A Good Wednesday

We had a perfect weather day in the St. Louis area yesterday--the first time in awhile that the weather story was how gorgeous the day was.




Our nephew, P, came to help with yard work. Now that we've decided that the yellowwood tree is rather special, we wanted to clean up the trees around it to give it some room. The evergreen that was planted too close to that ash is now gone, made into a separate pile of chips to provide an acidic mulch for the azaleas. One of the ashes was trimmed up and the next will be soon. We're going to put a bed around the two ashes and yellowwood -- probably just pansies for the fall and spring, but eventually a variety of shade perennials. We're concerned about the long term health of these two ashes and several more on our property because of the imminent threat of the emerald ash borer, but for now we're going to assume that they will be in the landscape for some time to come. R was thrilled with how much work he got done with a helper.




I discovered our first local strawberries of the season last night at the Maplewood Farmers Market. They were from Our Garden -- I assume she'll have them at the Tower Grove Market on Saturday, too. Biver Farms also had strawberries and will likely have them at one or more of their Saturday market locations, Tower Grove, Clayton, and Goshen Market in Edwardsville. I've been collecting strawberry recipes, but it looks like these won't last long enough to go in a recipe! The first strawberries are such a treat all on their own.

Lucy at the Claverach booth was selling small white Japanese turnips with the advice to try them in salads because they're so tender in the spring. I did and they add a nice mild bite, much less harsh than the flavor I normally associate with turnips. The turnips were also good at breakfast this morning, sauteed with some potato and fresh rosemary and topped with finely grated Parmesan.

Memorial Day flowers and trees

I hope everyone in the area did okay with the storms last night. Some of our new plants are looking pretty shredded from the hail we got, but I think they will all recover.

We wouldn't ordinarily go to the Missouri Botanical Garden on a holiday, but since it was an iffy weather day, we figured everyone else would stay home so we went. We had a burning question: What is this tree? It's in our new yard and, for the first time since we've moved in, we noticed it was blooming.

We took a sample of the leaves and flowers to the Plant Doctor desk at the Kemper Center for Home Gardening. The lady at the desk identified it for us immediately: yellowwood, Cladrastis kentukea. She did say that they are fairly rare, so it wasn't so surprising that we weren't able to identify it ourselves. We also learned when we looked it up at home that it only blooms in alternate years, so we didn't need to feel badly about missing the flowers last year -- we thought we'd been awfully oblivious to what was going on in our yard to have missed these long droopy flowers.

Of course, once we were at the Garden, we spent the next few hours wandering around, never mind that we were just there on Friday.

The peonies were pretty battered by last night's storm, but we found some that were still looking perky.

The most unusual find of the day came courtesy of a couple who had sat long enough in the English Woodland Garden to spot the foxes and pointed them out to us. We'd seen the sign that said "don't feed the foxes," so we knew they were in there, but had never seen them. We saw three running around today once we knew where to look.

Planting Day

It feels late, but it's been a cold wet spring here and today was the first that all the conditions were right to plant things.

This morning, the pots. Sage. Winter thyme -- I was disappointed in the lack of thymeness flavor in my lemon thyme last year so I asked the guy at Biver Farm what I should plant and he said winter thyme (it smells great!). Apple mint and pepper mint in the galvanized tubs. I'll be treating the sage and thyme as if they were annuals so I planted them in soil-less potting mix. I'm hoping the mints will come back next year in those tubs so I used Fafard 52 Mix. I have it on good authority that the Missouri Botanical Garden uses that for perennials in containers. We get it at Hummert's in Earth City.

This afternoon, the kitchen garden. This is the only bed that existed when we bought the house and it doesn't have the best soil yet. Last year, we planted it in July with Madagascar vinca and mums just to get something in it and have an excuse to work the soil a bit. It was beautiful in October! This year, we're going with annuals again, but edible ones: one zucchini (Spineless Beauty), four eggplants (Fairy Tale, with lavendar and white stripes), and three basil.

What you can't see in the picture is that I also sowed New Zealand spinach seeds. That's not really spinach but is supposed to taste remarkably similar and to grow better in our hot summers.

Also invisible, because I haven't planted them yet, are the seedlings of bell and jalapeno peppers. I'm going to let them get a little bigger and more hardened before planting them, probably around June 1.

Future garden

This is probably the first of several posts I'll make this growing season. I have ideas about what produce that I want in my garden based on the relative ease and cost of buying it from other local growers.

Asparagus, for instance, is easily found right now and sold at a reasonable cost. So, asparagus is not high on my list of things to go in the garden. This is a good thing because asparagus is a perennial and I'm nowhere near to being ready to commit to a spot for asparagus for the next 20 years.

Greens, both salad and cooking, are surprisingly expensive at the farmers markets and not as readily available as I expected. It's been taking trips to two or three different farmers markets to get all the greens we're eating -- salads every day and cooking greens a couple of times a week. Plus, I understand that many of them are easy to grow. I might even be able to get an early start on the season by growing greens in a cold frame.

The jury is still out on rhubarb. It's been scarce and expensive so far, but I'm not sure how much we'll eat it. Since rhubarb is generally made into desserts, we may eat it just two or three times in the spring -- just enough to honor the fact that my grandmother was somewhat famous for her rhubarb crunch. For that, I'm willing to buy a bunch or two from a local farmer rather than grow my own.

Plant shopping

I've visited more than my usual number of haunts for plants this spring. While far from an exhaustive search of St. Louis area nurseries and plant outlets, I've learned enough to make a list of my current favorite places.

Best conventional herbs: Biver Farms, selling at the Kirkwood Farmers Market

Best unusual herbs: St. Louis Herb Society, selling during the Missouri Botanical Garden's Herb Days (scroll down to April 16-19). Today, they had a non-flowering basil, scented annual geraniums that can be used in cooking, and large stevia plants.

Best unusual annuals: Meramec Horticulture Club selling at St. Louis Community College - Meramec, Great Plant Sale (April 18, 9am-7pm and April 19, 8am - 12pm for 2008)

Best native shade perennials: Gateway Greening, selling at St. Louis Community College - Meramec, Great Plant Sale

Best native sun perennials: Missouri Wildflowers Nursery, selling at the Kirkwood Farmers Market

Best vegetable plants: Thies Farm

Best trees and shrubs: Schmittel's Nursery

Spring planting

We potted canna rhizomes yesterday. It reminded me of the scene in Harry Potter where they pot the mandrake roots. Someday this summer, they will form a border of stately flowers.




In the meantime, it's too cold to put them out. So, they go in pots in the sunroom, turned greenhouse, for awhile. We planted 20 Crimson Delights that R ordered from the canna people, Horn Canna Farm. And we repotted 3 cannas that R bought on his birthday from a local nursery, just to try some different varieties.

Around mid-May we'll plant them in a new bed we're making in the sideyard along the neighbor's fence. We're trying to keep the new bed dry with plastic because it looks like it's never going to stop raining long enough to use a tiller. Then in the fall, we'll dig up the canna rhizomes and store them in the root cellar for the winter to do this all again next spring.

Rooting stem cuttings

Today is a rare spring-like day, even if there are still patches of snow on the ground. My unhappy herbs did manage to survive the winter, just long enough that I could use this warm day to take stem cuttings so that I won't have to buy new plants this spring. I learned everything I know about rooting stem cuttings in water from Easy Plant Propagation by Nancy J. Ondra.




This is a sprig of apple mint that I cut from my plant.



And here's the same sprig, with the lower leaves removed, ready for rooting.



I root my cuttings in mason jars filled with water. A square of chicken wire forms a structure that keeps the leaves out of the water.





The peppermint leaves are too small to catch on the chicken wire, so R made me a new structure out of hardware cloth.



Works perfectly!







I also took stem cuttings from basil and sage. I've done the basil and mints before, but not the sage, so I don't know if it will work or not. After I took this picture, I moved the jars to the back of the bay window--the cuttings want "bright but indirect light." I'll change the water every few days. In a couple of weeks, I should start to see roots. In four or five weeks, I'll be able to pot these. I'll have more plants than I want to pot, so if you're in the St. Louis area, let me know if you want a rooted cutting or two.

Unhappy herbs

My herbs are failing to thrive. These were stem cuttings from my potted herbs that grew on the deck this summer. I rooted them in water and planted them in small pots in October. That went well, but they haven't grown much since. This window seems better equipped to keep plants alive than to force them to grow.




So, I'm going to try something different in 2008. I'll make my stem cuttings in late June, pot the plants when they root, and leave the plants outdoors to grow for the rest of the summer. Then, I should have large herbs to move inside before the frost, keeping me supplied with fresh herbs through the winter months.

Pesto

The last basil harvest occurred just before Halloween, shortly before our first freeze. I got two cups from my three surviving plants even after an aggressive harvest in late September (when the first freeze was predicted but didn't materialize).





I like this Fresh Basil Pesto Recipe but leave out the cheese and the salt because I would rather add them, if I want them, to the final dish. Two cups of basil yields a little less than one ice cube tray (I made two batches at a time in the summer and used what wouldn't fit into the ice cube tray over the next several days).



I'm still using pesto cubes from this batch once or twice a week, most commonly in a dish that starts with roasting a whole eggplant and red pepper on the grill and ends with stirring those chopped vegetables, pesto, toasted pine nuts, and a bit of cheese into bulgur wheat.

Mint Tea Smackdown

We got carried away with herb-planting in the spring, particularly mints. Our new kitchen has a bay window begging for herbs. Naturally, we overfilled it with one of everything we liked and more of the things we thought we could move outside. The final mint tally was six plants of four different varieties. They ultimately ended up in great big pots on our deck where they are happily producing large quantities of fragrant leaves.



It turns out, we only use mints in three ways: tabbouleh, cocktails, and tea. Mostly tea. Thinking ahead to next year -- I don't need this much mint! I want maybe two to four pots of mint in one or two varieties. Our enthusiasm this spring, however, gives me a splendid opportunity to choose exactly which mints I want growing in my summer garden by taste testing the different mint teas.

Here's how I make mint tea:

1. Cut enough 4-8 inch stems with leaves to fill a big stainless steel bowl.
   
2. Wash the stems in the bowl three times.


3. Boil water in my 4-cup measuring cup in the microwave (this takes 6 to 8 minutes).


4. Using tongs (yes, I learned the hard way that fingers were not a proper tool for this job), shove the mint leaves and stems, even flowers, into the hot water.


5. Cover the measuring cup with an inverted dinner plate.


6. Let steep for twenty minutes (or until I remember that I need to rescue my tea).
   
7. Strain through a metal colander back into the original bowl (which I've rinsed and dried).


8. Let cool in the bowl until safe for my nice glass pitcher -- I pour the tea back into my big measuring cup and then into a glass pitcher because it's easier.


9. Put the glass pitcher in the fridge.


10. Drink the next day in a glass with ice and a slice of lemon. I usually drink the whole quart in the afternoon and will go through the whole process again in the evening.

Most of the time, I harvest mint from several of the plants (generally trying, desperately, to keep ahead of the flowering) and mix them all up in one brew. That's been quite satisfying but has told me nothing of my preference for the different types of mint. To do my taste test, I made four pure teas, one from each variety of mint. I let them chill overnight, and then it was time for the competition -- the Mint Tea Smackdown commences!

And the winner is....peppermint! For being the mintiest. Second was apple mint for having a nice hint of sweetness. Spearmint came in third and ginger mint took last place. To be fair to ginger mint fans, we did let that one bolt (go to flower before we could cut it back), so the off-taste may have less to do with the attributes of the plant and more to do with our lack of gardening skills.

Stay tuned for my next mint adventure: mint cloning! I'll take cuttings from my peppermint and apple mint and see if I can get new plants to grow in the bay window over the winter.