An ode to soil

I never used to pay much attention to soil. Dirt was ... well, dirt. Whatever the gardening books said about the importance of improving the soil, I just made do with what was there. My plants grew, but slowly.

Now, nothing makes me happier than to find a huge pile of fully composted wood chips at the Town Barns, free for the taking. We were there Monday evening with Josue and Amarina; they had kindly offered to help us out with their pick-up truck. The decayed wood chips in the center of a mountainous pile, towering far above us, was charred black from the heat generated in the composting process, and still warm to the touch. Richard climbed up, and began digging into the pile, knocking it down. Josue and I stood below, shoveling it into the back of his pick-up truck. We only had three shovels, so Amarina cheered us on. When we got home and unloaded it, my ecstasy was so apparent, they offered to make a second trip.

I read somewhere that scientists have documented a connection between micro-organisms in soil and the release of neurotransmitters in human brains. Digging in the soil, they concluded, really does make people happier.

Lots of organic matter in the soil also makes plants happier. I can see, from the year to year, the difference in the plants growing in the beds where the most composted material was most recently added.

So in appreciation to the soil, today I post some recent pictures from the garden. From downed tree limbs, to soil, to green plants to food. Amazing.

Photos (top to bottom): Yellow squash; Winter squash; Wild blackcap raspberries; Unripe peaches; Zucchini and cilantro; Dill flowers; Garlic scapes; Cucumber;  Arugula in bloom; Early morning asparagus fronds;

Cooking Seasonally and Predictably

At the public library last week, I stumbled across cookbook by a well-known chef whose promise of “fabulous flavor from simple ingredients” caught my eye. Since we started growing a lot of food, I’m always looking for new ways to prepare our harvest. I took it home. 

Sure enough, there were some wonderful-sounding recipes, especially the maple-roasted butternut squash and curried roasted butternut squash soup that I look forward to trying in the fall. But I was also surprised by a comment in the introduction. The author was writing about her time in France, where, she notes, cooking seasonally is not only the norm, but “the only option.” While extolling the flavor and quality of seasonal ingredients, she went on to say that “coming from the U.S., I found this kind of spontaneous menu planning hard….”

I wasn’t surprised that changing how one thinks about menu planning can be challenging, but the juxtaposition of cooking seasonally and “spontaneously” surprised me. In fact, seasonal cooking is nothing if not predictable. Just as crocuses in March are followed by daffodils in April, tulips in May, and peonies in June, so too are early spring’s salad greens and radishes followed by snap peas, strawberries and chard in late spring, and raspberries, beets, garlic scapes, and carrots in early summer. From that perspective, menu-planning that involves anything you want, any time you want it (what author Barbara Kingsolver has called the U.S.’s “promiscuous food culture”) is what seems spontaneous to me.

But as my new friend, Amarina, reminded me as we were preparing dinner last night, as a nation, we’re so disconnected from where our food comes from. Even when, she added, speaking of herself, you’re only a generation or two removed from people who farmed.  

I have to stop and remember that it wasn’t so long ago that I, too, might have found cooking seasonally to be “spontaneous”; growing food, the sequence and timing of various foods quickly becomes second nature. Certainly, one year there are more snap peas than I know what to do with; the next year, there may be few peas, but lots of something else. And depending on the weather, the first harvest of any given vegetable may vary by a week or so. But each food ripens at its prescribed time, in a regular sequence. And you see it coming. That’s why my 3-ringed notebook of collected recipes is organized by month, not by meal categories. The butternut squash recipes will go in the “November/December” section. 

Here’s a sample of this week’s “predictable” early-summer menu here in central New York State:

Breakfasts

Omelets with garlic scapes, herbs, feta cheese and some baby summer squash

Yogurt smoothies with strawberries or raspberries

 

Lunch

Tabouli with lots of parsley, spearmint, garlic scapes, radish and early carrots (plus chick peas and feta cheese)

Snap peas with mint, in a vinaigrette

Green salad, with chick peas and feta cheese, topped with olive oil and an herbal vinaigrette

Snap peas right off the vine!

 

Dinner

Stir-fried rice with garlic scapes, scallions, spicy mustard greens, chard stems, carrots, and snap peas (plus scrambled eggs and tofu)

Roasted beets

Beet greens with vinegar

Pasta with spearmint pesto

Grape leaves stuffed with rice and chopped beef

Quinoa risotto with arugula and carrots

More snap peas right off the vine!

 

Dessert

Strawberries and/or raspberries – on their own, in yogurt, over vanilla ice cream, or topped with whipped heavy cream

Wild black cherries     

Lemon balm, spearmint and/or peppermint tea

 

And coming soon: bush (string) beans

Life is a Bowl of Cherries

“All the really ripe ones are just out of reach,” complained Richard, from half-way up the smallest of the mature black cherry trees at the edge of our woods. 

We love “found” food – those native plants that we harvest with little or no work required. We didn’t plant them. Some we tend minimally. More commonly, we simply cheer them on and eat the gleanings with gratitude for the world’s abundance.  Most notable in this category are the wild black cap raspberries, just starting to ripen. Wild grape leaves, too, for stuffing with seasoned rice and meat, and on my “to do” list for the next week or two.

But there’s nothing quite like a perfectly ripe cherry. Unfortunately for us, the trees are 50-60 feet tall, the cherries far from reach.  Growing as they did in a crowded woods, most have no lower branches.

Usually, we resign ourselves to watching enviously as a multitude of birds feasted on the sweet black spheres. I joke about cutting down the trees to harvest the tantalizing crop. Last year, Richard tried hitting the branches of the smallest tree -- the only one with branches low enough -- with a long pole to knock the fruit to the ground. It didn’t work. He was able to reach three or four cherries with a ladder. But that simply whet our appetite for more.

Yesterday, Richard was determined to have some.

Out came the step ladder. It barely reached the one low-hanging branch. Out came the more serious ladder. He was on the top of that when he called that most of the ripe cherries were still out of reach.

I thought about Icarus and his determined creation of a set of wax wings. Richard is more practical. He decided to duct-tape a large-tonged serving fork to a very long pole. With a little practice – and a lot of patience – he coaxed a small bowlful of black fruit from the tree.

The taste was sublime.

This morning, we woke to a raucous symphony of chirps, and cheeps, and squawks and caws. The local avian population had found the cherries, and the message was traveling far and wide. With my binoculars, I could see hundreds of shiny ripe cherries filling the tallest of the trees. 

For the next three days, there will be a non-stop pilgrimage of birds as they pick the tree clean. Some come in noisy flocks. Others arrive on their own. Envious as I might be, I think we’ll have to simply enjoy the show. But then, after Richard took his turn with the binoculars, I heard him murmur something about climbing trees.  

On peas, summer storms, and me

When it comes to growing food, one has to give up rigid standards of perfection. Just a few days ago, I was proudly boasting about my towering 7’ tall sugar snap pea plants. While I was waiting for my camera batteries to charge so I could document that achievement, the first summer storm blew in, with two days of high winds along with the rain. The pea stalks bent, and many are now lying along the ground. We’ll tie them back up when the plants dry, but that “perfect” photo remains only in my imagination.

Fortunately, though, even with bent stems, the peas are still producing – about a pound per day. That’s more than enough to feed us, and our friends as well. Snap peas turn us into “browsers,” as well as gatherers. A fair number get eaten right in the garden. But plenty still make it into the house.

For those, my favorite recipe is to steam them for about a minute, then marinate in a mix of tamari (soy sauce), balsamic vinegar, sesame oil, and a splash of white wine vinegar as well. I use a ratio of about 5 Tbs: 4 Tbs: 1 Tbs respectively for about 1.5 pounds of peas. A generous handful of chopped spearmint, and another handful of chopped dill, and they’re done.

Still, the pea crop is just starting, so I went looking for some additional options this morning. I found a recipe for pickled sugar snap peas and another for an Indonesian-inspired stir-fried beef with snap peas and peanut sauce. I look forward to trying them soon.

Snap peas are one of spring’s great treats. And because they grow vertically, they take very little room for the amount of food they produce. A row of snap peas will fit in the back of almost any sunny flower border, alongside the sunny side of a shed, or in a foundation planting, growing up on a temporary wire trellis.

Commonly, people think they need a lot of space to produce any significant quantity of food. Friends who visit are often surprised at how much food and flowers we support in an area no bigger than many suburban lawns. Some days, I’m surprised too. But I’m also learning that we could do it with even less space if we had to. Or, in our case, that we could still increase the amount of food we are producing, feeding not only ourselves, but some of our friends besides.

Part of that is building up the soil enough to support dense plantings. Part is improving my timing at succession planting – pulling out plants that are past their prime and immediately starting the next crop in the same space. Or even overlapping crops. This morning, I pulled out the spinach plants that were starting to bolt. Some weeks ago, I planted string beans (a bushy variety) between some of the spinach and early lettuces. The beans are starting to really leaf out just as the spinach and lettuces are starting to bolt; with the latter greens gone, they will have all the room they need. Once the rains stop, I’ll plant something else – perhaps more carrots – in the rows where the remaining spinach was.

Similarly, for now, the snap peas are towering (or falling!) over the tomato plants in one bed and the zucchini and yellow squash in another. But by mid-July, when the summer veggies really need the extra room, the peas will be done. And I’m hoping the nitrogen-fixing pea roots will have given the heavy feeding tomatoes and summer squash an extra boost.

Finally, the almost-ready-to-bolt spinach I pulled? It went into this morning’s breakfast: spinach and garlic scallion scrambled eggs from the chickens our neighbors raise down the road, fresh strawberries, and, of course, some sugar snap peas.

Salad Stroll

When my nephews, Joel and Garret, and niece, Dori, came to visit with their parents during Memorial Day weekend, the first thing they did was head for the gardens, looking for what was edible. In May, that mostly means salad. I followed, pointing as they tasted. Each leaf differed from the one before: lemony sorrel and lemon balm, licorice-flavored Sweet Cicely, a spicy hot mustard. Tangy arugala. Chrunchy chard.  Spearmint. Dill. Garlic greens. Several different lettuces.

If I had space to grow only a few things, salad greens would be at the top of the list. With greens, fresh makes a huge difference, as does variety. They take up little room, and do just as well in containers as in the ground.

We’ve been learning to extend the harvesting season beyond central New York’s short Memorial Day-to-Labor Day “frost free” months. In early April, I built two wooden boxes covered with old window frames garnered from the “Free Fridays” at Significant Elements, our local salvage and re-use operation. They joined the raised bed with clear plastic thrown over some low hoops.

As a result, we’ve been well into salad season for weeks now. Some days, rushed and late to work, I simply grab whatever greens are closest at hand, throw in some chick peas and feta cheese, and head out the door. But I much prefer what I’ve come to call my daily “salad stroll.” Dori became quite expert at it.

The “stroll” begins at the kitchen door. Close to the house, surrounded by a low brick wall and an open southern exposure, are the earliest lettuce, mustard, and baby kale greens, started under a cover of plastic in mid-March, weeks before the last snows fell. 

Next come the “rays” of the sun patio, where we pick edible leaves from the perennial plants: lemon balm and fern-like Sweet Cicely in the shadiest “ray”; chives and garlic scallions on the sunnier side. Through May, violets (both leaves and flowers) and young celery-flavored lovage stalks – now past their prime – join the mix. All are reliable perennial crops, needing minimal care.

Then it’s on to several annual vegetable beds to snip a mix of greens: lettuces, mustard, spearmint, Asian “spoon” greens and Mizoona, spinach leaves, arugala, and chard. A few beet greens occasionally make it into the mix. Plus a couple of leaves from an overwintered hot mustard. Somehow I missed replanting the hot mustard seeds until a few weeks ago; so for now, it appears only sparingly in the salad mix. 

The small flower buds from the mustards and kales (florettes that look and taste like miniature versions of their close cousin, broccoli), go in, along with some of the already opened yellow flowers. And then there are the “volunteer” greens around the edges of all the beds, self-seeded from last year’s plants, that look like a mustard-chard cross.

The dill is in the front beds. Last year’s few gangly dill plants self-seeded themselves profusely, so some always goes in the salad these days. Each year, something grows taller, fruits more prolifically, or self-seeds more profusely than expected. Two years ago, it was the cherry tomatoes, which grew to about 7 feet before they fell over. Last year, it was the kale, which seemed to pop up everywhere. We ate kale several times a week, and had kale to spare. This year seems to be the Year of the Dill.

Next come the just-emerging snow peas and snap peas, scattered liberally through the yard. The Johnny-Jump-Ups’ edible flowers go in last.

When I’m not driven by the clock, the “salad stroll” is about more than fixing lunch or dinner. It’s a chance to look things over, check in on later maturing plantings, admire the lupine or peonies (or whatever else is in bloom), pull a few weeds, and notice the profusion of growing, growing, growing all around. 

Photos -- Top: greens on May 8; middle: chives and arugula in bloom; bottom: ready to serve. 

New arrivals

The ripening of the first strawberries and snap peas this week marks the transition from the early spring salad days to what will rapidly become summer’s succession of many varied vegetables and berries.

Planting sugar snap peas always comes with a burst of optimism, a chance to get out in the garden on the first warm day in March

I take the instructions “as soon as the ground can be worked” literally, pushing seeds into just thawed earth until my index finger is numb. Richard always reminds me that we still have many frosts and likely snow still to come. I always refuse to listen. Depending on the year, it may be a while before the seeds germinate, but one never knows when we’ll have an early spring. I want to be ready.

The seeds get planted along many of the cages protecting the young fruit trees through the winter; any climbing surface is fair game. I also set up some wire frames just for them. One can’t have too many snap peas. Growing vertically, they also offer pretty flowers before their sweet, crunchy pods, take little space in the garden, and are gone by early summer, turning over their space to other plants that do most of their growing later in the season.

The strawberries, perennials that require no replanting, are also spread throughout the yard. We used to have a dedicated strawberry patch. It was exciting for the few weeks that the strawberries flowered and fruited, and then offered little of interest for the rest of the season, merely taking up valuable space. Now, the strawberries are planted as a groundcover along the border of several perennial beds. They look especially pretty with the edible Johnny-Jump-Up (viola) flowers peeking out from beneath the larger strawberry leaves. This fall, I’m going to see what I can do to help the self-seeding violas spread more widely.

Each plant produces less fruit this way than when hilled for maximum production. But we can support far more plants, with far less work, than we would have room for in a dedicated bed. And it’s fun to watch guests pause at the unexpected sight of a ripening red strawberry along the path. As these plants send out runners later in the summer and root new plants, we’ll continue to spread them to more borders.

Last but not least, the blueberries and blackberries are in flower. Left: Blackberry flowers. Below left: a young blueberry with its first small white flowers, in front of purple Sweet Dames Rocket (a native woodland phlox). Below right: blackberries, climbing over the stone wall.

Both are native woodland berries in this part of the world. The blueberries we planted. The blackberries we simply “adopt,” letting them grow (along with the native black-cap raspberries) out into the sunnier spots along the woods’ edge.

The hummingbird just whirred by, reminding me that it’s time to stop writing and get to work.

Mmmint Pesto

The mints are a decidedly unfussy species. With a minimal set of growing conditions, they will spread as far as you let them – a clear reminder of nature’s abundance. They are happy in sun or partial shade; they are said to like moist, well-drained soil, but they seem to do just as well in heavy clay, wet drainage ditches by the side of the road, and my woodland paths. Of course, the more ideal the soil, the bigger they grow and the faster they spread. Thus, the usual advice is to confine mints to a secluded part of the yard. I find that easier said than done. So I let it ramble – within limits. I like abundance.

And although letting mint ramble began with my reluctance to throw out good food, it also appears to be useful. Mixing among other plants, it seems to reduce the damage from many insects that might otherwise find and eat leaves that I would prefer to eat myself. So I let the mint grow along the sides of my raised vegetable beds, under the kale transplants, and into some of foot paths, where it surprises guests when walked on. Fortunately, it is shallow rooted, and easy to yank out before it takes over completely.

My real challenge with mint has been what to do with it all. It stays bushy and attractive when picked; it gets scraggly when ignored. But, there’s only so much mint tea one can drink.

Then, the winter before last, my friend Audrey, whose mother’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Syria, offered me a taste of lentil soup with a spoonful of spearmint pesto to mix in. It turns out spearmint pesto is equally delicious on pasta, or spread on crackers or a fresh crusty bread. Problem solved.

Many people think of pesto only as the wonderful mid-summer paste of basil leaves, garlic, parmesan cheese, pine nuts and oil. But “pesto” merely means “pounded” in Italian, referring to the mortar and pestle traditionally used to pound the ingredients together. A wide variety of greens can be pounded into pesto. My favorites are two extremely easy-to-grow greens that are ready for harvest a month before the basil can even be safely transplanted outside.

Garlic green pesto is the earliest, in late April, a delicious start to the new season. The first small batch of spearmint pesto follows soon after. 

By now, we can add spearmint leaves to our daily salads, make tea after dinner, and still have plenty for pesto. This evening, I pulled out several handfuls that were threatening to overtake the beets, and several more handfuls from where I want to add two more cucumber transplants tomorrow. Ten minutes later, I had pesto. Paired with a just-picked salad, it was dinner.  

I use the same recipe for my garlic green and my mint pestos:

About 2 cups (packed) of washed greens
2/3 cups of olive oil
2/3 cups of parmesan cheese
2/3 cups of pine nuts and/or walnuts
Blend in a food processor (or pound in a pestle, if you prefer).

Audrey’s second indispensible tip: freeze leftover pesto in ice cube trays. Then pop them out, and store in bags. You can easily defrost exactly as many cubes as you need – for pasta, or those winter lentil soups.

Now if only I can find an equally satisfying use for the spreading peppermint.



Photos - Top: spearmint; middle: greens from last year's overlooked garlic; bottom: an after-dinner pot of spearmint/peppermint tea.