix, and Pinterest, and food blogs, I mostly wish I could spend my days tending vegetables and climbing trees and walking in the woods with my dog foraging for wild food, and my nights reading, writing, cooking, playing music, and making quilts. Essential things. I don’t think I’m alone in this. And while I might not be starting my days with a dead nettle smoothie, I think it’s not just entertaining, but imperative to know that I could.

4Apr2015

POTATOES

Posted in Heirloom gardening, Potatoes, Spring Planting by jonesamye

If you need to be reminded of the earth’s ability to create abundance, place a seed potato in the ground in April. By June, when their beguiling flowers begin to blossom, you can reach into the earth and bring up nothing short of buried treasure. The taste of those first homegrown new potatoes, with their delicate feathery skin, is a revelation.

Potatoes are one of the largest food crops in the world, right up there with wheat, corn, rice, and sugar cane, and they produce one of the highest yields per area planted of all food crops. They are low in calories, have no fat, sodium, or cholesterol, and are full of potassium, Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, fiber, and iron. And for all that they have still ridden the wave of fashion throughout our history with them. Yet as historian William H. McNeill, argues in his 1999 article, How the Potato Changed the World’s History, the humble potato created at least two empires and changed the world in a number of ways.

Potatoes originated in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the longest continental mountain range in the world, a whopping 4,500 mile spine of seismic activity and extreme temperature fluctuations that stretches down the western coast of South America. Wild potatoes are full of toxins to protect them from predators both microscopic and macroscopic, but the ancient Incas (Empire #1) cultivated them in this much less than hospitable place, breeding them to be less-toxic and developing thousands of varieties for the multitudes of growing conditions with which they were faced. The International Potato Center in Peru contains almost 5,000 varieties!

Spanish conquistadors arrived in the region in 1532 and following the natives lead, began to eat the strange food, taking some with them when they departed. By 1570 the potato had arrived in Spain, and while a few farmers began to grow them, most were consumed by livestock. It took quite a while, but slowly they began to spread to the rest of Europe.

By 1596 the potato had at least been given its name, Solanum tuberosum, by the Swiss naturalist Gaspard Bauhin. Still, early reception to this new food was unenthusiastic. It was feared for its resemblance to other plants in the nightshade family, thought to cause leprosy, reviled by believers because it wasn’t mentioned in the Bible, and generally ignored because it was considered ugly and tasteless and because it came from a heathen continent (ours) – it was a food only fit for animals.

Frederick the Great of Prussia famously tricked his people into eating potatoes during a famine there in 1744 by placing guards around his potato field. The peasantry deduced that whatever was worth guarding in there was worth eating, and when the fields were (intentionally) unprotected, they sneaked in, stole the plants, and put them in their own gardens.

In France, the potato’s PR hero was Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. As an army pharmacist during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) he was imprisoned five times, subsisting on little but potatoes. After the war he became a nutritional chemist and devoted his life to championing the potato. Due to his efforts, the potato was finally declared edible by the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1772. So if you see a recipe with the word Parmentier in the title, you can rest assured that the dish features potatoes. The story goes that when Parmentier was on his quest to raise potato awareness he had a big society party featuring a variety of dishes made with potatoes. He presented Marie Antoinette with a bouquet of the flowers which she wore in her hair, causing a fashion moment. Thomas Jefferson, who was also a guest at the party, reportedly served potatoes “in the french manner” at a White House dinner upon his return.

This reluctance to embrace the potato is incredibly ironic considering that poverty and famine were commonplace throughout Europe before the shift to potato cultivation, especially in the countryside. Then, wherever it traveled, populations exploded. France had hovered on the brink of starvation, experiencing a nationwide famine approximately once a decade from 1500-1800, before the potato arrived. In Ireland between 1780-1841 the population doubled to 8 million, and this without any change in industry or agriculture, beyond adoption of the potato. According to conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. (Empire #2.)

Unfortunately, by the early 1840’s many of Europe’s poor, especially those in Ireland, were existing on nothing but potatoes, so when that monoculture was plagued by the pathogen Phytophthora infestans the results were devastating. An estimated 1,000,000 people in Ireland died during The Irish Potato Famine ( 1845-52) and twice that fled the country, many of them to the United States.

Another potato pest gave rise to the modern pesticide industry. Leptinotarsa decemlineata, the Colorado potato beetle, was first discovered in the United States in the 1824. It is believed to have come from Mexico where it fed on the potato relative, buffalo bur (Solanum rostratum). By the 1840’s it had arrived in the United States where it discovered and laid to waste acre after acre of domestic potatoes. Desperate farmers tried everything in their arsenal to destroy them, but it wasn’t until one hopeless farmer threw some old green paint on his plants that anything worked. That paint, Paris green, turned out to have been made with arsenic. Various arsenic compounds worked for a while until the beetles developed resistance to them. Enterprising chemists began to try any number of chemical brews, which all worked, for a while. By the end of WWII, the answer was DDT, that lasted about seven years. After that it was deildrin. You don’t even want to know about dieldrin.

Now do you want to grow your own delicious organic potatoes? I sure do.

Luckily that’s an easy thing to do. As Deborah Madison so nicely puts it in her masterwork, Vegetable Literacy (2013) “potatoes are obliging in the garden,” as anyone who has ever thrown one on a compost pile can attest. They want to grow.

Plan on planting them 2-3 weeks before the last frost date in your area. The last frost date I use for my area is April 20th. (That doesn’t mean it’s not going to snow in May.) We planted ours on March 30th.

Unlike most garden crops, potatoes are not grown from seed. Instead they are grown vegetatively from small potatoes called seed potatoes.

Seed potatoes can be planted whole or cut into pieces, as long as each piece has an eye. I plant mine whole because I have more potatoes than I have room, but if you do cut yours, use a sharp knife and allow them to callus overnight. Potatoes are heavy feeders, so I worked plenty of compost into my soil while I was loosening the soil in preparation for planting.

Traditionally potatoes are planted in a trench about 6″ deep and they are placed 12-16″ apart. We made two trenches about about 18″ apart. Further apart would be better, but our garden is on the small size, so we plant pretty intensively.

Each trench is then re-filled with soil. Soon, from each of those eyes a sprout will develop. Miraculously, that sprout will find the sun and begin to make leaves above ground.

Then, from the stem of that sprout will come stolons, the ends of which will swell to create potatoes. For this reason it is important to do what is called hilling up. When the plants are about 4-6″ tall, cover then with loose soil almost to the top of the leaves. Plan to do this again about three weeks later. This year I’m going to try my second hilling with pine straw. I’m also going to try to grow some in a container, which is a great option if you don’t have an in-ground garden. I’m going to put about 6″ of soil in a big (30g) plastic nursery pot, I’ll space about 5 potatoes in it and cover them with 4-6″ of soil. As they grow, I’ll continue to hill them up until the soil in the container is 18-24″ deep.

Seed potatoes can be kept back from the previous year’s crop, or ordered fresh every year. I ordered mine from Seed Savers Exchange (http://www.seedsavers.org).

Because they are grown vegetatively, each potato is a clone of its seed potato, which means that diseases are passed down along with other genetic characteristics. Therefore, the oldest heirloom varieties that we grow today were developed after the blight, around the 1850’s, from Mexican or South American stock.

This year I’m growing La Ratte again, it’s a French fingerling with a delicious nutty taste. I grew them last year because Seed Savers “couldn’t recommend them highly enough.” Roasted whole with olive oil and sea salt, we enthusiastically concur. We didn’t save a single one to store or use as seed, but I’ll try harder this year. I’m also trying Yellow Finn, whose “exceptional buttery sweet flavor sets it apart from all other potatoes.” I’ll let you know.

In about 60 days, those beautiful flowers will appear, (although sometimes they don’t and the plants still produce potatoes).

Tuck one behind your ear à la Marie Antoinette, then patiently wait for a couple of weeks. When you can’t stand it any longer, gently dig into the soil around the stem, where hopefully you’ll find your buried treasure. These are what are called new potatoes and they are an early summer luxury.

You can pull up the whole plant, eat them all immediately, and grow something else there, or you could continue to harvest throughout the summer. Be warned, they take up a lot of space.

That’s a path.

Here’s the potato corner June 1, 2014. Sorry beans.

By fall, the foliage will begin to die back. You can leave the potatoes in the ground for several weeks, but make sure you harvest them before any killing frost, or if the weather is warm and wet and could signal the potatoes to start sprouting. I don’t have the greatest conditions for storing potatoes, which is just as well, because once I start harvesting them I really can’t stop.

For a great article comparing different potato planting methods, check out (http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/garden/7-ways-plant-potatoes).

27Mar2015

ONIONS

Posted in Onions, Spring Planting, Vegetable Gardening by jonesamye

Waxing philosophic about onions is a bit like writing poems to your feet. Yet where would most of us be without those? They are the foundation upon which everything else stands. They provide us with balance, structure, and support. When your dogs are barking, nothing else matters. Onions (Allium cepa) are much the same. Among the first vegetables ever cultivated, remains of them have been found that date back to 5,000 BC. It’s believed that they originated in Asia, but it’s also possible they grew wild on every continent.

If space is a consideration in your garden, onions might not be at the top of your grow-your-own wish list. After all being the most widely eaten vegetable in the world, they are available year round at any grocery store or farmer’s market. Still, I love onions and I can’t imagine cooking without them, so when I ran across onion seedlings at a nursery last March I thought, why not? And I’ll tell you, the experience of going out to my garden and harvesting an onion moments before I needed it was so satisfying that I’m doing it again this year. Homegrown onions taste better and can be harvested at any stage of their growth – as spring onions at their immature stage, throughout the summer as their bulbs begin to develop, and, if cured and stored properly, throughout the winter. Onions are with us full circle.

Nutritionally, onions are low-calorie powerhouses. They are high in vitamin C, dietary fiber, and folic acid and contain calcium, iron, phosphorus, potassium, manganese, and magnesium. They also contain the flavonoid quercetin, an anti-oxidant that may help in the prevention of heart disease and many cancers. They are anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial. Eating them regularly increases bone density, strengthens connective tissue, and balances blood sugar.

Most onions are grown from seedlings or sets. Seedlings are tiny onion plants, about 5″ long, usually tied in a bundle of 50 or more. They look like baby scallions. Sets are tiny, immature onion bulbs, like cocktail onions. I have yet to try growing onions from seeds, but perhaps one of these days I’ll get ambitious. There are certainly more varieties of seed available than there are seedlings or sets, but growing from seed takes more space and time and is more of a challenge. I’ve been happy with seedlings.

Onions are photo-periodic, which means they require a certain number of daylight hours before they begin to form bulbs. There are three categories of onions. Long-day onions will not begin forming bulbs until the days are 14-16 hours long. These do better in the north (in North America) where the days are longer. Short day onions, which do better in the south, need 10-12 hours of daylight to bulb. Intermediate-day onions do well when daylight reaches 12-14 hours.

It also helps to know your latitude. Northwest Arkansas, where I’m growing, is at 36º N, so the best onions for me are intermediate-day onions which work well from 32-42º N. Luckily, the nursery where I got my seedlings knows this and orders onions that work best in this area. The varieties I’m growing are Super Star, the only white onion to win AAS distinction, Candy, which works almost everywhere in the United States, and Red Candy, a beautiful, sweet, mild red onion.

I learned a lot for this post from Dixondale Farms (http://www.dixondalefarms.com). They have been growing onions since the early 1900’s and supply onion plants to the entire country. From them I learned that the perfect onion has 13 rings. This also means that it has 13 leaves, since each ring is a modified leaf. Don’t worry, a smaller onion is not inferior in taste, it’s merely smaller. The more leaves an onion grows before the days get long enough to trigger it to begin forming a bulb, the bigger it will be.

I planted my onion seedlings on March 17th. First I made sure the soil was fairly pulverized, as Barbara Damrosch advises in her The Garden Primer, and then I made three long shallow furrows down the length of the bed. I sprinkled a balanced fertilizer into each furrow.

The fertilizer I used is Nitron’s (http://www.gardeniq.com) Nature Meal Vegetable Fertilizer (4-8-4). Those numbers correspond to the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. This one is made from feather meal, bone meal, sulfate of potash, and alfalfa meal. I purchased it at Ozark Natural Foods (http://www.onf.coop).

I spaced the seedlings approximately 4-6″ apart and used a hand cultivator to gently bring in soil around them, incorporating the fertilizer, until the row was planted. Then I firmed the soil around each little plant all the way down the row and watered them gently. I’ll keep an eye out for weeds because shallow rooted onions don’t like the competition and weeds can rob them of needed nutrition. I’ll also keep an eye on the weather and if it looks like we’re going to get another freeze, I’ll water them well, mulch them, and cover them with burlap for protection. I’ll mulch them anyway when they get about a foot tall to maintain soil moisture and keep down weeds. When they get about as big around as my finger, I can start to harvest some as spring onions, which will give the others more room to develop.

Another nice thing about growing onions is you can see what they’re up to. When the bulbs begin to form, their shoulders start to emerge from the ground, unlike, say, potatoes, where you’re left to wonder what they’re doing under there. Then in late summer, when the bulbs are done forming, the leaves begin to brown and fall over.

Now you know it’s time to cure them for storage. Gently, (they may seem sturdy, but it’s important to be gentle with them as any bruised places will rot over time) remove them from the soil, and allow them to dry for a couple of days. This can be done in the garden, or if rain threatens, in a warm, dry, place. Next, find a dry place out of the direct sun with good air circulation and let them dry a good three weeks or so. You can then cut off the tops and store them in mesh bags, or even panty hose with a knot between each bulb, or you can braid their leaves together and hang them. Barbara Damrosch advises weaving in a strong piece of twine to help keep it all together. Keep them cool, dry and well-ventilated, and use any compromised onions and those with thick necks first. It should be noted that sweeter onions do not store as long as the more pungent varieties.

In the kitchen, onions are incredibly versatile. From France’s mirepoix, to Italy’s battuto, Spain’s sofrito, or cajun cooking’s Holy Trinity they are the humble beginning from which all else stems. They can be eaten raw in salads or sandwiches. They can be pickled. They can be stuffed and baked, sauteed slowly and pureed into a classic soubise, or allowed to release their sugars until they carmelize. They are essential in stocks, soups, stews, and casseroles. And is there anything more sublime than French onion soup?

Every time I grill I cut one in quarters from the top down, keeping it intact at the base, then I wrap it in foil with olive oil or butter, or maybe some blue cheese and let it cook until the outside is almost burned, and the inside is meltingly sweet and mild. So good alone or with grilled meat. And what about onion rings? Or sausages with peppers and onions? Get outta here!

One of my favorite restaurant jobs was at a now-shuttered restaurant in Manhattan called Elettaria. It was a romantic, lamplit, cozy place with tiki-themed cocktails (27 rums on the menu!) and an open kitchen. Our chef, Akhtar, was of Indian origin and his food was laced with exotic Indian spices. I worked there from the day it opened until the sad sad day that it closed. Oh, the stories I could tell. I loved to watch Raphy scrupulously sharpen his knife and prepare the onions for the crab meat resala which was served with a turmeric laced soubise, (I’d also be hoping that he was making family meal). There was such zen precision to those perfect thin slices. I’ve thought about how an onion is cut ever since. Sliced, diced, minced, chopped, grated, it matters. Take your time with your onions. Prepping them and cooking them. If that prep makes you weep, make sure your knife is nice and sharp, or try refrigerating your onions before you slice them.

As Nigel Slater says in his gorgeous, passionate, wonderful Tender (2009), one of my all time favorite cookbooks, “Get the onion part of a dish right and you are halfway towards a good supper. Get them wrong and no amount of cooking and clever stunts can quite put matters to rights.” Amen to that, Nigel.

______________

In other news:

Everything survived the crazy hail storm on March 25th.

Beet, chard, kale, lettuce, arugula, broccoli raab, cavolo broccolo spiragriello, collard greens, spinach, and radiccio seeds have all been planted out. Pea and radishes seedlings are just starting to emerge and the fava beans are doing great. I planted some flat-leaf parsley plants in the leaf bed because I love it so and it’s challenging to grow from seed.

The perennial bed is slowly coming to life and the camassia and allium bulbs I planted last November have surfaced. I’ll take you on a tour of all that soon.

Asparagus spears are thrusting through the pine straw mulch! Too bad I can’t eat any until next year.

Seed potatoes from Seed Savers arrived in the mail and I’ll be planting them forthwith and telling you all about it next week.

I also MUST start tomato and pepper seeds. I should have started eggplants a month ago and I didn’t and that just has to be okay. You can’t win them all.

I hope everyone and their gardens are doing great, that you’re all happy, healthy, well-rested, and looking forward to your spring!

Namaste!

20Mar2015

PEAS

Posted in Peas, Phenology, Spring Planting, Vegetable Gardening by jonesamye

Peas are enchanting. And reason enough to have a garden. Their delicate nature, the fact that they start to lose their natural sugars once they’re picked, and their small window of availability makes growing your own a great way to insure that you don’t miss out on this early, rare treat of the garden year. And such lovely short term guests they are. So dainty and welcome with their pretty paired wing-like leaves, their sweet pale flowers, and their curlique tendrils. Those tendrils kill me. The way they seek and find and twine and draw themselves ever upwards. Emblems of curiosity and vitality. Like hope. In cursive.

Circumnutation is the term used to describe this motion. It was coined by Darwin himself who was also fascinated by tendrils.

Peas, (Pisum sativum – sativum is Latin for cultivated) are one of the earliest domesticated plants (8000 BCE!). They also have the broadest range geographically and climactically of any legume, although they weren’t eaten fresh until the 16th century. These days a lot of fresh peas don’t even make it out of the garden, especially if my niece is around. (If you manage to end up with a glut of peas, please let me know.)

And because they express their genes consistently, Gregor Mendel used them in his experiments between 1856 – 1863 which laid the foundation for modern genetics. So, thanks again peas.

The science of phenology tells us that the time to plant your peas is when the forsythia blooms. According to the Aldo Leopold Foundation (http://www.aldoleopold.org/Programs/phenology.shtml), “Phenology is a segment of ecology focusing on the study of periodic plant and animal life-cycle events that are influenced by climate and seasonal change in the environment.” Aldo kept records of the first occurrences of everything from blooms to migrating bird arrivals on his land in Wisconsin from 1935-1948 and these are chronicled in his seminal conservation treatise A Sand County Almanac (1949). His daughter Nina took up the work and kept detailed records of her own from 1976 until her death in 2011. These records, spanning 70 years, show that the first occurrences of certain songbirds and plant blooms are now up to three weeks earlier than when Aldo first began his observations. These records, and many more like them, kept by observant, organized, and generous souls, have important implications for the study of climate change, as well as for farmers, gardeners, and nature lovers. It’s fascinating, crucial stuff. Looking to nature for cues reminds me to be observant, as well as grateful, for the deep connection we share with every living thing. Turn,turn,turn.

These days we recognize three kinds of peas. English, or shelling peas, which are the familiar peas in a pod type from which the peas are removed and eaten. Snow peas, (P.sativum var. saccharatum), which are flat and eaten whole and are sometimes called Chinese peas because they are so often found in stir frys. And snap peas (P. sativum var. macrocarpon), which are a relatively recent cross of the two. Snap peas have sweet edible pods with fat round peas visible inside. These latter two are sometimes called mangetouts, or French for “eat all.”

This year I’m trying two kinds of English peas. Lincoln is a high-yielding, heat-tolerant, delicious pea that was introduced in 1908. I saved seeds last year, so I’m hopeful that these will perpetuate themselves. I’m also trying Iona Petit Pois which are tiny French peas, about half the size of regular shelling peas and are reported to be an exceptional treat. I can’t wait to find out. I’m also trying Sugar snap peas for the first time. This variety was an AAS winner in 1979, with 5-6′ vines and exceptionally sweet pods. Snap peas are reportedly more heat tolerant than English peas, so hopefully that will extend my season of peas.

All peas are incredibly nutritious. They are good sources of protein and fiber while being low in calories. They have high concentration of vitamins A, C, K, and folic acid, as well as phytonutrients, anti-oxidants, and minerals such as calcium, iron, copper, zinc, manganese, and phosphorus. The edible pod types are even lower in calories, but hold more vitamins and minerals than the shellers. The shoots, which include the leaves, stems, flowers, and tendrils are also edible and nutritious and can be lightly steamed or sautéed, or eaten raw in salads. Shelled peas can be eaten raw or tossed into rapidly boiling water for a mere three minutes. If you manage to resist eating them, they can be added to salads or risotto. Or you could make a lovely spring soup.

Well, the forsythia is blooming so it’s time to plant some peas! I planted mine close together against my garden fence, in two rows about 2″ apart and 1″ deep. I had planned to make some supports perpendicular to the fence, but David got worried about shade, so we’re just going to let them climb up the fence and give them something more to climb on later if they need it. Pea vines are very delicate, so I’m going to leave them alone to do their thing. The favas are already planted in front of them, so I’ll have no reason to disturb their ascent. I just hope they appreciate all this rain and don’t decide to rot!

I also planted some sweet peas. Flora Norton are clear blue sweet peas with an intoxicating fragrance. I saved these from last year and planted them all along the garden fence behind the perennial beds. They make a delightful cut flower too.

When it’s time to harvest peas, I’ll start from the bottom up, since that’s how they mature. It’s important to keep up with them because they can start to lose their sweetness quickly, plus harvesting speeds up production. I’ll use my trusty harvesting scissors to avoid damaging the delicate vines, and I’ll get definitely get my niece in on the action.

20Mar2015

SPRING PLANTING

Posted in Carrots, Compost, Fava Beans, Peas, Radishes, Spring Planting by jonesamye

St. Patrick’s day or not, Tuesday, March 17th was a big day in our garden. David and I both had the day off, it was warm and sunny with rain scheduled for the next day, and the soil was finally workable.

Do you know this term, workable? Many early seed packets will tell you to plant them “as soon as the soil can be worked.” This means that the ground is not frozen, and that it’s not too wet. Timing is tricky in the spring because you want to get stuff in the ground, but if you mess with your soil when it’s too wet you can seriously damage the soil’s fragile structure, causing it to clump and compact, something that is not easy to fix. Structure refers to the way soil hangs together, the relationship between the particles of soil and the pore space between them. This relationship is crucial to your soil’s ability to hold moisture and air, for roots to grow through it, and for the millions of creatures living in it. Structure is different than texture which refers to the relative amounts of different sized mineral particles present in your soil (sand, silt, or clay).

Soil is amazingly complicated stuff and is worthy of our deepest respect, but let’s not get into that right now. Suffice it to say that the timing was right and Tuesday was the day.

Incidentally, the best way to improve your soil’s structure is to add organic matter which also feeds your plants and enhances your soil’s capacity to hold moisture. This is a task that is best done in the fall (because of those spring timing issues), but we didn’t get to it last fall, so we did it Tuesday. Better late than never.

As a conflicted American consumer, I can find a million things to feel guilty about. When I lived on the East Coast in an apartment with an outdoor space, but no dirt, and no compost situation I never got used to not composting. For seven years, every time, seriously, every time, I threw food in the trash it bothered me. So one of the first things I did at my new place was establish a compost situation. It’s a pretty simple set-up, but I sleep better for it.

The enclosed middle compartment is this season’s working compost. That’s where I put kitchen scraps, yard waste, leaves, judicious amounts of ashes from the fireplace, etc. The left side has wire around it that you can’t really see, I put leaves in there (I should add more to it), the other side is where last year’s compost got turned so I could start a new batch in the middle. I’m not a master composter yet, but I aspire to be, and I actually made a batch of compost last year, which feels like a major step on the road to a self-sufficient closed-loop garden. We weren’t sure if it would be enough to add some to all of our beds though, so David got a scoop from Nitron (www.gardeniq.com) to supplement.

Then, while I was planting carrots and radishes, David, Mountain Man that he is, did the heavy lifting and wheelbarrowed compost into all the beds. Then he mixed it in and we were ready to plant!

CARROTS and RADISHES

I started with carrots and radishes because that bed was already prepared from when I planted garlic in it in November. At that time I added compost and worked it in and made sure that the soil was nice and friable. Carrots like loose soil, which makes sense if you’ve ever seen a crazy knobby two-legged carrot come out of hard rocky soil. I have nothing against those carrots, I love the way they are physical embodiments of the journeys they’ve taken, but I still made sure my soil was loose and light as far down as a carrot might grow. Then I made a shallow furrow across the bed.

Carrot seeds are tiny and it always seems like the wind starts blowing right when you want to plant them. (To avoid frustration, it’s also a good idea to open your seed packets indoors when your hands are clean and dry.)

I sprinkled them as sparingly as possible down the furrow. Because they’re so light, it’s hard to plant them thinly. One of the tricks of growing good carrots is thinning them. I’m happy that anything wants to grow in my garden, so it can feel ungrateful to pluck out tiny seedlings just as they’ve seen their first light, very Sophie’s Choice. But if you want nice carrots, that’s the sacrifice, so when these puppies get 1-2” high I’ll snip some off at the soil line. Then later I’ll try to thin them so they’ve got space around them about the size of a mature carrot with a little room to spare, hopefully I can eat those tiny thinnings.

I spent a lot of time trying to decide which carrots to plant this year. I finally narrowed it down to three: St. Valery, an ancient orange carrot with very high reviews for taste, Amarillo, a neon yellow carrot with a reportedly sweet taste, and Purple Dragon, a spicy, purple carrot with a deep yellow core. Then Baker Creek sent me some free Parisienne carrot seeds, which I had been curious about, so I’m trying them too. They are little round carrots, which makes them a good choice for less than perfect soils. It sounds like Baker Creek sent them free to everyone, and made them a lot of fans. I look forward to roasting them whole.

Carrots take a while to germinate and because I have a small garden, I’m always looking for ways to save room, so I like to plant radishes with my carrots. Radishes are quick. Once they germinate they provide shade for the slow spindly carrot seedlings. They also break up the soil for the carrots and are long gone before the carrots even get going.

Radish seeds are bigger and easier to control. I placed them about 2” apart, then I carefully knocked a very light layer of soil over them and patted that down gently. I watered them with a watering can and then covered them with strips of burlap and watered those too. When the radishes germinate in a few days I’ll take off the strips and let the radish seedlings nurse the carrots along, keeping them all moist until it’s time to eat radishes! I’ll probably try to find room for some more carrots elsewhere and plant those in a month or so. And once I’ve eaten the ones I just planted, I may plant some more there. Successive planting is a great way to make sure you have a crop all season.

Below is the root bed on May 23rd last year. You can see the carrots peeking out from under the radishes in front. That’s chervil in the very back of the bed with bigger leaved parsnips in front of it. In the bed behind are onions. Chervil is a great spring herb and I need to get some planted for this year! It’s a lovely, delicate, cool-weather herb, like a feathery parsley with hints of tarragon.

Wilson loves carrots. I told him it would take a while, I hope he’s not waiting for them.

FAVA BEANS

Remember these guys? Here they are March 11th, eight days after being planted.

Inquisitive little things, aren’t they? Like little Loch Ness Monsters. Each checking out the situation in their own way. “Hi, have you gotten the schedule yet? What’s next?”

And busy! We went away for the weekend and came back to these rowdy teen-agers. 100% germination!

They got caught in the rain earlier in the week and were wetter than I wanted them to be, plus they were starting to get a little moldy. David took one out to examine it and saw that they had crazy tap roots, so we decided we’d better get those kids in the ground!

Their root systems really are amazing. Look at this action! Exquisite!

And yes, I realize the whole point of the loo rolls was to leave them in place and not disturb that elaborate ladder of a root system, but then I read in Barbara Damrosch’s indispensable The Garden Primer (1988), that she had noticed when she pulled up spent crops in the fall that often the peat pots they were planted in were still quite intact. Ultimately, I decided to carefully remove the loo rolls (I put them in the compost) and plant them gently in deep holes. Luckily they got nicely rained in and so far they look really happy.

On to the next!

12Mar2015

HARICOTS TARBAIS and CASSOULET

Posted in Cooking from the Garden, Garden Structures, Growing Pole Beans, recipes by jonesamye

Brace yourselves this is a long one, (but there are lots of pictures).

Growing your own food is elemental. To place a seed in the ground, nurture it, and watch it grow into something that can sustain you is to participate in a miracle on the deepest level. It is an act that ties you to the seasons and to the earth. Homegrown organic vegetables not only taste better than conventionally grown store bought ones, they are better for you too. Yet as poetic as the desire to grow your own can be, it can stem from practical concerns as well. Some vegetables are expensive. Others are next to impossible to find.

Take the French white bean ‘Haricot Tarbais’.

This creamy white, thin-skinned, low-starch bean is said to be the soul of the classic French peasant dish cassoulet. Cassoulet is a hearty, meaty, quintessentially winter dish, originating in southwestern France. A forerunner to that classic American pairing Pork and Beans, if you will. It is named after the cassole, the vessel in which it is traditionally cooked. A cassole is a deep, round, covered casserole dish, shaped much like a short, fat flower pot. The beans are cooked for hours, sometimes under a crust of breadcrumbs, with a variety of available meats, often including duck confit, sausage, and ham. Cassoulet is one of those regional dishes, like American barbeque, that people have very strong opinions about. The few cassoulets I’ve had in my life have been at French restaurants in Manhattan, and as different as they were, they were each an experience. Eating cassoulet takes me somewhere. Somewhere rustic and French and cold. Austere but gorgeous and welcoming. When I saw ‘Haricots Tarbais’ seeds offered in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog two years ago, I knew not only that I had to take that trip, but that eventually this day would come and I’d be making my own cassoulet.

I have worked at my share of restaurants (I was an actor in a former life). From LA to NYC, I have been exposed to cuisines from all over the world prepared by talented, passionate, inspiring chefs. It’s made me an ambitious, if not proficient, home cook. Having my own vegetable garden to draw from has taken that, in the parlance of our times, to a whole nother level. It allows me to grow a crop with a particular dish in mind. I find this especially thrilling. True satisfaction can be hard to come by these days, but sharing with friends my first cassoulet from beans that I grew myself was the essence of satisfaction.

GROWING BEANS

Growing pole beans makes me feel like a rock star. I find it immensely rewarding, though I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of varieties and yields. Shelling beans are their own seeds, so what you plant is what you get. And they are sown in place rather than started indoors which is so much easier. Plus, like Jack’s beanstalk, they climb, which saves valuable space in a small garden and gives you a third dimension visually.

The first year I had my garden I fashioned these towers out of bamboo.

They remind me of Gilligan’s Island. Anyone fancy a Mai Tai?

Here’s why growing beans make me feel like a rock star.

July 28th, 2013.

August 6th.

August 21st!

Guitar solo!!

I was obsessed with towers, or tuteurs as the French call them, for a while there. I sketched them. I scanned the horizon for them. I dreamed about them. I made a Pinterest board. Ultimately, because I live in a ranch style house, I decided I wanted mine to look more like oil derricks than the Eiffel tower.

Last spring David made me these.

I adore them! Here they are fulfilling their potential. That’s our star ‘Haricot Tarbais’ on the front tower.

Last year I direct-sowed beans on April 27th. Unfortunately I planted potatoes in the same bed on April 2nd and they were already growing like gang busters. The beans had trouble initially because they were shaded by the potatoes, but eventually they found their purchase and up they went. Live and learn.

Many vegetables are revered because they have a small window of seasonality. Asparagus, peas, that perfectly ripe summer tomato, we appreciate these things because they are fleeting. But the fabulous thing about beans is that you can store them. Beans will get you through the winter. They are so easily grown and so durable that they have traversed the globe and have been fundamental to human civilization.

The history of beans is a fascinating one. I am currently devouring Ken Albala’s immensely compelling, “Beans A History” (2007), I highly recommend it and will continue to share with you what I’m learning from it.

Incidentally, he points out that in 2000 the Tarbais bean was awarded IGP (Indication Geographique Protegee) status, “which delimits where it can be grown, with what fertilizers and pesticides and protects the name legally”, similar to Champagne, or Parmesan Reggiano. So maybe I should be calling them by another name?

Another obsession. Jars. I love them. And I love them best when they are filled with beautiful, colorful, nutritious beans! I find a pantry stocked with jars of beans, grains, dried peppers, and spices a thing of great beauty and solace. It declares, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!”

CASSOULET

I still had about four cups of Tarbais beans and winter was running out. I invited people over and kept checking the weather, hoping that Sunday’s would be dismal. Time to make cassoulet!

Cassoulet is not difficult to make, but it does take several days (as does reading this post!). I started, as I often do, with research. Like many cooks I know, I like to peruse a number of sources for ideas, inspiration, and techniques, and then wing it. My main sources for this cassoulet were Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking and David Lebovitz’ My Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories. If you don’t know David Lebovitz, please check out his beautiful blog, http://www.davidlebovitz.com, and buy his cookbook, he is an inspiration.

Early in the week: Gather supplies.

One of the few things I miss about living in a big city is access to great grocery stores (yet another reason to grow your own). Luckily, we have Richard’s, which is a solid meat market. They had duck legs (frozen), rendered duck fat, a nice smoked ham shank, Italian sausages, and rosemary. I already had garlic, thyme, bay leaves, gin, nutmeg, and allspice.

Tuesday, Duck Confit: When the duck legs were thawed I poked them all over with a needle and then rubbed them with sea salt, a bit of allspice, and a few gratings of fresh nutmeg. I packed them skin side down in a Pyrex dish on top of the rosemary, some thyme, three bay leaves, and about six cloves of garlic. (David Lebovitz’ trick is to really pack them into the dish, or two dishes if necessary, with no space around them so that when the fat is rendered it makes a quick confit.) I dribbled in a tablespoon of gin, covered them with plastic wrap, and refrigerated them overnight. The next day I turned them skin side up, placed them uncovered in a cold oven, and turned it up to 300°. I cooked them for 2 ½ hours, occasionally basting them with their fat and juices. Then I turned the oven up to 375° for about 15 minutes to let the skins get crunchy. I let them cool and then covered them with parchment paper and then aluminum foil and refrigerated them for a couple of days until I was ready for them.

Friday: I picked through the beans and discarded any that weren’t up to par. Then I soaked the beans overnight in enough water to cover them by a couple of inches.

Saturday: Cooking the beans.

(Shout out to my mom for giving me this gorgeous copper stock pot for Christmas! Thanks Mom, I love it!)

I drained the beans and put them in my gorgeous copper stock pot with the smoked ham shank, three peeled carrots, a quartered onion with a clove stuck in each piece, a couple of bay leaves, some thyme, about six cloves of peeled garlic, and several grinds of fresh black pepper. I cooked them until they were tender. Which took about two hours. Maybe more.

One of the reported wonders of the Tarbais bean, and the reason they are the heart of this dish, is that they can stand long cooking, becoming incredibly creamy and tender, while still maintaining their integrity. They did not disappoint.

I took the ham shank out of the beans and put it aside to cool. Then I prepared the other components.

I heated up my trusty cast iron skillet and placed the duck breasts skin side down to really crisp them up, I flipped them over for a minute and then set them aside to cool. I poured off some of the fat and then cooked the sausages in the rest of it, not fully, just to brown them up. I set them aside to cool with the duck. Then I sliced up an onion and cooked it in the remaining fat and juices.

I fished the bay leaves and thyme out of the beans and discarded them. I fished out the carrots, cut them up and put them back in the beans. I tore the meat off the ham shank, cut it into bite sized pieces, and put that back in the beans.

I fished out the onions and garlic that hadn’t melted entirely and whizzed them in my blender with some of the bean juice, the onions from the skillet, and just a little salt. Then I poured this puree into the beans.

I sliced up the sausages. I separated the drumstick from each duck leg and cut the remaining piece in half. Then I tasted it. Credit must go to David and Anthony and the duck legs themselves, but it was one of the best things I’ve ever made. Meltingly delicious. I will definitely make duck confit again.

Time to assemble!

Oven preheated to 300°.

I don’t have a cassole, so I used my 8 quart dutch oven. I covered the bottom with beans, layered in half of the sausage and duck, more beans, the rest of the sausage and duck, and finished with the rest of the beans. Then I mixed a cup of panko bread crumbs with a tablespoon of olive oil and covered the beans with that. Into the oven with you!

Cracking the crust of the cassoulet several times while cooking is one of the aspects of cassoulet on which there is much debate. I only cracked mine twice. I let it cool fully and refrigerated it.

Then I whipped up some Pear, Riesling, and Ginger Sorbet, to serve topped with prosecco as a refreshing, palate cleansing dessert. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/01/pear-riesling-and-ginger-sorbet.html and went to bed!

When I have people over I always get carried away. I’m usually tipsy, two hours behind, and still standing over the stove in pajamas with dirty hair when my first guests arrive. I madly put those unfortunate souls to work while I put on pants. Lucky for me, the French believe cassoulet is best if served réchauffé, or reheated. This made party day a piece of cake. My house was clean, I was clean, the fire was blazing and the candles were lit. Come on in!

Thanks Janine for the party day pictures!

6Mar2015

GARDEN STRUCTURES

Posted in Garden Structures, Vegetable Gardening, Winter Gardening by jonesamye

Hello March! It was 37 degrees on Monday, but I still ended up spending a good two hours in the garden. I needed to be out there so badly I didn’t even notice the cold.

David got productive much earlier, leaving me at my desk. About the time I was getting onto myself for not getting more done, he returned from the hardware store with a trailer load and I finally got motivated. He had PVC pipe, rebar, and a 16’ cattle panel. I’m not a fan of PVC, but I want a hoop house to put over my (4 x 8’) leaf bed. Last year I used bamboo from my sister’s house and it worked pretty well, although the branch stubs tore the fabric in places and she has since moved, so I no longer have a source for young pliable bamboo. Anyway, he got 4 – 10’ pieces of grey 1/2” PVC and 8 – 2’ pieces of 3/8″ rebar. He pounded the rebar into two corners of the bed, stuck a PVC pipe over it on one side and carefully bent it onto the other. Six more pieces of rebar, three more bends, and voila, tunnel supports. All in all it cost under $20.

I’ve still got some Agribon+ AG-19 floating row cover fabric that I ordered from Johnny’s Seeds last year. It’s 83” wide and I have about 40’ left of it. I’m going to cut it in half lengthwise and sew two long sides together giving me a piece about 20’ x 14’ which will be perfect. I’ll put that over the top first. It will provide frost protection down to 28 degrees as well as insect protection. It lets 85% light through and is water permeable. Because nothing under there needs pollinating, it can stay put all summer. I’m still debating on whether I need to cover that again with plastic for these last crazy weeks of winter.

I can’t wait to start some spinach and lettuces under it, leaving room (if possible) for cauliflower and cabbages. I got carried away when ordering from Seeds of Italy and ordered a couple of lettuce mixes. Misticanza di Lattughe has 14 varieties of lettuces of all shapes, textures, and colors and Misticanza di Radicchi has 12 varieties of red and green radiccios and chicories. I also got Cavolo Broccolo Spigariello aka sprouting broccoli “an iconic vegetable from Naples” that I’m looking forward to trying.

David also had a cattle panel on his handy trailer. I’ve been wanting to make a tunnel between beds to grow cucumbers up. The panel is 16′ long and the beds are 4’ apart. When curved between them it needed some reinforcing to keep the sides straight, so he ended up making a frame out of 2 x 4’s. I can hardly wait to see it covered in greenery with little cucumbers hanging from it! Here’s David figuring it out. I love how it frames the venerable Magnolia in my neighbor’s yard.

And I still need to tell you about the Hot Box!

Fayetteville is one of those places where there are many routes to your destination. I’ll go out of my way to drive down a street with a house or tree that I like or a garden I’m observing. A couple of years ago I was driving down one of these streets and they were replacing the windows on a house I like. After stalking them for several days, I got up my nerve and stopped to ask what they were planning to do with the windows in their refuse pile. We had a lovely conversation about houses and dogs and gardens and landscaping and several trips later I had a new friend and thirteen lovely old wooden windows. It is my hope they will ultimately be part of a phenomenal greenhouse, but in the meantime, I wanted to use them to make a cold frame. Because he’s amazing David surprised me with this one. I may paint it, or maybe I’ll be patient and wait till the plywood mellows like the rest of the garden structures.

I know they’re called cold frames, but for some reason we call ours The Hot Box. He lined it with Perma R foam board insulation. We put a thermometer inside and have been monitoring the temperature. One day when it was sunny in the 60’s here it was 110 degrees inside!

In their great book “The Four Season Farm” Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman (preeminent garden gurus, especially winter gardens) advise that 75 degrees is as high as you want to let it get inside the box. They also advise that it is much better to err on the side of too cold. We’re still trying to figure out the best way to vent ours. We’re thinking about using chains attached to the fence behind it to raise the windows enough to keep the temperature moderate. In the meantime it’s 25 degrees here and snowing, so I’m not going to worry about it today.

On my blissful day in the garden I planted ‘Astro’ arugula, ‘Spring’ Broccoli Raab, ‘Quarantina’ Broccoli Raab, and Claytonia in the hot box.

Claytonia perfoliata, also known as miner’s lettuce from when it was eaten by miners during the California gold rush, is a super cold-hardy green that is native to western North America. Those miners ate it to prevent scurvy because it is high in vitamin C. I couldhave/shouldhave/wouldhave planted it last fall, but I didn’t, so I’m trying it now. We shall see. As soon as the leeks sprout, I’ll put them in there too.

I love having these new structures in my garden. They expand it in all dimensions. Into the sky and earlier into the season. Gaining me space and time. Cosmic.

The Cultivator

Can you dig it? I knew that you could.

Author Archives: jonesamye