Sunday, April 22, 2012

Earth Day Weekend at the Learning Garden


Happy Earth Day, Gardeners!

I’m betting you all had the same reaction I did to yesterday’s rain: finally! Not enough (a quarter inch in my rain gauge), and now they say it’s to be followed by snow for some folks, but I was happy to have gotten any amount since I had some new plantings at the Learning Garden I wanted watered in.

I planted the potatoes yesterday: reds, whites, and blues. Both the reds and blues have intensely colored flesh as well as skin, and I chose them to go with our informal “colored varieties” theme this year, along with golden celery, purple and orange peppers, red romaine, golden and pink beets, purple Brussels sprouts, and an amazing array of different colored carrots.

But the colored potatoes are for more than making a patriotic salad for the Fourth of July: I learned in the book The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe (which I have referenced in previous emails and blogs before) that once you get beyond the store bought varieties, potatoes have wonderfully different tastes, textures, and uses. She says:

White/yellow potatoes go well with: salt, pepper, butter, olive oil, toasted sesame oil, curry powder, canned tuna, canned salmon, spaghetti sauce, salsa, eggs, mayonnaise, pickle relish, light miso, Dijon mustard, lemon/lime juice, quality light vinegars (such as white balsamic vinegar and sherry vinegar), sauerkraut, white or mild-flavored beans, and small careful amounts of onions or garlic or roasted onions or garlic. They go best with the white meat of chicken or turkey, and with pork, ham, lamb, and fish (including tuna and salmon). They taste good with but are somewhat overwhelmed by the dark meat of chicken and turkey as well as beef, duck or goose. I always go with white or yellow potatoes to complement a whole roast chicken or turkey.

Blue potatoes have powerful flavors and a powerful aftertaste, and they go well with heavier amount of seasonings and other powerful flavors. They go well with salt, pepper, butter, tamari sauce, soy sauce (if you can eat wheat), dark miso, chili, black/pinto or other powerfully flavored beans, and serious amounts of garlic, onions, and roasted garlic or onions. They are wonderful with beef, duck, goose, smoked herring, and liver. They overwhelm the light meat of chicken or turkey, and their strong aftertaste completely overrides the flavor of the meat. Stick with whites or yellows to go with whole roasted chicken or turkey. Blue potatoes mashed with smoked herring make a wonderful pate. Notice that blue potatoes don’t go very well with the seasonings involved in potato salad. Nor do blue potatoes go well with white or yellow potatoes. The aftertaste of the blues so strong that when blues are mixed with yellows or whites, all the potatoes taste like blues. The classical red, white and blue potato salad might be visually delightful, but it tastes much better without the blue potatoes.

Some red-fleshed varieties should be handled as honorary white/yellows. Others taste best handled as honorary blues. I love red-fleshed potatoes mashed with spaghetti sauce, butter, and Italian seasonings, and with Romano cheese melted on top.

I pulled this from her website, on the page about potatoes. It’s a fascinating read, and I recommend it, as I do her book.


Now back to our spring Garden:

There is a lovely volunteer patch of cilantro. If anyone needs any, please stop by and harvest. It’s at the beginning of a row close to the newly tilled herb garden.

A tiny patch of Swiss chard survived this mild winter completely unprotected. I’m going to watch it and see how it does.

The asparagus is coming up nicely. It’s not a huge patch, but gives us enough for maybe 2 or 3 good-sized harvests a week. A benefit to volunteering for our work parties is those who don’t have their own patch get to go home with it! Another fun thing about the asparagus: it appears to be the purple variety, so it fits well in the colored varieties theme.

The rhubarb looks good this second year. I cut a stalk yesterday to enjoy the wonderful sour flavor and got the big dose of vitamin C it comes with.

We put in the Brussels sprouts and cauliflower seedlings (both purple varieties) earlier in the week, with some red and yellow shallot bulbs mixed in as a good companion. And I stuck in the red romaine seedlings as well, but plan to start some more in case the snow gets them.

Our small strawberry patch is spreading in every direction, so I transplanted a bunch of runners to a bed at the beginning of the forest garden we had left for that purpose. But there are so many more that need to be thinned out, we will surely have some for sale at the first market, along with German chamomile and columbine seedlings, which are volunteering just about everywhere!

Warren put the last of the fruit trees (2 apples and a pear) in the forest garden, and now I just need to get the gooseberries, and we’ll have completed what we hoped to, plantings-wise.

At home, I’m starting seeds weekly, herbs and tomatoes and various vegetables. And I’ve been growing sweet potato slips as fast as they’ll root. My husband set me up a great seed-starting area in the basement with a couple of the big shop lights, but the slips are just on the south-facing window sills, and are rapidly taking over since I’m potting them after they get a good set of roots. With luck, we’ll have these to sell at Market as well, since they came from the fabulous sweet potatoes we grew there last year.

Looking forward, as I’m sure you all are, to a great season to

Buy It Locally Grown
   Or Raise your Own!

Julie

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Garden News April 1

Good Morning Gardeners,

“April, come she will.” My favorite first line of a song, this one from Simon and Garfunkel that covers the best time of year, in my opinion, April through September, all in under 2 minute.

http://youtu.be/Smp9dwVUuls

But what a March for the record books! A wholly different take on March Madness for sure. And although some have worried that we might have April or even May snow to pay us back for such an early spring, I keep thinking that every warm day gets us closer to the time when winter will be too far gone to come back.

The asparagus poked up these last couple of warm weeks…and then was frozen off. Nothing sadder than mushy asparagus spears in the garden when you’ve waited so long since last spring!

The peas I planted weeks ago are still not up. Or more likely were up and then snacked upon by resident rodents or birds. Looks like I’ll be replanting those and trying to figure out how to protect them.

I have seedlings I started of cauliflower and Brussels sprouts (minus a few that my cats decided made an excellent salad course!), plus red romaine, ready to put in as soon as I harden them off. Between the sporadic freezing nights and the lack of a fence to keep out predators, we’ll probably start them under row cover. The celeriac and celery seedlings are still tiny, and the peppers are just poking up through the soil. Today I will start fennel and some herbs.

This weekend is the PermaBlitz (Saturday from 10 to 4), and the weather looks like it is going to be fantastic: sunny but not too hot or too cold. If you’re interested in helping, let me know. It should be both educational and fun. I need to hear from you because I’ll be making lunch. It would be cook if we were to get enough asparagus to include in the menu. I’m definitely going to grind up some corn from last year and make cornbread. I have dried beans left too. Maybe a corn and bean dish.

That day will also be the first indoor market of the season, down at Old Gregg School, just in time to pick up fresh greens for Easter. More about that later this week.

So what’s happening in your yard and garden?