Food and Flowers
The words are the recipe; heat the squash, then top with cheese and peppers. The initials stand for Very Nearly Instant: about 2 minutes in the microwave, because we almost always have some baked winter squash around.
It’s one of our favorite vegetables: in the garden, where it’s quite easy to grow if you have the space, in the kitchen, of course, and up in the bedroom under the bureaus, where it’s the first thing I see – other than Bill – every morning when I awake.
Terrific way to start the day, actually. No matter how gloomy the weather or discouraging the news, here’s this good sized supply of a beautiful winter staple that’s filling, flavorful, versatile AND (blare of trumpets) requires no refrigeration, canning, freezing or other special preservation. It stays perfectly good at room temperature for an entire season.
Down from the bedroom for their closeup, clockwise from left: Buttercup, Tetsukabuto, Candy Roaster Melon Squash, Queen of Smyrna.
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Nobody talks much about it, but the truth is the damn things tend to multiply.
While this is going on above ground, extension is transpiring underneath.
In the space of a single summer, one wizened little dahlia tuber can become a clutch of potatolike lumps the size of a basketball and the cannas are even worse – or better, if you’ve got a spot that could use a mass of something. Just because they got overused in the days of carpet bedding shouldn’t consign using cannas as hedging to the dustbin of horticultural history.
A section of the side yard hedge (as seen from the driveway) at the Hudson Valley house. The canna is 'Tropicana;' the neat black grass is millet 'Purple Majesty.'
This is by way of saying that – assuming you’ve got room in the cellar or garage – too much of a good thing may be just enough. And of course a bit more of an expensive thing is its own kind of gratification.
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It’s been a great tomato year so far, especially after 2009. We are well into tomato roasting, tomato drying, catsup-making and BLT’s. But it’s never too late for nature to pipe up and say don’t count your chickens.
Two cases in point: Hurricanes and Hornworms.
Most of these tomatoes would still be on the vine if heavy rains weren’t on the radar. The very green ones are almost ready, btw. They will still be green when ripe, just slightly yellower
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The old fashioned crookneck squash and Gold of Bacu beans are from our garden; the corn’s from the farmstand up the road and the vanilla butter* is the touch that turns them from yellow vegetables into winter joy.
Official Kitchen Garden Day was August 22, but at the time I was too busy planting fall crops, harvesting the everlasting beans and squash, canning roasted tomatoes and making plum jam to do any live-blogging, and yesterday was much the same except for an evening pizza party with freshly picked peppers, tomatoes and basil and the whole family around the outdoor oven.
If you actually have a kitchen garden, every day is Kitchen Garden Day – that’s the whole point. All spring, summer and fall, you plant and eat. All winter, you eat and plan for next year.
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Our 2010 cherry tomatoes, left to right: Black Cherry, Gajo de Melon (yellow), Maglia Rosa, Sun Gold (orange), Green Grape, and Juliet, with Matt's Wild Cherry on top.
Like most Northeastern gardeners, I planted this year’s tomatoes with fear and trembling, still in shock from last year’s late blight and almost afraid to hope.
A certain amount of apprehension remains – in gardens it’s never too late for disaster – but so far, so more than good. Like everything else goosed forward by heat waves, the Hudson Valley tomatoes are way ahead of schedule. There are a lot of them and they are delicious. (Nothing like nights in the 70′s to make a tomato plant happy, no matter what they do to the rest of us.)
Unintended consequence: we are drowning in cherry tomatoes
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This picture was taken on 7/22, after what will no doubt come to be called The Deluge of 2010. If you don’t know what our tiny creek looks like in late July, you see a fair amount of water. If you do know, you see Niagara Falls.
Rain gauge
When we left for an evening opening at Caldbeck Gallery, in Rockland, I put an empty bucket in the driveway, carefully avoiding measurement complicators like overhanging trees and dripping eves. When we got home (after crossing three low spots that should by all rights have stopped the car, since the water was up to the doors), it was overflowing. That is not a doctored photo; we got over 8 inches of rain in less than 4 hours.
Also the lightening was nonstop throughout. Also a giant elm branch fell on the sailboat parked in my neighbor’s yard. Also many roads were washed out; basements flooded…
People are pretty much alright, however, so I’m free to say the unusual storm is a perfect symbol for the usual Summer Crescendo: way too much of everything all at once.
Fruit is ripening - fast! These blackcaps came and went in about two (glorious; I made jam) weeks.
Mushrooms are popping up everywhere. (I fried these chanterelles in butter and froze them; they were the third batch this size in 8 days.)
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Ornamental millet ‘Limelight', in a bed with peppers (at right) and Verbena bonariensis. That's the tomato patch in the background.
Not long ago, I found and wrote a brief post about an amazing millet bug – amazing in that it was huge, gorgeous, and something I’d never seen before.
I was hoping somebody would recognize it. So far no luck. Also, at least so far, no one who shares my appreciation of its beauty. Commenters have been silent, but e-mails and conversations with friends have reminded me that for many people, bug = disgusting.
Too bad. Some insects are just plain creepy – earwigs come at once to mind – but a lot of them are drop down gorgeous, however disgusting their behavior.
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Will these Brandywine blossoms make it to tomatohood if the weather stays hot hot hot?
Our friend Melinda writes:
“It’s been my understanding that when it’s too hot for a sustained period (including high overnight temps–like around 80), that many veggie plants drop their flowers before they fruit (e.g., tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.). Is that true in your experience?”
Yes, but less often than you might think – or fear, given the ongoing heat wave. High night temperatures sterilize pollen and flowers that are not pollinated fall from the plant. But the window for this kind of blossom drop is comparatively narrow.
Pollen forms before the flower opens, but not that long before, and after the flower opens it must be pollinated within a day or two (over the course of a single morning, in the case of squash), no matter what else is going on.
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FGFP stands for Food Gardeners Fine Points and I’m putting pea varieties there because a recent NPR story, Why Supertasters Can’t Get Enough Salt, implied supertasters were the only ones who could taste differences between peas.
Phooey. If you’re any kind of taster at all, you know instantly when snap peas are too young or pod peas are over the hill. And if peas were sold by name, like tomatoes, you’d have little trouble noticing that different varieties have distinct degrees and kinds of sweetness, more and less tenderness, juiciness, grassiness…
And then the words start failing. I can say things like “Early Perfection has a slightly spicy note,” or “Casselode has old fashioned pea flavor with faint echoes of field peas.” But vegetable-speak has a long way to go before it’s as useful as wine-speak. I’m working on helping the produce catch up, so if you have good ways to describe the many, many tastes of peas, please write and let us know.
- Left to right: Early Perfection, Laxton’s Progress #9, Casselode, Sugar Ann, Gonzo, Sugar Sprint
Can’t expect tasters to know how different the plants themselves look. That’s a treat for gardeners.
This is how our squash bed/pea patch looked yesterday, 2 weeks after the version that ended Eric’s post on companion planting.
asparagus to the rear, mowed central path at the right. Actual distance between: @ 20 feet.
The plan: Early in spring, plant lettuce, fava beans and peas at the path edge of what will become the winter squash bed. By the time it’s warm enough to plant the squash, the peas will be flowering. By the time the squash flows lavalike over the edge of the bed, the early things will be all done.
Big question for today: will they be all done?
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