#31 We are Eating Good this Summer
We are eating good this summer. The madman says there is something to be said for this garden to table thing. We were complaining just as much as everyone else during the cold spring when the madman couldn’t plant his peas. And then the rains came – we continued to complain.
But we are not complaining now, but we are eating well. So, instead of discussing any one thing this week, we thought we’d walk you through the garden to show you what’s up.
Morning Glories for Shade
The morning glories have climbed the garden twine in the front of the house – providing welcome shade to keep the house cooler (we don’t have air conditioning). Beyond that, they create a lovely backdrop for the garden when visitors pull into the driveway.
The last of the blueberries are starting to ripen but the birds have been beating us to most of them. Oh well, that’s life. We got more than our fair share this year – just ask our freezer. But, blueberries aren’t the only thing we’ve been harvesting.
Garlic is Out
The madman claims he has finished lifting all the garlic, but I know there are still some out there – he has it planted everywhere. The garlic bulbs are now on racks drying in the atelier. Seems like so long ago that we made the pilgrimage to the Bethlehem Garlic & Harvest Festival. This mid-October festival attracts many Connecticut Master Gardeners who insist this is the best place to buy garlic for eating and planting. So the madman does too. This year’s festival will be October 12-13.
We plant the garlic around Halloween. Our main bed is carefully laid out in rows with neat labels indicating each variety. We like to try different types. Somehow over the winter, our animal friends take great pleasure in moving the labels around or making them disappear altogether. Over the past few years, the madman has been following a suggestion by fellow master gardener Tom Kalal who says that garlic around planting beds deters rodents. All the future potato beds are lined with garlic in the fall. The practice does seem to work as we are no longer finding potatoes with little bites in them.
Speaking of potatoes, the madman has harvested our first crop. This year the madman planted Adirondack Reds and Adirondack Blues from Pinetree Garden Seeds – they seem to do the best for us so that’s what we go with.
Fall Potatoes
A few years ago, the madman heard that a fall crop of potatoes does well in Connecticut and is not affected by his friend the Colorado Potato beetle. Try to find seed potatoes in the summer! First, he tried local garden centers where the most common response was “You know potatoes are planted in the spring, don’t you?” Then the mail order houses would take his order for shipping the following spring. His frustration led the madman to purchase a bag of California new potatoes – they were planted August 1 in a bed where he had just harvested onions. That year he watched them grow through all of August and September. In October, he worked up the courage to dig up his experiment. Much to his delight and surprise, the potatoes were great. A journal entry was made “plant potatoes August 1,” so now it’s part of the garden regimen.
Onions are Out
Guess what – he harvested most of his onions and got the August 1 potatoes into the ground just before the storms blew through. Beautiful onion harvest – they are now on racks in the atelier. We grow long day onions from Dixondale Farms, an operation that has been around for 106 years making them true experts in the onion arena. The key (besides ordering from an experienced grower) is to plant the onions while it’s cool so the greens have a chance to grow. The bulbs will bulk up in the heat of the summer.
Heat Loving Vegetables
The potatoes and onions are the last of the cool weather crops. Now it’s time to focus on the heat lovers. Everything seems to be flourishing in the vegetable garden. And, we have downed gallons of lemonade trying to figure out why. The nearest we can figure out, the big difference this year is care. In the past we planted our garden with great expectations and have turned over care of our plants to Mother Nature. She was in charge of irrigation and nutrition. Some years she did a great job, some years she could have done better.
This year, the madman has kept a real close watch on the rain gauge. He knows that a good rule of thumb in the garden is to provide 1” of water each week. This year, if Mother Nature fell short, he has been supplementing.
Feed the Plants
As usual, the madman put in a dose of good organic fertilizer as a jump start for the transplants at planting time. But, this year it seems as if he is out there every couple of weeks or so dosing the plants with liquid and foliar fish emulsion. I know when he does it because he comes in smelling like a mackerel. Our master gardener friend Jamie Burgess who heads the Middlesex County Model Garden in Haddam introduced the madman to adding milk to the foliar fish emulsion. The milk allows the nutrients to stay in contact with the leaves to provide better absorption. The madman insists that if you feed your plants, they will feed you.
Definitely Eating Good
And feed us they do. We are definitely eating good. Before July turned really hot, we harvested our first planting of root crops. The radishes were the first to go, and the madman was happy to get them up before the weather turned really hot. Next came the beets and carrots – both harvests, by the way, better than usual. The madman’s favorite beet is the Chioggia (kee-OH-gee-uh) available from a lot of seed companies. I thought he just liked to say Chioggia, but actually the crow in him likes the swirly color when the beets are sliced.
It Got Hot
With the temperature hitting 90˚ in our back yard 15 days over the past month, the hot weather crops are kicking in. Like most Connecticut gardeners, we are picking an abundance of tomatoes, summer squash, peppers, cucumbers and beans on a daily basis. Unlike most Connecticut gardeners, we also pick okra. We started growing okra a few years ago thanks to the Middlesex County Model Garden in Haddam where we do our master gardener volunteer work. Since the garden supplies a food kitchen in Middletown, representatives from the garden asked the chefs what vegetables they would prefer. They said, give us okra instead of eggplant.
Oh No, Okra?
The madman was shocked. We had experimented with okra a long, long time ago. It turned into a dismal failure – the pods were inedible and the vegetable was written off as a bad idea. But, several people at the garden grew okra and sang its praises. So, the madman took a few extra seeds from planting day at the garden one year and we tried it for the second time. With its mallow-like flowers, okra is a lovely addition to the garden – we just make sure to pick the pods while they are young and tender, because they are good when you do it right.
As a matter of fact, we prefer all our vegetables in the young and tender stage. Young, tender vegetables make the best gazpacho, which is a summer staple in our household. The madman agrees with the Spanish refrain: De gazpacho no hay empacho – you can never get too much of a good thing or too much gazpacho.
Eating Good is Easy
Our recipe is extremely easy – chop up all vegetables within reach when standing at the blender. Throw them all in and whir away. Here the madman gets creative, but I have to keep a good eye on him to edit out certain peppers. He has turned many a batch atomic by using the wrong peppers from the row of death. In case you’re interested, the row of death has been loving this hot weather. Some of the super-hot pepper varieties take a long time to mature, requiring at least 120 days so we haven’t had any accidental burns yet.
The vegetables that don’t make it into the gazpacho are grilled for supper; well, some of them anyway. Again the recipe is easy, calling for whatever is within reach of the cutting board. We coat in olive oil and throw in the wok over the grill. What we don’t eat, we give away.
As you know it has been awfully hot this month – too hot to do much more than water the garden then head up to the Lake. As the heat breaks, we plan to be more diligent about putting up stores for the winter. The blueberries in the freezer are getting lonely.
But for now, thunderstorms are keeping us inside so we’ll watch the rain fall and have a nice glass of lemonade.
