Deceptive Abundance

A look into my backyard shows a deceptively verdant garden.  The apple trees are covered with fruit, but this has been a terrible year for flies, and the apples are already riddled with larval tunnels.  The tomato patch, on the left side of the picture, has the tallest plants I have ever grown, but we have yet to get a single tomato out of it.  There has been too much rain.  The ground cherries, in the right bottom corner, seem to have finally won the battle against the flea beetles, but it’s been a hard fight.  Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Peppermint Soap really does work wonders, but I lost four plants before I found the right mixture to save them.

Only the grapes are flourishing, and we have an obscene number of them.  Both the Concord and the unidentified white grapes that came from nowhere are doing well.  There will be juice, jelly, and maybe even wine. 

But it doesn’t feel like summer without tomatoes.  Kathy Rhodes has posted a piece from her book Pink Butterbeans about the joy of tomato sandwiches on her blog, First Draft.  It’s made me mindful of how late in the season it is not to have had a single garden-fresh Stupice or Cherokee Green.  Even the Mexico Midgets, which have always been reliable producers in the best weather, are still only putting out green fruit.  Only the Amish Paste seem able to withstand the wet; there are several tomatoes on those plants that should be ripe in the next few days.  So there will be canned sauce, but that is hardly a consolation to a woman mourning big slices of sunsets.  Thanks, Kathy, for the remembrance of summer, since it seems this year there will not be much of the real thing.

Nasturtium Kimchi

I planted a huge barrel planter by the front walk full of nasturtiums this spring thinking that it would be nice if we could eat the flowers.  But, although I like their peppery flavor, I find that the texture of the flower becomes clingy when mixed in with salad, particularly after it’s dressed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I am taking a page from Maybelle’s Mom, who has inspired me to think of everything as potential kimchi, and I’ve made a batch of her Pea Shoot Kimchi with a few substitutions.  I have substituted nasturtium flowers and leaves for the pea shoots, replaced half the ground Korean Pepper with paprika (I was afraid the pepper would completely overpower the flavor of the flowers), turnip for daikon (only because I had it on hand) and lime juice for amchur powder (so we’ll have to have bitters in our gin and tonics tonight).  Oh, and I added some toasted sesame seeds.

I have to say, this experiment has not been a huge success.  It has worked, but not so well that I’m planning to plant a bigger crop of nasturtiums next year so that I can make this more often. 

The kimchi flavor itself is wonderful, but the flavor of the flower is completely overwhelmed by the other tastes, and the bright colors did not survive the process so it’s not a particularly pretty condiment. 

So, a lovely and whimsical idea… and I’m glad I tried it… but if you come for lunch next week, you’ll more likely get the flowers as a layer in a creamcheese and pumpernickle sandwich.  That has, so far, been the only really wonderful use I’ve found for them.

Full Spring

In West Virginia, the seasons overlap… winter seeping into summer nights, summer flitting back for a warm afternoon in mid-January.  Weather, then, is not the defining element of a season.  Instead, we know them by their artificacts.  Winter is defined by skeletal, sculptural trees and dried brown grass.  Autumn by the return of the scent of woodsmoke to the air and the oft-rhapsodied colors of the dying leaves. 

 

The first artifact of spring is the algae bloom in the creek beds and drainage ditches.  Within a few weeks, these will become fetid pools, but when the first snows melt they are bright and fresh-smelling. 

Next will come to the spring onions and ramps that spring up seemingly overnight and signal the beginning of the spring planting season.  Only frost hardy plants can be put in the ground before mid-May here.  No, that isn’t true.  Only frost hardy plants SHOULD be put in the ground before mid-May.  It’s certainly possible to plan earlier.  I’ve ruined many a crop of seedlings by getting cocky and planting them early.  Killing frosts can come late in the season, long after the daffodils have bloomed and died back again and the strawberries and lettuces are producing their first crop.  Gardening is at least as much an act of faith as it is an act of creation.

Full spring is here when the ground is littered with the shells of bird’s eggs.  The shard of light blue from a robin’s nest, or deep blue from an eastern bluebird.   White with dark brown speckles for a house sparrow, or lighter brown for a white-breasted nuthatch. There is an egg broken and spilling its golden promise on our porch this morning; I guess it to be the unrealized offspring of the muthatch couple who has set up a nest in our ancient chestnut tree, but am not enough of an ornathologist to know that it is not from the house sparrows who live in the eaves ’round the back of the house.  My guess is based more on proximity to the nest than on the egg itself. 

It has been cold and rainy the last few days; the threat of frost hangs in the early morning hours when the last of the previous day’s warmth is given up to the air and the real chill sets in, but so far we have been spared.  It’s been a good spring for magnolia trees, arugala, and mint.  Already my front yard smells like a cup of herbal tea.  The lemonbalm has taken over the herb bed, crowding out the spearmint.  It’s the new bully on the block… last year, it was the spearmint crowding out the chamomile.  I suppose I will intervene; weed out big colonies of lemonbalm to give the other things room to grow.  But I am hesitant.  There is a beautiful poem, “The Stray” in the April issue of The Sun by Eric Anderson.  As I put on my gardening gloves and go out to kill off a good amount of the lemonbalm, I can’t help thinking of the lovely and haunting way it ends.  “And yet I can’t/even kill these rodents, and want/to protect them from you,/and also want you/not to starve but will no longer/feed you or let you stay./This, then, is being human./ This, then, is not being God.”

Ground Cherries and Heirloom Tomatoes

It’s time to begin planning our garden. This year, in keeping with the idea of a “neighborhood garden,” where we each plant what we grow well, I’m going to focus solely on tomatoes and ground cherries. Last year, both did well, while my eggplant and cucumbers did horribly. The zucchini started strong, but for the second year in a row rotted by mid-June. The only part of our yard with adequate sun is, I’m afraid, nearly wetlands for most of the summer, which is great for the tomatoes and ground cherries, but lousy for everything else.

I’m hoping to do lots and lots of ground cherry starts this year, so if anyone would like to try these in their garden, please just let me know.

One of last year’s best producer was the Cherokee Purple, which has a lovely color and a very sweet flavor. The Speckled Roman also did well, and is truly stunning — like something from Van Gogh’s “The Sower” might have planted. We had an over-abundance of cherry and grape tomatoes, so this year I plan on putting in only one Mexico Midget plant. It’s so prolific, that it produced more than the other three small/tiny varieties we grew last year together. The fruits also hold up better than most, holding up both on the vine and in the fridge for over a week after ripening.

For slicing tomatoes, I haven’t found anything to beat the Gold Medal. I’m planning to triple the number of these plants this year, because I suspect they are also very good for making mild, sundried tomatoes that can be used all year round, and I expect they’ll be a favorite of our neighbors!

All of our seeds come from Seed Savers. At the “Just Foods” dinner, Linda Yoder told me a horrible story. According to Linda, we intentionally targeted seed banks in Iraq, and have since forbidden the distribution of seeds by local farmers in the interest of protecting the “copyrights” of big companies like Monsanto, who have been introducing chemically dependent, genetically engineered seed into an area that has traditionally not been a big market for international agribusiness. My research since “Just Foods” hasn’t turned up much information on this, but if anyone would know this, it’s Linda. It’s really deepened my commitment to heirloom and non-patented seed varieties. The idea that farmers must purchase seed each year, rather than gathering and preserving it from their own stock, is just… well, more than wrong. Muddle-headed, maybe. Or evil. Any more, I find it hard to tell the difference when talking about governmental policy. I’d like to believe we’re just incredibly stupid, since the other choices offer such little hope for a better future.

Peace!

Sarah