In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
Something softly went through the hollow last night, dropping huge handfuls of wet snow all over. The snow on the ground was gone by mid-morning, but wads of sticky whiteness remained in shrubs and dry grasses – looking like cotton candy. Meanwhile, inside under the …
It only took me 15 years. I used to make yogurt. Really, I did. I had one of those nifty little machine with individual glass containers. You prepared your yogurt mix, pour it into the little glass jars, nested the jars into matching holes in …
Do you do pot?
Not that kind of pot, silly! But “pot” as in food grown in a container…
Virginia Rockwell asked me in a comment on the post labeled “Eating Local in the Northern Piedmont in Winter” if I have “any tips for newbies [about] growing your own in central VA? […] focusing on growing edibles in containers, close by the kitchen door, and the easy, rewarding stuff – using local, sustainable sources for seeds, plants when possible.”
Virginia is a landscape designer in Gordonsville, VA and offers container gardening to her clients, of ornamental plants – as much as I can tell. So, going edible is just one step away from what she is already doing. I started to write her a private e-mail, but realized this would make a good post, so here is my letter to Virginia.
Dear Virginia:
Thanks for contacting me! I am always truly happy when one more person wants to grow some of her own food, so I hope you have a great attendance for your workshop.
My first edible garden was eked – almost 20 years ago – out of the bareness of a 6th floor balcony of an apartment building in Fairfax County. No elevator. Everything was man- or woman-carried up 6 flights of stairs: the pots, the soil, the planters, the plants, the tools. I mostly remember the tomatoes, started from seeds, and the numerous mile-long walks to Merrifield garden center, and back with plants: fern, rosemary, little annual packs… and I remember all the plants I wanted to grow then but could not. Then I got married, and we moved to a townhouse. Twice. Each time we left a small garden behind us.
Yes, this is a food related post. Look closer… can you find the honey bee? her butt sticking out from one of the snowdrops? “her” indeed… they are all “she”, you know. ah… honey: the food of the gods! bee barf! On warm sunny days, …
There are indubitable signs of springs out there (besides the 2 minutes of additional daily daytime we are getting now).
For once, the snowdrops are nodding their tiny white bells in the still blustery gusts of wind and then, then!, yellow IS swelling the buds of the early daffodils. But for the ever hopeful kitchen gardener, a much surer sign that spring is coming is what’s budding, swelling, germinating, pushing up or otherwise showing signs of life in the vegetable garden.
Is there something fresh I can sink my teeth in – or at least wake up my taste buds (pun intended) with? Something green? With a little bite? Something… live? I have talked about reliable mache growing outside in winter, but a few other denizens that grow happily enough in a cold frame provide fresh taste at this time of the year: spinach, cutting celery, parsley, arugula, and sorrel are among them. They do not need a cold frame per se, but the protection provided by a cold frame allows them to send forth new leaves much earlier than their unprotected brethren, left totally outside in what is otherwise a generally bleak landscape at this time of the year.
Sorrel might be less well known on the list, so let’s talk about it, a little, shall we? Continue reading Lovely Lemony Sorrel
OK! commercial plug for … me! Those in the Washington DC area, Charlottesville area and in the Piedmont, who are interested in cooking or kitchen gardening may be want to take a look at my upcoming cookery and kitchen garden workshops in Washington, VA in …
Swiss Chard and Cardoon. Cardoon!!! Since those two are not interested in mice hunting in the greenhouse (only the great outdoors)… … we had to resort to those: …baited with organic peanut butter – no less. Round 2: minus 2 mice. Ungerminated flats also moved …
ARGGGH!!!
Swiss Chard. Round 1: Mice.
AARRGGH!!!!
E-VE-RY-SIN-GLE-ONES!!!!
Lucullus, Perpetual, Poiree a Carde Blanche de Lyon, Fordhook, Carde Blanche! AARRRRGGH!!!
So what do you do with that almost, but not quite forgotten vegetable, Jerusalem Artichokes or Sunchokes, freshly dug from the garden? I have read that you can eat it raw, but have not tried that yet – except for a sliver to taste: it’s …