This is a stem of Benfica, reputedly the deepest, darkest red. It's much darker and redder than this picture suggests.

or this one either, for that matter.

Thus we arrive at the moment for talking about long-term amaryllis care. Questions have been coming in, so here’s the drill:

There are about 80 species of Hippeastrum, to give the genus its proper name, and not surprisingly they grow in a number of different habitats. But most of the “Amaryllis” sold in the US are hybrids like this Elvas, derived from deciduous species that live in well-drained soil where winter is temperate and dry, spring is heralded with warm rains and summer temperatures are toasty but not downright tropical.

Well, it was sold ( at the supermarket) as Elvas; I think it may be Dancing Queen

On home turf, the spring rains wake the dormant bulb. It sends up a flower stalk, closely followed by a sheaf of strappy leaves. The leaves grow and feed the bulb all summer, then gradually die back as the rains stop and the ground grows drier. Cold – well, cool, they can’t take frost – weather keeps them dormant until late winter, when the whole cycle starts again.

Translation:

1. After blooming, or when there are leaves if there weren’t blooms, encourage strong growth by keeping the plants warm (70 – 80 degrees), giving them bright but not scorching light and watering just enough to keep the soil barely moist; better to err on the side of dryness if you’re unsure. Avoid pouring  water into the neck.

Feed with all purpose fertilizer diluted to half strength, every 2 or 3 weeks from spring to fall. Don’t start until the leaves are well on their way and stop when you see they are no longer growing actively.

2. If you can move the potted plants outdoors for summer, that’s a good thing, though it’s important to protect them from narcissus bulb flies if these pests are in the area.

3. In mid to late summer, stop watering. If the plants are in pots outdoors, just turn the pots on their sides. If there are serious autumn rains; put the pots under cover, especially the terra cotta ones.

4. When the soil is dry and leaves are flabby and yellowing, cut off the leaves. If the bulb is extremely crowded or has produced many offsets, repot in very well drained potting mix in a slightly larger pot, leaving the upper third of the bulb exposed (to forestall rot at the neck). Removing the offsets will direct more strength to the mother bulb; leaving them will eventually produce a more handsome clump. Be warned “eventually” means 3 to 5 years.

5. Let the bulb experience winter – temperatures in the 50 to 60 degree range – for 8 to 10 weeks. You don’t have to put them in a dark place unless the place they’d be in otherwise is so brightly lit after dark they’d completely fail to get the message about winter’s short days.

6. Water well, just once, to restart growth. Be patient; it often takes a couple of weeks before anything starts happening, and over watering at this stage is a sure invitation to rot. When you think about those bulbs in the bin at the store, sprouting away while their naked roots are just dangling there in the dry air, you can see that lack of moisture is seldom the thing that’s holding them back.

Warm Climate Armaryllis Growing

Gardeners in zones warm enough to grow hippeastrums as garden plants – 8b and warmer, basically – have better or worse luck depending on soil, weather and placement. Slightly sandy, quick draining soil is essential; pH can be anywhere from 6 to a little above 7.

“Bright but not scorching” applies, a bit of afternoon shade is a good idea in truly torrid areas. There’s not much you can do about giving them the requisite dry period if you live where it rains in late summer, but you can be sure to site the bed away from plants that get watered in the normal course of things.

Bulbs in the ground may fail to experience 60 degrees as winter, especially if it’s never any colder. I’ve heard of people digging them up and putting them in the fridge but I’m against that degree of fussing around even if it does work.

Sources: I got the Benfica from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, which may well have been the source of the original Papilio – unless I got it from John Scheepers, an equal possibility. Next fall I may try an offering or two from Easy To Grow Bulbs. Never ordered from them before but they have both a good reputation and a large selection.

part of our Hudson Valley vegetable garden

In Kitchen and Garden has always been In Garden for Kitchen as much as anything else, so there’s a lot about growing vegetables tucked in among the posts about flowers and shrubs, preserves and pastries and architecture and wild mushrooms and coyotes and

where was I?

Giving pointers on food gardening, I think. Here are a few posts that may prove helpful as we teeter on the brink of the 2010 growing season:

The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Gardeners – just what it says… except of course it shouldn’t say “the,” implying as it does that there are only seven. This is just seven of the most important.

Planting a Delicious New Year, Favorite Sources for Seeds – Descriptions of and links to a few of the seed companies I buy from every year, along with a few words about heirlooms and hybrids

Tips for Success with Vegetable Seeds – or more accurately, success with vegetables like lettuce and carrots that are usually directly seeded, rather than grown from transplants.

High Return Vegetables – maximum bang for your (metaphorical; I’m not talking about money) buck when growing space, gardening time or both are limited

Concerning tomatoes: Cool Tomatoes (planting and mulching); Keeping Track of Your Tomatoes (labeling tips) ; Organic Tomatoes Triumphant (why organically grown tastes better and has more nutrients) Tomato Season Starts Now; It’s Time to Choose the Seeds – actually about making choices that (may) help avoid late blight.

Basil Time – harvesting guidance and late season care…I see where I should write something about planting the stuff; please stay tuned..

Delicious Home Grown Corn, and a Tasty Movie about the Industrial Kind – a giant love letter to Black Mexican aka Aztec Black heirloom sweet corn; why there’s no point in growing your own non-heirloom sweet corn and a friendly review of the now famous movie, King Corn.

Bill standing in the corn patch a couple of years ago. ( I think this may actually be Country Gentleman; Black Mexican plants are smaller. The purple item is Lespedeza thunbergii, in case you were wondering.)

Granted, Pinus rigida isn’t usually much to look at, but it is singularly resilient, and perhaps fittingly, it does approach genuine beauty just where it’s needed most: at the salty, wind-scoured seaside and on rocky slopes, where it can survive in crumbs of soil too scant for anything else.

One of Eric’s young pitch pines.“This one is only 5 years old but looking good,” he says.

Pitch Pine (Pinus Rigida)

by Eric Larson

First, a bit of New Haven news. The past month has brought us several solid snow storms here in coastal Connecticut. Nothing like further south to be sure, but still we had our share of the white stuff.

For us, most of these snows have been dry and fluffy, easily removed from streets and walks, and extremely photogenic. The storm of Friday, February 27, for instance, left every tree a work of art, every seedpod a captured moment. The snow is a good thing for ground water replenishment and also protects the roots of some plants from harmful cold.

If you can stay home and enjoy it, snow is one of nature’s gifts. If you have to move around in it, just go slow. By the way, despite the snow, our first beekeeping workshop as was a roaring success. Stay tuned for news of the next one, sometime in May.

Pitch Pine

is an odd plant in many ways. Its name seems to imply a relation to baseball, but not the throw to the plate from the mound. It’s one of the sources of pine tar, which was the focus of a famous at-bat by George Brett against the New York Yankees.

For those who are not sports nuts or Kansas City Royals or New York Yankee fans, George Brett hit a go-ahead home run in the late innings of a game at Yankee Stadium in1983. That wily fox, manager of the Yankees Billy Martin had noticed that the pine tar on Brett’s bat exceeded the allowable limits according to an arcane rule in the major league baseball book.

After the umpiring crew inspected the bat, they called George Brett out, his home run nullified and the Yankees winners of the game. One wag noted that, “Brett has become the first player in history to hit a game-losing home run.”

On appeal, the ruling by the crew was overturned, the home run and resultant scores were reinstated and the game was finished at a later date, with Ron Guidry in left field if I remember. The Royals won the game in the end. Not that I’m a sports nut, and please don’t accuse me of being a Yankees fan.

Pitch Pine’s Latin species name, rigida, refers to the stiff branching habit and the way the needles are tensed against gravity. Its genus, Pinus, which needs no translation, has well over a hundred species and many cultivars and varieties. The Pine family, Pinaceae, in turn, has 11 genera and over two hundred twenty species when they all sit down to Thanksgiving dinner. The genus and the family are cosmopolitan, with world-wide distribution.

P. rigida is native to the eastern half of North America, from Georgia to New Brunswick, westward to Ontario and down to Kentucky. This species is a bit odd in that it will grow in an assortment of forbidding conditions: it is one of the few woody plants that will tolerate the sands of the Pine Barrens, the rock crevices of Cadillac Mountain, the peat soils of Cape Cod, the marl of Isle au Haut and the top of Whiteside Mountain in North Carolina.

As one would suspect, its form is variable as well. If soils and conditions permit, it can grow to a hundred feet in the wild; the national champion in New Hampshire tops out at 94 feet.  Or it will twist and turn, crab along the ground and mimic a natural bonsai. The poorer and drier the soil, the windier the conditions, the more likely it is that the tree will have some posture issues.

Pitch Pines grow at a medium pace – 6-18 inches/year – as youngsters, slowing as they grow older. Pyramidal in youth, they become, as Michael Dirr puts it, “‘gnarled and more irregular with age,” often with an open and sometimes flat-topped visage. The 3-5 inch needles are held in bundles (called ‘fascicles’ by botanists) of three, and are usually a dark to medium green, although in some difficult sites with poor soil, expect a more yellow-green color.

One aspect of Pitch Pine that we like here is that they bear cones at a young age, often maturing after only twelve years. The smallish cones (2-3 x 1 and 1/2 inches) are produced in whorls of three to five, and stay on the plant for two years.

Although it’s not not a major timber source, pitch pine wood has been used for railroad ties, radio towers (in Germany, at Muehlacker and Ismaning), crates and pallets, and rough construction. Because of the high resin content, it is also a source of pitch, useful not only as a hitter’s aid in baseball, but also for waterproofing ropes, wood, boats and roofs.

Pitch pines are not recommended for your yard or small property. There are many more ornamental pines, to be featured in an upcoming column. We have the species here at the gardens by request from professors in the department of Forestry and Environmental Studies, because we are nothing if not quirky (!) and also because of  Tom Siccama, who retired from FES in 2008, after a long and distinguished career.

In his honor we created a small garden of plants native to the (Pitch) Pine Barrens of New Jersey, where he did his graduate field work so many years ago. Our youngest P. rigida is thriving there.

Disclaimer: The opinions and thoughts expressed within these columns are not those of Yale University, Marsh Botanical Gardens, any of our partners or Leslie Land. They are personal reflections on life, plants, humankind and the daily miracles that come my way.

But I can’t resist, because it’s such a classic example of the all-knowing self-righteous preaching that helps the processed food industry keep its stranglehold on the American diet.

Some are ok, some aren't. Can you guess which of these foods you're supposed to make yourself, or never heat - or not eat at all?

Left to right: Back row – Butter, smoked Spanish paprika, olive oil, hard cider, whole wheat flour, center – local cheese: Barat, from Sprout Creek Farm, and Shaker Blue, from Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, (home made cherry preserves, here for another reason), cocoa, thick cut rolled oats.

Having a contest or challenge is widely recommended as a way of driving traffic to one’s blog, so I will follow the “Real Food” example and issue a challenge of my own: how many logical contradictions, dubious pronouncements, definitional confusions and needless make-work can you find, between the challenges themselves and the responses of those who took them up?

Why, for instance, must you make your own fresh sauerkraut instead of buying same? Why must you render your own lard if the only acceptable raw material is coming from the sort of butcher who’s almost surely selling rendered lard already?

Why is the soft cheese made by a local dairy somehow non-U, while the cheese you make at home from the very same milk is just fine?

Have to confess my challenge probably won’t have a prize, though the how-to-drive-traffic people say that’s a very important aspect. It’s not that I’m stingy, it’s that I can’t bear the thought of dwelling on this one moment longer than necessary and can’t imagine you don’t also have better things to do with your time.

But if entries do appear, and there are more than, say, ten of them, the prize will be a jar of cherry preserves, processed right here at home by me. Be warned the preserves contain a small amount of white sugar, the devil incarnate, and were flavored with a vanilla bean that was of course quite complexly processed.

Last time I looked, American consumers were still buying 300,000,000 (yes, three hundred million) boxes of Jello every year. That’s Jello, festival of noxious artificial flavors and colors. Suggesting that the best way to graduate to something better isn’t to mix fresh fruit juice with unflavored gelatin but rather to source some local calves’ feet and start boiling isn’t just silly, it’s counterproductive. Or it is if your goal is to help people see how easy it can be to eat well, and thus create a mass movement toward purer, less processed food.

Important Note: as far as I know this example is fictional, invented for point-making purposes. If she really did say you ought to try making your own gelatin I don’t want to know about it. Please.

This is a revision of an earlier post that contained inaccuracies.

Uh huh. Maybe someday, but if you’re anything like me your supply of well-lit warm space won’t support that many plants, even if your supply of ambition is adequate to the task.

I’m lucky; we have a small greenhouse. But finding room in it for the tomatoes, peppers, basil and other necessities that will be soon be needing light is going to be hard enough without asking the cauliflower to move over

And please don’t point out that I could install grow lights in the basement. The only possible basement spot is already full of dormant figs and brugmansias and the giant lemon verbena, to say nothing of over a dozen large garbage bags full of dahlia tubers and canna rhizomes.

the lemon verbena, pausing briefly between in ground in garden and in pot in basement

I’m mentioning this because there are so many planting timetables floating around out there, telling you exactly when to start seedlings for just about any vegetable you might conceivably want to grow.

Makes sense for the timetables; the more thorough they are the better. What doesn’t make sense is to let them intimidate you. Yet I still find myself faintly cowed.

No amount of knowing that most of this doesn’t apply to us keeps me from having twinges of guilt about how few things I start indoors. Then I get cast down over not having started soon enough. Or too soon. Or…

Here’s what: Unless you’re a market gardener or a survivalist, the only crops you absolutely must start inside from seed are the ones that meet at least two of these criteria:

1. They will not produce unless started from seedlings

2. The seedlings needed cannot be purchased from local nurseries or market gardeners

3. Whatever it is, you plan to eat so much of it that buying it from worthy farmers would cost more than you can afford.

Eliminating everything that doesn’t pass the test makes the must-do list much shorter, but there are still a few items  on it, so here’s what else: There’s no rush. Although the timetables always give starting times counting backwards from last predicted frost , frost is only a proxy for the thing that matters most.

What really counts is when you’ll be able to get the plants into the ground. Outdoor plants do not like to be indoors, even when they get everything they need,* and they usually don’t get anywhere near everything. There is often quite a while between last frost and planting out time, so it’s always better to err by starting on the late side.

Waiting is frustrating. The urge to get going is strong and young home-grown seedlings often look small compared to commercial alternatives. But small really is beautiful. Whether they’re tomatoes, peppers or exotic, long-season beans, young plants get settled and start growing more quickly than their older, often weaker kin. Spared the setbacks of transplant stress, they catch up in just a few weeks and often go on to be healthier and bear larger crops.

Full disclosure:  I do start quite a few seedlings but most of my tomatoes, peppers, cutting flowers and such are started by the invaluable Jan MacDonald, at Barlejo farm in Warren, Maine. She has been in the vanguard, but there are now more and more greenhouse growers who do custom work, and if you can find one it’s well worth the investment. Choosing exactly the varieties you want, then having them grown by a pro is pretty close to a perfect setup.

A few things I start myself, in that ever-more-crowded greenhouse:

Specialty peppers that take months to germinate

Tomatoes I decided to grow after I sent the seed packets to Jan

Items to plant in the NY garden that are only indoors a short time and make no sense to bring down from Maine – lettuces and other greens for early harvest, basils, lima beans and long beans. Plus  flowers (coming up in a post or two).

I never used to start winter squash; you only get 2 or 3 weeks’ head start and the Hudson Valley growing season is usually plenty long enough. But “growing season” is measured frost to frost, and last year was a horrid reminder that frost-free is not the same as good squash growing weather. This year I plan to hedge my bets and I might start a few cucumbers too, just for laughs.

* “everything they need” includes but is not limited to: 12 to 16 hours a day of bright light; warm temperatures during the day, slightly-less-warm temperatures at night;  different sets of temperatures for different crops ( peppers want it hotter than broccoli, for instance). Also correct quantities of water and fertilizer, plenty of air circulation… If you didn’t have respect for seeds before, the fact that they’re able to produce useable, often quite nice plants while almost all of these needs go unmet ought to make you sit up and take notice. The people who call them miraculous are not exaggerating.

After the 1st and 2nd snowfalls, before the 3rd and 4th. That’s a 12 foot ladder

Up until a bit more than a week ago, I was in a pro-snow mood. Seemed like everyone else in the Eastern half of the country was having piles and piles of white beauty, while we had ugly patches of bare brown ground and nothing to ski on.

Be careful what you wish for.

When all is finally revealed, this viburnum will be about half as tall as it used to be. Those three broken leaders were due for pruning but I’d have preferred to choose where to cut without quite so much help.

For almost a week, day temperatures hovered near freezing, nights went down to 20 or so. It snowed and snowed, then it rained for a while and then it snowed again until I swear the stuff must’ve weighed about a pound per cubic inch.

Clearing the parking area wasn’t just  a Sisyphean enterprise, it was also, eventually, a mighty long walk. By the 3^rd go-round the blacktop was ringed with 5 foot piles of snow, and because I couldn’t lift a shovelful much higher than 3 feet, I had to drag each and every one to the only edge low enough to throw it over.

The area in question is about 50 by 75 feet. The low spot was on a short side. You may do the math yourself; I don’t care to think about it.

I don’t care to think about what I’m going to find when all’s said and done, either. The big triple-trunked arborvitae in the corner of the east yard is now a single, and one of the single’s major branches is ripped beyond repair.

Two trunks down; the other one will probably have to go, purely on aesthetic grounds.

We lost  arborvitae trunks one and two in the second snowfall, so I went out in snowfall #3 and tried to knock as much snow as I could from the survivor and from our precious privacy hedge, which at least at this writing appears to have come through ok.

That’s me gently knocking snow upwards with an extension pole pruner, fully extended to about 10 feet. Invaluable tool.

Note: I have exaggerated for the sake of eloquent complaining. Truth is Bill did more than half of the blacktop clearing – that’s where the 5 foot piles came from.

The sweet orange in blossom over at Yale’s Marsh Gardens. Flowers are only 1 to 1.5 inches across

No way of knowing if it was the perfume that inspired Eric to choose his sweet orange as a Pet Plant, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Sweet Orange – Citrus sinensis (syn. C. aurantium var. dulcis)

By Eric Larson

The first oranges came to Europe in the 11^th or 12^th Century, when the Persian Orange or Bitter Orange (C. aurantium) was brought to Italy. Sweet Oranges (C. sinensis)  arrived much later, in the 15^th Century, when the Portuguese started importing them from Southeast Asia.

The Portuguese had a monopoly on trade from Asia that they wrested from the Venetians by dint of cutting out the middle-men: they were able to travel directly to Asia around Cape Horn, instead of relying on long supply lines overland from India. This not only let them charger lower prices, it also permitted the transport of more perishable goods. Until the Spanish occupied their country starting in 1580, the Portuguese used the East India trade winds (based on monsoon events) to arrive in Asia before spring, and leave for home by mid-summer.

Botany and Nomenclature

All of the citrus fruits that we eat today are from one ‘super-genus,’ Citrus, which gives us everything from the oranges in all their varieties to the grapefruits, the lemons, the limes and so many others. The Sweet Orange is an ancient hybrid, probably between the pomelo, C. maxima, and the tangerine, C. reticulata.

The interesting thing about members of this genus is that the species hybridize quite readily between each other. The ability to produce different fruit so easily by crossing the pollen from one species to another is probably one reason why this has been underway for such a long time in human history.

It also means that most of the propagating of any  preferred type is done by grafting clonal material onto rootstock, instead of by seed. The seed produced by hybrids (especially those with such a long convoluted history) will not bear fruit true to the parent. It is most likely to produce one of the many older, less-preferred relatives.

Originally the word citrus comes from the Greek word kedros, for Cedar.  In classical Latin, it was used to describe any aromatic tree or wood, but eventually it got focused onto the Citron, C. medica.  The common name orange goes all the way back to Sanskrit origins: nårangah means orange tree.

Other languages co-opted the word, and its descendant forms have referred to fragrance and color as well as the fruit. The Muslim culture brought the name along with the fruit to Spain and Italy.  The words for the sweet orange in many languages reflect the bearer of good news: in modern Greek for instance, the sour orange is called nerantzi, while the sweet orange is called portokali, for its Portuguese importers.

Growing Oranges

Our orange tree is blooming and setting fruit now. The longer day length has triggered its flower production, and the fruit that is present has been there for some months. As you enter the first bay (or room) of our greenhouse 1c, the aroma is unmistakable and intense.  This combination of sweet fruit, evergreen leaves and aromatic presence has made this one of the most intensively hybridized and cultured plants in existence.

In our climate, the orange is a greenhouse plant. They will live through cold snaps with temperatures in the upper twenties (some say as low as twenty two, but I think that’s pushing it) but when temperatures are below freezing for prolonged periods, the trees will die. Northerners can grow citrus in pots, but must bear in mind that they will need full sun through the winter.

We have the luxury here at Marsh Botanic Garden of good southern exposure for the greenhouses, as well as supplemental lighting that provides extra lumens when the weather is cloudy (as it seems to be most every day in the winter here in New Haven).

The famous Orangerie at Versailles was a long bank of windowed rooms on the south-facing side of the main hill. In the summer, the large pots of oranges stayed outdoors, enjoying the long days of a European growing season. In the fall, the pots were rolled on heavy-duty carts into the glassed-in rooms, and held in the plant form of hibernation. This worked for them perhaps, but I wouldn’t try it at home. (I might, if I had the big greenhouse with terrace and the heavy-duty cart. LL)

Orange trees are pretty heavy feeders, needing a good fertile soil and plenty of organic matter, supplemented with a good source of Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorus. Trace minerals are also very important, and so is choosing the right type for your soil and climate.

Navel oranges, grown from a sport discovered in Brazil in 1920, prefer low relative humidity and well drained soils. These are grown in the Southwest and in California. In Florida, other varieties are planted that are better adapted to humid conditions and denser soils. Regardless of  type, dwarf varieties should always be chosen for pot culture (that means growing in a pot, not…)

Good watering technique is also very important for citrus, especially when fruit is developing. Again there are varietal differences, with some types more suited to growing in ‘droughty’ soils and less dependent on abundant water, but all will respond to being well watered. One caveat: keep the water away from the trunk, and do NOT over-water: several fungal organisms are major pests of orange, so managing the water is key.

Actually, the pests of orange and other citrus are too numerous to list, and they can cause mortality, either in the damage they do or as vectors for diseases.  Especially in Florida, where groves count in the thousands of trees, the control of insect pests and diseases is a big-time operation, with resources beyond the average bug-zapper bearing down on the problems.

This small green orange is about 3 inches across right now. Eventually it will grow to 5 or 6 inches across,despite being on a dwarf rootstock. I blush to point out the little white fuzz on the upper right portion. Nothing to be too ashamed of, this critter is a mealy bug, one of the main pests of orange in the greenhouse. We have a very strong IPM program, but we also admit that we can’t get every bug. This one will not be there on Monday morning

Harvesting

The fruit takes from seven to eleven months to set and ripen, depending on variety and conditions. Oranges do not signify ripeness by changing from green to orange overnight. They can be left on the tree for some time and picked some weeks after the orange color has been achieved.

The Marsh Garden Orange tree, getting light and keeping warm

Observant readers will notice this tree is towering above our Pelargonium display, highlighted in the last Pet Plant column. Notice the high-tech sign identifying this plant.

Come visit us and see the orange tree and other culinary giants. In the meantime, enjoy the lengthening days and the strengthening sun, and be well.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author.  Yale University and Marsh Botanical Garden and Leslie Land are not responsible for the iconoclastic viewpoint or less-than-successful humor attempted in these columns.

Spicy Messy Coconut Shrimp – Thai(ish) fast food from Maine

Good News! Maine shrimp (Pandalus borealis), is starting to get around. Delicious, affordable, wonder of wonders sustainable, the only thing that has ever been wrong with it is that you pretty much couldn’t get it unless you lived in coastal Maine – or ate in extremely expensive restaurants.

That’s changing. More and more high end fish markets are carrying Maine, aka pink, shrimp, and it’s getting a little easier for those far from the shrimp boats to  miss a few of the middlemen. Port Clyde Fresh Catch, a fishermen’s marketing cooperative, is now selling in Brooklyn, New York and (go figure) Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Lucky mid-coast Mainers, who can buy shrimp almost everywhere, know that these delicate little crustaceans are sold in two forms: transcendentally wonderful super-fresh, heads on, eggs attached, and everything else.

Under ideal conditions, super-fresh lasts about two days from catch to consumption, so most of us, most of the time, have to make do with (usually headless) fresh in the shell, still a superior product, or frozen peeled, one of the world’s best convenience foods.

Long about now you might be wondering why I’m jumping up and down like this if they’re all that terrific. Two related reasons: they’re not really all that well known yet, and because they’re unfamiliar they’re often treated like other shrimp, a big large major mistake. Maine shrimp are sweeter than other other shrimp, with no trace of iodine, and the tender texture cannot stand rough treatment. Most shrimp toughen when overcooked; P. borealis turns to mush,

An earlier cooking primer is here. Recipes for the Coconut Shrimp, Sweet and Sour Ceviche and Very Not-Chinese Fried Rice follow in a minute.

But first, a word about shrimp sex, to reassure my friend Carol (the Heath Bar Cookies Carol, not the other one), who  wrote not long ago to describe her first bulk-buying experience -  50 pounds, from a fisherman who lives a couple of miles from her.

“…Almost every shrimp was female and covered with eggs, ” she said. ” How could it be that there were no males? Or do the males  help and carry eggs too??  I do hope that there are trillions of other shrimp that fishing nets are not capturing.”

No worries. There are trillions not being caught, because only the egg bearing females come inshore (where the fisherpersons operate) in order to spawn. The males stay farther out to sea and do not carry eggs – until they grow up and become females, that is.

Maine shrimp are protandric hermaphrodites. They hatch as males, but when they’re about 2 ½ years old their testicles turn into ovaries and that’s the end of that. Meanwhile, new males are growing to take their place. The trigger for the change is not yet well understood. Shrimp scientists are still investigating (pdf).

In any event, this is an unusually good year; the season will go on to the end of March. Nothing else to say but hooray!

Heartwarming sight; finger and toe freezing task. Double thanks to those who bring in the winter shrimp

photo copyright Ben Magro, 2010

SPICY MESSY COCONUT SHRIMP

Strictly an eat-with-the fingers treat. Very easy to make and always a hit. The spicy part is Thai green curry paste. Amount suggested is moderate; feel free to bump it up.

For 4 servings (it’s rich)

2 – 2.5 lb. raw headless Maine shrimp in the shell, rinsed and well drained

2 heaping tbl. shredded orange zest

2 – 3 tbl. minced garlic (see note)

1 tsp. Thai green curry paste, or more to taste

¼ c. peanut oil

1½ tsp. salt

3/4 c. shredded unsweetened dried coconut

orange or lime sections for edible garnish

(plenty of paper napkins and beer)

1. Spread the shrimp out on newspapers or paper toweling and let the shells dry. Turn from time to time, replacing paper as necessary.

2. Mix the zest, garlic, curry paste, oil and salt. Stir in the shrimp and let marinate at room temperature for 15 minutes or so. Heat the broiler while this is going on.

3. Stir in the coconut. Heat a heavy sheet pan or jellyroll pan under the broiler. Spread the shrimp on the hot pan in a single layer and broil, turning and moving it from time to time, until the shrimp is just cooked and the coconut toasted with a few burned spots; 2 to 5 minutes or so, depending on your broiler.

4. Serve at once. Eat with fingers, peeling as you go. With luck – i.e. a good hot broiler – a lot of the shells will be so crisp you can just enjoy the crunch instead of having to remove them.

Note: Amount of garlic depends on pungency; it should be strong but not dominant. If like us you’re using hardneck garlic that’s starting to sprout, you’ll want lots. If it’s store garlic not so much. If it were freshly harvested softneck you’d use even less but I can’t at the moment imagine how you’d have fresh northern shrimp and fresh garlic at the same time.

SWEET AND SOUR CEVICHE

Mostly just regular ceviche, but with faint hints of the Chinese restaurant just to keep it interesting.

For 4 appetizer servings:

¼ cup each orange juice and lemon juice

2 tbl. lime juice

1 tbl. brown sugar, or more to taste

1 tbl. nutty (not peppery) olive oil, or more to taste

1 tsp. salt

a dash of tamari

¾ c. thinly sliced sweet onion, in @ 1-inch lengths

½ c. fresh pineapple, cut in small dice

2 c. peeled Maine shrimp, raw or cooked (see Note)

1 avocado, cut in ½ inch cubes

minced or thinly shredded hot pepper such as serrano (optional; I don’t usually use it)

1. Whisk the juices, sugar, oil, salt and tamari in a wide shallow bowl. Add onion, pineapple and shrimp and stir to coat everything well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, not more than 6 hours.

2. Taste, making sure you get onion and pineapple as well as shrimp. Add sugar if it’s too sour, oil if it tastes thin. Stir in the avocado and pepper, if using.

Note: From the purely gastronomic point of view, raw is preferable. But that’s if  and only if: a) the shrimp is right-off-the-boat fresh and b) no one who’s eating it has any previously existing conditions including being very young or old. Otherwise, better safe, etc., and cooked is perfectly ok.

VERY NOT-CHINESE SHRIMP FRIED RICE

Like the more Chinese version, originally devised to make use of leftover rice. Except this time it's leftover wild rice.

This is one of those recipes that instantly inspires additions – peas, for instance, or tiny dice of chorizo. Why not?

6 servings as part of a tasting meal, 2 plus leftovers if it’s the main event.

2 tbl. Butter

2 eggs, beaten to mix but not aerate with ½ tsp oil and a pinch of salt

3 c. cooked wild rice, a generous ½ c. uncooked

6 – 8 oz. cooked Maine shrimp

1/2c. very thinly sliced celery

salt to taste

¼ c. thinly sliced scallion

Siracha (sweet hot chili sauce) and tamari for serving at the table

1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a wide, heavy-bottomed skillet. When it sizzles, pour in the egg. Let it set a moment, then stir, separating the cooked egg into curds. Repeat. As soon as all the egg is cooked, remove it with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2. Spread the rice in the skillet and fry it, turning and scraping with the spoon or a sharp edged pancake turner, until it starts to have gold spots, anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes. It will stick a bit. A bit is ok. If it’s really getting glued on, add a little more butter.

3. Stir in the shrimp and celery. As soon as they’re hot, stir in the egg. That’s it. Add salt to taste and serve sprinkled with the scallions.

Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor) *

The way to blog brilliantly has been being demonstrated for a couple of years now by Margaret Roach, over at A Way to Garden. You wouldn’t necessarily know it from looking at my efforts, but she has been an ongoing inspiration ever since she started.

As the upgrades here continue I keep thinking I’ll find the right time to say thank you – after I get the new link list up, say, or post the long planned shopping page. But how bogus is that? The time to say thank you is always right now, so Thank You, Margaret, thank you very much.

If you know her, you know why the gratitude picture is of a frog. If you don’t, that’s one more reason to trot over there and have a look.

* I’m saying it’s Hyla versicolor on account of the markings and because it was tiny, about an inch long, max. But it might be a small Green Tree Frog, H. cinerea, not so much because it’s green (the gray ones can also be green) as because it was right there in the garden on a hollyhock leaf instead of hiding where it couldn’t be seen.

I’m happy to tell readers of Bill’s Coyote Post (and everyone else in the area) about a great opportunity to learn more, right from the muzzles of the top experts:

“Wile E. Coyote In Your Backyard: What You Should Know About Canis latrans”

will be presented free and open to the public on Thursday, March 4 at 4:30 p.m., in the Student Lounge in Vanderlyn Hall, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY,  sponsored by the Catskill Institute for the Environment (CIE).

The panel will include Dr. Roland Kays, Curator of Mammals at the NYS Museum, who will speak on “New York’s Coyote/Coydog/Coywolf: What is it and how did it get here?;” Dan Bogan, Ph.D. candidate, Cornell University, discussing “Suburban coyote behavioral ecology: Implications for ecology and management;” and Robin Holevinski, Ph.D. candidate at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who will address “Foraging Ecology and Population Status of Eastern Coyotes.”

For information and weather confirmation, call 845-687-5231.

Dr. Kays is the Curator of Mammals at the New York State Museum where he studies the ecology and evolution of temperate and tropical carnivores. He is the co-author of a recent paper on coyote-wolf hybridization, and of the Mammals of North America (Princeton University Press Field Guide, 2009).

Dan Bogan has studied coyote behavioral ecology since 2001.  His current research addresses coyote behavior and management recommendations for suburban landscapes.

Robin Holevinski worked as a wildlife biologist with the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation for several years before pursuing her doctoral research on eastern coyotes. Her presentation will focus on assessing coyote kill rates of white-tailed deer using GPS collar technology, and determiningcoyote population status with the use of non-invasive genetic techniques.

The CIE, established in 1998, is a consortium of representatives of colleges, institutions and individuals that coordinates symposia and special programming to promote environmental awareness, education and scientific cooperation in the Catskill region. For more information, contact Dr. Morton (Sam) Adams, chairman, madams@mail.nysed.gov, or go to the Catskill Institute.

If you haven't seen something like this yet, it's only a matter of time

Coyote Photographs by Susan Scheid