For those who doubted my ability to produce a decent harvest from my garbage can garden, I give you proof of the potatoes and sunchokes I unearthed yesterday.
Two chitted potatoes blossomed into over 4 pounds of decently sized spuds, though the sunchokes clearly needed to stay underground longer.
At this time last year, I was up to my eyeballs in lusciously imperfect tomatoes.
But, like almost everyone else this year, my garden’s been slow to blossom. About 2 or 3 weeks ago I was finally able to start harvesting close to a handful of mixed cherry tomatoes per day. Even though we’re now a couple of days into September, I still haven’t tasted the first full size fruit yet.
As with the red ones above, I’m not sure what varietals these (and the one below) are. I don’t recall planting any white varieties, but these tomatoes seem awfully pale to me. Perhaps they might be garden peaches…
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Every day that passes brings the gardening season that much closer (fingers crossed that we’re done with snow). To while away the time I’ve become hooked on something I read about over at You Grow Girl several months ago… Gardening Mama! It’s a game from the people who making Cooking Mama, which I also obsessively love, but more than that, it keeps my hands busy while I’m waiting for the universe to hurry up and warm up outside already…
Though I may have let the past few months pass in relative silence on the garden front, you can be assured that I’ve not been dormant. From taking my seed catalogs with me on Christmas vacation so I could pick out my new projects (yes, I am a garden dork and I was mocked mercilessly about it the entire vacation), to harassing the people at West Coast Seeds when an order didn’t arrive, to finally breaking out the potting soil and mucking about in my basement laundry room, the last 3 months contained their fair share of preparatory activities.
Project Sustainability 2009 is well underway, with approximately 60 seedlings chilling out on the grow tower. Considering that last year was my first attempt at growing anything more involved than a cactus, I was pretty impressed with the end results. There were definitely lessons learned, and notes made about plants I wouldn’t bother to grow again (read: corn and those weeds I thought were beans). But this year, along with bringing back favorites and successes from 2008, I also picked a bunch of new plants to try. As our diet becomes increasingly varied, the memories of how explosively flavorful my completely organic, fresh picked produce was last year inspired me to try my hand at even more. I can never replace Bob (our organic delivery guy) or our CSA farmshare from Zephyr Organics, but being able to combine two of my all-consuming passions is just too good to pass up. Plus, creating your own tiny microcosm means being able to experiment with more unique and just plain bizarre produce that larger growers might not bother with.
So far on the rooftop roster this year we have:
I’ve always been a great lover of pickles.
But – I am very specific when it comes to foods of the brined variety.
I don’t abide dills and I dislike large ones. Last summer I put up an entire flat of baby cucumbers using a gherkin recipe but they turned out like a weird hybrid sweet. I then tried to use a bit of the leftover brine to make a mixed vegetable pickle with overstock vegetables from my farm-fresh CSA, only to find several caterpillars floating belly up in it a few hours later. That’s one of the only downsides to buying a picked-that-day farmshare; occasionally it arrives with wily, hiding nuisances. My first attempt at mixed pickles failed, so I instead jarred spicy jalapenos and sweet and tangy beets, slapdash provolone stuffed cherry peppers in vinegar and fiery matchstick carrots.
My lust for pickles has not been easily quelled, and throughout the winter I’ve been daydreaming about what sorts of fermented things I’ll make this year. After another batch of gherkins the first thing that comes to mind is a sweet cauliflower pickle; all the better if I can get a brilliant purple, green or gold variety. A fantastic idea sat up and smacked me in the side of the head a few weeks ago, and only after seeing a picture on Foodgawker did the idea flit back into my consciousness. You see, one of the tubers I’m devoting some space to in my garden this year is the humble sunchoke. While sunchokes are delicious when cooked and pureed, or even shredded raw for a salad, I did not realize their full potential until my happy accident. Several weekends ago I was in the kitchen, shredding pickled beets, carrots and sunchokes on the mandolin for a raw, slaw-like salad. Noticing that I still had half a sunchoke left and not quite sure what to do with it, I haphazardly tossed it into the jar with the pickled Chioggia beets without thinking. For the record, when heat-processed they lose all their pretty, stripy color and turn an eggshell white that is not nearly as appetizing. I forgot about the lonely sunchoke until the next time I needed some pickled beets and was fishing them out of the jar, its color having changed to a dusky pink. A small nibble confirmed that pickled sunchokes are actually quite good. With a texture somewhere between daikon and a potato, I think the sunchoke lends itself well to this kind of preparation. My next thought was that there were several pounds of sunchokes in the crisper and no immediate plans for them.
After considering my options for awhile, I settled on a sweet/spicy combo. My tolerance for mustard seeds having increased during my last visit to The Black Hoof, it sounded like an intriguing flavor to incorporate. The sunchokes sliced into small, stubby rounds, and half an orange bell pepper would provide some semblance of color. Into the brine I threw some mustard seeds, turmeric, peppercorns, celery seeds, chili flakes and a few sliced cloves of garlic. The whole mess was heated on the stove, steeped and then showered over jars packed with the cut-up vegetables. It’s then allowed to sit until cooled, and then you seal the jar and leave it in the fridge for a week or two. Once they’re ready to eat I’ll post a recap.
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