To be honest, I meant to do this several weeks sooner but I couldn’t find the same triangular folding cages I’d bought last year. If you’re ever wondering what kind of tomato cages to buy, I recommend the folding ones for several reasons:

1. It’s much easier to fold a cage around a large tomato plant than it is to gently coax a generally non-cooperative and unwieldy cluster of tomato vines neatly and without some bruises into an upright, non-folding cage.
2. Folding cages fold flat and store pretty much anywhere.
3. They seem much easier to bend back into a useful shape than stiffer, non-folding cages.

Shameless confession: Plus, they come in green, which makes your cages semi-invisible in the garden. And, more importantly, in any photographs you might take of the garden. Witness the glaring sore thumb of a non-folding cage below:

Unfortunately, it seem word has gotten out about the awesomeness of folding cages because they were to be found nowhere at my usual nursery or hardware haunts so I had to make do with regular circular non-folding cages. The plus side of these cages, besides their obvious utilitarian purpose, is that I’ll be able to arrange them in an artful cone structure in the off-season.

One thing I didn’t expect to discover when installing the tomato cages was tomatoes. Especially large ones that look like they’ll be ready to ripen soon. I’ve got 4 Yellow Boy plants and 4 cherry tomatoes and they are both, in addition to putting out lots of lovely little yellow flowers, fruiting already.

And speaking of yellow flowers, I discovered these two hidden away beneath the squash leaves this morning.

Above – Some thyme, doing its best to take over the pot it shares with the tarragon and the rosemary – and below, the first eggplant blossom of the season.

Every day of spring rain has added 2-3 inches to the seedlings – the tomatoes are now nearly a foot high, the beans seedlings are crowned with their characteristic heart-shaped leaves, and the basil has perked up, nice and fluffy, if only momentarily. I’m beginning to suspect that basil is a perenially teenage herb – unless it gets rain, sun, etc exactly the way it wants, it sulks as morosely and defiantly as Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club.

Marjoram leaves just after a spring rain

Marjoram, on the other hand, is more like Molly Ringwald. It’s cute AND sociable – its delicate flavor plays nicely with others. It hasn’t suffered a bad hair day yet – carrying itself proudly through both the sweltering July heat and three feet of February snow.

Last year, I bought the marjoram on a whim, wondering how much different it was from oregano. The flavor is milder but the plant itself is much hardier – excess cold or rain or complete lack of rain had obvious effects on the oregano (the cold ultimately killing it in December) but absolutely none on the marjoram. I’d never used it before last year but now I use it all the time, routinely substituting it for oregano in recipes.

Ingredients

• 4 small potatoes (about kiwi-fruit sized)
• 1/2 a small onion
• 3 sprigs of dill, chopped fine
• 3 tbsps bouillon
• 1 tbsp meat fat or cooking oil, preferably vegetable
• salt & pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Rinse and dry potatoes. Without removing skin, chop into 1/2″ pieces. Peel and slice onion thinly. Place in a baking dish.
2. Chop dill sprigs finely. Sprinkle over potatoes and onions. Add bouillon, meat grease/cooking oil and mix until potatoes and onions are well-coated. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Turn on the broiler. Place baking pan on second highest oven rack and broil for 15-20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so.
4. Serve hot. Serves 2-3.

While the owner of this place and I were chatting, I mentioned that I do a bit of growing my own vegetables and she recommended that I read Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.” I told her I would look for it in the library and she leaned forward, looking me right in the eyes and, with all the gravity of SOMEONE WHO KNOWS, intoned:

“This isn’t the kind of book you get from the library. You will want to keep this book. And you’ll want to have additional copies of it to give to people. I would give you one but I just gave away my last copy. You should buy it.”

Now, saying that I have a tendency to skepticism is sort of like saying rain has a tendency to wetness or mosquitoes have a tendency to suck your blood. But when I saw that every single copy of “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” in the DC Public Library system was checked out, I figured she must be on to something.

Sensing that I could be starting something life-altering and wanting a witness, I called up my friend Sherin to see if she wanted to meet at the bookstore and grab dinner. Mother Nature (or Fate or someone else with a similar sense of humor and appreciation for synchronicity) apparently wanted to be sure that I got the message that this is a book of GREAT IMPORTANCE, because, when I cracked a joke to Sherin about what the lady had said, a perfectly normal and legit-looking nearby customer glanced over at us and the book I was carrying and said, “She’s right. That is a really good book.”

Skeptic balloon? Let me introduce you to universal truth hatpin. I’m sure you’ll get along just fine…

These three tiny new buds on my Purple Beauty pepper plant will soon turn into nice, fat bell peppers with purple skin and green flesh. Now if I can just refrain from snarfing them down long enough to make some art photos…

I’m 3/4 of the way through the book now and, while I can’t say it’s changed my life, it has solidified my thinking about the food I eat and how I eat it. One of the really cool things about the book is that Kingsolver’s farm is not far from DC so it’s a nice reference for what kind of things I can grow here and what to do with them once they’re harvested (the book has lots of seasonal recipes). It also turned me on to Seed Saver’s Exchange, which is sort of like porn for this urban farmer-in-training.

(Check out the Rainbow Chard, AKA Five Color Silverbeet – now, that is a SEXY vegetable! Looks like the love child of Mother Nature and Versace.)

So, my cold weather garden plans evolved from “maybe some onions, potatoes and carrots” to 3 varieties of greens for fall: radicchio, mache, and curly endive, 3 varieties of greens for winter: the aforementioned rainbow chard, Russian kale, and Brussels sprouts, and lots of root vegetables for stews and roasting: turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, leeks and two kinds of carrots – good ol’ Nantes and Dragons, a dark red variety that are supposed to have a “sweet, almost spicy flavor.”

I also added a few new herbs to the current mix of oregano, thyme, mint and basil: marjoram (which is already nearly dead and soon to be replaced with sage), rosemary, tarragon, bay, and some more basil. If this seems excessive, let me just point out that two blueberry bushes were also on the agenda. I still want them but I’ve got to make some more money first. Or find a donor. Wanna be my blueberry patron? I promise you the blueberry dessert of your choice next year – a pie, a tart, a crumble – you name it, I will make it for you! And I’ll publish the recipe in your honor on the blog – you could be famous!

Just so there’s no confusion, I am completely serious about this. If you’re game, let’s talk – tweet me or email me.

We nearly lost the cucumber vine in the corner to draught but it has rallied back amazingly. The ginormous yellow tomato plant fared better and has been dropping meaty, juicy tomatoes at the rate of 7 or so a week. Pepper plants in front of them, right chuffed with all the dry weather.

Why a container garden? I hear you ask. Well, in the spring, we had our soil tested. The results that came back were pretty surprising. Given that we live right in the heart of NW DC in an ancient house that has been modified numerous times by numerous owners, I was somewhat expecting there to be a ton of lead in the soil. But there wasn’t – just enough to make growing root veggies and leafy greens a bad idea. All our fall and winter veggies fall into both of these categories. Thus the containers.

We also have a secret plan for actually getting the lead out of the soil in the works, which I’ll talk about more once we get cracking on it.

Which is probably why I was surprised by an abundance of basil last week. Perhaps due to the cool weather we’ve been having, the basil started flowering a couple weeks ago. I have been stubbornly picking off the flowerheads in an effort to keep it growing leaves but my basil plants seem equally determined to flower (I imagine the plants having a dialogue not unlike that of the oranges in this Eddie Izzard skit).

Fortunately, our recent run of dark and stormy nights afternoons have completely de-railed its former plans of going to seed. Hence today’s recipe.

Pesto

Ingredients

• As many basil leaves as you can stuff into 2 cups
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup pine nuts
• 3 garlic cloves
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

1. Load up the food processor with the basil and pine nuts and pulse a few times until desired shreddy-ness is reached. Empty basil and pine nuts into a bowl.
2. Grate the garlic* and cheese and add to the basil and pine nuts. Pour in the olive oil and mix well with a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste.

*You can also put the whole garlic cloves into the food processor along with the basil and pine nuts and pulse together. Garlic laughs at my tiny food processor (which is clearly designed for garlic-free vampire kitchens), so I grate it with an old school tinned copper oroshi-gane.

Canon EOS 5D with ST-E2, 1/180th @ f8, ISO 200. 580EX II at 1/8th power bounced off back wall.

Caution: Rant Ahead

What marketing genius came up with this ad campaign? They’ve been in the DC subway trains for months – a photo of a pair of feet in flip-flops resting up on a porch railing that overlooks a nice pond somewhere (presumably while the owner reclines in a chair or something). The tag line is “The way tea should taste.” My brain completes that as “The way tea should taste. Like feet.” Plus they have a sweetened green tea variety and I firmly believe that sweetened green tea should be federally legislated against.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled recipe.

Moroccan mint tea is very easy – it just requires some time, some mint and some green tea.

1. Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil and turn off. Throw in 6 green tea bags and let it sit for 2 hours
2. Remove the tea bags and bring the water to a boil again. Turn off the heat. Crush a handful (1/3 – 1/2 cup loosely packed) of fresh mint to release the oils and throw into the water. Let sit for 2-3 hours.
3. Remove the mint. If the tea is too strong for your liking, dilute with water. Chill and enjoy!

About the photo:
Today’s goal was to get the look of sunlight without using sunlight. I backlit the mint by bouncing the 580 off the kitchen walls and brought out the texture of the leaves with the Lumo Pro. Because I wanted the light to seem as if it were coming from a single source, I put both flashes to camera left and used a folding mirror to add in some fill light.

ISO 200, f5.6@1/200. 580EX II @ 1/8 power, LumoPro 120 @ 1/32 power. Mirror reflector.