Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Harvest: July 10
Left to right: Tavera filet beans, Poona Kheera cucumber, Portofino zucchini, mixed Yin-Yang and Etna beans
We're getting into the high season for vegetables, and I'm still mostly thrilled with the harvest.
I didn't show the garlic I dug up yesterday because that was a disappointment. I had more Silver Rose garlic than any other variety and it appeared to be very healthy, but when I dug it I found most of the bulbs riddled with onion maggots. Not sure what is the best course of action - whether to leave them alone to dry or try to remove the infested parts. Also dug up the French Red shallots. They mostly look OK, with a few starting to rot. More rain expected tomorrow and/or Monday...
Labels: garlic, vegetables
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Summer Bulbs: The Decorative and the Edible
Growing your own food is very rewarding work, but it is work. Here at Tangled Branches South I've been fussing over vegetable, herb, and flower seedlings since January and still haven't gotten everything planted out in the garden yet. I think I've mentioned before that one of the reasons we wanted to live in the country instead of the suburbs was to have the space and freedom to plant a kitchen garden. And we now have space and freedom. What we lack is time. So when the mailbox started to yield up the summer bulb catalogs I was vulnerable and very susceptible to their charms. Hey, look, I could have a bunch of big nice tropical looking flowers without fiddling with seeds.
While I have been spending most of my time on the kitchen garden, I still want flowers. For the last two years, I've planted a small area next to the front porch with coleus and other things, but mainly coleus that I raised from seed. I love coleus, but something about the look of the bed was not quite right. I think it was too many dark colored leaves and not enough variety of leaf shape. Again, the bulb catalog to the rescue. How about big white leaves? Light colored enough for ya? Yeah...Caladiums...that's what I want. And what about some of the those Callas? Even if they don't bloom they have fabulous foliage - large, upright and splashed with white spots.
Well, the Callas did bloom, but the Caladium foliage is still a bit small. I started them inside, but apparently not early enough. Even so, they look pretty good with the self-sown 'Bowles' Black' Violas that popped up everywhere.
I also bought Tigridia, Sparaxis, and Crocosmia, and those are all planted away from the house and near the vegetable garden. No blooms yet on any of those. Oops, except for the one Sparaxis flower I snapped off while weeding around it. It looked like it was going to a nice color - sort of a muted red with yellow throat. Do they send up more than one flower stalk per season? I've never grown them before.
But back to the vegetable garden. I just harvested some of our very favorite summer bulbs - garlic!
The variety is 'Red Toch'. The flavor is on the mild side, at least while fresh. I'll be curious to see if the flavor matures as the bulbs cure. I planted four varieties of garlic last fall - three of them new to me. 'Red Toch', 'Korean Red', and 'Silver Rose' are the new ones. 'German Hardneck', I grew in 2008 as well. Hoping that 'Silver Rose' is similar to 'Nootka Rose' which was the best keeper I've ever grown. Bulbs of 'Nootka Rose' were still sound and usable well into May. I wish I had replanted some of it last fall, but didn't know at that time how well it was going to keep. Now I know. I planted a few cloves of it this spring, but the plants are rather small and spindly.
Another new-to-me summer bulb from the vegetable garden is the potato onion (Allium cepa var. aggregatum). I dug the first one over the weekend and liked the flavor, but still don't feel that I quite understand how to grow them. What I've been able to glean from internet research is that if you plant a large potato onion bulb in the fall, the following summer you will get a cluster of small bulbs from it. If you dig these up, cure them, and replant in the fall, you'll get large bulbs the next summer. In order to keep the variety going in your garden, you need to fall-plant some small bulbs which will make large bulbs for use in the kitchen and some large bulbs which will make small bulbs to replant to grow into large bulbs the second summer.
I also have 'Yellow Moon' Dutch Shallots, which may or may not be the same thing as potato onions. These were planted in the spring and are growing well. It is unclear to me whether/why spring planting is better or worse than fall planting, but I was only able to obtain these shallots in the spring.
And I have still more perennial onions - Egyptian Walking Onions and White Multiplier Onions, but I have more questions than answers about those and think I'll save them for a future post.
If anybody has experience with any kind of perennial onions, I'd love to hear about your methods for growing them.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Violas and Alliums: Wild and Cultivated
Yikes, I started this post last Sunday and here it is Friday and I haven't finished it. Seems most of the week was taken up by weeding and that's part of the subject matter here, so it's still current. But let's look at something nice first. Here's the first bloom on a self-sown viola. One of the children of last spring's planting of Historic Florist Mix violas.
Now for it's weedy cousin. Even though it's a weed and even though it's threatening to take over the vegetable garden, I love this tiny little Johnny-Jump-Up-like flower. If it's growing where it isn't in the way, I just leave it. I'll probably kick myself someday.
Its Latin name is Viola arvensis, meaning Viola of the fields, and is native to Europe. Apparently it was once considered a subspecies of Viola tricolor, the ancestor of our Johnny-Jump-Ups. You can see the resemblance.
If Viola arvensis is my favorite weed at the moment, then Allium vineale is my most hated. This wild Allium, aka Wild Garlic, is another European import. Sources disagree on whether it's edible but if it is, I'd have plenty of Alliums to eat even if I never planted another one. This stuff is coming up everywhere and it has to be dug out to get the bulb and the roots. If you just pull on it, you only get the top. Here's a picture of it infesting a clump of thyme.
But there's good Allium news in the garden too. The garlic I planted last fall is growing vigorously now.
This is 'Red Toch'. Never grown that variety before, so I can't say much about it yet, except that it's the largest so far.
The Evergreen Bunching Onions planted last fall are growing very well also, and I've been sampling them over the last few weeks. I think I'm supposed to leave them alone to make bigger clumps, but so far I've been digging up clumps, peeling off the largest stalk from the clump and replanting the rest. I have more bunching onion seedlings coming along so I should have enough even if I get too impatient and eat these before they multiply. The other multiplier onions I planted last fall (Egyptian Top Set and Yellow Potato Onion) are sprouting sporadically.
Is anybody interested in a short tutorial on growing and using green garlic? Or...? I have several blog posts in draft form and need help deciding what to post next.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
First Garlic Bulbs, Swiss Chard, and Green Onions
My curiosity got the better of me over the weekend, and I dug up one of the garlic plants just to see what was happening underground. A lot! This is the biggest, best garlic I've ever grown. The variety is Romanian Red - one of five varieties I planted last fall.
I used one clove of it in an Indianish dish of potato and Swiss Chard, and left the rest outside to dry on the deck. The papery skin started to turn purplish overnight, so I assume when it's really ready to harvest, the color will indeed be red (or something like it).
I've been thinning the Swiss Chard and trying to find ways to cook it that we like. So far, I've tossed it in with some frozen mixed vegetables; tossed it into a Thai pork, green bean, and basil stir-fry; and the aforementioned Indian-inspired dish.
I should have planted more onions! I keep pulling them up for green onions and I'll never find out if any of them make good bulbs. So far both the Rossa Lunga di Firenze and New York Early are both very mild in taste.
The vegetable garden is coming along nicely now, except for the Colorado Potato Beetles. I had never even seen one before this year and now they're everywhere. I'm handpicking the adults off whenever I see them, but I noticed their egg clusters on some horse nettles that are sprouting as weeds. I can keep the horse nettles out of the garden with a little effort, but I'll never get it all out of the "meadow". As my garden is about 80% tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and potatoes, and Colorado Potato Beetles will eat anything Solanaceous, this is a little bit worrying.
Labels: garlic, potager, swiss chard
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Cooking from the Garden, Early March
I never expected to be cooking anything from the garden early in March, but that's exactly what I've been doing over the last couple of weeks. I've written up three spinach meals over on my food blog.
The overwintered spinach (Bloomsdale Long-Standing) is in very good condition - sweet and tender leaves, but with a good substance that's excellent sauteed. I pulled up one green garlic stalk to mix with the spinach for last night's frittata.
I can't decide whether the one radish (French Breakfast) was a garnish or a salad, but it was very mild in taste. They're still a bit too small to harvest.
I expect to get one more good harvest of spinach from my winter experiment and then I'll pull up those plants and replace them with some transplants currently in the cold frame.
