That Time of Year

April is distracting, isn’t it? The house finches are plucking coconut coir from my hanging baskets to make their nests, the yellow-faced bumblebees are in the borage, and the clematis ‘Montana’ is a froth of pink. Nature is in the midst of transition.

And so is the garden! This is the time of year when the tomatoes and pepper seedlings have to be taken out of the ‘greenhouse’ every morning, and returned back every night. It’s still too chilly for them to be put into the raised beds, so they need to be babied a bit. Oh, it’s hard to wait.

But they’re still too little, and the soil too cold. However, other things can be planted! I’ve removed the lingering cauliflower, cabbage, chard, broccoli, and beets; in their places I’ve planted potatoes (Yukon Gold, Huckleberry Gold, and German Butterball), pole beans (Rattlesnake, my favorite) and the dry beans from Rancho Gordo. I’ll wait until May to plant cucumbers, basil, and winter squash.

We’re still eating peas, both shelling and snap, nearly every day, along with asparagus (six years after planting the most recent batch of crowns, and we’re finally getting all we can eat). Artichokes are coming on, and the herbs are going crazy - the oregano and marjoram and sorrel just overtaking their beds, and the chives and culinary sages blooming beautifully purple!

And the flowers… well, the flowers are abundant. Borage, and poppies, and phacelia, and heuchera, and columbine, and salvias, and echium…. the list goes on and on, and I haven’t even told you about the fruit trees and bushes yet. Summer is coming!

What’s happening in your garden?

Bean Buddies

Do you know about Rancho Gordo beans? I wrote about them years ago, but they exploded in popularity during the pandemic, and they now sell out regularly. You can get on the waiting list for their ‘bean club’ which guarantees you a monthly supply, but there are people on that list that have been waiting for years! They are that popular. They do have the most diverse variety of dried beans, all of which are grown by reputable farmers (some large, and some small, some in the Western US, and some in Mexico), and the supply is quite fresh, unlike grocery store beans, which may have been sitting on the shelf for years.

Imagine my delight when one of my students (thanks, C!) mentioned that Rancho Gordo was starting a Bean Buddies program, in which the company would supply a small amount of heirloom beans to try growing at home. I immediately signed up, both for my home farm and for Merritt’s farm (which is basically where I teach all my labs). I’ve just received four different kinds of beans to trial, and I couldn’t be more excited to get growing.

image credit: Rancho Gordo Beans (Good Mother Stallard)

Good Mother Stallard beans are well known to a lot of cooks. They are known for making the best pot liquor (broth, basically) and have excellent flavor.

But I don’t know anything about any of these other beans. Flor de Mayo beans are from Mexico, and are a bush variety. Apparently they are used frequently in Mexican dishes such as refried beans and soups. I can’t wait to trial them, as they have pink pods and pink beans!

Jacob’s Cattle Bean is another bush bean that is rarely grown in the United States. Slow Food USA says that it’s a speckled kidney bean, named for its resemblance to Hereford cattle. Apparently they get more flavorful, and smell even better, the longer they cook, and they hold up well under that long cooking time, which makes them ideal for soup.

image credit: Rancho Gordo Beans (Lila)

Lila Beans are another unusual bean, and according to Rancho Gordo, they come from the south side of the Popocatépetl Volcano. They are a pretty purple bean which pairs well with pork.

In my class, we are working our way through our last module of the semester, and it’s about partnerships and community building around agriculture and food. Naturally this leads to a discussion of food sovereignty, which has at the heart of its movement the idea that cultural, traditional foods, grown under the control of indigenous peoples, and consumed for the health of all peoples, makes eating these kinds of food a celebration of heritage and history. Beans, being a staple crop for so many indigenous people, and which are adaptable to a variety of climates and growing styles, are an easy and delicious way to find a way in to this wonderful and important tradition.

IPCC Mitigation Report

My news feeds are full of commentary on the IPCC’s release of their mitigation report. Of course, since I have long been a student (formally and informally) of environmental issues, this is the kind of news I look for - maybe you haven’t been reading as much about it as I have. Plus, I do find these reports confusing for the average layperson. So imagine my delight when I came across a great eight-minute video, summing up the report.

This video was recommended by Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist, University professor, and recently-named Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. I have read several of her books, and she has a unique take on environmental issues, being both a Christian and a scientist, and someone who believes in active faith and hope. She is a good resource for scientific facts, but also for a positive outlook in the face of very frightening information. So, I knew this video would be helpful and I feel confident recommending it. I hope you enjoy it too, and are able to learn something from it - I sure did.

Spring Salad

Oh yes, it’s salad season. Tender, fresh lettuce leaves, mixed with all kinds of spring veg like snap peas, shelling peas, pea shoots, asparagus, and scallions. Add some salty aged cheese, a chewy whole grain like farro or bulgur, a dressing of lemony garlicky olive oil, and maybe even some grilled salmon or chicken, and you’ve got a great meal. How about a side of focaccia? I mean, what could be better?

Recipe for a spring salad, adapted loosely from Bon Appetit:

1 cup semi-pearled farro, boiled in salted water for 30-ish minutes, drained and cooled

8 cups of lettuce leaves, whatever you’ve got in the garden

2 cups of pea shoots (the tender new leaves and tendrils)

1 cup of sliced snap peas, or shelled peas, or sliced asparagus, or scallions, whatever is fresh from the garden, or a little of everything

Shaved aged parmesan

Dump all of this in a huge bowl.

Make a dressing: Grate a garlic clove or two into a mason jar, then add 1/4 cup-ish each of olive oil and lemon juice, plus some salt and pepper. Put the lid on the jar and shake shake shake.

Toss everything together. Add a protein if you like.

Easy Focaccia: For this, I use the recipe from Alexandra Stafford on her site Alexandra Cooks. I use the yeasted version, and I follow it to the letter. Trust me, it’s foolproof. It also works as a fabulous pizza base and we often use it for this purpose.

You can watch her make the bread on YouTube, below:

Enjoy!

Roasted Carrots with Honey, Garlic, Butter, and Thyme

For many winters now, I’ve been growing fava beans in the hop containers on our patio, but I recently had a flash of insight. We’ve had very few hop cones develop the last few summers: Could it be that the beans were providing too much nitrogen to the soil? If so, that could cause the hops to spend more energy making leaves, rather than fruit. Well, my M.O. is always to experiment, so this past winter I grew carrots in the hop containers instead.

I chose a mix called ‘Rainbow,’ because I like having the different colors to eat. In nature, carrots were originally white or very pale yellow. 5,000 years ago, yellow and purple carrots were developed in the Persian plateau. Then in the 1500s, orange carrots were hybridized by the Dutch. According to LiveScience, “Flash forward a couple of centuries and the Dutch were one of the main agricultural forces of 16th-century Europe. This know-how allowed them to propagate orange carrots in large quantities, which seemed to thrive in the Netherlands' mild, wet weather.” However, they were not grown to honor the Dutch royal family - that’s an urban myth.

The purple color is an anthocyanin, which has antioxidant benefits. The orange color is a carotenoid, which has heart benefits. So the mix of colors is great for your mood and your health.

Today I noticed that the hop bines (hops are not vines, but bines) are starting to sprout, so I knew that it was time to harvest the carrots, even if they were smaller than I would like. I hoped that the carrot roots would break up the soil in the containers a bit, allowing for better airflow to the hop roots. I can only imagine that this happened, because I had a great crop of baby carrots, in a lovely rainbow of color. I gave their greens to the chickens, who adore them.

hops emerging

Roasting the carrots (about two pounds worth) in a honey garlic butter sauce, with thyme, in a high-heat oven, truly couldn’t be any easier, and the honey, garlic, and thyme are all provided by the garden.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt half a stick of butter. Add three cloves of minced garlic, a couple tablespoons of honey, and some salt and pepper. Let that meld while you trim the carrots and add to a cookie sheet, attempting to make the carrots roughly the same size. No need to peel them - that skin is a great source of fiber. Toss the carrots with the butter sauce, and sprinkle some fresh-chopped thyme over the top (1-2 tablespoons, depending how much you like thyme!). Very fresh carrots won’t need as much roasting time as older, store-bought carrots will, and of course the size will also dictate how long you leave them in the oven. Aim for a caramelized appearance, with some browning. Leftovers can be popped into glass containers and stashed in the freezer.