Garden
Ingredients for autumn soup: chestnuts from a farmers market, Lactarius thyinos (no common name), hen of the woods, Queen of Smyrna squash
I took this picture to run with the recipe – not yet written – because I was about to roast the squash and chestnuts, making them less photogenic.
But then I realized the picture itself is a massive seasonal alert. So:
Bill’s detailed hen of the woods hunting advice is here.
The post where I roll all over in delight about the squash, after a timely reminder that the window of specialty squashes is both small and right now, is here.
And really a lot about roasting and peeling chestnuts is here.
Further refinements:
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I probably should have titled this “Harvesting Wild Mushrooms;” there are all kinds of them just about everywhere (or at least everywhere in the Northeast). Our vegetable gardens may be soggy – even without Irene this has been a mighty rainy summer – but in the silver lining department there’s a bumper crop in the woods and fields.
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This started out to be about blue, and how plants that are far apart in most ways may be mighty similar in the color department.
That’s a sweet pea (legume family) on the left and a larkspur (buttercup family) on the right. The seeds are coriander and will be a new crop of cilantro by fall.
But then the larkspurs took over, because – at least in the north – they’re a real low fuss delight (unlike some flowers we could name). Larkspurs are so closely related to delphiniums they used to be in the same species, but this airy member of the family almost never needs staking.* Also unlike delphiniums, larkspurs are seldom bothered by slugs and snails. Plus they don’t dwindle and die out on you after a couple of years. Plant just once and have them forever.
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Would be me; thinking I could just make some of this classic English dessert, put up the recipe and move on to something gardenly like breeding peonies, growing great basil or one of the many other topics on the tip of my desktop.
However.
Reading up on gooseberry fool – don’t laugh; it turns out to be a much explored subject* – led me into a briar patch of nursery catalogs, from which I have only recently emerged.
Two ways of serving Gooseberry Fool.
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Their backs turned to us: no problem. Our backs turned to them: catastrophe!
At this point, most people are at least dimly aware that it ain’t about the honey. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are essential to the commercial production of most fruits and vegetables and those bees are in deep, deep trouble.
Being a locavore helps, especially if the locality is your own back yard, but staying away from agribusiness produce isn’t going to fix the problem. Even crops grown on small farms and in gardens need pollinators, and in many respects the woes of (non-native) honeybees are also the woes of native bees (there are scores of species) and other native pollen transporters.
What to do?
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A Luna moth (Actias luna). Not the enemy, even though its children are very large and green.
I don’t have a picture of a hawkmoth, aka sphinx moth or hummingbird moth (so named for its ability to hover and its very long tongue). But if you see one of these gray-brown creatures, almost big enough to pass for a small bird, you’re seeing disaster on the wing. The Hawkmoth’s very large green children are hornworms.
Tomato – or more likely tobacco - hornworm (Manduca quinquemaculata or M. sexta), both voracious consumers of tomato, pepper, petunia, tobacco and other plants in the nightshade family.
In our New York and Maine gardens, hornworms usually show up in late July or August. But I’m thinking about them early this year because a Facebook friend in Virginia is already beset.
“Hornworms are eating my tomato plants,” she wrote, “anyone have advice on how to get rid of them?”
But of course!
Try the tips on Hornworm eradication at the end of this post, I replied, and if you get the chance, employ these two major organic defenses:
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After years and years of happy harvests, garden mainstays like heirloom tomatoes, squash blossoms and armloads of fresh herbs are as familiar as breathing, but every spring I get surprised all over again by the lettuces: how beautiful they are, how delicious, how willing…
And how different from the lettuce at the market, whether super or farmers.’ Being both extremely bulky and highly perishable, first class lettuce is a perfect poster child for home-grown.
Panisse (left) and Forellensclhuss – one modern, one heirloom. One toothsome, one super-tender. Neither suitable for any but the most local commercial cultivation.
It’s an ever-changing parade, with overlapping performers. First come the mild, mid-green frills of Black Seeded Simpson, dotted around in self-sown clumps, offspring of last year’s late summer’s crop. Then close behind them the classics of spring planting, including our favorite: buttery thick-leafed Webb’s Wonderful.
Self-sown Black Seeded Simpson, being permitted to stay in place beside the tomato patch. It grows so fast we ignore Rule # 1 and just cut the crowded seedlings by handfuls until we’ve used them up.
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I first saw this thing around Easter time, took a photograph (finding it almost uniquely eekworthy), then realized I couldn’t excoriate it here because I’d forgotten to take a closeup of the label.
And when I went back it had disappeared.
Or so I thought. No such luck. It has returned. The greenhouse/nursery at Adams is a reputable outfit and has therefore posted a warning
But the distributors of this abomination
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Oh dear, HOW has the time passed so quickly (as if gardeners didn’t know). I have now planted 6 kinds of peas, multititudinous onions and leeks, beets and lettuces and other comestibles galore, as well as the first flowers. Also pruned and deadheaded and mowed and edged and…
Result: blog silence. And here it is time for the next spring fling recipe swap.
If asparagus comes, can rhubarb be far behind?
This time it’s rhubarb, about which I have had a lot to say over the years on account of because I love it. Please use the search to find everything or go directly to the Rhubarb Custard Pie pictured above.
That post has links to other pies, but if you’re interested in the garden angle
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The very first spears came up two days ago – and promptly got clonked by last night’s frost – but it won’t be long until we’ve got plenty; there’s a 100 foot row at the back of our truck garden here in the Hudson Valley.
When I got out the butter I was thinking "have a measure to show the lengths," but it doesn't hurt to remember you don't HAVE to cook it in olive oil.
It was planted 20 years ago, which means 16 years of bountiful harvests and about 5 years of asparagus posts, most recently Tips for Choosing, Storing, Preparing and Growing. Want recipes? I seem to have called it a day at Cream of Asparagus Soup (made from the otherwise discarded tough ends) and Spring On Toast, with asparagus, morels and eggs. So I was feeling faintly remiss when
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