From Seed to Plate: A Green Bean Dinner

I love the Corvallis farmers' market. It's set up along the Mary's River and it feels like one of the biggest Northwest farmers' markets with all the tables laden with fresh produce, demonstration beehives, dancers, singers, cheesemakers and lots of farmers. You must go there, if you get a chance before the season ends.

So that's where I found Peace Seedlings, a seed producing farm at the market and I bought these Red Swan Bush snap beans and was told the seeds would be quick to sprout and ripen. Okay I pictured Jack and the Bean Stalk and suddenly I couldn't wait until spring. I planted a few seeds when I got home, but it was too late in the season (who plants beans in August?). Before long it started raining and got so cold the beans quit growing. I saw flowers on the plants, but they died before beans because it was so cold, the bees quit flying.

Early this spring I got out the gardening seed catalogs.

And I remembered the seeds I had from Peace Seedlings.

Nowyou can have the farmers' market kind of bean experience--buy from abundant bins of beans in the peak season, and there isn't anything wrong with that I've done it for years. I still buy plenty of green beans at the market.

It's gratifying knowing you're buying great locally produced food, but . . .

you could also have this amazing bean experience at home.

I was anxious again and wanted to taste these beans in my garden so much, I picked them too early. Tom mentioned they didn't look quite ripe to him, but I wanted to try them, so I picked them anyway.

See them next to the bigger greener green beans from Rent's Due Ranch.

Even my Cooking Assistant is impressed.

Suddenly I realized it was 5 o'clock. What shall I make? Came to mind.

I got out fresh garlic, carrots, potatoes and onions. The zucchini is nearly ripe, but Tom said, "Let's go a day without zucchini, okay?" Like me, he's had too much zucchini lately.

Here is what I made:

Five O'clock Green Beans

(Serves 4)

1 spring onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon oil

2 tablespoons tomato paste

Handful of chopped basil

1/4 cup dry white wine or dry hard apple cider

1 potato, cut into bite-size chunks

1 carrot, sliced

2 cups green beans, ends removed and cut into 1 1/2 inch lengths

Sea salt to taste

Fire Cracker Port Madison Goat Cheese, 1/2 round cut into small chunks

Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat and add the onions, garlic and oil. Stir and cook until onions are soft. Add tomato paste and cook a few more minutes.

Stir in the basil, wine, potato and carrots. Cook until vegetables are nearly fork tender. Add green beans. Add more wine or water, if necessary. Cover and cook until green beans are tender.

Season to taste with sea salt.

Sprinkle with goat cheese and add pepper as needed to balance the flavors.

This quick dish took about 20 minutes from start to finish. The potatoes and carrots take longest to cook; cut these vegetables in smaller chunks.

Somebody felt a little left out of this and isn't afraid to give me the look.

How could you resist handing him the prewash job?

Make an Artist Date in Your Garden

An Artist Date

An artist date is a concept that originated in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self. The "date" is a chance to explore something that interests you. Artist's dates along with writing morning pages spark your creativity. I won't go into moring pages in this post, but if you want to know more check both concepts out here.

My first artist date was a local auction. I'd always wanted to go to an auction, and I was just going to observe, but I got caught up in the bidding (it was low end starting bigs). I ended up with this vintage green pitcher from the 1930s that glows under black lights and an antique apple peeler.

I don't need these things but it wasn't really like buying something new and I'm confident that I can one day pass them on to someone else that will enjoy them.

How did going to auction affect my creativity?

The next morning while walking the dogs. I took lots of pictures of things people discarded--a toothbrush on the sidewalk, hand sanitizer covered with dirt in the gutter, and apple cores discovered by my Cooking Assistant.

I wasn't even thinking about the connection between the pictures and the auction at the time. I came across this random sofa in a front yard. I might have thought was so ghetto before but suddenly it became a photo opportunity.

My Cooking Assistant thought the sofa in the front yard was awesome.

In the Garden

I love to dream about plucking English peas, eating juicy tomatoes from the vine and enjoying the arugula in salads, and sure a garden is all that, but there's a lot of work hidden in the details that gardeners don't always talk aobut. That's what I think about when I haven't visited my garden for awhile and I know the weeds have been slowly taking over. I admit the work can intimidate me, so I decided to make an artist date in the garden. I hoped it would help me view the garden in a new way. And who knows? Maybe a spark of creativity would be ignited. That was the plan anyway.

I wanted to have fun, so I set the time limit to two hours and chose starts to plant in containers. I had lettuce, kale, garlic, parsley, spearmint and arugula and two tomato plants that came from Rent's Due Ranch and River Farm.

I planted this tiny kale. It hasn't grown much yet because the weather turned cold and one drawback to container gardening is the soil is more vulnerable to shifting temperature. But on the plus side I find less insects attack the greens and you can line the tops of pots with copper strips to stop slugs.

When you think about it, writing is a lot like gardening. Seeds of a story are planted and with the right care they take shape and grow and soon take on a shape of their own. I like to think if our thoughts all resembled vegetables, emerging stories would look like this baby kale.

While I was in the garden, I took the opportunity to gaze around and I realized one thing that slows me down is my reluctance to pull some of the volunteers that come up every spring--those do nothing plants that are nothing more than eye candy. But maybe we need more eye candy in our lives.

I got out my macro lens for these tiny blue weed flowers that spread farther across our garden each spring. Though they must be weeds, but neither Tom nor I want to pull them. I hate to say that they've become an army now, but even so we still like them and hesitate to pull them until the flowers die. I tried to find out what they're called but I couldn't find any pictures of them. If anyone knows what they're called let me know.

Another thing that I love is these collard flowers that bloomed from collards I planted last fall. The plants suddenly shot up a few weeks ago and bolted. If you eat these flowers, they taste a exactly like collards, and more flowers open up every day. I saw birds eating them today.

Lately I've been thinking about pairing these pretty flowers with my arugula and some kind of fruit vinaigrette. I have some mulberries and some red currents tucked in the freezer and I'm mulling over the possibilities now.

The maintenance or commitment that a garden commands sometimes frightens me. And just because you plant the seeds or plant starts is no guarantee things will go as planned. It's like being a small scale farmer and these young plants could succumb to insects or diseases. It's a risk like farming, but we take it every year anyway.

The two hours went by quickly, and it wasn't long before I was thinking about the next date.

The only thing missing from the date was my Cooking Assistant. Poking his nose through the fence he looks so sad, but don't let that innocent look fool you. Sure he loves the garden but he nibbles on leaves, eats flowers, inhales strawberries and mauls vegetables, even lettuce--and he sometimes digs in the wrong places. Everyone has fun in the garden in their own ways, he tells me.

Why not explore your own garden like an artist? Who knows, magical things might happen.

Sowing the Seeds of Spring

At the beginning of the year, I checked The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide and learned that onions, leeks, artichokes and lettuce seeds should be planted in January. This week the seed catalog started arriving, and last night, I stayed up dreaming about summer, circling the greens I wanted and making plans for our summer garden.

If grey days and winter storms make you long for summer too, why not check out these cool Northwest seed catalogs:

Osborne Seed Company (in Mount Vernon, WA)

Irish Eyes Garden Seeds (in Ellensburg, WA)

Wild Garden Seed (at Gathering Together Farm)

Peace Seedlings (in Corvallis, OR)

email to order a catalog: peaceseedlings@yahoo.com

I found Peace Seedlings when I went to the Corvallis farmers' market last summer. The woman at the booth told me she was buying the company from her dad who started the seed company in the 1970s. It was the first time I'd seen seed farmers at a market and I was intrigued. They came up almost right away, just like she'd said, but I must plant them earlier this year. But even with these beans, I'm not going to have a big garden. I'm paring back from last year's garden. The expense of watering and using organic amendments made it more costly than I'd ever imagined.

The main problem last year was we planted way too many tomatoes. By mid-August we had tons of green ones and then suddenly (like overnight) they got blight, turned black and died. When Tom broke the news, I'd wanted to throw in the trowel. It was ugly. Not as easy as Michelle Obama made it out to be.

This year I'll be more realistic about gardening. Confession number one: I don't like to dig in dirt. And I only want to grow easy things (who doesn't?)--like sugar snap peas and lots of greens. You might call me a fair weather gardener.

For sure I'll order India Red Giant mustard greens and Red Russian Kale seed from the Osborne Seed Catalog partly because lots of farmers have told me they swear by seeds from Osborne so I can't wait to to try them. I have lots of seeds left from last year, so we'll use those first and hopefully they're still good.
Of course we'll have raspberries because they're so easy. Once raspberries are established they just come up, but the blueberries I'd planted last year look like sticks. Are they still alive? At the end of the summer, they'd looked fragile, and the freeze we experienced recently probably did them in. But the raspberry canes we got from our friends just a few years ago came back last year with more berries, and my Cooking Assistant swears juicy homegrown raspberries can't be beat on a hot summer day. How's that for a winter dream?
This year I plan to keep it simple--lettuce, braising greens, raspberries, then maybe we'll graduate to more complicated gardens.

Just one more thing I'm doing for the garden this year--more edible flowers. I love these pretty violas and they taste fantastic and are super easy to grow. Plus they attract bees, they're oh so trendy and cool in summer salad mixes at the markets. So what's on your garden list? Haven't decided yet? Check out those catalogs.

Sneak Previews and Garden Treasures

I laid awake at night thinking about a year-round fruit vinaigrette recipe-- where you use the same basic ingredients (oil and vinegar) and just change the fruit as the seasons rotate.

The whole idea started with a recipe I picked up at a market. I don't remember where I got it but it featured greens with sliced strawberries and rhubarb dressing. The rhubarb dressing (cooked rhubarb and sugar, pureed into a vinaigrette sparked a cascade of vinaigrette possibilities--raspberry (been done), blueberry (ditto), apricot, pie cherry . . .

I got obsessed with this idea and one morning created pie cherry vinaigrette. I sampled as I made it to tweak the flavors and then I had it over greens. (Yes, for breakfast). Today, I made this vinaigrette with apricots and immediately wondered how it might taste with ginger--maybe sesame, ginger, apricot dressing. With different fruits, the sweetener or honey needs tweaking, and you'd probably have to cook hard fruit like apples before blending. It's a good year-round recipe. Finn give it four paws up.

Here is the recipe:

Cherry Vinaigrette Over Greens with Berries

(Makes about 1 cup or about 10 servings)

This recipe is a sample of our Northwest summer produce all in one salad. Try this vinaigrette with peaches, nectarines or plums and see how much you might alter the other ingredients.

1/2 cup pitted tart cherries (Montmorency or North Star)

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons raspberry vinegar

4 teaspoons honey

Pinch of cayenne

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

10 to 12 cups salad greens

1 pint berries (use blackberries, raspberries, or blueberries)

1 cup chopped toasted hazelnuts or walnuts (optional)

Blend cherries, olive oil, vinegar, honey, cayenne and salt in a blender until smooth and creamy. Place greens on a serving plate. Drizzle vinaigrette over the greens; then top each serving with berries and hazelnuts.

I'll be making this with North Star cherries at my upcoming cooking demo at the University District Market on Saturday July 24).

At the Saturday demo, I'm also making an Easy Creamy Northwest Greens Soup and a fruit salad called Ambrosia, with a hazelnut-berry dressing. I submitted the soup recipe to Culinate where they'll feature it soon. The soup is called Easy Creamy Turnip Greens Soup in my book.

Also, this weekend I'm hosting another contest to win a signed copy of my book. If you miss me at the U-District Market, catch me at any of my other events. I'll also be selling signed copies of The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook at all my book events.
On the garden front, Tom harvested the two cabbages that he'd placed way too close to our blueberry bushes. "Who does that?" I wondered every time I'd walked by them, then I'd feel sorry for them having to share such a small space. We had too many plants to put in our small garden this past spring. As the cabbage plants got bigger, I noticed the blueberry plants were stressed.

Hopefully our blueberry plants can recover from our overcrowded garden space this spring. The cabbage and these sugar snap peas will definitely be part of our salad tonight.

The Tiniest Carrot, Garden Treasures, and a Cool Farm Sign Contest

I discovered this tiny carrot tucked into the bunch of carrots I got from Willie Green's Organic Farm at the market last weekend. When I mentioned that I just had to take a picture of my market find, my kitchen assistant snapped awake from what looked like a deep sleep. And as always, he was a little too eager to be part of the scene and check out my market treasures.

Finn finished off this tiny gem in half a bite. I didn't even see him chew. Then, it didn't take him long to find our raspberries in the garden.

We got these raspberry bushes from our friends Molly and Bill when they were thinning their berry crop one year. The berry canes were once part of an old raspberry truck farm whose owners grew berries and carted them to Pike Place Market every week. (So sad to think Seattle's suburbs once supported vibrant farms.)

Our berries are smaller than the popular giant Tulameens that so many berry growers sell at the market. But don't let the size fool you, these half-size fragile berries have exceptional flavor. And the scent is heavenly.

I'm a berry fanatic and I can't help buying some kind of berries from each market I visit.

Last week at the Lake Forest Park farmers' market as I was reaching for a box of raspberries at McPhail's berry booth, I saw this great sign. I love creative signs at farmers' markets and it suddenly gave me an idea for a contest.

Send me your best farm photo and win a signed copy of my book The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook. For example, I snapped this photo of a sign from Rent's Due Ranch. So next time you're at the market, check out the signs and send me a cool one. Deadline for this contest is July 31.

In the meantime, I'll be enjoying berries and looking for more cool farmer signs. Stop by my table at the Lake Forest Park farmers' market this Sunday and say hello. I'll be telling farmer stories, answering produce questions and signing copies of The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook. And if you feel lucky, I have an ongoing weekly contest for a book giveaway and you can enter the drawing at the market. Hope to see you there.

Friends and Foes in Garden, Field and Orchards

I gaze at these salmon carved from tree stumps at my writing group at Sheila Kelly's house in Ballard. Its a captivating picture--the salmon against the greenery with Puget Sound in the background. But lately I've been staring at these salmon a little more closely.

Look close--the biggest salmon's head is rotting away and you can see the gaping hole of nature taking it's course. While it's a sad to see this beautiful carving crumbling back to earth like totem poles in Alaska, I've been watching bumblebees flying in and out of their new home in the salmon's head.

These fuzzy, round easy-going pollinators fly like helicopters because of their big body size. Hardworking pollinators, bumblebees are troopers working in sun, breeze, and rain from dawn till dusk, early spring through fall. (Honey bees don't fly in rain and windy conditions.)

Sometimes bumblebees make their homes in rotten tree stump, living in small colonies of about 50 or so. These colonies only live for one season and only queen bumblebees overwinter to start another colony next season. The queen builds the nest and lays all the eggs.

Bumblebees are often more effective pollinators than honey bees. Bumblebees "buzz pollinate" going deep into a blossom, visiting flowers many times. Though they make honey, bumblebees don't store it like honey bee horders who continually produce more honey than they can use.

Bumblebees are often overlooked in news stories about pollinators because honey bees hog the limelight. Much has been written about keeping urban honey bee colonies lately. If you are interested in honey bees, urban beekeeping with honey bees and building your own local honey supplies, check out Amy Pennington's article in this month's edition of Edible Seattle.
While honey bees and native pollinators like bumblebees are hard at work boosting berry and soft summer fruit yields, a threat is lurking on the horizon. I read about it in

Tilth Producers Quarterly this month.

Ripe berries and soft fruits of summer attract fruit flies that can be annoying, but annoying is nothing compared to the new cowboy in town threatening berry and soft summer tree fruit harvests. A fruit fly called the Spotted Wing Drosophilia from Asia hitched a ride on some overripe fruit and well, you know what happens when fruit flies get together. . .

This little alien was never seen in the United States until recently and it has the potential to devastate future Northwest berry and soft tree fruit harvests.

The Spotted Wing Drosophilia is bigger than common fruit fly and it targets green or unripe fruit, depositing eggs on the soft fruit skin. These eggs burrow into the fruit and grow into larvae, destroying the fruit's texture when ripe.

"How would you know your fruit is infested?" I asked a gardening friend. "It would be all mushy," she replied wrinkling her nose at the thought of eating a mouthful of larvae. Tons of Northwest fruit can be ruined by these tiny pests. Right now, experts aren't sure how to deal with it, but conventional fruit growers have a solution.

How many different ways can you say new chemical pesticide?

My friend Bill Davis who works for WSU agriculture extension in Mount Vernon attended a seminar on this fruit pest, and now Bill is making vinegar traps to check for the Spotted Wing Drosophilia on fruit trees. Like all fruit flies, Spotted Wing Drosophilias are attracted to apple cider vinegar, so Bill got some clear large take out cups from a local coffee shop and poured apple cider vinegar in the bottom. Then he placed a strip of fly paper inside--half way in the cider vinegar. He snapped on the lid, put a wire on the top, and hung his apple cider vinegar trap near his raspberries and on plum trees. He has been checking his traps everyday and so far none of the fruit flies are the Spotted Wing variety. A farmer or gardener can also clean up their fields and trees by removing overripe fruit that mature flies feed on. You can remove blackberry bushes with unripe fruit around your garden.

These foreign troublemakers are most likely here to stay because of the sheer number of blackberry bushes we have growing wild in this state.

I'll be making some vinegar traps for my raspberry bushes this year.

Why does it seem like for every hopeful sign like bumblebees in a friend's yard there is a new opposing threat like fruit flies? Growing great Northwest fruit certainly isn't for sissies.

Badger and Finn with shameless product placement of The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook and Discover Cooking with Lavender by Kathy Gehrt. Also, read more about Alaskan totem poles in Voyages to Windward by Elsie Hulsizer.

Plant Starts, Lavender Lemonade, and Cookies at Sky Nursery

Who would guess Sky Nursery is a food connection? But with the currant gardening and cooking local craze, Sky Nursery is doing a booming business. And now that Sky Nursery has a huge brand new greenhouse, they've upped their organic vegetable plant starts. They also have a cool seminar room where they offer free weekly seminars in the spring and fall. (If you click on the store link and check out the Web site, you can get a $5.00 store coupon.)

First off, I have to say that I love that Sky Nursery is a longtime customer of Rent's Due Ranch in Stanwood, just northwest of Everett. They've been buying Rent's Due plant starts for years. JoanE McIntyre from Rent's Due Ranch is one of my favorite summer farmers and I can't wait for her to return to the U-District Market. I heard a rumor earlier this season that one of Rent's Due greenhouses caved in after wicked storm, which is sad because plant starts is a big part of their farm business. JoanE and husband, Michael Shriver sell most of these starts to nurseries and PCC Natural Markets.

The variety of organic local kales, lettuce, beets, tomatoes, and other vegetables at Sky Nursery is simply amazing. You can't go there without coming out with at least one box full of these garden treasures.

After checking out the plant starts, I headed over to the seminar room where my friend Kathy Gehrt was presenting a workshop on container gardening and cooking with herbs. By the time I arrived, there were hardly any seats left. Lavender lemonade and chocolate chip cookies were on a table near the back of the event and both quickly disappeared as more and more people showed up. Kathy shared lots of gardening and cooking tips. Check out Kathy's blog for her herb gardening tips.

Here is Kathy's easy lavender lemonade recipe from Discover Cooking with Lavender:

Lavender Lemonade

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1/4 cup dried lavender buds or 1/2 cup fresh lavender blossoms

1 12-ounce can frozen lemonade

2 cups cold water

1. Add lavender buds or blossoms to boiling water and let mixture steep for 20 minutes.

2. Strain mixture to remove lavender buds or blossoms, then set aside the lavender infused water and let it cool to room temperature.

3. Add the frozen lemonade and 2 cups cold water to the cooled lavender-infused water.

4. Mix well and serve.

It's so easy to make and the added flavor of lavender is heavenly. Check out Kathy's book Discover Cooking with Lavender for more great tips and recipes and look for her events at nurseries and bookstores this summer. Many independent bookstores, gift stores and some nurseries are getting on the lavender bandwagon with this great little cookbook.

Check out my other blog for some great book marketing tips.

Garden Blunders: Gardening Rule Number 1

Did I mention we're trying to grow some of our own food supply? If you're new to gardening, it's easier in theory than practice.

I bought these grey shallots last fall. I had dreams of planting and harvesting these treasures from my own front yard. Grey shallots have a light sweet taste and when sauteed in olive oil until browned they impart the best sweet and crispy tones and textures I've ever had. There isn't anything savory these grey shallots can't improve.

So who wouldn't want them growing right outside the kitchen door? I bought about three bags at the market from Liz and Michael at Grouse Mountain Farm in Chelan, and I carried them home to eat and plant. It was hard to ration the ones for eating.
This is a page from Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini with shallots from the market. Grey shallots are the ones on the right and the more common shallots are on the left. These are also good, but the flavor of grey shallots is more satisfying and you don't need as many to flavor a dish.

Did I mention I'm new to gardening? I only bring this up because I started seriously planting more vegetables last summer. And last fall I put in beets and spinach and chard and I sowed a cover crop, but I'd neglected to tell Tom who was also working our front yard garden and when I was gone to the market, he planted the shallots, exactly where I'd sowed the cover crop.

"How was I supposed to know you'd planted anything there?" he'd said. And if that wasn't bad enough, he couldn't recall each shallots exact location. Would there be much point in digging them up? The lazy gardener's thought is: why not let them go and we'll just find them when they sprout up? This approach led to:

Gardening Rule Number One

Tho shalt keep a notebook about your garden. Drawings and details of where and what you've planted will come in handy and may even save your plants from horrible fates.

When the cover crop sprouted up, we spotted the problem like a bad debt on the horizon. The shallot tops looked exactly like the cover crop.

In late January we considered the possibility that the shallots weren't even there. That perhaps they'd been crowded out.

Here is how it looked a few weeks ago. Every week we kept hoped to spot the shallots. Finally Tom uncovered all the shallots last weekend by snip and taste.They were thin and tiny and fell over as if exhausted by rye grass. They looked like they needed a plant doctor. It's amazing they survived.

For anybody who says I think I'll grow a few things, gardening is more than sowing seeds and harvesting tons of vegetables. Perhaps each lesson this season will become a rule.

And speaking of rules, a second rule is coming because we'd no sooner transplanted our peas when hungry eager crows showed up. If we'd have gone off to work, we'd have missed the bird buffet. We raced out and covered the tiny plants with the plastic cover we had for the seedlings.

Time to get out the gardening books again.

What else can I expect after birds? And will our shallots ever recover?

Look close and you'll see our exhausted skinny grey shallots.

Vegetable Gardens at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show

I collected pamphlets, ideas and plenty of gardening inspiration this past weekend at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. What compelled me to pay a prime-time admission fee for Tom and I was Pacific Magazine's "Foot Print Issue," featuring the show this year. Also, last year this show had been in financial trouble. And so many people had proclaimed that it could be the last show unless someone bought it. Sometimes miracles happen. This year the focus was on vegetable gardening--perfect timing, and so worth talking about.

My favorite display garden was “Crops for Clunkers" (above). Just a simple vegetable garden in an old pick up truck, with a chicken coop on the side of it. It looked easy to do, but so does good writing. And like good writing, not all gardening is easy or as easy on the wallet as many gardening advocates like Michaelle Obama proclaim. If you’re a beginner like me, you can pump a lot of money into the garden with the plant starts, basic tools, soil and amendments.

At the Seattle Tilth booth I learned about their popular spring edible plant sales and picked up a flyer for some sustainable landscape classes. I also got information about what we can plant right now:
Fennel
Arugula
Radish
Garlic
Shallots
Fava beans Peas

The highlight of our day was a seminar called Vegetable Gardening for Dummies by Charlie Nardozzi also the author of the book. He talked about the types of gardens. I like the one called a Square Food Garden; I saw plenty of these at the Natural Gardener in Austin, Texas last fall. That's where this picture comes from.



I love history and Charlie started the seminar talking about the "Victory Gardens" during World War II. Forty percent of our national food supply came from these gardens. I'm always thinking about eating locally and I'm convinced gardening at least some of our own food is the way to go. We'll cultivate some skills, roll up our sleeves and get to work. Well, at least in theory.



Charlie also highlighted the three billion dollars spent on gardens each year and how in 2009 there was a 10-20 percent increase in vegetable gardening. I have a hunch that three billion garden dollars can help boost our local economy. Plus it's the green thing to do.



The hand-out contained a list of the varieties of vegetables that do well in the Northwest, and I was enthused when I spotted Stupice tomatoes and Fairy Tale Eggplant on that list. For a moment I was lost in a memory of the Gathering Together Farm store in Philomath, Oregon where I’d enjoyed farm-fresh Caramelized Eggplant Soup and a salad with Stupice Tomatoes. I purchased these two vegetables and drove them home. It was great to know, I can try growing my own this year.


Charlie’s talk focused on what he called the 5 S’s. Here they are:
Sun (how much for various plants)
Soil (compost, cover crops)
Selection (what types of crops; heirloom versus hybrid)
Site (location)
Size

Vegetable Gardening for Dummies is a great resource on any garden bookshelf.

Cascade Harvest Coalition was also at the show passing out information about CSAs and local farms.

I came home from the show with lots of ideas, for making some food connections from my own front yard. I'm already tooking forward to next year's show.

I’m going to try some Fairy Tale eggplant and maybe even Stupice tomatoes in my garden. What's in your garden plan this year?

Winter Gardening Isn't for Wimps

Last summer when lettuce came up abundantly, I vowed to start a fall garden. I'd been considering it long before Michelle Obama's White House garden. But it didn't help much that the First Lady made it look so easy there wasn't even a trace of garden dirt on her pink pants and matching cardigan.


I knew fall would be a little cooler, but with less insects, it was the perfect time to start a garden, or so I thought. We tested our soil and I tilled in lime and compost. Then I planted seedlings and waited for my fall abundance. Pacific Northwest rain and gray fall days were the farthest thing from my mind and when the rain started my tiny spinach simply quit growing. It dawned on me that low levels of light and cold weather could be a problem.

“Take the starts out of containers and put them in the garden,” my gardening coach told me. But it seemed like too much trouble, so I didn’t follow her advice. Soon everything I'd planted in containers was stunted and waterlogged. Container plants, I learned were actually in a zone colder than regular garden soil, but still I left them. There's probably a time for pure optimism without action, but this wasn't one of them.


The frisée (above) also looked spindly, but it's weed-like appearance didn't prepare me for the super-bitter, rubbery leaves that seemed resistant to breaking down when chewed. I couldn't imagine inflicting this unfortunate salad green on dinner guests. And my Osaka mustard greens I'd been so excited about had attracted a tiny breed of cold weather slugs that chewed big holes in the baby leaves.

“Beer traps,” Wade Bennett of Rockridge Orchards told me when I showed him a chewed up leaf. “That’s the best thing for the slugs.”


Okay, if growing our own food supply was as easy as donning a coordinated pink pants outfit, we'd all probably be doing it.



It's about time to review a few books, and here are two that I’m gleaning gardening advice from this fall:

Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Soloman (Sasquatch Books, 6th edition 2007)

This is a regional gardening classic gives essential advice about what grows here, plant growth rates, weeds, fertilizers and containers (a section I hadn't consulted). Soloman talks about maritime micro climates and the problems with winter gardening. Mulching, composting, dry gardening and drip systems are also covered. In chapter 9, "How to Grow It," Soloman takes gardening readers through the variety of vegetables, when to plant the seeds, set out seedlings and how to deal with insects and diseases. The book's approach is organic using compost and building healthy soil with organic matter.

Check Soloman's book out at your favorite bookseller or library, and as I've learned, it's best to read this before you plan your garden, not when you suddenly need help. On Amazon, look below the reviews and you'll find gardening forums, that will help answer common Northwest garden questions. The only drawback is that the book doesn't cover fruit, but the next book does.

Fresh Food From Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting and Sprouting, by R.J. Ruppenthal (2008, Chelsea Green)

I recently ordered this book from Real Goods and was surprised that the book contained more than gardening basics and tips. It's also a primer on fruit and vegetable gardening with some urban food survivalist strategies like how to make yogurt, kiefer and fermented foods, food foraging, cultivating mushrooms and raising honeybees and chickens. The last chapter is called "Survival During Resource Shortages." In this post Katrina world, it's worth it to look at all of our food alternatives when it comes to our immediate food supply. Much of the Northwest is in a natural disaster zone and it's prudent to prepare for disruptions in our food or water supply. This book also has a resource list of where to get tools, soil amendments and various supplies.

My plan is to read more about Northwest gardening before planting in the spring.

From my fall garden, these tiny magenta lettuce heads looked stunning in in our salad bowls, but they didn't have any tenderness because they were nothing but old vegetables that never reached their full potential.

Overwatering, cold weather and container gardening produced these stunted lettuce heads from my beginner's garden in the Pacific Northwest. The roots clung feriously to the earth and the leaves were tough enough to resist the cold.

Quince and the last fruits of fall

Quince, pears, hearty kiwi, apples-- these are the backyard treasures I got from my friends Molly and Bill. I set my fruit in front of a great seasonal recipe inspiration--Local Bounty by Devra Gartenstein (2008). Then I waited for Finn to show up for the photo shoot.

The smooth-skinned, tiny hearty kiwis (red and green, left bowl) from Molly and Bill were mistaken for olives when I brought them to my writing group. Not many people have seen these tiny Northwest kiwis. Liz and Michael at Grouse Mountain Farm in Chelan, offer the green variety for sale at the University District farmers' market for a few weeks in late September or early October. Another farm vendor comes in, also for a few weeks with these hearty kiwis. These sweet-tart fruits are best eaten raw, and according to Dr. Oz "thin-skinned" fruits are best in the organic version.

As for quince, the citrus-like fragrance is so heavenly that in ancient times ripe quince perfumed rooms much like air freshener does today. But quince flavor is astringent. It's an acquired taste, if you didn't grow up with it. And I didn't.

I first tasted quince when I was at the Community Food Co-op in Bellingham a few years ago. A produce worker there enchanted me with stories about all the different kinds of quince one of their local farm vendors brought in. My lips puckered as I sampled it raw, but the store worker assured me that quince is best cooked. I can't resist a the new fruit, especially if it's local and organic.

I don't remember what recipe I made when I went home. Probably something safe like a quince-apple crisp, nothing cutting edge like quince paste for a first recipe. As I revised my cookbook this last year, I added Quince Paste by Lizz Eggers in the dessert section. Also, it occurred to me that many people don't have a clue about quince and it has such a long past.

Quince has been around for over 4,000 years and was first cultivated between the Tigrus and Euphrates Rivers in what is now northern Iraq. Romans preserved quince in honey and transformed quince into wine. Some sources raise the idea that it was quince not apples that Eve picked in the Garden of Eden.

Quince is a common food in other countries and has been for centuries. It is so popular in the Middle East, people eat it like an apple. But the bright yellow, tart, apple relative enjoyed only brief popularity here, until apples pushed quince out of the spotlight. It remained in the shadows for decades.

But in the Northwest today, quince is making a come back as a respected locally-grown "heirloom" fruit. It has a small bin of it's own and a full-page sign at PCC Natural Markets. Here, curious shoppers can read a quick update on this unique fruit--its history, varieties, selection and storage. The sign at PCC also said, once the fruit is ripe, use it quickly because it doesn't keep. This is important if you're planning on cooking your fragrant fruit. When brown spots appear on the outside, they go all the way through and the flesh becomes mealy.

Will the real quince please step forward? In this photo, quince (front) with a ripe golden delicious apple from Cliffside Orchards and a Newtown Pippin' from Molly and Bill's tree. I asked Bill if quince got the dreaded coddling moth or apple maggot that apple farmers fear and he said quince trees don't have that problem. Maybe it's an easier tree fruit for beginning Northwest gardeners. Check out Raintree Nursery's quince varieties.



Finn finally showed up. He takes the photo shoot seriously, but given a choice, he'd pick the bronze beauty--the Taylor's Gold pear-a creamy fleshed, perfectly sweet pear.

Backyard gems

Last week a friend offered to get some figs for me and this is what he gave me. It may not look like much, especially to people who live in California and see tons of figs pass through the farmers' markets, but figs are a rare treat in Washington and I've come to love them for this.

For years, I'd put in my fig pleas to Wade Bennett of Rockridge Orchards. His farm is in Enumclaw (south of Seattle) and his fig crop was sold every year to chefs. His treasures never made it to farmers' markets,but I often hear about them because I talk to Wade at the University District market. One year when he finally had enough to sell me $40 worth, my father suddenly passed away and I was out of town when the figs were ready. The next winter we had crazy weather--a snow, that lasted for a week, then melt off, a freeze and another snow--and when I next saw Wade, he said he lost most of his well-established fig trees. The ice got into cracks in the trees and split them. What a sad lost harvest.

Last summer to revise the farm profiles in my cookbook, I traveled through Oregon and I found the best figs at the Eugene farmers' market from Grateful Harvest Farm (http://www.gratefulharvestfarm.com/) in Junction City. I have to admit figs were a big reason for including this farm in my revised cookbook--the sweet treasures attracted me to the farm booth and led to my talks with the farmer Charles Duryea. He says that one of the hardest things about organic farming is getting good fruit consistency year after year. His fig trees are under cover in a greenhouse, along with heirloom tomatoes that also need more warmth and sun. If I could think of a reason besides figs to drive to Eugene, I'd go get some of those sweet figs and savor them like a sunset. For those who live in the area--don't miss the sweet treasures from this farm!