5 Fab Recipes! Get ready to eat tasty warm winter meals!

Whether lazy leftovers for breakfast, a lunch bowl or salad, main course or side dish, winter meals are super nutritious, and definitely not boring! Choose some special keepers from this list!

This is Italian heirloom Corona beans or butter beans/Lima and Brassicas – Broccoli & Brussels Sprouts. plantzst.com

Choose a Szechuan Sauce with some heat and lots of brassicas!! Broccoli, Bok Choy, the works!
From Tiengarden 170 Allen st #1, New York, NY getskinnygovegan

Carrots are luscious shred in traditional salads with a bit of pineapple if you are adventurous. Or, roasted, in winter soups and stews, whole or chopped! Try roasted whole slender carrots, drizzled with green tahini sauce, sprinkled with pomegranate seeds! Presented at greatist.com

The Tiny Farm blog says: Sprint, a new Amsterdam forcing variety (good for growing in challenging conditions) that matures long and slender in a listed 42 days. That’s fast, over two weeks ahead of the quickest regular carrot we grow (the fabulous Nelson).

Simple. Hearty brown basmati rice, speckled with onions, petit peas, and dill; this brown rice pilaf is a simple and tasty dish that can be whipped up as a nutritious and hearty weeknight side. At momtastic.com

Kale is the Queen of Greens! After you wash the leaves of kale, mustard, turnip, or collard greens, tear out the thick center stalk and tough midribs and cut the leaves into smaller, bite-size pieces. Slightly steam or saute. See the whole delicious recipe and others by Karen Ahn!

Image by Ultimate Kitchen Commando

Please vary these recipes to your heart’s content! Omit what you don’t currently have in your garden, add, replace an ingredient with what you do have or that you love more! In summer make variations to be eaten cold!

Bon Appétit, Dear Gardeners!

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for our SoCal Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

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Harvest & Storage Tips for Our Favorite Summer Veggies!

HARVEST! Harvest at your veggie’s peak delicious moment! Juicy, crunchy, that certain squish in your mouth, sweet, full bodied flavor, vibrant texture, radiant, vitamin and mineral rich! Besides being delicious and beautiful, it keeps your plant in production. Left on the plant, fruits start to dry and your plant stops production, goes into seeding mode. The fruit toughens, withers, loses flavor, maybe rots, sometimes brings insect scavenger pests that clean up, but spread to other plants. So, harvest right on time and let that radiance fill you!

Tomatoes can be harvested when they are green or when they get the color you chose! Bend cherry toms back so you get the cap and stem. This keeps them from splitting open. O’ course, if they split, you absolutely must eat them on the spot so they don’t spoil! 🙂 No fridging! Keep toms at room temp. Pink tomatoes ripen to a better taste and red color if they are left at room temperature. They do not turn red in the refrigerator, and red tomatoes kept in the refrigerator lose their flavor. If you want a tom to ripen, place it in a paper bag with an apple. No problem freezing toms whole! Just remove the stem core. You can blanch them and remove the skins first, or not…your choice.

Cucumbers – no storing on the vine. Your plant thinks it’s done and stops producing. Cut, clip or carefully twist off while holding the vine. Probiotic pickle your cukes. Cucumbers are another room temp veggie. University of California, Davis, says cukes are sensitive to temperatures below 50°F. They thrive and last longer at room temp. However, cucumbers, eggplant and peppers can be kept in the refrigerator for 1 to 3 days if they are used soon after removal from the refrigerator.

Sweet Peppers – depends on the pepper. Let them stay on the plant if you planted ones for pretty colors. Cut or clip them off so not to damage your plant. Only wash them right before you plan on eating them; wetness decreases storage time. Store in a cool area, or only 1 to 3 days in a plastic bag in the vegetable crisper of refrigerator, separate from fruit. Green peppers will usually stay fresh longer than orange or red peppers. Quick-freeze ones you won’t be using right away! Slice, dice, and freeze in baggies in the amounts you anticipate using in a stir fry or stew.

String Beans Harvest just about daily. If they bulge with seeds and start to dry, your plant thinks it’s done and stops producing. Pick, pick, pick! Get them to the fridge vegetable drawer. If you have too many at once or want some for after season use, cut them to bite size pieces or freeze whole! Put as many per bag as you will use for the kind of meal you will use them for. If for a stew you will feast on for several days, you may want a larger quantity bag.

Carrots Check the shoulders of your carrots to see if they are the size you are wanting. A big carrot is not necessarily tough and woody. If you want tender snacking types, pull while they are smaller. Water well the day before pulling, dig down beside them to loosen them if necessary so they don’t break off in the ground. Carrots go limp if you leave them lying about. Cut the tops off to keep them fresh longer. Get them cooled off in the fridge veggie drawer in a closed container with plenty of moisture, either wrapped in a damp towel or dunk them in cold water every couple of days if they’re stored that long. Be creative with your cuts if you freeze some. Go diagonal, rippled, cubed, curled, sticks, or even whole!

Summer Squash, Zucchini Harvest in self defense! They get BIG, FAST! Some of you came from big families and like stuffing and baking them and would never think of harvesting them until they are huge, lotsa bang for your buck! Others have a family of 1, can’t possibly eat all that zuke, so harvest them quite small, fresh salad slicing size. The ridged types make pretty little star shaped slices! They like hanging out in the fridge, but not for long! They are more soft than carrots or peppers. Give away what you won’t use asap.

Lettuce can be harvested at just about any size, but definitely needs to be harvested before it bolts, puts up a stalk, or immediately after. It can be harvested several ways. Eat the thinnings of a group you may have deliberately overplanted! If it is at a size you like, pick lower leaves and take them to the kitchen immediately. Wash, spin dry if you have a spinner, put them in a bag in the fridge veggie drawer. Feast daily until they are gone, go harvest some more. If harvesting a bit at a time drives you nutty, give it a whack about 2 ” above the ground and leave the root there. Take that lovely beauty home and process as usual. Good chance the root in the ground will regrow more lettuce if you keep the area moist! It won’t likely be as big as the original plant, but you will have more lettuce. Or pull that root and toss it in the compost. Plant more lettuce! Your choice. If your plant has bolted, take the whole plant and the leaves that are still good.

Sweet Corn When the silks turn brown and you push your fingernail in a kernel and it squirts milky juice, it’s ready for harvest! It holds its sweetness only 2 to 5 days! Harvest early in the day, make time to your fridge or the barbie because the sugars turn to starch very quickly! If you can’t eat them right away, pop them in the freezer, husks on!

Melons Harvest sooner by placing ripening melons on upside down aluminum pie pans or cans to keep them off the damp soil. The reflected heat and light will help them ripen evenly and sooner than when they are shaded by foliage. Watermelons lose their flavor and deep red color if they are stored for longer than 3 days in the refrigerator. If you can’t eat them big ones fast enough, plant smaller size varieties, like container types, or harvest as soon as possible. Uncut, store in a cool dry place, out of the sun up to a couple weeks. Cut melons should be in the fridge, an open container is fine. In general, melons prefer your countertop. Really, no storing melons. Just eat ’em!

OR! Make melon sorbet! Simplest recipe: one melon, juice of one lime, a few squirts of honey (some ppl use sugar) blend and freeze. Tasty and healthy on a hot day! Use an ice cream machine if you like. Variations might be a dusting of salt, syrup steeped with mint. Serve with fresh blackberries, blueberries, raspberries. Mmm…..

Potatoes are ready for digging when the plant flowers and after. Wet up the soil until muddy, feel about for the biggest ones, leaving the others to get sizable for another harvest later. Store garlic, onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes in a well ventilated area in the pantry. Protect potatoes from light to avoid greening; a paper bag works well.

Okra! If your summer has been hot enough you got some! They must be harvested before they get tough. Letting them get bigger simply doesn’t pay. So look carefully for mature fruits and take ’em! I grow the burgundy and ruby types, slice them fresh over my salads. Pretty little stars. Okra really is best fresh. Very fresh. Eat okra within a few days of buying it. Store okra loosely wrapped in a plastic bag in the fridge veggie drawer.

Strawberries Pick them when they are red! Don’t let them hang out on the plant where soil creatures or birds will nibble on them. Storing them is a little different. Quickly as possible, store fresh picked berries in a container lined with a paper towel or in a paper bag in the coldest part of your fridge. They will last about a week, but it’s more fun to eat them sooner!

The counter storage area should be away from direct sunlight to prevent produce from becoming too warm. And don’t put them in sealed plastic bags that don’t let them ripen and increase decay.

Per UC Davis: Refrigerated fruits and vegetables should be kept in perforated plastic bags in the produce drawers of the refrigerator. You can either purchase perforated plastic bags or make small holes with a sharp object in unperforated bags (about 20 pin holes per medium-size bag). Separate fruits from vegetables (use one drawer for each group) to minimize the detrimental effects of ethylene produced by the fruits on the vegetables. Use all refrigerated fruits and vegetables within a few days since longer storage results in loss of freshness and flavor.

Your SECOND HARVEST is SEEDS! As July goes on or in August, when you or your plant are ready, let your very best plants produce but don’t harvest the fruits. Beans get lumpy with seeds and will dry completely. Let them dry on the vine for full nutrition from the mother plant. Let a cucumber yellow and dry. Let the corn cob dry and the kernels get hard. Cukes, peppers, melons, okra and squash are easy. Just remove the seeds and let them dry. Label the drying containers with year and name! Tomatoes are a tiny bit of a process but not hard at all. See more!

Save enough seeds from your best plants for your own planting, for several rounds of planting across the next season, for replanting when there are losses, and some to give away or share at a seed swap. Keep the race going.

Give away or store what you can’t eat. Freezing is the simplest storage method. Cut veggies to the sizes you will use, put the quantity you will use in baggies, seal and freeze. Whole tomatoes, chopped peppers, beans, onions. If you need more than your freezer can hold, get into canning! Learn about it from a pro and do it right! Probiotic pickle your cukes and cabbages and anything else you want to! That is a super healthy option!

See also Simple & Easy Storage Ideas for your Harvest Bounty! Nothing wasted, inexpensively made, thankfully eaten!

Enjoy your sumptuous meals! Sing a song of gratitude and glory!

Here’s a quickie convenient reference graphic from UC Davis!

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. We are very coastal, during late spring/summer in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

See the entire July 2016 GBC Newsletter!

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Chard! An Elegant, Colorful, Nutritious Pleasure!

Chard is the bouquet of the Garden! Plant it for pretty! Plant it as a centerpiece, at the front, by the entrance. Contrast it with frillys like carrots or in the spring with dill.

Chard is fabulous in containers on the balcony, mingled with ornamentals in your landscape, and brightens any veggie garden, especially in Mediterranean WINTER gardens! Whether it is all green, a white stemmed Fordhook Giant, or Bright Lights/Neon from white to neon pink, bright oranges and reds, brilliant yellow, it is glorious!

And it’s not just another pretty face, it’s a prodigious producer, Cut-&-Come-Again, and again, and again! In our SoCal clime, it acts as a perennial, sometimes living for several venerable years! Low calorie, only 35 calories per cup, it is packed with vitamins K, A, C, E, and B6, a valuable food for maintaining strong bones. Chard is also very good source of copper, calcium, phosphorus, and a good source of thiamine, zinc, niacin, folate and selenium!

According to Aug 2013 Huff Post Kale has a LOT more Vitamin A, twice as much Vitamin C, but Chard has almost 4 times the iron! They are about equal in calories, fiber, protein and Calcium. A different Oct 2017 post says: [Kale] has more than twice the number of calories of collard greens or Swiss chard. Salt is another story. Kale has only 30 micrograms of sodium, whereas Chard has 313! All these counts may make no difference to you, because kale leaves may taste bitter to you, and are tough to chew unless massaged for salads or steamed. Chard is less vegetal in flavor than kale, even the stems can be slightly sweet! And Chard comes in all those dazzling bright colors that make you smile!

Chard is a lot like Spinach, but has an earthier flavor. Dr Weil says: …concentrations of oxalic acid are pretty low in most plants and plant-based foods, but there’s enough in spinach, chard and beet greens to interfere with the absorption of the calcium these plants also contain. Steaming chard helps reduce its oxalic acid content. TreeHugger says further: Raw versus cooked spinach offers a trade-off. Vegetarian Times writes that folate, vitamin C, niacin, riboflavin, and potassium are more available when spinach is eaten raw, while cooking increases the vitamins A and E, protein, fiber, zinc, thiamine, calcium, and iron – as well, important carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, also become more absorbable when spinach is cooked. The advice is eat lots of different veggies both raw and cooked!

In a sense, Chard, Beta vulgaris, is a relatively new vegetable that is thought to have first been described in the mid-18th century. It is also known as Swiss chard, silverbeet, spinach beet, and even spinach in different parts of the world. It is in the same family as beets, but doesn’t make a bulb like they do.

Chard is one of the top 5 veggie producers per square foot! It is a fast prolific crop maturing in only 55 days! It tolerates poor soil, inattention, and withstands frost and mild freezes. Besides being a beauty, having a blazing array of colors, leaf after leaf it feeds a family! Though the colorful hybrids are stunning, and your shopping list is delighted with their magical names, the older green forms tend to out produce them and are more tolerant of both cold and heat. The mammoth white stemmed heirloom Fordhook Giant can’t be beat! It grows up to and more than 2′ tall with huge leaves, and feeds an army, with heavy yields even in hot weather!

Chard may be considered an all season plant in SoCal, but it suffers in heat. It wilts terribly in afternoon heat. The problem is heat, not water, and sometimes, not knowing this, gardeners literally drown them with water, rotting the root. Either put up some shade cloth, grow it in the shade or the shade of taller plants, or just don’t grow them in summer. After x number of wilts, they never quite recover their full zest and radiance. At the community gardens, there are none left by mid summer. Soon you can be growing it again ~ they thrive and grow quickly in cooler fall weather!

Varieties Cornell lists 49 chard entries! Five Star ratings go to Burpee’s Rhubarb Chard, Verte a Carde Blanche and Verde da Taglio. Bright Lights is an All America Selection winner! Umania is a Japanese chard that tolerates heat and cold, is slow bolting.

Flat leaved or bumpy?! Bumpy, called Savoyed, leaves give more chard per square inch, but they can also hide aphids. Narrow or wide ribs. Green, crimson or purple leaves! Rib colors galore, from white to neon yellow, pink & orange, brilliant to the darkest reds!

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You can see why chard is frequently used in flower gardens!

Check out Nan Ondra’s post! She grows a designer quality garden in Pennsylvania! Nan says ‘As the season progresses, the leaves of some of the orange- to red-stemmed chards darken to bronzy green or even a deep purple-red.’

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Do you like that purple one with the yellow rib?! That beauty is Prima Rossa! The cooler the weather the deeper the color!

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Perpetual Spinach varieties and container sorts make leaf after leaf, and behave themselves. Maybe you would like some red leaves and red ribs! Try Scottish heirloom MacGregor Swiss Chard! It does not get colossal, is more tender than other chards. Pot of Gold, green leaves with yellow ribs, is also a charming dwarf variety!x

Grow It!

28 Days for tender little leaves, only 55 days or so to maturity.

Chard likes a rich sandy loam soil – well manured and composted with worm castings added. It is sensitive to soil acidity. A low soil pH results in stunted growth. Consistent water, full sun, and plenty of space! A healthy chard, will take a 2′ to 3′ footprint, more if it is a Fordhook Giant! At 28” tall, it makes a shadow, so plant accordingly!

Soak seeds overnight or presprout! Direct seed into the garden 3-5 weeks before the last frost date, or you can start seedlings indoors around the same time. Transplant seedlings after your last frost. Chard seeds germinate best in soil temps around 75°F-85°F (not air temps) but 50°-55°degrees will do, and is practical. Avoid seeding during daytime air temps of 80°F or more. In SoCal, one of the best times to plant is mid August for production all winter long. Plant then in the shade, on the north or east sides, of taller plants that will be replaced by fall plants or will finish soon.

Chard seeds don’t mind those hot August soil temps, but Chard plants here do best in cool weather, wilting pitifully midday in hot summer temps. Check your soil to see your plant really needs water or is reacting to the heat. Be sure your plant has plenty of compost for water holding capacity and keep your plant moist. Plant it in a large basin so water can get to the dripline to feed the surface feeder roots. Mulch deeply in the basin so its roots don’t get hot. Like with lettuce, keep harvesting lower leaves to help prevent bolting and so it doesn’t have to work so hard in the heat.

Germination will take 5-16 days. Chard seeds are actually a cluster of seeds and will produce more than one plant. Spacing will determine the size of the plants. Space plants at 4-6″ apart within rows spaced at 18″-24″ apart. When the young plants are 4 inches high, thin them to stand 8 inches apart. If you are pest and disease conscious, keep right on thinning so adult leaves don’t touch each other! That, of course, depends on the size of the variety you pick.

Depending on your space and needs/wants, avoid planting in rows, plant far enough apart that mature leaves don’t touch leaves of another chard plant. Interplant here and there. That way Leafminers, aphids and diseases can’t go plant to plant. if you have space, you can broadcast your seeds in sections of the garden to create a bed of tender leaves and thinned to 4 inches apart as they mature. Otherwise, plant your seeds 1/4-3/4 in. deep. That will give you a steady table supply of tasty little greens!

Mulch in summer keeps roots cool and moist. In So Cal winters it keeps rain or watering from splashing soil up onto the leaves.

Water! Chard, like Lettuce, likes plenty of water regularly to keep it sweet. It’s putting up big leaves again and again. Weed early and often! If you are in drought or a dry area, weeds drink your water.

Feeding! Since Chard is a prolific producer, it needs feeding from time to time. In summer it can use a little compost and a tad of manure. Some worm castings would make it even happier! Late summer spread a little compost over the root zone, drench with a water-soluble organic fertilizer. They will make a strong comeback early fall. In winter a light feed of fish emulsion is easy to apply, and easy for it to uptake. If you have digging predators use alfalfa meal instead.

Pests & Diseases

• Hose APHIDS off Chard, kale and brocs. Keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed and new generations. For hard to get at places, down the centers of chard and in crinkly kale leaf crevices, get out that spray bottle! Treat once, wait a couple days, treat the ones that got away and newborns. I tried this home remedy, it WORKS! The simplest is to spray with 2 parts alcohol, 2 parts water, 1 part  soap. DO NOT use on seedlings, it will kill some of them. Spritz lightly rather than drenching or you may kill your bigger plant too! If the aphids are totally out of control and you can’t get to them down in the center of the plant, if you are very brave, cut the whole plant off a couple inches above the crown, let it produce new leaves.
• Leafminers are the bane of chard, spinach and beets, going from plant to plant. These are not plants to row crop with leaves touching! You know you have leafminers when you see their trails or brown patches on the leaves as the miners burrow between the leaf’s layers. Remove those sections and badly infested leaves immediately. Depending on how close the plants are, remove every other plant. Your plants will thrive with more sun, space, soil available for their feeder roots. Remember, with Chard, spacing determines the size of the plants. Keep your chard harvested and well watered to keep it growing and producing fast, sometimes outgrowing the leafminers. Some say soft fast growth is perfect habitat for the miners, but chard is meant to be a fast grower with plenty of water to keep it sweet! So if you can’t eat it all, find a friend or two who would appreciate some and share your bounty! Or remove plants until you have what you can keep up with. Plant something else delicious in your new free space!
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  Details from U of Illinois Extension:  Spinach and Swiss chard leafminer flies are 1/2 inch long and gray with black bristles. This leaf miner lays eggs on the underside of the leaves side by side singly or in batches up to five.  One larva may feed on more than one leaf.  After feeding for about two weeks, the larvae drop from the leaves onto the ground where it pupates and overwinters in the soil as pupae. In spring, they appear from mid April to May and they cause serious damage compared to the other generations that appear later. The life cycle is only 2 weeks long, and they can have five to ten generations per year!  That’s why you immediately want to remove infected parts of your plant, to stop the cycle! Cornell Cooperative Extension  UC – IPM
  
• Slugs & snails are chard’s other not best friends. Irregular holes in the leaves, that’s the clue. Remove by hand, checking the undersides of leaves and down in the center area where new leaves are coming. I chuck snails and slugs where our crows gourmet on them. Or use Sluggo or the cheaper store brand in the cardboard box of the same stuff. Lay down Sluggo two or three times to kill the generations then you won’t need to do it again for quite a while.
• Beets, Chard and Spinach get Cercospora leaf spot, light brown patches surrounded by purple halos. Promptly remove infected leaves. Late fall or early spring plantings are most likely to be affected. Late summer when conditions are favorable (high temperatures, high humidity, long leaf wetness periods at night) is the worst. It grows on infected crop residues, so immediately remove leaves that collapse on the ground. It is carried by wind or rain to host leaves. This is one case where AM watering really makes sense to reduce humidity. Plant less densely for more airflow, thinnings are tasty! Planting only every 3 years in the same spot often isn’t possible if there is too little garden space, so cultivating, turning and drying the soil between plantings is good. See more

Harvest & Storage

Cut or twist off stems of outer leaves while still tender, 1-2 inches above the soil surface. Leaves are of best quality just when fully expanded or slightly smaller. Chard loses water very quickly after harvest, so give it a rinse, shake off excess water, pack loosely in a plastic bag, get it into the fridge. Use ASAP, 3-4 days! Do not store with fruits, like apples, and vegetables that produce ethylene gas. Blanch and freeze leaves if you like; use in soups and stews later.

Like other biennial plants, chard produces flowers and seeds in the spring of its second year, after it has been through winter. Let your favorite chard make a flowering stalk, seed and dry. Label it before it starts drying so you know what color or variety it is. The seed is super easy to harvest. Just hold your fingers close to the stalk, zip them along the stalk and put the seed in an airtight container. Label it right then and there because you can’t tell chard seed from beet seed! Same family. If you want that variety of colors, and don’t have room or the time to let all of them seed out, just get a packet at your local nursery or online from your favorite seed house. Keep your seeds cool and dry, viability 3+ years. Harvest plenty for you, gifts for friends, to share at seed swaps!

Culinary Satisfaction

When preparing your chard, if you are eating it for the Vitamin A, trim the leaf from the rib. You can eat the rib, it just takes a little longer to cook unless you chop it up into little pieces. Ribs have healing factors all their own due to their colors! Here’s a surprise – use stems like celery! Stuff and serve! Or pickle them, or the crisp ribs can be steamed or grilled like asparagus!

Small leaves in salad, drizzle with a sauce or dressing of your choice. Larger leaves chopped, steamed over rice or in stews. Toss with olive oil and stir fry with your favorite veggies and protein. Layer in lasagna or a casserole of scalloped potatoes or turnips. Everyone has their favorites! Deb Elliott of Helena AL loves hers in chard soup, beginning with chicken bouillon, Italian sausage, onions and little red potatoes. Chopped chard leaves are added toward the end, as it only takes a few minutes for them to cook.

Chard can be used as a substitute for spinach in most dishes and goes well with roasted meats, cream sauces, nutty cheeses, and tomatoes. Try adding chard to au gratin or serving it alongside Jamaican Jerk chicken with red beans and rice. Squeeze out excess water, and use the cooked chard in casseroles, quiches, or as a succulent side dish.

Or try this Vegetarian Stuffed Chard Oregon Style from Organic Authority!

Cabbage is substituted by chard in this Pacific Northwestern version of a Scandinavian recipe. Light, nutritious and deliciously healthy, the chard leaves are stuffed with a grain of choice alongside Oregonian staples like hazelnuts, dried cranberries, goat cheese and late summer veggies for a satisfying and wholesome dish. The red, pink, white and yellow veins of rainbow chard leaves are an excellent choice for this chard recipe, especially if you are looking for visual appeal. Serve it as a main vegetarian dish with a side of yogurt sauce/dip, homemade chutney or lemons wedges, or make smaller ones to serve as pop-in-your-mouth appetizers. Serves 3-5

Happy growing, happy eating!

Updated 9.26.22

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Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. Climate is changing, but it has been that during late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

Read Full Post »

Crusty Parmesan Herb Zucchini Bites!

Another way to have low-cal, tasty Zucchini fresh from your garden!

Easy to make, this is San Francisco blogger Elle’s recipe with a few additions of my own! See her blog and original recipe if you like! Thank you, Elle!

Slice your zucchini lengthwise
Brush with olive oil
Sprinkle with herbs – maybe fresh rosemary & thyme, finely chopped basil, cilantro or parsley
Top with any cheese you like, Parmesan is tasty!
Add any tasty bits that make you happy! Minced onion or bell pepper, fine shred carrot, bacon bits.
Salt & pepper to taste
Sprinkle with a tad of Paprika!

Pre-heat oven to 350F, lightly brush both sizes of the zucchini with olive oil and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes then place under the broiler for the last 3-5 minutes until cheese is crispy and browned.

Enjoy every last bite, you Zucchini lovers!

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Garden Ants in Your Summer Veggies?!

Ants tending aphids on Tomato plant

Too many ants! Plants are seriously damaged by their aphids. Production is stalled, plants die. Not ok.

Bad year! Ants are on beans, cucumbers, okra, even tomatoes! It’s become clear the usual hosing off the aphids isn’t enough. Hosing uses too much water, it waters your plants too much, which the ants like! With big tomato plants jammed in cages, you can’t get to the center and fuzzy plants don’t like to be watered on their leaves anyway. The aphids the ants tend are almost impossible to get off those fuzzy backed leaves – especially the stiff haired cucumber leaves. You can’t hard spray them off cucumber flowers because it blows the flowers away too. Argh.

Where do those aphids come from?! Some farming ant species gather and store the aphid eggs in their nests over the winter. In the spring, the ants carry the newly hatched aphids back to the plants. Queens that are leaving to start a new colony take an aphid egg to found a new herd of underground aphids in the new colony. As aphids feed, they often transmit plant viruses that can sometimes kill the plants, and the honeydew they make, that the ants feed on, favors the growth of sooty mold. This is a very destructive black fungus that spreads on plant leaves. Not only do ants protect and farm herds of aphids, but also cottony scales, mealybugs, soft-type scales, and whiteflies. Bad juju in the garden.

OK. So it’s either spray with a killer mix, or bait to end the colony. Enough already. Spraying is immediate; baiting takes a few days to a week. Do both to save your plants sooner.

Temporary Solutions

• Insecticidal soaps are quick but temporary. Drench ant colonies with solutions of insecticidal soap, which are nearly non-toxic highly refined soap. It will not eliminate ants deep in the nest.
• Neem Oil, organic, is a maybe. Some report it works and swear by it, others say it doesn’t work at all. Probably depends on what kind of ants you have. Some say premix works for them, others say get the 100% stuff. It is not long lasting, repeated sprayings are needed.
• The Stinkies! Tea Tree Oil, herbs like Peppermint or Rosemary, Cinnamon, Eucalyptus sprays work and smell great! These can be used a couple of different ways. Crush the leaves, sprinkle on an ant line and they vanish. Or, use one cup of water to ¼ cup of peppermint or spearmint. Mix in your blender, strain into a handheld pump sprayer. Put it where you want it! Repeated sprayings needed. Some say you need less of Tea Tree and less frequent sprayings.
• Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth is fossilized remains of plankton; it looks like an off-white talc powder. It kills insects with exoskeletons, all kinds of them! It is perfectly safe for mammals, in fact, is eaten daily by some humans. To work it has to get ON the ant, and if it is even dew dampened, doesn’t work. It doesn’t attract ants, so they don’t invite their friends, and it isn’t ‘shared’ with the other ants. So yes it works, and no it doesn’t. If your plants are suffering now, it’s too slow to use.
• Vinegar A half to a liter down the hole kills, but the ones that escape merely move. Remember, vinegar is also an herbicide. Be careful.
• Water? Ants can live submerged in water for several days. That’s why the hose down the hole doesn’t work. So you need a little fire power, boiling hot water, to kill them.

‘Permanent’ Solution! Borax, plain old grocery store 20 Mule Team Borax kills the colony. It really works without fail. It’s cheap, a little goes a long way, and you can use what’s left to do your laundry!

Spray Mix 1/2 cup of sugar with 1 teaspoon of borax (20 mule team) with 1 cup of water to make a spray and spray on their trail where they enter the house (garden) and in 3 days they will be gone. Spay around the windows and doors to keep them out. When the spray dries they eat the crystals and take them back to the nest and POOF they are gone. At the garden, do this on a WINDLESS DAY, and be very careful not to get it on your plants. It’s an herbicide.

Per April Sanders, here’s how the BAIT thing works: Worker ants only feed on liquids. They take solid food back to the nests, where it is given to larvae. Then, the larvae convert it to liquid and feed it back to the worker ants [all the worker ants!]. Straight boric acid or insecticide will kill ants, but the worker ants will eat it rather than taking it back to the nest because it is in liquid form. Making a paste ensures the poison will get to the nest.

The first bait recipes I found were sugar and Borax. So I tried it. I found a lot of dead ants, meaning the Borax was not getting back to the nest, but the Borax was definitely killing the ants. After reading April’s explanation, I am now adding cornmeal to the mix. It is a ‘solid’ the ants have to carry back to the nest for processing. So sugar to attract the ants, cornmeal to carry home, Borax to do the job.

Here’s the skinny on cornmeal! Neither cornmeal nor grits cause ants to explode or jam up and starve because ants don’t eat solids. Cornmeal does disrupt ants’ scent trails until they lay down new ones. Yes, the ants might move, due to disrupted trails, and that might be only a few feet away. It appears to stop ants, but they are merely feeding close to their nest at your expense! They take the stuff home, let the larvae convert it to liquid, and they get it back in the form they can eat.

April explains that cornmeal is a medium to carry the poison. ‘Mix cornmeal with a slow-acting liquid insecticide or boric acid to make a paste. Slow-acting insecticides are the most effective way of controlling ants, according to the Colorado State University Extension. Choose one made specifically for ants for best results, and add it a little at a time to the cornmeal until you have a thick paste.’

• Sugar ants. Bait is serious. This means you are out to kill the colony, a ‘permanent fix.’ Bait is easy to make, a cup of very warm water, 1/2 c of sugar, cornmeal, 2 tablespoons Borax, make a paste. Set it out in a way birds, pets or children can’t get to it. Put it out AFTER you have watered, at the base of plants the ants and aphids are bothering. The ants will go for the sugar and lay off your plants. Scout ants take it home to the colony, and it is spread to all the ants. It isn’t an instant fix, but it works in a few days to a week. REMOVE while you water, replace afterwards.
• For grease or protein ants, Golden Harvest Organics bait: Mix three parts peanut butter with two parts jelly and add one tablespoon of boric acid per six ounces of mix. Add cornmeal for your solid. Place the bait on pieces of paper or stuff it into large straws (safer so birds won’t get into it,) and place it where you see ants foraging.

Make your own SAFE bait containers!

• Small diameters of pipe or unchewable tubing keeps bait safe from birds, pets and small animals. Swab the inside of the end of the tube with a Q-tip to be sure the paste is stuffed far enough away from the end of the tube for a small creature to reach. Place out of the sun, or make some shade for it, along the ant trail.
• Make holes in a jar lid, toward the center, so if it gets wet, falls over or you lay it on its side, your bait doesn’t ooze out. Put your bait in the jar, put the lid on tight. Lay it on its side, butt end facing the direction you water from, so if you accidentally water, the water doesn’t get inside. Lay it on its side along the ant trail, but especially near a plant the ants have been tending, for their easy access. They will go to it and stop tending the aphids. Don’t put it in full sun so it won’t bake your bait or be too hot for the ants to want to get into. If the lid surface is too slick for purchase, sandpaper or scratch it with a rock so the ants can get a grip. Containers are safe for you to handle when you want to move them or add more bait or remove while you water. If you make holes in the sides, make them high so the bait doesn’t seep out.

When I say Borax really works, I mean it! BE VERY CAREFUL. Besides a bugacide, it is an herbicide, used to kill weeds! It can’t tell the difference between a weed and your veggie plants. When you put down your bait, do not water later, forgetting it is there, and get it in your soil or on your plants. Take up your baits before you water. Definitely don’t do it before rains.

More ant & Borax details from an undated UCCE article on ‘New Research’ by Nick Savotich says: ‘The Argentine ant, being a honeydew feeder, has a strong preference for high carbohydrate liquids. High sucrose-based baits, (50% solution), were found to be the most preferred. Various concentrations of boric acid as the toxicant were also tried in combination with the high sucrose baits. It was found that the lowest concentration of boric acid, 0.25%, was as acceptable to the ants as was the sugar solution alone. Higher concentrations, 0.5 – 2%, tended to inhibit acceptance. Boric acid is an excellent toxicant for ants. However the next step is to determine whether this very low concentration (0.25%) is adequate to destroy whole colonies of the Argentine ant.’ So you see, it doesn’t take much of that 20 Mule Team to do the job.

For best results lay out a fresh bait daily. Lay it in areas where you see regular activity and near their points of entry if you know them. Don’t be diligent washing away their trails, you want them to find the bait spots easily again and again. All the workers in the colony can follow each others trails, so even if you killed off the first foragers, their partners will follow the trail they left.

Stop them before they start! Maybe you have been over watering? Ants make their colonies near a water source, and soft over watered plants are aphid friendly. When you find ant colony entrances, put a few drops of dish soap around, down the nest hole, fill in/bury the nest entrance. If they have taken up residence in your compost pile, turn that compost more frequently and water it a little less!

Predators! Groundbeetles, humpback flies, parasitic wasps, praying mantids and the yellow-shafted flicker all dine on ants. Plant flowering plants like cilantro, celery, carrots, food to bring the beneficial insect predators. You are lucky if you have woodpeckers because they are voracious ant eaters.

Wear gloves, wash your hands when you are done working with any toxic stuff, and remove your baits promptly when you are done with them.

Next year, put down your baits before you do plantings the ants and aphids love. Knock back the ant population from the get go! No, dear garden friends, we will never be ant free, nor do we want to be. Ants aerate our soil, clean up scraps and seeds, feed on fleas, termites, and other pests, are a food source for birds and other insects. As with all creatures, they play an important part in a healthy planet. Balance is a practical peace.

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Love KALE! Beauty, Super Nutrition, Easy to Grow!

Rainbow Lacinato Kale is almost too pretty to eat! West Coast Seeds says, ‘A fabulous cross of beloved Lacinato with the super cold hardy Redbor produces these multicoloured plants with mostly the strap-like leaves of the Lacinato and the colouring of the Redbor. It is slower to bolt and more productive than Lacinato. Enjoy in your salads, snacking, cooking this colourful bouquet all winter long.’ 65 days.

PLANT KALE! In SoCal, rather than cold tolerant varieties, select heat tolerant varieties that will grow well over summer too!

Kales have amazingly different colors and shapes!

• Scotch – Curly Leaf Kale is the most plant you will get for the footprint of all the plants in your garden! Its leaves are amazingly convoluted, and it keeps growing as you pick, tall and taller, up to 7′! In healthy soil it may make side plants along its naked stem. It’s disadvantage is if it gets aphids, then whiteflies attracted to yellowing leaves, they are hard to hose out of the leaves.
• Siberian Kale is a curly edged flat leaf variety. If you like your curls, but not your aphids, you might prefer this beauty. It’s leaves are light blue-green with white stems. It is the most tender variety, making it a great choice for raw salads, especially for seniors with tender teeth.
• Red Russian is a flat leaved low variety, with a red/purple midrib, beautiful among your ornamental yard plants!
• Red Bor, a completely purple beauty, midribs and leaves, is perfect for edible landscaping. 3 to 5′ tall. It is mild and crisp!
• Lacinato, aka Dinosaur Kale, is a unique bumply long narrow leaved variety that gets tall. Definitely prehistoric looking! Rainbow lacinato kale, image above, is more productive and quite prettier!
• Ornamental kale, aka Salad Savoy, is such a pretty winter garden accent! Ruffly, maybe frilly, bi/tri color purple, white, green heads.

Farming ThousandHeaded Kale is quite popular in Kenya! Great return per square foot!

And then there is ThousandHead Kale! It has fans. It’s an old Heirloom from the UK originally used as a fodder plant called borecole – you can see how productive that means it is! Turns out it is a great culinary plant too! You may need only one! Medium height variety, if left to grow it will reach a height of five feet! Vigorous plants with many side branches, continuous picking, long harvest period. Maturity 60 days from planting. Very good heat tolerance. Mature plants survive to -12°C (10°F) or below! One person said ‘When we grow this plant it is a sampling of medieval food.’ ThousandHead Kale has a 5 Star rating at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds! It’s like Fordhook Giant Chard – can you eat that much?!

Another excellent factor, that gives year round production and no time lost replanting, is that it has perennial leanings! Per PlantingJustice.org: It has perennial tendencies, so can be cut back after flowering and more side shoots will sprout and give a few more years of production. Great addition to a perennial food forest. Kale leaves are some of the biggest we have ever seen.

What kale can do! You can see you can feed a family with just one of these giant ThousandHead kales. Baker Creek says ‘Grow mammoth-sized kale that remains tender even as the leaves grow to an astounding 3 feet long.’ Particularly winter hardy, mature plants survive to -12°C (10°F) or below. Mark the site so you can find the fresh greens under the snow.

See more about other superb perennials – Grow Delicious and Amazing Edible Perennials!

Kale, Brassica oleracea, varieties have differing tastes. Some are more peppery to a bit bitter, like Curly Leaf; Red Russian is milder. Some are snacks in the field, while others need some cooking or even disguising in a stew with other veggies if you aren’t a kale lover, but want the nutrition. Salad Savoy is mild and tender.

Soil Fertilize well at planting time because your plant will be working hard, leaf after leaf, forever and ever! Kale grows best when your soil is mixed with organic matter (manure/compost) and perhaps a tad of lime. Overplant, closely, to start, for lots of little plants for salads, then keep thinning to 24 to 36 inch centers for your final spacing. Even my ‘dwarf’ kales get up to 36″ wide!

Kale is really a winter plant, but will happily grow in SoCal in summer. It will do better if its roots are kept cool with 6″+ deep mulch! Keep it moist. On extra hot series of days you might rig up some shade…

Intermingle with companion plants and different varieties of kales and Brassicas! Cilantro enhances Brassicas and repels aphids! Keep replanting that cilantro! Lettuces repel cabbage butterflies. Different varieties mature at different times and you will have less pests like aphids.

In SoCal weather your kale will grow up to 4 years, even more, though it is a biennial. Feed them time to time because they are heavy producers, a continuous leaf crop. Dig in a compost, worm castings, manure chow. Be careful not to break main roots. Scratch in some of those delicious box powder ferts, or if you live in Santa Barbara get that super landscape mix at Island Seed & Feed. Water it in well. Or get out your spade fork, poke in some holes and pour a compost, castings, manure tea down the holes! Your soil, your kale, and the faeries will dance in the moonlight!

Mildews, yuk. Severely infected plants may have reduced yields, shortened production times, and fruit/leaves that have little or off flavor. Powdery mildews like warm and dry weather, are windborne! Be good to neighboring gardeners, remove infected leaves ASAP! Some Powdery Mildew spores can’t germinate in water, so water your kale overhead and spritz the undersides of the leaves every couple of days to wash spores away and suppress the spread of the mildew! Downey mildew, the fuzzy under leaf kind, likes cool moist weather, is spread by wind, water, and overwinters in your soil!

Aphids suck the juices out of leaves, stealing your plant’s vitality. Aphids are pests particularly of Curly Leaf Kales. You can see they are well protected in those curls, humidity is great, thanks! Inspect your curly leafs regularly. Hose away aphids and whiteflies, mildew ASAP! Let them have it! Spray in those little folds. If they get in the center new leaves, hose ’em out! Remove leaves that are hopelessly infested and DO NOT compost them. Remove yellowing Brassica leaves. Yellow attracts whiteflies. In general, plant further apart for air circulation, water and feed just a little less to let those leaves harden up a bit. Soft fat leaves are an invitation to aphids and mildew! Keep up with harvesting, so leaves that are still there, the new leaves, are healthy and resistant ones.

Aphids do it all year-long, birthing as many as 12 a day! That’s long odds in their favor. Aphids prefer a comfy 65° to 80°F, sigh. If ever there were a reason to plant habitat for their predators…. As well as being super pollinators, Syrphid flies, aka Hoverflies, larvae are natural enemies to aphids; they can eat an aphid a minute! These flies are actually those little insects that hover, hover flies! You’ve seen ’em. Plant ample habitat for them. They prefer little flowers, white (alyssum) and yellow colored flowers, some preferring more open flowers like daisies and asters. They like parsley, dill, yarrow (leaves speed compost decomp), clover and buckwheat flowers. Plant more flowers! Check out this post by Heather Holm for ideas, but know she is in Minnetonka, MN! Her ‘hood is definitely different than SoCal!

Prevention is the wise choice.

• Do fall cleanup of leaves and debris.
• Plant in full sun
• As soon as you do your planting, or the very next day, treat with your homemade remedy: heaping tablespoon Baking soda, 1/4 cup non-fat powdered milk, one regular aspirin, teaspoon liquid dish soap per watering can/gallon. Treat again every 10 days or so after that, and after rains.
• Water less and early in the day.
• Avoid excess fertilizer, use slow release fertilizers instead.
• Remove weeds and plant less closely to reduce humidity.

Get mildew resistant varieties! Some say their Lacinato kale is resistant. Blue Curled Scotch Kale seems to be. High Mowing says NASH’S GREEN KALE is resistant, as proven in the damp winters of the Northwest! If you are looking for cold hardiness, here is great information from Mother Earth News field trials! Kales are generally Heat tolerant but even more heat tolerant varieties are surely coming due to weather changes and droughts. Coastal SoCal kales grow all year long and the most severe condition in recent years is heat, though 2019 certainly was the exception! For strong mildew resistance, more, take a look at Cornell’s super plant by plant Veggies Disease Resistant List!

Some gardeners say steamed washed mildewed kale is safe. But many gardeners won’t have it, and I personally don’t recommend it. Some people are allergic to certain fungi. Some don’t prefer to breathe the spores, say the kale smells mildewed, and suspect a lack of the right taste. Having read about spores overwintering in soil, I’m no longer putting it in my cold compost, likely a perfect habitat for it.

IMPORTANT WARNING! Non organic grocery store Kale is one of the top three most pesticide contaminated veggie!

GROW YOUR OWN even if it is in a container at your front door or on your balcony, wherever you can! Put in a bucket or planting bowl! That’s as fresh as it gets! It’s easy to grow from seed or a transplant from your nursery! It needs a little watering – you can carry a little bucket or if that’s too heavy, a half bucket, of water from your tub or kitchen tap. Let that water sit for a bit to off gas any chlorine. Keep your Kale harvested so it doesn’t get too big, but never more than a 1/3 of the plant at a time. You will become accustomed to it’s happiness and yours as you learn. It will become part of your family.

If you are not inclined to grow it, buy organic! Support your local organic growers, go to the Farmers Market! Bon appétit!

The nutritional value of kale is superb, both in disease prevention and treatment!

• The trick is to balance the nutrition versus the calories. For example, kale has less calories, but sweet potatoes have more Vitamin A. But that kale does have 98% of our daily need!
• Kale has less sodium and a surprisingly high Vitamin C count, in fact, raw kale has 200% the Daily Value we need! Even cooked, it has 71%! A cup of cooked kale or collards contains more vitamin C than an eight-ounce glass of orange juice, and more potassium than a banana. All that and only 55 calories!
• One of the super features of kale is it has a high amount of bioaccessible Calcium, especially needed by older women! We can absorb 50 to 60% of kale’s calcium. A cup of kale has more calcium than a cup of milk, that many are allergic to! And, it is a top source of Vitamin K, also essential to bone health.
• Steamed kale’s fiber-related components bind with bile acids in your digestive tract to lower your cholesterol levels. Raw kale does too, just not as much.
• Extraordinarily, kale’s glucosinolates can help regulate detox at a genetic level!
• Over 45 different flavonoids in kale, kaempferol and quercetin heading the list, combine both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits that reduce your risk of cancer.

Proper Storage  Do not wash kale before storing. Water encourages spoilage. Remove as much air as you can from the plastic storage bag. Pop it in the fridge, it will keep for 5 days. The longer it is stored, the more bitter its flavor becomes.

Eat more, cook less! Eating a cup to 2 cups 2 to 3 times a week is good, 4 to 5 times is better! Steaming is best. If you have young thin stemmed kale leaves, cut the leaves into 1/2″ slices. If your kale is older, thick stemmed and you don’t want the stems, run a sharp knife along the stem to shave the leaves from the stem, cut those into 1/2″ slices. Let them sit for at least 5 minutes to enhance their health-promoting qualities, then steam for 5 minutes.

Delicious Kale Blueberry Salad recipe at Natasha’s Kitchen!

Tasty Culinary Adventures: With most kales, young leaves can be added to a salad. Mature leaves are better in soups, quiches, stir fry, steamed over rice sprinkled with soy, or sautéed and tossed with your favorite dressing! Kale chips are easy to make; dry and sprinkle with your favorite flavors! Have you had it chopped with scrambled eggs in a homemade breakfast tortilla?! Make a cream of kale soup, kale potato soup. Add to accent your fish chowder. Add to winter stews, or with cream of Butternut squash! Chopped and steamed with diced potatoes, diagonally sliced carrots, and onions, all tossed with olive oil. Are you hungry yet? Get rad and try a smoothie! With yogurt and berries, mmm, delish! Finely chopped in hummus, or super tender baby leaves, thinnings, chopped in salad, or sprinkled with enthusiasm in enchiladas!

Cool kale salads! Delish with dried cranberries, toasted or raw cashew pieces, vegan mayonnaise and a little lemon juice. With fruits like avocados, apples, pears. Napa or red cabbage, carrots, pumpkin seeds and walnuts. Dress to taste with vinaigrette, sesame-ginger or tahini dressing. How about chopped kale, pine nuts, and feta cheese with whole grain pasta drizzled with olive oil?! If your kale plant flowers, those are edible too! Just run your fingers along the stem then sprinkle the flowers over your salad.

Bon appétit! To your superb health and longevity!

Updated 8.28.23 

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Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both remaining Santa Barbara City’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

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Probiotics in Your Garden?! YES!

Believe it or not, the homemade common green pickle is an excellent probiotics food source.  So is homemade sauerkraut, considered a probiotic super food! And the ‘sauerkraut’ can be made of any of the Brassica family plants – broccoli, cabbage – green or red is fine, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kale, bok choy, kohlrabi, etc.  These plants have the same bacteria as in yogurt, and the bacteria does all the work naturally!

Probiotics?  Say what?  What are they and why would you want them?!

Per WebMD.com ‘Probiotics are organisms such as bacteria or yeast that are believed to improve health. They are available in supplements and foods. The idea of taking live bacteria or yeast may seem strange at first. After all, we take antibiotics to fight bacteria. But our bodies naturally teem with such organisms. The digestive system is home to more than 500 different types of bacteria. They help keep the intestines healthy and assist in digesting food. They are also believed to help the immune system.’

Pickling cucumbers are fun to grow, crunchy tasty off the vine, and the survivors are easy to make into pickles!  Basically, use any mix of spices that pleases you, add it to your jars.  Wash, leave whole or cut to fit, and puncture your cukes – so the brine is better absorbed, stuff them into the jar too.  Make a salt and water brine, pour it over them a 1/2″ more than the height of the cukes.  Ferment a few days and they’re yours!

HellaDelicious uses a marvelous spice mix (below), and has great tips on her page by page recipe – see all the details!  Or just do water and salt, forget all the spices!  But, I’ll bet you have a few of these spices handy and could quickly throw in a few, just your favorites, of course!  Be creative!  This works for any veggies you would like to pickle – cauliflower, beans, asparagus, onions, carrot slices, beets, tomatoes!

• small handful fennel seeds (you gathered from an unsprayed place)
• 6-10 black peppercorns
• 1 T mustard seeds
• 5-7 cloves
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, sliced (you grew your own)
• dill flower heads and leaves (you grew it next to your cukes)
• small handful of coriander seeds (cilantro you let bolt and seed)
• 1 horseradish root, sliced (fresh is great but it’s highly invasive)
• cinnamon bark

You may enjoy A cheater’s guide to quick pickling almost anything by wild Brooklynite pickler Kenji Magrann-Wells.

Now.  Before you go running off to the grocery store to buy pickles and sauerkraut, know that, per Sarah, the Healthy Home Economist,

Foods that are pickled are those that have been preserved in an acidic medium. In the case of various types of supermarket pickles on the shelf, the pickling comes from vinegar. These vegetables, however, are not fermented (even though vinegar itself is the product of fermentation) and hence do not offer the probiotic and enzymatic value of homemade fermented vegetables.

Vegetables that you ferment in your kitchen using a starter, salt, and some filtered water create their own self preserving, acidic liquid that is a by-product of the fermentation process. This lactic acid is incredibly beneficial to digestion when consumed along with the fermented vegetables or even when sipped alone as anyone on the GAPS Intro Diet has discovered (cabbage juice anyone?). In other words, homemade fermented veggies are both fermented and pickled.  [Be sure to read the comments on her page too!]

She says not only are there probiotics, but these homemade foods

• Enhance the vitamin content of the food.
• Preserve and sometimes enhance the enzyme content of the food.
• Improve nutrient bio-availability in the body.
• Improve the digestibility of the food and even cooked foods that are consumed along with it!

To your excellent health and the great sport of pickling and krauting!

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The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden, then became this blog too! Both of Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

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Taming Your Butternut, Waltham, Winter Squash!

Handsome Butternut Squashes! Photo by Yelena Strokin who has a fabulous food blog, is currently living and working in historic Newtown, Bucks County Pennsylvania. She quotes Leo Tolstoy: Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. 

This kind of squash has a hard rind, tan to orange colored, and depending on the variety, often with a neck and bulb. You may have passed it by because it takes a long growing time to make that hard squash, it takes a lot of growing space, and is hard to peel. Below are some tips for making peeling easy! 

Consider letting it grow on a sunny hillside, or an abandoned area, along the sunny side of a fence or among your landscape ornamentals. It’s wonderful big leaves can act like a living mulch for an otherwise dry area. If your area is good and hot, you can grow them on a trellis, but trellises are a bit cooler… If you are in a cooler area, keep them on the hotter ground. Butternuts do need regular water to grow those huge fine leaves, and to produce those dense/heavy tasty squash that are so high in Vitamin A, good for your skin and eyes! Depending on your zone, plant by March/April so it will have a long enough season to harden for harvest and be done in time for early fall planting. If your season is short, grow smaller varieties like ButterBaby F1! The squash can be stored for months, so you can eat them as you need them!    

As a grower, harvest your Winter squash when fruits have turned a deep, solid color, its stem turns brown, and the rind is hard. Generally, the shell should be so hard as to make it difficult to make an impression with your finger nail. Cut squash from the vines carefully, leaving two inches of stem attached if possible, to protect it against bacteria that cause it to rot. You want that so they store well. See more about growing Squashes! Prolific and Indomitable! Johnny’s has this terrific page! How Long to Cure & How Long to Store Winter Squash for Peak Flavor & Eating Quality

Removing the Skin  Some people like the skin, which solves the whole matter. Others find it tough and papery, less than palatable. If you decide to peel your squash, microwave it for 3-4 minutes (online I saw anywhere from 2 to 10 mins! 3 worked fine for me), let cool, then peel. If you don’t want to microwave it, have a good sharp knife on hand.

Next to the obvious tip of keeping your knives sharp, is the importance of stabilizing that puppy. That’s why first you cut the bulb end off. Before you peel, scoop out the seeds. Easiest is with a grapefruit spoon; fork tines will do just fine. If you try to scoop seeds after you peel, it’s hard to hold the squash. It’s slippery.

Then you halve the bulb, leaving you 3 pieces with flat edges. That way you have stable ways to hold your squash pieces. This is critical when peeling, a notoriously difficult task because of the thickness and density of that squash.

Stand your pieces and use that sharp knife, or a sturdy sharp potato peeler, down their length. Not a task for children. Do be careful, yourself, please. Check out Alanna Kellogg’s page, the Veggie Evangelist! Cut it as you wish ~ you have several options, be creative!

Delicious! Have it as fries, chunked in soups and stews, baked stuffed with your favorites, roasted small chopped with apples and onions drizzled with your favorite sauce, mashed, and creamed topped with bacon bits, puréed sprinkled with cinnamon and/or brown sugar, drizzled with Grade A maple syrup, or honey, spread on pizza or tortillas, baked in muffins and breads, omelets any time of day, or simply steam cubes and dress with olive oil, tamari, ginger and top with pumpkin seeds! Send us your favorite recipe in the comments!

A great winter treat! Have a tasty Roasted Butternut Squash Salad with Warm Cider Vinaigrette!

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Place the butternut squash on a sheet pan. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil, the maple syrup, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and toss. Roast the squash for 15 to 20 minutes, turning once, until tender. Add the cranberries to the pan for the last 5 minutes. […you could top your salad with fresh pom arils (that’s pomegranate seeds) and pumpkin seeds.]
3. While the squash is roasting, combine the apple cider, vinegar, and shallots in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until the cider is reduced to about 1/4 cup. Off the heat, whisk in the mustard, 1/2 cup olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper.
4. Place the arugula in a large salad bowl and add the roasted squash mixture, the walnuts, and the grated Parmesan. Spoon just enough vinaigrette over the salad to moisten and toss well. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Recipe courtesy of  Ina Garten

Your Butternut seeds are edible too, just like pumpkin seeds! Clean, dry, roast, eat! If you are a gardener, clean, dry, keep some – you are definitely going to save some of those pups for planting! They are viable up to 6 years when kept in cool, dry storage conditions. Cross pollinating can occur any where from 800′ to 2 miles. If the wind blows I would opt for the 2 miles. If you think some cross pollination by wind or insects may have occurred, eat your seeds, but buy seeds or nursery transplants to plant again!

Here’s to a nutritious and happy fall, and happy winter feasting! 

Updated 8.23.23

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Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of the remaining Santa Barbara City’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

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Chard, Glorious Chard! And Leafminers.

Chard is the bouquet of the Garden!  Whether it is all green, a white stemmed Fordhook Giant, or Bright Lights/Neon from white to neon pink, bright oranges and reds, brilliant yellow, it is glorious!  And it’s not just another pretty face, it’s a prodigious producer, Cut-&-Come-Again, and again, and again!  In our SoCal clime, it acts as a perennial, sometimes living for several venerable years!  Low calorie, it is packed with vitamins K, A, C, E, and B6.  Chard is also very good source of copper, calcium, phosphorus, and a good source of thiamin, zinc, niacin, folate and selenium!

Chard is a top producer per square foot!  It is a fast prolific crop maturing in only 55 days!  It tolerates poor soil, inattention, and withstands frost and mild freezes.  But it likes a rich sandy loam soil – well manured and composted with worm castings added.  It likes lots of consistent water, full sun, and plenty of space!  A healthy chard, will take a 2 to 3’ footprint, more if it is a Fordhook Giant!  At 28” tall, it makes a shadow, so plant accordingly!  Some varieties, like Fordhook, have crumpled leaves, lots of leaf per space, like curly leaf kale, lots of return per area used.  Others have a flatter leaf.  Rhubarb chard has a narrower midrib.

Chard seeds are actually a cluster of seeds (like beets) and will produce more than one plant, so thinning and/or micro greens is part of the story!  Spacing will determine the size of your plants.  Too crowded, shading each other, they will be smaller.  With full space, they will produce to feed an army!  If you are harvesting baby chard leaves on a regular basis, space them 2″-4″ apart, or 8″-10″ if you plan to harvest less often.  Generally, row planting chard is not your best choice because of leafminers.  See below….  Plant them here and there; interplant with stinky herbs!  Sow chard seeds ½” deep; germination will take 5-16 days.

Leafminers are the bane of chard, spinach and beets.  Plant so your neighboring plants leaves don’t touch each other.  This is NOT a plant to row crop.   Leafminers flies just lay eggs from one plant to the next.  Separate your plants into different areas, biodiversely; interplant with herbs.  They are so pretty I put them where they can be seen the most!  You know you have leafminers when you see their trails or brown patches on the leaves as the miners burrow between the leaf’s layers.  Remove those sections and badly infested leaves immediately.  Keep your chard harvested and well watered to keep it growing and producing fast, sometimes outgrowing the leafminers.  Give it plenty of worm castings both in the surrounding soil and on the surface.  Cover the surface with a thin layer of straw to keep the castings moist.  Some say soft fast growth is perfect habitat for the miners, but chard is meant to be a fast grower with plenty of water to keep it sweet!  So if you can’t eat it all, find a friend or two who would appreciate some and share your bounty!  Or remove plants until you have what you can keep up with.  Plant something else delicious in your new free space!

Details from U of Illinois Extension:  Spinach and Swiss chard leafminer flies are 1/2 inch long and gray with black bristles. This leaf miner lay eggs on the underside of the leaves side by side singly or in batches up to five.  One larva may feed on more than one leaf.  After feeding for about two weeks, the larvae drop from the leaves onto the ground where it pupates and overwinters in the soil as pupae. In spring, they appear from mid April to May and they cause serious damage compared to the other generations that appear later.  [The life cycle is only 2 weeks long, and they can have five to ten generations per year!  That’s why you immediately want to remove infected parts of your plant, to stop the cycle!]   Cornell Cooperative Extension

Slugs & snails are chard’s other not best friends.  Irregular holes in the leaves, that’s the clue.  Remove by hand, checking the undersides of leaves and down in the center area where new leaves are coming.  I chuck ’em where our crows gourmet on them.  Or use Sluggo or the cheaper store brand of the same stuff.

Harvest chard quickly, rinse, pack loosely, get it into the fridge.  Do not store with fruits, like apples, and vegetables that produce ethylene gas.

Let your most wonderful chard go to seed!  It will likely get as tall as you are!  Let the flowering clusters turn brown and hand harvest your anticipated number of seeds you would like, plus some extras in case, and some for giveaway or trade!  The seeds are viable for 4 to 5 years if you keep them cool and dry.

Chard is young-leaf tender in salads, mature-leaf tasty steamed and in stews, sautéed, and in stir fries.  Some people eat the leaf midrib, others cut it out, use it like celery, stuff and serve.  And there’s always chard lasagna….

6-Large Leaf Chard Lasagna 

Oil your baking pan
Lay in flat uncooked lasagna noodles to fit, cover bottom
Remove stems, lay in 3 unchopped chard leaves, more if your pan is deep enough
Sprinkle with chopped fresh basil leaves Sprinkle with chopped onion, garlic bits
Spread with flavorful cheese of your choice
Spread with zesty tomato/pizza sauce of your choice
Repeat.  Pile it high because the chard wilts down
Top with onion slices, tomato slices, or whatever pleases you
Sprinkle with Parmesan

Bake at 375 for 45 mins
Let cool for 20 mins, EAT!

If you don’t eat it all, freeze serving sizes

Instead of chard, you can use spinach, fine chopped kale, strips or slices of zucchini or eggplant!

Have a tasty day!

Next week, Garden Tools Specially for Women!

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Growing UP, 4 High Yield Summer Plants!

From the LA Examiner.com Pasta with fried zucchini, teardrop tomatoes and walnut pesto!

Four of the highest yield summer plants per square foot are indeterminate tomatoes, pole beans, zucchinis, and chard!  Three of these crops can be grown up, on trellises, in cages, so your land need is small.  Chard is prolific, cut and come again all year long!

Tomatoes are classically grown UP!  They have their own little support systems, tomato cages!  Some people trellis them, grow them against the fence, espalier them, even grow them upside down!  At Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden we have two foot diameter cages we build out of two remesh panels – if you are local, drop by to see them on the job!  

We use those same structures for pole beans!  Pole beans love growing on trellises, any kind!  Those simple tripods tied at the top work fine.  Or let them shinny up your sunflower Jack-in-the-Beanstalk style!  I feed them across my remesh panel horizontally so they remain at harvest height!

For zuchs, the easiest thing is to grab the largest strongest tomato cage you have and feed the zuch leaves up though it as your zuch grows! Let some of the outmost leaves stick out so the plant is more open for easier harvesting in the center, air flows to allow cooler conditions to prevent mildews. Cut the bottommost leaves off as the plant gets taller and well foliated, plant other plants underneath! As your zuch vines more, put in another cage, or two, right next to the first one. Let your vine grow right over the top of them, above the other plants already growing there. Put in as many cages as you need as your vine grows.  This is one time when it really doesn’t pay to let your zuchs get huge on the vine, break the plant from their weight, fall on plants below!  Harvest small and salad tender.  If you see one coming, don’t neglect to check on it in a maximum of 2 days.  In prime conditions they are FAST growers!  

If you are growing butternuts/winter squash, or gourds, pop in a well staked sturdy trellis – simplest is remesh 4′ X 7′ panels from Home Depot or OSH, or an arbor. Remesh can be bent whimsically or cut to fit a spot perfectly, or green wire tied together to make cage sizes that suit your needs. Tie your vine, 10′ for squash, 25′ for gourds, to the trellis, or to a southwest facing fence so your squash get plenty of heat and light. Use that flat green garden tie that expands with your plant as your plant grows.  Heavy fruits will need to be supported. Use cloth twine, net veggie bags ie onion bags, old panty hose, old sheets, towels, colorful cloth scraps, parts of old clothes. Have fun with it! 

That said, another ‘vertical’ trick, that doesn’t require tying, is to put up an upside down ‘U’ shaped device. Take one of those remesh panels, or a trellis and lay it over the top of sawhorses or any way you can devise, cinder blocks staked with rebar, whatever you have around. Be sure to support anyplace that needs it so the structure won’t sag. Plant your plants, cucumbers, melons, beans, outside the ends of your ‘arbor’; let them grow up and over. Your fruits will be supported by the remesh or trellis! Don’t make your structure too wide, and make it high enough – you want easy access to tend and harvest other plants that you will grow underneath, like summer lettuces that need a little shade!  Or it can be a kid play place and they will harvest the beans for you! 

Trellises?! Buying them readymade is time saving. Some gardeners would never dream of buying one. They build their own! Some make the simplest, three poles tied together at the top. Others go into fastidious detail and artistic ritual, creating works of beauty! To them, gardening wouldn’t BE gardening without doing that. 

Blessings on your way.  Up you go!

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