Monthly Archives: December 2006

Peeking under the political bed

So I grew a few Asian brassicas this year, too. Mizuna, though it gets eaten by flea beetles, is a big salad favorite around here. Pak choy, especially the mini kind shown above, often ends up stir-fried. Tatsoi, which has to be one of the prettiest green things out there, is good both cold and hot, and, when cold, its little spoon-shaped leaves are excellent receptacles for salad dressing. Then there’s the hot mustard. All can be found at Kitazawa, along with a bunch of other fancy stuff! I’m looking forward to trying their bolt-resistant Japanese spinach this year.

And the non-Asian brassica that got planted the most around here (my notes say I planted it eight times) is rapini. Broccoli raab, whatever; it can get very bitter in the heat, but I’m still picking it out of the bed above. We stirfry it with garlic. (But what don’t I stirfry with garlic. Blueberries, maybe.)

Frost-nipped parsley (Petroselinum crispum neapolitanum) is still good eating

When I reread my enthusiastic post about brassicas from yesterday, it got me thinking. Why do we pick favorites?

Broccoli has always been a favorite of mine, but it was only once I became interested in vegetarian foods and cucina povera (Italian for, basically, use what you have in your pantry) that dried beans and kales became regular dinner fare. But do I love them, I ask myself, because they grow so well for me? Is this a mutual admiration society here?

And I think it is. This parsley did not grow for me last year. This year I started it in the garage, and transferred it out to two big patches in the veg garden. Parsley is so…ubiquitous that it usually isn’t given much consideration. It is an herb, after all; my experience is that most anyone can grow herbs. But parsley ends up in almost every savory dish I make, usually as a finishing touch, so it, like lowly onions and life-affirming garlic, is very necessary. That it is pretty and bug-free earn it bonus points, certainly.

(Do you play favorites?)

Frosty Nero di Toscana kale and Morris Heading collards in the garden this morning
I am puffed up and spouting poetry when I think of the genus Brassica:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
(partial, XLIII from Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

It is beginning to feel like Christmas around here: hoarfrost everywhere, and maybe (finally) those frogs have sunk back into their hidey-holes.

My first lovingly coddled office-sprouted batches of broccoli (Calabrese Green Sprouting, Early Purple Sprouting and Romanesco Italia, all Baker Creek) bit it in our really late frost, so I had to go with some cutting broccoli I found at the seed store. Wow does that stuff like my garden. I am still getting sprouts off of it. My second planting of broccoli (direct-seeded in July) got hit by our early frost in October. YES I feel very put-out.

But the kale of course did well. (Baker Creek ’05 seed for both.) I planted a 6-cell flat with Red Russian kale back in the garage in February and planted it out with the early spinach in March under a row cover. It did fabulously, and still is. What’s great about this open-pollinated seed is that the plants are all slightly different from each other, so one will be really red, one purple and one will be more a White Russian than a Red. I also planted a row of lacinato (also called Dinosaur, Nero di Toscana and Black Palm Tree) that I transplanted around. Gorgeous stuff. SO good in lentil soup. It is still producing.

Then of course there’s the collards. Morris Heading Collards (Baker Creek, ’05 seed) are a gift that keeps giving in my garden. I direct-seeded them in a row then planted them around the garden. They’re great in the spring, but they are really fabulous once the frost gets them. I should be able to make a mighty fine Hoppin’ John with all my Holstein and Cardinal cowpeas (black-eyed peas are relatives) for New Year’s Day.

I will have to wax on about the wonders of Asian brassicas at a later post. Tonight’s dinner will be “green potatoes,” which are Yukon Golds slightly mashed with garlic-sauteed Red Russian kale. With lots of butter, of course.

Poof into seed
I went a little crazy with the lettuces this year. Actually, I simply committed the sin of underestimating germination, and then I didn’t have the heart to kill all those cute little babies. So we had lettuce coming out our ears. Good thing, though: I was quite popular for a while, giving a lot away. I also used them in my newly-dug flower beds, planted en masse for color.

There’s always the mesclun mixes, of course, that are broadcast on the ground or in transplant flats. These do well, and I am mostly able to identify weed from seed when the plants are fairly young. But this year, in the unheated garage, I started a flat of heading plants. They were great. So tasty.

Focea green butterhead (Johnny’s Selected Seeds, ’06). Cos type, quite bright green.
Fireball red butterhead (Johnny’s, ’06). More spreading than Focea, and quite burgundy to start, but more mottled red when it heads up.
Freckles romaine (Johnny’s, ’06). Upright romaine, if you let it get that tall. Beautiful red-spotted leaves. Did not get bitter.

These are the other cold-season salad-type things I planted this year:
Claytonia (Johnny’s, ’06)
Dutch corn salad (Baker Creek, ’06)
Giant Noble spinach (Baker Creek ’05)
The first two were planted in one flat inside a plastic tub with a clear lid. I set it outside in February, in an area that got maybe one hour of sun a day. This worked. Claytonia, though, hates being transplanted. The spinach was fall-planted under straw (successful!) and also planted in the flat with the lettuce. I planted the tiny seedlings out much sooner than the lettuce and put a row cover over the top. I don’t know; I never have complete success with spinach; it never gets very big before it bolts. Such is the nature of the beast, I guess.

Next year I will do the same in-the-garage trick. I always like oak-leaf and deer tongue lettuces, and never seem to have enough in the mesclun mixes, so I will probably get more of that kind of seed next year.

Oh, and one other thing: once the plants start to shoot into seed, you can hack off all but the bottom two inches of the plant and it will put out more baby leaves. They won’t be bitter, but they’ll be tougher than those early baby plants. If you do let them go to seed, then save the seeds! YUM.

I am absolutely kicking myself that I didn’t do more to extend the seasons. This above pic was taken yesterday in the weedy herb garden. It’s of two types of arugula, some chervil, and some weeds (a nagging rhizomatous grass, and some Queen Ann’s lace). Ah. In the category of “next year,” right?

Amish Paste

I will have it be known to all that I killed a mosquito in our kitchen this morning. Yep; 12/14/06, and global warming is a theory.

I have wondered how I would review the vegetables, and it struck me that I could adopt the Academy Awards format. Too hokey, certainly; though in many people’s gardens, tomatoes ARE the best actors or even the best picture.

Well. My notes say I planted 7 types of tomatoes from seed, and one tomato from an extra plant my mom had. In general, this was a very wet year, and we also had a cool spring; all this means that tomatoes took a while longer to ripen. I harvested our first small tomatoes the last week of July, but the first big ones didn’t ripen for another week or more…and the chickens nabbed my first harvest. Little buggers. I fixed them, though.

So here’s the list, from small to big:
Black Cherry (Baker Creek, ’05 seeds). Heirloom, purple, prolific, tasty. Also known around here as Pox On Your House, as these were the only volunteers I found, and I found them in EVERY bed (compost not hot enough, I guess)
Riesentraube (Baker Creek, ’06 seeds). “Giant bunch of grapes” red, nippled tomatoes; good sweet salad tomatoes; small plants, small leaves.
Sweet 1000s cherry: random plant. Somewhat thick skin, orange-ish, very prolific; not as tasty as the above two.
Green Zebra (Baker Creek, ’05 seeds). Best fresh tomato; heirloom, know it’s ready when it gets yellow shoulders. Fussy plant, not terribly prolific, but worth it.
Amish Paste (Baker Creek, ’06 seeds). Plum-like, fleshy paste tomato. Very prolific, somewhat uniform fruit; tends to ripen all at once so be prepared.
Striped Romans (Baker Creek, ’05 seed). Beauty queen winner; elongated, thick-ish skin, fussy heirloom. Will get blossom end rot if conditions not ideal (mulch is the answer). This is the “Oooo” fruit to impress the guests; easy to peel and can.
Hillbilly Potato Leaf/Flame (Baker Creek, ’05 seed). Big beauty that can crack at the shoulders if it gets dry. Cut it open and it is beyond gorgeous. I made lots of salsa with this and the Green Zebras for my kid’s school (so that is a LOT of salsa); quite tasty.
Brandywine (Baker Creek, ’06 seed). THE heirloom. Big, thick, pink tomatoes; my largest one weighed in over a pound. Quite tasty, too. Like all large tomatoes, prone to cracking and catfacing; watch their water when they’re plumping up.

I always wonder why I plant large tomatoes at about the time when it seems like they’re taking forever to pinken up, but then, when they’re all coming in (at once, it seems) I wonder why the hell I plant small tomatoes. I can’t win, in other words.

The tomatoes were planted out with a half scoop of well-rotted sheep manure in their holes, and they were planted next to 2x2x8′ posts. I lost my first batch to our ridiculously late frost. Once the second batch took hold, I put compost on them up to their shoulders, and compost (about a double handful) on each plant once more toward bloom set in mid-July. I mulched first with straw, then with grass clippings once the season went on. My other tricks this year were to plant Genovese basil in the middle of the plants: it didn’t bolt once the tomatoes blocked their light, so I always had some on hand. I also planted vining nasturtiums on the beds’ perimeter to act as a type of green mulch. The nasturtiums climbed the plants and made a colorful display. My watering schedule was nil after the 2nd week of July, but I had watered plenty to get the plants going.

Next year? Who knows. There’ll always be tomatoes around here, though.

Parsley, taking an end of season bow
The garden recap, 2006

We had a garage sale when we lived in Minneapolis the spring before we moved. I brought out boxes of books, categorized by subject, alphabetized by author, all boxes labeled. Nutty, I know, but it was something I had to do. Now, this was Minneapolis, which has a fairly well-educated citizenry: one patron looked at the books, looked between Tom and me, and said, “Which one of you is INTJ?”

(Now, it will be a cold dark day if some random Michigander garage-sale shopper even KNOWS Myers-Briggs categories, much less can look at one’s spread of books and can type the book sorter. It will also be a cold dark day before I ever have another garage sale.)

With this in mind, I hereby give a wrapup of my 2006 vegetable season. Here are the five “truths” of the season:
1. Mulch. Mulch with anything on hand, but mulch. Copiously. Repeatedly.
2. Nobody Grows Alone. No single grouping of plants for the bugs seek/destroy.
3. Squash bugs are Enemy #1.
4. Succession planting = Successful planting. In some instances, I planted things eight different times.
5. Giant of Italy parsley was the surprise winner of the season.

Over the next few whatever–weeks, days–I will go over each pretty little thing that got planted out this year. Maybe it will help you suss out what you may want to plant next season; maybe it won’t be completely juicy blog material, but hey: this IS a gardening blog, after all.

As it is, I need to review my notes and seed packages. They’re all organized, you know, by plant family, growth type, and general requirements. Of course. It was something I had to do.

Smooshed Green Zebra (looks like I forgot to bring this one in)

I’ve been reflecting on the last veg garden season. I do take garden notes, and make sketches…but you know, it’s hard to really capture a whole season in time when you succession plant about half of your garden’s contents every month! And because I am an architect, I also have the damned plan on Autocad. Seriously.

I really am not this organized in real life.