Very Vegetable

An explosion of edibles from the garden installed earlier this year.  I had forgotten how incredibly easy and satisfying veggie gardening can be (and I'm saying this even before the tomatoes have ripened!)  The peas trail along a plum twig trellis, generously made especially for me from my Dad.  I love the three pods in the photo above- I just think of a xylophone dinging "dink, dink dink!"

This Flying Saucer or Patty Pan Squash looks like it's wearing a cashmere bodysuit with all its fuzzy whiskers.  These taste delicious with prosciutto and fresh basil.

The French Pickling Cucumbers continue to trickle in and the first batch of quick pickles won rave reviews at our weekend BBQ.  Tiny foods...  so irresistible, hidden among the leaves!

And a sun-bleached long view of the Titan Sunflowers (still growing and not even flowering yet!) with the Sunsweet (an improved Sungold) tomato growing everywhere except the middle of its tomato cage.  Cosmos, Zinnias and a sprinkling of Bachelor's Buttons lure pollinators and give me an excuse for a non-native cutting garden.  Scarlet Runner Beans have twined up the Sunflower stalks, shooting bits of red-orange firecracker sparks in the background.  A rampant mess and I couldn't be more delighted!

Plant of the Week: Dandelions?

I was working on a client's garden the other day and remembered that those pesky dandelions riddling the yard with their long taproots are not just weeds... they're food! If you don't believe me, check this out. This is also a lovely post about their virtues. You absolutely must make sure that you're harvesting from an area that is free of pesticides and other ickies, but by all means cook up a fancy, foraged side-dish!

If you're interested in growing dandelions in your garden, you may be hard pressed to find seed for purchase. You won't have any trouble finding the little buggers in your yard or neighborhood, though! And please, make sure you cut the flowers off before they go to seed in your garden. This will help prevent an infestation in the next year and apparently, the flowers can be made into jelly! As you well know, dandelions will grow just about anywhere so I wouldn't worry about growing conditions or care. I would recommend growing them in part shade so they don't flower right away (in other words, treat like lettuce you are trying to prevent from "bolting"). Harvest in the spring before the leaves become too bitter.

This recipe is quite tasty, although I might add a few red pepper flakes. It's quite an interesting contrast to the undesirable connotations of weeds in the lawn!

UPDATE: From my Grandma:
"Dandelions was the only salad I knew about 80 years ago. Dad and I would go down to the park and pick dandelions and mom would just put vinegar and sugar on them. We didn't know about "salads" until much later. There is a picture in the family room of dad and I collecting dandelions."

Plant of the Week: Baby Tomatoes!

I just can't help it. It's that time of year when all you can do is wait in anticipation for harvest time (cut short by a few weeks by frying up some green tomatoes). This little one is an Early Girl who got a late start. (Does that make her a Punctual Girl?) For information on growing tomatoes, check out my very first post to this blog. This week I'm not detailing growing information, just getting lost in daydreams of too many tomatoes and not enough recipes! However, here's a few places to get some great seeds and starts: Spiral Gardens, Kassenhoff Growers, or the Seed Savers Exchange.

And hey, why not? Let's throw in a recipe for fried green tomatoes:

Prepare 3 shallow bowls: fill one halfway with milk, one halfway with flour and one halfway with either cornmeal and your choice of spices, salt and pepper OR a cornmeal based fish fry.
Slice 2 or 3 large green tomatoes about 1/4" thick and dredge through the flour.
Dip in milk and dredge through the cornmeal mixture.
Meanwhile, start a frying pan on the stove with high heat and more oil than you want to use (1/4" to 1/2" deep). Any oil is fine, I use olive.
Fry the smothered tomatoes until they're brown on each side. Set them on a little stack of paper-towels and dab them a bit to get rid of the excess oil.
Eat plain, with mayonnaise, or make a fancy aioli.