Tag Archives: gardening

Speaking of hot, dry weather– a few days ago, we harvested our onions. They’re Tropeana Lungas from Baker Creek, and they are wonderful.

While cooking with them the other day, Zac remarked that, in the same way homegrown garlic is fresher, stronger, and plain-old more than the store-bought kind, these onions are more pungent, sharper, and, when cooked, melt into a more powerful sweetness than others do.

I just love them because they’re beautiful. They bulbed up quite nicely over midsummer– it’s hard to believe that they were this small a month ago!– and, as soon as the really hot weather came and their tops started to fall over, we waited a few more weeks, until the outer layers of their skin began to dry out. That’s when we pulled them and set them out to cure.

 Curing onions– or any food, for that matter– is a process that ensures that the onions are thoroughly dried out, that they develop a tough, protective outer layer, and that they’re all ready to go into dry storage for the season ahead, and not rot.

Onions are partially cured in the field. After they’re harvested, they’re left out in the open sun for a day or two. After that, they’re left in a dry, sheltered place– we’re keeping them in our garage. We leave the tops on, both so that we can braid them later, but also to help wick extra moisture out of the onion, preventing rot.

They’ll hang out in the garage for at least two weeks, if not longer. Once the tops wither completely, we’ll braid the onions and hang them up next to our braids of garlic. These onions are so tasty– and we use so many aliums in the kitchen– that I’m certain they won’t even make it to winter. We’ll definitely grow more of this variety next year, and I’m certain a few others, too.

The past few days have been terribly hot and dry. It’s taken quite a toll on even the heat-loving plants in our garden– we’re making sure to give the corn, beans, and melons enough water to ensure that they can still stand up and set fruit.

The early-spring vegetables– the ones that are even less heat-tolerant, such as lettuce, peas, radishes, and arugula– gave up the ghost long ago. They turned bitter, sent up flower stalks, went to seed, and dried up to crispy brown husks and stems.

While cleaning out the garden beds and making room for more summer-loving plants, Zac wondered if he might be able to save the seeds from a few varieties (and, in so doing, save us a bit of money next spring).

When saving seed, it’s important to make sure that your seeds breed pure and true-to-type– that is, that they haven’t cross-pollinated with any other varieties. Vegetables that are in the same family often cross with one another– squashes with pumpkins, for example– as well as with wild varieties– like carrots do with Queen Anne’s Lace. A great place to look for more information on saving seeds is this website, or Seed to Seed, which is considered the definitive work on the subject.

Luckily, we only planted one variety of arugula.

The seed pods on the plant were so dry that they had already begun to shatter:

After cutting the plants off at the root, we threshed them– separated the seed from its husk, and from the rest of the plant. Since arugula lets go of its seeds rather easily, this step was pretty simple: bang the dried-out ends of the plants back and forth in a hard-walled bucket. We were left with a mixture of seeds and chaff in the bottom of the bucket.

 That all got put through a sieve:

  All that was left were thousands of the yellowish, peppery seeds (of course we tasted a few!):

We set them on a baking sheet to dry a little further– some of them still felt a bit green and tacky, and we want to make sure they’re all well-cured before we store them. We’ll definitely plant a patch of arugula this fall, once the weather cools down, and we’ll plant the other half of this seed this next spring.

Are you already thinking about next year’s garden? Do you save any seed from year to year?

It’s been a while since I’ve taken you all on a walk around the garden, and, in true Ferris Bueller fashion, I realize that a garden– especially this time of year– moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. So let’s go look, shall we?

Can I just tell you how excited I am about these melons? The Seed Saver’s Exchange catalogue describes them thusly:

La crème de la crème of French cantaloupes. First noted in the garden of the Bishop of Rennes nearly 400 years ago.

If that’s not exciting, I don’t know what is.

I’m not certain whether or not we’ll have cabbages this summer– it all depends on whether the weather stays cool or not– but they sure are lovely to look at. I actually just saw a bunch of gorgeous red cabbages growing in planters all around the patio of a restaurant downtown, and was surprised, amused, and terribly gratified.

The corn is TALL, but the beans have climbed right up them, curling up to the top of the stalks. I have a feeling that the corn and beans (and understory watermelons) will be this summer’s unsung breakout stars– they’re going to make so much good food for us!

This is borage– the quickest way to insure the indisputable authenticity of your summer’s Pimm’s Cup, but also, according to the fantastic Vegetables from An Italian Garden, a green that can be cooked and used like spinach, but tastes like cucumber. Have any of you cooked with borage before?

And, just to prove that it’s not all 100% perfect all the time around here, here is a thousand-word picture of a tragedy that befell some goose-nipped Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers. It can be condensed into just three words, however: TIME OUT, GEESE.

(Short ist of things Easier Said than Done: Putting a goose in time out)

We’re also looking forward to little cornichons. Did you know that, as a child, I lived for several years on little more than sweet midgets and ham?

And this is a picture of our small tomato bed. It’s about 40 feet long, and contains about as many plants. It’s a good thing we’re taking July off– we’re going to be working full-time to stay on top of it all!

These little tiger-striped guys, Violet Jaspers, will be purple and green.

But my absolute favorites are these, the classic of classics, the Consoluto Genoveses.

We’ve already sampled the first cherry tomatoes, and I’m happy to tell you that they were perfect. Absolutely ripe, deliciously warm, and definite foretastes of the summer to come.