Monarch Apple

My first apple arrived this spring. Kind of sad and lonely, single child and all. It's a Monarch (from England, where the monarchs are, Trump's royal delusions notwithstanding), one of the heirloom apples I purchased from Seed Savers Exchange in Deborah, Iowa. I first ordered five varieties in December of 2014 and reported about it on this blog in January, 2015. Seedsavers grafted the trees on M-7 dwarf apple tree stock, so they will only be 12-15 feet tall when mature. The trees arrived in the Spring of 2016 and that's when I planted the Monarch. The original plan was to plant them in parking (the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street), but I cut down our Douglas fir in the front yard so I had space for these trees, eventually planting four varieties: Monarch, Brown Sweet, Black Twig, and Knobbed Russet. I also planted a semi-dwarf peach tree. The Woodard was D.O.A., and of course Seed Savers refunded my money.

About M-7 rootstock, from Extension.org:
Formerly known as EM VII. Selected in 1912 from unknown parentage at the East Malling Research station in Maidstone, Kent, England. Trees on M.7 EMLA produce a semi-dwarf tree about 60 to 70% as big as seedling. Trees are moderately precocious and may lean with some cultivars and may require trunk support. Trees tend to produce many rootsuckers. M.7 EMLA has been widely planted since the 1960s with cultivars such as ‘McIntosh’, ‘Empire’, ‘Cortland’, ‘Golden Delicious’ and spur strains of ‘Delicious’. Trees with cultivars such as ‘Gala’, ‘Stayman’, and ‘Granny Smith’ tend to lean excessively and require support.

This is what this apple will look like one day, God willing and the creek don't rise. 

Here is the description from Seed Savers:

Apple Tree, Monarch 0076 Essex, England, 1918 introduction. Large, flattish shaped apple. Flesh is crisp, tender, white, subacid to sweet. It has been a very reliable, annual bearer and an excellent pie apple at Heritage Farm. Ripens early September - October.

Pesto Chango!

Basil and parsley, both of which will make it into this first batch of pesto.

This happens every year, I plant five or six basil plants and come June, I've barely used any of it as it begins to bolt. The best way to harvest basil is to whack it off just above the bottom few leaves making a clean go of it. But what to do with all that basil, which might last in the fridge no more than a couple of weeks? You don't really have a choice but to make a big ol' batch of pesto.

Pretty much all the ingredients except salt and pepper. Getting down to the last of my yummy garlic. I'll have to hit the farmers market for a couple of months until the new crop is ready to harvest.

The cheese in pesto is optional (keeps it vegan for those so inclined) and I always put it in when I cook with the pesto as the pesto stays fresh longer without the cheese, whether freezing it or merely storing it in the fridge.

This first pesto I'm making uses walnuts. I find the flavor is deeper if they're toasted for a few minutes before using.

This is a triple batch of sauce and it barely fits in the food processor. Take your time and pulse it.

All that for three small jars of this mighty sauce (a scant 24 ounces/3 cups/1 ½ pints/710ml) all told. I cover the top with olive oil to keep it from turning brown. Then it's into the freezer for a few months. It's just the thing mid-winter.

I actually made two triple batches of pesto. The second made from unsalted raw pistachios from Trader Joes instead of the walnuts. No toasting necessary. Also, six cups of basil and no parsley. Otherwise, samo-samo.

Basil-Parsley Walnut Pesto

This Basil Walnut Pesto recipe comes together in 15 minutes with just  6 ingredients. (Not really. Took me an hour.)

Servings: 16 (totally made up number)

Calories: 191 kcal

Ingredients

6 cloves garlic

1 cup walnuts 

4 cup packed fresh basil leaves

2 cup packed fresh parsley leaves

1 ⅓ cup olive oil

2 teaspoons salt 

1 teaspoon  freshly ground pepper

4 oz.  (1 ⅓ cup) Parmigiano-Reggiano  grated

Instructions

To toast the walnuts:

In a  skillet on medium heat, and add walnuts. Toast until fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes, shaking frequently to prevent scorching. Remove from heat.

To make the pesto:

1. Drop garlic cloves into running food processor. 
2. Add nuts and grind to a coarse-meal consistency. 
3. Add the basil and parsley, salt and pepper.   Chop until completely integrated with the nuts and garlic.
4. Add olive oil in a stream with blender running.
5. If adding cheese, do so now or wait until actually using the pesto.

Serve as a topping on pasta (3/4 c. pesto per pound of pasta), as a spread on sandwiches or bruschetta, or as a garnish to soups.

Beet Greens, Chard, and Steel Cut Oats (Recipe)

This is pretty much a case of taking an existing recipe, in this case one from Anya Kassomff's excellent cookbook, Simply Vibrant, and pretty much changing everything. Her recipe, Creamy Steel Cut Oats With Rainbow Chard and Pine Nuts looked good (simple and vibrant, actually), but perhaps a little bland for my taste. This recipe has become something else altogether under my unsubtle touch. In my version there is no rainbow chard, and no pine nuts. I added onion, garlic, beet greens, Fordhook Swiss chard, fresh herbs, beets, and pistachios. So, this is really my recipe now, for better or worse.

Trader Joes is my go-to source for steel cut oats. Make sure you buy the regular slow cooking variety.

Pretty much a complete one-pot meal. A salad would be nice, of course, as well a crusty loaf of bread, but not necessary.

Steel Cut Oats with Beet Greens and Chard

1 pound of beet greens &/or chard, washed

½ yellow onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, chopped

1 cup steel cut oats (slow cooking)

1 cup unsweetened coconut milk

1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs (whatever is handy. I used thyme, basil & chervil)

beets from beet greens, roasted, skinned, and sliced for garnish (optional)

1/4 cup unsalted pistachios

olive oil

3 cups of boiling hot water

1. Sauté onions on medium heat until translucent (about 5 minutes)
2. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute
3. Add the oats. Sauté until starting to toast and turn brown, 3-5 minutes.
4. Add hot water. Bring to a boil, turn down heat to to simmer, cover and cook for 25 minutes.
5. While the oats are cooking, separate the chard/beet greens from their stems. Coarsely chop stems. Sauté for 5 minutes and set aside. 
6. Chop the chard/beet green leaves into 1-inch pieces.
7. After the oats have simmered for 25 minutes, add the coconut milk and the chopped herbs. Continue to cook on low, partially covered, for 15 minutes, until creamy, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.
8. Add chopped greens, mixing thoroughly. Cover and let rest for 5 minutes.
9. Serve in pasta bowls. Garnish with sliced beets and pistachios.

The Great Garlic Scape

If garlic were art, it would be a triptych, deserving of a place in the most holy of culinary shrines. Garlic gives of itself thrice in a single season. In May, when the young garlic plants pop up, we're treated to an aromatic garlicky scallion called spring or green garlic （青蒜 qīngsuàn）, wonderful in eggs and soups and pastas. In the fall, the garlic itself is ready to harvest, to be stored hanging in the basement throughout the winter, with the perennial hope it will last until the following fall harvest. But in between these two deliveries, we have the lesser-known, and some might even say lowly, garlic scape (蒜苔suàntái, 蒜芯 suànxīn, 蒜苗 suànmiáo, or 蒜毫儿 suànháor, depending on where one is in China). My first experience with garlic scapes came in Beijing in the fall of 1988 when I was attending Peking University . Back then, I was a carnivore, and one of my favorite Sichuan dishes was 鱼香肉丝 yúxiāng ròusī (shredded pork in garlic sauce). Usually the dish is served with a green vegetable such as 空心菜 kōngxīncài (water spinach), 芹菜 qíncài (celery) or 莴笋 wōsǔn (celtuce, also called stem lettuce, celery lettuce, asparagus lettuce Wikipedia). However, our favorite place to eat, the Restaurant Number 5 at the Friendship Hotel, 20 minutes from our dorm by bike, used garlic scapes whenever they were in season. And these babies will last for months in the fridge, so they were available for at least half the year.

A fairly large and robust garlic crop this year. I've raved about this wonderful Italian variety in previous blog posts.

The scapes are actually the flower of the garlic plant. As such, it pays to remove them when they're still young and tender as the plant can then concentrate its energy in developing large bulbs and the 5-6 big cloves this variety is known for.

I think they're king of cute, like a pig's tail.

Yikes. This is but one third of the harvest. I better get stir frying. Perhaps to make my go-to replacement for 鱼香肉丝, 鱼香茄子 yúxiāng qiézi, which replaces the pork with eggplant. Quite delicious.

Red Russian Kale Collusion (Recipe)

In this rigged kale recipe, the red Russian kale colludes with lacinato kale in a simple one-bowl meal that will please even the most picky and partisan palates. Make it vegetarian or vegan. I modified and merged  a couple of recipes (hence the collusion) and came up with this slow cooker version of a classic dish, made healthier with short grain brown rice. Leave out the dairy and you can be even more self-righteous. Red Russian Kale is the bomb.

Red Russian kale, an heirloom variety from Seed Savers in Deborah, Iowa.

Lacinato kale, also from Seed Savers.

The kale and mushrooms really cook down, but I halved the rice from the original recipe.




Completely unnecessary picture of onions cooking and might just as well be a stock photo, as far as the viewer is concerned.

Slow Cooker Mushroom Risotto with Brown Rice, Kale, and Mushrooms

10-16 oz kale (I used lacinato and red Russian) washed and cut into 1-inch pieces

8-12 oz. mushrooms (I used crimini and oyster), thinly sliced

5 cloves garlic (the original recipe called for NO garlic. Can you imagine?)

1 small yellow onion cut into small pieces

3 cups of veggie broth

1 cup short grain brown rice

½ cup white wine

1 tablespoon chopped thyme 

salt and pepper

1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, plus more for serving

2 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons olive oil

Bragg’s nutritional yeast (optional

Step 1    

In a large enameled cast-iron casserole, or large wide saucepan, heat 1-2 tablespoons
olive oil. Add the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl.

Step 2   

Add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil to the casserole. Add the
kale and cook over moderate heat until wilted, 3 minutes. Add the kale to the mushrooms and set aside.

Step 3   

In the casserole, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter and 2 tablespoons of olive oil (3 of olive oil for a vegan version). Add the onion, season with salt and pepper and cook over moderate heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the rice and thyme and stir until coated with oil and lightly toasted, 2 minutes. Add the wine and cook, stirring, until wine has evaporated. 

Step 4

Pour rice and onion mixture into into a 4-quart crock pot set to high. Add the broth. Cook for 1 ½ hours. Add the mushrooms and kale. Cook another ½-1 hour or until most of the broth is absorbed.

Step 5

Add 1 tablespoon of butter and 1/3 cup of cheese stirring, until the risotto is creamy. Season with salt and pepper. Drizzle with oil and serve with more cheese.

For a vegan version, omit the butter and cheese, and sprinkle with a little Bragg’s nutritional yeast.

Drip Works

Good news! The drip irrigation system I installed really works. Since I installed it last week, we have had consistent rain every other day or so, and I haven't had to water.

The tomatoes have really started to take off. I can't wait: 24 plants; 16 varieties of heirlooms.

Unfortunately, the cilantro is always ready before the tomatoes. Hmm...plant later next year? 

Everything looks pretty good—no diseases and looking pretty healthy. Might have a few cabbage worms lurking but they're easy to get rid of.

Drip Irrigation: Because I'm an Environmentalist *and* Lazy

I finally got around to adding drip irrigation lines to my six raised beds. One would think a lazy person such as me would have added this system last year as it really will cut down on the work of watering, but I just never got around to it; apparently, Mr. Lazy Bones ran into Mr. Mañana. I ordered the materials from a very knowledgable woman in Salt Lake city, Kathlyn Collins, whose website, The Gardening Coach, is a trove of useful information. And she will willingly talk to you at length over the phone to answer questions and give advice. The hard part about this all is just figuring out how to get started; once that happens, it's pretty easy to work things out, and even ad-lib. Kathlyn's prices are also very reasonable, so there's not much of an up-charge for getting advice as well as materials.

The drip lines I used have emitters every 4 inches, and the lines are placed every six inches across each box to allow for blanket coverage. This type of coverage is essential for square foot gardening.

The design the Gardening Coach website espouses looks like a good arrangement for boxes set out on a flat surface, but I quickly discovered it would be problematic for my boxes which are terraced into a hillside. I opted for a different approach where I would run the ½-inch sub main across the inside top of each box, and attach the drip tape with Starter 6mm Barb x 5/8" Tape Swivels and ⅝" tape end plugs (see below).

I ran the ½" sub main line across the end of each box. I also attached each section to a piece of 2x2 cedar so it can float on the soil at the end of each box (see next pic below).

Sub main header ready to install.

To enable the use of my hoops and cover, as well as trellises and tomato cages, which sit on the top of each box, I had to lower the sub main headers below the tops of each box. I started this by drilling 1" holes on each end corner.

Then I used a reciprocating saw to clean up each notch.

Next, I prepared each ½" sub main line for the installation of the barbed swivels to which each drip tape line would be attached. I used a 7mm punch for this, a great little time saving device well worth the 8 bucks I paid for it.

Attached drip tape swivel. Only 35 more to go.

One header down, five to go.

Sub main attached to 2x2 header board and floating in the box. This design will also facilitate winter removal of the lines as all I have to do is unscrew the connector that attach it to the next box.

The lines between boxes are enclosed in ¾" PVC pipe to prevent damage from heavy-footed bi-peds. I also used a piece of 1 ½" PVC to cover the connectors sticking out the end.

After the headers are all installed, the next step is to attach each 8-foot piece of drip tape to each swivel.

After pushing tape onto end of swivel, simply screw the cap over the tape.

After all lines are connected, and water is flushed through the system to remove any possible debris, the end plugs are similarly attached to the drip tape.

After careful placement across the box, each drip tape line is secured by a landscape staple.

Each run of sub main is capped off by a screw cap that allows the lines to be flushed as well as drained for the winter should you decide to leave them in place.

This side of the yard is ready to attach to the water supply, in this case a hose coming from one of the two house spigots. On the end is the pressure reducer which is attached to the filter, which is itself attached to the swivel-t. These three bits are the only parts that have to be removed in the winter.

The final touch is adding a timer to each line. I will start by watering every other day for 10 minutes and modify from there.