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Want to save the planet? Think small. - The Washington Post

One day in the spring of 2001, I sat in a coffee shop near the Washington Post offices, talking with garden editor Adrian Higgins. A book of mine I’d just updated, on ornamental gardens, sat between us on the table. The burning question, for both of us, was “How can we get people to grow food?”

Two years later, when I launched my column “A Cook’s Garden” for The Post, people were still putting lawns and lilies ahead of lettuce and kale. Now, 14 years later, that has changed. Americans are caught up in a sod-busting, tomato-canning, chef-worshiping food revolution.

For my part, it’s time for me to end this series and spend more time in the garden outside my kitchen window. But I leave it on a happy note. Although the recession of 2008 certainly fueled the grow-your-own boom, the boom has not slowed. A National Gardening Association survey found that food gardening increased 25 percent between 2008 and 2015. Recently, a publisher complained to me: “I can’t sell a rose book. I can sell books on chickens. Why?”

There are many answers. People have concerns about the industrial food system, its factory-like farms, its harm to the environment and its degradation of the soil. The food you grow at home tastes better and the act of growing it rewards you, both physically and mentally. It’s given a big boost to home cooking as well.

But there’s more. I say we are at the dawn of a new biotic age. Just as we’ve been negotiating our way between two parallel but very different forms of agriculture — one large-scale and chemically based, the other localized and biologically based — we’ve been caught between two modes of thought. This paradox is not just about growing food but about how we interact with nature in general. Both approaches can’t exist at once. As in 1492, the Earth is either round or it’s flat.

I’ve always thought of horticulture as the humble science, maybe because I practice it on my muddy knees rather than from the cab of a huge computerized combine. But a science it is, and all the more challenging because it shows us how much we don’t know and how little we are in charge.

[The zoo beneath our feet: We’re only beginning to understand soil’s hidden world]

And who is in charge? The microbes. Sure, we’ve known about bacteria, fungi and all the other essential no-see-ums for a long time, but every day we’re shown more about how numerous and complex their systems are and how they steer life on the planet.

Consider our planet’s skin, the soil and the bit of it you allocate for your garden. We’re told that it needs nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous in good balance and a collection of other minerals such as calcium and iron. But unless the soil is alive, it might as well be on the moon.

We also know about the rhizosphere, the area where a plant’s root hairs partner with microbial teams. The roots exude carbon sugars that feed microbes, which return the favor by making soil nutrients available in forms that the plants can use. But soil scientists are just discovering how numerous and diverse these microbial communities are in a healthy, fertile soil.

A plant will select an appropriate microbial community that will not only feed it and make it grow well but also fend off harmful bacteria and fungi. The suitability of a plant’s chosen range of microbes, acting in concert, has even been referred to as a “second genome.”

Similar exchanges take place in the human gut, with enormous implications for our health, as well – not just for the intestines but for the whole organism. That’s humbling indeed. It’s like finding out that the guys in the mailroom have been running the company.

It requires an abundance and a diversity of microbial life for systems like these to flourish, and it takes forbearance on our part to allow it. It’s a big mental shift to go from treating nature as individual elements to seeing it as infinite communal interactions.

Just as antibiotics, originally cultured from soil organisms, can have the side effect of upsetting our intestinal flora, so any biocide – be it weed killer, bug killer or chemical food – will compromise the life in the soil.

As a gardener of the biotic age, the best thing you can do is add organic matter to the soil in the form of homemade compost, or legumes and grasses dug in as cover crops, and let the microbes go to work. Stand back and don’t get in their way.

You’ll know your soil is fertile when its color is dark and its structure loose and open. Your plants will show health and vigor. Worms will appear, and when you see them, you’ll know that all the tiny guys are in there, too.

Stock up on horticultural row cover fabric in advance of frost season. Fending off one night of early frost can prolong the growing season for tender plants such as peppers, beans and annual herbs. The reusable spun plastic material is also useful for extending salad green season and is available in hardware stores and garden centers and by mail order.

More from <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle">Lifestyle</a>:

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Barbara Damrosch’s latest book is “The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook.”

Barbara Damrosch

The Washington Post

Home & Garden

The Washington Post Home &amp; Garden section provides tips and advice for homeowners interested in home improvement and gardening. Resources and coupons for homes and gardens in DC, MD and VA. Guides for organizing, cleaning, planting and caring.

Washington Post Lifestyle gives you the latest fashion and beauty trends, home d&eacute;cor pointers, food and recipe ideas and reviews, relationship advice, travel ideas, wellness tips and much more.

Lifestyle

Slim pickings in this summer’s garden? You can do better next year. Here’s how. - The Washington Post

How did your garden grow? Do you still have the taste of summer on your lips from all the luscious melons and tomatoes you grew? Or did the garden get ahead of you? Maybe you never had a chance to put one in at all.

Take heart. There are limits to a gardener’s time and space. But there are lots of little things you can do next year to make even a small plot yield more bounty, and one big thing you can do right now.

First, assess the sunny areas in your yard. We love our trees, but could one go, or at least one of its limbs? 
Converting just 100 square feet from shade to sun will give you space for a few sun-loving tomato plants, cucumbers and pole beans. Aside from one sprawling but productive zucchini plant, all could go vertical, on poles, teepees, trellises or strings dangling from a top bar, held up by posts.

Look for other, less obvious sunspots: An upstairs balcony, a terrace with planters, a roof. Cherry tomatoes can dangle from window boxes.

Eggplants, peppers and even baby new potatoes can inhabit whiskey barrels. Nobody ever said that all vegetables had to be in one place. Use a double row of corn as a privacy fence and for cookouts. The ears, dunked first in water, can go right onto the grill, with chipotle butter tucked inside the husks.

Let’s say the best sun is in front, facing the street. If your potager is beautiful, productive and neatly tended, it’ll be way more attractive than boxwood globes and cones of dwarf Alberta spruce. It might even turn your neighbors into kitchen gardeners. My friend Roger Doiron created such a handsome front-yard plot that neighborhood kids were always stopping by to pop sweet, orange Sungold tomatoes into their mouths. Roger called it “Sungold diplomacy.”

Unpack the whole bag of gardener’s tricks and make the most of the space you have. Plan succession plantings, with late crops such as kale and fall carrots following early peas and lettuce. Interplant a late crop with an early one: Rows of radishes or greens can grow on either side of Brussels sprouts, because the spouts will take longer to fill the bed.

Embrace edible landscaping. Let trellised grapes climb a sunny arbor and hardy kiwis a shady one. Berry bushes can make a good hedge. Instead of a spreading beech, plant an apple tree. Fruit trees suit small yards, and the shade they cast is dappled rather than dense.

Although fruiting crops like tomatoes need six hours a day of full sun, leafy ones like lettuce and kale will work with four. Even root crops tolerate part shade. So in spreading your vegetables around, look for spots where tree roots will not infiltrate the beds, then sow your greens there.

As for that one big thing you can do right now, look at the yard again and picture it in its sunnier state after autumn leaves have fallen. Then find a good spot for a cold frame.

A cold frame is a bottomless box with a glass or plastic lid that sits on the ground. It conserves the sun’s heat and keeps much of it from radiating back again at night. It allows you to grow crops that prefer the cool temperatures of fall, winter and spring but protects them from snow, ice and more severe cold.

You can build a cold frame easily with wooden boards. Collecting salvaged storm windows is one way to get lids. The back edge of the frame is built higher than the front so that the lids slope downward toward the south, for a better sun angle. In our garden, we’ve built framed glass lids called “Dutch lights.” These consist of a sheet of glass or plastic inserted into a grooved wooden frame and held in place by a stop. This reduces the amount of wood prone to rotting from water as it flows over the lids.

There are many styles of cold frames you can buy, some with both the lids and the frames themselves made of a double wall of plexiglass or a similar material, to let in even more light. Many are lightweight, portable and stackable so that you can set them up as fall approaches.

Sow them with spinach and other greens that will regrow when cut.

Try a baby lettuce mix or an Asian greens one.
 Maybe a row of arugula, too, and one of radishes. Your yard will suddenly be a little larger, your growing season longer and your table a little fuller.

Green waste from the vegetable garden should be chopped up before being added to the compost pile, to speed decomposition and reduce bulk. A quick pass with a lawn mower will make short work of pulled tomato plants, squash vines, corn stalks and other end-of-summer vegetation. Make sure the mowing area is free of stones and other potential projectiles.

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The stylish way to keep homegrown onions and garlic on hand - The Washington Post

Onions are an easy crop, one that doesn’t require much attention. Water and weed — that’s about it. But toward the end of summer, you need to watch them to see whether they’ve flopped. When the leaves lie down in the row, it means the bulbs have stopped growing and are ready for harvest.

When this happens, check the weather. It’s best to pull onions during a sunny spell. Simply lift them and lay the whole plants on the ground in tidy rows to dry out and cure. The idea is to let the tops turn brown, all the way down to the bulbs, so that the necks will tighten and seal the bulb against deterioration. A brief shower is harmless, but if genuine rain is coming, bring them under cover to finish the job. Spread them on a floor, table or screen in a place that’s well ventilated and dry.

Soft-neck garlic can be harvested like onions. Hard-neck garlic is pulled when the tops start to brown but there are still about six green leaves on top. Bring both under cover right away to dry and cure.

New onions and garlic can be eaten immediately and are outstanding when fresh, but their main virtue is that they last many months in storage. An ideal space is dark, cold and frost-free, but not moist like a root cellar.

Like many cooks, though, I don’t feel secure unless I have a working stash of onions and garlic within easy reach. In the kitchen, there’s always a bucket, bin or basket — anything that works, but never the fridge, where too much moisture might make them rot.

You can also treat them as a kitchen display. This concept appeals to anyone who likes rustic kitchen decor, but even if the theme is stainless-steel modern, the sight of onions and garlic in a kitchen gives one a feeling that the cook cares about flavor and that the upcoming meal will not be bland. (You might have already sensed that upon entering, from the pungent aroma of a bubbling pot.)

Hanging food pantries are picturesque, especially if your kitchen ceiling has exposed beams from which to suspend them, but they have limitations. Ristras of dried red chiles look gorgeous at first, before they lose color from too much light. So do bundles of upside-down herbs, which, if too close to the action, crumble from the careless swish of a tea towel. Both gather dust.

But none of that happens to onions and garlic, which are neatly protected by their skins. So you can braid their tops to form a tidy hanging column and snip off one at a time as needed.

Normally you would cut off your onions’ dry foliage as soon as the necks have cured, but if you’re going to braid them, leave it on. The simplest way to do this is to tie three onions tightly together at the neck with tan-colored jute or sisal twine, which will last as long as the onions will. Then braid the three clumps of leaves just as you would a pigtail, alternately bringing the left and the right one to the center.

After each movement, bring a new onion in, above the center onion, adding its top to that strand. So even as you rise above the tops of the lower onions, the upper ones carry on the work. One way to give the column more strength is to leave a long piece of twine when you make that bottom tie, and braid it into one of the continuing strands.

If you’ve ever fiddled with long hair, you probably know that braiding in new strands as you go is called making a French braid.

Heads of garlic can be braided the same way, but only if you have grown soft-neck garlic, which has pliable foliage like that of an onion. They’re easier to work with than onions because they weigh less. The result is charming.

If you grow hard-neck garlic, which has long, very stiff stalks, you’ll see that it doesn’t lend itself to braiding. Instead, you might bundle the stalks together at the top and bottom and hang them up, keeping hand pruners at the ready to snip off a head.

But I don’t hang them at all. I put them in an upright vase with the heads on top, like a bouquet. Nothing could be simpler than that.

If you have always had short hair, especially if you are male, the idea of the French braid may be a little baffling, but you’ll catch on. Who knows? The next big thing, after the ponytail and the “man bun,” might be the French braid. And you’ll have practiced on onions.

Spend some time perking up annuals by pinching out blooms that have faded, trimming back leggy stems and applying a thin top dressing of potting mix or fine compost. Tall annuals such as zinnias, sunflowers, tithonia and amaranth may need staking or ­ re-staking to remain upright and attractive through October.

If your weeds are getting wild, ﬁrst things ﬁrst: Rescue your crops

Antiques can add personality, focal point to a garden

Good gardening practices are the key to flavorful vegetables

The secret to cooking with your favorite summer produce: Keep it simple.

This popular perennial flower can be turned into a tasty summer snack - The Washington Post

When bright orange daylily blossoms start to open along country roads in summer, it’s a beautiful and welcome sight. It always seems like a midpoint between the hurry-up planting of crops in spring and the harvest-rich enjoyment of summer and fall, along with the planting of cool-weather crops.

The time of those roadside flowers has passed, but there are still daylilies in my flower garden. The various daylily species, with modern cultivars in various colors, span the season, from late spring to the end of September. Those I've collected, grown by <a href="http://www.bloomingfieldsfarm.com/frmindx.html" shape="rect">Bloomingfields Farm</a> in Sherman, Conn., give me four months of these gorgeous, minimal-care treasures.

Before you do the same, you must understand the difference between daylilies and true lilies, which are only distantly related. The trumpet-shaped flowers of daylilies (genus <a href="http://www.daylilies.org/AHSinfo.html" shape="rect">Hemerocallis</a>) and lilies (<a href="http://www.lilies.org/" shape="rect">Lilium</a>) are somewhat alike, but where lilies grow from bulbs, daylilies grow from fingerlike rhizomes. Lilies have small, narrow leaves all along the stem, but daylilies have a big clump of long, grasslike leaves at the base of the plant. Lilies are toxic to humans, daylilies are not, and most of their parts — rhizomes, young shoots and flowers — have long been consumed as food.

[
This herb tastes like tarragon and adds beauty to your back yard
]

That said, it’s best to introduce yourself to them gradually, as would be true for any new plant, just in case you have a sensitivity to them.

So which parts to eat? I’ve found the young shoots to be a good addition to a stir-fry. Some people eat the tubers, though, come to think of it, nobody I know. Mostly I stick with the flowers.

In addition to topping a salad, you might find other creative uses for them. For instance, you could snip off the long stamens to make space in the bloom for a spoonful of cream-cheesy or goat-cheesy dip, then poke nasturtiums, calendulas and other edible flowers into it, making an edible bouquet. Some might find it a bit intimidating to eat, but it would be a beautiful garnish.

Recently I’ve been wondering about daylily flower fritters, made the way I make squash blossom fritters, for which I stuff the flowers with cheese, swish them in batter and fry them in oil. They are wonderful. But those huge, yellow squash trumpets are soft, pliable and easy to pinch shut before swishing. Daylily trumpets are stiffer and harder to close.

So I made fritters from the buds. I picked the biggest, fattest ones I could find — ones that would have opened the following day — and made a slit in them with a small, sharp knife. I left the stamens and pistil neatly bundled inside and inserted matchstick-like pieces of sharp cheddar.

They were delicious — crispy, with the sweetness intact. As I was gorging on them with my husband, I confessed that he probably wouldn’t get to eat them again because they were tiny and tedious to make.

He picked up a whole flower and put a dab of butter on the tip of each petal. Then he pinched the tips together, gluing the flower shut.

So the next day I stuffed some flowers with a mixture of ricotta cheese, rosemary and a little nutmeg. The butter seal made it possible to douse them in the batter and fry them to a golden crisp. Superb!

I fooled around with the idea of using ricotta with cheddar as a filling. Cheddar was nicely assertive and oozed less. I tried an eggy batter, then my usual thin slurry of whole-wheat flour and water. The batter absorbed too much oil and didn’t crisp up as well as the thin slurry.

Next year, when the wild daylilies start to bloom, try harvesting them and bringing some to your table. I’d avoid any growing alongside the road, where they’ve been exposed to vehicular fumes, road de-icer, herbicides and Lord knows what else. Better to pick from a field where they have naturalized or, better yet, from your own organic, unsprayed garden.

Order daffodil and specialty bulbs soon to get them planted and growing early for an optimum display in the spring. Early ordering from mail-order catalogues will also allow the widest selection of bulbs. Some of the choicest tulip and daffodil varieties quickly sell out — something to consider if you are aiming for a specific color scheme.

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If your weeds are getting wild, ﬁrst things ﬁrst: Rescue your crops - The Washington Post

Somewhere between spring fever and bringing in the last of the sheaves is a season I call Runaway Train. While we’re at the barbecue, the softball game and the beach, weeds continue their silent march through the garden, rising above the crops that should be shading them out by now. They are winning. What shall we do?

The answer is not obvious. Your instinct may be to start with the worst weedy patch or the one with the most beloved vegetable, but a more carefully conceived triage plan is in order.

The most urgent task is not always weeding, no matter how tatty the garden looks or how smothered the crops. For some, their harvest is so time-sensitive that you may have only a day to rescue them. Peas and corn can lose their sweet tenderness overnight. Pole beans will, too, and will stop producing if picking is not sustained. Zucchini — well, you know what zucchini plants do. They not only stop making nice little squash but also leave you with huge, clublike monuments to your indifference.

Deal with those first, then begin the weed campaign.

[For a better compost pile, balance these two types of ingredients]

Instead of tackling one spot with all your might, do something for the whole garden, before somebody offers to take you out on their boat. 
Pull the tallest weeds, the ones that cast the most shade. Some will come out with one firm yank, if you grasp them low on the stem. Others, with large and powerful root systems, will carry your vegetables’ roots up with them and throw soil all over your mulch. Put down the trowel and use pruners or loppers to cut their stems at ground level or even just below it if you can.

They will start to regrow, but if it’s late enough in the season, your crop will at least have the advantage for a while. If the weeds are summer annuals, such as lamb’s quarters or pigweed, those will die at summer’s end anyway. If they’re perennials, such as dandelions, witch grass and brambles, get them out right away, especially if the crop they’re bullying is also a perennial, such as asparagus. But if the crop is an annual, you can wait till it stops producing, to buy some time.

Yanking the biggest weeds all at once gives you a mental boost, because the garden will immediately look less depressing. If the weeds have finished flowering and are beginning to seed, 
pulling them now will also keep them from scattering their seeds.

The next step, before house­guests tear you away from the garden for another week, is to remove any small weeds that are about to drop their seeds as well. Then and only then can you assume the penitent on-your-knees position and purify the whole garden, weed by weed, bed by bed. Start weeding the small, most vulnerable crops such as carrots, spinach, salad mixes and others that are low to the ground, especially if you’ve sown them for fall and winter harvest. Those are easily destroyed by vigorous weeds, whereas the corn, squash and tomatoes can grow up past many weeds.

Save lives first, clean up later. It’s perfectly fine to leave piles of weeds in the garden if you are in a hurry to weed some more. The piles will get lighter in the next day or two, as evaporation occurs. You can even mulch with pulled weeds if they are not dropping seeds.

If either of these ploys makes the garden look too messy because visitors or relatives or the garden club is coming over, and you don’t have time to wheelbarrow the weeds away, just grab them and throw them under the nearest dense shrubbery, which they will fertilize as they decompose. This is also a good fate for weeds dropping seeds that you want to exclude from the compost pile: Hide them where it’s too dark to grow.

The enemy isn’t weeds; it’s time. When you have too many things you want or need to do, use brains, not brawn. A wise gardener and friend once told me how weeds utterly colonized his large potato patch, where the crop’s foliage had succumbed to potato beetles. There were decent tubers under the ground, but because it was too early to dig and store them, he just mowed the whole patch with a string trimmer, leaving the mowed weeds and the withered potato vines as mulch. They helped keep the soil moist and protected until cool weather arrived.

You could do that and be done before the coals are hot in the barbecue grill.

If you plan to reseed a threadbare or weedy part of your lawn next month, you can start the ground preparation over the next few weekends to avoid the frenzy of doing all the prep work at seeding time. A dethatching rake and three-prong cultivator are effective in breaking up the ground while dislodging weeds. Sturdy gloves will protect against blisters.

Blueberries are good for you. Don’t be afraid to grow them.

Summer’s bounty presents a perfect opportunity for antipasto - The Washington Post

The summer table is all about medleys. With so much ripening in the garden, a vegetable isn’t just a side dish to accompany a carb-and-protein meal. Fresh produce inspires the meal, often stepping forth as the main event.

Few leafy greens tolerate hot weather, so summer salads are a more solid affair, with cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and the like. In winter, a savory dip might be scooped up with crackers or frost-sweetened carrots. But a summer dip sits amid raw treats in blazing colors — scarlet peppers, golden cauliflower, midnight-purple beans.

Many classic recipes were built around midsummer bounty, such as ratatouille, a stew of tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and peppers. Every culture has its summer vegetable soups, whether it’s a robust Italian minestrone, a French ­basil-infused soupe au pistou or a spicy Spanish gazpacho, in which crunchy cucumbers, peppers and celery swim with tomatoes.

[
Turn your summer harvest into a refreshing drink
]

In summer, pasta gets a veggie-laden primavera sauce. Fried rice gets fresh-shelled peas, carrots, corn kernels and whatever’s in the garden. Is that traditional? Who cares?

My favorite summer medley is an Italian-style antipasto, for which all the vegetables are gently cooked in extra virgin olive oil and then served at room temperature. It might take two hours to prepare, but it makes for a festive treat.

You can speed up the process 
by cooking some of the ingredients on top of the stove and others in the oven. With some planning and careful attention (“Out of the kitchen, everyone!”), both can happen simultaneously.

The vegetables I most like to use this way are summer squash, eggplants, sweet peppers, bulb fennel, onions and paste tomatoes, also known as plum tomatoes because of their size and oval shape. Gathering them together at the beginning, washing them and prepping them so that they’re all ready to go will make the process go smoothly.

For the tomatoes, this means slicing them in half lengthwise and setting them, cut side up, on a rimmed cookie sheet slicked with olive oil. You can smear the tomatoes’ cut sides in the oil before arranging them, or drizzle it on afterward — or both. Sprinkle them with salt, pepper and herbs.

For the onions, use ones of a uniform medium size, peel them and trim the root ends so that they can sit flat but with enough of the base intact to hold their shape. Slice about a quarter-inch off the top and drizzle with extra virgin oil, salt and pepper. Crowd them into a baking dish that will hold them upright, with a half-inch of water.

Slice the peppers into rings. Trim the stems off the fennel bulbs (and any brown parts), leaving the bases (the root ends) intact. Hold them upright and slice down lengthwise into quarter-inch-thick fans.

For the summer squash, use any size (except for the monsters), slicing larger ones in rounds about a quarter-inch thick and small ones in half lengthwise. I slice the eggplants the same way, then salt them and lay them on paper towels, letting the salt draw out some of the bitterness. I then wash off the salt under a running tap, squeezing the slices gently to compress and moisten them without letting them get soggy. This keeps them from absorbing too much oil in cooking.

Bake the tomatoes and onions at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, until they’re soft, sweet and caramelized. The tomatoes should be reduced in size but still feel pillowy on the bottom. Both can share the oven if you’d like, but make sure that they don’t burn.

While they’re cooking, get your biggest skillet, pour in a generous amount of olive oil and saute all the vegetables, slice by slice, adding a little garlic from time to time. Hover over them, flipping them to give each side a golden color. Drain them on paper towels if you’d like, or take them straight to the serving platter. Check on the tomatoes and onions from time to time to see how they are doing.

These can all go onto individual dishes, but I love the way they look on one big platter. In Italy, this would be part of a larger spread of antipasti, which might include various kinds of salami, olives and cheese. Since the word antipasto means “before the meal,” a great more food is expected to follow.

I might fry up a few sausages in the skillet and set out some cheese, but usually the vegetables and a loaf of crusty bread will suffice. Well, maybe with a little cheese.

Heading lettuces such as romaine and bibb varieties grow best in the fall in hot regions. They are slow to germinate in warm soil but can be started indoors in seed trays under lights or near a bright window. Plant them in prepared garden beds once they are two inches high. A covering of shade cloth for a week or two will help acclimate transplants.

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Good gardening practices are the key to flavorful vegetables - The Washington Post

The flavors of garden foods are difficult to describe. Teasing out some of the many familiar compounds that edibles contain is one way. So one might say that sorrel is grassy and lemony, that arugula is mustardy and peppery, and that anise hyssop is minty with a hint of licorice.

Food critics sometimes refer simply to an ingredient’s essence, as in “the bean soup was full of beany flavor.” The beaniness of the beans has been brightened, the way you would brighten a photo by adjusting its color.

There are many ways a cook can achieve that. Flavor enhancers such as MSG, a wee spike of vinegar or a dash of salt might help. One might show restraint in seasoning the soup, so that it honors the beans more than the cilantro or the Sriracha. I like to retain the flavor-rich broth in which the beans were cooked.

Cooking methods that heighten flavor apply to many vegetables. Lightly steaming or sauteing greens is preferable to boiling them and discarding the water, which sacrifices nutrients as well. With root vegetables, roasting, grilling and braising concentrate the flavors better than the old boil-and-dump routine.

[How a full spice cabinet can keep you healthy]

The beans themselves might deserve as much credit as the cook for that triumphal soup. Seed catalogues will point to a carrot that is especially carroty, a pumpkin with a rich, dense, non-watery flesh, or a beet with that good old-fashioned beet taste. Some gardeners grow only heirloom varieties, which are often more delicious and more like what we expect from any given vegetable. Some breeders still prize flavor, and I grow a number of excellent modern hybrids.

As an example, consider Burpee's <a href="http://www.burpee.com/vegetables/tomatoes/tomato-brandy-boy--hybrid-prod000973.html" shape="rect">Brandy Boy</a> tomato, a successful upgrade of the popular heirloom Brandywine. Crossing that with a more disease-resistant tomato kept the old tomato's funky shape, intense color and great taste but made it twice as productive.

But many so-called improvements have been gained at the cost of taste. When I was searching for a cherry tomato that would ripen a whole truss of fruits uniformly, a seedsman told me not to bother. Although such varieties are available, their flavor is subordinate to other traits such as a firmer attachment of the fruits to the vine and thicker skins for shipping.

So the work of the cook and the breeder play roles, but how can the grower enhance a vegetable’s flavor? Sometimes unexpected forces are at work. Long spells of hot, dry weather can kill plants, but if you can keep their roots moist enough — with the help of mulches, a little irrigation and a moisture-retentive soil rich in organic matter — the flavor of fruiting crops such as tomatoes and melons will surpass the flavor they have in a wet year. This benefit is a combination of plenty of sun for ripening, and the concentration of undiluted flavors.

With leafy crops such as spinach and some root crops such as carrots, cold is more benign than heat. The plants are less stressed in cool weather, and they may manufacture lower concentrations of chemicals that they use to repel pests. The result is a more ideal balance of sweetness and the compounds that give a crop its distinctive taste.

As gardeners, we can’t do much about the weather, but we can do a lot about our soil. A full component of trace minerals, such as calcium, has much to do with the nutrient and flavor components of the food we grow. A soil rich in organic matter in the form of compost, in addition to buffering the effects of too much or too little water with its spongelike structure, appears to help manage any mineral deficiencies in the soil that nature gave you.

There are amendments you can buy that supply a variety of minerals. Most come directly from the sea, such as dried seaweed and crustacean meal. Others are mined from ancient sea deposits on land that was underwater in ancient times, such as greensand (glauconite) and <a href="http://www.azomite.com/faq.html" shape="rect">Azomite</a>. Cow manure provided with mineral-rich salt licks is useful, too. But usually a home compost pile made from a wide variety of high-carbon and high-nitrogen materials will be all you need.

The ultimate test, though, is how your vegetables taste to you, and what may taste bitter, sour or hot may seem mild or even sweet to someone else. Many folks are drawn to extreme flavors, or can learn to be, after longer exposure.

Try everything. Spend an extra few bucks and choose two varieties of a crop each year. Grow them well, cook them well and arrange a family taste test. Then take a vote. After that, the negotiations are up to you.

A small- to medium-fruited tomato plant that has outgrown its cage or stake can be trimmed with hedge shears. A robust, healthy plant will soon set another round of blooms and fruit. With large-fruited plants, especially heirlooms, trim back wayward stems that have yet to fruit but leave developing tomatoes. Feed plants after pruning.

Turn your summer harvest into a refreshing drink

How to get rid of bats (or birds) in your chimney

HANDOUT via barbara@fourseasonfarm.com

Gardening Column 7/2017

This herb tastes like tarragon and adds beauty to your back yard - The Washington Post

The common names of things bedevil us all. How about the New York egg cream, a refreshing mix of milk, fizzy water, and chocolate or vanilla syrup? With no egg and no cream, the only truth to its name is the New York part.

Mustard spinach, a tasty Asian green, is neither a mustard nor a spinach. Safer to stick to its proper Japanese name, komatsuna.

So it was with some trepidation that I sowed something called Mexican mint marigold this year. It’s the new kid on the herb block, a fact you’d know only by looking it up under several names mentioned in seed catalogues. These include sweet mace, Spanish tarragon, Texas tarragon, winter tarragon, cloud plant, yerba anis, coronilla and pericón.

I sowed the seeds indoors in April, lured by descriptions of the plant’s appearance­ — up to three feet tall, with long, strong unbranched stems topped by small, bright yellow flowers. They sounded like good flowers for cutting and would be a great contrast to the blue-and-purple color scheme set by all the mint relatives I grow in my herb patch — lavender, salvia, oregano, anise hyssop and thyme.

I was also intrigued by descriptions of its leaves’ flavor. The plant’s main claim to fame is its use as a tarragon substitute.

[Blueberries are good for you. Don’t be afraid to grow them.]

Regular French tarragon (which is in the genus Artemisia) is a magnificent herb, its licorice or anise-like notes tempered by a unique grassiness. Cold-climate gardeners sometimes lose it to winter cold, and those with very hot summers can’t grow it at all. Furthermore, the real thing doesn’t grow true to seed, only from cuttings or divisions. Any tarragon seed sold is likely to be the Russian kind. That grows fine, anywhere, but does it taste like tarragon? Nyet.

The botanical name of my new herb is Tagetes lucida, and the genus Tagetes includes the popular garden marigolds, so I looked for indented, marigold-looking foliage when my seeds germinated. But no, they had slender leaves that were more tarragon-like in shape. That's not unusual — the leaves of closely related plants can vary. Conversely, it's also common for plants that are not closely related to share some of the essential oils that give herbs their flavors and scents.

Good germination was followed by sturdy growth. The transplants were planted around an urn in the middle of the herb garden. As I watched my new crop mature, I was in for more surprises, though. To my delight, the plants were not the leggy sort described, but compact, with branching stems, allaying my fears that they would overwhelm the space. They looked just right.

The flowers were like all the ones I'd seen in pictures — five-petaled, brilliant gold and about the size of a dime. They started blooming early in July, not in fall, as I had consistently read. Even better! Either there is more than one strain of this plant (my seeds came from 

<a href="http://www.johnnyseeds.com/herbs/mexican-mint-marigold/mexican-mint-marigold-seed-2273.html#q=tagetes&amp;lang=en_US&amp;start=1" shape="rect">Johnny's Selected Seeds</a>), or there's something about my particular garden that favored bushy growth and early bloom. Next year I might plant some in a different location just out of curiosity, or order from an additional source. Then again, it might self-sow, as it is purported to do.

When I 
tasted the leaves, they seemed quite strong and more minty than tarragony, but after trying them out in the kitchen, I admitted that they really did make a good stand-in for tarragon. Leaves chopped and added to a salad lended some tarragon notes, ­and in cooked dishes, too. I tried them at breakfast, mixed into a creamy sauce for poached eggs on English muffins. They also enhanced squash blossoms stuffed with cheese.

Next I added them to a ­Colombian-style stew I make with chicken, chicken broth, potatoes, corn, avocado, hot pepper and a blob of sour cream. That was great, too. But one needs to add the herb at the end of cooking. Heat brings out its flavor, but too much heat diminishes it.

The petals, like those of any marigold, make a sunny and good-tasting garnish when sprinkled over food. Sprinkling on top is the way to go, because stirring any flower into a liquid or an oil dressing will make it shrivel.

I’m delighted with the sight of this golden ring at the center of my garden, just outside my kitchen window. A prolonged dry spell has done nothing to dim its glory, and I’d recommend it to any gardener, wherever they live, and whatever they choose to call this excellent plant.

Lavender plants dislike hard pruning, but spent flower stalks can be removed to encourage re-blooming in the fall. Take the opportunity to remove wayward stems and lightly trim the foliage. Make sure the base of the plant is free of excessive organic mulch, which can lead to crown rot.

You don’t need a large plot to grow a bounty of vegetables and herbs

Tablescaping: Adding some garden beauty to the dining room

Waiting too long to weed can turn a relaxing task into a trial

Get the most out of your small garden with these dual-role vegetables

New artichoke variety puts purple on your plate faster - The Washington Post

Is every common vegetable going purple? Purple broccoli, purple cauliflower, purple carrots and purple bok choy now have pride of place in the seed catalogue kaleidoscope, along with the more customary purple cabbage, lettuce and beans. I say the more colorful antioxidants the better, so let’s give a hearty welcome to a new, gorgeous purple globe artichoke called Colorado Star.

Purple artichokes have long been part of the gene pool, both globe-shaped ones and the pointy kind, which have been easier to find. I grew a pointed heirloom called Violetta years ago and loved it. The heads were small but numerous and kept bearing in fall long after the green ones had gone to seed.

What’s new about Colorado Star is that it’s the first purple one bred for annual production. Artichokes are perennials that normally start producing in their second year, when grown from seed. They must go through a chilling winter to make the flower buds we eat. But by sowing them in the warmth of the indoors in late winter, then giving them six weeks of the mildly cold outdoors in early spring, you can trick them into producing in their first summer.

[
Vegetables for patio gardens are more abundant than ever
]

This process, known as vernalizing, was pioneered at a number of research stations, including one at Virginia Tech. Then in the 1980s, a breeder in Imperial County, Calif., named Keith Mayberry developed Imperial Star, which could produce with a chilling period of only 10 days. That’s a boon to gardeners with winters too cold for overwintering artichokes outdoors and to those with winters too mild for sufficient chilling.

Mayberry, now retired in Colorado, went on to cross Imperial Star with varieties he found in Peru and developed the first vernalized purple artichoke variety, Colorado Star.

So now, my magnificent, spiky artichoke plants are topped with deeply purple globes. They appeared about 10 days before I normally expect artichokes and continue to add an extra note of glamour to an already beautiful crop. Any I leave uncut will tower over the garden like neon-blue torches as the amazing thistlelike flowers start to bloom.

Our new, colorful variety is very good to eat, and I’ll look forward to cooking with it well into fall. Over the years, I’ve tried various methods of preparing artichokes. I’ve boiled them, grilled them and smashed them in a frying pan to flatten them, the way they do in Rome, with olive oil, garlic, herbs and a little water so that they steam when the pan is covered.

Some moisture is essential to tenderize the firm flesh, but boiling can make artichokes soggy and waterlogged and dilute their flavor. Steaming them (at least 45 minutes for large ones) is better. So is oven-braising in a covered casserole, along with olive oil, a small amount of water, and savory additions such as anchovies, garlic, capers, olives, parsley, rosemary and lemon.

An artichoke is a savage beast that will prick your fingers and leave a bitter taste on them, but cooking tames it. The choice part is the heart — a circular plate at the bottom with tender flesh extending into the lower parts of the leaves (which are technically bracts). You pull the leaves off, dip them in melted butter and draw them between your teeth, scraping out the good stuff. Then you eat the heart (also with butter) and, if you are enlightened, the stem. The stem of an artichoke is less touted than the rest but every bit as succulent and tasty. You can leave it on or cut it off before cooking it.

Cardoon, a close relative of the artichoke, is grown just for its leaf stems, which can be wrapped and blanched to make them tender. But I’ve found no need to blanch artichoke stems, or even peel them. Rubbing the stems, or any parts, with lemon juice will keep their color from darkening.

It’s important to pick an artichoke when the bud is still closed. As the leaves start to open, the flesh will toughen. The first bud the plant produces will be the largest, and most of the rest, shooting out from lower on the main stem, will be smaller. But they will also take less time to cook.

I’m already thinking of baby artichokes, braised with garlic, and a nice glass of — no, not wine. The one bad thing you can say about an artichoke is that it pairs horribly with wine. Make that a cold beer.

The sweet basil you planted in May will soon flower and lose flavor: Start fresh plants from seed for a crop that will last until early fall. Sow seeds thinly in a wide-rimmed, free draining pot, and either thin seedlings as they bunch or carefully transplant to a sunny, freshly prepared garden bed.

Sick of buying mulch for the garden? The pros have a different idea.

For a better compost pile, balance these two types of ingredients

Waiting too long to weed can turn a relaxing task into a trial - The Washington Post

It’s important to savor the little sensual pleasures of everyday life, even when doing chores. For instance, I hang sheets and clothes on a clothesline because I enjoy the way cotton fabric smells when it’s dried in the sun. And if I need to put a wayward hen into her house for the night, I wait until she’s asleep and will let me pick her up without squawking. A warm, sleepy chicken, cooing softly, is lovely to handle.

With gardening, some routine chores are, by nature, pleasant. Harvesting cherry tomatoes for supper and popping them into your mouth as you go can hardly be thought of as work.

But timing is everything. Take weeding. You’d be surprised how many people love to weed. They say it’s relaxing and meditative. They listen to the birds and mull things over. Freeing plants from competition is satisfying, and looking at a tidied-up bed gives a gardener a lift.

[If pulling weeds makes you want to pull your hair out, there’s a simple solution]

But weeding can be hell if you’ve gotten behind. And if the weather is too hot, too cold or too wet, if witch grass has netted the soil with its long tiller roots and dandelions have drilled deep, it’s hard to face the task with anything but dread.

There are solutions. It’s fine to wait for the right day, not just for your comfort, but also for the increased vulnerability of the weeds. If they’re small, you can cultivate the soil, skimming below the surface with a collinear hoe or scuffle hoe to expose weed roots. You need a hot, sunny day for this, so that the weeds will fry. Do it early in the day, and, because it’s a quick job, you’ll be out of the garden before the sun scorches you.

If the weeds are larger, you can chop them out with a standard garden hoe, but that’s hard on the back. It’s better to make cultivating a habit. Large weeds can be left on the ground to wither in the sun, just as tiny ones can. Putting them on the compost pile while they’re still green will provide more nitrogen, to keep your pile cooking. But it’s also true that any green matter left to sit a while will lose weight as it dries and be easier to haul away.

As a compromise, use the old tarp trick. Dump all the weeds (or grass clippings or autumn leaves) onto a tarp and drag them to their final resting place. That eliminates trips with the wheelbarrow, which I don’t consider fun.

Another way to make weeding pleasant is to wait for a sunny morning that follows a spell of rain. Working very soggy soil 
harms its structure. But soil that’s just uniformly moist will make weeds easier to pull by hand.

Hand-weeding may be necessary with aggressive plants such as witch grass and dandelions, both of which will regrow if chopped out, with some roots left in the soil. To get the whole plant out, loosen the soil around it with a digging fork. Yanking up a dandelion intact is immensely rewarding.

Following grass tiller roots along their journey and grabbing a fistful of them is a triumph. So is loosening wild sorrel and lifting it by the tiny threads that connect its little clumps. And, needless to say, keeping your soil loose and fluffy by adding lots of organic matter will always make it more pleasant to work with.

If pest insects are eating your plants, picking them off is an effective but icky chore. Or, use a Shop-Vac to collect them. For ones that try to get away, such as squash beetles and Japanese beetles, vacuum them early in the morning while they’re sluggish.

Pruning woody plants is rewarding because they show their gratitude. When you remove the dead branches or superfluous growth from the limb of a shrub or tree, it springs upward, as if thanking you for lightening its load. Thinning fruit on a branch does the same thing. Pruning also helps air circulate through the plant, helping it breathe, get more light and become more resistant to fungal disease.

Some days I find it hard to get into the garden, but then it grabs hold of me and I don’t want to leave. Suddenly the shadows are longer, and it’s time to pick cherry tomatoes, a few baby squash, a head of broccoli and a few sweet 
onions. Off to the kitchen I go to steam, saute or grill them, with olive oil, garlic and lots of fresh herbs. I toss them with pasta and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, inhaling all those good aromas. Bon appétit!

Midsummer is the time to think about sowing and planting for a fall garden. Over the next month, directly sow spinach, beets, Swiss chard and carrots. Kale and collards can be sown directly as well, though transplants are easier. Keep seedbeds moist — a straw mulch will help. Wait until mid- to late-August to sow lettuce and other greens.

Why New York’s High Line is the perfect source of gardening inspiration

Flexibility is the name of the game when repairing gutters