2013 Garden Dreams (and Some Actual Planning Ahead)

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frosted-broccoliMy Northern California garden doesn’t sleep for the winter under a blanket of snow, or ever experience much of a frost, but parts of it are “resting” right now in cover crops of peas, fava beans, clover and fenugreek. (Seriously,  Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) is well known as a spice, but is also useful as a nitrogen-fixer (it’s in the Fabacae or bean family), soil-cleanser, and source of forage (for both pollinators and livestock). Just ask the folks at TheModernHomestead.) All but two of the summer’s tomato plants have hit the compost pile, and all the perennial runner beans have been mounded with compost of their own. While the kale, spinach, onions, and garlic are slowly consuming the short day’s sunlight, it’s a very good time to dream of the next gardening year.

My favorite gardening catalogs help. Orders from Victory Seeds and Adaptive Seeds will round out what I haven’t saved myself or traded with other seed savers. I already have a tantalizing stash of seeds courtesy of a friend’s visit to Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They have wonderful names like ‘Amsterdam Prickly Seeded Spinach’ and ‘Glory of Enkhuizen Cabbage’ and ‘Monkey Tail Cowpeas.’  And the chayote fruit the neighbors brought me has not only sprouted, but it has a 5-foot long vine growing leaves as wide as my hand.

wildlife-trust-insect-hotelThe biggest structural change in the garden this year is that we are building a Beneficial Insect Hotel out of pallets salvaged by a good friend. The center section of the front garden is dedicated to an insectary with a small, rock-filled bug  bath, annual and perennial natives to attract and feed beneficial garden insects, and the new hotel. This beauty from Inspiration Green is what we are using for inspiration. So far we have added tree cuttings, hollow bamboo poles, a pottery toad house, and straw batting for nesting material. I’ll share pictures as it fills. If you have a secret for attracting toads, please share it!

In the 2013 garden I hope to focus on growing more onions and garlic, getting back to basic and reliable potato varieties, and adding two more stands of runner beans, one for the big white ‘Cannellini’ runner beans and the other for the relatively rare ‘Ayocote Morado’ runner bean.  Both this summer’s ‘Blenheim Orange’ and ‘Amish’ melons were wonderful, so I’m sure I will have requests from the family to grow more of those along with the standing request to grow watermelons. This year I plan to finally break down and grow the watermelons on Solar Mulch to warm the soil. I already have to put the mulch in to get sweet potatoes to crop in less than 200 days, so I might as well add some for the melons.

This year we’ll test seven different varieties of tomatoes for canning. I planted four seeds of each variety on January 12th and set them on the seed heating mat. I’m comparing their germination with the ‘Principe Borghese’ tomatoes that I grow every year for drying. The test varieties for this year are:

  • ‘Rutgers’
  • ‘Scatolone’
  • ‘Tsungshigo Chinese’
  • ‘Raspberry Lyanna’
  • ‘Roma VF’
  • ‘Santa Clara Canner’–A “local” variety which is actually from Italy!
  • ‘Marglobe’

Because taste-testing those tomatoes is so far away, for now I will be working on the rutabaga trials. I have ‘Nadmorska’ rutabaga seed from two different sources, ‘American Purple Top,’ ‘Marian,’ and ‘Joan’ all going in the garden.

What’s happening in your garden? Have big plans for 2013?

Five Fiery Fall Favorites for Pepper Perfection

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Heirloom ‘Matchbox’ Peppers Grown from Hudson Valley Seed Library Seeds

It’s almost the end of October, so that must mean I finally have peppers! And this year has been extremely satisfying in the pepper department. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t actually know how to measure a “peck of peppers” but I am willing to bet I have a least one.

Along with the several sweet peppers that were kind enough to perennial-ize themselves from last year, and our usual ‘Ancho-Poblano’ and ‘Spanish Spice’ varieties, this year we added several new additions to the pepper patch. This ‘Matchbox’ pepper was started from Hudson Valley Seed Library seed on Valentine’s Day. I didn’t notice fruit setting until seven months later in September. Today, October 23rd, the first pepper is finally ripe. I was so happy to see it that only its Scoville Unit rating of over 30,000 saved me from popping it straight into my mouth. It may not be a Habanero, but I’ll still be wearing gloves when I pick and cook with these little beauties.

Ethiopian Brown Berbere Pepper

I’m also looking forward to the ‘Ethiopian Brown Berbere’ peppers. I plan to start drying them in the next few days to make the Ethiopian spice paste called “Berbere” for a nut and seed mix recipe that I like. These peppers are a beautiful chocolaty brown, though I have heard their final ripened coloring is a brighter red. Since the plant has been prolific, I plan to harvest some of the peppers brown and dry them now, then if the rest ripen to red, I will dry those and we’ll be able to compare the flavor. I expect these peppers to be pretty hot, in the 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville Unit range.

These Berbere peppers are also said to have a rich, smokey flavor that’s good for making chili powder as well as rubs and BBQ sauces. I may have to fight my husband for them to get enough for the nut mix.

‘Red Cherry Bomb’ Pepper

One pepper we will certainly have plenty of is the ‘Red Cherry Bomb.’ This was the first of our hot peppers to produce fruit and here in late October it is still covered in deliciously bite-size bright red peppers. It’s on the milder side, good for fresh salsa, diced on pizza, or tossed into omelettes to get you going for the day.

This variety is definitely a keeper–maybe. It was sold to me as an open-pollinated heirloom. But I have seen other posts around the garden blogs saying that it does not grow true-to-type. If you have more information on this pepper, please share in the Comments!

‘Manzano Orange’ Pepper

Another mystery for us this year is the ‘Manzano Orange’ Pepper. Still no fruit set, but look carefully. I am pretty sure we’re about to see what it will make.

This pepper is intended as a perennial. Trade Winds Fruit calls this pepper, “a rocoto tree pepper relative” and says it, “is noted for its cold hardiness, as it naturally grows on Andean mountain slopes, this pepper will survive several degrees below freezing. Plants grow to 2-6ft, can live for many years.” At the end of next month I plan to surround the roots with a layer of compost and then mulch heavily with rice straw and hope for the best. It’s very unusual for us to have freezing temperatures but anything can happen with the weather these days!

Heirloom ‘Fish’ Pepper Plant
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No post on our favorite peppers would be complete without the African-American heirloom ‘Fish’ pepper. Great for seafood and gumbo, I also dry the light-colored peppers to make “white” pepper for added heat in cream dishes where I don’t want the red coloring that usually accompanies this spiciness. (Think Chicken a la King, for instance.) The red and mixed-color peppers that aren’t eaten fresh are dried for pepper flakes and get added to everything from pasta sauce to bacon frittata.

Color Variation in ‘Fish’ Pepper Fruits

The colorful variety on this plant is also a fun surprise in the garden. I have gotten ‘Fish’ peppers in green, yellow, white, red and even some with stripes. And the plant itself has beautiful two-toned leaves with bold white splashes across whole sections of the plant.

How did your peppers do this year? If you have a favorite, please share it with us in the Comments.

Don’t Read This – Go Read “The Seed Underground”

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To say that I was inspired by Janisse Ray’s The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food, would exceed my understatement limit for the week. Before I even finished it, I purchased three more copies to increase my chances of still having one after I start giving it to friends who are on the verge of grasping where our food system is currently heading. I told my husband that when he was finished reading this book, he would better understand his wife, his yard, and his dinner.

Ray weaves her own story of coming to understand food in a deep and fundamental way with many stories of seed savers around the United States and the why, if not so much the exact details of how, they do what they do. It’s not an instruction manual. It’s more a “This I Believe” manifesto of seed saving.

If I could have put the book down, I would have done it in order to plant, collect, or share seeds of the nearest vegetable at hand. The book makes you want to DO something. It lifts you past the doom and gloom of species and varieties disappearing or being forever fouled by the poison of corporate gene manipulation to the beautiful simplicity of action you can take right now to be part of the solution.

You finish the book with the knowledge that seed savers are out there. Seed savers are messy and neat, healthy and sick, on small lots and vast acreage, saving a single variety or dozens at once. Seed savers are people saving food. And maybe seed savers are just like you.

So, don’t read this. Get out there and save some seeds. And take The Seed Underground with you to keep you in good company along the way.

Hot Weekend with Hot Peppers

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I had to transplant the new hot peppers into their bed in the fading evening light because of the unseasonably hot weekend, but they don’t seem to have minded. There are six of them spread out across a 3′ x 4′ bed with a few Nasturtiums. I edged the planting bed in with a dozen ‘Chandler’ strawberries because my daughter can’t seem to get enough of them and they won’t mind a little shade from the growing peppers when things heat up for real. But I’m afraid to look at any of my companion planting books now that I’ve mixed strawberries and peppers.

The peppers for this bed include a ‘Manzano Orange’ which has soft, fuzzy leaves that look more like an eggplant’s. The Manzano pepper is one of the few chilies that are not in the Capsicum annuum species. Instead, it’s a Capsicum pubescens from the Andes. Maybe that’s where the fuzzy leaves come in. Wilipedia says pubescens means hairy. The thick-walled peppers are supposed to look like small apples and make nice hot salsa.

I’m hoping to over-winter the ‘Manzano Orange,’ though it’s going to need to be replanted somewhere with a lot more space because Wikipedia also says, “They grow into four-meter woody plants relatively quickly, and live up to 15 years, which gives them, especially with age, an almost tree-like appearance.” Sounds wonderful! This winter I was able to keep two sweet pepper plants going on in pots on the semi-protected patio. They are each several feet tall and leafing out fully with lots of flower buds right now. I’m very interested to see if, and how, they produce this year. I think they are a ‘King of the North’ and a ‘Corno di Toro.’

My Hot Pepper Have to Have list has been trimmed, due to my uncanny ability to kill pepper seedlings. I can grow asparagus from seed. I can grow potatoes from true seed for God’s sake! But I cannot seem to manage to keep pepper seedlings alive long enough to make it into the garden. Out of the dozens of pepper seeds I have started this year, only one ‘Fish’, one ‘Matchbox’ and one ‘Joe’s Long’ have survived. They are heading out into the garden along with the purchased starts of ‘Pasilla,’ ‘Red Cherry Bomb,’ ‘Ancho Poblano,’ ‘Ethiopian Brown Berbere,’ ‘Pimento Super’ and the ‘Manzano Orange.’

Suddenly that seems like it might be a whole lot of peppers. What’s your favorite way to use peppers? Fresh, dried, pickled or something else I haven’t thought of? Please share!

Hot Pepper Have-to-Haves

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The first of this year’s pepper seedlings has sprouted! It’s a Pizza pepper from several year-old Territorial Seeds meant for planting in 2009. After my recent trials with onions seeds, I was glad to see that these held their viability.

On February 15th, I planted six seeds each of  Pizza, Fish, Joe’s Long, Matchbox, and Chervena Chujski peppers. In a few weeks I’ll compare the germination rates and seedlings of the varieties.

Pizza peppers from this same pack of seeds did well for us in 2010, growing late into the fall and producing lots of thick-walled peppers with a little zip to them, but none of the sting some of our hotter peppers bring. I love these for fresh eating in dips, in salsa and in summer pasta dishes.

The Fish peppers grow on beautiful multi-colored plants and carry an irresistible  bit of heirloom history. William Woys Weaver, author of Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, says, “the Fish Pepper…was an African-American heirloom that began as a sport or mutation of a common serrano pepper sometime during the 1870’s…raised almost exclusively in the black community for use in oyster and crab houses…It was one of those “secret” ingredients favored by cooks and caterers to spike a recipe with invisible heat, for the Fish Pepper was used primarily when it was white, and it could be dried to retain that color. This feature was a culinary plus in the days when cream sauces reigned supreme.”

Fish peppers were prolific on very small plants through our unusually cool summer last year. The six seeds I have started came from Mike the Gardener, and I also plan to start a few more plants from saved seed to compare the fruits at harvest. I like these dried and ground into pepper flakes or powder and added to stews, chili, or barbecue sauces. I may even sneak one or two into the homemade ketchup recipe this year.

Another heirloom, Joe’s Long peppers, are listed as having came over from Italy with the Sestito family. My husband’s family is Italian and that gives me an excuse for lots of wonderful varieties I grow, including this one. Plus they look so darn cool. Check them out on the Bountiful Gardens website where I ordered my seeds. I’m looking forward to trying these fresh and also experimenting with them dried.

I’m planning to grow peppers in containers on the patio this year, a warm and protected spot they should like, and the Matchbox peppers are often recommended as a container variety. I received seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library in an Edible Garden gift basket during the holidays. I’m looking forward to the “sugary-hot” spiciness of these guys. I enjoy adding hints of sweetness to stir-fries, braises and sauces and plan to try these in chili as well. And I hope the plants will complement the colors of the Fish peppers I plan to have growing nearby.

The last pepper in this early batch is a sweet pepper, the Chervena Chujski from Landreth. I was tempted by this variety because it is supposed to be good for both fresh eating and roasting, which we love. Last year I could have used a whole lot more peppers that were good for roasting. I plan to try the Chervena Chujski grilled, hand-roasted over a gas burner, and smoked. If they are productive, I will also pickle some of them.

Which peppers will get space in your garden this year? I’d love to hear what you are growing and what you turn them into once they get to the kitchen!