The picture to the left is a painting by Vincent van Gogh, and I'm including it here because it's beautiful and I hope you enjoy it, and because to me it perfectly expresses the abundance of late summer days: golden sunshine, lush vegetation, and a colorful little village lane in Provence. (I've noticed that there is smoke coming out of the chimneys, but since this is a village in France, I assume that the smoke is from woodstoves cooking delicious meals.) One of our recipes this month is French too, and uses many of the late summer vegetables that are so abundant right now.

ContainerSeeds News

I'm very happy and pleased to tell you that the ContainerSeeds website will have original artwork. You can see a sample on our 'temporary home page' at http://www.containerseeds.com The artist is my very talented daughter, Lisa (she said immodestly!).

ContainerSeeds.com is on schedule for opening in November or December and, with a little luck, our bookstore will be online as early as next week, maybe the week after.

Nasturtiums - FollowUp from the August Newsletter

In the August newsletter, I mentioned that the leaves and flowers of nasturtiums are edible. I have since learned that the seeds are edible too: green seeds are pickled and used as a substitute for capers and dried seeds are used to give a peppery flavor to foods, in a similar manner to black pepper. The seeds can also be used to make a flavored vinegar. Frankly, I cannot see myself actually pickling nasturtium seeds (I don't even like capers or pickles!), but it might be nice to have a home-grown substitute for black pepper. It would add just a little bit of self-sufficiency to one's life. This is really a quadruple-threat plant - 1) the flowers are decorative, 2) you can eat the flowers, 3) you can eat the leaves, 4) and you can eat the seeds!

Pretty in Purple

The two pretty ladies in the picture to the right are the Mexican beauty, Senorita Rosita (left) and the Italian charmer, Signorina Rosa Bianca (right). Que bella! (I don't think that Rosita is really especially Mexican, but Rosa Bianca really is an Italian eggplant.) Both were grown in pots on our deck. The small lavender flowers (not very visible in the picture) are from a purple basil. I've forgotten what variety of purple basil it was, but you don't want to know anyway. The leaves were all green with only a few purple spots and the plants just look as if they have some strange disease, instead of looking beautiful. The pictures in the seed catalogs are so lovely too! I'm not giving up on purple basil: maybe it was this summer's cool wet weather. Or maybe I just need to try another variety. At least the flowers are pretty and lavender, if not really purple.

Why Have My Tomatoes All Died?

Late blight came to the eastern USA and Canada very early this year because of the extremely wet and cool summer we've had, and if you live in either the eastern USA or Canada, there's a good possibility that it will affect your tomato plants. "Late blight of potatoes and tomatoes, the disease that was responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century, is caused by the fungus-like oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans. It can infect and destroy the leaves, stems, fruits, and tubers of potato and tomato plants" ( from a Cornell University Extension Office Fact Sheet). (You probably didn't want to know this.)

Most years, the late blight hits not-very-long before the first killing frost, so it's not that much of a problem. But the conditions we've had in the northeast this summer (moderate temperatures, lots of moisture) are just what this pathogen likes most and have allowed it to reproduce like crazy.

Theoretically, at least, you can try to prevent late blight by not getting the tomato foliage wet when you water, but I'm not sure how realistic this is: after all, the foliage gets wet whenever it rains. The Cornell Fact Sheet I've quoted above goes on to say that it can be spread by rain splash or wind currents. That it can be spread by the wind really is discouraging.

However, the use of plastic mulch may help, and growing your tomatoes in a hoophouse would probably help too. You could use systemic fungicides as a preventive measure but this is unsatisfactory for many home-gardeners. We're not growing our own food in order to ingest systemic fungicides! I don't know how effective the fungicides really are, either. Generally, the use of heavy chemicals merely breeds a new and more resistant race of pathogens. Affected plants should, of course, not be composted but burned, or bagged for disposal with the garbage.

It's also true that some tomato plants may have died because they are just at the end of their life-span by now. Determinate tomatoes have all their fruit in a relatively short period of time and then die out, whereas indeterminates will keep chugging along for a very long time, or until frost kills them.

My tomatoes have, sadly, all succumbed to late blight now, but we did have a good long run of ripe tomatoes. Our first ripe tomato was June 8 (spectacularly early for this area - our last killing frost this year was June 4) and we're still picking a few tomatoes from the seemingly-totally dead plants.

By the way, the spectacularly early tomato was an open-pollinated variety, Glacier, and of course I've saved seeds from it. I won't be selling or giving away the seeds at present because I want to grow them out next summer in order to determine if the good characteristics are hereditary, and because I will need to have many more seeds in order to distribute them. Glacier has golf-ball sized fruits which have a very good taste for such an early tomato. The plant is a rather small determinate. In fact, the phenomenally early individual is growing in a 20" pot on our deck and that size pot is large enough.

Plant Profile - Leaf Celery: The Very Useful Plant With Many Names

Leaf celery's scientific name is Apium graveolens var secalinum - this tells us that it is a variety of regular celery (Apium graveolens). Leaf celery is also called cutting celery, parcel, Zwolsche Krul, and German celery - maybe it has other names as well. Many names indeed!

Leaf celery looks like a more robust and larger version of parsley. In the picture to the right, you can see its size compared to a quart jar. It tastes exactly like (regular) celery, but the leaf celery has a somewhat stronger taste than stalk celery. The plant is a biennial, meaning that it grows lots of foliage the first year and produces seed the second year, then dies. It is grown as an annual, starting new seeds each year (unless you want to save seeds, of course).

Leaf celery is much easier to grow than its "big brother". Every time I read the instructions for growing regular celery, I decide that it's just not worth the bother. But the leaf variety is an absolute cinch. I started the seeds indoors, in my usual seed-starting manner - nothing special. When the little plants were large enough and after the last frost, I transplanted them to the garden (although I've since discovered that it's very hardy and can be planted out in early spring).

And then I totally ignored the plants except for watering them when the rest of the garden was watered (very seldom in this wet, wet summer). It doesn't get much easier than this! It can also be grown indoors on a sunny window sill in winter, and I will try it this winter. I'll start the seeds next week.

In late July, I picked a large bunch of leaf celery and dried it in my food dehydrator and it has kept its flavor very nicely. It's a cut-and-come-again plant and grew back beautifully. This week, I picked another large bunch, but this time I made "leaf celery ice cubes" out of it. I whirled the leaves (in batches) in my blender with a little water until they were a thick slurry. Then I poured the slurry into ice-cube trays and froze it that way. When the ice cubes were frozen hard, I popped them out of the trays and put them in a freezer bag. Now I can just pull out a "celery cube" this winter whenever I want that good celery flavor in a soup or stew. ( I do this with fresh basil too, by the way. It won't hold the texture, but it preserves that wonderful "fresh basil" taste.) To sum it up: try leaf celery: you'll like it!

I Can't Offer You Fame and Fortune.... But How About Just a Tiny Bit of Celebrity and a Very Modest Prize?

Submit a tip, maybe win a prize! We will be having a page of tips on the ContainerSeeds website and we need tips. The tips should concern container gardening, gardening in general, or harvesting, preserving, and cooking garden produce. We'll give a prize to the person who submits the best tip each month.

Please understand that I may not be able to use all the tips submitted on the website: some will be duplicates of others and some may seem hazardous to me. I may want to hold others until I can try them out for myself.

Send your tips here: tips@containerseed.com In the email submitting the tip, please tell me how you would like to be credited on the ContainerSeeds website. You might want a credit like this: John Smith (your real name), Arizona. You might just want your first name: Jane, Arizona. You might not want your name to appear at all and then I'll just say that the tip was submitted by "a reader".

If you are the month's prizewinner, I will email you and ask for your postal address so we can send you your small (but very useful) prize. The winning tip will also be announced each month in the Newsletter. Send as many tips as you wish, the more the merrier.

August Abundance - One Day's Harvest

Believe it or not, the picture shows one day's harvest from containers on our deck and front porch. The funny thing is that our container garden this year was almost an afterthought. I concentrated almost all my efforts this spring on the in-ground garden which has turned out to be somewhat of a weed-filled disaster this year (health problems all spring plus seriously bad weather.) But the containers have been extremely productive all season. I hope this picture will dispel forever any thoughts that you cannot get a worthwhile amount of produce from a few containers!

The tomatoes are from two Patio Hybrid plants - those plants have been almost incredibly productive. The basil is Lettuce Leaf, and the green pepper is King of the North. The eggplant that you can see is Rosita, and the long black Japanese eggplants that you cannot really see are Shoya Long.

This month's recipe will help you use up some of that late summer abundance. It uses all the produce shown in the photo, plus summer squash or zucchini. Yes, it has a French name and a complicated one at that. But this is very, very easy to make and delicious too. It also freezes superbly. You can call it "Glorious Glop" if you prefer that to "Ratatouille"! It can be served as a main dish over polenta, or over pasta, or just with a wholewheat roll and a hunk of cheese, or as a vegetable sidedish.

It's followed by a bonus recipe for Plum Tart. This is an old family recipe, handed down to me by my grandmother who learned it from her mother (which makes the recipe at least 125 years old, probably more). It's my very favorite summer dessert. I'm sorry that most of the quantities are approximate but they didn't measure ingredients back in my great-grandmother's day or even in my grandmother's day. The plums called for are those little blue ones. I've seen them variously called prune plums, Italian plums, German plums, and Stanley plums. They're only available (in the northeastern USA, anyway) in late August and September, so Plum Tart is a very seasonal treat.

Buon appetit!

RATATOUILLE (serves 6 as a sidedish and 4 as a main dish)

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup sliced onion
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 green (or red or yellow) bell peppers, cut into chunks
• 2 medium zucchini or yellow summer squash (or one of each), cut in chunks
• 1 medium eggplant, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 28 oz can crushed or diced tomatoes, or an equivalent amount of fresh tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 cup dry white wine (or water)
• 1 Tablespoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon black pepper (or dried nasturtium seeds!) ;-)
• 2 Tablespoons (or more) shredded fresh basil

Heat oil in large saucepan or wok. Add onions and saute until golden. Add everything else except the fresh basil. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Uncover and cook (at least) 10 minutes more until the liquid is reduced by half and the vegetables are amalgamated together into a really thick and chunky sauce. Remove from heat and add the shredded fresh basil. Serve warm. It's nice to have a little grated Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top after dishing out the ratatouille.

PLUM TART - Makes a 9 or 10 inch pie

• 1 stick of butter or the solid kind of margarine (1/4 lb)
• 1 cup unbleached flour
• Plums - the small blue ones, usually called prune plums although I've seen them called Italian plums or German plums
• About 1 Tablespoon tapioca - not more (can be omitted)
• About 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• About 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 F. Oil a 9 or 10" pie plate, or spray it with cooking spray.

Mix the flour and butter with your fingertips until it is in the form of large crumbs that adhere to each other. Roll it up with your hands into a ball or sphere-shape. Put it in the pie crust, and pat it out with your hands so that it covers the bottom and sides of the pie crust. You can press the crust going around the top with the back of a fork's tines to make it look pretty, and I do this. Sprinkle the tapioca on the pie crust. You don't have to use tapioca, but the pie may be extra juicy (and the juices may boil over into your oven) if you do not use it. If you don't use it, you can put a cookie sheet on the bottom rack of your oven to catch any boil-overs.

Halve and pit the plums (but do not peel them). Put the plums in the pie crust. The idea is to get as many plums in the crust as you possibly can. I do this by making concentric circles, starting at the outside. When you do this, you can get the plums to sort of sit up and you can get a lot of them into the crust. Mix the sugar and cinnamon and pour it over the pie. Bake at 350 for about 30-45 minutes or until the plums are soft and the juice is boiling. Let cool on a rack. Serve with *real* whipped cream. (It would be sacrilege to serve this with anything but real whipped cream!)

Until next month, and I hope you have a fruitful and happy September,
Pat

Return to ContainerSeeds Home

Comments or questions to: webmaster@containerseeds.com

Copyright © 2004 ContainerSeeds.com
All Rights Reserved