Archive for the ‘gardening’ Category

Puny purple potatoes

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Some of you may recall a post back in May or June when Jake and I planted approximately 3,500 purple potato plants. Ours was to be Peasant Garden 2010. We were going to have enough spuds to feed an army of Proletariats!

Planting potatoes is a fairly straightforward business. A potato is cut into sections, each section must bear an eye, or sprout.  Only non hybrid spuds can be used (in other words, planting potatoes from the grocery store won’t work). Plant the spud in the dirt, sprout side up–or is it down? Does it matter?   And prepare for a season of purple mashed potatoes.

Unfortunately, between the pregnancy, delivery and the lockdown that is mommyhood, Peasant Garden 2010 turned into an unruly mass of weeds devoid of anything resembling care.

But we’re not a couple of yokels that lets work go to waste. Oh no!  A few days ago, Jake and  I tore up the weeds and tilled the parched soil, on the hunt for our precious spuds.  And we found a motherload.

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These will go in our root cellar.

The only problem with digging up purple spuds in a woefully neglected garden?  The potatoes tended to be smaller than the cut segments we planted!!!

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So we’re calling these miniature purple potatoes.  Does their puny size justify the planting?  At first, I thought not.  But after tossing them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasting them at 400 degrees, I am inclined to say MMMMmmmm.

The peasant garden rises

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

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I mentioned in a previous post how my husband insisted on planting 350 purple potato plants in our garden? Well, it looks like all 350 plants are coming up.  Each plant yields up to 6 purple spuds.   That’s a lot of potatoes. I get a binding sensation just looking at all that starch.

On a happier note, it looks like my first attempt at planting parsnips has been a success. I think. I planted the slow growing seeds last fall after reading the roots attain the sweetest flavor if left in the ground over the winter, and harvested in the springtime.

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The plant is looking a little on the wild and unruly side right now, so I think it may be time to harvest. Does anyone know anything about when to harvest parsnips???

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The base of the parsnip plant.

Other veggies coming up:

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See those spindly wisps? That’s asparagus. I planted them in March, and they’re already coming up….which surprises me since it takes a full five years for an asparagus plant to become established, i.e. that’s how long it takes for a first harvest.  (The bushier plants next to the asparagus wisps are wayward kale. I didn’t plant kale this year. They just mysteriously came up on their own.)

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Cauliflower.

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Heirloom tomatoes.

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Sugar snap peas.

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And of course, the ladies.

Anyone have any good recipes for purple potatoes?

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

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See this patch of soil here? That’s our summer garden. And it’s already completed planted.
Owing to me being pregnant and somewhat brain-dead in most capacities, Jake ended up taking over the planning and implementation of this year’s garden.
The man decided to plant three things.
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Red onions. Lots of red onions.
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White onions.
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And approximately 350 potato plants.  And not just any potato: Purple potatoes.

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A potato plant produces anywhere from 1 to 6 potatoes. We’re looking at a yield of up to 2,100 purple potatoes come July.

Now the obvious question here is, What the—?!

WHY 350 purple plants? Why would a family of two — 2 1/4 once the baby arrives in July — require so many flipping purple potatoes?
I put this question to Jake while we both toiled in the hot sun, tilling and planting row after insufferable row of purple potatoes.
He had two responses:
1. “Cause I just spent $10 on a 50 pound bag of purple potatoes.”
2. “You gotta go big or go home, hon.”
I’ve noticed Jake relies on that second phrase quite often, usually to justify an action that makes absolutely zero sense or to satisfy his maximalist tendencies  (adding 2 cups of cumin when the recipe calls for a teaspoon; building a “simple” Hen Hut so big and spectacular it’s impossible to pull around the yard without a tractor, planting a garden of NOTHING BUT PURPLE POTATOES , etc., etc., etc….)
Ordinarily, I would have fought him over this…..we’re going to be eating purple potato and onion mash well into December! Ours is the garden of medieval peasants!….but I lacked the wherewithal. I lacked the conviction to push for eggplants and cucumbers and habaneros. I just looked at him and  shrugged and said, “Uh. Yeah. Whatever. Pass me another purple potato.”
I truly am pregnant.

My gardening staff

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

This was the first nice weekend we’ve had since forever so I blew off work and spent all day Saturday preparing my nine raised beds for a spring planting.  To prep the soil, I headed down to the chicken coop and scooped up 3 bucketfuls of nitrogen-rich chicken droppings.

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This is where the chickens have called home since January (the mobile Hen Hut turned out to be way too cold to properly house them over the winter so we moved them to the coop/barn.)  I like to keep a clean, sparse coop. Here, you’ll notice the stacked laying boxes, a hanging feeder and their makeshift wooden roost. The white bucket is full of poop. The floor is covered with fresh cedar chips.

If you’ve ever spent any time in a chicken coop, you’ll notice that some coops have a very strong ammonia smell. This is not healthy for the birds. It could even be toxic. It means that their poop is off-gassing; there’s nothing to absorb the noxious fumes of the turd build-up, which could make the birds sick.  This is why it’s essential to layer wood chips or some other source of carbon to facilitate the breakdown of the poop, which also absorbs the chemical smell. And wood chips mixed with droppings are really, really good for a garden.

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A 2-for-1 chore: Cleaning the coop AND collecting compost for the garden

Chicken droppings are among the best forms of compost there is; vegetables need nitrogen to grow, and chicken scat is positively loaded with it. In fact, chicken poop is SO nitrogen-heavy, it can actually burn the plants if the poop isn’t given a chance to thoroughly dry out first.  To be honest, I’m not sure the chicken scat I collected was thoroughly dried, but I took my chances anyway. (That’s the one thing I’ve learned about gardening: You can read all the books you want, and listen to all the advice in the world, but at the end of the day, you gotta go with your instincts and work with what you have when you have it!)

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Next, I turned my gardeners loose on the raised beds. Chickens love, LOVE, LOVE to kick and scratch in dirt looking for all sorts of yummy larvae that have bedded down for the winter. Not only does this action aerate the soil — nature’s way of tilling — but the chickens rid the beds of beetle eggs and other nasties that might otherwise invade vegetable plants.

(FYI, the protein from bugs are what makes farm-fresh eggs taste so good and give the yolks that deep golden hue. Factory farm birds, on the other hand, don’t get to eat their natural diet, which is why their eggs taste so bland and watery and the yolks are the color of margarine.)

While the birds went to town on the beds, I dug up in another bed 6 fat parsnips and 3 huge turnips I planted LAST FALL, which we roasted for dinner last night. Mmmmm.

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Each bird claims her own bed.

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After the chickens had their fill, I then tilled in a few shovelfuls of my scat compost to each raised bed.  I tried not to add too much just in case some of the poop was still too fresh.

I’m going to give the soil a few days to rest, then I’ll plant my spring garden:  Sugar snap peas, snow peas, kale, spinach, leeks, turnips, radishes and onions.

I can’t believe it’s garden time already. Hooray!

Seeds on the brain

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

It’s hard to believe but planting season is right around the corner.  I’m already looking forward to plots of bountiful leeks, peppers, sugar snap peas, and hot, hot, hot chilies of all persuasions.

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As I’m sure it was for a lot of Americans, 2009 was a grim year for me financially. So I’m having to cut back on my seed buying this year. Which isn’t such a terrible thing because last year, my gardening collective and I — the Violet Femmes — ended up buying way, way, WAY too many seeds. I still have leftover leeks, sugar snaps, beets, radishes, fennel, celery root, parsnips, okra….you name it, I have it save for the basics like tomatoes, cucumbers and melons.

Plus I’m pregnant. And 50 additional baby chicks are due to arrive June 1. As ambitious as I am, how much gardening am I really going to have time for once all 51 babies arrive early summer?  So I’m thinking a small garden is the name of the game this year, supplemented by a CSA.

Have you started thinking about your 2010 garden?

Tomatillos: The “hot veggie” of summer 2010?

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

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I love tomatillos for four primary reasons:

Number one, it’s always  the last thing to be harvested in my spring/summer garden. These things like to take their sweet time growing. Sort of like the favorite friend who always shows up late to your party because she took so long getting ready?  But you like her so much you’re glad she showed up at all? That’s how I feel about tomatillos.

Number two, it’s the basis of all Mexican salsa verde, and I love salsa verde. I’m gearing up to can some this evening.

Number three, it’s one of the only vegetable plants I can think of — aside from asparagus and rhubarb — that is A PERENNIAL. You plant it once and it grows anew every year.  Can’t say the same for those blasted tomatoes!! Speaking of tomatoes….

Number four, they’re just as juicy (if not a little more tart) than tomatoes, so they could work as an acceptable substitute in many tomato-based dishes, considering the crazy tomato blight that wiped out my tomato crop this year!

So I wonder why more people don’t grow tomatillos?  I, for one, plan to triple my crop next year.

In fact, I’m calling it right now:  Because of the blight, watch tomatillos become “the hot veggie” of summer 2010…or heck, September 2009!  I can see the New York Times Food&Wine cover story now. You heard it here first.

Aaaa, nature…..

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
Tomatoes get excited too

Tomatoes get excited too

Cream of broccoli soup and the law of averages

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
Mmmm, a steaming bowl of green fiber.

Mmmm, a steaming bowl of fiber.

The other day, I was lamenting my dismal heirloom tomato crop and generally bemoaning the fact that gardening, for all its rewards, can be a big waste of time when things don’t work out.  But me being me, I didn’t think to say a word about all the veggies in my garden that are doing very well. For one, broccoli.

I plant broccoli every year, and every year it’s a big let down. Either the catepillars get to them before I do, or the weather becomes too hot too quickly (broccoli is a cool weather plant), or the broccoli gods simply do not wish to shine on me. But I went ahead and put in 12 broccoli plants anyway, figuring, maybe this year I’ll get lucky.  Sure enough, for the first time in four years, I hit the broccoli jackpot.  My broccoli crop has exploded. Every morning for the past two weeks I’ve been picking  a head a day.

Which means that I’ve been eating a lot of broccoli.  More than I can handle. Last night, I chopped three pounds of it and made an easy cream of broccoli soup, courtesy of The Joy of Cooking.

The directions:  Melt a tablespoon of butter with 1/4 cup chicken stock. Add an onion and cook for 5-10 minutes. Add some white wine, 5 cups of chicken stock, and a bunch of chopped broccoli, including the stalks (which is where the bulk of the nutrients are). Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes.  Puree in batches in a food processor, and return to the pot. Stir in 1/4 cup whipping cream, and season with white pepper and salt.  Garnish each bowl with freshly chopped dill and scallions.  If you want an extra shot of creaminess, stir in a spoonful of sour cream.

It was fantastically fibrous. And delicious.

That’s the thing about gardening: It’s a numbers game.  Just when you think you know a plant, such as tomatoes and eggplant (another crop that’s sucking bigtime for me this year), you realize you don’t know much about them at all. This is why I recommend planting way more vegetables than you think you need and a large variety because invariably something will not work out, while others will defy expectations.

I call this strategy “maintaining the gardener’s mental equilibrium,” because otherwise a feeble-minded gardener like yours truly would go nutters.

A gardener’s lament

Monday, July 13th, 2009

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I planted 30 gorgeous heirloom tomato plants this spring, and exactly half are dying. I don’t understand it! Are they thirsty? Are they drowning? (It’s almost impossible to tell the difference at first.) I’m inclined to go with the latter given all the rain we had this spring. The roots never had a chance to dig down and thrive.

And to think of all the hard work I put into those plants. Working in the hot sun, digging holes, pruning them, watering them (that was what probably killed them!), suffering dirty finger nails and soil-covered knees….and for what??? To have my tomato dreams ripped away from me, that’s what.  I was so looking forward to canning truckloads of heirlooms, all varieties, and eating ratatouille until it came out my ears, I was even going to preserve homemade pizza sauce. Yes, I am that domestic, people! If you come too close to me, I may try to bedazzle you a sweatshirt. A bedazzled tomato sweatshirt.  And lets not forget the annual tomato toss across my front lawn.

Is it any wonder people buy their tomatoes in cellophane at the grocery store?  Allow me to be clear:  Gardening is a big pain in the butt full of disappointment and sorrow.

So many green beans, so little time

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

 

Paige posing with the evening's haul

Paige posing with the evening's haul

 

The other evening my neighbor Bill rode his 4-wheeler over to tell me that if I wanted green beans I’d better come over and get some pronto because they had more than they could handle.  So last night, I moseyed across the road and up the hill to find his daughter Yvonne and wife Ellen bent over in their impeccably-tended garden picking their brains out.  I joined in, and when all was said and done, we had picked 25 GALLONS of beans. That’s just this week’s pick, mind you. Buds are still on the plants so they can expect another load next week.

Ellen loaded me up with 5-7 gallons of the stuff, plus zucchinis the size of my forearm, 10 pounds of potatoes, radishes and crookneck squashes…and now I get to fantasize about what sorts of deliciousness I get to prepare with all this garden booty!

The first order of business: pickling the green beans. One of my all-time favorite summertime snacks—thanks to Ellen—is pickled beans.  Specifically, her pickled green beans. I have yet to eat a better batch. They’re puckery, but not overwhelming. She gave me a jar last night, and Jake and I had polished it off not 20 minutes later.

Now I’m gearing up to make a batch of  basil-pickled beans, followed by New Orleans-inspired Zydeco beans that are packed with lots of japones peppers. I’d better get moving….canning is a time sensitive operation, and my refrigerator can’t hold any more greens.


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