Posts - 2010
Planning for the Garden Shows
Dec. 10 -- Although winter is just setting in, I'm already planning for early spring, when the daffodils cheer up the muddy, brown ground with their yellow starbursts. That's also the time for garden shows in the Northwest, and I'll be speaking at three of the biggest ones: Seattle, Portland and San Francisco.
I'm very excited to be asked back to Portland's Yard, Garden & Patio Show (in fact, I'll be doing two talks there!) and to the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show. This will be my first talk at the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle.
I encourage you to buy tickets and support these amazing shows, and come find me to say hello! Here are the dates and titles of my talks:
"Year-Round Edibles: Best Growing Techniques," Sat., Feb. 19, 12:30 p.m., Yard, Garden & Patio Show, Portland, Ore.
"Ten Steps for Your Best Tomato Year Yet," Sun., Feb. 20, 12:30 p.m., Yard, Garden & Patio Show, Portland, Ore.
"Year-Round Edibles: All the Latest & Best Growing Techniques," Wed., Feb. 23, 4 p.m., Northwest Flower & Garden Show, Seattle
"Ten Steps for Your Best Tomato Year Yet," Sun., March 27, 10:45 a.m., San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, San Mateo, Calif.
Thanks to My Garden
Nov. 23 -- As we sat down to our traditional dinner, I was thankful for all the goodness and nutrition my garden has given me this year, up to and including today.
Our meal included salad from the garden and beets fresh out of the ground. The turkey and stuffing were flavored with our own garlic and herbs, some cut today (or yesterday, brushing aside a light covering of snow from the sage and parsley).
In the aftermath of our early snowfall, which has just melted, I pulled the cloche off the brassicas to find them all in perfect shape. The fava beans, which were about 6 inches tall and not covered by a cloche, did not fare as well. About half of them were flat and wilted. I nestled a leaf mulch around the remaining ones, and will see if they make it through. Guess it depends on further appearances of snow...
Year Round Sustainable Eats: Tips for Better Winter Edibles
Nov. 6 -- My friends at the Sustainable Eats blog asked me to do a guest post, because they were too busy processing their hog, down to rendering lard for soap. True story. I hope they write about that.
So I shared some ideas about getting the most out of your overwintered vegetables. See the post at Sustainable Eats.
Cooking With the Fish
Oct. 10 -- This is the Fish pepper, an African-American heirloom that is included in the book. It's an amazing plant and a wonderful fruit, and I'm enjoying the harvest in stews and stir-fries right now.
It is named fish because it was discovered in the Chesapeake Bay area, being grown by slaves before 1870 in their own gardens on the plantations. It was, and still is, often used in shellfish dishes. It is listed in the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste program as a food with a significant history.
The peppers aren't large, at least not in a Seattle summer, which for my type of cooking is just perfect. One pepper can nicely spice up a dish without making it too hot.
As you can see, the plant and the peppers are both beautiful. The plant has varigated green and white leaves, which are mirrored in the peppers, which are various shades of green with white or yellow stripes. When the peppers start to get more ripe, they turn brown with gold stripes, and finally a solid, cherry red. At the red stage, they ratchet up the heat a bit.
This plant, only about two feet tall by a foot wide, produced about two dozen peppers, even in our wimpy summer.
I've been growing peppers as annual vegetables for years, but this year I'm trying a new experiment: overwintering the plant. In many places, peppers can be perennials, so I'm giving it a try. I dug up this Fish pepper plant and potted it, and will store it in my garage by a window over the winter. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Sow Now for Fall and Winter
August 15 -- Even though it's the height of summer (please tell that to the green tomatoes), now is a great time to begin sowing fall and overwintering vegetables. I've started a couple of rows of Early Wonder Tall Top beets and Danvers carrots, and am clearing a bed for brassicas -- because I must have my Purple Sprouting broccoli and at least a couple of cabbages.
Soon I'll add some lettuces, and maybe see what my favorite nurseries have for fall starts.
The trick is to find some bed space not still being used by summer vegetables, hopefully that is in full sun, to take as much advantage as possible of the low winter sun.
For best success, space your winter veggies farther apart than you'd plant them in summer. Don't make them compete for nutrients with other veggies, and make sure to keep on top of weeding. Finally, use a mulch around young plants as the fall rains and cooler temperatures take hold.
Some of my favorite heirloom winter vegetables:
Arugula
Asian Greens (Mizuna, Tatsoi, Green-in-the-Snow)
Cabbage (January King)
Chard (Fordhook)
Corn Salad
Kale (Russian Red)
Leeks
Lettuce (Green Deer Tongue, Rouge d'Hiver)
Spinach (Giant Winter)
Beets!
July 19 -- We planted heirloom beets in a succession (one row each week for a month) and have been enjoying the first ones for a couple of weeks. Some of them have gotten quite large. (In the photo, the huge one is Detroit Dark Red, the side ones are Early Wonder, and the candy-cane one is, of course, Chioggia.)
One way I love beets is pickled and canned. It was one of the few veggies I'd eat as a kid. Here's my mother's recipe:
Beet Pickles
5-1/3 cups beets, cooked, peeled and cut into one-inch chunks
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon each of cloves, cinnamon, allspice
Simmer all ingredients except beets together for 15 minutes. Pack beets into jars, pour liquid over to fill; seal and process.
Salad Time
June 25 -- Summer crops are beginning to finally put on some size, but right now the garden is providing us with great salads. Here are two of my favorite heirloom lettuces: Tom Thumb on the left, Little Gem on the right.
Tom Thumb is a butterhead, Little Gem is a romaine. Each fits easily in the palm of your hand - in fact, the precursor to Tom Thumb is called Tennisball Black-seeded, so you can imagine the size. These are bigger, but not by much. They're great for a single salad.
Tennisball was one of Thomas Jefferson's favorites, and he noted in his garden book that it was easier to grow than most. Both of these easy lettuces are English heirlooms, tailor-made for our region. The crisp leaves of Tom Thumb are so curled and creased that they can easily trap dirt or bugs, but they wash up fine. Little Gem's sturdy leaves are succulent and upright in a loose head. Put these on your list for your fall garden; in the Seattle area, they'd be planted in late August or early September for salads by Halloween.
EH Reviews Appear in Two Horticultural Society Magazines
June 10 -- I'm very appreciative of two recent Edible Heirlooms reviews in current editions of horticultural publications.
My Seattle colleague Lorene Edwards Forkner curled up with the book during our rainy Memorial Day weekend to get heirloom inspiration, and wrote about it for the Pacific Horticultural Society. See an excerpt at her wonderful blog Planted at Home, or check out the full review in Pacific Horticulture. She complimented my wife Susie's "charming illustrations" of heirloom varieties and wrote that the book offers "thoughtful and compelling reasons for the preservation and continued cultivation of these living pieces of history."
Botanical bookseller Keith Crotz wrote about the book in The American Gardener, the American Horticultural Society magazine. In his review, Keith wrote "Even if you don’t live at the seaside, you will enjoy Edible Heirlooms..." and "plant choices and cultural
advice apply to gardens in any cool climate region."
I'm a fan of Lorene's books Hortus Miscellaneous and Growing Your Own Vegetables, and look forward to reading and using her most recent book Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest. The last two are part of the "Encyclopedia of Country Living" guides.
Keith's bookstore, American Botanist Booksellers in Chillicothe, Illinois, is the place to find historic or out-of-print books on agriculture, horticulture and other topics. He is a great supporter of Seed Savers Exchange and was a helpful advisor to me during my research phase for Edible Heirlooms.
Edible Heirlooms Chosen for Washington Reads Program
May 16 -- Edible Heirlooms has been chosen by the Washington State Library to be part of the Washington Reads program this spring! The theme is "The Tastes of Washington," and my book joins some great regional reading, including Erica Bauermeister's The School of Essential Ingredients and Langdon Cook's Fat of the Land.
Thank you to State Librarian Jan Walsh and the library for this honor.
May 3 - This was the scene on Sunday at the Tilth Edible Plant Sale - plenty of tomatoes left, even the heirloom Brandywine!
Seattle Tilth's Veggie Explosion
April 28 - No, there wasn't a volcanic eruption in Seattle Tilth's demonstration gardens, but something like that will occur this weekend when Tilth fills the adjoining Meridian Park in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood with table after table of vegetable and herb starts. Their Edible Plant Sale offers 50 varieties of tomatoes and 20 varieties of peppers - far more than will be found at any other sale.
I'll be there on Sunday, talking tomatoes at 11 a.m. and then signing books under the Tilth store tent for about an hour. Come and say hi!
Earth Day Presentation
April 21 - Join me at Eagle Harbor Book Company on Bainbridge Island for a celebration of Earth Day and heirloom vegetables. We'll talk about beans and tomatoes -- and I'll be giving away some of each! It's at 7:30 p.m. in this wonderful independent bookstore. Hope you can make it.
Biodiversity for PCC
April 5 -- Heard of the Moon and Stars? Not the celestial bodies, but a sweet, seedy heirloom watermelon named after them, due to its yellow spots and flecks on its green skin. That fruit was brought back from near extinction by seed-saving gardeners, and I use it as an example of such valuable work in my article for PCC Sound Consumer.
Josh Kirschenbaum, Territorial Seed Co.'s trial farm manager, shows off the melon.
Graceful Grazing on the Patio
March 24 -- Want to know what heirloom vegetables could grace your patio in pots? Genie, the engaging Inadvertent Gardener in Oakland, California, was thinking about some edibles in pots at her new place, so I wrote a guest blog entry with some of my favorites. A cherry tomato, some greens, perhaps a bean trellis... Read more! And come see me at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show this Friday, March 26.
Foodscaping the Bay Area
March 17 -- I'm on the virtual road to the Bay Area this week, in preparation for my talk at the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, and today I had the pleasure of a keyboard chat with Patricia, the blogger at Foodscaping. We talked about how and why to save heirloom seeds. She saved some carrot seeds but they had gotten contaminated, er, I mean, cross-pollinated, probably by Queen Anne's lace, and she got albino psuedo-carrots. I offered some seed-saving tips and talked a bit about storage and seed life. Thanks for hosting me, Patricia!
If you're in the Bay Area, come see my slide show (and get some free seeds!) next Friday, March 26, 3:30 p.m. If you can get free, plan to stay the whole day at this great garden show.
Hey Tom, my peas are up!
March 7 -- The first shoots of the peas poked through the soil this weekend -- Thomas Jefferson has nothing on me! In my research for the book, I found that he participated in a yearly contest with his neighbors on who could bring in the first ripe peas. There's no record of him ever winning the contest, but he often held the dinner party at his house, at the center of which was a dish of peas.
Blessings of a Maritime Spring
Feb. 27 -- Our early spring weather continues, and my soil thermometer tells me the temp in my raised bed is staying above 50 degrees F., so this weekend I'm planting peas, rainbow chard, tatsoi and black radishes. So many people are planting edible gardens here, and there's lots of interest in talking about heirloom vegetables. I just booked talks at Village Books in Bellingham (April 1) and at the new gourmet food store Savour in Ballard (May 27), an event that will include tastings.
Chattin in Manhattan
Feb. 11 -- My virtual book tour continued with an interview with savvy  editor Kate McDonough of The City Cook, New York City's "ultimate guide to home cooking for pathetically busy, space-compromised urban dwellers." Kate and I discussed what to grow if you only have a container, a small city garden or a community garden plot, and how local food activists can support the heirloom seed movement even if they're not gardeners.
Guest Appearance on KUOW Radio
Feb. 9 -- As a guest on Seattle's NPR station KUOW 94.9 FM during the weekly Greendays gardening hour, I discussed heirloom veggies with host Steve Scher, talked about some of my favorites (including purple-sprouting broccoli, above), and bantered with regulars Willi and Marty about the merits of some historic tomatoes. It was great fun. Listen to the archived show.
Stories for Oregon
Feb. 5 -- In preparation for my talk at the Yard, Garden & Patio Show in Portland this Friday, I wrote a piece about the value of heirloom vegetables for Oregon Tilth. Read Tragic Beans and Radiator Tomatoes on their site. Thank you, Oregon Tilth friends!
Diggin Heirlooms
Feb. 2 -- Today I guest-blogged a post on Willi Galloway's DigginFood site. Willi is a friend and stellar gardener who also is the West Coast editor for Organic Gardening magazine and a panelist on KUOW's Green Days program on Weekday, Tuesdays at 10 a.m. Check out my post and be sure to stick around and browse the DigginFood archives - it's a treasure trove of great recipes, garden techniques and pictures.
One of my five choices was Lacinato kale, here pictured in the depths of last winter's freeze, being bothered not a bit by the frost. In fact, I think the cold made it sweeter. It's also called Dinosaur or Palm Tree kale (go to my blog entry to find out why).
Host a Seed Exchange
Jan. 22 -- As you're getting ready to garden this year, why not exchange seeds and ideas with gardening friends? We do this every year, and it allows us to try more varieties, learn from each other, and get fresh seed each year.
- Tell everyone to bring their catalogs and seed boxes
- Assign one person to place an order from each catalog you're using
- Make it a potluck using last year's preserved produce
- Get back together a second time to split up the seeds
Seed Sources
Many heirloom seed varieties are only available through specialty catalogs, although more are appearing in the seed racks at larger nurseries, and even as starter plants in 4-inch pots. But if you need to order online, here are my favorite suppliers:
Back to Edible Heirlooms
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