Taste And Aroma
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Old Peaches
The peaches on a friend’s tree were small, marred with bacterial spot disease, and still showed some green on their skins. So burdened with fruits was the tree that it had burst asunder from their weight, splitting one of the main limbs.
Still, the friend insisted that the peaches tasted good. As further enticement, the tree had a history, having sprouted on the grounds of a nearby 18th century house that had an orchard. The tree was evidently cold hardy also. So I twisted one fruit off and took a bite. In spite of being not quite ripe, the fruit was delicious, quite sweet — as…
How Pesky And Interesting
Snowflakes? No.
Gardening never ceases to be interesting, even if the current object of interest is a pest. Not just any pest, but a NEW pest! And not just for me.
I was alerted to this pest when pulling a few weeds near my Brussels sprouts plants. Brushing against their leaves brought a cloud of what looked like fine snowflakes. They were, in fact, whiteflies, tiny (1.5 mm) fluttering insects, immediately recognizable to me from their common occurrence on houseplants.
Whiteflies rarely show up on outdoor plants; in my experience, never. Easy enough to discover on the web, my whiteflies…
It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, and Pears
Whoosh!
Whew! How quickly this growing season seems to have scooted by. I am putting the last plants of the season into the vegetable garden today. These were transplants of Shuko and Prize Choy bok choy, and Blue napa cabbage. I’m eyeing some lettuce transplants, and if I decide that they’re sufficiently large to transplant, they’ll share a bed with the cabbages.
Reconsidering, the end of the gardening season isn’t really drawing nigh. The cabbages won’t be large enough to make a real contribution to a stir fry or a batch of kim chi for at least another month. And then, with cool weather…
The Destroyer To The Rescue
Predatory Helpers
Some of the figs — the varieties Rabbi Samuel, Brown Turkey, and San Piero — started ripening last week. With their ripening, I am now in a position to claim victory over the mealybugs that have invaded my greenhouse fig-dom for the past few years.
Mealybugs look, unassumingly, like tiny tufts of white cotton, but beneath their benign exteriors are hungry insect. They injects their needle-like probiscis into stems, fruits, and leaves, and suck life from the plants, or at least, weaken the plants and make the fruits hardly edible.
Over the years I’ve battled the mealybugs…
The Bad and the Good
Winecaps, Not For Me
My successes with growing shiitake mushrooms emboldened me, this past spring, to venture further afield, to wine cap mushrooms (Stropharia rugosoannulata). After all, it’s been billed as “prized, delicious” and “edible when young.”
Their quick production also prompted me to give them a try. As a matter of fact, my spring “planting” started bearing a couple of weeks ago. A bed can also be refreshed or a new bed can be inoculated from an old bed for repeat performances.
Let’s go back to spring, to my planting. Wine caps grow very well in wood chip mulch,…
Picked At Peak Of Perfection
Tomatoes Vs. Sweet Corn
Some gardeners sit tapping their fingers waiting for the first tomato of the season to finally ripen. I don’t. I’m waiting to sink my teeth into my first-picked ear of sweet corn.
Not that my tomatoes don’t taste really good, but they’re also good all winter dried or canned, as is or as sauce. Or just frozen.
An ear of sweet corn, though, captures the essence of summer. Not just for flavor and texture. It’s the whole ritual of peeling back the husks and snapping them off at their bases, brushing away the silk before steaming the ears, and then, holding…
Making Sense
Lilies, More Than Just Pretty
I’m triply thankful for the lily stems in the vase in the kitchen.
First, for their beauty. The large, lily-white (of course) petals flare out into trumpets, from whose frilly throats poke groups of rust-red anthers and single tear-capped stigmas. The petals spread about 8 inches wide from one side to the other, and the single stalk I plunked into the vase sports six of them!
Second, I’m thankful for the lilies’ fragrance. The heady, sweet fragrance fills the whole room.
And third, I’m thankful that the plants, cut from outdoors where they share a bed with…
Fruit, Again, With Nod To Michael Jackson
Blackcaps Redux, This Season
I took a cue from Michael Jackson today when pruning my black raspberry (a.k.a. blackcap) plants. Not that I had to prune them today, or even this time of year. But I couldn’t stand looking at the tangled mass of thorny canes. And, more importantly, the tangled mass would make harvest, slated to begin in a couple of weeks or so, a bloody nightmare.
(Most blackcaps bear only once a year, in early summer, so tidiness would be the main reason to prune conventional blackcaps now. Pruning would also let remaining canes bathe in more light and air, reducing the threat…
