Colorful finger limes

ALL FOR A SLICE OF PIE

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The Real Thing

This time of year, a slice of Key lime pie is the next best thing to walking along a beach in the Florida Keys. Okay, not the next best thing, but good eating anyway. Hold on a minute, though, before beginning your gustatory journey; the supermarket is not the place to begin.

What you are most likely to get at any market is a Persian lime (Citrus × latifolia), a hybrid of Key lime and lemon), and this kind of lime lacks the unique and potent aroma of a genuine Key lime (Citrus × aurantiifolia). Persian lime is more cold-hardy and less seedy than Key lime, and has a longer shelf life. Even commercial lime pies are sometimes made with Persian limes, one reason why a pie from a bakery or a slice in a restaurant might miss the mark in flavor.

Bonsai Key lime tree

Bonsai Key lime tree

You probably now suspect — and rightly so — that I’m going to suggest that you grow your own Key limes. Do it, but watch out Read more

Macrocarpa, wintergreen planted as ornamental, Bryn Mawr

A WELCOME TOUCH OF GREENERY

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Beauty, Beer, and Aroma

What more hopeful way to go into winter than with a plant named wintergreen? Wintergreen. The word conjures up an image of lush greenery against lily white snow, a congenial juxtaposition of the living and the nonliving, both pristine.

Wild wintergreen in Maine

Wild wintergreen in Maine

If the word wintergreen brings to mind, instead, a refreshing aroma or flavor — yes — that’s the same plant. Oil of wintergreen has been used as flavoring for teas and beers, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, as well as straight up, as a leafy nibble. The plant’s berries also provide a nibble, one that might make you start moving your feet. Wintergreen is also known as teaberry, the flavoring in a chewing gum that was featured in popular TV advertisements in the late 1960s that showed the gum inducing a jiglike dance, the “teaberry shuffle,” to a catchy tune. Read more

Growing breadcrumbs

STUFFED

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Grow Your Own Stuffing

Thanksgiving is a time of year when one’s thoughts naturally turn to . . . stuffing. No, not stuffing yourself, but stuffing a turkey. Even many people who choose not to eat turkey on Thanksgiving nonetheless do enjoy stuffing themselves with stuffing.

So why not think about what ingredients for stuffing can be reaped from the garden? Even better, how about setting aside a little portion of the garden next year as a stuffing garden?

The bread and butter of any stuffing is some starchy food, often bread and butter itself, the bread usually as crumbs. There’s no breadcrumb plant, so forget about growing breadcrumbs. Not that you couldn’t buy some wheat “berries” at a health food store, plant them next spring, harvest the grain when the plants dry down, thresh and winnow out the berries, grind them into flour, make the flour into bread, then let the bread go stale and pound it into bread crumbs.

Growing breadcrumbs

Growing breadcrumbs– I did it once!

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Spitzenberg apple watercolor

ONE OF THE GREATEST APPLES

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Ol’ TJ was Spot On

Thomas Jefferson was right: Spitz is one of the greatest. Apples, that is. Esopus Spitzenberg, to use the variety’s full name, was the variety that T.J. preferred over all others from his Monticello orchard. And soon it will be coming into perfection here. Or, I should say “would be coming into perfection here.”

That was years ago, when I grew Spitz.

This time of year, back then, the fruits would not be still hanging from the branches. Read more

Fruit of true quince

THREE BEAUTIFUL QUINCES

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Two Hardly Edible Quinces

A lot people wonder about eating those orbs hanging from quince bushes. After all, everyone has heard of eating quinces, even if few people — these days, at least — have actually tried them.

In most cases, the answer to the question about whether you can eat the fruit depends on how hungry you are. The reason is because most of the “quinces” that you see are what are called “flowering quinces” (Chaenomeles spp.), grown mostly as ornamentals. Flowering quince flower Read more

My "tiny folio" book of USDA watercolor illustrations painted between 1887 and 1942

IT’S RED BUT IS IT “DELICIOUS?”

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Tasty Origins

As I was about to chomp down on the apple I had just plucked off the tree, I also was about to sink my teeth into over one-hundred and twenty-five years of history. You see this was no ordinary apple, but a Red Delicious apple. Nothing special about Red Delicious, you think — yes, it has been among the leading commercial apple varieties in the world, surpassed about twenty-five years ago by Gala. Ah, but the particular Red Delicious apple in my hand was the original Red Delicious, THE Red Delicious.

Hawkeye, the original Red Delicious, page my book "Fruit: From the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection"

Hawkeye, the original Red Delicious; page from my book “Fruit: From the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection“

Let’s backtrack a minute to the origin of this particular apple which, incidentally, you’re not apt to be able to reach for on a grocer’s shelf anywhere these days. The year was 1872. The place was Peru — Peru, Iowa.

Here we are at the farm of Jesse Hiatt, and here’s an apple tree, one that sprouted from some seed dropped here by chance. Read more

Ephraim Bull

THANK YOU EPHRAIM

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Foxy Grapes

Early each fall I come upon a most delicious fragrance, reminiscent of jasmine, at a certain point as I walk along the rail trail near my home. No flower claims responsibility for that aroma. Wild grapes, dangling in ripe clusters from low hanging vines, are the source. That scent begs a taste, whose quality you quickly discover pales by comparison with that of the perfume. Wild grapes are downright sour.

Now go to your grocer’s shelf and take a deep whiff of the grapes there. Hardly a hint of aroma — unless the grapes happen to be the variety Concord, a commercial grape variety that captures the essence of our wild grapes. And Concord’s berries are indeed edible, being much larger and sweeter that their wild counterparts.Concord grape bunch

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Figs ripening

FIG UPRISING

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Up From the Ground

Raising my figs last week got me as excited as, I imagine, opening a kiln does for a potter. What would this spring’s disinterment — “kiln opening” — hold?

In an effort to grow figs outdoors here, despite winter temperatures regularly dipping below zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18° F. this past winter) I buried two plants last fall. Actually, those plants were put in the ground two years ago, but a combination of mice and insufficient cold protection prevented their making successful emergence each spring. Figs are resourceful plants, though, and new shoots sprouted each year from the roots. Read more

Pruning young pear tree, showing where I prune

NATURE’S DESSERT

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What Do I Hear?

Every morning I can hear especially one group of plants crying out to be pruned. It’s the fruit trees. They demand annual and careful pruning. I’m almost finished pruning them, but not quite.Old apple tree, unpruned & pruned

Taste the sweetness of a perfectly ripe pear: that sweetness represents energy, the result of pruning so all limbs bask in energy-generating sunshine. Pruning also helps these trees strike a balance between shoot growth and fruit production. Pruning removes some potential fruits so that more of the plant’s energy can be funneled into the fewer fruits that remain, fewer but larger and more flavorful fruits.

I started off regular pruning of Read more

Basket of various heirloom apples

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

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Varieties and Aesthetics Past

You’re rummaging in the attic, in your greatgrandma’s steamer trunk, and you come upon a dusty, old packet of garden balsam seeds. An heirloom! This heirloom’s probably more valuable for the picture on the packet than for the seeds, which probably have lost their vitality. You could, though, if you wanted, get your hands on heirloom plants seeds or plants that would grow.

Old seed packets Read more