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Russian Blue Kale

Kale is the ancestor of all other vegetables in the brassica family:  broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, rutabaga, and collard greens, to name a few.  The kale varieties we eat today are at least two thousand years old.  Over the last two millennia gardeners have selected the anomalies growing in the kale patch and propagated them by natural selection.  We know these as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, rutabaga, and collard greens.

The family tree for kale is essentially two branches.  Brassica napus species covers the Russian kales, rutabagas and canola (as in the oil).  Brassica oleracea is home to regular kale, collard greens, Chinese kale and the other brassica vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

Kale is like cabbage but without a head.  It is one of the most hardy of vegetables and some report it surviving temperatures down to 5 degrees F.

In fact kale becomes sweeter and much more flavorful after a couple of frosts.  To grow for fall, direct seed in garden 3 to 4 months before your first fall frost.  With a little protection from the cold you can harvest kale until December in most locations and even through the winter in southern areas.

Kale can also be sown in October for an early spring harvest.  Cover the little plants with straw before winter takes over the landscape.  Or if you prefer you can direct seed in early spring along with other cool weather greens.

Kales are true biennials.  To save seeds try one of the following methods.  Leave mature plants in the ground with winter protection, then uncover and allow to go to seed the following spring.  Another method is to dig and store kale plants with their roots in damp sand in a root cellar for winter and then plant out in spring and allow plants to go to seed.

Kale is becoming more popular as a vegetable and gardeners are cooking kale every way they can think of.  The Greeks and Romans couldn’t get enough of it.  Scandinavians simmer kale slowly for hours with cream, stock, salt and pepper and serve it with the Christmas ham.  The Irish mix kale with mashed potatoes and call it colcannon.  Even the so-called “ornamental” kales are edible.

Whether you grow it as a spring green to toss into green salads, lightly saute like spinach in late spring or plant for traditional cooked greens in fall, kale is delicious and packed with nutrition.  I’ve found it works in virtually any recipe calling for cooked greens.

I’ll let you know how my “overwintering” kale experiments turn out.

Garlic Chives in bloom

Gathered since ancient times and cultivated since Medieval times, garlic chives have been used as a seasoning, vegetable and medicine.  Their subtle garlic flavor enhances many dishes.  Asian cooks give garlic chives a starring role—cooked whole in stir fries or cut in large chunks in a simple soup.  Asian cuisine also features garlic chives as a seasoning.  Whatever way you use them, garlic chives are an asset to any cook’s seasoning repertoire.  Oh, and they’re really easy to grow.

Allium tuberosum is its Latin name.  Allium is Greek for garlic and tuberosum describes the tuberous rhizomes from which it grows.  The leaves of garlic chives are broad and flat, unlike the onion flavored chives, with their round, hollow leaves.  Garlic chives produce white star shaped flowers in late summer, while onion chives produce lilac colored flowers in late spring.

Garlic chives are usually started from root divisions in spring or fall.  You can start from seed, but it can take an entire year for a clump to get established.  Plant in fertile soil in full sun, although garlic chives will grow in partial shade.  Keep moderately moist but don’t over water the first year, to give the plant a chance to produce a strong root system.

Whether your clump of garlic chives is new or established make sure you cut the whole thing down to the ground several times during the growing season.  Older established leaves become tough and stringy and cutting down the entire plant causes it to produce tender new leaves.  If you can’t use the garlic chives you just cut from the plant, feed your compost pile.

Garlic chives are prolific re-seeders.  Gather the seeds before they drop and use to grow sprouts.  Garlic chive seeds produce a sprout that’s peppery yet delicate in flavor.  Or cut the flowers before seeds form.  Chinese cooks dry the flowers and grind them into a garlic-flavored powder.  If you’re not that ambitious, cut the garlic chive flowers with long stems and include in your late summer/early fall flower bouquets.  Their light airiness makes a nice accent flower.  Or simply toss the fresh, individual flower petals into a green salad.

Garlic chives grow much faster than regular chives and you’ll need to divide them every three years.  Less hardy than regular chives, garlic chives need extra protection in colder areas.  The way they re-seed themselves pretty much assures you of always having a clump of garlic chives in your garden.

Swiss Chard Fordhook Giant

My grandma turned me on to Swiss Chard.  After asking me about my garden and patiently listening to me gush on and on about it she told me her father used to grow Swiss Chard.

Bought the seeds later that day.  Planted them by nightfall.

Truth is, Grandma did me a favor.  Turns out the whole family loved Swiss Chard.  We’ve had it in soups, sauteed as a side dish, in pasta sauces (especially tomato based), and even baked until crisp as a topper for stir fry or pasta.  And that’s only some ways to eat it cooked.

The young leaves are good raw in salads, especially in spring or fall.  Toss a few into your mesclun mix for an added dimension of flavor.

Swiss Chard is very forgiving.  It tolerates poor soil, inattention and takes frost or even mild freezes quite well.  It will even grow in partial shade and produce a respectable crop of leaves.

Plant seeds in early spring and you’ll have Swiss Chard all season long.  Pick the outer leaves as they mature and leave the small inner leaves to develop.  During the hottest days of summer the leaves may become slightly bitter.  If this happens pick the outer leaves off the Swiss Chard once the weather cools slightly.  The inner leaves will not be bitter and the cooler weather will keep them that way.  Toss the bitter Swiss Chard leaves from the summer months into your compost pile.

Swiss Chard is popular with Mediterranean cooks.  The first known varieties of Swiss Chard have been traced to Sicily.  Varieties available include white, red or multicolored.  In deference to Grandma, the only variety I’ve ever grown is Fordhook Giant.  The above picture is of Swiss Chard growing in my garden right now.

European cooks value the stalks of Swiss Chard while American cooks prefer the leaves.  They’re both right.  The stalks are every bit as delectable as the leaves.  Chop and cook the stalks like celery.  The young leaves can be eaten raw or lightly sauteed; older leaves lose their slight bitterness when cooked.

Swiss Chard withstands temperatures as low as the upper 20’s.  Even if the outer leaves are limp and frozen, very often the inner leaves are not.  Peel off the outer leaves before discarding just in case.

For many years I supplied Grandma with fresh Swiss Chard from spring through late fall.  Swiss Chard is usually one of the last things still growing in my garden at Thanksgiving, unless we have an early blizzard.

Never out of the question in Minnesota.

Mums for sale at grocery store

It’s still officially summer by the calendar.  Here in Minnesota autumn is in the air.  Some leaves have already begun to change.  The nights are cool.  Tomatoes, peppers and other hot weather vegetables have begun to slow down their production.  Although it’s not yet time to put the garden to bed for the winter, there are things we can do now to make things go easier later on.

In early September we should fertilize our lawns for the last time.  Two weeks later, reseed if necessary.  Continue to water once or twice a week if needed.

Autumn is great for planting trees and shrubs.  Plant at least three weeks prior to the average first frost in your area.  The roots will continue to develop until the ground freezes solid, usually a month or more after the first fall frost.

Keep up with weeding, even if the bed is all “picked out.”  If the weeds go to seed, the seeds produced this fall will survive the winter and plague you and your garden in the spring.

Pull vegetable plants no longer producing and flowers that have considerably slowed down their production.  Collect seeds from flowers and vegetables or leave some spent blooms on several plants to make seeds before frost.

It’s time to bring in your tender tropical plants that have summered outside.  Before bringing in the house, place plant in plastic bag, spray lightly into the bag with insect killer, and securely close bag.  Leave outside for twenty-four hours, then remove plant from bag.  This should take care of any bugs planning on wintering in your house.

Harvest storage onions when the tops fall over.  Spread out in single layer on picnic table.  Leave to dry and toughen up the skins for a week or so.  Cover with a tarp at night or plastic if rain threatens.

Keep turning the compost pile.  Its internal warmth will keep it decomposing long after the garden has frozen solid.  If you turn frequently now you may have enough to topdress your vegetable beds this fall and get a jump on spring soil improvement.

Don’t forget to plant some mums.  You’ll find them at the door to every grocery and home improvement store this time of year.  Properly cared for, they’ll last well into fall and will even survive light frosts.  Mums make a stunning doorway decoration in a decorative pot along with fall gourds and perhaps a cornstalk.

Multiple flower colors on same plant

A staple in the gardens of our grandparents, Four O’Clocks are worthy of a place in our gardens.  Four O’Clocks are members of the Nyctaginaceae family with the Latin name Mirabilis jalapa.  Native to the mountains of South America, they are also known as “Marvel of Peru.”

They’re commonly called Four O’Clocks because the blooms open in late afternoon and stay open all night.  A couple hours after opening they begin to emit a sweet, heady fragrance that makes them a favorite near entrances and patios or potted on decks.

Four O’Clocks are actually perennials grown as annuals in the northern part of the United States.  Due to their long tap root and prolific reseeding they can be considered invasive in the south.  Four O’Clocks are tough resilient plants that handle drought and poor soils as well as pollution, fumes, and smoke.  They will bloom in sun or shade and produce seeds that often germinate and bloom before frost in warmer zones.

As dependable as they are at producing seed, northern gardeners will get earlier blooms if they dig the tubers in fall and store in damp sand or peat moss in conditions similar to a root cellar.  Plant outside in late spring about the time you set out your tomatoes.

The leaves of Four O’Clocks lure Japanese beetles in a kind of “fatal attraction.”  The Japanese beetles are drawn by the scent and poisoned by the leaves.  Some claim Four O’Clocks are effective as a deer repellent or at the very least deer resistant.  Hummingbirds like them and dive deeply into the elongated flowers searching for nectar.

Four O’Clocks are available in red, magenta, pink, yellow, white or striped flowers and have the unusual trait of producing flowers of more than one color on the same plant.  They grow to about three feet high but can grow much taller in long season areas.  In the south they die down to the roots when cold weather arrives.

There is a wild variety native to the Dakota prairie called Mirabilis nyctaginea.  It was discovered by French botanist Andre Michaux in 1792.  Native Americans used the plant to make a tea for colic, eye infections, sore muscles, swellings, rheumatism and indigestion.  Some say the plant has sedative properties and several native tribes smoked the dried leaves.  In South America Mirabilis jalapa was used as a hallucinogen.

The seeds of Four O’Clocks are poisonous.  If you’re plotting a mystery novel add motive and opportunity.

And an alibi.

Tarragon drying

Its common name is tarragon but its botanical name is Artemisia drancunculus, which means “dragon” in Latin.  “Tarragon” is thought to be a corruption of the Arab word “tarkhum” meaning “little dragon.”  In fact, most languages refer to tarragon using a form of their word for dragon, most likely because the root system is suggestive of small dragons.

There are actually two types of tarragon.  French tarragon is preferred for culinary use.  It has a more refined flavor, very smooth dark green leaves and is a native of southern Europe.  Russian tarragon lacks the peculiar tartness of French tarragon and has leaves that are less smooth.  One source claims the stems of Russian tarragon can be harvested in early spring and eaten as a substitute for asparagus.  Russian tarragon is a native of Siberia.

Even though tarragon loses some of its essential oils when dried, enough remain to make it an attractive addition to the spice rack.  The sweet licorice flavor goes well in salads, dressings, vegetables, eggs, sauces, seafood and poultry.  It’s best to use fresh tarragon to make classic tarragon vinegar and French cooks use tarragon vinegar to make Dijon mustard.  Try a variation of traditional tarragon vinegar by combining fresh tarragon with fresh chives, fresh lemon balm, shallots and garlic.  The classic French herbal blend called “Fines Herbs” combines tarragon, thyme, parsley and chervil.

Tarragon does best in hot dry situations with unimproved soil.  Heavy loam soils that retain a lot of moisture are conducive to winter kill by frosts—cover well before freezing weather sets in.  You should divide tarragon every 2-3 years or it will die from the center out.  Tarragon helps any vegetable planted near it grow healthier and more robust.  Legend says that a flax seed put into a radish root and planted will grow a tarragon plant.

Unlike most other herbs, tarragon was not used by ancient peoples and did not become known until the 13th century when it began to be used medicinally.  Because fresh tarragon contains an anesthetic compound called eugenol (the same compound found in cloves), it temporarily relieves pain and it was used to “cure” toothaches.  Fresh tarragon also has antifungal and antioxidant properties.  Tarragon did not become widely used until the 16th century.

Seed catalogs say tarragon is hardy to Zone 3.  I’ve lost several in my Zone 4 garden, most likely due to inadequate protection from our brutal Minnesota winters.  The tarragon plant currently in my garden survived last winter under eight inches of leaves.  I’ve learned from that and now look forward to fresh tarragon every year without buying a new plant.

Dill seeds ripening

If I had the room and authority in the yard (I’m a renter) I would make an entire garden just for growing seeds.  The whole business of seed saving is fascinating to me.

It all started with dill.  The seed heads can be majestic, the umbels radiating like mini umbrellas without the fabric.  When I was a new gardener these were the first seeds I noticed.  The following spring when at least a dozen dill plants came up where the lone dill plant had grown the year before, something clicked in my brain.  I realized I could grow “free seeds.”

In the flower category it was calendulas.  They popped up all over my gardens for several years after planting gift-with-purchase seeds.  Eventually I gathered some to save and planted them on purpose.  They are quite prolific seed makers.

Cosmos seeds ready to harvest

Another flower that hooked me on seed saving was Bright Lights Cosmos.  I gathered seeds from a stranger’s yard in a mini flower bed growing next to a public sidewalk.  I filed them away for about four years until I got around to planting them.  When I finally did, only five plants came up.  From these five I gathered seeds and replanted the following year.  Germination skyrocketed, thanks to the freshness of the seeds, and the full spectrum of the mix grew—yellow, orange, red-orange and red.

We had a very dry spring and summer, with precipitation about three inches below average.  Consequently most of the radishes never developed.  I left several in the ground to go to seed.  They’ve produced seed quite well and I’m looking forward to a bumper crop next spring.

Several varieties of lettuce also sent up seed stalks which are now in the process of growing seeds.  Hopefully there’ll be enough frost-free weather before winter sets in for the seeds to form and mature.

Arugula in flower with seed pods in foreground

I purposely left an arugula plant to go to seed.  Wow!  The plant rivals my tarragon in size and spread.  Seed pods have already formed and again, I hope the weather cooperates this fall long enough for seeds to mature.

Savings seeds is satisfying as well as economical.  There’s something about eating vegetables from seeds I originally purchased years ago that is uber satisfying.  If you buy non-hybrid seeds and practice saving them, there’s no need to purchase new ones every year.  With the money I save I take the opportunity to try new varieties.  After all, variety is the spice of life.