week 7

Cooking in Season
Week 7
As I stare into the great weed patch of a garden at work with the wind blowing the tall ragweed to and fro, I find it a good time to reflect on what went wrong and where I did go right. 50 pounds of seed potatoes and a sore back tell me that it is a bad idea to plant potatoes in the low spot of the garden in the heaviest soil there is. Bad idea. Oddly enough, two rows over, my carrots are thriving and I’m not sure why. I tied a few sheep to graze on where my potatoes were and pulled as many out of the ground as I could. My tomatoes aren’t doing too bad, but nowhere near as well as my sister’s tomatoes that got 6 foot tall cages and are still growing out of the top of them. I know I planted peppers in there somewhere but I think the thistles overtook it. My boss’s corn in the one corner is sticking it’s thumbs in its ears and sticking out it’s tongue like a taunting second grader as it grows above my failed garlic experiment and weed choked white beets. Where I did go right was with beans. I have about 5 different types of gourmet dry soup beans growing which I inoculated, a technique touted by Rodale to reintroduce beneficial bacteria to help the roots grow and the plant to produce more. Said beans look amazing. The dry dirt around it just thrives with life as they stretch toward the sun, outstretching the grass growing around them, but not by much. I hope someone likes Edamame, edible soybeans, because I hand weeded them at least twice by now and they should be coming on soon. I also tried growing garbanzo beans as I love hummus and would love it even more if it came out of the garden…. Buuut they aren’t as easy to grow as other beans and there’s only one per pod. So out of the one pound of seed I planted, I only got about 3 ounces of beans. Something didn’t work out well there.Another thing that is really doing well is my carrots. Every year I am determined to get good carrots and every year I get a little bit closer to figuring it out. I am not sure what I did right at my work garden, maybe it’s the 10 hours of hand weeding that they likes or maybe it was getting planted as filler in between winter squash, but they are looking amazing. The problem, however is that carrots get sweeter as the temperature drops. This is why I am so baffled as to how carrots grow in California and are sweet. Maybe I don’t want to know, but there’s got to be some trick to get them to ripen at the right time without turning hard as sticks, get big and nice and long, and get sweet. I think I’m close this year, but I’ll let you all decide. Oh, I think I might harvest some, put them in sawdust and ice and see if that works. I guess that’s the fun thing about growing your own food. Yes, there is probably a chemical that would make this process easier, but it’s more fun to figure it out naturally.
The blackberries are here, however not for much longer. The blueberries at work are starting to come on, but I don’t think that I will have enough for all the baskets at once so if you get some one week, let someone else try them the next week. Peaches are ripening now along with some early apples. And we have baby melons coming on now too.Anyway, the blackberries are hit or miss. The wild ones are smaller and I can’t pass them up when they’re in season, but they aren’t the best for raw eating. I highly suggest you put them in something to tone down their acidity. Cobblers or on ice cream works really well or here is a simple blackberry jam recipe.
1 pint blackberries1 pint sugar
Put berries in a small saucepan and mash with potato masher on medium heat. Once the berries are at a boil, add sugar slowly into the saucepan, stirring constantly. I like to add a little bit of lemon juice for some added flavor. Return to a boil to dissolve sugar, about 2 minutes. Store in the refrigerator and eat immediately. Enjoy! - Janee