garlic pesto

There is an overabundance of garlic scapes hereabouts. I've roasted them with potatoes, sauteed them with vegetables and taken them to market, but still I'm inundated. Then, I came across this recipe. Or more accurately, a recipe very similar to this one but with a couple of changes.

Anyway, if you like garlic, give this recipe a whirl. This stuff is good on crackers as well as linguine.

And by the way, the season for scapes is almost over. If you'd like to try this before next year, you gotta hurry!

Garlic Pesto
This pesto keeps very well, covered and chilled up to 3 days or frozen up to 2 months.
Ingredients:
1/2 pound garlic scapes (about 
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt, plus more to taste
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup freshly shredded pecorino cheese or other hard sheep's milk cheese
Preparation:
Trim and discard garlic bud. Finely chop garlic scapes, rinse thoroughly and pat or spin dry.
In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, cook vegetable oil, garlic scapes, and 1/2 tsp. salt until soft, about 3 minutes. Let cool to warm room temperature.
In a blender or food processor, pulse pine nuts to chop. Set aside. Add garlic scapes and process, scraping down sides as necessary, until bright green and smooth. With motor running, drizzle in olive oil. Pulse in reserved pine nuts and cheese. Taste and add more salt if you like.
Makes enough Garlic Pesto to coat 1 pound linguine.

fresh roasted vegetables

golden beets, rose gold potatoes, garlic scapes, patty pan squash, rosemary, sungold tomatoes, and zephyr squash.

What started as a desire to try some of the fresh garlic scapes from the garden turned into a full-blown meal of fresh roasted vegetables. Scapes are seriously seasonal and available only for a short time in late spring/early summer - now, so if you want to try some, you gotta find them soon. Wanting to allow the flavor of each vegetable to come through while still working together as a whole, I decided to roast them. Or, at least finish by roasting them. Here's how...

Take a small handful of scapes and some young beets, cut them all into bite-sized pieces and toss in a bowl with some sea salt, a pinch of pepper, and enough olive oil to coat. Spread out on a shallow pan and put them in a 350° oven to roast for about a half hour (I like golden or albino beets for this since they won't turn everything red). As they're roasting, cut up some new potatoes into one inch chunks and boil them until barely done. (Or better yet, use baby potatoes and boil them whole.) As that's happening, heat olive oil in a skillet, slice up some young summer squash about a quarter inch thick, and saute them with a little salt for about 4 minutes until golden brown but also barely done. You don't want to overcook either the potatoes or the squash since they are both now going to be added to the roasting pan along with a handful of cherry tomatoes and a couple teaspoons of minced rosemary. Toss everyone together in the pan, making sure to get everybody coated with olive oil. Roast for just a few minutes more to meld the flavors and finish cooking. Whatever you do, don't overcook the veggies because that's just disgusting.

Yes, several of these things are early, but with the greenhouse, I'm able to get a jump on the season. Of course, other fresh vegetables would also work. Use what's available to you. For instance, I think scapes and asparagus would be great roasted together, maybe served warm on a bed of spinach with a little vinaigrette.

final fall planting

Yesterday afternoon I decided that it was the perfect day for putting in the garlic. We've had our first hard frost, but the soil is still warm. I tilled under the eight inch high spring oats cover crop and saw some truly beautiful soil - soft and dark and crumbly (all of the mulching and composting and rock-picking is paying off). The sky was overcast and rain was in the forecast, but the air felt almost balmy as I pushed the cloves into the earth. Working steadily, I could see my neighbors were also trying to beat the oncoming twilight and the next round of rain as one baled corn fodder and another brought in hay for their dairy cows. The shorter day length catches me by surprise sometimes and so planting was finished by the day's last light.

readying the garden for winter

Yes, there is still time for fall crops like radishes, lettuce and other salad greens, but I was in a mood and decided to go ahead and prep the garden for winter. With the exception of some peppers, carrots, and a small salad patch, everything got mowed down. Woody remnants that refused to be shredded by the mower were burned. Those that resisted burning got put on the compost pile. A shallow tilling came next and then cover crops were sown. In the beds where there will be root vegetables or the brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, etc.) next year, spring oats went in, everywhere else large purple-top turnips were planted. Since turnips are in the brassica family, it's best to not plant them where next year's crop will go since they share pests and disease.

So why plant turnips at all? Because the sheep love them! If the weather cooperates, the turnips should be ready for grazing in mid-November and hopefully through the end of the year. Frost won't kill them, but a good hard freeze will. So depending on the weather, the sheep could get as much as six weeks of eating off of them, saving quite a bit on hay. Along the same thinking, I've stopped mowing the grassy area around the garden, to create stockpiled forage. It should balance the the turnips nicely in terms of nutrition. The first year I tried this, it worked great, but last year was pretty much a bust. The turnips got planted late and then we had an early hard freeze. That one-two punch meant the sheep barely saw any benefit at all. It's all a gamble, but not an expensive one, so definitely worth trying.

I also prepped the garlic bed. It is tilled, raked, spread with chicken litter, and planted with oats. The garlic will get planted into the oats in late October, having just enough time to put out some roots before resting for the winter. The oats will grow until winter-killed, and will then provide a handy protective mulch all as well as a weed barrier next spring. All I need now is for the garlic to arrive in the mail. I ordered a second variety this week, called music. It should be interesting to see the differences between it and the red russian.

The last big garden project before winter is to prep the cut flower garden. I've been putting it off until I can get a nice fence put up around it to keep the dogs out, but probably a temporary fence will have to do for now since time is running short. A dog barrier is essential because there will be manure spread on the beds. Dogs + manure. Need I say more?

The greenhouse is still in the planning stages (yikes!). Hopefully next week that will move forward.

starting the 2010 market garden

The start of the 2010 season is officially underway today with the ordering of garlic bulbs for planting! I selected a red russian garlic from Wood Prairie Farm, an organic farm in Maine that also offers a wonderful selection of seed potatoes. I got my potatoes from them last spring and had great results.

The Red Russian is a Rocambole garlic, a hard neck variety and suited to cold winters, so should do well here. Unlike most hard necks, it is supposed to be a good keeper with large cloves. Most of the garlic you'll find in grocery stores is the soft neck variety, usually grown in California. In researching garlic, it's my understanding that soft necks generally keep better and have a mild flavor, while the hard necks have a stronger, more complex flavor. And while it will be interesting to compare flavors, really my selection of a hard neck boils down to what will grow well here in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

And so, with the simple act of ordering some garlic cloves, my new venture has officially begun. I am excited and nervous. Time seems to be both screaming by and yet crawling along. Winter will be here before I'm ready, I'm sure, and spring seems so far off.