Sunday, May 31, 2015

BEETS

Beet. What a wonderful vegetable. 
Edible from top to bottom. Eat the greens and the roots!


For many years we simply grew the cylindrical, tasty beets you see in the photo above. 


Once we tried a few other varieties, we were sure glad we did. The colors, shapes and flavors are attractive, varied and delicious!


Some of the varieties we have grown and enjoyed are:

ALBINO
BOLDOR
BULL'S BLOOD
CHIOGGIA
CYLINDRA
DETROIT DARK RED
EARLY WONDER TALL TOP
GOLDEN
RED ACE
TOUCHSTONE GOLD





















Plan on getting your beets started any time from early May through mid-June. This will give your beets plenty of time to germinate and grow into good sized plants. The greens are best harvested while fairly young. The roots are tastiest when medium sized.



For years I followed the simple instructions on the package for seed starting. Begin by soaking your beet seeds in room temperature water for a few hours or over night. 



Prepare a fertile, raised bed with good drainage. 

Usually the next step for me would be to plant the seeds about three inches apart about 1/2 to 1 inch below the surface. However, one of our girls, Rachel, planted the beet seeds for me a few years back. Instead of poking her finger into the soil less than an inch deep, she poked holes about two inches deep and dropped a seed into each hole. Hmmm. Ordinarily, I would fill in the holes with soil after the seed was dropped inside. With the seeds deeper in holes than recommended, I decided to leave these two inch holes with a seed in each... uncovered by soil... to prevent too much pressure from two inches of soil. These holes were watered gently for only five or six days before the happy little beet plants came peeking out! 

Germination is usually about 60 to 70%. This patch was more like 90%! What the heck! So, the same routine was followed from then on... with continued success! Thank you, Rachel, for a new take on starting beets!



So, once the beet seeds have germinated

 cover the beet patch with a floating row cover for the life of the beets. This will keep out any unwanted pests and allow the soil to warm up much more than without the cover. The sunshine passes through the cover as well as rain. If there is not enough rain, water with the cover in place. Beets benefit from regular watering. The growth and quality of the beets improve remarkably with the additional heat. One year we had a row of beets uncovered beside a row covered. What a difference! The uncovered row never matured.



After about a month of growth, remove the cover to weed and, if necessary, thin the beets. Go ahead and eat the leaves of any plants removed from thinning! Also, the remaining beet greens may be large enough at this point to start harvesting a few from each plant. Baby beet greens are delicious added to salads. 



Older beet greens can still be eaten and are tasty when steamed or sauteed in olive oil.





Wait until the beet roots are at least one inch in diameter before harvesting to eat. Most varieties have tender, delicious roots until they are over 4 inches in diameter. When beet roots grow larger than 4 inches, the flavor and texture starts going downhill.




When harvesting beet roots, leave an inch or two of stem on the top of the root to prevent the color from bleeding out. 

If you have an abundance of beets in the fall, best to store them in a root cellar type environment... cold but not freezing. Place them in damp sand or sawdust in a container or bucket.




How to eat beets? 

My all time favorite is BAKED BEETS. Wash and place the beets in a covered roasting pan. Bake them with skins on at 400 degrees for about an hour. Simply slip the skins off after baking. Slice or dice the cooked beets and eat warm with butter and salt. Or slice the beets and soak them in apple cider vinegar. 

Well, maybe my favorite is BEET CHIPS
Thinly slice raw beets. 
Marinate in 1 cup water, 1 cup apple cider vinegar and 4 tablespoons of olive oil for about 20 minutes. 
Drip dry in a colander. 
Season with salt, pepper or other flavors. 
Dehydrate at 145 degrees for 1 hour.
Then dehydrate at 115 degrees until crispy. This will take as many as 24 hours. 
Beet chips!

But, wait. I really love beets peeled and SHREDDED into salads.

And, there are wonderful recipes for BEET SOUP, also known as BORSCHT. I like it served hot or cold. Beautiful color and flavor! 
Below is the photo of a simple, blended borscht recipe.

Want to give it a try? 
Here is a recipe based on the beet borscht on the TasteofHome.com site.

Place the following ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil:
2 cups shredded beets
1 large chopped onions
2 or 3 medium sized carrots shredded
2 cups of water
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes with a cover.

Add:
1 quart of chicken, beef or vegetable broth 
1 cup of shredded cabbage
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of lemon
Simmer for 15 more minutes, uncovered.

Eat as is... or blend into a creamy soup as in the photo above. 
You might want to add a dollop of sour cream to each serving. 
Simply delicious!





There's more! I love BEETS JUICED with apples and carrots! 
Nectar of the gods!

And what a delight it was trying beet pesto. Hands down favorite was made with Touchstone Gold beets:






Have you ever PICKLED BEETS
I hope to try this soon.


Whether made into pesto, pickled, dehydrated, juiced, boiled, steamed, baked, roasted or shredded... beets are a delicious, nutritious addition to any meal.











Saturday, May 16, 2015

MUSTARD




Mustard greens are known to be zesty, flavorful additions to salads, stir fries, sandwiches and classic southern dishes. 

My personal favorite use of mustard is a wrap! Forget the bread. Forget the tortilla. Grab a giant red or green mustard leaf from the garden! Wrap up some goodies! The colors are beautiful. The flavor is surprisingly mild, yet distinctive. 

I love to fill large mustard leaves with chopped and seasoned seafoods... tuna, shrimp, smoked salmon, crab or halibut. 
Or, how about curried chunks of chicken with chopped celery and crumbled cashews? Or, egg salad with olives?

Here is the process in photos.  This is a mixture of lots of dungeness crab with chives and a little mayo:


Scoop a good amount onto the large, clean mustard leaf:




Fold over both sides:




Roll it up:




 Add garnish. Here the garnish is sprigs of cauliflower:








Grow mustard as you would other greens. Best to start  seeds indoors any time between April and July. I like to start mustard plants in April and again late in June or early July.





There are several varieties of mustard. For the wrap, I recommend the giant red:





Mustard plants can also be grown for the seeds. Once the mustard plant flowers, seed pods form full of many, many seeds! Mustard seeds can be crushed and used to make the popular mustard condiments we eat on sandwiches and hot dogs. The darker the seed, the hotter and spicier the mustard! Mustard seeds are also used for cooking. Mustard seeds are used for pickling. If you are growing mustard plants especially for the seeds, try growing the milder white seeds, Brassica alba. 



Decide which variety and how many plants you would like to grow.  





Fill pots with potting or seed starting soil.
Make two to four 1/4 inch indentations in each small pot of soil. Place a mustard seed in each indentation. Cover the seeds with soil. What you see here are 4" pots:


After the seeds are planted, water the pots gently until well moistened with warm water.




Place the pots in a container in your warmest indoor location  or on a seed warming mat. Cover with plastic. Keep moist.





Mustard seeds usually germinate  in 4 to 10 days. Once they sprout, no need for the plastic cover or the warming mat. Place them in your sunniest indoor location, a cold frame or a greenhouse.




Mustard starts grow quickly. Once the plants are two to three inches tall
plant outside in a sunny spot in fertile soil with about one square foot of space allowed for each plant. Best to cover with a floating row cover early and late in the season so the plants do not get too cold.



Mustard plants do well in cool, moist conditions. If grown in a climate that is too warm, mustard tends to go to seed prematurely. This is called bolting. The plant will likely produce few leaves and seeds if the plant bolts. If grown in a cooler climate like Sitka, mustard will grow and mature gradually... resulting first in lots of large, healthy leaves and finally with seed packed pods.












When harvesting leaves, pinch them off as needed from the outside of the plant. 






As the mustard plant matures, yellow flowers (sometimes white) will appear and gradually become seed pods. This can happen in as few as sixty days after planting. The leaves of the plant turn yellow and the pods turn brown when it is time to harvest the seeds. The trick is to harvest the seed pods before they burst open! Harvest and place the seed pods in a paper bag until they mature and burst. Shake the bag to loosen the seeds from the pods entirely. Use seeds fresh after harvesting. If you have an abundance of mustard seeds, dry them thoroughly and store them in an air tight container for later use.











Saturday, May 9, 2015

CARROTS




Carrots are simply beautiful fresh from the garden! 





Carrots really grow well in our climate. There are many varieties. The blunt-ended nantes varieties seem to be the most reliable.


A few of our favorites:


WHITE SATIN



SUGARSNAX


EXCELLENT FOR OVERWINTERING, MERIDA ON THE RIGHT




NELSON (ORANGE)


Varieties we have grown and enjoyed over the years are  
AMSTERDAM, ATOMIC RED, BOLERO, COSMIC PURPLE, GIANTS OF COLMAR, INGOT, MERIDA, MOKUM, NAPA, NAPOLI, NECTAR, NEGOVIA, NELSON, NEW KURODA, PRODIGY, RODELIKA, ROMANCE, SPEEDO, SOLAR YELLOW, SUGARSNAX, TAMINO, TENDERSWEET, WHITE SATIN, YAYA

Once you have decided which varieties you want to grow, prepare a garden bed early in the season around the end of April through the middle of May. This will be early enough in the season for carrots to mature in flavor and size by fall.

Because we get so much rain, we find that a 50/50 mix of sand and fertile soil does wonders for carrots and other root crops. Good drainage is essential for successful growth. 
Organic matter in a carrot garden should be thoroughly decomposed, not fresh. 
And, as tempting as it might be with our annual herring spawn, hold way back on the herring eggs. Too much nitrogen results in carrots that look like deformed hands with 2 or more hairy fingers! 
A final warning... do not plant carrots in a bed where potatoes were last grown. Carrot scab can be the consequence.

Choose a time to till or loosen your soil when it is not soaking wet. Lucky for Sitkans, if our soil is ever going to be even remotely dry, it is in April or May.

Once the soil in the carrot bed has been loosened, direct sow the carrot seeds into the soil. This means you will be planting the seeds directly into the soil, not starting the seeds in advance indoors. Carrot seeds are the perfect size to put in an old herb shaker with standard sized holes.



Gently shake the carrot seeds over the prepared garden bed spreading the seeds sparingly and as evenly as possible. Best to do this when the air is still rather than when it is windy. 




Once the carrot seeds have been shaken onto the surface of the garden bed, take a rake and lightly rough or chop the seeds into the soil. The seeds barely need covering... say 1/4 to 1/2 inch. If you have a small carrot patch, you could sprinkle 1/4 inch of soil or sand over the seeds. 



Don't forget to label if you are growing more than one variety!




Now it is time to gently water the newly planted carrot bed. Use a gentle shower so that you don't form a crust on the surface from too much pressure. It is important to keep the carrot bed moist until the seeds germinate. If it is not raining, then best to get out there every couple of days and water. Be patient! It can take up to three weeks for these little carrot seeds to sprout! 




Cats love to use carrot beds for litter boxes. For that reason alone, it is best to cover the carrot bed with a floating row cover. A more important reason for a floating row cover is to increase the temperature of the soil. It makes a remarkable difference in carrot growth. No need to remove the floating row cover to water. The water from hose or rain will pass through the cloth with no problem. Sunshine too!







Now think of a way to keep dogs from tromping through your freshly planted carrot patch. We have used old fish nets successfully for fencing:





We have also kept old rolls of fencing handy to protect garden beds. We use old pieces of rebar to hold the fencing in place:




Time to remove the fencing and floating row cover after about a month of growth for weeding and thinning. We replace the fencing and floating row cover once the job is done:



Start enjoying small carrots as early as August!


When the weather starts getting cold in October, we cover our carrot bed with a tarp. We place a foot or two of mulch on top of the tarp. This protects the carrots from freezing. Most often we use seaweed from the high tide line for mulch. As we harvest the carrots, we toss the seaweed mulch to the side and uncover however many carrots we need. Come spring, we can till that seaweed as fertilizer into the new spring garden bed.


So what to do with an abundance of carrots? We use the majority of our carrots for juicing from September until they are gone. Fresh carrot juice is sweet and delicious! Carrots are wonderful juiced in with other fruits and vegetables:




We also like to share carrots with friends and neighbors:




It's always fun to invite an entire classroom of children over to drink carrot juice, eat carrot cake and munch on the carrots they pull!



And, carrots are surprisingly good grated into ribbons and then dehydrated! A yummy snack food!






Here is one of my favorite thank you drawings from one of the many children who visited and harvested fruits, vegetables and flowers from our gardens. I received this unusual piece of art work in a classroom bundle 
...and never knew the name of the amazing young artist! 
The carrot makes a lovely bride for the zucchini groom!







Wishing you all a good experience and success growing carrots!