Pepper Quest 2010

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Finally Found?

While we are planning what to put into the dirt for the next growing season, we are never too far from thinking about dinner. One of the things we certainly could have eaten more of last year was peppers. And this year we should have plenty of them; hot, sweet and in-between.

There are at least three popular ways to start your pepper seeds:

  1. Pop them in the dirt as-is. Keep them moist and very warm (as high as 85 degrees would work) and hope for the best.
  2. Soak them in water overnight before popping them into the dirt, etc.
  3. Soak them for 10 minutes in a 10% bleach solution, then plant them. This method is recommended for killing any possible disease that might be carried on the seed if, just as an example, perhaps you got your seed from an unknown or unusual source, let’s say.

We have trials of all three methods going right now using seeds from Guajillo peppers that are supposedly grown all over Mexico and very popular but which I could not find this year for love or money from our usual seed sources. My ever-resourceful husband found a handful of seeds from someone on eBay for us to try. And I drove up to Penzey’s in Menlo Park to buy 1 oz. of dried Guajillo’s for $2.09. I cut a slit in the side of one and now have enough seeds left over to go into business on eBay myself. Of course, we don’t actually know if the peppers will grow from either source yet.

Guajillo’s are moderately hot peppers for us, they rank at ~6,000 Scoville Units. We are also planning to try ‘Hot Lemon‘ peppers (5,000-30,000), Jalapeños (2,500-8,000), Anchos (1,000-2,000), Santa Fe style peppers (500-700), ‘Pizza‘ peppers (500) and the very hot Fuego F-1 Hybrid (60,000-100,000), even though we usually try to grow from open-pollinated seed.

The sweet pepper list is shorter, but also very important for fresh eating. Many of the Dirt to Dinner kids will happily eat sweet peppers right off the plants! This year we’ll try Yolo Wonder, California Wonder 300, Golden Star, Mini-Red Bells and a Tangerine Pimento. (If this one is anything like the Pimento we grew last year, I’m going to have to move it to the Hot list.)

We plan to be using our peppers in a variety of Mexican dishes since Mackenzie has been interning in Mexico for the last several months, for fresh salsa, for pickling, for drying and for smoking. We will also be canning ketchup, pasta sauce and barbecue sauces.

Pea Trials 2010

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Remind me next year that the ‘Oregon Sugar Pod‘ peas are going to need better supports than the split bamboo poles I stuck in around them before overwintering. They have grown at least a foot up and over the side of the raised bed and another two feet back down to the ground. (They are growing in the old potato bed, so it’s deep.) The packet says to expect 28″ vines but I’m getting a tape measure out for these guys. They have done well, and are a sweet treat when you’re working out in the garden, but they are getting a little moldy on the shady side after all the rain we’ve been having. We lost some pods to frost but the vines held on and continued to grow and produce flowers and new pods. I will definitely grow them through the winter again.

The other side of the same bed has ‘Cascadia‘ snap peas, which haven’t been nearly as productive. Welcome, certainly, but hard to find even though the vines look good and there seems to be no shortage of flowers. The pods are harder to spot, and some of them have been lost to a sort of rot that seems to start at the flower end in all this wet weather. I am keeping them picked and hoping they will make us more peas when the weather clears. I have another patch of them starting across the garden.

That patch of ‘Cascadias‘ is growing along with the last of my ‘Sugar Daddy‘ seeds. I have two plantings of ‘Sugar Daddy‘ growing in the center of this year’s potato bed, the ones I started in the ground and the ones I started in the house the same day and then transplanted. Unless transplant shock is a bigger setback than I anticipate, I’ll be starting my pea seeds indoors from now on. You should see what we have to go through defending pea seeds and shoots in the garden! I have nets and cages, row cover and bird tape, cat-attractors and anti-squirrel devices. The Pisello Nano, “dwarf peas,” ‘Piccolo Provenzale‘ I planted today are under glass to help them get established without being molested.

I also started a patch of ‘Amish Snap‘ peas from Seed Savers Exchange. These vines are predicted to grow 5-6’ tall and I put in the supports to hold them. I also have Pisello Rampicante (which I think means “Climbing peas”) ‘Telephono‘ peas starting under one of the teepees we used last year for beans. The kids planted seeds and then we were hit with crazy winter storms, so I filled in with transplants I had seeded indoors again. And there are seeds left in the packet which I may start tomorrow. They are growing alongside another Italian climbing pea variety called ‘Gigante Svizzero‘ or Swiss Giant even though the packet says this is an old French variety. It takes an international cast of thousands to grow peas around here. ;-) These are new for us, but they look like something in between a snow pea and a snap pea. I’m curious to see how they do.

And, of course, there are the ‘Freezonian‘ peas as well. I am trying to start a good-sized patch of them in the back garden this year. They will get a little shade there as things warm up, which might help them hang on longer if it’s warm.

That gives us ten varieties to try:

Snow Peas – ‘Oregon Sugar Pods’ and ‘Gigante Svizzero‘
Snap Peas – ‘Cascadia,’ ‘Sugar Daddy‘ and ‘Amish Snap‘
Shelling Peas, dwarf – ‘Petit Pois,’ ‘Laxton Progress No. 9,’ ‘Freezonian‘ and ‘Piccolo Provenzale‘
Shelling Peas, pole – ‘Telephono‘

Oh! And I am still hoping to get organic ‘Green Arrow‘ seeds from Seed Savers. They just looked so perfect in the picture. *Sigh* I know it takes a ton of vines and the right conditions for a home vegetable gardener to enjoy a big ol’ bowl of fresh peas swimming in butter, but I can still hope, can’t I?

Dark Days Dining – Passing the Husband Test

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My husband has declared my most recent creation straight out of the garden to be, “The perfect vegetable soup.” (You can see why I keep him around.) But the secret was actually a little trick I borrowed from his mother.

Vegetable Soup

The "Perfect" Vegetable Soup

I took my harvesting basket and a knife into the garden to see what I could find. We have dozens of broccoli shoots on plants I would have pulled out after the first head if the folks at Full Circle Farm hadn’t taught us better during our volunteer work day this winter. There’s also a nice crop of snap peas and snow peas–if you happen to find a time to pick them when the kids aren’t in the garden. ;-) I found beets, rutabagas, turnips and three or four different kinds of carrots. I am especially partial to the yellow ones in my winter cooking. They are a bright spot in the bowl that is surprisingly cheering this time of year. I also found plenty of oregano, thyme, chives, parsley and rosemary. And celery loves the wet weather we’ve been having.

I started with the traditional olive oil, carrots, onions and celery in the big stock pot and added in the rest of the root vegetables as I chopped. I also had some potatoes that needed to be used and I tossed in some sweet potato, trying not to waste that either. When the vegetables started to soften, I added in some chopped garlic. A few minutes later, I added two cups of chopped tomatoes, with the juice, half a cup of cooked kidney beans, the herbs, salt, pepper and four cups of chicken stock.

I let that simmer for half an hour while I cleaned and prepped the peas, broccoli and greens. Some of my broccoli plants are perfectly clean and healthy, but some of the flowerettes I have been picking are over-run with aphids, requiring a good wash and even a quick soak in salt water to clean them. I need to get out there with some soap and then go buy the kids a tub or two of ladybugs. ;-)

After the flavors had settled a bit, I brought the soup to a low boil and added in the rest of the vegetables and covered the pot for two minutes. But it still tasted too tomato-y. It was a bit harsh like Summer Sauce when you haven’t cooked it down yet. This is where my mother-in-law comes in. I consult with her on all culinary mysteries. She told me to slowly add some more herbs and red wine, tasting in between each addition until the soup was more balanced. Well, certainly never noticed *that* on the back of a Campbell’s label. I had a nice Cabernet in the cupboard that served well.  Three pours and some oregano later, I rested the soup overnight in the refrigerator.

And then I fed it to my husband. The same husband who, when presented with my recent homemade creamed chicory, burst out with, “That is truly awful!” Luckily the vegetable soup went over better. He liked it, Hey Mikey!

New Raised Beds

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The Dirt to Dinner crew wants to send the folks at Naturalyards a big Thank You! As many of you already know from The Great Raised Bed Debate, if money had been no object, we would have started with lots of their untreated, kiln-dried Port Orford cedar raised beds on day one.

Hexagonal Raised Bed from NaturalyardsBut you’ve gotta let people know you’d like their help before they can help you. As soon as I talked with the kind people at Naturalyards, they promptly donated three of their beautiful, easy-assembly raised beds. Not only that, but we found another gardening fan who happened to be driving from where Naturalyards is in Oregon, right to our doorstep in time for the next Dirt to Dinner session! How’s that for service and support?!

Strawberry Tower Planter from NaturalyardsAt our next meeting the kids will be assembling three different Naturalyards raised bed designs; a rectangle planter, a hexagonal planter and a strawberry tower. We’ve also received several alternative suggestions for assembling the beds. We could make a potato growing bin, or instead of two large towers we could make three smaller planters. And we’ve been toying with a design that would combine the strawberry tower and the hexagonal planter into a single bed.

It will be fun to see what the kids decide on. Some of them relish the construction projects as much as they do the food.

Dark Days Dinner – A Variation on White Bean and Kale Soup

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Carrots, turnips & herbsOK, by the time I was done with it, my version of this soup was quite nearly a stew, but it was still yummy. Four different recipes for a White Bean & Kale Soup were swirling around in my head when I went into the garden to see what I could find. This one looked especially appealing but unfortunately I didn’t have all the ingredients.

The ‘Dinosaur‘ or ‘Covolo Laciniato Nero Di Toscana Precoce‘ kale was easy. It loves this kind of winter weather and puts out dozens of long, dark green fingers from a tall central spike. My ‘Tokyo Market‘ turnips surprised me with fat white globes sitting atop the soil with nothing but their skinny taproots in the ground. And, this year at least, we finally have carrots! Last year by this time they had all been eaten, but we have 12 square-feet of carrots and parsnips still in the ground waiting for a recipe like this. The rosemary bushes are also content to grow straight through the winter here, so I pulled off a tender branch to flavor my vegetable stash.

Inside I had been soaking the ‘Jacob’s Cattle‘ beans we grew over the summer. They were the closest thing to a white been that I had. This year I plan to grow Cannellini and at least one other White Bean and Kale Soupwhite variety, but for now, we’re making do with what’s on hand. Might need to call this one “Pink Bean & Kale.”

I sautéed an onion in olive oil for a few minutes then added the carrots and turnips. While the vegetables were softening, I stemmed the kale and chopped it fairly fine. I also cut up some nice chicken Italian sausage with the perfect amount of fennel in it that just squeaked over the 100 mile Dark Days Challenge line in time to join us for this meal. I tossed the sausage and kale with the softened vegetables and added the chopped rosemary leaves. As soon as the kale started to brighten and wilt, I added in the now cooked beans and simmered the whole concoction on low for about an hour to marry the flavors some.

Before serving, I added fresh ground pepper and my husband insisted on dusting his bowl with Parmesan as he would with Minestrone. The whole family approved, which was a nice surprise as I had been expecting the little one to turn her nose up at the fenneled Italian sausage. Instead, I caught her scooping some out of my bowl when I wasn’t looking!