Saffron

Many herbs are useful enough to deserve some dedicated space out in the yard, and this pretty purple flower is one of the herbs I give space to; it is a saffron crocus. The saffron crocus in the picture has come up in a space other than the one I planted it in, the way bulbs do around here. It is under a blueberry bush, along with a whole lot of sheep-sorrel that I need to pull up!

One great feature of the saffron crocus is that, in my yard anyway, it appears around Halloween, reliably, when other plants are shutting down and turning into masses of dead foliage. The flowers are a welcome sight.

The parts used in cooking are the stigmas, the three, bright red, thread-like bits that are the female parts inside each flower. To harvest, I just pick the stigmas out by hand and dry them on a paper towel for a few days before storing.

The plant itself really is a type of crocus, growing from similar corms, with similar planting depth and spacing, and it does best in zones 6-8 here in the Southeast. In colder areas, the corms might not survive the winter. The White Flower Farms website shows that, in the Western U.S., the best growing zones are 6-9.

I tend to think of saffron as a Mediterranean, near-Eastern, and Asian spice, but this article from the Kitchen Gardener magazine archive made available through the Vegetable Gardener website explains that saffron has been used in Lancaster County, PA, for a very long time as an important ingredient in many foods—one familiar example is chicken potpie.

In from the Cold

I brought peppers inside today, pretty much all that I could find out in the yard, since they don't like cold weather. In the basket, one bell pepper is off to the left. The large oblong peppers are the variety Spanish Spice. Those plants produced really well this year, and the peppers were delicious stuffed with cheese and then grilled. The longer, skinny peppers are Jimmy Nardellos that haven't fully matured. They aren't especially wonderful when green, but they turn astonishingly sweet when they ripen fully to what is, essentially, fire-engine red. However, even green they are plenty good enough to eat. The yellow peppers are banana peppers. I only planted one of these plants, but it was a prolific producer, and the peppers are great on sandwiches and pizza. The rest of the peppers in the basket are jalepenos. We are going to rig our little grill to act like a smoker, and put these in it for a day or two to give them a smokey flavor and to dry them for later use.

The other peppers that I grew this year are Minibelles. I grew two of these plants in pots, and quite a lot of little peppers are still on the plants, so I brought those into the house with the hope that the remaining peppers would ripen.






I have never before brought pepper plants into the house for the winter, but a few weeks ago I talked with someone who does routinely. Really, I started out talking with someone else, because I had been given a huge stack of 3-gallon pots that a friend had picked up off the side of the road where a major landscaping project had just been completed. I was offering to share this treasure trove of pots (since the person I was talking with is also a gardener), when I heard someone nearby say, "I could use some 3-gallon pots!"

It turns out that she digs up a couple of pepper plants every Fall to bring inside so she can have fresh peppers all winter, and she was out of big pots. We finally worked out a way to meet up and share the pots, and I am assuming that her pepper plants are now safely indoors. Because of this conversation, however, I brought the two Minibelles inside. I don't know whether my window will provide enough light for more growth, but I am hoping that the peppers that are on the plants now will have a chance to ripen.

I don't plan to grow Minibelles next year, because the other peppers I grew are so much tastier, but I am interested in finding out how the indoor peppers will do.

Sweet Potato Weather Alert!

This message came to my email this morning:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Atlanta, GA
5:42 am EDT, Fri., Oct. 16, 2009

... FREEZING TEMPERATURES AND FROST POSSIBLE IN NORTH GEORGIA SUNDAY AND MONDAY MORNING...

A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN THE WEATHER PATTERN WILL TAKE PLACE ACROSS THE EASTERN U.S. DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS AS A DEEP UPPER TROUGH DEVELOPS IN THE MID-ATLANTIC REGION. THIS WILL RESULT IN MUCH COLDER AIR SPREADING SOUTHWARD INTO THE SOUTHEAST U.S. TONIGHT AND SATURDAY. MUCH BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES WILL REMAIN IN PLACE THROUGH EARLY NEXT WEEK.

TEMPERATURES WILL DROP TO THEIR LOWEST LEVELS SINCE EARLY APRIL DURING THE WEEKEND. CLOUD COVER AND WIND WILL LIKELY KEEP TEMPERATURES ABOVE FREEZING SATURDAY NIGHT... BUT BY MONDAY MORNING CANADIAN HIGH PRESSURE WILL SETTLE OVER THE AREA ALLOWING SKIES TO CLEAR AND WINDS TO DIMINISH TO NEAR CALM. LOW TEMPERATURES NEAR 30 DEGREES ARE EXPECTED IN MOUNTAIN VALLEYS AND IN MANY RURAL AREAS OF NORTH GEORGIA EARLY MONDAY. WIDESPREAD FROST CAN ALSO BE EXPECTED... ESPECIALLY WITH WELL ABOVE NORMAL SOIL MOISTURE CONDITIONS CURRENTLY IN PLACE.

I know, I hate the all-caps presentation, too, but in this case the alarm might be justified. Sweet potatoes need to stay at well-above freezing temperatures, and what is coming this weekend misses that ideal by a huge margin.

Anyone whose sweet potatoes are poking above the ground, the way they do as harvest time approaches, should either dig those sweet potatoes up today or tomorrow, or mulch them heavily to protect them until a warmer day comes again. The picture below illustrates what I mean:





Around here, Fall temperatures can swing pretty wildly, so I don't expect the cold weather to last until April. Warmer days will be here in a week or so, but I am not going to wait, even though the ground is still very wet. Cold is even worse than wet, where sweet potatoes are concerned.

I had been hoping for great weather for harvesting the sweets, especially since this year I am growing two kinds. I wanted a bit of leisure so it would be easier to compare. However, this weather is what I have.

In the picture below, the differences in the leaves of the two kinds of sweet potatoes are easy to see. The heart shaped leaves are on the Beauregard plants and the deeply lobed leaves are on the Puerto Rican plants that were given to me by a friend.




When I have all the sweet potatoes safely out of the ground and in the house, I will spread them out in a single layer on newspapers to dry, with a small space-heater aimed at them to keep them warm. They need to dry and cure in a warm place for at least a week before being gathered back up for longer term storage.

When a Gardener Can't Manage the Veggies

Someone asked me today about growing blueberries. She plants a veggie garden every Spring, enjoys it for a while, and then leaves for a summer vacation. By the time she gets back, the garden is a mass of weeds and dead veggies. Her new plan is to skip the veggies and just grow some fruit. This is a great idea for her situation.

The good news is that the garden sections of places like Lowe's and Home Depot have pots of blueberries for sale right now, and this is a good time to plant (after the ground is less soggy, of course). UGA recommends that home gardeners choose the rabbiteye types of blueberries, and several varieties are listed, along with planting and other growing information, in the UGA publication Home Garden Blueberries.

Blueberries are among the lowest maintenance fruits available for the home gardener in this area, so anyone who can't manage a vegetable garden but still wants food from the yard should consider growing them. They have few pests, and of those birds are the worst. Most people aren't squeamish about birds the way they might be about some insects, so this problem isn't too horrible. People who don't want birds to eat the berries can use netting to cover the plants.

Another low-maintenance, high-reward fruit for this area is figs. UGA's publication Home Garden Figs includes recommended varieties along with planting and growing information.

Figs are supposed to be much easier to propagate than blueberries, and I am hoping to make new plants from my brown turkey fig this year. Cuttings are supposed to be made after the leaves have dropped in early Fall. My fig bush still has all of its leaves, so the time is not yet right. I have noticed though, around town, that trees are beginning to turn yellow and red, so fig leaf drop should be soon, maybe just a couple of weeks away.

Garlic and Fall-Planted Onions

I plan to get my garlic and multiplier onions into the ground in the next week or so, but other people may want to plant sooner. That would be fine. Here in my yard, I would feel comfortable planting garlic and multiplier onions anytime from early October to mid-November.

A UGA publication called “Garlic Production for the Gardener” points out that garlic prefers, like every other garden plant, a soil that is “well-drained … with organic matter worked into it.” Of course, we all know how close my yard’s soil comes to that well-drained ideal….not even close!

Luckily I have been adding organic matter to the garden for years, but even with those additions, before planting the little cloves, I will add more organic matter in the form of compost from the pile out back and a purchased bag of soil conditioner (the brand I picked up at the local Home Depot is called Nature’s Helper). I will also add a little fertilizer, but more will be put on in Spring when the plants really begin to grow.

To get started with the planting, I will need to pull apart some heads of garlic. The cloves get planted individually, still in their papery wrappers, three to four inches apart. They go in the ground pointy end up, the tip about one inch below the surface. Only the fat cloves from the outer layers get planted, since they seem to result in the biggest bulbs. The littler ones go into a dish on the kitchen counter, to be used in cooking.

The soil requirements of multiplier onions are basically the same as those for garlic, so getting the garden ready for them is essentially the same task. This saves the gardener a load of trouble.

The multiplier onions are much easier to separate than the garlic, so pulling the clumps apart doesn’t seem like such a chore. The individual onions get planted just below the soil surface and ten to twelve inches apart, because they will make big (if all goes well) clumps of onions as they grow.

I also bought, at a grocery store, a couple of organically grown shallots to plant. I chose “organic” so I could be sure that they hadn’t been treated with any anti-sprouting chemicals. Their requirements are similar to those for garlic and multiplier onions, so they should be fine in the same bed. Since they make clumps the way multiplier onions do, they get planted the same way.

In addition, I saved seed from some red onions this summer. The only UGA publication specifically on growing onions that I found is one called “Organic Vidalia Onion Production.” Even though my seeds are not for Vidalia onions, the growing requirements should be the same. The publication mentions that seed for Vidalia onions should be planted in September. The Vidalia area is enough south of here that I know I am very late with my onion seeds, but I am going to put some of these into the ground with the other onion-family plants, anyway. I am hopeful that I will get, at least, some little onions. If I am lucky and we have a warmish Fall, the plants might get far enough along that I get some medium sized onions. That would be great!