Grow – Cook – Make

I’ve been waiting for this moment since September 19th, the day I put those seeds in the ground. Six months it took those plants to give me good sized beans. Six months!

I am trying to figure out the best time to plant favas. I tend to plant them too late for our climate, February, even March. It then quickly turns too hot for their liking. I end up with sickly plants and the nagging thought that if I had just been quicker to plant, I would’ve have had a larger harvest. Well, no more, this year I planted in September. Now I will know what happens if I am diligent and plant in the fall. Actually, I planted another batch in November and one more in my habitual February date. I will be able to compare and choose the better date in order to have a plentiful fava harvest every spring.

So far I have the feeling that September is too early. These plants have been blooming for months now, with not a bean in sight. Intense fragrance but no fruit. They seem to be day length sensitive because all of a sudden they got busy with fruit production. I am rushing to conclusions, though, I really need to wait and see what the other two fava patches will do.

Here they are, ready to be brought into the kitchen. I am hungry, I want dinner now and favas take a while to peel. I generally double peel them. I take the seeds out of the sheath, briefly blanch them and pop them out of their inner peel, the loose skin that covers every seed. I am too hungry for double peeling, it takes forever. I’ll just cook them peel and all. They’ll be good too. Less refined, more rustic, but tastier. With some caramelized leek and a handful of mint… Delicious!

I hope.

It looks like it, doesn’t it?

There are leaves in the grafted stick, this must mean that it took? I figure… Why else would it be leafing out?

Yay! I am so happy. I see leaves or flower buds in about half the grafts I made. Some of the rest are clearly dead sticks. A few are in between, I am still rooting for them.

This image shows Santa Barbara peach grafted onto Indian Free peach. I hope that since the Santa Barbara is a low chill variety it will be more productive than Indian Free. Well, I also hope it tastes good. I definitely hope it tastes good.

I also grafted Santa Rosa plum onto an Italian prune. Again, trying to see if a low chill plum variety does better in my orchard than the prune. The grafts seem to be taking.

All in all, my grafting experiment is showing good progress. Let’s see how it evolves. So far, it’s making me so happy. So, so happy!

Or at least, why do I even bother planting radishes in winter? I picked some radishes today for a quick appetizer and it so happened that I picked them from two different beds. Do you see how the two radishes in the left have a lot more foliage than the two radishes in the right of the photo? But the radishes themselves are about the same size. Yes, I realize that the ones to the right are slightly smaller, but the difference is not great. All of them are perfect baby radish size.

Well, I planted the two on the left last November, on the 2oth to be exact. The radishes on the right were planted on February 7th, eleven weeks later. Both plantings are ready to pick at the same time. Meanwhile the November ones have had eleven weeks extra exposure to radish eating creatures, as you can see from the bites someone took off the left most one. I didn’t feel any difference in taste. The were all fresh and crisp and spicy.

I know, plants do grow less during the short days of winter. But it is actually surprising to me that those extra eleven weeks made no noticeably difference. Does it take a certain amount of daylight to fatten a root? The leaves grew plenty…

As a gardener I want to figure out the best time to plant my crops. Temperature is the most obvious determining factor: I plant tomatoes in warm weather and broccoli in cool weather. Day length is a more subtle one. And how do those two factors interact? I am paying attention now. Do leave crops react differently to short days than root crops? What about fruit crops like peas or favas? I’ll keep watching. Lots to learn in  the garden. Always.

I love it when garden chores suggest the dinner menu.

I spent  a good part of the afternoon weeding and thinning rows of  little vegetables. I tend to plant too thickly, so I often find myself thinning my rows to a reasonable density. I figure it is just insurance against all creatures who love tiny just emerged vegetables. Those little bits of green must be like desert for some of them, a welcome change in a diet of mostly brown plant remains. Whatever, weeding is no that exciting, and there I am, thinking about earwigs and sow bugs having a desert party at my expense…

In any case, the end result of my thinning was a bunch of mini scallions and one of baby radishes. What can I do with them? Cut some lettuce, go get a couple blood oranges from the tree, and voila! a salad. A delicious and super simple composed salad that can be served both as an appetizer or after the main dish. It also makes a good lunch all by itself or with some crusty bread.

You will need:

• lettuce, washed.
• baby radishes, cut in bite size pieces if needed.
• baby scallions, washed and roots trimmed.
• 1 small blood orange per person, peeled and sliced.
• some pine-nuts, toasted or raw.
• balsamic vinaigrette: 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar plus salt.
• salt and pepper to taste.

As close as possible before serving:

• Dress lettuce with the balsamic vinaigrette.
• Lightly dress the orange, radishes and scallions with salt and olive oil.
• Place orange slices, radish and scallions over bed of lettuce in a pattern that pleases you.
• Sprinkle pine-nuts on top.

Pass around a pepper grinder at the table so each person can add some fresh ground pepper to their salad.

Enjoy!

The first trees we planted in our orchard were a Floragold and a Tomcot apricot. We selected those varieties because they are late blooming and resistant to inclement weather. At that time we had no experience with fruit trees and we heard over and over that apricots are irregular producers in our area because their blossoms get knocked off the tree by our furious late winter winds. We figured that by selecting varieties that bloom late we would increase our chances of success.

We’ve had excellent crops, not so good ones, and last year, a totally disastrous one. But in any case, late storms didn’t seem to be the culprit. As far as I could see, the flowers were not being knocked off the trees by the strong winds. Some years we got lots of blossoms, and some years we just got fewer. Last year the upper half of the trees bloomed and leafed out about a month earlier that the lower half of the trees. By then we had learned quite a bit about fruit trees and realized that what was going on with the apricots is simply that our winters are too mild. This bizarre leafing pattern was an unmistakable sign that the trees had too little winter for their needs. That’s why fruiting is irregular. Just like our winters, some are cold enough, some are too warm. We should have selected our trees based on their winter cold requirements. Oh, well!

When they bloom, Floragold and Tomcot produce very fine apricots. Floragold has velvety skin, pale color with a blush of red, and a sweet mild flavor. I like it very much for baking since the flavor intensifies with the cooking and I don’t need to add additional sugar. Tomcot has a smooth skin, dark orange color, crisp flesh and intense tart flavor. Great for eating fresh out of hand, a little too tart for baking unless you use a good amount of sugar. Actually it is perfect for jam, which needs lots of sugar anyway and a good dose of acid to balance the sweetness.

It turns out we have a perfect combo, a variety for baking and a variety for eating fresh and making jam. Even in bad years they do give us enough fruit to eat in season. It is just that I am hugely greedy for apricots. I want enough to preserve and eat all winter long. As luck would have it, last year’s miserable crop was preceded by the best crop ever and I was able to preserve enough apricots for two winters! I am still eating apricots from the 2008 crop, although I am down to my last two portions.

These flowers make me very happy, I need to refill my apricot stock, I need one more year of delicious apricot tarts, and jam, and sauce over waffles, and apricot sorbet, and lamb tagine with apricots, and braised chicken with apricots. You see how I get greedy for apricots, such a versatile fruit. Definitely, I need enough apricots to eat year round. I may get them, the flowers are there in all their glory.