Photo by Flickrite Kelly Sue DeConnick
If you are familiar with this San Francisco favorite, you know there is no definitive recipe other than starting with the catch of the day — whatever that may be. And tomatoes. Then you could add sausage. Or not. And serve it on rice. Or spaghetti. Or as a soup. In other words, Cioppino is a grab-bag, just like this post. I’m hoping, if I throw in all the bits and pieces, nuggets and chunks I’ve been collecting over the past few days, it will all turn out beautiful and tasty. We’ll see.
First up: I’m having a blast with the Wine Country Wildflowers field guide I told you about in yesterday’s post. That’s the one that wisely categorizes things by color. I see a blue flower and I just flip to the blue chapter and scan through the glossy pictures until I find a match. The book also wisely puts the common name in big bold letters and the Latin names in little subordinate italics. Don’t get me wrong, I love Latin. Took years of it. But it just seems to take the fun out of flowers. Say I told you I had some nice stands of Liliacae, Mimmulus guttatus and Cynoglossum grande. You might yawn. If I told you they were Diogenes Lantern, Sticky Monkey Flower and Hound’s Tongue. Well, now you’ve got the picture.
Behold the Hound's Tongue. Named, I'm assuming, for the leaves.
See the resemblance?
Yes, I’m forming a Chapter of The Campaign for Real Plant Names. And I’m appointing myself President. Consider Henderson’s Shooting Star. I don’t know who Henderson is, but I love his flower. Apparently so did California Natives. They roasted the leaves and roots for dinner.
My wildflower book calls this "a perky little charmer". Its other name is just as descriptive: Mosquito Bills.
Thus ends the teaching portion of our program and we move to the question period. Where I ask the questions and, hopefully, you give me answers. You’ve probably guessed that the topic is going to be my misadventures with vegetables. So Question One: how do you tell when carrots are ready for harvest? Do I dig them up to check? If they aren’t ready, do I replant them? How do carrots feel about this?
I uncovered a little bit just for a peek. They aren't very orange. Not ready?
Similar question with Fava Beans, which I’m growing, not for beans, but as a nitrogen fixer and green manure. All my gardening books say they’ve “fixed” when the nodules on the roots turn pink. So, I pulled one up. Not ready.
I quickly replanted it, but I think my Fava will like this as little as the carrot did. There must be a better way.
Next question: how does anyone grow bulbs outdoors? Mine are dug up and chomped down by varmints as soon as I put them in the ground. That’s with a fenced raised bed covered with netting. And two terriers on patrol.
The remains of the feast.
Okay, bored with showing my ignorance. How about a quick check of this week’s highlights at Two Terrier Vineyards?
John the Baptist found the tracks of a Bobcat and a baby Bobcat. So I guess Bob the Bobcat will have to be rechristened Roberta. I rushed to take a picture of the track, but two terriers stomped all over the site before I could focus.
Cats walk with retracted claws. So I think this is the right print. It was the only one without toenail marks.
The Barn Swallows are getting set to build nests in the eaves of the barn. One little bird dude decided there was an evil interloper living in my wing mirrors.
I had to park 100 yards away before this little guy decided we were out of his personal space.
On a culinary note, I finally tried the American Bison meat that Sonoma Market has been pushing. Yeah, yeah, lower cholesterol, less fat. But what got me to buy was their great new slogan. And I’m always a sucker for a good tagline.
Buffalo: The Meat Americans were meant to eat.
The verdict: delicious! Especially when served with Sonoma produce (obviously not my own.)
So that’s it. Everything’s in the pot and hopefully coalesced into some sort of post.
Now be vewy, vewy quiet. We're hunting varmints.
I don’t have the answer on the fava beans or carrots but protecting your bulbs is a big thing here in MN. We have basically found the only thing to do is plant bulbs critters don’t like to eat, daffodil & such. Otherwise the crafty squirrels will follow right behind you & eat them all up
Can’t help you with the fava beans, but with carrots – first, you can eat them at almost any stage of their growth, so don’t worry about it too much. But for a larger carrot, you wait until their shoulders are visible above the earth they’re planted in, and you calculate in your head how long they are relative to the size of the shoulders and decide which ones you want to pull up. You can leave them in the ground for quite a long time, to get really big, if you like, but I always preferred the smaller, tender ones (past tense because I don’t have a garden space now).
The shoulders on the ones in your picture seem fairly good sized, if I’m getting the proportion correct – there are yellow varieties of carrots, are you sure you didn’t plant one of those? Otherwise I can’t help you – maybe there’s something lacking in your soil that would encourage more orange in the root. You might want to check with your local extension office and see what they have to say about it.
An old trick my grandmother taught me was to mix carrot and radish seeds together in the palm of my hand, make a little furrow in the ground with my finger, and sprinkle the seed mix along the row. Radishes take hardly any time to sprout and get big enough to be pulled and eaten, and they don’t go down far enough into the ground to disturb the baby carrots that are coming along much more slowly. By the time all the radishes have been pulled from the mixed row, it’s time to start thinning the carrots, which will then take over that whole row. A very good system for making the most of your garden space.
Try finding a copy of Ruth Stout’s No-Work Garden books – wonderful old books, two of them, I think, with all kinds of hints and tips about “how to have a great garden without having an aching back.” They were my garden bibles for more than a decade.
South Valley Gal
Wow, Christina. Thanks. I actually did plant radishes, but the recent heavy rains seem to have washed everything to the center of the beds. I’ve got a clump of growing stuff all on top of each other. I suppose there are radishes in there somewhere. My carrots are about the size of a No. 2 pencil now. So, guess I’ll leave them in a little longer.
Try your tiny carrots. You may really enjoy them. I have yet to get any of my peas or carrots into a pot. They are my snacks out in the garden.
Glad to see those pups earning their keep.
I’m with MAYBELLINE…tiny is good. I think it’s easier to leave them crispy the smaller they are, when cooking. Our neighbor lets us come “weed” her carrots and now my kids are spoiled for the little ones. They seem spring-ier, too, which matters to me only because I’ve always thought of carrots as a winter veg. and I’ve never much liked them.