Cabbage

Just like my Sue, my sister of the soil, I've just made my first-ever batch of sauerkraut, which spent four days on the counter before moving to the well-known "cool, dry place," which in my house is the fridge. Its base was Napa cabbage from the garden, and the secondary ingredients included both carrot and parsnip from the same source.

Honestly, I don't really like sauerkraut — it's "sauer!" — but I had my reasons to try it. First, is the locavore reason — what good is a bumper crop if your only choices are to give it to the neighbors or put it into the compost? 

Secondly, I was writing a story about natural fermentation, the centuries-old method of food preservation, for the Boston Globe, and wanted to have a feel for what I was talking about. It's one of the privileges of journalism, to learn and experience more than I would if I didn't have a need to know.

Anyway, the story was published this morning. Though it didn't make the print version, the online presentation includes a tips box from Dan Rosenberg, founder and co-owner of Real Pickles, a Greenfield, Mass., company makes about a dozen products using only local produce and natural fermentation.

If remember to, I'm going to bring my kraut to the garden Saturday morning for a tasting. C'mon by!

I was intrigued by a recent Terry Gross interview with Sandor Ellix Katz about his book "The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World".  Katz explains that fermented foods and beverages have been prepared by humans for over 8000 years.  Fermentation is the process whereby cultures of micro-organisms (usually bacteria or yeast), often microbes already naturally present in the food or surrounding environment, are allowed to establish and grow in the food, enhancing flavor and, Katz believes, providing numerous health benefits.  (Our own bodies normally contain vast -- VAST -- numbers of living bacteria and other microorganisms, known as our "microbiome", though this fascinating topic is way beyond the scope of this post.)  As they grow in the fermenting foods, the microorganisms digest carbohydrates and produce byproducts that impart characteristic flavors.  (See "glycolysis" in your biochemistry texts.)  For example, both wine and beer are fermented beverages, with sugars converted by yeast to alcohol (and carbon dioxide).  In the case of some other fermented foods, lactic acid is the product contributing to the characteristic flavor and texture.  Lactic acid gives pickles and sauerkraut their sharp sourness, and the extent of acidity can be controlled, for example, by moving the product to the refrigerator to slow bacterial growth. 

 2 years ago, we planted cabbages and they were essentially a failure, attacked by insects and really poor performers.  Last year the yield was better- we were able to harvest several cabbages and we tried a successful experiment where we left the cabbage plant after we harvested a cabbage and benefited when it produced more cabbages.

This year- cabbage nirvana.  We have both green and red cabbages that are doing really well.  On Saturday, June 23 we harvested our first monster cabbage.

If it's November, it's time to harvest the Brussels Sprouts. They're one of the slowest crops in the garden -- but worth the wait. They're exceptionally cold hardy. In fact, they were growing so vigorously in late October that the snow didn't even stick to them!

The last of the Scallions, Leeks, Collard Greens and Tatsoi were harvested this week. (Sadly, the Leeks never fully matured.) We're still picking small Broccoli florets (amazingly, from the seedlings we planted in April) and some of the sweetest Kale I've ever tasted. The Arugula and Broccoli Rabe also continue to produce. A few tiny Lettuce and Spinach seedlings remain, along with our marginal late-season Cabbages.  

After Saturday's work session, the garden was neat and clean and green. The following day, it was white! The fluke October snow was perfectly timed to weigh down the fresh compost of basil, bean, eggplant, okra, pepper, tomato and tomatillo plants.

The cabbage was snug in its white blanket, awaiting more warm weather and the Brussels sprouts were standing tall.

Today my colleagues at the Garden were kind enough to let me take home one of the two kabocha squash that we harvested.  I regret that I didn't photograph it, but my colleague Elisabeth provided this photo of another of our beautiful kabochas (surrounded by tomatillos).  Wikepedia informed me, with its usual degree of authority, that Kabocha squash is also called "Japanese pumpkin".  Indeed, as you see, it is very pumpkin-like.  We also harvested two sugar pumpkins from our "Three Sisters" plot today, and our kabocha looked like they could easily have been their unripe cousins.

Elisabeth reminded me about an amazing soup that uses kabocha, along with tomatillos.  I recalled the recipe, too, the minute she mentioned it yet, inexplicably, it's been over 10 years since I last prepared it.  It's "Tomatillo and Squash Soup" from Anna Thomas' "The New Vegetarian Epicure".  It is probably the best soup I've ever made, or eaten.  How on earth have I lived without it, let alone forgotten about it, for all these years?! I'm quite sure that the last time I made it was in the late 90's.  Kabocha squash and tomatillos were relatively hard to come by back then.  As we reminisced in the Garden today, you had to search for tomatillos at "Bread and Checkbook", and they cost a lot, and even the 12 required by the recipe were not necessarily in stock when you needed them.  Kabocha squash, with its firm very deep orange flesh and unique flavor (and tough constitution...you'd better have a good knife!), was not particularly easy to find either.

Normally, when cabbage is ready to harvest we just pull the whole plant out of the ground and lop off the roots.  However, we were told by someone that it is possible to have multiple crops of cabbages on the same plant if we don't pull the entire plant.  We are trying this experiment with several of our cabbage plants- both the plain green cabbage and the Savoy.   This plant seems to have as many at 7 new cabbages growing from the original plant.  Supposedly the cabbages will be quite a bit smaller, but hopefully they will taste as good.

Something is eating holes in the cabbages, and left us some evidence. We don't know (yet) what it is or what to do about it.

Saturday we harvested the second-season cabbage, started about two months ago.  The heads were small, but there were heads!  It was a bit of a gamble to try, but the extra motivation was to use the space to show visiting children what cabbage looked like.  The small cabbage could have used a few more weeks to grow larger, but we had committed to returning the Garden back to the Park by November 1st this Pilot year, and so Saturday we harvested everything.

The peak of the harvest is past, and yet we tried second plantings of some crops because we had the space, to see what would happen.  With about a month to go, here's their progress.

Cabbage & Cauliflower:  large leaves, producing well, but no sign of heads yet.

Carrots:  leafy fronds are doing well; no sign of poking out of the ground.

Beets:  alive but struggling.

Spinach:  mostly eaten by Something.

Peas:  half-height, base leaves yellowing, no sign of peas.

Lettuce:  looking good!  Might harvest some next week.

Also, here's an update on some first plantings:

Eggplant:  *continues* to produce, though more slowly.

Beans:  the bush beans produced another handful; the pole beans have disappointed.

Potatoes:  we pulled a single plant to obtain some potatoes for display at Town Day.  The number amidst the roots was extensive, and while mostly small-to-tiny, there was at least one big red one.  From just one plant!

Squash:  the tiny zucchini was accidently harvested; there's still a medium yellow squash; and the pattipan has several small fruits (not to mention flowers) which it thinks it has time to make bigger -- we'll see.

The mildew is back to some extent on the squash, and worse, has jumped to the other side of the garden and covered the collard leaves.

The rest of the greens (kale, chard, arugula and other herbs) still doing well.

So maybe we waited a -little- too long.  All three cabbage were pulled today, and the green one was beginning to split.  Some claim that such splitting indicates over-watering, or perhaps watering more than usual (extra rains).  However, I think cabbages just do that when they've decided they're big enough.  Perhaps both are true; quoting one web source:  "Splitting is caused by the pressure of excessive water taken up after the heads are solid."  One of the red cabbages looked a bit bigger than last week, but the other did not.  It was time to harvest.

Three small cabbage remain in the garden.  Some questioned whether they would grow any larger.  It was said that cabbages can be unpredictable as to how big they get.  It was also said that these three wouldn't get any bigger.  But since it was pointed out that having different colored cabbage would be nice for the schoolchildren to observe, we decided to wait-and-see another week.

The cauliflower (and cabbage?) seeds planted two and three weeks ago were unsuccessful.  Last week (in my absence) more were planted, but this time under shade cloth, and they sprouted.

I opened the garden for a couple of hours Tuesday.

Again, we had several Asian-Americans coming to visit, including one a couple who had just arrived from Beijing! The man practiced his English on me. They have different gardening customs, which I can't quite repeat. For instance they do not plant cabbages in the spring.

A little later, after Michael had come by with baby Joe, an Indian family visited — a dad and three kids who were very enthusiastic. They asked about several of the crops, including which ones were being grown for what was underground, and the elder girl (9 or 10, maybe?) warned that when we harvest the zucchini, we should be wary of the little spines that could hurt.

Their dad liked our garden and wanted to be in touch with us. He said he is psyched that we are adding to the town's culture, which he, himself, was also doing: He told us about a townwide Scrabble tournament at the library on Wednesday. Unfortunately for us, he said it was closed to those who had graduated high school. 
 

[Michael P. contributed to Oakes' report.]

One of the winners   . . .   and two also-rans

On Wednesday, it was amazing to see no leaf damage in the soybeans.  They are actually looking better than the bush beans!  Did the soybeans regenerate leaf-parts eaten?  There is a theory that plants respond vigorously to stress.  Maybe a mild pest attack inspires soybeans to greater productivity?  It would be ironic then, that pesticide-happy farmers might actually be hurting their crops by eliminating natural sources of stress.  On the other hand, many of the cabbage plants succumbed to -something-, so stress may not be a good thing for all plants.

Meanwhile, the bush beans have started flowering.  Maybe they look less explosive because they are now putting less energy into leaves and more energy into beans.

 
We harvested one red cabbage Saturday.  But some cabbage plants looked like they were not going to do much.  So the decision was made to cull the runts.  Most of these had cutworm collars, leading one gardener to speculate that maybe cutworm collars somehow stunt the growth.  However, it was pointed out that the cutworm collars, placed about a week and a half after the seedlings were planted, were placed especially around those seedlings having trouble.  One wonders at why some cabbages did better than others.  Was it the transplanting?  (i.e. some rootlets might have been more disturbed than others)  Was it some early attack on the seedling by a pest?  Or was it just that some do better than others?

Meanwhile, the tomato committee appropriated the liberated area.

Curly Kale : Mary Ellen  . . .  Red Cabbage : Elizabeth  . . .  Russian Kale : Michael