Tomatoes? Hold Your Horses!

Blossoms are showering our sidewalks with pink snow, tulips and daffodils are out in full force, so it must be time to plant our vegetable gardens, right?

Patience is a virtue when it comes to tomatoes.

Not so fast, according to Ginger Rapport of the Beaverton Farmers' Market, a seasoned plant maven. "Now is the time of year to get your peas, kales, rhubarb, broccoli, beets, carrots and some lettuces in the ground," she said. "It is not the time for planting tomatoes and basil unless you plan on keeping them protected from the cool temperatures and rain."

Another voice of reason comes from Chris Hertel of Sun Gold Farm in Forest Grove. "Don’t be fooled and have patience," he cautions. "We can’t mess with Mother Nature! We can only work with her. Too much rain and cold weather will either harm your tomato plant or make it weak."

Radishes and greens? Have at it!

Those garden center tomatoes that are waving their leafy appendages at you, begging you to bring them home and plant them in some nice, richly composted soil? They're grown in heated greenhouses, said Hertel. "The plants are not conditioned to anything that Mother Nature is giving us now. If we wait and have patience, the nights will get warmer and days will be drier. That usually happens around Mother’s Day weekend."

So go ahead and get your spring yayas exorcised and plant rows of those hardy spring greens and root veggies, and wait until the soil temperature gets up to at least 55 degrees—60 is even better—to plant those tomato starts. Your summer will be that much sweeter with a little added patience along with that compost.

Garden 2015: Mixed Bag of Tomatoes

Tomatoes this year? A mixed bag. The cherry tomatoes—one Sungold and a black cherry—were prolific, as was a full-sized green variety called Aunt Ruby's. The two Purple Cherokees, on the other hand, were disappointing, both in terms of healthy plant growth and yield. The darker tomatoes are our perennial favorites for their robust flavor and gung-ho willingness to lend a hand for slicing, as well as serving in sandwiches and tomato salads, so we'll probably opt for another variety next year.

A simple sandwich.

Fortunately, though, the farmers' markets and local supermarkets have given us plenty of supplemental, organic "heirloom" tomatoes—a term d'art used to describe not just old varieties, but almost any open-pollinated (i.e. non-hybrid) tomato, whether bred for commercial or private consumption.

Gazpacho.

And consume them we have, from simply sliced on a platter to wedging them between two slices of Dave's homemade whole wheat bread to a snack bowl of cherry tomatoes on the kitchen island, perfect for grabbing as you pass by. There's been cool gazpacho and panzanella, and more of those cherry tomatoes tossed in a grilled corn salad. And of course let's not forget the pasta with cherry tomatoes, garlic and anchovies that's one of our go-to quick dinners.

Tomato salad.

Even after all that, there was a moment when I walked in from the garden with another gallon of cherry tomatoes—we were also watering our vacationing neighbors' tomato plants, which were producing like crazy—and I would have shed some tomato-laced tears, but I remembered a tomato jam (top photo) I made a few years ago.

So if you get to that "too many tomatoes" stage and you've made all the tomato dishes you can think of, and even created a few more out of sheer desperation, here's a simple fix for the problem that you can enjoy any time this winter when the supply of the fresh article has dwindled.

Tomato Jam
Adapted from Mark Bittman for the New York Times

1 1/2 lbs. good ripe tomatoes(Roma are best), cored and coarsely chopped
1 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice
1 Tbsp. fresh grated or minced ginger
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. salt
1 jalapeño or other peppers, stemmed, seeded and minced, or red pepper flakes or cayenne to taste.

Combine all ingredients in a heavy medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until mixture has consistency of thick jam, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning, then cool and refrigerate until ready to use; this will keep at least a week. [I put them in clean, lidded glass jars and freeze them. - KB]

Yield: About 1 pint.

Garden 2015: Things Are Bustin' Out All Over!

Was it just 10 days ago that I posted a photo of my baby greens? Yikes!

With the unseasonably sunny and warm-to-hot temperatures, the garden has been going gangbusters. I've made two dinner salads with just the thinnings from the lettuces, the carrots are looking like they'll be ready in a couple of weeks (my 5-year-old nephew will be thrilled) and the tomatoes are growing like, well, like the weeds that also seem to thrive in these temperatures.

I'm not optimistic that the remaining greens will survive the predicted steady onslaught of temps in the mid-90s that are coming for the next couple of weeks, but I'll try to preempt bolting by picking as much as I can. In the meantime, happy summer!

Garden Tours: A Perfect Excuse to Snoop!

I admit it. I'm a nosey parker at heart. There's nothing better I like than having a chance to get on the other side of the fences that keep me from seeing people's back yards and gardens. The best way to do that and not get arrested for trespassing is to go on a garden tour, and prime time for doing that in the Northwest is right now.

These events are supposed to be in the service of gathering ideas for one's own meager plot, but really a part of the thrill for me is having the chance to stroll through what only friends and family normally get to see.

Snoopy, as my father would have said, is my middle name.

The gardeners themselves are often in attendance at these tours, so you might get a chance to chat with them if you so choose. As an example, one garden owner last weekend admitted to planting bamboo in a corner of his garden as a screen between him and a neighbor he's had issues with, knowing that the plant might just send runners under the fence, a little-known-but-used-more-often-than-you-might-think technique I like to call "Passive-Aggressive Gardening."

One of the best ways to take advantage of these tours is to join the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon, which, for only $35 per year, offers its members self-guided tours of a rich and diverse array of gardens from April through October. Stretching from the coast to Bend and from the south Willamette Valley all the way north to Seattle, the featured gardens can be everything from a shade garden on a city lot in Portland, to a more rural but still gorgeous flower, fruit and vegetable extravaganza on 2 acres, to a historic garden designed by a major landscape architect. The society also offers workshops, lectures, programs, discounts at local nurseries and reduced prices on garden books.

Several neighborhoods offer garden tours, including Sellwood and Foster-Powell, and there's even a bike tour of community gardens in Northeast Portland. A national organization, the Garden Conservancy, offers tours in the region, and searching for "Portland Garden Tours" yielded several resources. So get out there and rubberneck to your heart's content!

The Garden Reborn

We took a vacation from gardening last year, with the excuse that we were letting the beds "go fallow." It might well have experienced another fallow year, but I felt I needed to at least plant a few carrots for my 5-year-old nephew to pull out of the ground. So when I took him to buy seeds at my neighborhood garden store there were all those pretty packages of lettuces and greens, and some chervil starts and, oh yeah, I meant to plant some chives, too. Then Dave started pining for some tomatoes…

A very happy Sungold cherry tomato plant.

Long story short, we're back in business. The two raised beds are full, the tarragon hedge came back with a vengeance and the tomatoes are going gangbusters with the hot sunny days of the last couple of weeks. Now what to plant when those greens start to bolt in the heat? Hmmmm…

A Pollinator Garden: A Mother & Son Perspective

In honor of Mother's Day, which was marked earlier this month, the Xerces Society published this perspective on pollinator gardening. Alice Vaughan wrote a lovely narrative of her bee garden on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Alice's son, Mace, who co-directs the Xerces pollinator program and is a contributor to Good Stuff NW, added his memories of sharing in the garden.

Alice's View of Her Garden

I have always enjoyed gardening. I love being among the plants and the bees that come to visit them. A few years ago I saw that Xerces was offering plants for sale that attracted bees. I was very excited. We had a bit of land along our driveway on which orange daylilies and ivy fought for dominance; a rather boring area, I had always thought. So, as soon as I heard of the Xerces offer, I knew I had to clear that area and plant a bee garden.

In the years since, the garden has thrived. I have expanded it with the help of our son, Mace, adding not only more plants that attract bees, but some of my personal favorites, as well. (Who says all of the plants in a bee garden have to attract bees?)

This garden is a joy to me. I stand in it in the spring and summer, close my eyes, and the world around me hums and vibrates with the bees, large and small. They are amazing to watch going about their work every day, or curled up to rest occasionally. Each time I drive in, I pause and roll down the window just to say hello and listen in appreciation of their lives in our world.

Mace's View of the Garden

The bee garden my mom describes is a place—almost a sanctuary—that connects us across a continent. Spring, summer and fall, I love hearing stories about new bees or new plants in the garden—on the last call, I learned that the milkweed was already 4 inches high! My dad makes sure to send photos, always with the date and time attached. And, when I visit, I enjoy adding plants or pulling weeds under the direction of my mom, or just watching the bees and sharing their hidden stories with my family.

This garden connects us. This is not unusual: gardens bring together families, neighbors, communities, nature. The garden is a way to share work and place, whether it is families working in the backyard to raise a small crop, community gardens that bring a neighborhood together, or a wildlife habitat that attracts bees, butterflies, and birds closer to home.

We are a private family, and I worried that this peek at a gift that I share with my family would somehow violate a trust. As I've put these words down, however, I think that this glimpse into our lives is okay. I'm struck by how lucky I am to share this experience with my mom, and I hope it helps inspire you to create a garden for pollinators and share it with the people you love.

Photos by Mace Vaughan.

Garden 2014: Shoots and Buds

While most of our garden still slumbers under a tangle of fallen sunflower stalks and the weeds and grass that are beginning to take it over, I've been watching to see what's survived the winter. Most exciting are the little green shoots of the tarragon hedge (top photo) emerging from around the old stalks of last year's crop, promising another bumper crop of one of my favorite herbs.

Red veined sorrel.

Along with the tarragon are new sprouts of parsley popping up, as well as thyme and savory that apparently made it through the freezing temperatures. The red-veined sorrel has also come back and looks to be thriving, so it will start adding its bright color to some salads in the near future. It was good to see that the blueberries we planted last fall are budding, too, but I'm not expecting much of a crop until next year when the plants get better established. And I do have high hopes for the rhubarb, which should, at three years old, be ready to produce enough for a couple of crisps and maybe even a pie.

Come on, rhubarb!

While there's another month yet before I can start digging in earnest, I have time to think about what to plant along the cyclone fence behind the blueberries, both to cover up the unsightly metal fencing as well as screen off our backyard dining area from passersby. And then the decision about tomatoes, which were heartbreakingly unproductive last year—I'm thinking optimism will win the day and we will try growing them again.

Garden 2012: The Harvest Hits

We leave town for a week and suddenly it's tomato season!

Can't ask for better timing than that, especially since a couple of years ago we left for a few days about this time of year and got a panicky call from our son, who was housesitting for us and had just collected a bushel of ripe tomatoes from the garden. "No problem," we said, sensing this was a perfect teachable moment. "Get a big pot, chunk up the tomatoes and simmer them over low heat. You'll have sauce in no time."

I've run the recipe below before, which is based on a Mark Bittman dish from his Minimalist days, but it's one of our all-time favorite, go-to weeknight dinners. And there's no better time to make it than when cherry tomatoes are popping out of the garden and flooding into farmers' markets!

Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic and Anchovies

1 lb. dried pasta
2 Tbsp. olive oil
6 anchovy fillets (in oil or salt-packed)
2 Tbsp. chopped garlic
1 pint (2-3 cups) cherry tomatoes (larger tomatoes, roughly chopped, also work well)
2 c. chopped kale, chard, spinach or other greens (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan and/or pecorino cheese, grated

Bring large pot of salted water to boil.

While water is heating, heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat until it shimmers. If using salt-packed anchovies, rinse and dry on a paper towel and proceed as with tinned anchovies. If using tinned anchovies, add without draining to skillet and sauté, breaking them up with a spatula until they dissolve (watch out for splattering). Add garlic and heat briefly, then add cherry tomatoes and reduce heat to simmer.

While tomatoes cook down, add pasta to boiling water and cook till al dente. While pasta cooks, add greens, if desired, to skillet and let them wilt. (To me, adding the greens makes a one-dish dinner, but it'd also be great with a green salad and bread.) Add salt and pepper to taste. When pasta is cooked, drain and put in serving bowl. Pour tomato mixture over top and toss gently. Sprinkle with cheese and serve more on the table.

Garden 2012: Leaps and Bounds

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words. All I have to do is go back one month and look at the photos of the garden back then. Tomato starts just put into the ground. Teeny baby lettuces beginning to sprout from the seeds I'd planted.

Then take a gander at the salad greens above taken a couple of days ago…and that's after two hefty harvests the week before.

Wow.

The tomatoes (left), as foretold by wise gardeners I talked to, have taken off with the advent of warmer soil temperatures, some even starting to set fruit. The kale, still in the baby stage, should provide some good eatin' later in the summer and throughout the winter and spring. It's still a little early to tell if it'll be a good year for peppers, but hope springs eternal.

See? There is a reason I write this blog. Even if it just reminds me how quickly my garden grows.

Here Kitty Kitty

My friend Antonia Manda is a fabulously talented fabric designer, illustrator and artist, and I'm always knocked out by the creative touches she brings to everything around her.

Her garden is no exception, and when I saw these kitties* perched along the back wall of her garden, I just had to share them with you.

* Boxwood with small flower pots painted blue and turned upside down.

Garden 2012: Tomatoes On Parade

I was beginning to think that, for the first time in memory, we might not be planting tomatoes in our garden. My neighbor, Susana, had planted hers a good three weeks earlier and I'd been watched them gradually pop out of the tops of their protective teepees. Plus we'd been gone for a week at the beach, losing even more precious planting time.

I was somewhat comforted when the weather took a turn for the colder, followed a couple of days later by a horrendous hailstorm that blasted through the area, leaving pellet-sized residue a good half inch deep on the ground. So yesterday we downed some coffee and headed for our favorite neighborhood nursery, Garden Fever, hoping that they hadn't sold out of our favorite varieties.

The younger starts we normally plant in the spring had been replaced by larger, sturdier plants in gallon pots that were a bit more expensive, but we decided to pay the penalty for not planting earlier and bought six: two Cherokee purples and one each of green zebra, yellow pear, Sungold and red cherry. And with the weather for the coming week predicted to hover in the 60s and 70s, and consequent warmer nights bringing the soil temperature up to the desired 60 degrees, we also invested in pepper starts: two Jimmy Nardellos, two pasillas and a Melrose.

With those and a six-pack of lacinato, we bought, we came home, we planted. Add in the tiny leafy greens, carrots and herbs in the raised beds and the pea shoots climbing up the fence behind them, and we're pretty much done for the time being. Now to sit back and pray for nice balance of sun and rain for the duration!

Garden 2012: Blueberries, Peas and Leafy Greens

The blueberries were the first to go in, a selection that included Duke, Blueray, Earliblue and a mature Bluecrop bush from a friend who was removing a few of hers. I'm hoping to baby the young bushes through the summer, though it'll be a year or two before they start to bear fruit. But we should be in for a haul assuming they all survive.

After getting the blueberries settled into their new homes, I poked sugar and snap peas along the chain link fence behind them. It took about a week, but with regular watering and a string of warm, sunny days, they began to pop out of the soil and wrap their little tendrils around the fence wire.

This year I'm dedicating the raised beds to salad greens and carrots, planting rows of individual varieties rather than combining the seeds from the packets and sowing them in large patches. As usual, I got a little overzealous in my selection, ending up with mixed mesclun, arugula, two types of oak leaf lettuce, red velvet lettuce, romaine and a fascinating sounding Australian Yellowleaf. Who could resist?

My plan is to pick the baby and mid-size greens to thin them, then let some mature into heads. About half the second bed will have eight rows of carrots, an orange Yaya hybrid that's purported to be sweet and crunchy, and a sweet purple variety called Purple Haze that grew well last year, tasted great and looked really impressive with other roasted roots.

Coming soon will be tomatoes and kale, though they may have to wait till after the beginning of June to go in. At least the soil will be warm enough by then…I hope!

Scourge of the Garden But Tasty on the Plate

Speaking of gardening, there are some lessons that I've had to learn the hard way. My recent Waterloo came in the form of a friend offering to share a cutting from her horseradish plant.

Fresh horseradish? Sure! I love its dry, peppery bite, which is so much milder than the white, biting stuff in jars that can take your head off if you're not careful. (Due not as much to the horseradish it contains as to the mustard oil that's sometimes added to it.)

My big mistake was in not checking into its growth habits before planting it in my raised bed. The first year was fine…it stayed contained in the corner of the box where I'd planted it and yielded a few long roots that spiced up grilled meats and stews when grated over the top.

The second year was the wake-up call. That's when I realized I had a monster on my hands. Almost half the bed was taken over by the large waving leaves, and it was threatening to strangle the rhubarb next to it. Which meant digging out the rhubarb plant and disentangling its roots from the death grip of the horseradish, as well as digging out as many of the horseradish roots as I could find.

I know I'm going to be digging them out for years to come, trying to prevent a second War of the Raised Bed. Though, as strange as it may sound, I'm committed to planting it again. The difference being that this time it'll be growing within the confines of a pot.

I Say Raab, You Say Rabe

When I planted those lacinato kale seeds in the garden last spring, I figured I'd get some good eating from their greens later in the summer. Indeed, that did happen until they became infested with aphids and the dusty grey bugs and their residue couldn't be washed off the leaves. At that point I thought they were pretty much done and it was time to pull them out.

Then Anthony Boutard mentioned that he prefers these greens in the winter, when the cold weather causes the plants to produce sugar as a kind of anti-freeze. So I left them in, pulling off the leaves for salads, soups and sides and discovering, by golly, that Anthony wasn't pulling my leg. There was a definite sweetness that crept in as the winter progressed.

As the plant grew, looking like a Dr. Suess illustration of a tiny palm tree, the leaves became smaller and smaller, and again I thought about pulling them up. About then I noticed that little heads were forming with buds that looked like the raab I love at the spring farmers' markets. I picked one off and tasted it…nutty, green, sweet…woohoo!

So about the time the raab runs out it'll be time to plant new seeds and get a whole new year's worth of eating. Who knew?

For more, read Jim Dixon's rant about the "immature flower buds from various cabbage relatives."

Speaking of the Harvest…

Is it any wonder that late summer is one of our very favorite times of the year? This is the haul I just made from our garden, and it doesn't even include the carrots, collards and lacinato that is waiting for me to get back out there, or the tomatoes I took to the neighbors. Fabulous eatin' awaits!

Garden 2010: The Best of Times…

Along with the best of times, like an unseasonably warm early spring and some mind-blowingly sunny days a couple of weeks ago, came maybe not the worst of times but certainly some disappointing (albeit seasonally appropriate) dips in the mercury. Plus a couple of crazy hail storms that did amazingly little damage to the baby greens trying to grow in the raised beds.

But the tomatoes and peppers have survived, thanks in large part to the walls of water surrounding them, and we'll see how they fare when the sun really starts to shine. Which it will. Eventually. Right?

Here's the list so far:

Raised beds: Basil, spinach, mizuna, arugula, mesclun. chard, carrots (scarlet Nantes), radishes (top photo), lacinato kale and one very large rhubarb in its second year.

Parking strip: Tomatoes (purple cherokee, green zebra, sungold, Dr. Wychee's yellow, black cherry), peppers (Jimmy Nardello, pimiento de padron, Melrose), gai lan. Plan to add two or three aci sivri Hungarian peppers.

In Season NW: Jimmy Nardello? Nice to Meet You!

I first met Jimmy by chance about a year ago at the Hillsdale Farmers Market. He was hanging around with a bunch of friends near a large pile of brilliantly colored peppers at the Gathering Together booth. He was young, but there was a gnarliness about him that sent shivers down my spine, offset by a sweetness I could see in his eyes. Before I knew it, he sitting down for a candlelit dinner, just me and him and a bottle of red, red wine.

There are romance novels to be written about the flirting and flings that happen at farmers' markets, the glances, the double-takes, the outright lustfulness that overcomes shoppers at this time of year. Perhaps it's the ripeness, the abundance, the dizzying selection that makes people giddy, or maybe it's the knowledge that soon, so very soon, it will all disappear with the onset of winter.

And though I'm guilty of piling more produce than I'll ever use ("Beans again?") into my market bag, I also use this season as an opportunity to survey vegetables that I might want to include in my garden plan next year. Which is where Jimmy comes in.

Doing some research, I discovered that the seeds for these long, twisty sweet peppers came over from Italy with Giuseppe Nardiello and his wife, Angela, in 1887. Giuseppe's son Jimmy, whose teachers decided he didn't need the "i" in his last name, donated some of his father's pepper seeds to Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, which specializes in protecting heirloom seeds.

Fantastically flavorful, I found myself throwing them into pasta, roasting them (carefully…they're thin-skinned and disintegrate easily) for antipasto, chopping them into salads and even including them in tomato jam. So when the time came to buy seeds for the garden, I made a point of picking up a packet of the Nardellos.

The results of the first harvest from the garden are pictured above. And I'm thinking that this fling may have turned into a long-term affair.

The Garden, Week 8: Tomatoes in Bondage

It had to happen sometime. We coddled them, cooed over them, fed them their favorite foods. But it's time for them to deal with the harsh realities of life, face the music, do or die.

Nighttime lows have crept up into the mid-50s here in the northern Willamette Valley and it looks likely to stay that way for the duration. So off came the Walls O' Water and in went the heavy-duty cages we got last year that seemed to hold up much better than those wimpy little circular cages. Tomatoes, you're on your own!

Second crops of radishes and greens also went in, which might or might not do well depending on how hot it gets and how soon, and the peas are starting to blossom. The peppers are just kind of sitting there until it starts baking, and then we'll see if they've got the right stuff. (C'mon, Jimmy Nardello's!)

The Garden, Week 5: Big Developments

Our best ideas, at least around here, often get put on what we not-so-jokingly refer to as the "Mañana Plan." That is, it's something we'd genuinely like get done but because of lack of funds or bad timing or just plain old laziness, we don't quite work up the wherewithall to accomplish.

At first it seemed like the whole tree removal, hedge destruction and planting bed project could end up in the pile of good intentions gone awry, and it made me especially nervous to commit to it in print. But maybe the specter of having to face the humiliation of questions ("How'd that tree project come out?") or, worse yet, jokes ("Remember that tree project you wrote about?") galvanized us into action.

So Saturday bright and early found Dave driving out to Home Depot in his trusty truck, returning with a rented rototiller which he diligently used, along with a pickax and ax, to turn the patch of grass and a tangle of hidden tree roots into a new planting bed. Then it was my turn, while he had a well-deserved hot-bath-with-a-beer-back to soothe his sore muscles, to plant the tomatoes and peppers I'd purchased from the tremendous selection at Garden Fever.

The five tomatoes, Green Zebra, Early Girl, Cherokee Purple, Sungold and the wild card, a French Carmello, are now happily ensconced in their walls of water (above, left) with some of Dr. Kobos' Magic Dirt to help them along. The peppers I chose were two Jimmy Nardello's that I'd become addicted to last summer after finding them at the Gathering Together Farm booth at the Hillsdale market, and then two anchos, a pasilla, a jalapeno and a paprika.

The raised beds continue to thrive (right, above), and it's almost time to start harvesting the first chard, arugula and radishes. So exciting!

The Garden, Week 4: I Kill a Tree

The deed is done. Do I feel bad? A little. Like writing in books, you're not supposed to kill trees, especially mature, beautiful trees like the one I just murdered.

Grinding the stump.

But, as mentioned in Part 1 of my garden saga, I had good reason. It was buckling the sidewalk, creating a trip hazard for the mothers and children that walk to the school across the street. Worst of all, though, it was located in the sunniest spot on the property and shaded the raised beds that Dave built, causing my tomatoes to look more like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree than the lush, heavy-bearing plants my neighbor grows.

I got the permit required by the city to take down the tree and had Joe Harrity of Harrity Trees, a respected tree specialist, do the deed as well as take out the arbor vitae hedge behind the beds and "limb up" our other parking strip trees. Of which we have five. Does that mitigate the damage?

Hedge removal (by hand!).

The one problem is that the city requires replacement of said tree within 30 days of removal, and I'd really like to reserve that now-empty and sunny bed between the two driveways for a vegetable garden. Plus, planting another 30-foot-tall "street tree" from their list of approved trees as required seems like it would buckle the sidewalk all over again. (Does anyone know if there's a way to get a waiver from having to plant another tree?)

So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I throw myself on your mercy. It was a one-time thing, and it'll never happen again. Be kind in your judgement, I beg you!