Mache, corn salad, lamb's lettuce all the same plant

Dear Gardeners,

I saved some seed from Jurgen's generous Mache planting from last winter, and am going to plant it now, for winter harvest. Very delish! Hope they sprout!
So input welcome. I looked up the plant (called mache, corn-salad, lamb's lettuce, and all number of other things in various languages, as it has been grown for winter salads since Roman times!) to find out whether I had to treat the spring seed to sprout in fall, and can't find that information exactly; but my seed has been in a watertight container in the fridge, so I'm hoping the two months of cold in there will help fake out a season of rest for the little seeds.
Let me know if you have ideas on sprouting the fall crop of mache.

I read this morning that it can be an edible "cover-crop" for a fallow bed.
Hmmm....wonder if this is true?
Meanwhile, here are some interesting articles I've gleaned this morning. (below).
Best, Jen


It could be time to plant your Mache

Corn salads — also known as mâches — are unusual salad crops because they are very cold hardy and grow best during the fall and winter. Two features of golden corn salad elevate it above the common mâche now sold in many supermarkets: its intensely nutty flavor and its ornamental possibilities for edible landscaping. The nutty flavor suggests a hint of toasted peanuts or even tahini; some people detect a trace of walnuts or hazelnuts.

If individual plants are placed about 6 inches apart, rather than planting them by broadcasting the seed, you will get nice, large and bushy salad greens of the most succulent texture.

The leaves of golden corn salad are much longer and larger than the common mâche leaves, so when the two are side by side, there is no mistaking one for the other. Because of the greens’ nutty flavor, I recommend using cold-pressed peanut oil or a sesame oil, or even pricey hazelnut oil in any dressing you prepare.

Growing it is fairly simple (especially in Pacific Northwest). The most common method of cultivation is to broadcast the seed on a plot of well-prepared ground in mid-August or early September.

By October, young plants should be well established and able to survive the rigours of winter, which they do very well in temperatures above 5 degrees F. The salad then can be harvested all winter long. Late the following spring, the plants bolt and run to seed, which should be collected because it's difficult to purchase outside of Europe. (please take note and comment if you've found a North American source.)

Collecting your own seed:
After the plants are mature and begin dropping their tiny white seeds, just pull them up and stuff them upside-down into brown paper bags.ate and label the bags and set them aside in a cool, dry place for a month or so — until the plants are brittle. Then shake the seeds loose into the bottom of the bag and put them away in envelopes in a tightly closed jar.

Date your seeds carefully — if you store them in a cool, dark closet, they should remain viable for up to three years. In early spring or fall, you can plant the seeds the same time you would plant spinach; make additional sowings every two to three weeks. Since it is more heat tolerant than common corn salad, the golden corn salad does not bolt as quickly either. Thus it can be planted later in the spring for a harvest of greens well into early summer.

Above from: Mother Earth News on Mache

More articles with photos: Collecting seeds

More Mache information.

Little Diggers at Play

Dear Gardeners,

Here are some photos from the last two Sundays at DIGS.


Some of the Little Digger's activities were macrame, scavenger hunt, measuring giant sunflowers as they grow, and eating!!

Some of the Big Diggers helped with harvesting:
yellow beans, leeks, giant onions, chard, carrots, the last of the peas, and herbs.

And new winter brassicas were planted out in beds nos. 2 and 4.

Come on down to the garden and see the last two weeks of August unfold with bees in yellow squash flowers, (of unknown squash types; some are a surprise!), new cauliflower and brussel sprouts winter crops, a great crop of chrysanthemums about to bloom, and many other wonders of our garden.

Best and thanks so much to all who made the cornroast a cornucopia of fun!
Jen

August Farm Fair

Dear Gardeners,

I realize this isn't entirely about gardening, but we did visit the local Fair today, and took some photos. Chickens, goats, horses anyone? Do share your Fair photos too. (my photos of goats and rabbits/horses now taken down to make room for future photos.)
And hello..looked high and low for that marvellous machine that makes tiny donuts....main reason to go besides the excellent animals. Doh.

Jen

P.S. Only found tiny donut wagon at the local fair with covered fryer (no view of donuts as they were made).
Wikipedia says Tiny Tim/Tom donuts produced too many per minute, and it was their downfall. Weird fact of the day.

Check out this article on preserving summer herbs...

http://www.simplebites.net/picking-drying-freezing-how-to-preserve-summers-herbs/

Winter veggies to be planted this weekend

ATTENTION GARDENERS: There will be a regular meeting in the garden this Sunday, August 15 at 10:00 am. The job this week is to clear out one garden bed and plant
winter veggies. (Cabbage family etc.)

The LITTLE DIGGERS meet at 10:30. This week they will complete their macramé project by planting the "mystery" plant. Don't forget food for the worms. All are welcome!

Big and small we love to see our garden grow!!!

Garden Library

Time to start preserving the harvest...check out the cookbooks and books on preserving fruits and vegetables...at your Garden Library located at the PI Archives...ring the bell or drop by Mondays 3-4 pm.

New Titles Include: Simple Act of Planting a Tree, Harvest Garden, Raising Poultry...

Still need some summer easy reading for the hammock?? How about a garden murder mystery...Mulch; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Crime...to name a few...

Hope you drop by soon...also donations of garden, nature and children's books in good condition are welcome. Happy Gardening and picking, preserving and sharing!!!

Check out this family, growing loads of food, mostly off the grid...


http://www.homegrown-film.com/trailer.html

http://www.homegrownrevolution.com/trailer

http://urbanhomestead.org/about

http://www.urbanhomestead.org/journal/

August 1st What's Up?

Dear Garden Lovers,

Here is a fabulous slideshow of today's harvest and garlic braiding:


If you click on it, and then look on upper left to choose "full screen slideshow" you can have a HUGE photo experience.

Today at D.I.G.S. we did the following:

Herbs
- Little Diggers did Herbs and took home fresh and dried oregano.
- other herbs (lovage leaves for use as celery flavour) were trimmed and you're welcome to trim more.
- Personally I removed the giant bronze fennel, as I felt responsible for it. I'd planted it when it was tiny and now it had become The fennel that ate Japan.
Not only did it not produce a bulb at all, but it hogged the heck out of the herb garden and spread its happy bronzily healthy progeny all through the other beds. So I replaced it with basil. Whew.......that was CLOSE! :>)



Garlic
- the garlic had been hung to dry inside the "social shed" and M & A.G. kindly showed all how to trim, braid and store it. Wonderful garlic braids!
GORGEOUS garlic braids. Seriously, we should have more garlic braids!!

Note: gardeners seem to love garlic, and took five home each. Next year we might double the beds devoted to garlic. Thanks so much M and A, as we could not do it without your expertise!

Harvesting vegetables

The following were harvested:

kohlrabi, carrot, beet,zucchini, yellow cherry tomatoes, some giant onions

Important: Don't touch the biggest ones that are entered in the contest please! Don't even breathe on 'em....eek. Wowza, are they huge! What is M and A's secret do you think? Feeding them with goat's milk by the full moon?



Also available: whole cabbage heads, and do ignore the grey aphids. They wash right off and are totally organic. ;>)

Tasted
dillweed, blueberries and raspberries.

And see if you can recognize all the flowers and vegetables and fun structures in the above slideshow. You should find a potato tower or two and a sunflower house which will have a morning-glory roof soon.



Oh yes, and do please feel free to click on COMMENTS below and add more information. What did everyone else notice or want to comment on?
There was alot going on today, and I'd love to have more contributers add to this blog.
Oh yes....Please consider becoming a team member of this blog! Only takes an email to me or Marg, and you can post, edit, link and add articles to this blog too. Come on and get creative!
Or just add comments.

Mystery of the week: We're still looking for the name of the disease that attacked the peppers in the green house. We could call it gray-floppy pepper-butt, but it might have a more scientific name. All investigators and pepper-sherlockian dudes welcome. :>)



Best,
Jen

Asian Vegetable planning & planting

Dear Gardeners,
As you can see from previous posts with slide shows, our DIGS garden is doing just wonderfully.

Oh sure, there's a tiny stunted squash problem in bed no.1, but hey; we don't want to be all perfect or anything; we have to fail at Easy crops sometimes, just to keep ourselves from getting too proud....ha ha. :>D

Here's something to think about though, while we're being 95% successful, and want to plan for year round planting, what about those incredibly difficult nomenclatural greens called Asian Vegetables?
They grow well here on the coast, and were featured in this month's newsletter from WCS.
Check out the excerpt below.
Best,
Jen



For those interested in year round vegetable gardening, here is a good quality article from West Coast Seeds about planting Asian vegetables now, for fall and winter eating.

From this month's newsletter at: WestCoastSeeds

About Asian Vegetables

Don't let the names scare you off! These vegetables are tasty, nutritious, fast, and some of the easiest to grow. Use the young leaves raw in salads, or chopped into soups, or cook them as you would spinach - a quick steam will do it. Better yet, use them in stir-fries with a bit of minced garlic.

Not too long ago, most of the vegetables we think of as "Asian" seemed altogether foreign. Over the last decade, however, it became commonplace to see snow peas and pac choi on the shelves of even the chain supermarkets. As time passes, we'll probably begin to see pac choi's sister choi sum appear, a better selection of the Chinese cabbage known as sui choi, along with gai lan, and the mustards.

The leafy greens from Asia include many that are incredibly cold tolerant. They do not require warm soil to germinate, and some of them can even be grown in partial shade. With a simple cloche setup over the row or raised bed, a number of these vegetables will grow better than any others throughout winter. They grow well in a variety of soil conditions, too - just keep them watered and weeded, and your winter greens will do the rest.

For a new Western gardener, trying to get a handle on the world of Chinese and Asian vegetables can be a baffling ordeal. Is it pac choi, or bok choy? Worse, there is no standard reference to work from! Open ten books on the subject of Asian greens, and you'll find ten different spellings for each. Many differences between spoken Mandarin and spoken Cantonese, for instance, are tonal (just think of the different variations on one syllable: mha, ma, maa, mah). Chinese words are written in English by means of a system called romanization, and over the centuries, several systems of romanization have been used, including the Wade-Giles system, the Yale system, and the Hanyu Pinyin system -- which has been the standard since 1982. But each of these systems produced different results.


Here's a simplified guide to some of our favourites:

Amaranth: This plant is a close cousin of beets, quinoa, and spinach. There are masses of varieties of amaranth, and nearly all of them have edible leaves, but look for the Red Leaf type known as een choi (Amaranthus tricolor). Even as the plant matures, the new leaves are always tender and delicious, plus they contain more vitamins and minerals than beet greens! Amaranth makes a sensible alternative to spinach during the heat of summer, as it doesn't bolt like spinach does.

Gai Lan: The literal translation of gai lan is "mustard orchid," which speaks to the subtle mustard flavour of the leaves. Harvest the broccoli-like stalks with leaves and flower buds intact by cutting them at ground level. Quickly stir-fry some minced garlic in hot peanut oil, and then add a bunch of gai lan. Turn this quickly, and add a splash of oyster sauce and vegetable stock. By the time the leaves are wilted, it will be heated through and ready to serve with rice or noodles. Yum!

Sui Choi: Chinese cabbages (sometimes called Napa cabbage - as well as hakusai, michihili, wong bok, and pe tsai) grow like upright, barrel-shaped cabbages, with the same sweet/bitter taste and versatility in the kitchen. It's excellent raw or cooked, and it's packed with nutrients. The michihili types are tall, and the true napa types are squat. Plant some mid-summer for a very easy fall harvest.

Mustards: This is a really big, diverse group of plants, but it includes the inseparable pair mizuna and mibuna, Chinese mustard known as dai gai choi, the so-called spinach mustard tah tsai, and the incredible vegetable komatsuna. Mizuna has deeply-cut, feathery leaves, and mibuna has rounded, spoon-shaped leaves, but both are fast to germinate, fast to grow, and EASY. Both are tasty, with a very mild heat to them. For more heat, go for dai gai choi, which brings a wonderful background taste to mixed stir-fries. Tah tsai looks like very low growing rosettes of pac choi, with the same succulent, crunchy stems, but with a slightly stronger mustard flavour. Komatsuna is the Maserati of the vegetable world, maturing from seed in 40 days! It is tolerant of quite intense cold in winter, and it's drought tolerant and slow to bolt in summer. Both the red-leaf and green-leaf types can be harvested for baby greens only three weeks after planting, and both have a nice, mild taste.

Pac choi: This vegetable should be familiar to everyone - but it's available in many forms. Shanghai pac choi has green stems, Taiwan pac choi has wavy, lettuce-like leaves, and there are dwarf and giant versions, too. It can be picked as a baby vegetable, while it's still buttery-tender, or grown on for chunky, crunchy stems. Its high water content means that it is super succulent and mild in flavour.

Choi sum: This is the same species as pac choi, but bred for a different growth form. Instead of forming urn-like rosettes of leaves, choi sum grows a central stem with a few leaves up its length and a rapini-like cluster of flower buds at the top. Just before the buds open is the time to harvest whole plants cut at the ground. The stems are so succulent, you'll be eating them fresh in the garden, but they're wonderful stir-fried as well.

There are lots of other vegetables that arrived from the diverse cuisines of Asia, including daikon radishes, snow peas, kabocha squash, and soya beans, but the leafy greens listed above are ideal for cool-season growing in the spring and fall. Plant some this month and enjoy them right through the fall!

-----------end article

For 4 to 5 articles like this per month (including tomato varieties being tested, tasted, and written up) subscribe to West Coast Seed Newsletter here.

Another great article with photos is the one on how to tell male and female zucchini blossoms apart. Enjoy!

Best,
Jen

What's Up? July 11th

Dear Garden lovers,

What's up at the DIGS garden today?

If you double click on the photos below, and then choose full screen slide show on upper left you can make the photos bigger!



Activities today:

Huge thanks to those DIGS members who transplanted all the fall-winter brassicas from seed flats to cell-packs. (sorry not to be more helpful, but I actually sat on an old garden chair yesterday and it went KABLOOM, and I, guess what, hurt my sit-bones!) But huge huge thanks to our greenhouse crew.
The baby brassicas are now on an open bed in their new flats.

Garlic was harvested and hung to dry in the social shed. The scent was fabulous!

Click on his picture to make it larger to see garlic close up:



Various other early vegetables were harvested, for example:

Harvestable today:

Carrots, Kholrabi, Beets, Garlic, Lettuce, Peas, Raspberries, few Strawberries.
Please continue to eat lettuce before it bolts!

Recipes for Kohlrabi include:
- treating it like a carrot or celery stick (raw, with salt, or with dips, dressing)
- slicing it like a radish or grating like carrot for a salad or kohlrabi coleslaw
- saute-ing or steaming, then cream-saucing it or cheesing it like a scalloped potato
- add to stir-fry at end like water chestnuts
- more kohlrabi recipes
- even more kohlrabi recipes
Little Diggers:

The Little Diggers built bird houses and hung them up and also built a bird bath with hanging drip fountain - please go see this in the DIGS garden near the roses. This is fabulouso!!
Carrots were tasted, and sunflowers were measured. What a beautiful day!


Pests seen today:

Yucky prolific and furry grey Aphids (use water sprayed hard on them to knock them off) and Onion Root Maggot. Some quick research on organic controls for onion maggot suggests:

- clean out all onion plants each time you harvest; don't leave onion debris in soil.
- use diatomaceous earth around plants (I have an enormous container of this, myself, so just ask if the garden needs it.)
- interplant radish between onion rows and let the maggot infest the radish (which it prefers) and then discard the ruined radishes.
- use row covers
- avoid replanting onions in same bed for several years.

More suggestions for ridding ourselves of root maggots welcome.

See horrificly close-up (ick! :>) pest photos above in the slide show, and please call our Ladybug (yes there's only one so far, and even SHE is missing) back home so she can continue to munch on aphids as she was doing up until yesterday on the tall Lovage plant in the herb bed.

Best, Jen

whimsy, individuality & gloriousness

Dear Garden-lovers,

Photos of the garden tour now taken down.
Let me know if you need to see 'em.

A huge thankyou to all who grew, helped and were both organized and whimsical. Such beauty!
Plus; what is that fantastic recipe for pecan chocolate chip brown sugar bars???
Those were scrumptious!!

Best, Jen