I am completely smitten with this combination of snow peas and sea holly (Eryngium spp.). The silvery green, curvy foliage of the peas and their delicate, dangling pods contrasts perfectly with the spiny sea holly flowers. To steal this idea, simply plant a sea holly at the front of a pea trellis and sow peas all around. As the peas grow, they’ll use the sea holly as scaffolding to reach their trellis.
Yesterday the bumblebees were out in force at my P-Patch. I found this guy just a few plots away head first in a mass of purple flowers. He was completely oblivious to me. So I got up close. Really close. I could see pollen clinging to his little hairy body.
It was awesome! And also a totally appropriate way to spend my evening, because this week is the 2nd annual National Pollinator Week. I think that you’ll understand why pollinators deserve their very own week when you ponder these facts I discovered at the Pollinator Partnership and Xerces Society websites:
70% to 80% of the world’s flowering plants require pollination to produce fruit and seeds. This includes 30% of the crops humans eat, including common garden crops like squash, melons, and blueberries.
Nearly 200,000 insects pollinate plants, but they aren’t the only players in the pollination game. About 1000 species of birds, bats, and small mammals also act as pollinators.
4000 species of native bees live in North America.
The estimated value of insect pollinated crops in just the United States was $20 billion in 2000.
Diseases, pests, habitat decline, pesticides, and climate change pose a major threat to pollinators, but gardeners can help!
The Xerces Society has an excellent article on DIY nests you can build for native bees, including bumblebees and orchard mason bees. You can also design your garden to be more pollinator friendly.
Grow natives. Our native pollinators evolved with native plants, so growing a diverse range of natives that bloom from early spring through winter helps provide a consistent food source for insects.
Go organic. Pesticides don’t just kill insect pests, they kill beneficial insects, including pollinators. Pesticides that kill more than just the target insect are called broad spectrum, and even organic pesticides (like pyrethrum and rotenone) can be broad spectrum. If you have an issue with an insect pest, focus on preventing the problem in the future rather than reaching for a spray. My go-to resource for dealing with garden problems organically is the Insect, Disease & Weed ID Guide (Rodale, 2001). It’s a very practical and easy- to-use book…my copy is falling apart because I look at it so much!
Provide water. Pollinators get thirsty, too. Make sure they have a place to drink in your garden by putting a few small rocks in a shallow tray and setting it in your garden. Fill the tray with water and then sit back and watch as all sorts of insects pay it a visit. Change the water daily to prevent a mosquito problem.
If you’re interested in discovering more tips for making your yard a better pollinator habitat, definitely check out the Xerces Society—a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon dedicated to invertebrate conservation—and the Pollinator Partnership, a group of 90 organizations that teamed up to help educate people about pollinators. I also really love the blog Pollinators Welcome. Gloria has planted her yard with pollinators in mind and her posts are always full of great tips, ideas, and facts about pollinators.
Here’s a look at a few other flowers that got some buzz love from the bees last night:
I have a crazy, all out, intense love affair with vegetables. Don’t get me wrong, I like flowers, but most of them don’t taste very good. And that, in my book, is a deal breaker. I’d really rather spend my time with warty winter squash, speckled lettuces, and baby radishes.
So imagine my delight when I stumbled across these gorgeous, linoleum block prints of vegetables by the gardener and Bay Area artist Rigel Stuhmiller. Rigel starts by drawing each vegetable portrait into a block of linoleum and carving out all of the negative space—leaving behind the image. She then hand colors and prints each portrait.
I emailed Rigel to ask her about the prints and she wrote back that she was inspired by the amazing diversity of vegetables grown at Chino Farms—a family owned farm near San Diego that sells about 75 different varieties of vegetables to restaurants and at a farm stand. Rigel says that the farm feels like a second home to her and that the vegetables are the best she’s ever had. While I won’t have a chance to try the Chino Farms produce in person this summer, I think Rigel’s prints are definitely the next best thing.
To find out more about the linoleum print process, check out Rigel’s step-by-step explanation on her website, where you can also find more of her prints, and purchase them (the prints sell for $10 each and the notecards are $18 for a packet of six).
On Sunday evening we paid a visit to our P-Patch to do some weeding. In early spring, I planted a few baby Dinosaur kale (also called ‘Lacinato’ kale) along the border of our plot. It now stands nearly two feet tall and its rumply, crumply leaves were just begging to be harvested. After digging out a slightly embarrassing amount of weeds, I plucked a few kale leaves, pulled up some immature spring garlic, snipped off a few sprigs of oregano and walked home with recipe ideas whirling around in my head.
After considering frittatas and stir fries, I settled on making a hearty wild rice bowl, laced with ribbons of kale, and studded with asparagus, chunks of spring garlic, and feta cheese. To give the dish a little zip, I tossed everything together with a simple oregano balsamic vinaigrette and topped it off with a sprinkle of toasted pine nuts. It was delicious!
Wild Rice with Spring Vegetables and Feta
A few months ago I discovered that Trader Joe’s sells pre-cooked packages of wild rice. It doesn’t compare to freshly cooked wild rice, but it’s tasty and you can’t beat its preparation time (3 minutes). The rest of this dish comes together in just a few minutes, making it a quick and tasty option for weeknights. Jon’s a vegetarian, so I served this as our main dish, but it would also make a great side for roasted chicken.
Don’t be thrown off by the large amount of garlic called for. Spring garlic has smooth skin (much like an onion) and is milder than mature garlic, so you can get away with using lots. If you can’t find spring garlic, use two cloves of minced garlic or chop up four or five cloves of roasted garlic.
You’ll need:
2 cups cooked wild rice
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for stir frying
1 or 2 bulbs of spring garlic (about 1/3 cup roughly chopped)
1 pound asparagus
6 large Dinosaur kale leaves
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 teaspoons white balsamic vinegar (if you don’t have white, just use red balsamic)
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
1 tsp maple syrup
1 ½ tsp oregano, minced
2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
¾ cup crumbled feta
Salt and Pepper to taste
Calendula petals for garnish
Instructions:
1. Wash the garlic thoroughly. Then, slice off its roots and chop the bulb(s) into pieces. Wash the asparagus, cut off the woody ends, and slice the spears into ½ inch long pieces. Remove the center rib of each kale leaf and then slice the leaves into thin ribbons. Place the kale into a colander and wash thoroughly.
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a wide skillet until it shimmers. Add the garlic and asparagus, stirring occasionally until the garlic begins to brown and the asparagus is crisp tender (about 5 minutes).
3. Add the kale, with water still clinging to its leaves, into the pan and cook until it’s bright green and just barely beginning to wilt (about 1 minute). Remove the vegetables from the heat and stir them into the cooked wild rice. Toast the pine nuts in a toaster oven or in a dry skillet until lightly browned.
4. For the vinaigrette: In a medium bowl, whisk together the vinegars, garlic, maple syrup, and 1 teaspoon of the oregano. As you whisk, slowly add in the olive oil. Continue whisking until emulsified. Add salt and pepper to taste.
5. Pour a half a cup of the vinaigrette over the rice and toss to coat. Then, mix in the cheese and adjust the flavors, adding more vinaigrette, salt, or pepper if needed. Serve in large bowls and top with toasted pine nuts and a sprinkle of minced oregano. Garnish with calendula petals to add a burst of color, if you like.
I decided to give our pepper plants a little TLC by building them a miniature hoop house right over their raised bed. I’ve nicknamed the structure The Pepper Palace, but Jon thinks it looks more like a Conestoga wagon. Either way, it’s keeping our plants toasty warm!
We constructed our little greenhouse with rebar, copper tubing, and plastic sheeting. As the summer warms, I’ll probably take off the plastic and replace it with TufBel—an extremely durable row cover developed in Japan. Tufbel lets in tons of light and it will keep the peppers warm without baking them (peppers tend to drop their blossoms if temps rise over 80 degrees F or drop below 60 degrees F at night). I’m also planning on leaving the hoop house up over the winter and growing spinach, cold hardy lettuces, kale, and chard inside.
Here’s a little photo essay that details the construction of our peppers’ new digs. The whole process took less than a half and hour!
To help ensure the hoop house stays upright during windstorms, we used 3/8-inch rebar stakes to support the hoops. We purchased the rebar in 2-foot lengths and used a heavy hammer to pound the stakes about 20 inches into the ground. Our raised bed is about 6 feet long and we put a stake in each corner of the bed and one on either side of the middle.
Most people build mini hoop houses with flexible PVC tubing, but we happened to have a roll of copper tubing hanging around in the garage. Not only is the copper easy to cut with a hack saw, it looks pretty, and doesn’t contain phthalates or other toxic chemicals. I can’t wait to see how the copper weathers over the winter. To create the hoops, just slide one end of the tubing over a stake, arch the tubing across the bed, and slip the other end of the tubing over the other stake.
Peppers typically top out at about 24 inches, so we made our hoops about 36 inches tall. Make sure that the tubing you use is slightly larger in diameter than the rebar stakes. This way you can easily slide it over the rebar.
Drape plastic sheeting (or a row cover) over the frame, making sure to leave extra plastic so you can easily weigh it down. Right now the plastic is secured with rocks, but I plan on stapling 1 x 1 pieces of board to the edges. I think this will make the plastic easier to roll up when I need to water and it will look neater.
Here’s a peek inside the hoop house. Today after work I’m going to plant some basil seedlings down the middle of the bed and mulch with composted chicken bedding around the peppers.
Swapping seeds is an old tradition among gardeners, but I recently participated in a gardening swap that took things to a whole new level. It was the Punk Rock Garden Swap organized by Renee, who is also the garden blogger over at Modish—an altogether lovely blog that celebrates handcrafted goods.
I like Renee’s posts because she really celebrates the indie, just-get-out-there-and-make-sure-you-get-your-hands-dirty aspect of gardening. Renee and her friend Taylor at Mercenary Gardens recently developed a theory that gardening is the new punk rock, and I happen to think that it’s pretty much the best theory since Relativity. Here’s what she has to say about it in her own words:
Besides having plans to take over the world, we also both believe that gardening is the new punk rock; and no, I don’t mean the puffed up pop of Green Day, but I mean raw, grimy, sometimes a bit funny, awkward, garagey and altogether authentic underground. (click here to read the full post)
To that end, Renee organized a swap with a punk rock garden theme. The rules were to send 3 items that fit with the theme and spend less than $5. I had so much fun putting together my swaps, and I pretty much stalked the mailman each day until my packages arrived.
It was like my birthday when the box sent by Illeana of india*romeo showed up on my porch. When I opened it up, the first thing I saw was a red SOLO cup, which happened to be protecting a petite tomato labeled ‘Mystery Tomato’. Apparently Illeana got a little mixed up when she was transplanting her seedlings, so I’ll have to wait and see if I got a ‘Cherokee Purple’ or a ‘Lemon Drop’ cherry tomato. I was delighted someone sent me a seedling that they started and cannot wait to see what it turns out to be!
Illeana also shared three kinds of seed and packaged them up in the most adorable homemade seed packets (see the top photo). She included ‘Dukat’ dill, which will come in so handy, because I’m planning on making a bunch of pickles this summer. She also tucked in packets of ‘Erbette’ chard and ‘Kaleidoscope’ carrots. But my favorite thing in the package was a photo of crocus growing against a mossy picket fence that Illeana took on a walk this spring (it’s peaking out from behind the tomato in the photo above).
I also got a really fabulous box of goodies from K8tron, who sent me a packet of ‘Yellow Pear’ tomato seeds (one of my favorites!), a terracotta plant marker for sage (perfect for my new herb garden) and a very cool glittery beetle magnet.
If you’re interested in swapping, check out Swap-Bot. This site makes it easy to organize your own swap or you can sign up for one. It’s fun, and you never know; you might get your very own mystery tomato in the mail.
Last Saturday morning Jon and I paid a visit to our friends, Peter and Chloe. On the way there, we picked up a few pastries from Bakery Nouveau (a completely addictive French bakery located just a few blocks from our house), and I brought my camera to document Peter and Chloe’s highly effective and unusual organic weed control: goats!
Like so many gardeners in Seattle (including myself), Peter and Chloe found ivy, Himalayan blackberries, and bindweed creeping over the fence and into their yard. Rather than spend tons of time digging up the beastly plants, or using chemicals, they rented four absolutely adorable goats from the Goat Lady!
For just $25 per goat, Jill (the Goat Lady) dropped the goats off in their backyard for a week. All Peter and Chloe had to do was move the goats around the yard (they are tether-trained) and check on them a few times a day. The goats ate weeds to their hearts’ content, and they also left tons of free fertilizer in their wake!
I particularly liked two of the goats, Sunny, who loved being petted, and Twitch, a small goat with a very sweet face.
At the beginning of May, I bought a handful of garnet colored rhubarb stalks at our Sunday morning farmer’s market. That afternoon, I mixed up a crisp with a strawberry rhubarb base and a pistachio crumble topping. The crisp was good, but I wasn’t in love. So I tried making it again last week when I was visiting my parents.
They live in the kind of neighborhood that has block parties and where no one locks their doors. My parents’ neighbor, Abraham, is pushing 100 years old, but he still grows roses that he shares with the neighborhood ladies and keeps up a gigantic patch of rhubarb. The rhubarb grows all along the outside of Abraham’s back fence and it’s free for the picking. The plants have slender, pale green stalks blushed with just a hint of red and huge prehistoric-looking leaves.
Old-fashioned rhubarb like Abraham’s has more flavor than the popular deep red varieties and it looks gorgeous paired up with bright red strawberries. I thought this rhubarb might be the secret ingredient for my crisp, but it wasn’t. The pistachio crumble topping still overwhelmed the strawberry/rhubarb base and the whole concoction was just too sweet.
I’ve given up on the crisp recipe for now, but yesterday I cooked up a lovely strawberry rhubarb sauce. It couldn’t be easier to make and its bright pink color is nothing short of irresistible. I’ve already tried it stirred into a bowl of Greek yogurt and spooned over angel food cake. In both cases, I sprinkled chopped, unsalted pistachios over the top of the sauce. Yum!
Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce
Strawberries lend this sauce its luscious pink color and sweet flavor. Use small, fully red, highly fragrant berries (if you don’t have a strawberry patch at home, check out Local Harvest to find U-pick farms in your area). If you can, use stalks from an old fashioned variety of rhubarb, like ‘Victoria’ or ‘Glaskin’s Perpetual’. This sauce has just a hint of tartness. If you have a sweet tooth, decrease the brown sugar to one tablespoon and up the white sugar to a scant ½ cup.
What you’ll need:
2 cups sliced rhubarb (about 4 to 5 medium stalks)
2 ½ heaping cups of strawberries, sliced
1/3 cup white sugar
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon flour
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions:
1. Pre-heat the over to 375 degrees F. Wash the rhubarb stalks and then slice them into ½ inch pieces. Carefully wash the strawberries*. Use a paring knife to core the strawberries, then slice them thinly.
2. In a medium sized mixing bowl combine the rhubarb with 2 cups of the strawberries and the remaining ingredients. Set aside for about 15 minutes or until the berries release their juices.
3. Pour the strawberry rhubarb mixture into a casserole dish and cover. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven. Give the sauce a good stir, let it cool for five or ten minutes, and then add in the remaining 1/2 cup of sliced berries. The sauce tastes good hot, cold, and at room temperature. Serve it over ice cream, pound cake, shortbread, angel food cake, or short cakes. Or stir it into your favorite yogurt.
For more rhubarb inspiration, check out the Rhubarb and Raspberry Clafoutis from La Tartine Gourmande. Béa is an amazingly gifted food stylist and cook, and her beautiful photos and charming stories always make my day!
* On a side note, the Environmental Working Group lists strawberries as one of their Dirty Dozen–a list of the top 12 most pesticide contaminated crops–which is a great reason why you should try growing some organic strawberries at home.
I paid a visit to the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City in April and vendors were selling huge, garden-ready tomatoes, big pepper plants, and tons of basil. The entire scene gave me an intense case of envy, because the we have to wait until late May to plant tomatoes in Seattle and it’s best not to even think about basil until mid-June.
In the Maritime Pacific Northwest (and in places that have short summer seasons or cool nights), growing tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and melons is a huge challenge. Tomatoes grow best when temperatures stay above 60 degrees F and below about 85 degrees F. But in Seattle, our average nighttime temperatures never get above 57 degrees and our average daytime highs, even in the height of summer, barely nudge past 75.
Over the last few years I’ve discovered a few strategies to help out my tomatoes, and I thought I’d share them with you. Even if you’re lucky and live in the Midwest or Mid-Atlantic states (aka Tomato Heaven), these tips can help you get started earlier and grow bigger, better, healthier plants:
1. Choose the right variety. I avoid varieties that take longer than 85 days to mature and mainly grow ones that were bred to thrive in cooler climates or shorter seasons. I like ‘Oregon Spring’ and ‘Legend’, which were both bred at Oregon State University to set fruit at cool temperatures. I also like a few heirlooms that were bred in Siberia (I figure if they grow in Siberia, they’ll grow in my garden!), including ‘Odessa’ and ‘Moskovitch’. I also always plant ‘Green Zebra’ and several cherry tomatoes, especially ‘Black Cherry’, ‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’, and ‘Yellow Pear’. If you like big, beefsteak tomatoes try ‘Chianti Rose’, I’ve had great luck with it!
2. Heat up the soil. Tomatoes and other warm season crops like to sink their roots into soil that is at least 60 degrees F (but 65 or 70 is even better). Rather than wait for my soil to heat up, I use plastic to help things along. Start by weeding your bed and raking it smooth. Then water it until the soil is soaked down to at least 8 inches. Stretch clear plastic across the soil as tightly as you can and weigh down the edges with soil or rocks. The plastic acts like a greenhouse and heats up the soil. I usually leave it on for two or three weeks before planting.
2. Plant in a trench. It pays to bury as much of a tomato stem as possible because the little hairs on the stem develop into roots when they come into contact with soil. When I’m ready to plant my tomatoes, I pull the plastic off the soil (you can leave it on all summer, but I don’t like the way it looks). I then plant my tomatoes in a shallow trench that is about four inches deep and as long as my tomato plant is tall. Before planting, pinch off any flowers and the bottom leaves on your tomato plant. Then, lay it sideways in the trench and bury the root ball and bottom portion of the stem in soil. Gently bend the top of the tomato up so the leaves are above the soil line. Don’t worry, the plant looks crooked at first, but it straightens up as it grows. I space my plants about 3 feet apart to ensure plenty of air circulation.
3. Mulch. A lot. After planting, I water the plant in really well and then pour 1 cup each of diluted fish emulsion fertilizer and liquid seaweed onto the root zone. Then I apply about ½ inch of compost around the base of the plants and a 3 inch deep layer of grass clippings or straw on top of that. The compost slowly releases nutrients every time you water and the mulch insulates the soil, which helps it stay warm. This mulch system also prevents moisture from evaporating out of the soil quickly and keeps down weeds, which means I have to spend less time watering and weeding. After mulching I install super sturdy tomato cages made from wire mesh around each plant.
4. Keep the plants warm. This year I’ve placed Wall-O-Waters around each of my tomatoes. The Wall-O-Waters look like water filled teepees and they act like mini solar greenhouses. The water absorbs energy from the sun during the day and then releases heat at night, which helps keep the tomatoes warm and growing fast.
5. Water at the base. The best way to prevent fungal diseases like late and early blight is to keep your tomato foliage dry. I do this by watering my plants at their base. This year I’m investing in soaker hoses, but in the past I’ve always hand watered. The trick to hand watering is to get a water wand with a long neck and a toggle that turns off the stream of water at the handle. That way you can bring the hose over to the garden and nestle the wand in at the base of the plant. Then, simply turn the water on to a slow stream and water the plant deeply. Before moving on to the next plant, turn off the stream of water. This saves water and prevents you from unnecessarily spraying your tomatoes and other plants with water. I try to soak the soil about 6 to 8 inches deep every time I water, and I wait until the soil dries down to my second knuckle before I water again.
6. Fertilize, but not too much. I’m still working on building really healthy soil in my P-Patch and the new soil in our raised beds needs more organic matter. This means I have to fertilize a bit during the growing season. Typically, I spray my plants once a month with a half and half mixture of diluted liquid fish emulsion and liquid seaweed. I spray the entire plant, including the undersides of the leaves, until it is dripping.
This system has helped me grow great tomatoes, but I’m super curious to find out what tricks you guys use on your tomatoes.
© 2008 DigginFood
