We Take Gardening Very Seriously Around Here

The Best Tasting Brussels Sprout Ever

This year we hauled a ton of produce out of our big (weedy) garden, and it was lovely. But I'm still a newbie, and I still make stupid mistakes. Recently I read a short story in which the main character is contemplating "the impossibly ambitious" seed catalogs which fell through her mail slot, and now I know precisely what she meant.

The weeds? They are everywhere.

"Honey! You won't believe what I found in the garden!"

Early in the season I bought a four pack of seedlings labeled "Brussels Sprouts." I hadn't seen anything on it resembling, well, Brussels Sprouts. But, hey, not every plant works out.

Last week my husband surprised both of us, by picking this Brussels Sprout:

Yeah. Go ahead and laugh. But isn't it cute?

Luckily, my husband is smarter than I am. These past two years he's done really well with organic potatoes. This year he's harvested about... 2/3 of his plants. And he's picked 86 pounds! And a half. But who's counting? This is the biggest one so far, at 2 pounds and half an ounce:

We've had potato salad twice this week. I'm sure you're surprised.

Happy October!

Gazpacho Season Arrives

The farmers' market is full of ripe tomatoes, and my moment has arrived. 

I like my gazpacho (a raw, chilled tomato soup) pureed very smooth, but I'm not fussy enough to remove every tomato seed. Although I shot the photo plain, to show the color, some freshly toasted croutons are marvelous on top. Diced avocado is also nice.

Peeling tomatoes is a cinch. Set a saucepan full of water to a boil, and make a bowl of ice water beside it. On the bottom of each tomato, cut an X with a knife. Place each tomato in turn into the boiling water for 30 - 60 seconds. (Very ripe tomatoes will begin to shed their skins immediately. Less ripe ones will take more time.) Even if the skin looks firmly attached, remove the tomato with a slotted spoon after 60 seconds and place it in the ice water. After a couple of minutes, remove and peel from the X upward. (Tip: peaches are easily peeled in just the same way.)

Notes: I don't put salt in gazpacho, because it has so much natural flavor. (Bonus!) 

Traditional Gazpacho, Serves 6

6 large ripe tomatoes, peeled and cored

1/2 a large red onion (or a whole small one)

2 garlic cloves (optional)

1 red pepper, cored and cut into 8 pieces

4-6 tablespoons vinegar, to taste

1 large cucumber, peeled and de-seeded

1/4 cup olive oil

Using a food processor or a blender, puree the tomatoes in batches, transferring each to a large bowl. Next, puree the onion and pepper and garlic together with the vinegar. Add to the bowl. Puree the cucumber and the olive oil together, and stir into the soup. Refrigerate until ice cold, and serve with croutons.

Quickles (Quick Pickles)

My cucumbers have overrun us. I'm a fan of pickles, but I haven't ventured into full-on preserving techniques yet. So when I ran across a recipe for quick refrigerator sweet pickles over at In Erika's Kitchen, I had to give it a try.

So now I'm a convert. But I also wanted to make a savory, garlicky pickle, so I did a little experimenting. I made this recipe with both an expensive wine vinegar and grocery store white vinegar. Much to my surprise, the white vinegar (which I ordinarily use to clean my coffee pot, not for cooking) was the winner. Who knew?

Sarah's Quickles

1 garden cucumber, sliced

1/4 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup water

1 heaping tablespoon sugar

1 garlic clove, mashed

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Place the cucumber slices in a clean jar with a working lid, and set aside.

Combine the vinegar, water, sugar, garlic and salt in a bowl, and whisk until sugar and salt have dissolved. Pour over the cucumber slices. If the liquid is insufficient to cover, add one tablespoon of vinegar and then one of water until you're satisfied.

Cover and refrigerate overnight. Serve cold. Pickles will keep for a week in the refrigerator.

Thank you to SortaCrunchy for sponsoring Your Green Resource, collecting posts like this one into a useful weekly menu!

Pruning Tomato Plants (Who Knew?)

Before we learned about pruning tomato plants, we had some trouble. Larger tomatoes, especially, did not ripen up properly. They weren't getting enough light and air. Many tomato plant ills are water borne, and therefore good ventillation can help stave off problems. 

At Cedar Circle Farm in East Thetford, VT, my husband watched a pruning demonstration. "They're ruthless," he said. "On an overgrown plant, even beautiful looking green fruits are lopped right off, if they're growing in the wrong place." Ouch. Tough love. 

Before learning about tomato pruning, I had assumed that a tomato plant needed all of its leaves to stay strong and healthy. But that's not at all true.

Here's what we learned:

1. Find the lowest branch with buds / fruits. Except for the branch of greenery immediately below it, cut off every branch below those. 
2. Any greenery that is touching the ground should be trimmed off, either at the trunk stem, or half way out the branch.
3. Every tomato plant needs to have a clearly identified main trunk, which should be supported. Secondary branches should be trimmed such that they do not touch the ground.
4. Cut out all suckers. A sucker is a branch which emerges from the crotch between the trunk and a branch.

See that little extra growth between the trunk & branch?

The result is plants which look scrawnier. But the fruits can get air and light, which discourages bacteria and mildew from accumulating. 

A City Girl Gardens Week 1: Anything is Possible

This will be my third season gardening, and this time I intend to do it right. I am starting to suspect that gardening has a lot in common with writing a novel. Lofty intentions meet reality right around mid July. And even while you begin enjoying the fruits of your labors, there are weeds that you never did get around to plucking.

I love the precision with which seed packets are written. The Tyee Spinach I just planted indicates that it should be sewn under 1/4 inch of soil, spaced at 1/2 inch apart. Perhaps one of the seeds I scattered now sits under 1/4" of soil, but only by happenstance. It is possible to buy a plastic device which will help you in this endeavor. It costs $1.97, plus shipping. But I'm not a girl who goes by the book. I wing it. (And it often shows.) I do read the book before I fling it aside. So I happen to know that seeds which are meant to be planted under very little soil need to see a little sunlight to start their germination. So I have not sunk these tender spinach seeds to China. 

The peas I started are another story. 1-2" on those. The last two years I have been hoodwinked by pea varieties that swear to not need support. This always proves false, and the peas plants lie snarled on the ground, their little tendrils reaching out, pathetically, for strong arms to hold them.

This year I wised up and planted the peas against the side of the barn. I'm going to trellis them on yarn I'm stringing from nails I pounded in. Yes, that sounds ugly. But the husband has forbidden me to use anymore invisible fishing line in my gardening endeavors. He's tired of detangling it from his mower blades.

Lastly, I've been pruning our copious wild blackberries. Let's say I don't exactly know what I'm doing here, but when the canes stand so tightly together that reaching the ripe fruit is impossible, there is quite a bit of guiltless hacking a girl can stomach. Sweating in my husband's burly man gloves, I snipped and snipped. I now have a giant pile of brambles with an uncertain future, a few scrapes, and a somewhat tidier blackberry patch. As with everything in life, there's surely more to be done.

Yay, Parasites!

My view of parasites is largely informed by letters home from my children's school. "Health notice" in the subject line of an email from the school is the equivalent of unexploded ordinance, right? While I'll probably still dread any mention of lice even after today, I've discovered that there is such thing as a good parasite.

See this guy? This giant green Tomato Hornworm (cool people also know it as the Manduca quinquemaculata) was attempting to chow its way through our Big Girls and Brandywines. Now, see all those white things on it? I thought they were eggs.

They're not eggs, they're the larvae of my new best friend, the Braconid wasp. The wasp larvae are eating the hornworms, helping to guarantee a new phalanx of soldier's for next year's fight, too. Go, little white squirmy parasites!

Review: The River Cottage Preserves Handbook by Pam Corbin

As I admitted before, I've always been a little afraid of preserving things. But since my husband planted 50 fruit trees and shrubs last year, I'd better figure it out before we're buried in overripe fruit. (Many of his darlings are still infants, so at least I've got a couple of years to educate myself.)

I was seduced by The River Cottage Preserves Handbook because of its beauty. I tucked it under my arm in the bookstore like a lost kitten, and never quite put it down again until the checkout counter. The still life photography of preserves in simple jars is extraordinarily attractive. The book's design is also gorgeous.

But worried that I'd succumbed to a pretty face at the expense of substance. Would this full price hardcover beauty be a good worker too? Things looked up as the bookseller handed back my credit card. "I love this book. The mint syrup is to die for."

I had nothing to fear. The Making Perfect Jams instructions were concise and supportive, and taught me things that I haven't read in any other book about canning. Did you know that tougher fruit skins will not soften properly if you add the sugar immediately? I, for one, did not.  The science of jamming and jellying is laid out nicely here, and I appreciate the table showing the pectin content of different fruits.  I can't wait to try the fruit leathers.

The recipes are quite adventurous. Apple lemon curd? Roasted Sweet Beet Relish? Yes, please.  I especially appreciate the section on cordials. Elderflower cordial! Come to mama.

The only hesitation I had after a thorough read was that the book was first published in the UK, and then converted. So the amounts of fruits nearly always read: "2.25 pounds plums," for example.  That's a kilo, people. Caught you! But then I realized that this quick conversion is less troubling in a book on preserves than anyplace else. When we pick our own fruit, it surely doesn't come to us in even poundage.

I'm smitten. And my kitchen scale is happy to take up the slack.