Tasty, tasty tubers!

Some of you may remember my tale from a couple weeks back about how my one-year-challenge to eat something I had grown or foraged every day for a full year was a total failure, due to my having been hijacked by hormones through the fall and winter. Since then I've been back on track, eating delicious sprouts and microgreens, which I have been tending lovingly in their jars and recycled containers that deck my windowsills. I've sown some seeds for spring and summer vegetables. I've been snipping and clipping from my potted rosemary, lemon thyme, and sage plants, and in no time at all I'll be gathering teapots of mint and lemon balm from the weedy recesses of the back yard. One other plant has emerged to help me get through a few days of homegrown eats, too: the knobbly, delicious Jerusalem artichoke.

If you've never eaten a Jerusalem artichoke, you're certainly not alone. I've never seen them in a grocery store in Newfoundland, and only a handful of local farms grow them. I first ate them in Montreal when I lived there, and only in restaurants, so I had never cooked them myself until this week, when I dug them up from the frosty dirt where they had been hiding out since last fall.

Jerusalem artichokes aren't really artichokes: they're sunflowers, native to the eastern part of North America, where they were a staple food long before the Europeans showed up and took them back with them as novel delicacies. There is a lot of lore around the name, and the accepted explanation is that the "Jerusalem" bit comes from the Italian girasole, which means "sunflower," and that the "artichoke" bit comes from French explorer Samuel de Champlain's description of the tuber's flavour as being like an artichoke, although, frankly, I don't get the similarity.

So what do they taste like? Sweet, nutty, crunchy when raw (really crunchy, like, water chestnut crunchy), potato-y when cooked (although they tend to go mushy very quickly when boiled, so steaming, roasting, and pan-frying are recommended). They're really very yummy.

There are two caveats to growing Jerusalem artichokes. The first is that they are notoriously invasive, so you might not want to plant them directly in the ground. Apparently, even the smallest bit of tuber left behind will sprout again, which is all fine and good if you have the time and energy and wherewithal to dig them up year after year until the end of time, but if you move, the next people to inhabit your garden might be less than impressed. The second is that Jerusalem artichokes are sunflowers, and sunflowers can suck a lot of lead out of your soil, so if you live in an area with dodgy dirt, you might want to grow them in a container. I tried to come up with some kind of cool planter option last year, but as the spring crept on I ran out of time, and just flung a bag of soil on the ground, cut a big hole in the top and some drainage holes around the bottom, and stuck my seed tubers down in it. The yield wasn't huge, but since I had them in close quarters, in a shady spot, during the most miserable summer in recent memory, I'm impressed they did anything at all, really. This year, my husband and I are going to dig a trench for them and line it with something they can't get out of, in an area of the yard where they'll get more sunlight, and where they'll have a bit more space to spread their roots.

Oh, there's a caveat to eating them, too: apparently some people have a hard time digesting them, and thus the tubers have earned the nickname "fartichokes." Ahem. Now, I can report that I have had no such reaction, and I am very happy about that. British garden writer Alys Fowler solves the wind problem by cooking her Jerusalem artichokes with winter savory. I may have escaped a gassy fate through my negligence: I've read that leaving them in the ground for a hard frost or two helps them convert the troubling carbs, making digestion easier. A full winter of freeze and thaw seems to have sorted them out nicely.

Jerusalem artichokes can grow quite tall - over 20 feet in warmer climes, but easily six or eight feet here. Mine didn't flower last year (no sun, no sunflowers), but the flowers are cheerful and yellow when they do appear. They attract all kinds of helpful insect friends. They're so pretty, actually, that Monet painted them. The variety I grew is called Passamaquoddy Potatoes from Hope Seeds, but unfortunately they're not available this year. If you can get your hands on some Jerusalem artichokes from a local grower, I suggest you toss a few in some good soil and see what happens. Come springtime, you may well be thanking yourself.

The good, the bad, and the ridiculous

Well, friends, I had planned to offer you a delightful round-up of what worked and what didn't in my little downtown garden this year, but unfortunately the cable for my computer has vanished, and the extra cable I keep on hand for such emergencies has had both of its ends filled with play-dough. (Hey, guess what! I found the cord! We have photos!) I have an angry, teething toddler trying to get into my lap, so you'll have to settle for a photo-less post in list form. Okay? Okay! Most amazing discovery: the rat tail radish. Holy crow. Rat tail radishes are heirloom radishes that were bred to produce tasty pods instead of the roots we're used to. They're delicious! Zippy, like a regular radish, but kind of greenish at the same time. They're really good with a dip or just on their own. Super crunchy and juicy. Apparently they're good pickled, but I haven't tried that yet. As they grow they get kind of jungly and lanky, so they're not the best if you're into ornamental edible landscaping, but they're well worth the mess.

Biggest bust: beans and peas. Between the slugs and the damp spring, hardly any of the four kinds of beans I planted came up. Also, two kinds of peas were lost to sogginess and slugs. It was very sad. The troopers that survived were the Schweizer Riesen snow peas and the Blue Jaysnap beans, and they're both still truckin', even in the cold. I should note, though, that neither one of those has had a particularly impressive yield, but I'm going to attribute that to the weather, not to the seeds themselves. They did the best they could.

Most impressive harvest: garlic. I planted my garlic late last year, well into November. By that time, nobody local had any seed garlic left to sell, so I had to order some from away, at considerable expense. When my package came, I was kind of sad to realize that for all that money, I had gotten a mere two heads of garlic. I sighed and carried on. Then, that same week, what should I spy at Dominion but packages of organic hardneck garlic from Furmanek Farm in Arthur, Ontario. There were three bulbs in a little net pack for, what, maybe six bucks? I took them home, planted them lovingly, and they outperformed the ordered seed garlic by far. All the garlic I planted did well, but the grocery stuff was incredible. Just goes to show that sometimes it's better to ignore conventional advice and just try something crazy.

Most ridiculous out of season action: squash. All of my squash, winter and summer, sulked through the whole season. Now I have two baby zucchini and a load of baby pumpkins, just in time for the frost to kill them. Oh, the tragedy! I'll eat the baby zucchini, but I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for the pumpkins, except keep my fingers crossed for a ridiculously warm November.

Wackiest season-extending scheme: tomato dome. Like pretty much everyone else, I have a load of green tomatoes that will probably never ripen on the vine. Some are far enough along that I can ripen them indoors, but others are nowhere close. They're in two adjacent 4" x 4" beds, with a trellis along the inner edge of each bed. My scheme is to encase the whole thing in vapor barrier (cheaper and easier to find than greenhouse plastic, and just as durable - I know someone who's had an amazing greenhouse made from the stuff for the last three years) and hope for the best. I'm also going to remove all the last of the blossoming flowers and pinch out the growing tips of the plants so that all the energy will be sent into the fruit that has already formed. Wish me luck!

There are some things I haven't been able to harvest yet. My Jerusalem artichokes and my ground cherries are still growing, and my parsnips will want a frost before they can be dug up. I have kale, lamb's lettuce, and red mustard started that should take me into winter, and I'll be starting some more winter crops over the next couple weeks. I hope I can find my camera cable soon so I can show you pictures of them.  Photos to come soon!

Downtown Dirt end-of-July update

Hello, friends! I had wanted to do a lovely pictorial of all the things growing happily in my garden today, but unfortunately almost everything in the back yard is completely covered in specks of black poo from the millions of tiny worms rolled up in the leaves of my neighbours' enormously large maple tree, the branches of which now reach almost 2/3 of the way across my back yard. It's to the north of my garden, so it doesn't block all the light (although if it weren't there, I could grow super sunny crops like corn and peppers without any trouble, I'm pretty sure), but it does shower everyone and everything with worm poo for weeks of the summer, then with seeds which seem to have a 115% germination rate, and which I spend the entire warm season trying to remove. Ah, but it is a lovely tree, I suppose. A lovely, wormy, shady, seedy tree. (The neighbours, though, really are lovely, and since they're renters I do not hold the pooping monster tree against them. We're all victims here!)

So yes, all my backyard plants are covered in worm poo and not looking all that pretty. They're doing reasonably well, though. My Jerusalem artichokes, which were nearly devoured by slugs, are now about two and a half feet high and have formed a thick stand behind one of my raised beds and against the neighbours' fence (directly in the line of fire of the most worm poo). When I ordered them, I knew where I wanted to put them, but I wasn't sure exactly how to execute it. I didn't want to put them straight in the ground, because they're in the sunflower family, and sunflowers suck lead out of the soil - great if you're growing ornamental sunflowers and then binning them, but not so great if you're growing them for their tasty tubers. Time was running short and I hadn't come up with a good plan, so I just flung a bag of soil on its side, cut the now-top of the plastic off, and planted them in there. They're definitely too close for comfort, and probably won't produce all that well due to cramped space, but seeing as how there's no proof that anyone but me even likes Jerusalem artichokes, I think that's alright.

Across the yard, away from the worm poo (but straight into the bindweed), my fig is putting out tons of new growth.

My fig lives in an old enamel stock pot with holes in the bottom. This year, I gave it new soil and fed it with tomato feed, which is apparently something figs like (according to someone on the web somewhere - I can't for the life of me remember). I had overwintered it indoors last year, but I think this year I'll tuck it in a protected corner of my patio and let it experience the winter. I think I've interrupted its natural cycle of dormancy by keeping it too warm, and now the poor thing is confused. If I ever want to eat a fig from my own tree, I'd best try to un-confuse it.

Right now, the most advanced crops are my tomatoes, which are all beginning to flower, and my Onaway potatoes, which are looking fantastic (and taking up half my front yard).

Their leaves are so lush and gorgeous! Since Onaways are "earlies," I can start feeling around for baby potatoes as soon as the flowers do their thing. I'm super excited, especially after last year's great potato failure. These guys don't make great storage potatoes, from what I hear, but I have Pink Fir Apple spuds growing out back for that. They went in the ground much later, so they're nowhere near as advanced, but I think they'll do alright.

Out of the crops I didn't expect to do all that well, my Aunt Molly's ground cherry seems to be coming along quite marvelously. I have one in a pot in my front yard that is going great guns, and another two in a raised bed in the back yard that are quickly catching up. I put in three more plants at my mother's house, but they're not quite so happy, for reasons we have yet to determine. I'm super excited about these. I used to eat ground cherries until I couldn't take it any more when I lived in Montreal, but they're pretty scarce around here. They really are very tasty.

So that's the good news. Sadly, it's not all looking that good. My cucumbers never came up at all. I sowed them outdoors under glass because I ran out of space under the grow lights in my basement, but nothing happened. My Gnadenfeld melon plants were eaten by slugs, and I think my Blacktail Mountain watermelon might suffer the same fate. I have plenty of seeds left of each to try again next year, but still, it's pretty disappointing. My French beans never came up at all, and I had wanted to train them up a nice, attractive teepee, with sweet peas growing up among them. Well, at least the sweet peas are growing, so the teepee won't look totally stupid.

Oh, and my brassicas at my mother's place are full of cabbage worms. We broke out the BT and are hoping for the best. Now, if only the landlords next door would come spray that tree...