Veggies

April 2, 2010

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Meanwhile, Over at the Greenhouse

We have been enjoying an unseasonably warm March here in Toronto that has lead into the warmest early April I can recall, ever. Temperatures are supposed to soar this weekend, sending gardeners (including me) into a flurry of activity. I have already sown spinach and mâche into containers on the roof. The chives have been shooting up slowly over the last few weeks, and I am starting to identify lettuce seedlings that have self sown where I let mature plants go to seed last season. I intend to spend this weekend cleaning up, amending the container soil, and getting all of the gardens into shape.

Meanwhile, over at the greenhouse, my little seedlings are go. I started tomatoes and peppers on March 5 and have sown the odd thing here and there since. I’m enjoying the simplicity of this stage of the growing season very much. I’ve been through this stage countless times now and you’d think it would get dull, but it never does. Every year there is something new and even the same old same old haven’t lost their appeal. On a basic level I am amazed by my plants’ progress every time I visit the greenhouse. I am relishing just observing the beauty of new seeds as they come out of the package and discovering the early growth stages of plants I have never grown from seed before. This is a happy time all around.

These are a pansy called ‘Caramel Spice’ from Botanical Interests. It’s a little late to start pansies and violas from seed as they are typically started in January. In fact, I just bought the first pansy cell-packs of the season yesterday. Unfortunately, these seeds came late but I figured I might as well give it a shot anyways. I can always try tucking them into a cooler spot once the summer heat hits and hope they make it to the fall cool-down.

This is cardoon (Cynara cardunculus), one of my fun experiments for the 2010 growing season. Cardoon is a gorgeous, and rather massive plant that looks an awful lot like an artichoke or giant thistle. In fact, they’re related. What’s interesting is that you eat the stems of the plant, not the flower bud as you do with an artichoke. But before you harvest it you’ve got to “blanch” it, much like celery, by covering the stems with a large box or some other cover to keep light out and soften the leaves. Perhaps a bit complicated but my curiosity has got the better of me so here we go. Another fun fact: cardoon is often used as a vegetarian rennet substitute in cheese making.

I like the seedlings at this stage; so perfect.

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January 12, 2010

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Stevie, Not Wonder

My epic trip has come to an end and I’ve been back in the freezing north for a few days. Brrr…. It’s time now to begin processing the experience for myself as well as find a way to express on this site some of what I have learned and experienced.

Boy did I learn a lot. I may have spent a whole month away, but it never quite felt like I was taking a break. The trip was more comparable to enrolling in an intense immersive learning program. With my brain so filled with new experiences, thoughts and feelings, I lamented on Twitter yesterday, “Where to begin?”

Some of you responded, “With the beginning” but I am having a hard time deciding where that is. Which beginning? I’ve never been very good about pinpointing where a life experience begins and ends. Did it begin when I got on the plane and arrived in Barbados? Or perhaps the part that felt like the real beginning to the personal journey, flying into Dominica. Do I begin with a specific plant that intrigued me (they all did!) or try to express my overall impressions of the trip? Should I stay focused on the botanical portion of the trip or allow myself to veer off into non-botanical terrain and tell a larger story?

And just what is the larger story? I don’t quite know yet. The trip was both what I expected and yet mostly filled with surprises.

Perhaps it is a cop out, but I’ve decided to begin randomly. I literally clicked on a folder of digital images and pulled up the first photo that brought up a memory. If I didn’t begin this way, I’d probably never begin and an entire month of travel would go the way of Cuba and so many other travel experiences I’ve had.

I took the above photos about a week or so into the Dominica portion of the trip. Travel around the island can be a bit gnarly. While the island isn’t particularly big, winding, thin and sometimes rough mountain roads increases the distance between places. In Dominica you are always going up or down but very rarely straight or flat. For this reason we decided to book a few nights in Calibishie, a small village on the northeast side of the island so we could do some walking and exploring at our own pace.

Dominica is not the place to go if you’re looking for a sandy beach vacation. We could see the ocean from the little cottage we rented above Roseau, on the west side of the island, but it was a 3 hour walk to the closest beach, which was rocky, not sandy. Staying in the northeast also gave us closer access to ocean swimming.

Our second day in Calabishie fell on a Sunday. Local buses don’t run on Sundays in Dominica and we don’t drive so we decided to try and walk through the village and see if we could make it to the closest sandy beach in that direction, or find somewhere to dip into the ocean if it got too hot. The people of Calabishie were very friendly and inquisitive, quick to find out who we were and chat. We stopped many times to take photos or get into conversations with locals.

The last stop we made before leaving the village was when the guy in this picture, Stevie (not Wonder) called out from his porch for us to take his picture. Turns out Stevie is a farmer and a gardener so I asked him to show me what he had growing around his house.

That’s dasheen (Colocasia esculenta) in the foreground, one of many ground provisions that were originally brought to the West Indies as food for slaves. As you can probably tell by the leaves, dasheen is related to taro. You’ll find it growing just about everywhere in Dominica. The young, unfurled leaves are harvested for a soup or stew called callaloo, and the roots (or corms) are typically served boiled.

That huge bush behind it is a hot seasoning pepper. It looked to be some type of habanero/scotch bonnet, but I was too chicken to taste it. I never saw a mature hot pepper plant in the Caribbean that was smaller than this bush. Some were larger still. I understand now why the scotch bonnet types require such a long growing season to get to the fruiting stage. The plants we grow here just don’t have a chance.

The third edible Stevie had growing was a small tangerine. It didn’t have any fruit yet, but the spines were a good inch and a half long, the largest (and scariest) I have seen on a citrus tree.

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November 30, 2009

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Let’s Learn About the Historical Origins of Herbs, Fruits and Vegetables

Have you ever heard of sea cabbage, a wild cousin of the domesticated brassicas? Did you know that edible bananas are a primitive plant thought to be related to some of the first trees of the primeval forest?

I didn’t either until this weekend when I was finishing up an article on unusual vegetables and decided to fact check some long-ago gleaned historical knowledge against books in my personal library. What began as a quick check turned into a much longer read.

The first book I pulled out is called The Origins of Fruit and Vegetables by Johnathan Roberts (in case you’re wondering mine cost $22US, not $472 YIKES). I think I’ve had this book in my possession since it was first published in 2001, and while I have flipped through the pages of historical prints and food-based artwork more than once, I’m not certain of just how much I have actually read. If you’re interested in plant history and ethnobotany, this book is a great place to start. It’s not exactly a definitive tome on the subject but it’s a beautiful book that provides just enough insight to draw you into searching out more. It also gives you something to talk about in mixed company. Now if only they’d make a gardener’s trivial pursuit for geeks like me.

Next week I am off on a month long journey to The Caribbean. As you can imagine I am extremely excited about food and plants. One of the plants I am most stoked about seeing up close and personal is the vanilla orchid. I have actually seen the vining plant growing in the greenhouse of a botanical garden, but I have never seen one growing outdoors and in bloom nor smelled the scent of its flowers. Or touched a green pod straight off the plant for that matter. Everything about the vanilla from its history to the process of growing and fermenting the beans fascinates me to no end. I found a book at a used bookstore last week that indulges everything one could want or need to know about vanilla. I plan to read it during the first part of my trip to get in the mood to see vanilla towards the end. Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World’s Favorite Flavor and Fragrance, written by Patricia Rain, the self-proclaimed Queen of Vanilla is indeed what I would call a definitive tome on the subject, covering everything including a sampling of interesting new ways to use vanilla in cooking. If the beans are affordable and customs allows me to bring some back, I plan to get a whole bunch as gifts for friends. I’d also like to try my hand at making homemade vanilla extract to give as gifts. I am after-all going to be visiting places known for both decent rum and vanilla production. I should be able to produce a quantity of excellent extract affordably. I think I’m going to need bigger luggage.

A third book, one that I have gone to many times and have even posted about here is Herbal: The Essential Guide to Herbs for Living by Deni Bown. I bought my copy back in 2002 after much deliberation. At $58.00 the book is not exactly cheap but I promise you it is worth the dough if you are curious about the historical background and usage of the herbs you like to grow or are seeking inspiration to try a few exotics. The book does contain some growing information but is not meant as a gardening primer. I’d suggest Exotic Herbs by Carole Saville, or New Book of Herbs by Jekka McVicar if you’re looking for more definitive growing considerations for a wide variety of common and unusual herbs.

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November 26, 2009

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Bok Choy

It has been an unseasonably warm November here in Toronto. I’ve enjoyed an education in observing how trees and plants are reacting to an extended period of warmth, not to mention the thrill of coasting all the way into late November without a single flake of snow. JOY!

Meanwhile, my own gardens are continuing to produce healthy greens, broccoli, herbs, and flowers like we’re living on the west coast. I’d have a bigger crop had I not shut down earlier than usual in preparation for my time away or if the squirrels would ease up on the persistent digging, eating, and general ruckus. They were, and continue to be, more destructive than ever this year. I caught one hanging off of my giant cape gooseberry yesterday afternoon. It was attempting to steal fruit, which incidentally is still growing. In any other year that plant would have hit the compost heap ages ago.

Amazing.

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November 7, 2009

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Mutant Veggies at the Fall Fair (2009)

Turnout in the mutant vegetable competition at The Royal Winter Fair was disappointingly lackluster this year. I don’t know if it was the poor weather this season, or a waning lack of interest in growing monstrous, overgrown produce, but it seems that the competition fell from an abundantly healthy display in years past to the above six, pathetic contenders.

Photo by Gayla Trail All Rights Reserved
To be fair, I don’t recall having seen Siamese twin cucumbers before and was quite impressed. But the duck shaped potato that in my humble opinion stole first place from the Siamese twin cucumbers… PLEASE.

I should have entered my sweet potatoes, however we ate them all up soon after harvesting. The entire crop grew into twisted puzzle pieces that together could do a decent imitation of stomach intestines. Take THAT potato duck! I’m crafting myself a mental grand prize ribbon as I write this.

I pretty much only go to The Royal for the mutant veg, so thank god for the adjacent table of whale-sized squashes and melons or I would have been forced to demand a refund.

Photo by Gayla Trail All Rights Reserved
Look at the size of this thing! We put a quarter next to it for size comparison. At this size vegetables tend to morph but I’d hazard a guess that it’s a butternut squash.

I don’t know what they’ve got in their soil, but two of these three jumbo squashes were grown by competitors with the same last name. The biggest one is listed as a ‘long gourd’ or ‘Sicilian zucchini’ and comes in at 9ft 10.25.

Photo by Gayla Trail All Rights Reserved
It was held to the support structure with camo duct tape, a detail that won my heart. Automatic win! No, I wasn’t a judge. However, if there is a fall fair that would have me, I’d be very into it!

Enormous sunflowers and corn: one of my favourite categories.

These potatoes were a part of the regular produce competition. They looked so fake from what I deem to be excessive polishing, that I actually had to touch them to prove they weren’t made of plastic. That friends, is weirder to me than a Siamese twin cucumber.

Related:

Not vegetable related but equally fascinating: