From This Dirt Forward

November is such a fickle month.  Today I continued tucking my dull and dormant gardens in for the winter.  While it’s not unusual to spend an afternoon in November composting mushy pumpkins and pruning perennials, it’s a bit odd to do so wearing a Cheerios t-shirt.  (The Cheerios kitsch is perfectly normal; the skin exposure is not.)  Tomorrow it will likely snow.

So while November continues to be beige and indecisive, I figured there’s no better time than now to reflect on my gardens and honor the most reliable, colorful and flavorsome of my 2010 garden companions.

Best Edible Ornamental
Scarlet Runner Bean

The Scarlet Runner Bean is the epitome of an edible ornamental and it might just be my new all-around favorite plant.

These beautiful and bountiful runner beans can climb up to 10 feet in a growing season and produce a profusion of deep orange flowers amidst dense green foliage.  The young bean pods can be eaten cooked and are similar in appearance to a standard bush bean.  I found the flavor of the young beans to be excellent, standing out from all five other varieties I grew.  The bean pods have a tendency to become tough and stringy if grown too large, but if left to fully mature; the beans themselves can be harvested and eaten.  The purple and black mottled beans are strikingly beautiful, dry very nicely, and I’m looking forward to cooking with them this winter.

Seed Source:  Livingston Seed Co.  I started them from seed in my greenhouse on April 10th and during their one month residency indoors, they grew into a 2-ft. tall knotted mess.  In the future, I think I’ll direct sow.

Best Leafy Green
Rainbow Chard—Bright Lights

This chard takes the crown, not just for tastily delivering a plethora of phytonutrients, but also for its striking aesthetics.  This is my second year growing Bright Lights Rainbow Chard, which is a selection of multicolored New Zealand heirloom chard from Renee’s Garden Seeds.  I was so impressed with it last year that it’s now an edible landscaping staple, and has expanded from my vegetable garden into my flower gardens, containers and planters.   Chard is amazingly frost hardy and can be grown year round in milder climates.

Seed Source:  Renee’s Garden Seeds.  I directed sowed in the garden on April 5th and started additional seed in the greenhouse on April 10th to accelerate them for container planting.

Best Culinary Heirloom Tomato(s)
Green Zebra and Black Krim

This year I grew six varieties of heirloom tomatoes:  Black Krim, Brandywine, Crimson Cushion, Green Zebra, Purple Russian, and Striped German.  I gushed about the Green Zebra in the August 2010 issue of Fine Gardening magazine and I’ll do the same here.  Green Zebras mature to a beautiful green and gold striped medium-sized tomato.  They have a full-bodied tomato flavor, but with a notable zing that adds wonderful pizzazz to summer salsas and burgers.  (Though typically marketed as heirlooms, Green Zebras are actually a hybridization of four heirloom parents.)

My favorite tomato pairing of the summer was Green Zebra and Black Krim (a richly flavored, dark maroon colored heirloom), diced into a bruchetta topping.  This combo was as beautiful as it was tasty.

Plant Source:  Though I started most of my heirlooms from seed, I purchased both the Green Zebra and Black Krim as plants from a lovely farmer at the Dane County Farmer’s Market in Madison, Wisconsin.

Best Performing Heirloom Tomato
Brandywine

I know that Brandywines are becoming totally cliché in the realm of heirloom tomatoes and many believe that they are overrated.  I wish that I could say that some obscure heirloom from my great grandmother’s Ukrainian garden blew me away this year, but alas, it didn’t (nor do I have a Ukrainian granny.)  Instead, the ever-popular Brandywine, a large beefsteak-style slicing tomato, proved to be the most disease resistant and the most resilient throughout our wet spring and desert-like summer.  The Brandywines were the first to bear fruit in late July, the last to be picked in early November, and the star of many tomato sandwiches in between.  They also made high marks in my Fresh Bloody Mary Trial.

Seed Source:  Abundant Life Seeds. Seed started in the greenhouse on April 5th.

Best Non-Perishable Garden-Fresh Snack food (no, it’s not an oxymoron!)
Robust 997 F1 Popcorn

Small plot of popcorn interplanted with pole beans and squash

In a 10’x10’ square at the back of my vegetable garden, I interplanted the three sisters—corn, beans, and squash, which according to Iroquois legend are inseparable sisters that should always be grown together to ensure good harvests and long-term soil fertility.  Planted in mounds, the runner beans will climb the corn stalks, and the squash will grow in the under story, creating a living mulch.  Since my husband was already growing masses of sweet corn in his garden, I wanted to try growing popcorn.  Oddly enough, in Indiana—the home of Orville Redenbacher—popcorn seed is nowhere to be found on retail seed racks.  Conspiracy?  I think maybe.  Johnny, over in Maine, had to hook me up.  Go figure.  I was skeptical whether seven measly mounds of corn in a small 10’x10’ plot (see template) would sufficiently pollinate, but much to my delight, the popcorn matured awesomely into big, beautiful golden ears of goodness.  These popcorn cobs would have made great Christmas gifts, but unfortunately they stand no chance against my husband’s late-night munchies.

Homegrown snackfood!

Seed Source:  Johnny’s Selected Seeds.   Direct sowed.

Flower of the year
Angelonia Serena

Angelonia Serena growing in my patio area early in the season

Searching for a care-free continuous-blooming white annual for my new patio garden, I picked up a flat of Angelonia Serena.  I had previously enjoyed its Lavender hued equivalent in a mixed container and thought I’d give it a try as a bedding plant.  As promised, they adapted well to the indecisive weather patterns we experienced this summer.  While the New Guinea impatiens looked pissed most of the hot summer, Angelonia’s small upright spikes of delicate white flowers bloomed from the time I brought them home in late May right through September. They proved to be a great option for short masses and borders and I will definitely make Angelonia Serena a seasonal regular in my gardens and containers.

Plant Source:  Purchased in four-packs at… umm… okay fine I’ll admit it… Meijer.  (I love local garden centers, but sometimes my wallet speaks a little louder than my eco/social conscious, especially when it comes to flats of annual bedding plants.)

Best New Idea of 2010
Freeze Those Bushels of Whole Raw Tomatoes

I’m (just barely) old enough to admit that the biggest Oh-My-God-That’s-a-Brilliant-Idea moment of 2010 came from, gulp, my Mom.  I was having a tomato breakdown of sorts.  Unlike last year when they were inappropriately seized, I actually had more tomatoes than I could handle and was in overload crisis.  I wanted so desperately to make vats of sauce, salsa and soup, but my tomato torrent was ill-timed.  Paralleling a busy spurt at work, I just didn’t have enough hours in my day to handle my harvest.  I sulked to my mom over the phone, and she calming replied, “You know you can freeze whole fresh tomatoes and then do your cooking and canning later when you have more time.”  Seriously?  Why had I never heard of this?  I immediately googled “can you freeze whole tomatoes” just to make sure this wasn’t another Mama’s wise tale.  Sure enough, this appeared to be sound motherly advice.   (I wish I’d had the truth checking capabilities of an iphone when I was a kid.  Oh, the satisfaction of being able to answer such persistent questions as “Will this gum stay in my stomach for seven years?”  “Will I catch a cold if I don’t wear a hat?”  “Will coffee stunt my growth?” “Will I get warts from playing with a toad?”)

Anyhow, fresh whole tomatoes can go straight to your freezer (raw and skins on) and later in the fall or winter, when it actually sounds appealing to spend all day cooped up in a steamy kitchen, pull them out and makes those soups and sauces.  Brilliant!

Source:  Mom

Worst Idea of 2010
2 mil plastic sheeting DOES NOT EQUAL greenhouse plastic

Need I say more?

Source:  Lowes