2013 Midseason Report

Well, it's midseason, and this has been a disappointing year for a number of reasons. Overall, it's been a cool, rather wet summer. Today's high was 74 degF, in the middle of August when we normally have blistering heat. Also, our yard is shadier this year than last year. Our neighbor's Norway maples are just that much bigger, and more of the garden is in shade. In another few years, I may have to revert a good chunk of garden to lawn, or possibly just grow a lot more strawberries. And finally, rather mysteriously, my earthworms seem to have all vanished. This worries me more than everything else combined. Well, whatever the reason, it's been a tough year so far.

The potatoes keep not being ready. They should have been ready by the end of June. I think I made a mistake in placement. When we realized that our drip irrigation system would be blocked by our potato boxes, I reasonably moved the boxes to the ends of the rows. But there were two problems I hadn't considered. First, that's the shady end of the garden. Second, we discovered that the water pressure isn't high enough to push water up the drip tape into the tops of the boxes. Poor sunlight and less water equals poor production.

The squashes are having a tough time with fungal infections in all this rain. Five out of six of my zucchini plants' stems rotted out. Only one robust plant remains, the source of the impressive 16-inch zukes. (I am definitely saving that seed!) Similarly, the spaghetti squash, kabocha squash, and pumpkins are struggling, and the patty pans have yet to produce a single fruit.

The cucumbers are dying back two weeks early due to unseasonably cool weather. This has a pleasant counterbalance: the broccoli is still producing happily in the middle of August. This weekend, I'll be planting fall peas in their place, and I have more broccoli and cauliflower starting in the greenhouse.

The corn has been... odd. Only half of the blue corn came up at all. I started some more in the greenhouse and planted it, but it has yet to put out pollen, and I'm concerned the ears on the older stalks won't pollinate properly. Meanwhile, the sweet corn came up fine, but no one warned me that edamame grows four feet tall! It's overgrowing and stunting the corn, so I'm not looking at a great crop there either.

Several attempts to reseed carrots have simply failed, and I'm not sure why.

But we do have some nice successes. The tomatoes, despite quite a bit of early blight, are going gangbusters now. This weekend, I'm hoping to make tomato jelly. The New Zealand spinach was a huge success and very tasty. The eggplants and peppers are starting to come in, the beets have been growing like mad, and the beans and kale are as prolific as ever. And the basil! Big bushy beautiful basil! We have quite a few cantaloupes on the vine but not many watermelons. I have no idea if they'll make it to ripeness in this cool weather. In fact, even with the disappointments, we are hard pressed to keep up with harvesting, though that may have more to do with me going back to work.

So perhaps it's just as well that we're not inundated with food. Still, I can't help feeling disappointed. I grand plans for canning, and thus far, I've put up only three quarts of bread-and-butter pickles and two quarts of raspberry preserves, plus two gallon bags of frozen beans. Well, it's only midseason. We'll see what the fall brings.

Squashes of Unusual Size -or- You Should Absolutely Eat Things Bigger Than Your Head

My zucchini plants have been assaulted by ants, which have burrowed right into the stems, hollowing them out from the inside until they finally snap. I've been so concerned with the bed infested with ants that I entirely forgot about my other zucchini bed. When I finally remembered to check that bed, I stumbled across a Squash of Unusual Size:

Bigger than her head!

It was sixteen inches long. I tried to weigh it, but my bathroom scale first informed me that it is low on battery and then proceeded to tell me I weigh 331.4 lbs, so I decided it wasn't the most reliable of instruments. I think I exercised great restraint in not throwing it out the bathroom window.

So, what do you do with a zucchini of such prodigious girth? Really, there's just one thing to do: Stuff it. Stuffed zucchini is a great family tradition and an excellent use for such a tough customer. Here's the basic recipe, followed with a blow-by-blow account of cooking this beast.

Stuffed Zucchini

Extra virgin olive oil, lots
2 small fresh yellow onions, diced
2 shallots, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped (I should have used more. Bump it up to 6-8 cloves.)
1 lb. organic free-range ground beef  (Vegetarians, this is optional. Use more pine nuts.)
8 broad beans, cut in 1-inch pieces
8 oz. oyster mushrooms, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
1 cup fresh basil leaves and blossoms
2 stems fresh rosemary
2 stems fresh parsley
2 stems fresh oregano
2 stems fresh thyme
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 gargantuan 16-in. zucchini
16 small tomatoes + 1 small plum tomato, diced
8 leaves Russian and Winterbor kale, coarsely chopped
1 cup gluten-free breadcrumbs
(should also have added 1/2 cup parmesan cheese )
2 cups shredded mozzerella cheese

First, I preheated the oven to 375 degF. I heated about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil in a braiser pan, my go-to saute pan for big jobs. In this I browned the ground beef over medium heat along with the onions, shallots, garlic, and mushrooms. The mushrooms absorbed quite a bit of the oil, so I added another tablespoon or two. When the beef was about half-cooked, I added the broad beans. I chopped the basil coarsely and threw it in, then stripped the leaves of all the herbs from their stems, chopped them up together, and threw them in as well. I seasoned the whole lot with salt and pepper, and as the beef finished cooking, I moved the mixture from the pan into a bowl with a slotted spoon.

At this point, I turned off the heat, realizing that hollowing out the zucchini was going to take some time.  I used a vegetable knife to cut the zucchini in half, then made a slice 1/2 inch from the edge all around the inside of each half, without slicing through the skin below. I used a serving spoon to scoop out the inside. This is an inelegant process, but it doesn't have to look good. I hollowed out each half to a 1/2-inch thickness all around. I set the hollowed halves on an 18-inch baking sheet, then diced the zucchini into 1/2-inch pieces.

Zucchini shells. Yes, that's an 18-inch baking pan.

All the insides out.

Next, more olive oil, in which I toasted the pine nuts until lightly brown. These I removed to another bowl with the slotted spoon. I deglazed the pan with the sherry, and when it had reduced by about half, I tossed in the zucchini, tomatoes, and kale. When the zucchini started to become tender and the skins began to come off the tomatoes, I drained out as much of the liquid in the pan as I could without spilling veggies everywhwere. I added about half the breadcrumbs (this is when I should have added the parmesan cheese), then returned the ground beef and pine nuts to the pan. Mixing everything together (adding the rest of the breadcrumbs in, too), I left the stuffing to simmer.

Using the slotted spoon, I stuffed the zucchini. With the liquid cooked out of the veggies, and with a little careful mounding, all of the stuffing fit in quite nicely. I then topped the stuffed zucchini halves with the mozzerella cheese. Alas, I discovered the perils of topping an unstable squash. So I propped that half up using toothpicks and returned the cheese to the top where it belonged.

Zucchini shells filled with yummy goodness.

Oops! Cheese everywhere.

Wobbly zucchini propped up with toothpicks.

I put this in the oven and roasted it for about 30-35 minutes, until the cheese was nicely browned and the zucchini shells yielded easily to a fork but hadn't yet gone mushy.

Finished stuffed zucchini

This I served with fresh garden cucumbers and sungold tomatoes and angel hair pasta tossed with butter. Unsurprisingly, the kids at the table refused to touch the zucchini, which is why the pasta was there. So I may as well have used regular breadcrumbs instead of gluten free. Ah well. Between us, my husband and I ate half of one stuffed shell, and it was the skinny half. I am now thoroughly stuffed, just like the zuke. I am guessing that this could easily serve 8-10 people, more with additional courses (appetizers, a tossed salad or antipasto, a more serious pasta course).

VARIATIONS:

I used ground beef in this, but other meats work well, including ground turkey, ground pork, and italian sausage. However, meat is entirely unnecessary for this dish, and this actually makes a great and rather dramatic vegetarian entree. In that case, I would double the amount of pine nuts and increase the amount of mushrooms. If you can't find oyster mushrooms, portobellos will do. If you want to get fancy, try hen of the woods or chicken mushrooms, but only if you have eaten them before, as some people can have a reaction. And if you use such wild-harvested mushrooms, omit the sherry, as mixing wild mushrooms with alcohol can have dire results.

Speaking of sherry, you can use any dry white wine in this, or you can omit it entirely.

As for cheese, I forgot the parmesan cheese and sorely missed it. I highly recommend parmesan in and atop the stuffing. Romano works well, too. For the topping, you can also use fresh mozzerella, or you can go for a stronger flavor with asagio.

As for vegetables, the great thing about stuffed zucchini is that you can really throw just about anything you want into it. Broad beans aren't usually in this dish, but I had some, so I tossed them in. In the past, I've added eggplant and broccoli. Shredded carrots would probably be good, too. I suspect that fennel could be really delicious in this, although I've never tried it, and I'd use it sparingly to avoid overwhelming the wonderful basil. And fresh basil is really what makes this dish. Greens aren't required, but they are yummy. If you don't have or like kale, try spinach, chard, or beet greens.

A note about the tomatoes. I have to check my garden chart, but I'm pretty sure what I used were Grandma's Pick, an heirloom variety I'm trying for the first time this year. They're lovely little tomatoes, about two inches in diameter, as prolific as cherry toms, and have a nice firm texture and light tomato flavor. It's an excellent salad tomato, but I'm not sure it's robust enough for sauces. The one drawback I've found is that they don't seem very disease resistent. Nearly every tomato plant in my garden has early blight, but most of the plants are fighting it well. One Grandma's Pick, on the other hand, has lost most of its lower leaves entirely, although its top leaves and stems continue to grow and thrive. I think it may be time to spray with copper, though I'm also curious to see how well it does on its own. Well, maybe I'll spray one plant and leave the other to fend for itself.

The plum tomato I used was an Amish Paste. They're smaller than I expected and slow to ripen, but they are quite tasty. Thus far, they are also the least affected by the blight.

One of the very satisfying things about this dish was how much of it I grew myself. It's actually easier to list what didn't come out of my garden: olive oil, ground beef, salt, pepper, mushrooms (I do grow oyster, shiitake, and king stropharia mushrooms, but none of them are flushing just now), pine nuts, breadcrumbs, and cheese. Which means the total cost of this meal was about twelve dollars. Not bad.

Mulch Madness

It's the middle of May, and I'm already thoroughly sick of weeding. I weed, they come back. Weed, grow, weed, grow. So on Tuesday, I vowed to weed smarter, not harder. And that means mulch.

Fortunately, when I was at Kane's Flower World in Danvers to pick up compost last weekend, I noticed that they had salt marsh hay available. Salt marsh hay makes wonderful mulch because it germinates in salt water, not in your garden. I picked up a bale, knowing it would be a good investment. Later that day, I spent a good hour weeding a single strawberry bed, so on Tuesday, I broke open that bale and mulched those strawberries down. And then I mulched the bush beans, pole beans, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, winter squash, and half the peas.

Among the garlic and shallots, which weren't actually all that weedy, I seeded a living mulch of arugula and radicchio. Along the asparagus, I planted pak choi. Beside the winter squash, New Zealand spinach. I didn't mulch down the edamame because it was just barely sprouting, and I was worried I'd cover some by accident. Once it has fully leafed out, I'll weed out that bed again and mulch it down with the last of the salt marsh hay.

On whichever beds remained unplanted, with the exception of the corn bed and the beds alongside the potato towers (where I have mounds of earth that will need to be shoveled later), I weeded and cultivated laid down black weed barrier. This will both warm up the soil nicely and prevent weeds from taking over while the beds await planting with the warm-weather crops: basil, eggplants, ground cherries, melons, peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos.

At this point, the garden is pretty well planted and just awaiting a little heat. The peas are climbing their trellises happily. The garlic should set scapes in a couple of weeks or so. The onions, which had been struggling, seem to be perking up after all the rain last week. Two out of three potato varieties have sprouted (Bintje and Norkotah), so I have high hopes that we'll have new potatoes by midsummer. The strawberries seem intent on fruiting by then, too, judging from the profusion of blossoms.

All the beans are up now, even the straggling edamame, the asparagus is ferning out nicely, and the kale is growing like mad. We have swaths of volunteer lettuce and mustard greens and quite a few wandering raspberries that will need new homes. Last year's flowerbed is carpeted in green, and that's either an amazing amount of reseeding or the best crop of lamb's quarters ever. I can't quite tell. The beets and carrots we seeded are looking ready to thin, and there's space for more seeding (succession planting).

Inside the greenhouse, the snow peas are producing like mad, although the lone snap pea that actually sprouted does not seem to be setting any fruit. The some of the tomatoes and tomatillos are already blooming and keep outgrowing their pots. I'm hard pressed to keep them happy. Yesterday, I finished repotting all the cucumbers, zucchini, and patty pans. The melons, sunflowers, and nasturtiums have all sprouted nicely, and the marigolds, cilantro, and parsley really need to be planted outside. I have some insect damage on a single Highlander chile pepper plant, but I have extras for just this purpose.

The one thing I keep forgetting to do is seed the spinach. I need to soak the seeds in water for 24 hours first, and I just never remember to do it. Spinach, like onions, is one of those crops I have a very hard time growing, so I think I just keep putting off the inevitable failure. But who knows? Maybe this will be the year when I finally figure it out. I hope so because I really, really love spinach.

 Regardless, they'll have to wait. I'm currently sitting in O'Hare International Airport on my way to Moline, IL to visit my sister and attend her PhD graduation. Go Karissa! I am so proud of you. I'll be back on Sunday, and in the meantime, my husband and daughters are in charge of the garden. I'm sure they'll do a splendid job.

Time to Start Planting

Last night, a fellow parent asked me if it was warm enough to start planting outside. Answer: YES! You can begin planting as early as March 15th, depending on what you're planting. Here's a simple chart describing when and where to plant. Note that these dates and recommendations are for zone 6. You can find your plant hardiness zone here. Adjust by two weeks per zone (Zone 5 would plant two weeks later, Zone 7 two weeks earlier, and reverse that in June.)

Date	Start Inside	Direct Seed Outside	Plant Outside
Feb. 15th	Leeks
March 15th	Basil, Ground Cherries, Kale, Peppers, Tomatillos	Peas - assuming ground is not thoroughly frozen
April 1st	Broccoli, Cauliflower, Tomatoes, Herbs
April 15th	Nasturtiums, Potatoes (chitting)	Leeks, Carrots*, Beets*, Onions, Lettuce, Spinach**, Dill, Cilantro, Marigolds, Sunflowers	Leeks, Kale, Strawberries
May 1	Cucumbers, Melons, Squash (summer and winter)	Beans	Broccoli, Cauliflower, Potatoes, Nasturtiums
May: soil temp. is 70 deg		Corn***	Basil, Ground Cherries, Melons, Peppers, Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Squash (summer and winter), herbs
Early June	Broccoli, Cauliflower		Cucumbers
Mid-July		Lettuce, Peas	Broccoli, Cauliflower
Sept./Oct.		Garlic, Shallots

*To ensure a continuous harvest of beets and carrots, seed every two weeks starting April 15th.
**Soak your spinach seeds in water for 24 hours before planting to improve germination.
***If you're considering planting corn, remember that you must have enough space to plant 36 plants (6x6) to ensure proper pollination.
I hope this is helpful. If there's a vegetable you don't see here, look for similar vegetables and plant at the same time, e.g., brussels sprouts, cabbage, and collards should be planted the same time as broccoli.

Tractor Language

This morning was a busy one in the greenhouse and the garden. I repotted tomatoes, started melons, nasturtiums, and sunflowers, and planted edamame and the Bintje potatoes. The Norkotahs are ready to go in the ground, too, but we don't have a tower built. Tomorrow, I may just plant them in the space where they're meant to go and fit the tower around them.

In planting the potatoes, I discovered that I'm a dumb ass. I ordered some of the potatoes from a supplier that shipped them in plastic mesh bags, and I stupidly left them to sprout inside said mesh bags. So of course they sprouted right through the mesh. It took some very dainty work with nail clippers to snip the plastic from around the sprouts without damaging them, and I still lost three sprouts, muttering tractor language as I went.

Wait. What's tractor language, you ask? Didn't I mention this last year? My grandfather, who taught me how to farm, was a wonderful man: hardworking, clever, generous, trustworthy. He could also swear like a soldier (which he had been in WWII) in English, Spanish, and a smattering of Italian. I'd be out in the apple orchard throwing rotten apples at my brother, and I'd hear this stream of invective echoing over the alfalfa. So I'd wade out through that green sea to, most likely, my grandfather's cantankerous tractor and find him laying under it, hands smeared with grease and mouth running at full throttle.

My family used to joke that my grandfather's blue streak was a secret language he'd invented in order to talk to his tractor, and so we always called it tractor language. And tractor language popped up in the most unlikely places. One day, I wandered in from the fields and asked my grandmother for the meaning a particular Spanish idiom my grandfather had just used. She turned beet red, marched out to the tractor, and let loose her own stream of invective upon my poor unsuspecting grandfather. Which is how I found out that Abuela knew tractor language, too.

Today, I stood in the back office of the greenhouse, snipping and swearing, when I heard a buzzing next to me. A carpenter bee had slipped down behind the plastic over the window next to me and was having a devilish time getting out. He'd climb a little ways up, get stuck because the space was too tight for him to use his wings, and slide back down again. Every so often, he'd let loose this little buzz of frustration. And it suddenly hit me: he was using the bee equivalent of tractor language.

I felt a moment of solidarity with the poor bee. I took hold of the plastic and tore it down so that he could escape. Instead, he ran from the nice big gap I'd just made and crawled through a hole under the windowsill. So now I have to replace the plastic. #$@*!

How to Turn Strawberries Into Asparagus (well, sort of)

Last Monday, my Jersey Supreme asparagus crowns arrived from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Excellent! I thought, and ran out to my garden to plant them. Then I read the instructions, which specified working compost into the soil. I'm out of compost; one tumbler keeps almost-but-not-quite being ready. So I sighed, deposited the crowns in the greenhouse, and went back to whatever I was doing.

Meanwhile, my friend Megan offered me some finished compost in exchange for some of the bazillion volunteer strawberries I dug out of the beds and paths last Saturday. On Wednesday, we met up in Burlington and exchanged organic matter.

And then it rained. And rained. And rained some more. I kept spraying the crowns with water to keep them from drying out and praying for a break in the weather. We had a nice break yesterday, but with my husband sick and a crazy work week, I was just too tired to do much of anything. This morning, I woke up and peeked out the curtains at a lovely blue sky.

Aha! Asparagus time! After breakfast, I went outside and weeded out the bed. Then I dumped the compost on it. Bonus: it was chock full of very happy, wriggling worms! I weeded an adjoining bed for a few minutes to give them time to settle down, then I pulled out my cultivator and worked that compost in.

I dug a trench and put down some crowns, but I still had some left. So I dug the trench a bit farther and put down some more crowns, and there were still some left. I just kept going and going and going until I'd dug a 25-foot trench in the long bed at the foot of the garden. It was starting to sprinkle. I had seven crowns left, but I didn't really want to extend the trench further and encroach on other growing spaces. So I took the crowns next door, along with my remaining volunteer strawberries, and deposited them all upon my delighted neighbors. As I covered the crowns, it gently began to rain.

It'll be interesting to see the effect of the compost, since I only worked it into the first half of the trench. Otherwise, it was a pretty perfect morning in the garden. I can't wait to see what comes up.

Seed Starting Has Begun

Today, to the steady drumming of snowmelt off the roof, I started a slew of seeds in the greenhouse, pretty much until I ran out of seedling starter mix (need more finished compost, as usual). I started the ground cherries, tomatillos, basil, some kale, and most of the tomatoes. To my horror, I found an old Sungold seed packet and realized that they're hybrids, and the seed I saved from last year probably won't breed true. Argh! I actually remember discussing this last year, and somehow, I just plain forgot this year. So I went and bought more. At the same time, I'm curious. What will come up if I plant those seeds? Sounds like a fun experiment to me.

So, started today:

• Mountain Magic tomato
• Grandma's Pick tomato
• Amish Paste tomato
• Juliet tomato
• Koralik tomato
• Golden Treasure tomato
• Longkeeper tomato
• ... hey, I forgot the Brandywines!
• Aunt Molly's ground cherry
• De Milpa tomatillo
• Aroma basil - this is from saved seed, and Aroma may be a hybrid, too, so that'll be interesting...
• Sweet Thai basil
• Lemon basil
• Winterbor kale - only had enough soil for about half of these

The tomatoes and tomatillos are on heating mats because they won't germinate if the soil temp. falls below 65 degF. It is considerably less expensive to heat two starter trays to 65 degF than the entire greenhouse. I really should put the basil on mats, too, but I only have two mats. Which makes me wonder if I should buy more... Well, I managed with only two last year. Let's see how this year goes. As it is, I'm going to have to wait for this batch to germinate before I start the two forgotten tomatoes and all the peppers and eggplants.

I ordered the sungolds from Territorial Seed as Johnny's was all sold out. I also bought a bunch more cover crop seed, inspired by this Slate article. I got arugula, mesclun, radicchio, and an interesting variety called New Zealand Spinach, which isn't actually spinach but sort of tastes like it. Maybe I'll have better luck with it than regular spinach, which I've never successfully grown in New England. It's apparently quite high in vitamin C, so if it grows well outside, I may try it in the greenhouse during the winter.

The weather report has improved, thank goodness. Instead of raining all week, it looks like we'll only get rain tomorrow and Wednesday. Unfortunately, the lovely high-40s-low-50s temperature we're enjoying will dip back down to high-30s-low-40s. But if we get some good sun, the garden should be free of snow and dry enough to plant peas and greens on Saturday.

Surprisingly Inexpensive Seed Potato Supplier

Although the snow is just starting to come down, I'm deep in garden planning, a pile of catalogs to my left, credit cards to my right. I have just finished ordering all my seeds for 2013. My goodness, it adds up! My order to Johnny's Selected Seeds totalled $136.25, including $25 of asparagus crowns. My order to Territorial Seeds was $134.30, including a paw paw bush and a honeyberry bush. Still, most of that was tiny little envelopes of seeds. When you order 20 packets of seeds at $3-5 each, plus tax and shipping, it sure adds up.

Then I went to Irish Eyes for my seed potatoes and discovered to my horror that they had sold out of Bintjes for the season. Eek! I did a quick Google search for "organic bintje seed potato" and found a place called GrowOrganic.com, which offers the lowest seed potato prices I've seen anywhere. Here's a quick comparison of organic Bintje prices:

Annie's Heirloom Seeds: $14.50/1lb. !!! And not actually organic!
Grow Organic: $2.95/1.1lb
Irish Eyes: $8/2lb.
Wood Prarie Farm: $10.95/lb (using Yukon price since they don't carry Bintjes)

Now, GrowOrganic did charge me $16 in shipping fees, but Wood Prarie Farm was similar at $12.95. So I guess it pays to shop around. I'm delighted to find an organic supplier with much, much better prices. I'll let you know how they grow.

If you're interested in which other seeds I bought this year, let me know and I'll post the whole, enormous list. The thing that really astonishes me is that I saved a lot of seed from last year. This is what I didn't save. Yikes. I have got to be more diligent about saving seed this year.

No Seedlings This Year

Well before the snow hit, during the very, very cold snap we had a couple of weeks ago, our greenhouse heater broke down, and the pipes in the greenhouse burst.

We debated for a while on whether we should even bother fixing the heater. The part that broke was under lifetime warranty - because it never, ever breaks - but the labor of replacing it and fixing the faulty air intake to prevent this from happening again, came to over $1000. We went ahead and fixed it, but now we're trying to find a plumber to fix the pipes. And we have rather low expectations. With all the extreme weather that we've been getting, there are a lot of people with burst pipes in their homes, rather a higher priority than our greenhouse.

So, reluctantly, we will not be selling seedlings this year. I will probably start seedlings for our garden only, an amount that I can water with a watering can. But I can't imagine trying to do that with a jam-packed greenhouse.

On the other hand, that means I'm going to end up with a lot of spare seeds, so if anyone is interested in a seed swap, let me know.

The Chile Experiment of 2012

As I shoveled snow off the driveway this morning, I kept sneaking glances at our greenhouse where, until about two weeks ago, we were still growing fresh, hot chiles. How I wish we still had some stew lamb left from our last meatshare from Chestnut Farms. I would love to make Lamb Chilindron on a chilly day like today (see below for recipe). Next week, I'll order some lamb from Farmers to You for the insanely cold weather to come.

Don't get me wrong. I love the snow. I grew up in New Mexico, where snow was a serious rarity, and even when it did snow, it melted by midafternoon. To this day, I have still never been sledding. I've also lived in Idaho, where it once snowed six feet in a single day! Massachusetts weather is perfect, as far as I'm concerned: not too hot in the summer, nor too cold in the winter. We get maybe one or two big weather events per year, and that's quite manageable.

But I do miss three things about New Mexico: my family, the mountains, and chile. New Mexicans take their chile very, very seriously. The official state question is, “Red or green?” Chile is a major export from New Mexico, and for good reason. Growing conditions are perfect for hot, wonderfully flavorful chiles. And I miss them tremendously.

Even though you can now buy chiles grown in Hatch, NM at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, you can't get fresh chiles, just canned, dried, or powdered. There are some dishes for which canned or dried just won't cut it. Lamb Chilindron is one; another is Chiles Rellenos, where you take a fresh green chile, slit it open, remove the seeds, stuff it with a mild cheese such as monterrey jack, dip it in batter, deep fry it, and then serve it topped with chile sauce (red, green, or Christmas).

I've tried growing chiles in Somerville and Cambridge, but they haven't performed well, with poor yield and low heat. This year, however, I had a greenhouse handy. So I tried an experiment. I planted two varieties of chile seed, Sandia and Española, from the New Mexico Chile Institute both outside in the garden and inside the greenhouse. The greenhouse can get really, really hot in the summer, well over 100 degrees if I let it, and I can control the amount of water the plants receive more carefully. Would hotter, drier conditions produce a better pepper?

Well, this summer was a good warm, wet one, and both varieties produced well both inside and out. Each plant produced at least 20 pods. I found the Sandia to be a little hotter than the Española, and the Española to be a little sweeter, but both had very good flavor, excellent texture, and roasted beautifully. I could be mistaken, but I think the greenhouse-grown peppers were slightly hotter that the garden-grown ones, but not so much so that I'd outright prefer them.

There was, however, one huge advantage to planting in the greenhouse. The greenhouse pepper plants started producing almost two weeks earlier and continued producing, even after I'd stopped watering them, right through the end of December. I was astonished. Fresh chiles for Christmas? Who'd ever heard of such a thing? But they were amazing in the Posole I made for a neighbor's Christmas party.

Given the serious advantages, I will grow my chiles in the greenhouse from now on, freeing up more valuable garden space. It's also nice to find varieties that will stand up to the punishing midsummer heat. Who knows? If I hadn't come down with the flu (six straight weeks of coughing!), I might have been able to keep them going all winter. I may add more heat-loving crops that are well-contained: eggplant, tomatillo, artichoke, a determinate tomato. That, perhaps, will be next year's greenhouse experiment.

Let's not leave out the other peppers. I also grew chiles de arbol, which were small, exceedingly hot peppers. I only planted these outside, and they grew quite prolifically, but they just didn't have the flavor I wanted. They'd add some good punch to a salsa or mole, but I don't think they're worth growing just for that.

As for sweet peppers, I grew Yankee Bell, Sweet Chocolate, and Olympus as a red bell. All three of these performed very well. Yankee Bell is a tried-and-true variety with sweet, firm flesh, perfect for stuffing. Olympus was smaller and sweeter. My younger daughter ate these right off the plant so fast, only one or two ever made it to their full, ripe red color. Sweet Chocolate was a new variety for me, and when I finally warned my daughter off them long enough to let some ripen, they turned a soft brownish purple and had the most amazing rich smoky flavor – nothing like chocolate, mind you, but utterly delicious. I will grow Chocolate Bell and Olympic again next year and perhaps try a sweet Hungarian. I wonder if they'll do better in the greenhouse? Hmm...

And now for the recipes!

Lamb Chilindron

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 lb cubed lean lamb

salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

1 Spanish onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed

3 green and/or red chiles, seeded (for better flavor, use roasted chiles)

3 large fresh tomatoes, diced (for better flavor, use roasted tomatoes)

1 tsp red chile powder

1 tsp Mexican oregano

Heat the oil in a flameproof casserole or paellero (I use All-Clad's Everyday Pan). Season the lamb and add to the casserole. Brown evenly on all sides. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a bowl. Add onion and saute until transparent. Add garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes, then stir in chiles, tomatoes, chile powder, and mexican oregano. Simmer until tomatoes are slightly reduced, about five minutes. Return lamb to the casserole along with any juices collected in the bowl. Cover and simmer for about an hour or until lamb is tender. Serve over rice.

Chiles Rellenos

Adapted from Southwest Flavor by Adela Amador

12 to 16 whole, long green chiles

1 lb. Monterey Jack cheese cut in thin strips

Batter:

1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 egg

1 cup milk

Slit open the chile, removing the seeds. Make sure to retain the stem. Insert strips of cheese into the chile pods. Mix flour, salt, and baking powder. Add milk and egg and beat until smooth. Holding by the stem, dip the cheese-stuffed chiles in the batter and fry in about 1 inch of vegetable oil until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Serve as is or smothered with red or green chile sauce and pinto beans.

Posole

Posole is so simple, it really doesn't need a recipe. Mostly, it's dependent on what type of hominy you use. If using dried hominy, soak a pound overnight before using. If using frozen posole, thaw half of a 32-ounce package. If using canned hominy, drain one 16-oz can. Put any of these into a stew pot or crock pot with 2-3 lbs. of pork, such as a pork shoulder, and 2 quarts water. Simmer until the hominy pops, about 2 hours in the stew pot, longer in the crock pot. Remove and cut the cooked pork shoulder into bite-sized chunks, then toss them back in.

In New Mexico, this is traditionally eaten on New Year's Eve with red chile sauce. The beauty of it is that you can add as much or as little spice as you like. This is also frequently eaten for breakfast on chilly winter mornings.

A more elaborate variation, common in California, adds the following:

8-10 roasted, peeled, seeded, chopped green chiles (usually frozen)

1 medium onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 16-oz can stewed tomatoes (or more for a milder soup)

Finally, chicken can be substituted for pork.

Red Chile Sauce

1/4 cup red chile powder

1 cup water

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, finely chopped or pressed

1 Tbsp flour

1 tsp mexican oregano

In a metal or glass bowl (chile will stain ceramics), combine the chile powder and water, mixing thoroughly to create a paste. On medium heat in a cast iron or other heavy-duty skillet, saute the garlic and mexican oregano in the oil but do not brown. Add the flour, stirring rapidly to combine with the oil. Add the chile paste and reduce heat to low. Simmer until it reaches the desired consistency.

This is a critical component of enchiladas, burritos, rellenos, posole, and many, many other New Mexican dishes.

Best and Worst Potatoes of 2012

My husband Alex is half Swedish Finn, that odd little ethnic group that includes Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux operating system. Alex spent five years of his childhood in Stockholm, and one of the things he seriously misses about living in Sweden is new potatoes. Swedes take their potatoes very seriously, and new potatoes are a necessity for Midsummer festivities. For Swedes, they represent the beginning of summer as much as the first strawberries do for us.

Alex's memory of those potatoes is strong, and he's been searching for the same variety of potato ever since. Yukon Gold comes close, particularly in texture, but he says the flavor just isn't quite right. So last year, we set out to grow the perfect new potato for him. We chose four varieties to try out: Yukon Gold (as a standard), Bintje, Rose Finn, and Norkotah. Of these, we mounded the Yukon Golds and Bintjes and left the others planted flat in their beds.

It was a blighty, blighty year. I mentioned in my last post that many of our tomatoes suffered last year from late blight. What I didn't mention was that the potatoes came down with it first and unfortunately shared their fungus with neighboring plants. There's a neatly encapsulated gardening lesson: separate your nightshades!

By the end of July, it was clear that our potatoes weren't long for this world. Since the tomatoes hadn't yet shown any sign of late blight, with the exception of one hardy Stupice planted at the end of one potato bed, we chose to harvest our potatoes early in an effort to stem the spread of the disease.

On July 31st, the girls and I went out and dug up all the Yukon Golds. They loved this! It was like a dirty treasure hunt. Since midsummer, they'd been carefully brushing away soil from the mounds and making off with one or two small tubers for supper. Now, though, they could yank up entire plants and plunder the soil for potato bounty. Actually, I did most of the yanking with a pitchfork, while the girls sifted through the soil for stragglers. Here's what we harvested:

Eleanor (top) and Annelise dig up (Yukon) gold.

On August 5th, Alex came out and helped me with the rest of the potato harvest.

Rose Finn and Bintje potatoes.

Norkotah potatoes.

Here's how well these varieties performed for us:

Bintje

This Dutch variety is grown widely throughout Scandinavia, and we were very pleased to find organic seed potatoes available in the U.S. from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds in Washington. The Bintjes produced quite well in their hills with a little scabbing and wire worm damage. Alex declares that Bintjes come very, very close to what he remembers of Swedish-grown new potatoes. The one downside was that they simply weren't ready by June 21st for use as new potatoes. We ended up using Yukon Golds for our Midsummer dinner. They also were seriously affected by the late blight. They kept reasonably well and just started sprouting in the basement last week. We liked these enough that we will likely plant them again next year.

Norkotah

I selected Norkotah not as a Swedish new potato contender but rather as a reliable storage potato. This relatively new russet variety was introduced in 1987 and has become a favorite russet variety at markets. I can understand why. Despite the fact that we didn't hill them and they're late season potatoes, they produced like crazy. I think if we'd hilled them and allowed them a full season, we'd have filled that large basket, and then some. They resisted the late blight best and had the least scabbing of all the varieties, and they have kept quite well in our basement. We used the last few for Thanksgiving mashed potatoes along with some Bintjes and Yukes. We'll definitely plant these again.

Rose Finn

I wanted to try a fingerling potato in the hopes that it would mature early enough for midsummer, but Rose Finn was a thorough disappointment. They were slowest to sprout and mature, resisted the late blight poorly, had the lowest yield, and were scabby, knobby, and mealy. After trying one batch, I gave the rest away to a delighted Polish friend, which just goes to show that tastes vary widely. Not planting these again, I'm afraid.

Yukon Gold

This common thin-skinned potato has creamy golden flesh and is wonderful boiled or mashed. Yukon Gold performed well for us, maturing early enough for Midsummer and producing a sizeable harvest despite the blight. Yukons don't store well, so we used these up as quickly as possible. While this variety is a reliable one and easy to grow, I don't think we'll grow them again this year simply because they're everywhere, readily available in every farmers' market and grocery store. I'd rather plant less common varieties I can't easily get.

So, in 2013, we'll repeat the Bintjes and Norkotahs. I think I'll also try the Swedish Peanut fingerling, known in Sweden as Mandelpotatis or "almond potatoes." If I have room for one more variety, I'd like to try a red-skinned potato. Selecting for disease resistance, I think I'd try Dark Red Norland or Chieftain. If you have suggestions of your own, please let me know.

This year, I'd really like to try growing potatoes in box towers. Irish Eyes has some excellent instructions for how to do this. If we can find the time to construct these, we can easily fit four varieties in our garden.

Note: Irish Eyes offers mini tubers as seed potatoes for some varieties. I highly recommend these. Cutting seed potatoes leaves them vulnerable to disease. Whole tubers resist far better and sprout faster.

Alex relaxes with his potato harvest.

Best and Worst Tomatoes of 2012

Ah, January. Snow covers the garden, and fresh tomatoes are a distant memory. How I miss them! I've been making do with homemade tomato sauce all week, but nothing beats a fresh, homegrown tomato, bursting with juice and flavor. So it's time to snuggle down with my pile of catalogs, think about ordering seeds, and ponder the successes and failures of last year.

2012 was an interesting year for tomatoes. It was the best harvest season I've ever had for Brandywines, that fussy, late-producing heirloom. I suspect the mild winter, early spring, and warm, wet summer provided almost optimal conditions for Brandywines and their cousins here in coastal Massachusetts.

I say almost because it was also a year filled with fungus. Early blight, late blight, and leaf spot all hit our tomato plants with widely varying impact. While the Brandywines weathered the late blight fairly well, our  Hillbilly tomatoes started rotting on the vines. This didn't stop our raiding woodchuck from eating them like candy, and he was welcome to them. Even applications of copper fungicide could not stem the decay.

We grew ten different varieties of tomato last year. In alphabetical order, here's how they performed for us.

Bellstar

I chose Bellstar for its reputation as a reliable early plum tomato. It was non of these. My Bellstars produced very little and succumbed to early blight within a month of planting. The few fruits I got from these were round, not plum-shaped, and seriously lacking in flavor, although they did have good texture. I won't be trying this variety again, which leaves me looking for a good plum tomato variety to replace it.

Brandywine

Brandywine is a pink heirloom variety with a well-established reputation for excellent sweet and fruity flavor. Not a good choice for sauces, they are fantastic for slicing or salads. The drawback is that Brandywines take a long time to mature, 78 days on average, and I've had many a crop cut short by an early frost. Not this year. For the first time ever, my Brandywines started producing in late July and kept on going despite encroaching late blight and leaf spot. They were some of the best, tastiest, most productive Brandywines I have ever grown, and I'll grow them again next year, giving them a nice early start in the greenhouse.

Defiant

Defiant is a hybrid slicer bred specifically for blight resistance, and it did resist well, but it produced poorly. While heirlooms were blooming and fruiting like mad all around them, our Defiants produced very few rather small fruits. They were tasty, though, and I have to wonder if they simply got completely overgrown by the other tomatoes in our bed. Given their excellent disease resistance, I think I'll give them one more try but interplant them in another bed, perhaps with onions, so that they have more space to develop.

Gold Nugget

I planted this pear-shaped cherry tomato primarily for my children to nibble, and the first few we got were delicious, firm, and not overly sweet. I suspect I would have loved them, but alas! Early blight did them in almost instantly. My husband ripped them out of the beds in July, and that was the end of that. Regretfully, I cannot recommend planting a tomato so sensitive to blight.

Hillbilly

One of my seedling customers provided me with Hillbilly seeds. I'd never heard of the variety before, and they were certainly interesting. A close cousin of Brandywines, these yellow-orange tomatoes are firmer and meatier. They grow robustly, and one actually pulled down its tomato ladder. They also produce earlier than Brandywines and quite prolifically. Unfortunately, they proved to be highly vulnerable to late blight. The fruit developed dark brown pitted bruises which eventually split and turned moldy. I didn't see this kind of response on any of the other tomatoes, and it persisted despite two treatments with copper. So, with further regrets, I have to pass on this variety as well. I won't be planting it again.

Juliet

This early-producing  mini-plum, closely related to Santa tomatoes, was a delightful discovery. The fruit was excellent, a wonderful balance between sweet and meaty with a good firm texture. Our Juliets produced prolifically and were outperformed only by our Sun Golds. Better yet, they resisted cracking quite well. Towards the end of the season, they did begin to exhibit some fungal pitting, but they kept on producing right up until the first hard frost. I will absolutely grow these again.

Stupice

This potato-leaf heirloom from Czechoslovakia looks exactly like Brandywine until it fruits. It's reputed to be cold-tolerant and early producing (52 days), but they actually produced about the same time as the Brandywines. Stupice did not stand up to either early or late blight well, though it did better than many other varieties. To my surprise, I found that it grows quite well in a greenhouse at low temperatures, even down to 50 degF. So while I probably won't grow it in the garden next year, I may well start another one in the greenhouse in the spring to replace the one that has just now stopped producing.

Sun Gold

In my opinion, Sun Gold is the king of cherry tomatoes. The round orange fruit is incredibly sweet, and even my tomato-hating eight-year-old will eat them right off the vine. They are incredibly prolific and vigorous, shrugging off blight, drought, and even frost. It took three frosts to finally kill ours off! They do have downsides, though. They split at the the least provocation, so they're not great for market, and they tend to overgrow everything around them. They require very sturdy trellises and plenty of space. That said, this is our favorite tomato, and we'll be growing it for years to come.

Valencia

I chose Valencia as an orange heirloom slicer. I love to make tomato salads with a variety of tomato colors for interest and variety. Valencia was billed as a reliable mid-season tomato, and it was. The fruit, however, was, well, boring. I honestly can't recall now how a single one of them tasted. They weren't particularly blight resistant, but neither did they instantly wither and die. They didn't produce much, but they did produce two or three fruits per plant pretty reliably each week. So, this wasn't a bad tomato, but neither was it a great one. I think I'll pass on this one in 2013.

Washington Cherry

Billed as the earliest cherry tomato to market, I think Washington Cherry was the biggest disappointment. They did produce early, but with nowhere near the yield of Sun Gold. They resisted splitting quite well, but in exchange, they just had no flavor whatsoever. I may as well have bought them in the store for a good deal less trouble. So no more Washington Cherries this year.

The big winners this year were Brandywine, Juliet, and Sun Gold. Stupice and Defiant are worth trying again, I think. But the rest we'll chalk up as learning experiences. 

This leaves me wanting a good, normal-sized plum tomato, a large beefsteak, and some good color. I also want to find more good determinate varieties that don't require quite so much staking and maintenance. I should also add in a couple of blight resistant hybrids.

I'm considering trying the following new varieties next year:

Amish Paste - Mid-season heirloom plum tomato reputed to have high yields and excellent taste. Available from Bountiful Gardens and Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Attention - A new beefsteak hybrid, highly adaptive and resistant to a range of fungal infections and viruses. Available from the Natural Gardening Company.
Celebrity - "A perfect main crop tomato", highly disease-resistant with a long growing season. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds and the Natural Gardening Company.
Golden Treasure - Yellow storage tomato. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Grandma's Pick - "Heirloom flavor with hybrid production, uniformity, and disease resistance." Now, how can I say no to that? Bright red with orange shoulders, this tomato is a heavy producer with high lycopene content. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Gregory's Altai - Bred in Siberia, this heirloom big slicer is reputed to be a very early producer. Available from Bountiful Gardens.
Indigo Rose - So dark purple, it's nearly black with high anthrocyanin content. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds and Territorial Seed Company.
Legend - Early slicing tomato with excellent late blight tolerance for an heirloom. Produces big 4-5 inch fruit. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Longkeeper - This semi-determinate hybrid will keep for up to three months when picked green or not-quite-ripe just before the first frost. Available from Territorial Seed Company.
Mountain Magic - Early hybrid, blight resistant, high yields. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds.
Pruden's Purple - An early Brandywine cousin with dark pink skin and crimson flesh. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds.
Taxi - Early, determinate yellow tomato, reputed to be easy to grow. Available from Johnny's Selected Seeds and Territorial Seed Company.

If you've grown any of these varieties in the past, please share your experiences and help me narrow down my selections. Also, many years ago, I grew a small Brandywine cousin called Lillian Yellow. Alas, I didn't save the seed, and I haven't been able to find it since. If you have some seed or know of a good source, please let me know.

Happy New Year!

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post. In fact, the last post was by my husband while I was on vacation with our daughters in New Mexico. Now, why would I take a vacation in August, the peak of growing season? Well, when we bought our home, it had many wonderful features, such as the greenhouse and the yard, but it also had some serious drawbacks.

Worst of these was the kitchen, which had not been changed since the house was built in 1940. It had lower-than-standard counter heights, no space for a dishwasher, and very little cabinet space. The adjoining dining room was so cramped, we couldn't entertain more than a few guests without turning the table diagonally or adding a table in the living room. So we embarked on a radical kitchen renovation: add a structural beam in the basement to level the sagging floor, tear down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, pull out the cabinets, add a food prep area with a high counter, and provide enough cabinet space overall that we could stop using the linen closet as a pantry.

We chose to do this in August while on vacation so that the bulk of the work could be done with the girls out of the house. Our younger daughter has asthma-ish problems, and we didn't want her home, breathing in construction dust. We also wanted the kitchen finished before harvest season hit full swing so that we could be canning and preserving our hard-won garden bounty. Every contractor we interviewed assured us they could finish the renovation in four weeks.

It took over three months. We began the 6^th of August, and the kitchen was not completed until the week of Thanksgiving. There are still outstanding issues. Our new induction range arrived with a manufacturing defect. It is scheduled to be fixed on Tuesday. Also, somewhere along the way, someone made a measurement error, and our refrigerator does not quite fit in its allotted space. So we're now looking for a 30-inch-wide fridge that won't seriously bust our budget.

The renovation ate all of my spare time, hence no blogging. Worse, with no kitchen, I couldn't cook most of the veggies we were growing. What on earth do you do with an enormous garden full of veggies when you can't cook? You give them away. We gave veggies to all our friends and neighbors. When the girls returned to school, we sent bin after bin of cherry tomatoes, bush beans, broad beans, bell peppers, cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, husk cherries, and sunflower seeds to their classrooms as snacks. Every Monday, I'd pick everything ripe and bring it to the food pantry at Beverly Bootstraps, a local charity. By the end of the growing season, we'd given them nearly 100 lbs. of our fresh, organic produce.

We did manage to freeze some tomatoes, corn, and roasted green chile. We stored potatoes, beets, and squash. I dried broad beans and blue corn for meal. Some friends kindly took all our basil, converted it into pesto, and gave us half the batch. Many of our attempts at storage failed, including green tomatoes wrapped in newspaper and stored in our basement, which simply rotted, and dehydrated red chiles. After hours in the dehydrator, I ended up with red chile leather that then went moldy two weeks later.

And the worst, most frustrating part of this was that the garden was, with a few exceptions and despite raids by a determined woodchuck, wildly successful. Even the corn stalks infected with Gibberella produced bushels of corn. The husk cherries completely overgrew their bed and carpeted the garden paths with their fruit. The bush beans kept on producing right up until the first frost. Even now, with the garden blanketed in snow, we're still picking fresh kale, cauliflower, and broccoli.

At last, the renovation is over, the holidays are past, and I have time to reflect on our successes and failures. Seed catalogs have begun arriving in the mail, and I'm beginning to think ahead to this year's garden. So over the next few days, I'll be posting on all the varieties I planted, reporting on what worked, what didn't, and what I'm considering trying this year. First on my list: tomatoes.