Roots, both Edible and Incredible

How do you know you are getting a bit behind in garden chores? When the 2014 seed catalogs start arriving and you have not completed cleaning out the garden beds! I was enjoying the newly arrived Pinetree and High Mowing  catalogs when I realized I have not finished my chores with this year’s garden. We already had a garden work day but I spent more time helping put a wood chip border around our deer fence to protect the fragile plastic mesh deer fencing fabric from the town’s mowers than cleaning up my own plot.

 

We always recommend gardeners pull disease-prone plants like tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumbers and dispose of them in the trash, the task I had yet to finish in my own garden beds. So today I headed to the garden with a black plastic trash bag. My first discovery was a pleasant one. I had left some Golden Ball turnips in the ground after pulling the larger ones and they survived nicely. I now have a nice batch of turnips to use for Thanksgiving dinner.

 

 

Next I pulled all the dead solanaceous and cucurbit plants. The plants were dead brown stems, the leaves long blown away. The biggest distinguishing characteristic was the roots, and how easy or hard it was to pull the plant. Particularly interesting to me was to compare the root structures of the grafted tomato plants to the ungrafted control plant. I have already declared the grafted tomato experiment a failure, and I won’t be planting them next year. Looking at the root balls, you can see why. Below is a photo of the Juliet tomatoes. The ungrafted tomato is the one at the top.

 

 

Alright, maybe I should have removed the fabric from the grafted tomato, but roots are supposed to grow through it and actually did. Also notice the size of the stems. The ungrafted Juliet at the top was grown in a 4 inch pot by a neighbor and was a beautiful transplant with a thick, stocky stem flushed with red. The grafted tomato was a mail order plant and arrived as a small, spindly plant and was never going to compete effectively with my locally grown ungrafted plant. Next I pulled the Big Beef tomatoes, shown below.

 

 

Again, the ungrafted Big Beef is the plant on the top. The Big Beef grafted plant was a bit more successful than the pathetic Juliet grafted plant, but did not compare well to the ungrafted Big Beef. So much for the theory that the rootstock used for grafted tomatoes is far more vigorous and  produces huge root volumes. In my case, that clearly is not true, but there must be a reason. Commercial growers are huge consumers of grafted plants, so it must work in the right conditions. For the time being, I will sit out the grafting experiment and go with ungrafted plants next year.

Planting Garlic 2013

 

I have finally completed planting out my garlic for harvest next year. I am a bit late (mid-late October would have been better for my zone), but stuff happens. At least it is done, and since I over-ordered the Spanish Rioja, I have the additional satisfaction of spreading the affliction to three other gardeners by giving them free garlic to plant.

 

In the picture above, you can see the 4x4 bed that was used to grow bush beans this year. It was prepared for the garlic by adding a bag of lobster compost along with a granular organic vegetable fertilizer and some bone  meal. Three rows have already been planted and you can see the spacing I am using. Each square foot of the row is marked out and I have spaced 9 cloves of Rosso di Sulmona garlic per square in a 3x3 grid. That gives a 4” spacing between plants.

 

Last year was my first year for garlic and I planted two hardneck varieties, German Extra Hardy and Chesnok Red. I got a good harvest and set aside some bulbs for planting this fall. The Chesnok Red has held fine and is a great garlic. I am a bit concerned about the German Extra Hardy. Four months from harvest and the bulbs have started to soften and some of the cloves have turned brown, and some are even moldy. From the bulbs I set aside for planting, I only got enough sound cloves to plant three squares. This may be the last year for that variety for me, since there are far too many varieties to try and not enough time for me to settle for mediocre results.

 

This year I wanted to add another variety, probably Spanish Rioja. While shopping around I encountered and became enamored of Viola Francese, a softneck popular in the south of France and in Italy, so I ordered a quarter pound. Then I encountered Rosso di Sulmona, touted as the best tasting garlic in the universe, and I also had to have some of that. Eventually I got back to thinking about Spanish Rioja. Many sources were now sold out, but I found it at High Mowing Seeds and (accidentally) ordered a full pound. So this year I am planting five varieties of garlic. Here are the new varieties this year:

 

 

Viola Francese above (purchased from Cook’s Garden) is a softneck artichoke variety.The bulbs were very large and so were the individual cloves. The “viola” apparently comes from the violet stripes on the skin, since the individual cloves are an orange-brown color with just a flush of violet. Two bulbs to a quarter pound planted 4 squares.

 

 

The beautiful garlic above is Rosso di Sulmona (imported from Italy by Seeds of Italy). I believe it is a hardneck but I have seen it described as a softneck. The garlic I received had a single row of cloves around a central stem, which seems to be a hardneck. Cloves were very large, with 6-7 per bulb. I planted 5 squares of it and hope it lives up to the hype.

 

 

Finally, the garlic above is Spanish Rioja, another hardneck variety. The bulb has a white skin and the cloves are brown with a rose colored blush. Cloves were very large, 6-7 per bulb. Since I over-ordered, I planted 6 squares of this garlic, and gave bulbs to three other gardeners to try their hand at growing garlic. Everything is now planted, fertilized and mulched and I am done with the garden for this year, except for a few turnips and escarole holding in the garden.

Grape Harvest 2013

 

 

I have not been blogging much lately but that doesn’t mean I am dead (yet). Just busy with things that intrude on gardening. Like picking grapes in exchange for food and booze. Today was our second season of wine grape harvesting at Nashoba Valley Winery in Bolton, Massachusetts. This year we we picked late, but it turned out to be a beautiful Fall New England day with temperatures in the 60s and deep blue skies. We were tasked to harvest the Cabernet Franc grapes. Because of the cold nights we had, the leaves were mostly dead so picking was much easier than last year. And no bunch rot to deal with.

 

Below is the row we had to pick, which was loaded with grapes and seemed to run off into the sunset.

 

 

The Cabernet Franc clusters were fat and ripe. It was easy to quickly fill one of the yellow plastic lugs, but it took a bit more time to tease out the clusters that were wrapped up in the support wires and vines so we could maximize the yield for our host and fellow Boltonian, Rich Pelletier.

 

 

 

So two hours later,  here we are behind a skid containing 28 lugs of luscious Cabernet Franc grapes, sticky but un-stung (by hungry bees) and ready for lunch! I’m the strange looking dude on the left, accompanied by some of my fellow Bolton Community Garden compatriots, Lynn Dischler and Rachelle Ayotte (and Rachelle is responsible for some of these photos). We harvested an estimated 4 tons of grapes and my back can attest to that!

 

 

Finally it is party time in the pavilion, with a chicken barbeque luncheon and apple crisp for dessert, along with unlimited pours of last years Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay!

 

 

Lunch was followed by a personal tour of the winery led by the owner, Rich Pelletier. It was fascinating to see how the grapes we picked would be processed into fine table wines. We each received a gift card that will allow us to buy a bottle of the wine we helped harvest in a year or two, but I really did not need that to feel good about helping a local farm winery prosper. Walking back to the car, I smiled while I watched swarms of people on a beautiful fall afternoon heading to the winery to taste wines I might have had a hand in harvesting.

Harvest Monday–23 Sep 2013

Slim pickings from the garden this week while waiting for the fall crops to reach harvest stage. The weather was moderate with a lot of daytime sunshine and cool nights, with an occasional rain storm. The squash and cukes are kaput, except for the Tromboncino squash which is still trying to put out a few more fruit. My peppers are rebounding and I got a nice crop of the Aconcagua frying peppers. Meanwhile I have been clipping some of the herbs for drying before they get killed by a frost.

 

 

The week was brightened a little by the arrival of some of the seed garlic I ordered last month. I grew two varieties last year, German Extra Hardy and Red Chesnok, and they are safely stored in my basement now, with some bulbs reserved for seed stock this fall. We have been enjoying it and it is amazing how much better tasting fresh hard neck garlic is than the spongy bulbs in the supermarkets this late in the season. Some of the supermarket garlic is actually imported from China so you have to check carefully.

 

Since the experience growing garlic this year was so satisfying, I went looking for just one more variety, maybe Spanish Roja which I considered buying last year. I found it but along the way was intrigued by Viola Francese, a softneck garlic popular in southern France and Italy, so I bought some of that. Then searching for reviews of the Francese, I kept encountering rave reviews about Rosso di Sulmona, a hardneck garlic from the Sulmona area of Abruzzo. That variety is imported from Italy by Seeds of Italy, and fortunately for me they receive their stock late because of USDA inspections and fumigation, so I was still able to order it this late. And they ship very quickly.

 

 

Above is the Rosso di Sulmona, nice big bulbs with large cloves covered with a purple-striped skin. Seeds of Italy is very generous, throwing in some loose cloves with the four bulbs to make sure I got my half-pound of garlic.

 

 

This is the Viola Francese, my first softneck artichoke variety, so I hope it does well in my climate. I got it from Cook’s Garden, which I guess is now owned by Burpee’s since it came in a Burpee’s box from Warminster, PA. You can see a tinge of the violet color on the wrappers, but the cloves themselves are an orange-brown color. I’m still waiting for the Spanish Roja from High Mowing Seeds, so still something nice to expect in the mail.

 

That’s what is going on in my garden this week. See what other gardeners around the world are doing by heading over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday–16 September 2013

The summer garden is winding down and yielding a few things here and there. This year I actually did plant some fall crops, maybe not as early as I should have. The hot dry, weather in August didn’t seem like the ideal conditions for starting radish and spinach seeds, but I did anyway. They are starting to put on some growth now with the recent rain and cooler weather. However, the squash and cucumbers are not liking the 50°F night-time temperatures, and also beleaguered with PM and bacterial wilt, are starting to shut down, capping a really lousy year for the cucurbits.

 

 

The beans are just about done except for a few stragglers here and there. The Dunja zucchini and Tromboncino squash are still alive enough to put out a squash or two a week but won’t last much longer. The tomatoes are ripening up their last fruit. Most of the plants have survived relatively disease-free and are showing some new growth, but they are doomed by the weather and the shortening day length. At this northern latitude, the sun is dropping lower in the sky each day and its strength is tangibly decreasing.

 

 

The peppers, while not liking the cold nights, are holding their own, with new growth and flowers. The Jimmy Nardello peppers are ripening the last of the mature fruit while still flowering and setting new fruit. My Padron peppers are starting to produce again. And the Aconcagua peppers (the long, skinny one above), a Cubanelle-type heirloom from Argentina, are now starting to produce heavily. Even my one Fish pepper has set a few of its variegated fruit and is flowering extensively. Both the Aconcagua and Fish peppers are known as late-season producers so it is a gamble to grow them here.

 

That’s all from the garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting, head to Daphne's Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday–9 Sep 2013

 

Oops! It’s Tuesday and I completely forgot about Harvest Monday. It was that kind of a weekend. I would just skip it but I have a few things I want to show. Saturday was work day at the community garden. We did fence repairs and removed weeds and a two-foot strip of sod around the outside of the fence. We then laid down cardboard and covered it with wood chips. This will deter the weeds for awhile and make mowing easier and safer. We already had the mower come too close and rip off a six-foot section of fencing. With that big of a hole, more than bunnies can get through. After four hours of manual labor we all went home stiff and sore.

 

Sunday was the Patriots-Bills season opener (Patriots squeaked by with a win) followed by the garden pot luck dinner. Sunday morning I cut a huge bag of kale and turned it into a kale, white beans and sausage dish which was well received (and it got rid of a lot of excess kale). I also managed to clean up my Red Bull onions (above) and put them in storage. Five square feet yielded 8.5 pounds. A few big ones and a lot of small ones.

 

On to the harvest. Below, the zucchini at the top is my first (and maybe only) slightly-overgrown Romanesco squash. Unlike Michelle who has harvested something like 600 pounds of zucchini from her plants, I get one and the PM gets the rest. The Jimmy Nardello peppers are getting added to the string for drying.

 

 

More beans and another Green Fingers cucumber. A lot of beans were donated to the Hudson food pantry on Saturday, along with a large bag of kale. Lots of Portuguese in Hudson so hopefully people there know what to do with kale, which is a very healthy and nutritious vegetable.

 

 

Here is what I particularly wanted to show. The two Tromboncino squash below are my first and there is another ready for picking soon and lots of flowers. It’s nice to feel somewhat successful and these Tromboncino are making me feel good about my garden. I can grow something besides weeds. There also are a couple of my Tiburon Ancho poblano peppers, Spicy Globe basil for drying, and some decent-sized Purple Peacock shoots (now that I am following Michelle’s advice for cutting sprouts).

 

 

The Tromboncino are getting prepared tonight in one one of my favorite dishes. There is no recipe for this. The story is, long ago my wife and I took the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard with only our bikes and cycled to Edgartown. We stayed at a B&B and since we were hoofing it around town, we ate at a nearby Italian restaurant. It was a la carte and absolutely nothing came with the (already pricy) entrée. The waiter suggested a side of zucchini and it was fabulous. I don’t remember what the entrée was but I remember this dish. The zucchini was steamed but still bright green and crisp. It was covered with a  fresh tomato sauce with basil and oregano, thickened with bread crumbs and topped with shredded Parmesan.

 

That’s all from my garden, time to go prepare dinner. To see what other gardener’s around the world are harvesting  from their gardens, visit Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.

Harvest Monday 2 Sep 2013

 

The weather has been moderate, with warm days and cool nights. The humidity has crept up to the point where it was really uncomfortable by the end of the week. It has also been dry, with some overcast days during which it looked like rain but never did. The beds have to be watered at least every other day, and really every day if I can get to the garden. The holiday weekend has been overcast and gloomy, with real rain supposed to come today. Loving it anyway is my Tromboncino squash. What you see above is a female flower just starting to open. Yes, it’s over a foot long before it is even pollinated!

 

 

The harvests from the garden this time of year are boring, mostly beans, squash and cucumbers. The Jade beans above have a heavy set of beans ready now. There are over a dozen beans ready to pick on just the two plants shown above. I now have lettuces, endive, escarole, choi, and broccoli transplants set out and pea, radish, turnip and spinach seeds have germinated. The beet seeds have not sprouted. I didn’t presoak them and I think the beds are just too dry down deep. We really need a long, soaking rain (not another monsoon, please) to saturate all the soil again, which hopefully will happen today.

 

 

Among the tomatoes above are a Gilbertie paste tomato and my first Green Zebra that was not cracked and rotted. This is my first year growing Gilbertie, an heirloom, and I picked the fruit above a little early so it wouldn’t crack when we get rain. Yes, it definitely is going to rain sometime soon.

 

 

More beans. Lots of the darker green Jade bean on the right.

 

 

Beans, a few beets, my second zucchini, peppers and cucumbers. The apple-shaped cucumber is Crystal Apple, a New Zealand heirloom that can be eaten without peeling if you don’t pick them too large.

 

 

And yet more beans, and another couple Gilbertie tomatoes.

 

That’s all from my garden last week. To see what other gardeners around the world are harvesting from their gardens, head over to Daphne’s Dandelions, our host for Harvest Monday.