Hooray for Summer! I’ve posted a four-and-a-half minute video of our garden on June 21, 2019. Enjoy!
#ShowYourStripes
California
This is a handy graphic that was invented by Ed Hawkins of the NOAA to show the warming trend of our world. Each stripe is a year; the color is its average temperature over that year, with dark blue being below average, and dark red being above. Most countries start in 1901, but the United States starts in 1895. As you move right, the years move forward, ending with 2018.
With this graphic, it’s quite easy to see how, over time, the world is warming. Above is California.
Go to #ShowYourStripes to input your own information and see how your state, or country, has warmed over time. Check out the FAQ’s. I think it’s a very straightforward and striking way to see how things are changing.
June Cooking: Cherry Tomatoes and Blueberries (and bonus Focaccia video)
This delicious picture is from 2016
Father’s Day, 2019: Wandering around the garden, Dad and I discovered two ripe Sun Gold tomatoes, the first of the season. I suppose we should have brought them back to the house and cut them into six tiny wedges to share with Mom and Tom and the kids, but in the moment we didn’t hesitate to pop ‘em in our mouths. Is there anything as good as the first tomato from the garden?
In honor of cherry tomatoes making their way into our gardens, kitchens, and farmers’ markets, here’s a vegetarian recipe that, with a good bread, makes an excellent and filling dinner.
“Pearl Couscous with Olives and Roasted Tomatoes
(adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
2 pints (1-1/2 lbs) cherry tomatoes
3 large garlic cloves
1/4 - 1/3 cup olive oil, plus more for tomatoes
1/4 - 1/3 cup warm water
1 tsp - 1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp sea salt
black pepper to taste
1-3/4 cups broth (either vegetable or chicken)
2-1/4 cups pearl couscous
1/2 - 2/3 cup chopped Kalamata black olives
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1/3 cup chopped mint
1 - 2 tsp chopped thyme
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
greens of your choice
Heat oven to 300. Halve tomatoes through stem ends and arrange, cut side up, in one layer on a baking sheet. Add garlic (peeled but whole) to one corner of the pan. Drizzle all with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast until tomatoes are shriveled around the edges, about an hour. Cool in pan for 15 or so minutes.
Bring broth to a boil and stir in couscous, then simmer uncovered for six minutes. Remove from heat and let stand ten minutes. Either let it cool in pan, or spread out on a cookie sheet to cool (it doesn’t stick as much this way).
When tomatoes are roasted, throw the garlic and 1/2 cup of the tomatoes in a blender. Add 1/4 cup olive oil (or more if you prefer more dressing), the water, the lemon juice (I tend to like the citrus on the heavy side), salt, and pepper. Blend until smooth.
In a large bowl, mix together the couscous, the tomatoes, the olives, the chopped herbs, and the dressing. You can eat at room temperature, or cover and refrigerate, but bring to room temp before eating. To assemble for a meal, serve about a cup of the mixture on top of freshly washed greens. Let your guests sprinkle on their own feta.”
Here’s a blueberry dessert that is totally satisfying and delicious - and EASY. I found this recipe in a 2012 issue of Saveur magazine, which I got from an older lady cleaning out her cooking magazines. It requires a large amount of blueberries, so either save yours up until you have a bunch, or budget for a trip to the farmers market. It’s worth it!
“Blueberry Slump (adapted from Saveur magazine, barely)
2 cups flour
1-3/4 cups sugar
4-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
1-1/4 cups milk
1-1/2 lbs blueberries
1 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lemon juice
vanilla ice cream, for serving
Whisk together flour, 1/4 cup of the sugar, baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt in a large bowl. Cut in the butter, or use your fingers to rub into the flour mixture until pea-sized crumbles form. Add milk, and stir until just moist. Cover and refrigerate dough until needed.
Heat oven to 400. Put blueberries in a large cast iron skillet. Add remaining sugar, salt, and citrus juices and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Remove pan from heat, and using two large spoons, portion and form chilled dough into 2-3” oval dumplings, dropping them evenly on top of the blueberry mixture (I make about six). Transfer skillet to oven (might want to put it on top of a cookie sheet or some foil, as it might boil over in the oven a bit). Bake about 25 minutes until biscuits are baked through. Serve with vanilla ice cream.”
Adam has been making a focaccia recipe from Samin Nosrat of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat fame. Click THIS LINK to see the video in which they demonstrate making it. Take it from me, it is the absolute BEST focaccia we have ever had. Adam likes it with oil and vinegar to dip; I like it just warm and plain. SO GOOD.
Happy Cooking!
Wilting Humans, Thriving Garden
Is there anything more boring than talking about the weather? It’s not really news anymore that we’re all experiencing extreme conditions. Some folks have it really bad right now - the heat in India, which is causing livestock die-off, or the persistent flooding in the midwest, which has caused farmers to loose an entire season of grain. It’s not that bad here, but it has been extremely hot for June. We humans are completely wilted; the bees are pretty much permanently bearded on the front of their hive or crowded in a ring around the lip of the water feature; the chickens are firmly planted under the quince tree in deep shade.
But the garden? The garden says, Cheers Mate, Thanks Very Much. Peaches are ripening up, peppers are reaching and blooming, beans are twining and massing, pumpkins are unfurling big leaves, and tomatoes are plumping.
There are some precautions for plants in hot weather. The most important thing is to make sure your irrigation is dialed in. Consistency is more important than volume; daily water is a must when it’s this hot and dry. We Californians don’t have to feel guilty about watering each day because we had plenty of rain and snow this past winter, but in the coming years, that might not be the case. So let’s talk about preserving moisture NOW, so you’re all set when that moment comes.
The amount of organic matter (OM) in your soil is probably the most important thing, acting as a sponge, holding on to moisture. Clay soil already has good water retention and OM can help further. Sandy soil is terrible at holding on to water, so OM will be extremely important in that situation. How to include more OM? Add compost around your plants and on top of your beds each year, mulch the heck out of everything using whatever you can find, and keep a living root in the soil at all times.
Plants pump sugars and carbohydrates (carbon) down into the soil to feed the microorganisms that live there; in turn those organisms provide nutrients to the plant. Plants do not grow well alone - they all do much better with a lot of roots in the ground around them, with a lot of diversity of species. Think of a meadow, crowded with forbs and grasses, or a forest, covered with trees and ferns. Bare space gets colonized. If you don’t want your garden colonized with weeds, be prepared to colonize it yourself.
You can kill two birds with one stone by mulching with living plants. If your cover is complete enough, it will do the job of mulch; that is, shade the soil, suppress weeds, and keep things moist under the canopy. To that end, I’ve begun seeding any possible bare space, even in my veg beds, with a cover crop of some kind. Some of the tomatoes, the ones that didn’t have basil or cilantro growing under them, just got a seven-species cover crop sown beneath them (a warm season mix from Walnut Creek Seeds). I’ve seeded buckwheat in my melons, cosmos in my winter squash, and sunflowers in my pumpkins. You may feel that this would take nutrients and water away from the main crops, but the opposite has been proven true; when there is lots of diversity under the soil (in the rhizosphere, or root zone), MORE nutrients are available.
Of course, this kind of microbial diversity takes time. I find that things get better all the time, as long as I keep as much diversity of planting as possible. Also, with this system, you don’t have to worry quite as much about crop rotation. And, there are lots of other benefits to this besides water retention and greater nutrient availability, like the attraction of predatory insects that will take care of the pests in our gardens.
I encourage you to check out the latest issue of California Agriculture from UC Davis, which has a summation of a recent study about how cover cropping/multi-species cropping can really improve soil (in conjunction with no-till practices, which of course you’re already doing, right?). The bottom line is that there is more fungal hyphae in soils that are cover cropped (and not tilled). That means there are more connections between the plant roots, working in symbiosis. Here’s a little quote, sorry for starting in the middle of a sentence:
“… allowing roots greater access to water and nutrients (in exchange for carbon). Fungi, however, are more sensitive than other microorganisms to physical disturbance. Adopting no-till as a conservation man- agement practice eliminates or greatly reduces both disruption of fungal hyphal networks and redistribution of organisms and nutrients in the soil profile. Use of cover crops, meanwhile, provides more abundant and varied sources of organic carbon.”
So this system in the soil allows for greater uptake of water and nutrients. That should be enough to get you to think about adding many plant roots to one space!
credit: UCANR
One more little thing I learned in class that might help you on these hot days. Transpiration, that is, the exhalation of water vapor through the leaves of the plants out to the atmosphere, is what pulls the water up through the plant. At night, when there is no sunlight, the plants aren’t transpiring, so they aren’t taking water into their roots. Only when sunlight hits the plant does the flow of water start from the roots to the tips of the leaves. That means you want a nice reservoir of water in the soil the moment the sun hits the plants. That’s one of the reasons why it’s best to water early in the morning, just before the sun rises. Set your irrigation for that time and your plants will be quite happy. I also try to water containers in the morning, and on these hot days, they may need water again in the afternoon.
It’s a fallacy to think that a vegetable garden uses less water than a lawn; it uses just as much. So it really is our responsibility to figure out how to keep our soil super-healthy so that it can be resilient in dry times if water isn’t so available. If we start improving it now, we’ll be ready for those times.
Hollyhock
Isn’t this beautiful?