Garden On, Vashon

Here’s some news bits, a potato dish that’s perfect for St. Patrick’s Day, and what I found when turning the earth this weekend.

First, the news:

YESTERDAY, Wed 16th, 1-3 pm or 7-9pm:  Patty Campbell, a professional Island gardener, reprises her “Early Season Produce in Pots” vegie growing class that she taught at the Seattle Garden Show. It’s at the Presby church TODAY (the pinky church in downtown Vashon). She’s going to share “simple successful methods” of growing vegetables, herbs, and flowers in containers. PLUS, she’ll give tips on propagating, transplanting trees & shrubs, and a simple method for composting. 

CLASS: Raising Your Own Food.  Last year’s popular class pops up again this weekend on Saturday, March 20, from 9:30 am – 3 pm. Cathy Fulton (lately of the Food Summit) and Nancy Lewis-Williams, the thrifty home gardener who raised about $500/month of her own produce last growing season, will team-teach this day-long class for beginning gardeners.  

Nancy says, “We will attempt to cover all the basics for someone wanting to start a vegetable garden: soils, seed starting, irrigation, weeding, mulching, and harvesting.”  Call Cathy Fulton for details on location and to sign up, 463-5652 or email her at cathy@mariposagardens.org. Pre-registration is required (help them determine where the class site will be!)

Grass-Fed Beef shows up in Burton:  For the last several Saturdays, two guys with a truck sporting a sign reading “100% Grass-finished Beef” have been hanging out across from the Burton coffee stand. I talked to them on March 5th: “Sweet Water Farm” is Jon & Mark Hornby, third-generation sons off a 1925 Glenoma, WA farm near Mt. Rainier. Their small herd was bred on the farm by their father—”We still have the grandma cow,” Jon told me— and completely raised in the pasture, on grass. Now Michael Pollan and our Island’s own Jo Robinson (eatwild.org) have a lot to say about the benefits of meat raised on pasture, instead of  ”finished” on grain and antibiotics in confined animal feed-lots (C.A.F.O.s). The Hornby boys seem to be bringing that kind of beef to us. Why here? Their Uncle Jon, who first suggested they try to sell direct, lives on the Burton peninsula. If interested, check out their web site and contact them to see if they’re coming back to Burton. Their prices are within a dollar of Thriftway’s comparable offerings by Oregon Country Beef or Painted Hills. They’ll be back in Burton on Saturday the 20th. www.sweetwaterbeef.com

Vegie Transplants:  Michelle Crawford down at Pacific Potager tells me that she’s now selling vegetable transplants from her farm stand.  She’s got most of the cool-weather veg, hardened off and ready to go in the ground: pak choi, mustards, lettuces, onions, kale, peas including sweet peas. Her farmstand is about 5 minutes north of the Tahlequah ferry terminal, and she’ll be at the first VIGA Farmer’s Market this Saturday, March 20, from 10 am – 2pm.  (I noticed on the 16th that vegie starts are now also at DIG and at Thriftway: there, Langley offers a 5-pack of organic starts for $2.25, Rent’s Due Farm in Snohomish offers non-organic 6-packs for $1.99.)

Treasures from Turning the Soil

The soil wakes up when its temperature rises above 40°—fungi grows, seeds sprout, tiny soil critters start to move about, digest what’s on offer, and reproduce more soil digesters. When that happens, it’s time to throw food into that soil and turn it, to give all that life a chance to explode and then simmer down so I can plant vulnerable seedlings in a couple weeks.

So lately I’ve kept my compost thermometer stuck shallowly into my east-facing, downslope beds. Struck by morning sun, that soil hit 45° and kept going. With weeds cleared off, the naked soil hit 50°—five degrees warmer than the neighbor bed still covered with green manure and overwintered cabbage. THIS is why we clear winter mulchs and cover crops off the soil now: to let it warm into temperatures that seeds want to germinate in.

To give that awakening soil life something to gnaw on, to all but the potato beds I added 1/2″ of screened compost, 1/4″ of chicken manure, and a pint of bone meal. (Potatoes apparently don’t appreciate manures). Then I got out the garden fork and stabbed it deep into each bed, flipping the sods of green manure, wacking and scraping the amendments and green matter down under. Then I mixed it all with the fork cultivator and raked it fine and level with the bow rake.

And finally—and because my husband suggested that Rocky might leave the beds alone if I did this—I tamped the whole bed lightly down with the back of a flat shovel. Would this seal in any interesting smells? Provide a discouraging crust? Only Rocky knows, but he’s not been visiting this week—that smooth bed-top would show his tracks if he had!

As I worked through last year’s cole bed, up popped a few last carrots and beets. I suspect they came from last summer sowings: they were small, tender, and unmarked by the creepy-crawlies of early summer. Boy, they were good for lunch!

Golden Grated Salad with Cherries

This salad comes from half a dozen small beets both red & gold, plus two carrots, 1/3 cup of currents or chopped raisins, chopped dried cherries,and a vinaigrette of 2 parts rice vinegar, 1 part cherry-infused balsamico, 1 part olive oil, and 1 part splenda or sugar. Mix the vinaigrette in the bottom of a small bowl, put in the currents and cherries, then grate into the bowl first the red beets, then the carrots, finally the golden beets. Show off this sun-burst of colors, then mix at the table. DELICIOUS! healthy & quick!

Irish Champ: a traditional potato dish the very color of St. Patrick’s Day

I went looking in Sylvia Thompson’s “The Kitchen Garden Cookbook” for a recipe involving nettles, which are emerging around the fringes of my garden. Found this traditional dish from the land of the Celts: it’s called “Champ” in Ireland, “Stelk” in Scotland, and by either name it uses potatoes, spring onions, nettles and melted butter in a mash whose color screams “Put Me On Your St. Patrick’s Dinner Plate!” 

4-5 medium potatoes, any kind — steam in their jackets over boiling water, about 3o-4o minutes

Then go to the garden with scissors or snips, a bowl, and kid gloves (ok, latex or leather will work) to harvest a bowlful of young nettle tops. Clip stem about 6″ or less from top, use scissors to grab and drop into your bowl (the underside of the leaves sting awfully: thus the gloves and gingerly handling).

Also harvest about 3-4 green onions or young leeks, and a clutch of parsley.

In the kitchen, clip the nettle leaves free of the stems & stalk, back into the bowl. Pour some of the boiling potato water over them and let steep for 5 minutes: this will kill the little stingers. Replenish the potato water if need be. Then drain off ALL the nettle water, plop nettles on a cutting bowl, and chop fine FINE FINE! as possible. It’ll make a mound about 1/2 cup or more.

Chop the spring onions finely, too. Start with 3—keep the last in reserve. Make a mound about 25% larger than the nettle mound.

In a small pan heat about 2/3 cup milk: when starting to scald, add the nettles and onions and turn down heat to medium-low. Cook this for about 5 minutes. Taste: if the onion flavor doesn’t dominate, add the last onion, chopped fine. S & P to taste. Cook for another 5 minutes or until the potatoes are done.

Test the potatoes: when forkable, remove and peel. Turn off heat under green mix. Melt about 1/4 cup butter. 

Get out potato ricer, food mill, or food processor. Bring green mix, potatoes, and salt & pepper to the mill and start grinding them together into a mash. S & P to taste. Add a little of the butter and mix.

Spoon onto warmed plates. Make a trench in the middle and fill with melted butter. Chop fine the parsley and sprinkle over this mint-green mash. Serve immediately while still hot.