Lettuce Seed Mixes

I really like lettuce seed mixes, those packets that contain seeds of lots of different colors and shapes of lettuce.  I’ve been planting them each spring for the past five or six years and I’m hooked.  I’m not sure what took me so long.  I used to pour over the lettuce section of seed catalogs, reading descriptions of each variety, admiring the pictures, trying to select a green and a red, a ruffled and a smooth, loose leaves and crunchy heads and all the best flavors.  That’s a lot of seed packets and they translated into lots of lettuce, more than I really needed.

I’d gotten free gift packets of lettuce mixes over the years, most often with my Territorial Seeds order, but I’d never planted them, unreasonably biased toward my selections.  Then in an open-minded moment I planted a row.  The seeds were a range of whites and browns and the leaves that came up were a lovely array of dark and light greens and reds.  As they grew, each leaf revealed its own distinct shape.  Each time I checked the row there was another surprise.

As the leaves got big enough to add to a salad, I started thinning the row, gently pulling a selection of colors and textures and leaving the rest.  They grew bigger, I did more thinning, made salads of bigger leaves, and the thinning/growing sequence continued until the last leaves standing had formed full heads, each one almost a salad by itself.  The whole process was so much fun.  And there was none of the waste that sometimes happened when I planted all the varieties I used to order.

Another part of the fun was figuring out just what varieties I was harvesting. Territorial Seeds has several lettuce mixes including London Springs, the mix that started me on this path.  It includes Red Sails, Flashy Trout’s Back, Outredgeous, Hyper Red Rumple, and Bullet. I identified the named varieties from the catalog pictures and guessed about others.  The description of another of Territorial’s mixes, Garden Heirloom Blend, contains names as well as details: “Redder Ruffled Oaks, a loose-leaf with red on green oak-shaped leaves; Devils Tongue, a romaine with green leaves overlaid in deep red; and Speckles, a tight bibb-like butterhead with lime green leaves splashed with bright red and brown.”  Yet another of Territorial’s mixes, Wild Garden Lettuce, sounds very fun though identifying each variety would be a challenge.  “This mix is a vast assortment of literally dozens of varieties, including selections of lettuce that remain unnamed and not available anywhere else other than in this unique mix. If you discover a certain selection that you are especially fond of, let a few plants go to seed, and save your own. Bred by Frank Morton, Gathering Together Farm.” I want to try it.

Lettuce grown from these mixes makes beautiful and delicious spring salads, combinations of colors and textures and subtly different flavors.  Maybe I’ll find one variety in these mixes that I just have to have more of and will buy a single pack of that seed, but for now lettuce mixes work for me.

In Praise of Reemay

My friend Molly emailed this happy news a few days ago: “My beans all popped up under the Reemay, yours must have too.”  Yes, mine did too.  Whew!  We’d both planted bean seeds in less than ideal conditions, cool soil and forecasts for rain, but we’d covered the rows with Reemay, gambling as gardeners often do that this floating row cover would provide the warmth needed to make the seeds germinate instead of rot.  We won!  And now sturdy seedlings have shouldered up through the soil, ready to start adding leaves whenever the weather really warms up.  Germination was so good I’ll even have to do some thinning.

Reemay is the brand name of the original floating row cover, a lightweight spun polyester fabric gardeners can spread out over newly seeded beds or drape over transplants or growing plants and then secure with rocks or soil.  Agribon is another brand available today.  Reemay is typically about six feet wide and is sold on rolls of 20, 50 or 250 feet.  The six-foot width is perfect for my five-by-eighteen foot garden beds because the additional width gives plants room to grow up under the cover.  I buy a 250-foot roll and cut off eighteen-foot lengths for a whole bed and shorter lengths for sections of beds.  Each piece lasts at least three seasons before beginning to break down, so a 250-foot roll lasts me for years.  I’ve bought it at Stueber Distributing Company in Snohomish, Washington.  Territorial Seeds also sells it mail order as do many other seed and garden supply companies. Row covers also come in lighter and heavier weights though I haven’t tried either yet.

During this past rainy week, as we anxiously monitored our bean rows, Molly and I both periodically slipped our hands under the Reemay to see how much warmer the soil felt.  Even on a cloudy day, the soil under the row cover felt decidedly warmer than soil exposed to the air.  On the few sunny days, the covered soil was almost hot.  Row covers let rain through so the soil stayed moist but they also let light through and trap and hold heat, the key to our germination success.

While we use Reemay to warm the soil for seed germination and also use it to protect early spring and fall/winter crops from cold and frost, it has another valuable use in the garden: as a barrier to bugs, birds and cats.  I use it over carrots to prevent carrot rust fly, over beets and chard to prevent leaf miner, over turnips and cabbages to prevent root maggot.  I’ll often leave it on carrots, beets and spring turnips until harvest and on cabbage crops until the plants are well enough established to withstand bugs. If the days get really hot, I’ll loosen the row cover or even remove it temporarily but our cool marine climate rarely makes this necessary.  Row covers also prevent birds from pulling up newly sprouted seeds and cats from using the garden bed as a giant cat box. As any photo of my garden reveals, there’s always Reemay covering something somewhere.  It looks a bit ghostly, but I don’t think I could garden without it.

Beans, Corn, Squash: The Three Sisters

In the next few days, I’ll be planting beans, corn and squash in the kitchen garden.  I’m a bit behind my usual schedule because I’ve been traveling for the past three weeks, but I left the garden beds ready for planting so all I need now is a sunny day and, though this may be asking too much, some weeks of warm weather to speed germination and growth.

Beans, corn and squash, the three-sister trio often associated with Native American gardens, have always been part of my kitchen garden.  Though I’ve never attempted the Native American planting strategy of seeding corn in the center of a mound, surrounding it with beans that climb the corn stalks and finally surrounding these two with squash whose rambling vines encompass their sisters, I do take advantage of the synergy among these three vegetables both in the garden and in the kitchen.

In my rectangular garden beds, I plant pole beans in one bed beneath a trellis of strings for climbing, corn in two adjacent beds, two rows per bed creating a block of four rows to encourage good pollination, and squash in one or two beds that give lots of space to vine and spread.  This year’s corn goes into the beds that held nitrogen-producing shell beans last year, an important rotation for healthy corn; pole beans go into a bed that next year can use the nitrogen beans provide; and squash goes into beds where its robust growth won’t overwhelm other vegetables.  Planting it next to corn beds where it can wander beneath the stalks is perfect.  The seeds in these photos are three favorites: Seneca Horizon corn, Sunset runner beans and Burgess Buttercup winter squash.

Three months from now, with very little work on my part, these small seeds will be massive plants.  Soon after that I’ll be harvesting the first corn and shell beans and, later, squash and dried beans.

Beans, corn and squash are complementary sisters in the garden and they join together just as wonderfully in the kitchen.  Fresh succotash is only a dream at this point in the garden season but when it’s finally a reality, around the end of August, I’ll eat it every day at first.  Maybe it tastes so good because together corn and beans form a complete protein, but on my tongue the goodness comes from flavors and textures, slightly crunchy sweet corn and soft, rich beans. By late autumn, the winter squash will be ready to join corn that I’ve frozen and dried beans I’ll rehydrate in soups and stews, traditional three sisters meals that carry us through the winter.  But I get ahead of myself.  It’s spring and time to plant seeds.

2013 Lopez Lamb, Wool and Goat Festival

The Third Annual Lopez Lamb, Wool and Goat Festival is coming soon, May 11, 2013, to the Lopez Center for Community and the Arts.  All the sheep, goat, fiber and food events that made the past two festivals such a success are happening again this year.  Don’t miss it!

Rhubarb

Rhubarb grows so quickly, exploding from the ground, shooting up stalks, billowing out foliage, all in a few weeks.  It leaves other spring perennials, asparagus, artichokes, strawberries, far behind.  But this rapid growth is good; it means pies and sauces sooner.

We are a two-pie family when it comes to rhubarb.  Scott prefers rhubarb custard lattice-top pie while I’m partial to plain rhubarb pie, either two-crust or galette style.  I’ll often make one of each and we’ll sample each other’s favorite but have seconds of the one we like best.

Both recipes I use are from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, 1973 edition. I’ve used the excellent pie section so often that the pages are falling out.

Rhubarb Custard Pie

Mix 1 and ½ cups sugar, ¼ cup all-purpose flour, ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg and a dash of salt.  Add to 3 beaten eggs; beat smooth.  Stir in 4 cups 1-inch slices rhubarb. Prepare pastry for 9-ince lattice-top pie.  Fill with rhubarb mixture.  Dot with 2 tablespoons butter.  Adjust lattice top; seal.  Bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes.

Rhubarb Pie

Combine 4 cups 1-inch slices rhubarb, 1 and ½ cups sugar, 1/3 cup all-purpose flour and dash of salt; let stand for 15 minutes. Prepare pastry for 2-crust 9-inch pie; line 9-inch pie plate with rhubarb mixture. Dot with 2 tablespoons butter.  Adjust top crust, cutting slits for escape of steam; seal; flute. Bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes.

In this season of abundant rhubarb, pie is for dinner, or even lunch but for breakfast I like rhubarb sauce with plain yogurt and granola.  Several years ago I discovered Nigella Lawson’s rhubarb sauce recipe that calls for baking rather than boiling the rhubarb with sugar and grated orange rind and it’s the one I’ve used ever since.

Rhubarb Sauce

For two pounds of sliced rhubarb, add 1 or 1 and 1/3 cup sugar, depending on your sweetness preference, and the grated rind of one orange.  Bake, covered, at 375 degrees for 35-45 minutes until soft but not mushy.  I’ve sometimes substituted candied ginger for orange rind or simply left out the flavorings.  All variations are delicious.

The rhubarb in my current clump is from starts friends in eastern Washington gave me.  An unnamed variety, it’s the best rhubarb I’ve ever grown. The light pink stalks are tender and flavorful, needing less sugar than some of the darker red varieties I’ve grown in the past.  And it stays lush well into late summer with only moderate watering.

Our daily indulgence in rhubarb will no doubt wane as strawberries, raspberries and blueberries come in but until then, it’s the best thing on offer and we’ll eat our fill.

Bright Lights Chard

Who needs spring tulips when the kitchen garden offers Bright Lights chard!  After picking a bunch of this lovely, overwintered chard the other day, I couldn’t resist arranging it in a rainbow and setting it out to admire. 

The variety I’ve grown for the past few years is Bright Lights, Johnny’s Selected Seeds 1998 AAS winner. The Fedco catalog offers a glowing description and recent history of this chard: “Bright Lights bathes stems, midribs and secondary veins in a panoply of gold, yellow, orange, pink, intermediate pastels and dazzling stripes. The AAS judges were impressed by the tenderness of its dark green to bronze leaves and the mildness of its chard flavor…Developed by John Eaton of Lower Hutt, New Zealand, who found the parent plants, a red one and a yellow one, in a small home garden in 1977 and crossed them to standard green and white varieties, selecting for color and flavor over the next fifteen years. Johnny’s worked the following years to preserve the strength and range of the individual colors.”

Years ago, I grew the more aptly named Rainbow chard from Thompson and Morgan but turned to Bright Lights when Johnny’s introduced it.  Uprising Seeds in Bellingham offers Rainbow chard now so I may try it this year for a flavor and color comparison. 

Bright Lights or Rainbow, this chard is as gorgeous in the kitchen as it is in the garden.  I usually separate the stems from the leaves, chop them and steam them for a few minutes before slicing and adding the leaves.  This method gives one more chance to admire the colorful stems and results in leaves and stems that are equally tender. 

Chard has the same earthy flavor that kale has, but it is more melt-in-the-mouth tender.  Eating it plain is such a treat that I often do no more than wilting it in the pan before serving it.  Still, chard does blend well with other flavors.  Garlic and olive oil, yellow raisins, toasted hazelnuts are all tasty additions.  There’s also our longtime favorite pasta dish from Alice Water’s Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza and Calzone (1984): Chard, Goat Cheese and Buckwheat Pasta.  The sharp flavor of goat cheese is a perfect contrast to chard’s sweetness and the buckwheat pasta matches chard’s earthy notes.  We often make emmer flour pasta instead of buckwheat and use half as much cream and twice as much goat cheese.  This recipe is definitely one that invites variations.

Chard, Goat Cheese and Buckwheat Pasta

2 cloves garlic

1 large bunch chard

2 tablespoons butter

Salt and Pepper

1 cup cream

2 ounces goat cheese

Buckwheat pappardelle (for 2-4)

Chop the garlic 
Stem the chard. Slice the stems and cut the leaves crosswise in ribbons.  Wilt the stems and leaves in a covered skillet until barely tender.  Remove and drain. Melt the butter in the skillet, add the garlic and the drained chard and stew gently for 4 to 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat the cream. Crumble the goat cheese, add half of it to the cream and whisk until smooth.  Add to the chard and simmer gently for a few minutes.

Cook the pasta and add to the chard along with the rest of the goat cheese. Mix well and serve garnished with black pepper.

The leaves I’m harvesting now are from chard I planted nearly a year ago.  Like kale and other hardy greens, chard overwinters in our mild northwest climate and begins growing again in the spring, just in time to match the tulips but much more welcome because we can eat it.

Buds and Blossoms

The few remaining winter crops are putting on a showy display in the kitchen garden right now.  The tough stalks and stems of Brussels sprouts and red cabbage have sent out tender, broccoli-like buds and the overgrown arugula is topped with creamy white, four-petal blooms.  I could have pulled these plants out weeks ago, but I left them in place, both for their beauty and for their taste.

Brussels sprouts always surprise me this time of year with bright new growth bursting out along scarred stalks.  Cabbages send out buds too, just below the point where the heads were cut.  The red cabbage buds are especially pretty this year, blue green tinged with purple rising above the tattered winter leaves.  Like the buds of kale, these other cabbage family flower buds are sweet and tender.  Lightly steamed, they are delicious; sautéed in olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes they are even better.

There are many more arugula blossoms than I could possibly use but I’ve left them all blooming anyway.  They make a lovely garnish—I scattered them over a frittata the other day—and their subtle, sweet flavor, less spicy than the leaves, is a great addition to early spring salads.

These buds and blossoms are a short-lived treat, the last gift of the winter garden.  In a week or two we’ll have eaten them all and I’ll finally pull the plants to make way for spring and summer crops but for now we’re enjoying them.