Digging For Spring
(Garden • Nature)
Lest I leave the reader with the mistaken impression that a new garden hereabouts is ready for planting merely after turning the dirt over a couple of times with a shovel, allow me an explanation:
We’re blessed here with a sandy loam, courtesy of a few hundred thousand years worth of river risings and soil deposits, which usually include just enough clay to keep raised beds intact without securing them in railroad ties or other foreign materials. I like raised beds because you can keep the dirt soft and fluffy, allowing plant roots to move freely about the cabin and thus promoting quick growth.
What I do is create raised beds by digging deep paths in between – more than 2 feet deep. I toss the dirt that was in the paths on top of the beds, thus raising them.
In the case of my new approximately 25 by 14-foot kitchen garden, I ended up modifying original plans calling for 10 6 by 4-foot beds. I decided running a path down the middle would displace too much growing space. So I dug six beds running the breadth of the garden instead. Two of them are 4 feet wide and the rest are closer to 3 feet, with 1-foot paths between them that will become wider and shallower over time.
Then I used my ancient and tiny Mantis tiller on ‘em. It has four rows of sharp teeth set at various angles, and revs up good on a two-cycle engine, absolutely pulverizing the dirt into fine seed-bed-sized particles. The Mantis only cuts a path about 6 inches wide, but it’s so fast you can till up a 4 by 14-foot bed in like 10 minutes or less. I used a shovel to scoop some of the fine dirt that fell into the paths, laying it back on top of the beds. Then I applied a good dirt rake to smooth each bed into perfection.
So now I have this new garden, dying to be planted, but all I can put in are a few cold-hardy herbs. Because the weather dudes are promising us yet another episode of cold – perhaps a night getting down to 36 on Sunday. This will not make the plumeria happy either (some of which are lining the garden perimeter as a temporary fence).
I probably am not generating much sympathy from those of you in parts north. But we needs us our early springs in semi-South Texas, because by June the temperatures will climb well past 90, and the tomatoes and peppers will become surly and stop setting fruit. In past years, I’ve had tomatoes in the ground by the end of February. Now we’re three-quarters through with March, and they’re still stuck in pots.
If you didn’t follow the weather forecast, you’d swear it’s spring. The pomegranate bushes sport bright red leaf buds, and the figs have already begun popping out little fruits.
No leaf buds on our pecans yet, though, and that’s a bad sign that the cold winter finger of fate is sure to poke us one last time.
As Joe Dirt would say, “Dang.”
→ B.Dunn, Mar 19, 2010, 10 31 am
The Worm Turns
(Garden • Nature)
Few things reinvigorate your relationship with the earth more completely than digging a new garden by hand in the dawning spring. 
It took probably four or five hours spread out over the past three days – not bad, and surely would’ve gone faster were my son’s back a few years older and mine a few years younger. We also uncovered 40 or so bricks spread out about a foot down at one end of the new dig. No telling the story there, but it’s fun to imagine.
The 350-square-foot patch is just off the concrete, about 20 yards from the back door. An excellent location for a kitchen garden, but just by accident, because it represents the last remnant of summer sun in the back yard. The giant pecans have made sure of that.
It’ll be home to 10 raised beds of 4 by 7 feet each – enough to hold, say, three tomato plants with some companion dill or so-called Mexican marigold (Tagetes minuta). The latter might be more common in Peru, where they cook with it like mint. But my purpose is to see whether its reputed anti-nematode properties are real. The main point of this new garden plot is to rest the back garden dirt after moving peppers, eggplant and tomatoes through the various beds back there. They all like the same trace soil elements, and they all attract nematodes, which have proved to be a big pain in the roots for most of the past few years. The secondary point of the new plot is to serve as a proper kitchen garden where the likes of basil, oregano, Italian parsley, cilantro, mint, tarragon and chives can be had in a pinch.
This year my tomato expectations run high. The new dirt appeared to be dark and rich as I turned it over, with just enough clay content to hold raised beds together, plus it was full of earthworms (and more than a few June Beetle grubs, which I fed to the birds).
The worms attracted my 6-year-old, who’d recently received a scientific kindergarten lesson on the subject, apparently. Did I know that earthworms were good for the garden? That they had a mouth, but didn’t have any teeth? That they can stretch through the tiniest places? They can actually digest parts of some rocks? If they are attacked or mishandled and broken into two, both pieces may live? Their poop is not bad, it’s good for the dirt? They’re probably my very favorite worm, right?
I made the mistake of questioning her assertion that some earthworms reach 10 feet in length, though mostly just to interject a period into the conversation. Of course she was right.
“I’m pretty much an expert,” she explained. “If you have a question about earthworms, you can ask me.”
Then she stood there and waited for me to think of one, while I sweated and grunted and turned over shovels full of heavy dirt. I told her I couldn’t think of any at the moment.
So she checked back with me as each new moment arrived, to make sure my thirst for earthworm knowledge was sated.
→ B.Dunn, Mar 11, 2010, 07 22 am
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Currying Favor
(Recipes • Nature)
This year more than most, Spring and Winter have fought hard and often over who’s turn it is to steer the wind and wreak the seasonal havoc.
Tonight, Winter wins again.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow for Plantsman and Commutermaid, who decidedly operate with more efficiency and aplomb under the gentler countenance of the recently defeated but sure to rebound Spring. To be sure, one could attempt to drown one’s frozen sorrows in a hot, sweetened coffee with a shot of bourbon, however, the occasion really calls for something more substantive – say a good chili or shepherd pie.
Or, when the beef’s locked in the freezer and there’s naught left but leftovers, it could be a hot little curry that melts the long Winter of your discontent.
Texas Thai Curry
Ingredients:
→ 3 tablespoons olive oil
→ 2 cups diced chicken thighs, cooked pork loin or (God willing) fresh Gulf shrimp
→ 1 cup sliced mushrooms (shitake if you got ‘em)
→ 2-4 tablespoons red Thai curry paste
→ 1/2 to 1 cup chopped shallots or onions
→ 2-4 big, fat garlic cloves, minced
→ 2 Serrano or equivalent hot peppers, minced
→ 1 large (25-ounce) or 2 medium cans good-quality coconut milk
→ 1 small can sliced pineapples or the equivalent amount of fresh (or try mangoes or some other fruit experiment)
→ 1 can sliced water chestnuts or bamboo shoots
→ 2 tablespoons fish sauce
→ 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
→ a dash of Chinese 5-spice
→ 1/3 cup fresh chopped Italian parsley, cilantro or oregano
→ the juice of 1 fresh lime
Method:
→ Open the can(s) of coconut milk and separate out about 1 cup of coconut cream (the thick stuff at the top of the can) for later use. Pour the rest in a heavy pan. If using uncooked chicken, boil meat in coconut milk for 40 minutes. For pre-cooked pork or shrimp, simmer meat in coconut milk on low until heated through.
→ Heat oil in wok or large, heavy pan. Add onions or shallots, garlic and hot peppers and saute for 4-5 minutes on medium-high heat.
→ Add curry paste. Good Thai curry paste is hot! so adjust the amount based on the preferences of your diners. But for authentic curry, more paste is better. Use the curry paste as if it were roux – stir it in among the softened onions until it, too softens. Then add the mushrooms, cardamom and Chinese 5-spice and stir.
→ Add the coconut milk that you used to cook the meat, about a half-cup at a time, stirring constantly. Then add the meat and mix well, stirring until sauce thickens a bit.
→ Add the water chestnuts or bamboo shoots. Turn the heat down to low, add the fish sauce and stir.
→ Add the parsley or cilantro, the lime juice and the coconut milk and stir well. Turn the heat to its lowest setting, cover the pot except for a small opening to allow steam to escape.
→ While flavors are blending in the curry, make some rice, noodles or bulgar wheat to accompany the meal.
Serve over whatever you made in the last step and, if possible, include ice-cold Singha malt liquor.
I believe you’ll find that Spring is just around the corner.
→ B.Dunn, Feb 23, 2010, 03 55 pm
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Don't Stop The Dance Music Don't
(Nature • )
Even before we were through licking our wounds from the longest stretch of frozen semi-South Texas winter in 10 years or more (four frigid days, but really they seemed like at least six), the relentless audacity of spring forced an end to all the whining.
While inspecting freeze damage to a rather newly planted Meyer lemon, and noting the total lack of damage to a Satsuma orange planted nearby at the same time, I came upon these rings of leaves sprouted from spring bulbs that obviously had been busy pushing through the ground in the midst of the frozenness, as some are 8 or 10 inches tall already. I’ve never known what these plants are, but they sport foot-high flower stalks filled with little white bell-shaped flowers that never fail to herald in the appropriate season.
If this is Jan. 13, then it must be spring, for all practical purposes. Certainly it’s time to get the tomato and pepper seed into pots (maybe eggplant, but I’m bored with eggplant). This will be year two of the quest to develop an open-pollinated beefsteak-type tomato that can handle our hot springs and summers and live through the various wilt maladies that plague ordinary tomatoes around here.
It’s time to haul off the mushy banana corms, vine stalks and other vegetation zapped by the cold, so that room may be made for new experimental plant oddities.
It’s time to get out the shovel, hoe and Mantis rototiller to extend the back garden beyond the pecan branch shadows.
It’s time to dig the blackberries out away from the fence and see if they’ll populate the upper riverbank. It’s time to plan a new herb garden near the kitchen.
It’s time to repair the myriad mechanical breakdowns that have gone unfixed due to inclemency or the winter doldrums.
It’s time to work off the fat and stand in the sun and watch the birds and yell at the dog. Spring waits for no man. Backsliding weather notwithstanding, it really is time.
→ B.Dunn, Jan 13, 2010, 10 48 am
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