How Does Your Garden Grow? The Harvest

Containing more  Lessons from my Daughter and From My Son

The End for 2010

The last of the harvest has been eaten.  Tom cut four lone pieces of okra from the garden the end of  November and ate them raw, cut up into our mixed salad.  It was not enough for a mess and some folks would have just tossed them, or put them in the compost pile.

 But Tom is a  WWII baby, whose mother’s  voice still echoes in his head.  “Waste not, want not.....   You must belong to the Clean Plate Club..... Eat your food—just think about all those starving children in Africa.”

I hear a similar voice.  I could never understand, though,  about that starving children thing.  Why in the world couldn’t we send the food—which I DID NOT WANT---to the hungry children who so needed it?

First Harvest of the Season 2010

This year we planted a limited number of crops, unlike in past years.  The tomatoes and okra were givens, though not quite as much okra as in the past.   Peppers and fields peas rounded out the garden. My three favorite summer foods are tomatoes, okra and field peas.  I could eat them every meal. 

I do not eat peppers.  To be in the same room while Tom is cutting them up makes my eyes water.  Tom puts them in everything he eats and if,  by accident,  it is something I also am eating,  my mouth burns for hours.  Taking a hint from Jeff's cheese stuffed peppers dish, Tom also makes his own unique stuffed hot peppers, stuffing them with all kinds of cheeses, smoked oysters, crab meat, chopped shrimp, smoked salmon, tuna, minced clams and other interesting and unusual things.  The two tricks to this dish are to wear gloves during preparation (the more important of the two) and to roast them well  so that the intense heat is under control.  He freezes these individually on cookie sheets so that he can pull out one or two at a time to roast for his dinner.  

The only disappointment were the field peas.  They were heavenly tasting, but almost nonexistence. We planted four rows of them, two on one side of the garden and two on the other.  The rows on the right side yielded some every now and then, so that every few days we had gathered enough to cook a mini pot full.  Tom let me eat them all each time(about 3 spoonfuls), because I was the one who had begged to plant them this year.  The other two rows yielded nothing—not one pea.  The plants looked healthy and were heavy  with dark lush leaves.  That was it.  No peas. We are going to be more careful about the exact kind of field pea we try next year.  I think we will try two different kinds, maybe crowder  and pink eye peas, and keep track to see if either does better than this year.  If anybody had a recommendation, please let us know. I don't know if I can go another summer without fresh field peas.  On the other hand, Tom may be over it and have no interest in trying them again.  If you have read my previous gardening posts, you know that Tom is the master gardener and I am the sometimes helper—except for the summer of his hip replacement, when I was the worker bee under his rigorous oversight.  So if he says it’s a no-go, then we will be pealess next year.   

The tomatoes were .......... Wow!!

Sam & Madeline pick our tomatoes

We planted many heirlooms this year, harder to grow, but so worth it.  The whole experience is an affirmation that beauty is only skin deep.  Heirlooms  are open pollinated, not hybrids,  that look like they've grown wild. They're all different lumpy shapes and sizes, with scarred splits in the delicate skin and the flesh is firm, sweet, rich, lush, and smoky tasting. I love to eat them straight out of the garden, like apples, hanging over the sink with the juice dribbling down my chin. I have been excited to learn that, besides being funny looking

Davis & Tom

and tasting scrumptious,  they are  more nutritious, packed full of vitamins and antioxidants, than are  the more common hybrid varieties. Hybrids, on the other hand,  are cross pollinated, developed for commercial purposes--a uniform size to make them easy to pack,  with thick skins to be bug resistant, and to stand up under rough handling and for travel. Hybrids look uniformly, perfectly attractive, but are mealy, juiceless and drip free, manipulated for the sake of economics, taste be damned.

Our earliest harvest is always green tomatoes, picked  to thin the plants so that they will yield more. I have searched all my cookbooks and the internet for the best green tomato recipe to be had.  I am glad to share it with you.  The secret is the mustard mixture that you spread on the tomato before you fry it.  It is messy, but the spread adds a tang that makes this dish special.

Fried Green Tomatoes

This recipe is from Robert Lorino of The Irondale Café in Irondale, Alabama.This restaurant is the inspiration for Fannie Flag’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.  The recipe is world famous.

2          Medium hard  green tomatoes, chilled

1          Tablespoon Dijon mustard

1          teaspoon sugar

½         teaspoon salt

¼         teaspoon paprika

1/8       teaspoon ground red pepper

 1 ½     teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

½         cup yellow cornmeal

¼         cup hot bacon drippings or vegetable oil

Cut tomatoes into ½ inch slices

Stir together mustard and next 5 ingredients.  Spread on both sides of tomato slices.  Coat with cornmeal.

Fry tomatoes in hot drippings (or oil) in skillet over medium heat 3 minutes on each side or until browned.  Drain.

Yummmm!!!

  We planted less of everything this year, so we only froze a few of our tomatoes and gave away those we couldn’t eat at three meals a day sliced, diced,  minced and roasted, in sandwiches, sauces, and stews.  The office attorneys and staff got lots and we had enough get ripe at once during the summer to serve them on Sunday in Finlay Park at Food Not Bombs.

Our wonderful preacher,  Neal, got the lion’s share though.  In fact, he called every Saturday night to remind us to bring him some. “You know my favorite food is a BLT sandwich,” he would say. He even wanted us to bring a bag of them and hang them on his office door on the Sundays he was not preaching.  There was a little catch in his voice the Saturday night we had to tell him the yield was  over and there would be no more tomatoes in the morning. He is a tomato glutton and I threatened to tell the Board to reduce his salary,  as we were paying part of it in produce, the old fashioned way. LOL.

He did not LOL.

Okra was our most prolific crop this year.  Originally from Africa, okra is a hot weather plant.  We put the seeds in the ground later than any of our other crops and it is the last to stop yielding—when the weather is below freezing for several nights in a row, usually in late November.  We use it in stews and gumbos and soups, but primarily we coat it with corn meal and deep fry it.  Fried okra is as Southern as fried catfish, fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried squash, and….fried green tomatoes.  Good as it tastes,  Tom and I have stopped eating fried food of any kind, switching to broiled or baked, for the sake of our health.  But fried okra--we just have not been able to give it up. Until this year.  In yet another of the Lessons From My Daughter, Jeny introduced us to a new way to cook okra.  It is healthy, less messy than fried,  and so tasty that we are never looking back. Sauteed okra is simple.

Sauteed Okra

Cut okra in slices as for frying. (If you have just washed it, pat it dry with paper towels, or wait for it to air dry).   Coat the sauté pan well with oil. On medium high heat, sauté the okra in pan  until brown on edges and slightly crisp, 4-6 minutes, stirring constantly so as not to burn. Lightly salt if desired.

There are more elaborate recipes with onion and various spices, but we all like it so well  plain we’ve not tried to fancy it up yet.  Maybe next year.

  Both of our children have turned into master gardeners and master chefs and their gardens include a wide variety of herbs to use in their cooking. Our garden in no way rivals theirs.   Jeny grows a wider variety of crops than we do, including a fall garden.

 Jeff plants cucumbers, and pumpkins, in addition to most of the same things we do. He plants  pumpkins and such for fun for the kids. Sam loves cucumber cookies. The Lessons from my Son in this blog post involve his turning his garden produce into highly sought-after gifts. His cucumber and okra pickles and  fresh salsa, made with his own tomatoes and peppers, are to die for and he makes many of us happy with his homemade Christmas and birthday gifts. The marvel of this is that he manages it at all, in a teeny plot on the side yard, raided frequently by their two large, rowdy family dogs.

Winter is here, the temperature is in the 20’s and  the garden is only a memory, except for a few frozen quarts of tomatoes in the freezer and some of Jeff’s pickles in the cupboard. We are already looking forward to next summer and so, I am told, is Neal.  He misses his BLT sandwiches. 

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? THE TENDING

In an earlier post I talked about the adventures of planting our garden. Of course, once the garden is planted, comes the hard part, the tending.  Now I know why I am not a farmer by trade.  How do they do it?

I know why I should want to be a farmer: being outside in the air and sunshine is wonderful, watching things grow from nothing before your eyes is awesome, staying strong and healthy in a natural way instead of with machines and exercise videos is good for your head--and your body.

Farming or gardening is really, really hard work, and full of risk.  So many things can go wrong-- devastating if you are a farmer, only irritating if you are a gardener. 

The Weather

If there is no rain, the garden will dry up.  We don't water our lawn at all any more, because we are trying to be more ecologically mindful.   If a drought comes, it just turns brown.  However, during a dry spell,  Tom--who 

does most of the garden tending-- waters it every day, either early in the morning or after we get home from work.  It is important not to water in the heat of the day--I forget why. 

I was the official waterer when Tom was recuperating from his hip replacement last year. We don't use one of those automatic waterers, again,  because it wastes water and we are trying to help the planet a bit.  So we water by hand,  holding the  hose and using the squeeze nozzle to regulate the spray of water. It takes at least 45 minutes to do our whole garden.  It is boring work, so I would try to amuse myself to make the time go faster. I would squeeze the nozzle different ways to see how big I could make the drops.  I would hold the hose up as high to see how far it would spray so I could cover as much area as possible.  I would count as I moved the hose back and forth in an arch, counting to 50 at each section of the garden. I liked to watch the birds and the squirrels, but if I did that, I would forget what I was doing and water in one place too long. By the end of the 45 minutes I was pretty sure my arm was falling off and I couldn't squeeze the nozzle anymore, even using two hands. But I usually didn't complain when I reported in to Tom, with his hip packed in ice and his next pain pill overdue.

Sometimes it rains too much and the wind blows the plants over.  We have to go straighten them back up and pack dirt around them or tie them back up.  Sometimes they have been broken too badly, are declared dead and are sent to the compost pile.  One thing Tom does that I didn't understand.  I imagine few amateur gardeners know to do it.  If the tiny plant gets splashed with mud or falls in the mud and we straighten it back up, Tom always carefully washes its little leaves off.  I follow suit, but I had to ask. Actually it is to expose the whole leaf to the sun for photosynthesis.  If the mud blocks the process, the leaf will die and if enough die, then the plant does too.

Tom's Expertize 

I marvel at Tom's knowledge of gardening. How does he know these things?  I grew up in Birmingham, a city of cement and steel mills; he grew up in a rural part of Mobile, Alabama, helping tend his family's WWII Victory garden as part of Roosevelt's call for patriotism.  After the family's move to the eastern shore, he and his brother won blue ribbons as members of the 4H Club and earned money by selling the corn they grew in the rich soil of the plot of land their father gave them to farm. He is the true son of an agricultural scientist.

So the difference in our background  may be why the part of the tending that involves pulling weeds is hard for me. I know weeds.  There were a lot of them that grew in the cracks in the sidewalks in Birmingham.  Trouble is, I can't tell in the early garden which are weeds and which are plants,  till they get big enough to see that some are in a row and some more random. In a row, plants--leave them alone; random, weeds--yank them up!  Until then, my weed pulling requires very close supervision by Tom.

Tom does much to encourage the plants along in our thin, clay soil.  Several years ago we bought some compost from a farmer in South Congaree.  Since then we have added only our own home made compost made of vegetable peels, egg shells, coffee grounds, leaves,etc., turned often and processed with the red wiggler worm.  Early in the tending season he transplants the delicate little seedlings a lot, moving them around in the garden, till he finds the very best spot for each to settle in,  take hold and flourish the best. Of course we rotate the crops each year.  Again, I forget why.

Different Crops

We have tried different crops over the years with varying luck. There has been eggplant; butternut, acorn, and yellow crookneck squash; strawberries; cabbage and lettuce.  This year, and every year, it is tomatoes, okra and peppers-jalapeno and banana.  We have added back one of my favorites, field peas, a real southern crop to go along with the okra.

Butternut Squash

Different plants bring different challenges.  Last year the prolific butternut squash spread like the plague and crept throughout the garden, its vines slithering up the tomato and okra stalks, its fruit appearing everywhere. There was a whole lot of choking going on.  We didn't replant.

Okra

Tom has to love the okra into growing. It is delicate at first and needs much tender care.  This year our cats decided to add a twist to the okra struggle by adopting one corner of the okra plot as their kitty litter.

   Each time they visited, they scratched up the tiny plants along with the dirt before they wandered off. We lost a fair number of plants, despite our various attempts to alter the cats' behaviour.  Puck and Muck are not good listeners.

Tomatoes

The tomatoes every year have a different challenge.  One year it was stem rot -- the only year we used poison on the garden.  One year something tried to eat them on the vine--down low.  We figured rabbits, though we never saw them. 

 This year the birds have decided to take a bite out of each--and we have watched them do it. This is the first year that has ever happened! I think they have never liked the hybrid ones, but the heirloom ones we planted this year are to their liking.
 It may also be the squirrels.  We have loads, though for the life of me I can't imagine that they would be hungry with all the bird seed they eat. One of our Republican, NRA supporting, friends tells us with an evil grin that he handles the predator problem with a shotgun. I picture his garden strewn with the dear little bodies of wildlife.

Crookneck Squash

The biggest problem we ever had was with our crookneck squash. It began disappearing, the entire squash.  Turns out the raccoons were clipping them off at the stems and carrying them away.  We tried everything to discourage them, some suggested from Google, our primary research tool. Their big suggestion was to sprinkle cayenne pepper on them.

Fail. The raccoon does not care. Apparently he carries the squash to the closest water, washes the pepper off, and down the hatch it goes. Any he leaves for the next visit the rain takes care of and the pepper is washed away.  In desperation we called Tom's entomologist brother Sam for professional advice, knowing that he is better than Google any day.  Professor Sam, cleared his throat and said, "Hell, Tom.  Just plant enough for you and the raccoons."

Will all the hard work pay off?  What kind of yield will we have?  Every year I can't wait. Will this year be the best ever? 

*Tom wishes me to note that all photographs of vegetables are from our own garden.

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? THE PLANTING

Spring is here and the garden is underway.  It is not so easy as it was. Tom has a hip replacement which doesn't seem to slow him down any; I have degenerative arthritis in my back, which slows me down plenty and hurts like h--- when I bend over.  We both do a lot more of the work crawling along on hands and knees than we used to, but, oh well.....

Last week we planted over 65 heirloom tomatoes.  It went like this.  Tom prepares the garden plot which he has created over the years in a large corner of our small back yard.  It consists of a base of clay, which is the natural soil; several thin layers of compost, bought at great expense over the years; three or four years of homemade compost, supplemented of late with big ol' red compost-producing wriggler worms.  All this is tilled several times with the tiller-which-will-not-start.  Tom and Jeff own the tiller together.  Sometimes Tom can start it; more often Jeff can.  Most times Dukes Equipment does and they each have it for a weekend to till their garden.

Then Tom buys all the plants.  I usually go with him, but not this year.  He goes to the Farmers' Market, Lowes, Home Depot and the little locally owned shop on the corner of St. Andrews Road, where he buys a mixture of flowers to plant in our pots on the front porch and back deck, the herbs we cook with, and the vegetables we plant in the garden.  This year it is going to be four rows of tomatoes, two rows of field peas of several varieties (at my special request), three rows of okra, and a row of peppers--banana and jalapeno.

Next  Tom prepares the ground.  He scoops out a little hole for each tomato plant about 6 inches apart and fills it with a dab of compost.  Then it is time for me to come help.  Down each row and back up the next.  I, with my watering can, fill the hole; Tom rips the plant out of its plastic container with soil ball intact, carefully places it into the hole and pats the soil around it.  I sprinkle a bit more water on the delicate plant and we go to the next.  Up and down we go. Up and down.  It is hot. I worry about getting sunburned because I forget to put on sunblock.  My back hurts and I drop to my knees. I am pretty sure I am going to have to call it quits before we finish.  I grit my teeth and keep going because I am tough. I close my eyes and pretend I am a slave in a cotton field and will get beaten by the overseer if I quit before we are through.  Pretty dramatic, huh?  Finally, we finish the last row of tomatoes and quit for the day.

Next day are the field peas, planted from dried peas.  Tom has gone to three places, including the one all the way out in South Congaree, trying to find the kind we especially like.  Since he doesn't know the name, he can only go by the picture on the seed packet, and the way they look in the bin.  The ones we like are little and dark orange/brownish and aren't mealy when they are cooked.  You know the kind!   So he plants them and this time I do not help.  I take a nap instead.  I feel only slightly guilty.

Finally are the peppers and the okra.  The okra are planted from seed this year.  They are especially hard to get started. If we get impatient and plant too early, the warm weather turns cold one more time, the temperature goes below 50 and the plants all die.  We start all over again. We have done this. Our country cousin from Tennessee who grows a vast garden and orchard has given us advice about how to be successful planting okra--making the seed germinate faster and better.  Some folk freeze them he tells us; some soak them in hot water for a time; some soak them in cold water overnight; some soak them in water with a small amount of Clorox added. (I think it was Clorox.  It may have been vinegar or ammonia or hydrogen peroxide--oh dear!!)  So the year we talked to Farmer Tommy,  Tom divided his seed into five sets and tried all four methods, plus the control set,  which we planted without doing anything to.  We could tell no difference.  Except the set we soaked in Clorox (or whatever) died. This year Tom does not experiment.  He just plants.  I do not help with the okra.  I take a nap instead.  I feel only slightly guilty.

And so the planting is done.  Let the growing begin.