What Would Mendel Do?

Conducting field trials of peas has never been on my lifetime list of must-do endeavors. In fact, growing peas shows up repeatedly on the "tried-it-and-it-didn't work" list. Yet in the garden one thing leads to another in unpredictable ways.

To start with, this year's pea crop was, by previous standards, a success, meaning we ended up with enough peas at one time to build a meal around them. One cup of Caseload Shelling Peas was harvested and one fabulous dinner of Peas Alfredo was enjoyed.

Then I forgot all about the pea patch until the space was needed for something else. While pulling out the dried up vines I discovered that the plants had made one last desperate effort to leave something for the next generation -- which, from their point of view, is their reason for being. There were several well-rounded pale beige pods with wrinkled seeds inside.

It seemed rude not to collect them. So I did.





When storing the gathered peas I noticed there were still some seeds left in the original packet from Natural Gardening -- larger, more uniform, and shapelier than the ones I saved. This was the parent generation of the plants I had pulled out.

Hmmmm, wouldn't it be interesting to see if one set would do better when planted out? The time was right, the space was available, why not try it?






So I divided a bed down the middle and planted my homegrown Caseload peas on one side (to the left) and the leftover Natural Gardening seeds on the other. The seeds were planted out on September 11.

The Natural Gardening seeds were older, of course, but they had been professionally grown and looked a little better. My seeds were younger and might have an advantage from being more adapted to this particular growing space. Let the trial begin!

The photo above shows the bed on September 26. In general, more of the homegrown seeds came up and appear to be growing faster.






Here's what the bed looked like on October 24. Both sets are growing well, but the homegrown seeds on the left are still ahead.





The tallest plants from the Natural Gardening seeds have cleared the third wire of the support frame. They are nice looking and would count as a success by previous standards.





The plants from homegrown seed have cleared the fourth wire and there are more of them, making a nice lush row such as I have seen and admired in other people's gardens. Criteria for success will have to be adjusted.

A Confederacy of Worms

The first time I encountered solider fly larvae in my compost bin it was as a slowly heaving mass of damp leaves. The whole surface of the bin was creepily undulating up and down. When I used a trowel to push aside the thin layer of leaves, uncovering the recently added kitchen scraps, I saw the huge, whitish, maggoty creatures pictured above. Ewwww! Backing slowly away from the bin with a sick feeling in my stomach, I ran into the house and googled "huge maggots in compost!!!!"

That's how I found out about BSF, the black soldier fly, a great friend to lazy composters everywhere, we folks who never turn the pile, just add new layers and let it sit. Now, instead of recoiling in horror, I gaze fondly on the hard-working worms and urge them on.






BSF, you are my BFF.

The black soldier fly is an attractive large flying insect that looks more like a wasp than a fly. It has no mouth parts and lives briefly in order to mate and lay eggs. It does not bite, swarm, come into houses, or carry disease. The eggs are laid in wet, organic matter in the first stages of decomposition -- such as the layer of kitchen scraps in my compost bin.

The eggs hatch in just a few days into ravenously hungry larvae that start chewing their way through any nice juicy stuff they can find. They work so fast and wiggle around so much, aerating the pile where they are working, that there is no time for nasty smelling bacteria to get a foothold and create bad smells which attract the less desirable kinds of flies.

What's not to like? No smells, no flies, and very fast breakdown of organic matter, including materials usually not recommended for compost piles, such as dairy products.

They will eat anything, including manure, sewage, roadkill, etc., and are being studied for use in municipal waste systems. Although the thought of acres of undulating worms going after a city's worth of discarded organic matter is a bit nightmarish, it doesn't diminish my admiration for these first responders of Mother Nature's breakdown team.

When the larvae are ready to pupate, they crawl away from their feeding grounds, leaving behind a dark residue that is just right for the next set of responders.





Red wiggler worms like their organic matter a bit more aged than the greedy BSF larvae. When I see masses of red worms in my bin, I know the breakdown process has moved into the next phase. When the numbers decrease then it's time to add the compost to the garden beds. If I'm impatient to add some fertility ASAP I can use the compost at the red worm stage, adding some extra organic nitrogen to make up for the nitrogen needed to fuel humus making.

When the garden variety earthworms appear, it's a signal that the compost has now become soil. I have never seen earthworms in the compost bin, only in the garden. These worms, honored by Darwin for their soil building capacity, go after the tiny broken down bits of remaining organic matter and transform them into the castings that nourish good green growth.

This confederacy of worms works together to produce the rich medium needed for continuous vegetable production in our backyard.

Hollyhock Lore

The hollyhocks along the fence are finally coming into their own. These are the second growth stalks that came up after I cut down the towering (ten or twelve feet) spring flagpoles that were not blooming and had acquired a layer of rust, due to the relentlessly cool weather.

This is a popular gathering spot for all manner of bees. Once, I saw a hummingbird inserting its tiny beak along the base of a partially opened blossom -- not inside the flower but outside. It reminded me of the deft skill of my favorite dental hygienist probing my gums. Not the most poetic image, but it does capture the expert precision of the hummingbird at work. Perhaps there are pockets of nectar hidden in the showy blooms even before they open wide?






Here's a wide open blossom, a stunning pink banner unfurled to the sun. Rose pink is thought to be the original color of these ancient medicinal plants. The botanical name, Althaea rosea, comes from the Greek "althos" for "healing."

In medieval Europe, a related plant was used to treat horses. Ailing hocks, the part right above the hoof, were wrapped in the leaves. When crusaders came back from the Holy Land, bearing the botanical cousin of this hock plant, the new arrival came to be known as the "holy hock."






The dramatic knob in the center of the blossom contains both stamen and pistils and the plant is self-pollinating. Bees love the abundant pollen so cross-pollination occurs. I have often watched the giddy buzzing things burying themselves in one blossom after another.

Maybe cross pollination accounts for the range of colors that have evolved from the original seeds from plants with dark red blooms given by a friend from the south Bay. They grew in our yard as dark pink at first, then diversified into a range of dark pink to pale pink to white.






Pale pink and white blooms showed up this year for the first time -- the third season since the original planting.

Supposedly the "holy hock" brings good fortune and abundance to homes where it is planted nearby. Planting some certainly brings an abundance of hollyhocks, since they grow back from the base and also produce myriad seeds. In our yard, the row along the fence is well established and seedlings are popping up here and there.

Feasts of the Season

A feast for the eye; food as art. This is the best example of Eggplant Expressionism I've ever seen: the dynamic, almost careless composition, subtle range of color, and energetic play of light across the textured surface make it a real museum piece. Too bad about that. Roasted Hansel Eggplant and Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes lasted less than a half-hour.

Tomato Sauce with Fairy Tale Eggplant and Basil, even more colorful and dynamic, was just as short-lived.

Our dining room table has become an art gallery of seasonal creations, fleeting but delicious, showcasing garden-fresh feasts for the eye and the palate almost every night.

There is hardly room on the table to display the artistic creation du jour because the clutter of work-in-progress material hogs the space: bowls of produce, jars of seeds, lables and pens.

But we persevere.

Middle Eastern Still Life. Eggplant caviar (roasted eggplant and peppers with chopped olives), lemon cucumbers with yogurt, humus and pita bread.

Tomato Puff with French Beans. The puff is one of B.s inventions: a kind of Yorkshire pudding creation of eggs, cottage cheese, and cheddar cheese with a little flour. I'll take credit for the Haricot beans. The variety is Nickel and they are a breeze to grow.

Composition in Brown and Beige. There was nothing from the garden in this loaf of rye bread with corriander seeds, but it's worth sharing for sheer artistic merit. (Recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.)

Farmer's Market Applesauce

Confession: we hardly ever go to the farmer's market even though it's only eight blocks away and happens every Saturday, May through October. Our own backyard yields so much bounty there never seems to be a compelling reason to go and look at other people's produce.

Nonetheless, there we were on a beautiful, sun-drenched Labor Day weekend, wandering the length of the one-block row of pickup trucks backed in along one edge of the main downtown park. (At least that's what I was doing. B. was scouting out the shadiest bench he could find, avoiding the sun out of medical necessity.) In front of each truck were tents shading the tables heaped high with peak-of-the-harvest abundance.

I stopped at a popular table covered with numerous small piles of apples labeled with poetic and unfamiliar names: Honeycrisp, Ginger Gold, Jona Gold. After a brief discussion with the lady in charge about my desire to make some applesauce, I was suddenly the proud owner of a $10 bushel basket filled to the brim with a 30-pound mix of all the organic heirloom apples she was offering -- the rejects she didn't think would sell for the standard $2.50 a pound.

That works out to about 33 cents a pound! An unexpected windfall of apples. We had thought we might be bereft of applesauce this year because we missed the chance to get a box of our favorite Pomo Tierra Gravensteins.

B. and I slowly made our way through the park, carrying the heavy basket between us. When the wire handles started digging into our hands too painfully, we simply put our burden down for a bit and admired the festive scene of vegetables and fruits, bread and cheese, herbs and flowers, sweets and savories ready-to-eat, handicrafts and kids, music and . . .oh, hello! . . people we know.

I couldn't help thinking of one of my favorite lines from Dylan Thomas:

"Oh, I was prince of the apple towns and time let me run, golden in the heyday of his eyes."

At least that's the way I've always remembered it. Here's what it really is:

"Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes.
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns."
(From Fern Hill)

A wagon would have been nice.





With the apples at hand, the prosaic business of making applesauce was simple. I washed them thoroughly, ignoring the blemishes, bruises, and sun scald while admiring how firm and fresh they felt (and only 33 cents a pound!).





Then they were chopped into quarters and all the damaged parts removed. As it turned out, only a very small proportion of the whole biomass had to be removed. There was no need to remove the peels as they would be strained out.






Next, they were cooked gently until soft in a very little bit of water -- as little as possible -- along with a whole cinnamon stick.





Then all the softened apples were run through the mighty Squeezo (aka Vittorio Strainer).






A bushel of apples almost filled this big pot. The task took me about two hours up to this point. The next-to-last step was to wrestle the pot into the refrigerator and let everything cool down for a day or so.





The last step was to spoon it all out into freezer containers and tuck most of it away in the freezer for future feasting, saving some for immediate gratification.

I hardly ever eat sweets, so fresh applesauce with yogurt seems like apple pie a la mode. Mmmmmmm. This farmer's market blend has a lovely mellow flavor, and throughout the year, whenever we enjoy it, it will evoke this golden week-end.

Did I mention the apples were only 33 cents a pound?

Picking up a Six Pack . . . of Lettuce

All the lettuce is going to seed and we are in a lettuce emergency. No recourse but to run out for a six pack of seedlings. This is a "summer salad bowl mix." It looks promising but requires patience and deferred salad gratification.





Meanwhile, seedlings of seeds gathered from Bronze Arrowhead, Forellenschluss, and of course Black Seeded Simpson are developing. They were planted August 13, but not in time to bridge the gap. We have to (sob) buy lettuce at the store.

Our Cornucupia Runneth Over

Pictured above is the garden produce we had on hand as of 4:30 Sunday afternoon, August 29.

Clockwise from the top are:

Assorted chard volunteers: Lipstick, Biondi di Lyon, Rainbow
Cherry tomatoes: Sungold and Yellow Pear
Tomatoes: Early Girl, Japanese Black Trifele, Constoluto Genovese
Eggplant: Hansel
Zucchini: Green Bush
Pole beans: Kentucky Blue
Climbing squash: Trombetta di Albenga
Bush beans: French Haricot/Nickel

In the center:

Cucumbers: Armenian, Lemon

Since then more tomatoes and cucumbers have been harvested.

All of the zucchini and chard plus two of the trombetta squash (the long snaky green things on the left) went into a big batch of green soup for the freezer.

We've given away some of the tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, and beans.

We eat tomatoes and cucumbers in salad every night.

The French beans make a wonderful side dish, gently steamed and served with some orange zest and butter.

The tomatoes and eggplant cook up into a showstopper of a pasta sauce.

I plan to try freezing some of the Kentucky Blue beans, just a small batch to see if it works better than last year's experiment.

We need to give away more tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers and beans . . . .