Golden Gate Gardener

Year-Round Vegetable Gardening--a Talk

On Saturday July 12, I will be giving a talk on Year-Round Vegetable Gardening at the  30th Street Senior Services Garden at 225 30th Street near Church. It is at 10 AM. There will also be Master Gardeners available for a Plant Clinic.

The Garden at the Center is truly wonderful. If you come, you have to take the elevator just to the right of the front door to the third floor, and then walk to the back of the building. It isn't a roof garden, but a large, in-ground garden, filled with vegetables and ornamentals. Come see.

Come learn how to eat from a small urban garden year-round. The talk will be useful for both beginners and experienced food gardeners. I will also have copies of both Golden Gate GArdening and Wildly Successful plants available for sale and signing.

Chayotes Finally Planted!

Sometimes gardening seems like the slowest of sports. Like tennis that you play by hitting a ball and then waiting a few months for it to come back. Last March, I planted four chayote fruits in a greenhouse. Three of them sprouted. Whe I tried to harden them off in a lathe house, they were damaged by cold, or wind, so it was back into the greenhouse for them. Then back to the lathe house in May. On the day I planned to plant them out, it was so windy that I had to put the pots in a protected spot so they wouldn't blow over. Didn't seem like an auspicious day to plant them. Finally, last week, we put them in the ground! They are at the base of the nylon trellis I put on the frame of the beautiful arbor that the City College construction class built. There are two bamboo stakes for the plant to climb as it angles its first branches toward the trellis. But I keep talking about two plants. You may ask, where is the other one? It is on the other side of the arbor. They aren't very impressive right now. In fact, you can barely see the second plant in the following photo. It feels sort of silly having all of that trellis, and that huge arbor, but the last time I grew chayote, it was thirty feet tall and wide, so I have great expectations. I had this arbor built as a defensible space, a structure the chyote squash plants could climbe without being able to find anything else to climb into.

Here is the whole arbor. The above chayote is in the front, next to the rather ugly hose bibb. The other one is way off in the distance, behind the arbor. The plan is for them to meet in the middle at the top. I'm hoping for many chayotes to share wtih students in November and December. (For more photos of the chayotes starting to grow in the greenhouse, and of the arbor, use the search feature at the right side of my blog to search for "chayote" and for "arbor" elsewhere in the blog.)

Yacon or Bolivian Sunroot

Want to grow something that isn't the same thing you always grow? If you live in a location with a relatively mild winter, here is an idea. The plant species is Polymnia sonchifolia, common names yacon or Bolivian sunroot. It is a plant featured in the book Lost Crops of the Incas--and in my book Golden Gate Gardening (see cover in column at right). It is relatively uncommon outside of the Andes, but not lost, by any means. I've been growing this plant since the late 80s. The photo at left shows a crown with the rhizomes at the center top, and the tuberous roots hanging off of them. You plant the rhizomes, then in winter or early spring, dig them up, cut off and eat the tuberous roots that have formed under them, then replant the rhizomes.

In summer the plants grow. They have really big, furry leaves, arranged in pairs. The leaf stems (petioles) are winged--that is the leaf blade continues right down the sides of the leaf stems. And the plants are very tall. What I have read about them says they can reach 6 feet, but mine are usually rather taller than that, maybe 8 feet, maybe more.

These aren't quite full grown. In about late October or in November, they are topped with rather small orange daisies. Seems like a lot of plant for those tiny flowers, but of course the real reproduction is going on underground, where the rhizomes are multiplying.

So what does it taste like? The edible tuberous roots are crisp, juicy, and mildly to very sweet. Sort of like jicama, but juicier. I like to eat them raw myself, though there are those who advocate cooking them. Might try it.

To eat them raw, I just take a potato peeler to them, then wash and slice them. They are good just as is (shown on the plate with some also delicious homegrown sugar snap peas) or in a salad in place of jicama. One I like has red onion rings marinated in orange juice vinaigrette, sliced orange, Bolivian sunroot, avocado, dressed with the vinaigrette, served on a bed of lettuce leaves.

You can get starts of this crop through www.nicholsgardennursery.com and also through www.seedsofchange.com.

Chayote Report

Early this year I started 4 chayote squash plants in the greenhouse at City College. Three of them grew, and I photographed them. (The photos appear in my blog on February 25th.) The construction class built us a beautiful trellis, and then, several weeks ago, covered two sides with nylon bean trellis mesh for the chayote to climb on. Then I put the chayotes in larger pots and moved them to the lath house, a structure built only with wooden slats, set several inches apart. Since chayote begins to resprout each year from its perennial roots in March, I thought it was time for the plants to begin to get used to life outside of a greenhouse.

I went off to deal with Dad's house for a week, and when I returned, I saw that cold nights and strong winds had burned some of the chayotes' leaves. The trellis is ready, the soil prepared, but alas, the days and nights are too cold for these tropical babies. So it's back to the greenhouse for the time being.

Here is the trellis, all prepared for the chayotes. Looks kind of lonely, eh? (The fence on the left will come out eventually, so that the chayotes won't climb on it. The goal, in preparing a trellis for chayotes is to have defensible space, so the plants can't climb something you don't want them to climb.)

Chayote Sprouting! Banana Blooming!

For the demonstration garden at City College, I have set 4 chayote squashes in cutting mix, in hopes of getting 2 sprouted plants for the arbor we have built. By the first week of February, 3 of the squashes have sprouted! Two of them looked like this one, just small sprouts, slightly curled as they emerge from the fruit. An innocent beginning for a huge plant. By this time, there will be quite a bit of root formed already, to find water and prepare to grow a shoot.

And one of the fruits has unfurled its first leaves. You can see the tendrils starting to form, searching already for something to hang onto. You don't see any seed leaves (cotyledons), since they remain inside the chayote fruit, held together like the palms of two hands. We eat them when we eat the fruits. Being tropical, these fruits never form a hard shell for their seeds, and never go completely dormant. Well, I shall keep you posted. If this plant gets too long and rangy, I will have to trim it back before I plant it, but once it gets going, not much will stop it.

Meanwhile, in the City College garden, the January King cabbage formed its mature head right on schedule. It was ready at the end of January, all pink and blue-green, with the flat shiny top that indicates it is ready to eat. And the chard is still doing well too. It is in its last months now, since I have decided to take it out this spring and have no chard in the garden until fall in an attempt to escape the predations of the leafminers by giving them nothing to eat one summer.

Down at my dad's garden, in San Diego County, though he has passed away, his banana is looking really good this year. The recent rains gave everything a fresh, bright look. I love the vivid colors of the bracts that surround the young banana flowers.

Chayote Progress Report

The countdown to chayote planting is underway. The City College construction class kindly lowered the arbor that last month's class built. It was going to be a bit tall for harvesting the chayotes. Robert, the course instructor, said lowering it was good experience for the class. A client might request that. (See photo of the arbor before lowering in my January 19th post.)

Next step is to mount some hardware cloth on two sides of the arbor for the plants to climb. They attach by tendrils, so can use both the vertical and the horizontal wires. Then we need to take out another section of fence. The one on the west is only about 6 feet from the arbor. Too close for comfort, since the chayote will reach out in all directions. We are going to try to keep it on the trellis. A brave effort, considering what the plant wants to do is be 30 feet tall and wide.

Finally, the 4 planted chayotes are still in the greenhouse. One has sprouted nice green leaves. I am hoping for another to sprout, since the plants need 2 in order to enhance pollination. As my Guatemalan friend Maria-Marta said, it needs a "novia."

My cousin in Indiana asks me if she could grow chayote if she started it very early. I'm afraid not. It is a tropical perennial plant. It only flowers when the days get short in late fall. This is because it is adapted to short tropical days. In a place with a cold winter, it would freeze shortly after it began to bloom, thereby never making any fruit. And, although the young stem tips and leaves are edible, and would be produced in summer, I'm not sure the plant is worth growing just for them.

Well, here in San Francisco, where eggplants and melons are rarely satisfactory, and tomatoes are borderline, we like to fee lucky to be able to grow something that doesn't do well elsewhere.

I'll send photos of the chayote soon.

What's up in the City College Garden

What is literally "up" is the new trellis. I plan to plant it with chayote squash, a subtropical vine that should cover it completely in a year or two. Chayote, also known as chayote pear, has pale green fruits that taste rather like a summer squash, but are borne in the winter. A mature plant can produce a couple of hundred fruits a year. That's a lot of food unless you have a lot of eaters, but I am planning to share them with students, and since they will be ready in November and December, finding students to try them shouldn't be a problem. In addition to the fruits, one can eat the young shoots, though there may not be enough of them the first year. (In Guatemala, where there are many of the plants, people pick and eat just the tendrils.)

Chayote plants can reach 30 feet tall, and if there is a tree, or a wall, or a building close by, they will climb it. Better be sure there is nothing near that will let the vine climb so high you can't reach the fruit. This trellis has a defensible space on one side, but on the left side, I want to take out one more section of fence, so the vine can't leap onto it and take off.

At present I have 4 squashes in the greenhouse, set in potting mix, waiting for them to grow. The seed never hardens, you just plant the entire squash and wait for the seedling to emerge. I'm hoping for seedlings I can transplant by March. (I'll plant 2, so they can cross pollinate.)

The chayote trellis is to be the centerpiece of a new planting of Central and South American upland edibles in the garden. Stay tuned for more on this project.

Meanwhile, the more ordinary crops are doing fine. These Brussels sprouts, planted in mid-August, were starting to bear by December.

And here is 'January King' cabbage, planted on the same day in August as the Brussels sprouts. I took this photo in late November. As you can see, the head is starting to form, but it isn't ready yet.

Critters in the Community Garden

When I walk through my community garden these days, I notice quite a few critters have appeared. No, I don't mean pests, but examples of garden art. I thought you'd like to see a few of them.

This small feline was hiding among some cabbages. Hunting some pressed concrete bunnies no doubt, though I didn't see any of those.

Among the irises, I found a pink flamingo that seems to have fallen on hard times. Times are indeed hard for lawn flamingos, since last I heard, the company that was making them had decided to stop doing it. Is there a patent, I wonder, or could someone else begin to make them? Surely demand isn't completely dead for this 20th century icon of the lawn or garden.

And here we have a...a...well, it is art, don't you think? It is a multicolored monster reclining among the fading roses. How poignant.

In the college garden, the cole crops we planted in mid August are continuing to mature. One of my favorites is Romanesco broccoli. It has a unique color and form, and has a different texture than regular broccoli as well. All the ones I can find on the market these days are small-headed hybrids, but I used to be able to get heirloom seed that made huge heads. The smaller ones are probably better for the market, but for a home gardener, those big heads lasted a long time. The variety is from Northern Italy, where I'll bet one can still find the larger heads. I'm still hoping to find them again. In any case, it does best growing from late summer into fall. It ripens in November mostly, or early December. I once saw plants of it at the Rodale farm in Emmaus, PA, the Organic Gardening headquarters. The gardener said they didn't seem to do well with it. Makes sense. It is much better adapted to our mediterranean California climate. I think they were planting too late, treating it like a short-season broccoli, but it is more of midseason, meant to mature in a mild winter. 

Shell Bean Succotash

Gardeners sometimes eat beans at the shell stage, which is after the beans have fully formed in the pods, but before they have hardened. Just about anything you can cook with dry beans, you can cook with shell beans--but faster. You won't find them in the market often, since they don't keep well, so they are mostly a gardeners' secret.

You could eat any common garden bean variety at this stage, but several are sold specifically for it. They often have these splashy red pods. This one is a bush bean called 'Taylor's Horticultural'. Sometimes you find a similar one called 'Tongue of Fire.' At the shell stage, the beans are white or white streaked with red. When they become dry beans, they are bown streaked with maroon, and are often called cranberry beans.

So, in any case, I planted these in July in San Francsisco and harvested them at the shell stage in the second half of October and early November. I grew about 10 cups of beans (out of the pods) in a bed about 6 by 3 or 4 feet. And then I experimented with cooking them. They were great as Boston baked beans, fine in a French soup with pistou, and made yummy succotash.

And here is the succotash I made, with some of the beans and an open pod. The recipes I used were from The Victory Garden Cookbook, Marian Morash, Alfred Knopf, 1982. I modified the succotash recipe to make it vegan so I could take it to a class potluck. The recipe, as modified: 2 cups of shell beans, 2 tablespoons of chopped onion, 1 cup chopped tomato (from a can), 2 cups corn kernels (from frozen), 2 tablespoons Smart Balance margarine, a bit of salt and pepper. Put beans and chopped onions in a saucepan and add a cup of water. Bring water to a boil, cover, and simmer 20 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and corn. Simmer for 10 minutes longer. Stir in margarine, salt and pepper to taste. (4-6 servings).

The original recipe suggested using a mixture of lima and shell beans, since the original native American dish was more likely to use limas, but limas don't do so well in cool SF, so I just cut to the chase and used all shell beans. Got me thinking about succotash, which I for some reason thought was a Native American dish from the Southeastern part of the continent. But when I looked it up, I found that it was a dish of the Nanaganset, of what is now Rhode Island, who spoke Algonquian. The word, in Algonquian, was m'sickquatash, and meant "corn not crushed or ground." So there you have it.

What was in the original succotash? Not bacon, which was in the recipe I used before I modified it, though maybe other meat. And I read that the tomatoes suggest a Dutch influence, since they were known to add tomatoes and other vegetables to succotash.

Final analysis: great crop; good eating. Worth doing again next year.

More on Brazilian Peas

I am delighted to hear from Erica, who hails from Brazil, about the Brazilian pea mentioned in two recent posts. (The posts are from October 14 and October 26. Erica's comment follows the entry of October 14th.) So it is the "crooked pea with purple flowers," eh? That seems pretty accurate, since the pods do curl quite a bit. I have saved about 100 seeds, of which a few may not be viable. (Some of the pods decayed in those early rains we had this fall, and the peas were not quite ripe when I took them out of the pods.)

The seeds are interesting to look at, sort of mottled. Under a handlens, you can see that they are greenish with brown speckles. I will try to photograph them, but haven't done so yet. I will plant them this spring and see how they fare in the college garden.