"Vegetables of Interest"

Size Matters

Size Matters

(Allium cepa)



In nearly every respect Medwyn Williams (aka "Medwyn of Anglesey") seems like a normal fellow.  He is a Welshman of an age somewhere North of fifty.  He is retired from a long career in government.   His smooth, youthful face expresses warmth and intelligence. In photographs he appears in a fine-looking suit draped over a generous frame.   Medwyn Williams writes a good deal and his texts read like they belong to the man in the photographs.  His material is handled with crisp clarity and helpfulness.  He shuns illustrations preferring the ruler as he offers tips and encouragement to his readers.  And doubtless he has a great number of readers in places high and low.  Medwyn Williams is into size.

The English gardener is many things.  He is hard working, frugal, observant, patient, and communicative to the point of being chatty. But he is also something else:  Competitive.  The English are rather keen on something they call "competitive gardening"  a hobby whose spirit is captured in the brief and inelegant phrase, "Mine is bigger than yours."  I don't mean to suggest that the English gardener's sizable interest in size is entirely a matter of ruler or scale. English vegetable competitions also emphasize an unblemished specimen of uniform and 'classic proportions'.   But it is clear from those who make into the winner's circle using specialized seeds and underground tips that this is gardening in the "Big League.'

Americans gardeners, too, reach for super-sized produce.  A careful reading of a Gurney's or Burpee's seed catalog will discover pulse-quickening descriptions that include words like "huge," "enormous" and "fist-sized."  But unlike English enthusiasts we haven't marshaled entire seed lines devoted to the exhibition market nor do we have the expertise to boast of a 15# Kelsae onion with a girth of 33 inches.

Until recently  I've held a smug and self-serving opinion about competitive gardening.  I would quote Swift's line in Gulliver's Travels that "….whosoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind…"  and note that it applied to "two ears or blades" rather than an a double-sized ear or blade.  But my 2007 crop of Walla Walla onions was so diminutive that I found myself delivering them in brown paper wrappers.  It was time to study Medwyn's  tips on growing onions.

Attached is a photo of my 2008 Walla Walla onion crop.  They are not 15 pounds nor do they have 33 inch waistlines.  They do, however, catch one's breath.  And my cipollini which share space on the onion drying table seem embarrassed.  Medwyn is the Man!

These onions were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon, Sonoma County.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Sun Crest Peaches

Sun Crest Peaches   

(Prunis persica)

There has always been something a bit too sensuous about a peach to keep its admirers on the straight and narrow.  Sooner or later their relationship to a peach becomes physical and their admiring smiles tighten into a leer.  Even the splendid and lyrical Epitaph for a Peach by David Masamoto gets slightly creepy as he describes eating a Sun Crest peach: “Sun Crest is one of the last remaining truly juicy peaches. When you wash that treasure under a stream of cooling water ...your mouth waters in anticipation. You lean over the sink to make sure you don't drip on yourself. Then you sink your teeth into the flesh, and the juice trickles down your cheeks and dangles on your chin.”

I can speculate at some length about why peaches, in particular, have this effect.  I can point out its curvaceous outline; its lip-like groove; its terry-cloth fuzzy robe and its enchanting perfume as charms.  But I think that the Siren-like appeal of a ripe peach is its flesh.  Unlike other fruits peaches yield to the most tender of bites but a knife can make crisp-looking slices.  And once in the mouth a ripe peach explodes into a sweet elixir while retaining just enough texture that it’s nobody’s snow cone.  That peachy quality of yielding, juice-filled flesh is called “melting flesh” by botanists and while the science explaining this characteristic isn’t sensual it is sexy.

Peaches are a climacteric fruit, which means that the ripening process is triggered and driven by a plant hormone called ethylene.  Peaches make this hormone in the fruits themselves at a point in their development.  Ethylene is a gas and it permeates the peach tissues triggering a larger number of events that are collectively observed as the ripening process.  For example, ethylene speeds the destruction of green-colored chlorophyll in peach skin allowing the yellow-colored carotenoid pigments to shine  (if it’s a yellow peach).  Ethylene also pushes along the production of sugars and the elimination of acids which both contribute to the sensory perception of “sweetness.”  Ethylene plays a role, too, in softening the fruit’s flesh through an enzyme reaction that breaks down the cell wall structure in the fruit.  As this enzyme reaction gains speed the peach’s flesh softens or “melts” suffusing the flesh with aromatic juices. 

Recently plant geneticists have identified the peach gene responsible for the melting flesh characteristic and have given it the dubious abbreviation, “MF.”  It turns out that some peach varieties have an absent or silent MF gene and thus remain firm despite being ripe.  And there are probably variants of the MF gene to explain why some peaches “melt” more than others.  To my knowledge the Sun Crest MF gene has not been sequenced but when scientists do I suggest that they lean over a sink.

These Sun Crest peaches were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon, Sonoma County.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Elberta Peaches

Elberta Peaches

 

(Prunis persica)

The Elberta peach is a late-season, free-stone variety developed by Samuel Rumph in the 1870s. Rumph was an amateur botanist and nurseryman who triumphed in his creation of a tree that was hardy, highly productive and offered large, lushly sweet peaches. His contributions to the peach world did not end there. He was also an inventor of a number of peach-related devices and packages. He designed the first mortise jointed wood boxes that became the iconic "peach crate" and he developed the first systems of refrigeration for peaches traveling by railcar. Both accomplishments fueled the fresh peach market in the late 1880s and enabled Southern farmers to have access to Northern markets, particularly New York. Within his lifetime the Elberta peach population reached six million trees, sealing the fate of the "Peach State." Always a thoughtful and kind man Rumph gave away his inventions and graciously named his peach "Elberta" in honor of his wife who shares a middle name with this lovely peach.

 

These peaches were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

 

C Lindquist

Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Goccia d'Oro Peppers

Goccia d'Oro Peppers

(Capsicum annuum)

If you've ever wondered why Italians dote on heirloom frying peppers and give expressions of polite pity to an American garden filled with big, blocky bell peppers here is a clue:

Goccia d'Oro (Drop of Gold)  is an open pollinated heirloom frying pepper that despite its size has delicate, thin walls that melt into a sweet mouthful.  Its skin is also thin so you needn't peel them.  Cut-and-fry or simply apply a light coating of oil and grill.  Italian frying peppers have a delicate taste that thick-walled American Bells lack.

Goccia d'Oro  is a very productive plant which yeilds early peppers best picked as they turn yellow.  In my garden they've required staking to prevent them from toppling over with an abundance of big peppers.  That's the sort of extra work that a gardener finds appealing.

These Goccia d'Oro were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

C Lindquist

Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Masai Snap Beans

Masai Snap Beans

(Phaseolus vulgaris v. Masai)

There are few more sacred beliefs amongst seed collectors than the notion that heirloom vegetables are manifestly superior to ‘modern vegetables.’  There is, of course, ample evidence to support that proposition and it is as close as the nearest grocery store.  Still, the assumed superiority of plant varieties selected fifty years ago vs. those from 20 or 2 years ago seems arbitrary without closer examination.  And while I consider myself an “heirloom man” by nature I’m also on board with Mark Twain when he quipped that “All generalizations are false, including this one.”

For some years I’ve grown haricot vert (aka ‘French/filet) beans with an open mind towards the ‘moderns.’  My wayward journey away from heirlooms can be traced back to Triumph de Farcy, an older (heirloom?) French bean that is widely recommend by French growers and chefs.  In my garden, however, Farcy was more fussy than fine.  The work necessary to find only the slender & tender pods required the timing of a stopwatch and the working conditions of a slave.  Since that experience I’ve been sure to include a new modern hericot vert bean in my garden plan each season.  Happily, the French are always up to something bean-wise and this year’s bean throw down featured the modern “Masai” snap bean.

I am unable to find any meaningful information about the background of the Masai bean other than it comes from an agribusiness giant which doesn’t reveal much about how they create new plant varieties.   I can report that it readily pops out of the ground in 6-7 days with the vigor one might expect from a hybrid bean.  The foliage is adequate but not lush.  The plants are upright and appear to hold the pods well above the ground  which is a good feature to prevent the consequences of pods-on-soil.  The plants freely bloomed despite a short period of shock after a sweltering heat wave and I’m picking the first crop of pods about 2.5 weeks post bloom.  The pods are green, of course, but not glossy.  The tips are slightly curved but none are ‘hooked.’  The pods can be detached from the plant easily (low ‘PDF’ or “pod detachment force” in the parlance of bean breeders) and I’ve broken few pods despite my casual approach to picking.

The attached picture shows a small early harvest of Masai beans.  For the technophiles out there I recommend picking haricot vert beans at a diameter of about 5mm which corresponds to the bean industry’s sieve scale at the high end  of  “Sieve 1”.  Commercial bean production sorts beans by diameter and length.  The Sieve scale parses beans by diameter using a scale of 1-7 with the larger numbers corresponding to fatter beans.   Commercial growers aim for the fresh bean market with beans at Sieve 4 diameter or  about 22/64th of an inch (8 ¾ mm). 

The harvest diameter of a snap bean is a compromise between a more tender (thinner) bean vs. a greater yielding (fatter) bean.  In addition to the tender vs. tough consideration is shelf life.  Snap beans loose their ‘snap’ and become limp as they loose 5% or more their weight.  Beans picked when very thin are prone to dehydration and consequently have much shorter ‘shelf lives’.  Some commercial bean varieties attempt to skirt this issue by breeding more fiber into the pods but the consumer is dealt a cruel surprise in the form of a slender, tough bean.

As noted above I pick my beans at about 5mm in diameter which is so thin that many commercial processors would discard them as a ‘cull.’ Even more fanatical, however, are some chefs who insist on beans little bigger than a comma.  Personally I find that 5mm provides all the tenderness and yield that I desire.  Shelf life?  It’s about 10 minutes from garden-to-plate at my house.  That’s plenty of time.

These Masai beans were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

A Patch of Peppers

A Patch of Peppers

August 10, 208

This morning I watched a California 'wild' honey bee fly from Brazil to Peru by way of Japan.  I rushed to get my camera to record his transcontinental flight but when I returned to the garden he was over in Australia pollinating a winter squash.  It's been that way all summer here in the Valley of the Moon.  Moving 18 inches from one pepper plant to another crosses countries, continents, plant species and even centuries of plant development.  If you want armchair travel seasoned with education and beauty while waiting for delicious eating nothing can beat a patch of peppers.

My main pepper planting is modest in size.  It measures 35' X 10' and holds about 75 plants.  There are 5 different species (C. annuum, frutescens, chinense, baccatum, pubescens), 32 varieties (etc etc etc) and more to see and think about than I've had time to do either.  The education begins with the seeds.  Nearly all pepper seeds look alike:  small flat, round, tan-colored seeds that look crimped at the edges.  But one pepper variety, Rocoto, (C pubescens) has jet black seeds.  Rocoto is a very hot but very cool looking pepper!

Once established a pepper patch puts on a remarkable show of diversity in branching, leaf types and flower arrangements that long precede the abundance of different fruit.   A brief study of just a few plants opens up a treasure chest of natural nuance and ingenuity.  For example, the flower of our common sweet peppers or  hot chili peppers(C annuum) is a small, neat affair.  They seem to have an Amish-like modesty with white, straight petals with typically one flower per branch point (see photo).  The flowers of the C. baccatum & pubescens, however, have a painterly splash of color on each petal making it as beautiful as any in the garden (see photos).

Botany students keen on classification will find a pepper patch to be a challenge.  You can yell out "Capsicum chinense!" when you spot the unique crinkled leaves of the rare Brazilian "Dog Tooth" pepper but the multiple Peruvian "Aji" types will have you searching for small clues.  It's a comfort to find that even texts disagree on the classification of many pepper varieties.  The pepper gene bank in Brazil seems to have thrown up its hands when attempting to classify its 200+ accessions of unique Brazilian peppers.  They appear to abandon the Linnaean system in their initial classification of the collection in preference for the common farmer/consumer technique of sweet vs. hot; fresh vs. dry; size; shape and resemblance.  The latter category takes on an unusual and vivid meaning in the "Monkey Penis" types.  I don't know where Carl Linnaeus working in 1729 would have put such a pepper but I have no doubt but that he would have enjoyed it.

As fall approaches the pepper field studies are giving way to a more direct benefit:  eating.  The Spanish Padron peppers are hitting their stride and the Peruvian Aji Crystal pods are at their peak of citrus-y heat.  In about a week I'll be frying the first delicate, sweet Italian Friarello peppers and the Japanese Shishito peppers are close behind.  The peppers used for drying such as the famous New Mexican Chimayo or the glorious Mexican peppers from Oaxaca and Etla will need another month to ripen but the company of so many fresh peppers makes the wait painless.

I recommend a pepper patch to anyone with curiosity and an eye for beauty multiplied by subtle diversity.  A yen for fine eating is only a bonus.

My 2008 Pepper Patch was organically grown and attended to with an unusual amount of hand work.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008