Growing for flavor
Winter is prime time for garden planning, and savoring the bounty in seed catalogs with a warm cuppa is a cozy way to cheer up cold grey days!
In a recent post, a favorite gardener and chef in Wales, Gaz Oakley, remin
ds us to consider flavor, and include heritage varieties!
In my garden journal (Poteger Devotional) from 2006, I added this quote, "For too long vegetable gardening has been obsessed with shape and SIZE. Better that care be lavished from tilth to table on growing tasty food whose beauty is a bi-product to be relished." Montague Don, the Sensuous gardener. In a later chapter, he comments that there was a shift to growing for size and quantity when men took on a larger role, as there's 'an inbuilt relationship between Horticulture and gastronomy when the person(s) cooking/ preparing the food is involved!'
In traditional cultures around the world, seed is saved and treasured from favorite varieties, ones that grow well in one's area, and treasures from friends. In Coming Home to Eat, ethnobotanist and folklorist Gary Paul Nabhan tells of making a pilgrimage from his home in the Sonoran Dessert of Arizona to visit cousins in the Bekáa Valley of Lebanon.
One afternoon, Gary visited a field of squash with his cousin Nicholas, and asked if he had any herb or vegetable seeds that had come down through the family. Nicholas nodded and opened a cabinet full of hand lettered seed envelopes and bags. After wrapping and labeling small packets of eggplant, cucumber, grains, pepper, parsley, zucchini and tomatoes, he offered info on their individual planting and growing needs.
Gary shared about his work with the UN and US as a seed saver - yes, his cousins had seen an article about this and were proud - 'but one thing we did not understand it, well, because all of us, we save seed for family gardens here. Gary Paul, how come they pay people to be seed saver? Everyone in America, don't they make garden, save seeds?"
This visit sparked a resolve to, "fill my larder as much as possible from foodstuffs in my own backyard, within my own horizons." Like Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) and others, Gary set our to spend a year eating seasonally from food grown in his area. (250 mile radius for Gary)
I'm happy to have begun the gardens I planned last January As I contemplate what to plant, what to tend and nourish over the year ahead, I look to my own packets of saved seed, to our local library's seed 'catalog, box, where we can register seeds we take for our home gardens, and to my own catalog of seed packets
Home saved include love in a mist, mallow, Good King Henry lettuce, carrots and squash ....
I feel fortunate to live in an area with a good gardening climate and local farmers who grow for flavor!
- Grow what you want to see ending up on your plate
- grow close
- harvest young
- eat fresh.
Your post makes me long for spring. We don't save seeds but we do try toplane and garden organically.
ReplyDeleteYes! We must came out of a colder than usual freeze - hardy pants are doing ok - I wist for spring as well!
DeleteWhenever we try to grow vegetables, the suburban wildlife tends to think it is for them. We've tried to keep the deer and squirrels away, but no such luck. Thanks for doing your part.
ReplyDeleteI tend to garden by the seat of my pants. It's like everything that I do. I do save seeds. The trouble is things cross pollinate and sometimes they become something else. That can be fun though.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely must get serious about gardening this year! But thus far, I do not have a plan. I must.use my newly freed time in retirement to make an effort.
ReplyDeleteNice mix of information and interesting quotes. Thanks for sharing!
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