The Fall Garden: Decisions, decisions.

Earlier this year, I ordered shallots and two kinds of garlic to plant this fall.  Now, the question is, giving my limited space and the fact they will not finish growing until midsummer next year, how much space do I really want to dedicate to shallots and garlic.

This gets back to the question about what to grow.  I use piles of garlic every year.  If I grew garlic successfully, there is no way it would go to waste.  At the same time, I garlic is relatively inexpensive.  Shallots, on the other hand, are not.  I’m not sure why shallots are so much more expensive than garlic, but I tend to stave off buying them except for holiday occasions.  I wish this was not the case.   Today I planted ten shallots in the space where the pak choi had been growing.   Each shallot should give me 6-10 new shallots.  As a result, if none of them spoil and all of them grow reasonably well, I should have 60-100 shallots next year.  That would be pretty darn good, even if I save several for seed.  In theory I might not have to buy shallots again!

The question, then, is what I do with the remaining half pound of shallots and the two packages of garlic that I have.  The tomatoes will be coming out, and I could plant two rows of something there.  I also want to take out one row of chard, which would give me three rows.  The question is whether I want to dedicate that much of next year’s gardening space to garlic and shallots.  I’m going to wait another week or so before I start ripping things out.  Decisions, decisions.

On a happy note, back in March and again a few months later, I put down a couple of inches of composted horse manure.  When I turned the soil before putting the shallots in, I was very pleased with the condition of the soil.

The Fall Garden: The finishers and the slow growers

Well, in the ongoing Battle: Dirt Sack Vs. The Evil Blight, I may have to give The Dirt Sack some credit.  I’d say it is putting out as many tomatoes and takes up hardly any ground space.   I’ve pulled several romas off of it and dozens of the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes.  Was it worth the added expense and extra watering?  I don’t think so.   As soon as I take it down, I will respond to the recall.  It really was a terribly made piece of equipment.  That said, I do think that there is a lot of potential for upside down tomatoes.

Meanwhile The Evil Blight does seem to finally be striking at least one of the plants on the ground. I have found a few romas that were squishy without ever ripening, and many of the leaves are starting to turn yellow as seen below. I’ve cut the what-appears-to-be-blighted parts back and thrown them away.  I’m giving the tomatoes another week and a half.  Then I think their numbers will be up.

I keep wondering when the green beans will be done.  I am letting a couple of the plants go to seed in hopes of not having to buy seed next year.  The rest of the plants are still putting out plenty of beans for a side dish every few days, so we’ll just keep eating them until they are done.

Meanwhile, the leeks keep on growing extremely slowly. The biggest are about thumbs-width, depending on the size of the thumb.  They still have another month and a half before I was planning on eating them, but man do they crawl along.  Someday I would like to have an entire bed of just leeks, though.  Whether they will justify taking up a row in such a small garden is yet to be determined.

The brussels sprouts are absolutely fascinating.  The one big one has gotten HUGE while the smaller ones have stayed, well, small.  I’m not expectings many spouts from the three smallest ones; they simply have not grown that many axial leaves.  I think that despite being spaced fairly far apart, the two largest ones got such a leap on the smaller ones that the smaller ones just got crowded out.

What I find SO fascinating, though, is WHERE the sprouts come from!  Why they appear at the base of the leaves is a total mystery to me.

Wrapping it up, the purple sprouting broccoli is trucking along slowly in the front yard.  While I think they could do with more direct sunlight, this is actually about the size that I was hoping the cabbage would be.   Provided they don’t get frozen out, we’ll have fresh broccoli come March.

The Fall Garden: The Greens

I have much-neglected about writing about the fall garden, which is really too bad.  It’s doing shockingly well, too well, perhaps.

Back in August, I put in some baby pak choi, cabbage, and kale starts.

The pak choi grew at ridiculous rates.

I hadn’t planned on eating any of it by now, but two of the five plants were about to bolt, so I ended up having to pull them out!   I used 1 1/2 heads for a stir-fry.  Tonight, I’m going to try using the leaves from one or two in a vegetable soup in place of spinach.  The leaves are surprisingly spicy compared to the baby pak choi I’ve bought at the market.  I think it must be a different, stronger-flavored variety.

I put in six Red Express cabbages.  I think they may be growing too fast:

The goal was to get them big enough to surive being frozen out, then have them head up in the spring.  This is one of the smaller ones.  I’ve read that if they’re too big going into spring, they’ll bolt rather than head up.  I really didn’t expect them to grow this quickly.

Meanwhile, there is kale to be eaten, and I haven’t even begun to think about what to do with that yet:

Here is the chard AFTER the two major haircuts over the last few weeks.  It looks like there will still be plenty of meals coming our way.

If I accomplished one thing this year, this was it.

As I look back over the gardening season, I think the best thing I’ve done this year is provide some habitiat for bees in my previously-blighted front yard.  I’ve seen bees on the lavendar nearly every day this fall, whereas before there wasn’t a bee to be seen.   In the spring, depending on how much the strawberries end up doing, I’m going to try and plant more flowers to continue to attract beneficial insects.

I’ve figured out the secret…

I’ve figured out the secret to eating seasonally.  Lore has it that the food tastes so good, it’ll spoil you for everything less.  I’d say that’s at least 75% of it.  Since either buying produce at the farmer’s market or growing it, the bar has definitely been raised.  I do think there is another factor at work:

If you eat what you grow and you have a lot of it, you may end up so tired of a particular vegetable that the next thing in line tastes even better for it.   If you’re not the type of person who escapes the kitchen for a local restaurant, I imagine this is magnified 10-fold.

(I am getting tired of tomatoes.  I don’t think it is PC to actually say that you are tired of eating tomatoes off the vine, but I am getting there.  I was doing OK keeping up with the tomatoes up until a couple of weeks ago, but having had to take time away from the garden, I am way, way, way behind.  The chard has been tackled.  The pak choi has been partially tackled.  It was time to deal with the tomatoes. Next, while I am letting some of the green beans go to seed, I really should continue picking the rest.  I keep thinking they are done, but no.)

One of the things I have learned from this year’s tomato growing experiences is that, in the future, if I have sufficient space, I really could grow enough romas to put up to get through the rest of the year.  The bad news is, doubting whether my romas would ever turn red, I put up 30 lbs of tomatoes from the farmer’s market.  I don’t want to put up any more!  So, I have to find things to do with them.

I pulled out nearly 3 1/2 lbs of romas today, and I haven’t even dared think about the dozens upon dozens of cherry tomatoes waiting impatiently for me.  I eat as many as I can while standing in my garden plot, but there’s only so many of these things you can eat at a time!

I am trying out a new recipe for a fresh tomato soup.  It’s from the newly-published Cooks’ Country cookbook.  That said, I’m adapting both the proportions and some of the instructions.  This may be problematic for reasons mentioned below.  If it’s a success, I give total credit to the Cooks’ Country folk.  If it’s a failure, it’s really not their fault; I’m ignoring one rather crucial instruction.  It’s a little different than my other tomato soup recipes I’ve made, but I was pretty much able to make it with stuff straight out of the garden.

I cored and quartered the tomatoes and chopped up the three remaining small onions.  I threw in a few peeled cloves of garlic, and drizzled the entire thing with three tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of sugar.

Now, the recipe both called for more tomatoes and instructed the cook to spread them on a large roasting pan.  I don’t have a large roasting pan at the moment, so I’m using my buffet casserole.  The mixture is supposed to be roasted at 450 degree for 1 1/2 hours.  The potential problem is that, with the veggies so close together, they seem to simmer and steam rather than roast, per se.  BUT, this is supposed to end up as soup, so I’m hoping that I’ll hit close enough to the mark for it to still taste good.  We’re about 45 minutes into it, and it smells pretty amazing.

The roasted tomatoes and onions are incredible.  The problem is that when I pureed them, per the recipe, they make a VERY thick puree.  This is supposed to be the basis for the rest of the soup.   The recipe called for either slicing OR plum tomatoes, and I had plum tomatoes.   Well, plum tomatoes have much less liquid to spare than slicing tomatoes, so while I was worried about there being too much liquid, the opposite has happened.

Then, realizing that I needed another pound of fresh tomatoes to mix with the basil that goes into the soup, I went down and picked a bunch of cherry tomatoes.  Now, whether it is the cherry tomatoes or the puree, the soup is too sweet.  I added very little sugar, so it’s not that; it is the tomatoes.  Too thick. Too sweet.  What to do.

(—– Half Hour Time out—–)

OK, despite everything I said above, I think there was an error in the recipe, which is so uncharacteristic of those folks, but this was so far from the mark for them, I think they forgot to write something down.  The recipe didn’t call for ANY additional water or broth.  This might have been OK with slicing tomatoes, but definitely not with my tomatoes.  Considering I had downsized the proportions pretty evenly, I don’t think that was the problem either.

I tried adding water at first.  That thinned it out, but the soup was still thick and sweet.  I went out and grabbed a goodish sprig of oregano, chopped it up, and threw it in.  That rounded out the flavors somewhat, but we still couldn’t imagine sitting down to a bowl of this.   I threw in quite a bit of chicken broth and some more salt, and A LOT of freshly ground pepper.  That did the trick.   It was no longer too sweet or too thick and actually tasted like a pretty great tomato soup.   We mopped it up with grilled cheese sandwiches made with homemade bread and handmade Beecher’s Flagship cheese.

Too much food.

Due to two trips and a recent family crisis, I have been largely away from the garden and away from the blog.  Now, once again, I find myself with TOO much fresh food.    I had given the chard a serious trim two weeks ago, pulling out what amounted to 1 1/2 lbs of JUST leaves…no stems, but due to various life events, it ended up going to waste.  Today, I gave it another “trim”, and this is what I pulled out:

That ended up being two pounds of leaves after all the stems were removed.  That will make A LOT of ravioli.  I have started the process, and I will write about it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I have had more tomatoes than I could have imagined, even from the now-recalled Dirt Sack.  The fall garden, which I haven’t really written about, also is growing MUCH faster than anticipated, so I have an unexpected bounty of pak choi that must be eaten soon.

All this from such a small space.  It kinda blows my mind.

Really ridiculously easy pasta.

This is my new favorite easy-as-pie pasta recipe…at least as long as the cherry tomatoes keep coming.  When the cherry tomatoes started turning red, I turned to The Herbfarm Cookbook for ideas.  This recipe is so simple, it’s hardly a recipe.  This is cooking at its easiest.

This feeds two:

Heat oven to 450.  Start a large pot of water to boil.  Add salt to the water when boils.

Halve about a cup of cherry tomatoes.  Toss with a little olive oil, a pinch of salt, and about a tablespoon of fresh thyme.  Spread evenly on a rimmed baking sheet or enameled cast iron skillet.

Add 8 oz of dried spaghetti to the water.  While spaghetti cooks, place tomatoes in oven and cook for 6-8 minutes, depending on the size of the cherry tomatoes.  The tomatoes will shrivel up a bit.  Remove from oven.

When spaghetti is cooked, drain and toss with tomatoes.  Divide onto two warmed bowls.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and a bit of parsley, if available.

It doesn’t get any easier.

What does one do with cabbage?

I pulled this nearly 2  1/2-pounder out of the garden this week.   To cabbage growers, my ability to produce a cabbage will not seem a very grandiose achievement, but I’m still dazzled at how the head went from some slightly crumpled leaves to a dense ball in just a matter of weeks.  I wish I hadn’t unnecessarily pulled the other cabbage plants out.  I do have a 1-pounder that I started eating this evening, but I think I really ended up wasting those plants.  Alas.

What I do appreciate about cabbage is how much food you get for the space.  Three and a half pounds of cabbage will go a long way as side dishes.   The question is, what to do with this much maligned vegetable?  I am neither a fan of any sort of recipes that makes cabbage limp, nor am I a big fan of coleslaw.  As I’ve been looking around, I’ve realized, as should have been obvious, that cabbage has really fallen out of favor with both cooks and cookbook authors.  Given what a sturdy food cabbage is, this really is a shame.  At the same time, I have zero interest in eating something that doesn’t taste good.

My favorite recipe for green cabbage is a stir fry with bean sprouts and peanuts.  You can find it at www.cooksillustrated.com.  I’d love to post the recipe, but it’s detailed enough that I don’t think I can fairly post it without violating their intellectual property rights.   I tried a more simple saute this evening that I enjoyed far more than I thought I would.  This was an experiment, so I cut off 1/4 pound of the smallest cabbage.  I sliced it very thin.  I melted a half tablespoon of butter, then added about a tablespoon of water. I added the cabbage and a pinch of fresh thyme.  I let it braise, covered, for about seven minutes, until the pan was fairly dry and the cabbage was crispy.  I sprinkled on a little salt and pepper and gave it a try.  It was good!  I think the key here is to not add too much liquid and to minimize the cooking time so the cabbage still has some crunch to it.

I’ve put in five cabbage plants into my fall garden, but more on that later.

This was unfortunate

Just as my tomatoes were really starting to turn red,  we had a major downpour.  Despite watering the tomatoes regularly, the difference in the water levels in the soil was so drastic that these guys just couldn’t handle it and split apart.   That was really too bad.

DNA is amazing.

I am becoming more and more enthralled by the supernatural abilities of plants. This was the bean trellis on August 1st:

This is it today, a mere three weeks later: (you have to forgive my photo shooting skills.  The screen on my camera has gone blank, giving “point and shoot” a whole new meaning.

I am dumbfounded at how fast they have grown and how many beans I have pulled off of them.   Considering I was wondering whether they were going to make it AT ALL, they have proved me wrong ten times over.  These produce a thin haricot vert, which are thinner than many green beans.  I’d pay about $8/lb at the farmers market for these.  Instead, for the price of the trellis, which is reusable, I pull the off by the handful for free.

Meanwhile, someone has to explain the magic of cabbage to me.   They start out like this

and SOMEHOW end up looking like this!

Now, there really weren’t that many leaves that folded under, so I have to wonder HOW the cabbage actually grows?  Do the leaves that fold under keep expanding despite the fact they are curled up under other leaves?  I ask because, a week ago, the cabbage felt like it wasn’t going to be firm at all, and I was really wondering if I had wasted a lot of space.  Now, they are firm to the touch, and I sort of regret pulling out two that didn’t seem to be doing so well.  My guess is that they would have grown much more than I thought they would have.  I’m just amazed they have turned into actual heads of cabbage!

Meanwhile the various sets of chives that I was pretty sure I was going to kill while propagating them have all put on inches of new growth during the last couple of rainy days.   Despite the fact the soil does not yet have any redeeming value, I’ve decided that chives are pretty much indestructible.

The yard IS starting to get healthier, though.   My lavender is starting to bloom, and it is is attracting insects I have never seen before in the yard.  There was a very pretty butterfly or moth on them earlier, which was a welcome sight.