Early Season Treats from the Garden and the Woods
Posted on Tuesday, May 9, 2023 · Leave a Comment
Even if you planted your peas and spinach in April, you will not be eating them anytime soon. Despite days of full sun and occasional days of high temperatures, spring in New England is often cold and rainy, too. Our vegetable gardens putter along, but few things are ready to eat until June – or later. But there are vegetables you can be eating now, however, if you plan right.
Parsnips will grow in soil suitable for carrots and are an early spring treat
I eat parsnips as soon as the snow melts and the ground thaws. How? I overwinter parsnips in the ground, which sweetens them up and makes them even tastier. I plant parsnip seeds in June – they need warm soils to germinate. Even then, they take 2 to 3 weeks to come up out of the ground.
Parsnip seeds only are good for one year, so buy new seeds each year. Plant the seeds an inch apart and half an inch deep. A key to success is to thin your parsnips so they are not crowded. Thin them in July when the greens are 4- to 6-inches tall They need 3 to 4 inches of space between plants if you want good-sized parsnips. If you mulch the plants well with ground-up autumn leaves or straw, your work is done until harvest time the following spring.
Parsnips are an old fashioned vegetable, but prepared properly they are delicious. I peel and chop parsnips into half-inch thick slices, and steam them until slightly soft. Then I cook them briefly in a frying pan with butter. At the last moment I add maple syrup and cook at low heat until it caramelizes. Yum! Don’t have any this year? You can buy parsnips at your farmers market or even the grocery store.
Sorrel is ready to eat now for me
A little-known perennial green is sorrel. Once established, it produces a plethora of light green, lemon-flavored leaves, year after year. The French make soup with it, perhaps because the greens themselves pretty much melt and disappear if you sauté them. So for years I just added them raw to salads.
Then I got Deborah Madison’s wonderful cook book, “Vegetable Literacy”. She uses sorrel with peas and leeks to make a soup. But I don’t really follow recipes, and found that yes, indeed, sorrel goes well with peas. But I found I can boil frozen peas, then at the last minute add chopped sorrel. Just boil it for another minute, drain, add butter and enjoy!
Another early perennial vegetable, asparagus, is also coming in to season. If you like asparagus – and I can’t imagine anyone not liking it steamed and slathered in butter – you should grow it. It is mostly sold as crowns (roots), not seeds, for starting a patch, but seeds are available if you want to start an acre of asparagus.
Don’t crowd your asparagus. The roots are sold in bundles of 25, which is fine for a family of two. Plant them 18 inches apart and six inches deep. Buy any of the Jersey hybrids, they are all male and won’t start new plants that will crowd out your established plants. When planting, add lots of compost and some organic fertilizer. They like full sun, and plenty of moisture, but will grow with as little as 4- to 6- hours of sunshine if that is all you can offer.
To keep on getting good asparagus every year, keep it well weeded and top dress it with organic fertilizer every year after you finish picking. Mulch is good for keeping weeds down. And don’t over-pick your asparagus: three weeks is the season for a well-established patch. Don’t pick any in year one or two. The plants need to store lots of energy for next spring’s production, so they need to grow fronds all summer for that.
Fiddlehead stems are good tp eat, too.
Fiddleheads are a great spring treat. They are the new shoots of the Ostrich Fern, a big shade-loving fern that is common in New England. All ferns come up as fiddleheads, but only the Ostrich fern is tasty. There is an easy way to identify them: they are the only ones that have a groove up the inside of the stem – just like celery.
I sauté fiddleheads in butter in a cast iron frying pan. First I brown some slivered almonds in olive oil, then add the fiddleheads and some chopped garlic or the bulbs of ramps (more on them below). I pick not only the curled part of the fiddlehead, but also the first 6 inches of stem. But I only take one or two fiddleheads from each plant to allow it to develop well.
Ramps, also called wild leeks, are easy to grow if you have an open wooded area with maple, ash or beech. They are commonly sold now at farmers markets. Both the bulb and the leaves are edible, so cut off the bulbs and plant them. Next year they will please you by showing up in early spring. If you plant 25 to 50 bulbs each year for 3 years or more, you will develop a nice patch. Once established they will spread by seed and root.
Ramps are easy to grow and a real spring treat
My favorite way of eating ramps is to clean them and rub off the gelatinous covering of the bulb, and then chop the entire plant for cooking. I fry them in a cast iron pan until the leaves wilt, then make scrambled eggs. They can also be added to anything that require garlic or onion – they are the same family.
We will have to wait until July or August to get our tomatoes, even those like ‘Early Girl’ and ‘Fourth of July’ that are quick oto produce. But if you start some perennials in your garden, you can be enjoying taste treats even now, in May. I am.
Henry Homeyer is the author of 4 gardening books. His email is
henry.homeyer@comcast.net. he is a liflelong organic gardener and a 20+-year veteran of the UNH master Gardener program.
Summer Chores in the Vegetable Garden
Posted on Wednesday, June 16, 2021 · Leave a Comment
Summer Chores in the Vegetable Garden
As the song goes, It’s “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy!” Well, not really. Yes, I’ve planted my 53 tomato plants, 200 onions and more, but there is still plenty to do. Let’s look at a few chores you might want to do this weekend.
Your tomatoes need support. If they lay on the ground, or even on a nice bed of straw, they are more prone to diseases. They need air and sunshine to stay healthy and to ripen up sooner.
Tomato cages support your plants and hay or straw helps prevent soil-borne diseases scaled
I like wire tomato cages as supports. I recommend getting the biggest cages possible: 54 inches tall with four support legs instead of three. They are expensive, but last for many years. Right now your tomatoes are short, and standing up on their own. But if you wait too long, they will be much more difficult to install. Do it now!
If you grow a lot of tomatoes and don’t have the budget to buy nice cages, you can tie them to wood stakes. Get one-inch hardwood “grade stakes”. Five footers are best because you need to push at least a foot into the ground. Tie the plants to the stakes with something soft: strips of old sheets work well, or panty hose. If you use string it may bite through the stems when they are loaded with fruit. You will need to add more ties as the plants get taller.
As your tomatoes get mature, you may notice that lower leaves are turning brown.
This is probably early blight, a common soil-borne disease. It is not fatal, but reduces your fruit production. You can minimize by doing two things: cut off affected leaves, and mulch the soil to minimize splash-up. Grass clippings, leaves or hay will help. They also keep the roots more moist in dry times.
If you are growing carrots or beets, this is a good time to thin them. You really should thin them by the Fourth of July. It is tedious work, which is why many seed companies are selling “pelleted” carrot seeds. These are seeds that are coated with a clay covering to make them larger, and easier to plant an inch or so apart. Beet seeds are actually seed clusters: several seeds are in each “seed”. So even if you spaced them carefully, they need to be thinned.
If you planted potatoes, now is the time to look for potato beetles, or their eggs on the underneath side of the leaves. The egg masses are bright orange and easy to spot. Scrape off the eggs into a jar of soapy water. If you see the beetles or their larvae eating the leaves, get them into the water, too. By reducing their population now you will reduce their exponential increase in numbers. If you see holes in the leaves, you have the beetles.
Parsnips will grow in soil suitable for carrots and are an early spring treat
This is a good time to plant parsnip seeds because they need warm soil to germinate. Keep in mind that the seeds do not keep well, so do not plant last year’s seeds. Most garden centers probably still have parsnip seeds because they are not a terribly popular crop. Parsnips store well over the winter – just leave them in the soil. I love them as an early spring treat: just boil them up, then serve them with butter and maple syrup. Yum! And don’t get discouraged if they take 2 full weeks to germinate, they are very slow.
I am eating lettuce from my garden that I planted early in the spring. That means it is time to plant some more seeds. Lettuce bolts when the summer gets too hot, which means that it elongates (reaching for the sky) and turns bitter before flowering and producing seed.
But there are summer varieties that are heat-resistant. Of the Butterhead lettuces, try Skyphos or Buttercrunch Bibb. Oakleaf lettuces such as Magenta do well, and a Romaine called Jericho does well in heat. Read the packages well or study a catalog.
Plant mid-summer lettuces where they get morning sun and afternoon shade if you can. You can also use shade cloth to protect against strong afternoon rays. Perhaps you can plant seeds in six-packs to get them going, then transplant them in your tomato patch where the big plants provide some shade.
These little basil plants I started from seed and are ready to go in the ground
Pesto season is coming up in August, so plant some more basil by seed if you don’t already have enough planted. I like planting seeds in small pots to get them well established before planting them in the garden. But if you want a lot for pesto, dedicate a 6-foot row and plant plenty of seeds. They will do fine, even if a bit crowded.
Look around your garden now to see what you forgot to plant. For me this year, it was dill. No matter. I shall plant some by seed, and it will grow vigorously in the heat of summer.
If you have run out of space in the garden, think about creating a raised bed for those last minute plantings. Most garden centers sell metal corners to help you build your own raised beds, even if you aren’t a carpenter. Not only that, your local lumber yard will cut the boards to your specifications at no extra charge. All you need is a cordless drill and some outdoor screws to put a bed together in no time. Put a little bed on your lawn in full sun.
Don’t forget a few annual flowers in your vegetable garden to attract bees and butterflies. Most garden centers still have plenty of flowers that are in bloom and ready to plant. Just remember to tease the roots apart before planting now, as the little cells are often root-bound. So get outside, and get busy. It’s summer!
Early Edibles from the Garden and Woods
Posted on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 · Leave a Comment
Okay, you may not want to go to the grocery store so much anymore. Tired of eating canned beans? Want something new for your taste buds? Here are some early things I look forward to each spring. These plants are all perennials, so if you don’t have them, you will need to plant them this year for future years.
Parsnips
Parsnips that I planted the previous spring are always one of my first garden treats. I harvest them as soon as the soil thaws. Yes, it’s an old fashioned vegetable, but it’s tasty if prepared properly and easy enough to grow.
Plant parsnip seeds in early summer for next spring’s fare. But if you have seeds saved from last year, don’t use them. Although most vegetable and flower seeds are good for 3 years, parsnip seeds are only good for one year – as are onion and parsley seeds.
Parsnips take an interminable time to germinate – 3 weeks, on average. The roots survive winters in the ground, but the seeds like warm soil to germinate. And as with most root crops, no one starts them indoors to get them going early. Just plant them in the ground in late May or early June. Thin to 2 or 3 inches between plants by the Fourth of July.
As to eating parsnips, don’t overcook them. Steam lightly or sauté them in butter and coat with maple syrup at the last minute. The syrup will glaze them and make the dish fit for a queen. You can cook them with carrots or add fennel seeds for a change of pace.
Next I go to my woods for a real treat: ramps. These are also called wild leeks, and are related to onions, leeks and garlic. They grow wild in moist, dark soil, often alongside streams in maple and beech forests. They often grow in huge swaths, thousands growing in one area. But they are slow growing, so don’t over-harvest them.
Ramps growing in my woods
For several years I dug up and planted about 50 ramps plants each year in my woods, and they have multiplied by offsets nicely. Two or three years ago I started harvesting seeds in late summer and sprinkling them on the soil and covering with just a little forest duff. These have grown and are doing nicely, though they are still too small to eat.
If you want to start some ramps in your woods, find a friend who will teach you how to recognize them. Ramps have pointed green leaves roughly the shape of a canoe and 6 to 9 inches long. They grow from a single point, each plant having 2 to 4 leaves. Frequently the base of the stem is maroon, but it may be green. And the key is this: they smell like garlic. You need to dig down 4 inches or so in the soil to harvest the bulbs, which slightly resemble leeks.
I use ramps the way I use onions – I add them to stir fries, scrambled eggs and stews. The nice thing is, you can eat the leaves, not just the little bulbs.
Another early spring treat is a perennial green called sorrel. Although seeds are available, I recommend buying plants at your local garden center if possible because it takes a long time to get big plants from seed. This plant’s leaves are very tart and almost lemon flavored.
When cooked, sorrel leaves cook down to almost nothing. Fortunately, I found a recipe in Deborah Madison’s fabulous cookbook, Vegetable Literacy, which takes advantage of sorrel’s sharp flavor, but mixes it in with other veggies to bulk it up. Here is what you can do:
Sorrel in early spring
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan, add 5 ounces of leeks (I always have some frozen from my garden) and 1 cup of water, and simmer 10 minutes covered on medium heat. Add 1.5 cups of peas and 3 cups water and simmer for 5 minutes. The stir in 2 to 3 cups sorrel, allow to wilt, and puree in a blender. Finally stir in a little cream, crème fraiche or yogurt.
The last of my early spring treats is another old fashioned one: rhubarb. Like sorrel, this has a tangy, sharp flavor. I love it in pies, tapioca pudding and jam. Some cooks spoil it by cooking with strawberries, but I feel that diminishes its flavor.
Rhubarb is easy to grow. You will need to buy plants or get roots from a friend – although rhubarb produces flowers stalks and seeds by the gazillion, it does not easily reproduce that way, though I’m told it can be done.
Amend the soil with lots of compost and/or aged manure. Add some organic fertilizer, too, as the roots will be in the same soil for decades – rhubarb lasts forever. I have some plants over 25 years old and going strong. Full sun is best, but like any leafy green it will produce in part shade. Four hours of sunshine will be fine.
One of my favorite rhubarb uses is to make punch. Chop up a few stems and boil in an equal quantity of water. Once it gets mushy you can strain it and add more water and some sugar until you have a nice drink. I just use a little sugar – I like the tea plenty tart. I like to use red stems for the tea, as it looks so nice in a glass or cup. Most people who grow rhubarb have plenty, so you might beg a few stalks if you don’t have your own – yet.
It occurred to me as I walked up from my vegetable garden recently with a dozen fat parsnips, that gardening has something in common with fishing: you never know if you’re going to come home with something for dinner or not. Those parsnips, which were planted last summer, had spent the winter in the garden. Mice or voles might well have eaten them up – but they didn’t.
Parsnips, carrots and potatoes can spend the winter in the ground without injury –other than the risk of rodent damage. In fact, I leave most of my parsnips in the ground each fall because they taste sweeter in the spring. I mulched them well with straw in the fall.
Once the soil has dropped below 50 degrees F some of the carbohydrates turn to sugars. That’s why commercial potato growers store their spuds in temperature-controlled places that are above 50 degrees. MacDonalds and other big buyers of potatoes don’t want potatoes with high sugar content – they burn, or darken, when frying. So they carefully monitor temperatures, ensuing they stay a little above 50 degrees.
It’s not time to plant parsnip seeds yet, but I bought my seeds this week. Parsnip seeds are only good the year you bought them, so if you have left over seeds from last year, toss them out and buy new seeds.
Parsnip seeds take forever and a day to germinate – I have been known to wait a month to see them appear, even though the seed package might say they’ll start growing in 2 weeks. Wait until the soil warms up well before planting – late May or even early June is best.
Plant parsnip seeds half an inch deep and an inch apart in rows that are 6 inches apart. In a wide raised bed you can plant multiple short rows across the bed. Then, after your parsnips are a couple of inches tall, thin them to 3 to 4 inches apart. Even though they tend to grow straight down into the soil, they send tiny roots laterally and don’t like to be crowded.
If you are not familiar with parsnips, go to your local food co-op and buy a few and cook them up. After you’ve tasted them, you’ll know if you want to grow them or not. They are related to carrots, but have their own distinct flavor. You can steam or boil them like carrots, and serve with butter and a little hot maple syrup if you like.
Another recipe I like uses potatoes, parsnips and sorrel, an early-season green. Just peel and chop a pound of potatoes and 3/4 pound of parsnips; boil them until soft. Cut up a cup of sorrel and sauté in 2 ounces of butter until soft and mushy. Mash the root crops when cooked, add the sorrel and some heavy cream. Yum!
My sorrel is up now, and will be ready to harvest in early May. Sorrel is a great favorite of French cooks who make a soup with it. Although I grow it, I sometimes forget it’s there and overlook it. It’s a bright leafy green that comes back, year after year. It has a sharp lemony flavor, a bit like wood sorrel.
My problem with it is that when you cook it, it practically disappears. It has little substance. But it’s easy to grow, and adds a unique flavor if added to a salad or even a sandwich. Plants are often sold at garden centers in the herb section.
What else is coming up in the garden? Rhubarb. This sharp-flavored perennial stalk is a favorite of mine. Some varieties have deep red stems, others are green with just a hint of red. All will make you pucker up if you take a bite raw. The leaves contain oxalic acid, and are said to be poisonous.
I love rhubarb pie, strawberry-rhubarb pie, rhubarb sauce and rhubarb tea. You know the pies and sauce, I suppose, but the tea? It’s easy to make. Chop up a few stems and boil in an equal quantity of water. Once it gets mushy you can strain it and add more water and some sugar until you have a nice drink. I just use a little sugar – I like the tea plenty tart. I like to use red stems for the tea, as it looks so nice in a glass or cup. I drink it cold, too.
Chives are another perennial vegetable or herb. Mine are just up now and a couple of inches tall, despite the snow nearby in the same bed. This tasty fellow is best known as a garnish for baked potatoes, along with sour cream. It is one of the few things that will winter over easily in a pot on the kitchen window sill. But look for yours now, when there is little fresh in the garden to harvest.
I also grow garlic chives, but mine aren’t up yet. Garlic chives are bigger than chives and the flavor is bolder. I like them for their fuzzy white flowers that appear in early summer. The leaves are not hollow like chives, but flat. They are commonly used in Asian cooking. They’ll be along shortly.
I wish I had more perennial vegetables. Wouldn’t it be great if our tomatoes and squash came back like rhubarb, year after year?
Henry is a UNH Master Gardener and a gardening consultant. He is the author of 4 gardening books. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
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