The garden is almost done for the growing season. There's still plenty of food, like two rows of small potatoes, hardly worth digging up except that then I'd have to (heaven forbid) BUY potatoes. The red and green romaine lettuce is small, but there's 150 feet of it. Even after a dozen mornings of frost the broccoli is still kicking out shoots. Broccoli is my first garden love; it's the hardest worker and keeps going right up until a hard freeze. And there are a few scraggly leeks and scallions, itty-bitty cabbages and lots and lots of kale.
Kale was the stepchild of the garden this summer. There was a period between the time when it got too hot for the lettuce and spinach and the point when we were 'rolling in zucchini' when kale and broccoli and green onions were the main deal. Everybody loves broccoli, green onions are great to cook with, but no one knew what to do with the kale. We asked each other for recipes without success.
Years ago, when taking a class called 'Your Creative Process,' one of my granola-eating, new age teachers told me that the perfect recipe for kale was to saute onions and garlic in olive oil, throw mounds of chopped kale into the pan, cover with a lid, lower the heat and let it wilt for 20-30 minutes. Since this person liked collard greens and mustard greens and all those other icky, bitter greens, I never worked up the nerve to try it. I talked the recipe up to all the members of the garden, hoping someone would cook it and tell me how it really tasted, but no matter how enthusiastically I promoted no one ever reported back. As soon as the other vegetables started to kick in, Terrie and Amy whispered that I could skip the kale in their shares. Poor kale, all it did was grow like crazy.
Later I came across David Leite, food blogger (leitesculinaria.com) and author of The New Portugeuese Table. Turns out kale is the national food of Portugal! It's a key component in their famed Caldo Verde (green soup) and much more. Next summer there will be Portuguese recipes galore and root vegetables ready to pick up the slack so the kale doesn't have to take such abuse.
The garlic's in for next year. You plant garlic in the fall, the full moon after the first frost, usually October in Michigan. On the last group day of the season, while the rest of us pulled up plastic mulch, Helen and Ann planted garlic: twenty bulbs of hard necked cloves, twenty bulbs of soft neck cloves. About one row's worth was left to plant at the end of the day. I said I'd finish up later in the week, but when I went back out to look (ok, two or three weeks later), I couldn't see where the rows were. There'd been days of rain so I couldn't see where the dirt had been disturbed by planting. Ann said they'd put in five or six rows, but I could only find flags marking a possible two.
I thought I'd gotten plenty of garlic for next year, but I started to panic that we might run short. If you mess up on garlic in the fall, there's not so much you can do about it in the spring. If we had three 50 ft rows, cloves 6 inches apart, for 100 plants per row, that would only make 300 bulbs for next year. Divide by 12 shares and that's a maximum of 25 bulbs per share if everything comes up. Take away 40-50 bulbs to have seed for next year and it's only about 20 bulbs per share. I'd wanted to have much more. A couple of weeks later Helen came and put the last row in (Yea, Helen!) She says she thinks there are at least 6 rows, but I can only see where three are sending up sprouts (not counting the last one planted). Well, 400 plants is a little better.
There's lots left to do in the garden. Matt, my nephew, is spreading composted cow manure (the good stuff) and will till it into the soil next week. The place to start for a good garden is always 'in the dirt'. Without strong soil the plants can't thrive. My garden has large grained soil, low in organic matter, poor at holding water. I never have to worry about too much rain because it flows right through, a benefit last spring when we had water up the wazoo. Most problems with vegetable production come back to a lack of nutrients. (I'm embarrassed to confess that I've never had a soil test done. Next task on my list: find the soil test box I bought in the spring and use it.)
