Oregano

Although many of us grow basil, parsley and chives, oregano seems to be less popular in Canadian gardens. Part of the reason may be that we have more limited experience cooking with fresh oregano since this herb didn’t become popular in North America until after world war II when newly arrived European immigrants and returning soldiers - hooked on oregano’s peppery edge and heady flavor that develops with cooking - began to ask for it at supermarkets. Despite being quite new to Canadians, the culinary use of oregano has a very long European heritage. In fact, oregano was popular for cooking and as a perfume ingredient in ancient Greece where legend holds that the plant was a gift from the goddess Aphrodite. The word ‘oregano’ is, in fact, Greek and means ‘joy of the mountain’. Besides being popular in Grecian favorites like Mousakka, oregano is an important Italian flavor and one of the main ingredients in chili powder, too.

A few years ago I wrote about cooking with oregano and I interviewed herb expert Pat Crocker. She gave me her excellent oregano growing tips and I pass them along to you again today.
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• Oregano is a compact, bushy plant with small leaves and small white or pink flowers that form in clusters. It is part of the mint family and shares the family characteristic of tending to spread so plant oregano in containers or spaces where you don’t mind it wandering.
• Culinary herb gardeners should plant Italian oregano (O. x majoricum); it has the sweetness of sweet marjoram and a spicy zip, without the bitter undertones found in some stronger oreganos.
• Oregano thrives on hot, sunny, well-drained slopes. Sun helps to develop the essential oils, which give the aerial parts their fragrant odor and taste so an open location is important.
• Oregano can be grown from seed but the plants are very slow to germinate. Root division or cuttings are the easiest method of propagation since most oreganos develop roots easily. If starting from seed, definitely start indoors mid- to late March.
• Cut back up to two thirds of the plant each time you harvest and harvest regularly in the summer months to maintain good tasting stock.
• To dry your crop for use in the colder months, cut whole sprigs; rinse under cold water, pat dry and hang upside down in a dark, warm, dry place. Don’t try to pack too many sprigs together and remember that they will shrink as they dry, so tie the string tight. Label each bundle.

Dana’s Big Gardening Adventure: 5 tips for growing peas

Recently I joined a farm tour organized by the Ontario Farm Animal Council. I met the group at Lennox Farm in Dufferin County near Shelburne, Ontario. Bill French, a 5th generation farmer who grows rhubarb and peas, owns it.

Growing 75 to 80 acres of peas a year has given Bill plenty of opportunity to refine his technique. Although my own pea growing efforts are progressing nicely, I wish I’d had the benefit of Bill’s tips earlier in the season. Had I known then what I know now, I would have done quite a few things differently.

Here are Bill’s recco’s for growing peas:
1. Since peas are prone to powdery mildew, plant them in rows that run north and south so that each plant has maximum opportunity for the sun to burn off the dew.
2. Bill also recommends creating raised beds so that rain doesn’t collect around the stems and roots.
3. Fertilize the seedlings with a molasses mixture to raise their brix level. This will make the plants more resistant to disease and the peas will taste sweeter, too.
4. Stagger planting so that you have peas throughout the season. In a farm setting, this means planting a new row every other day for as long as the farmer hopes there are 71 days left in the pea-growing season. In a home garden, you can plant one row and then the next week another and extend your yield time that way.
5. Pick and chill mature peas promptly. On the farm, Bill’s pickers bring peas from the field to the cold storage barn every one and a half hours to preserve the sweet, fresh flavour.

Grow a peck of peppers

The first (and truthfully the only) time I grew sweet peppers, it happened completely by mistake. My brother and I, squabbling all the way, accompanied our mother to the garden centre to buy the salvia, marigolds, dusty millers and other showy annuals she planted every year on the Victoria Day long weekend. In an attempt to re-direct our attention (and preserve her own sanity no doubt) she said we could each choose a plant from a table marked with a large hand-painted sign reading Annuals: 4 for $1. I have no recollection of what plant my brother chose, but my choice was a four pack of unmarked stems featuring lovely, dark green leaves.

Being a preteen who was more interested in talking on the phone than gardening, I unceremoniously plunked my spindly plants into the small holes I made in one of the dry beds at the side of our house. It was the kind of plot in which snapdragons and sunflowers thrived since the sun belted down on it unrelentingly each day. As my grandmother pointed out, it was a place “no nice leafy, green plant like that should be asked to grow.” A year earlier I would have taken her hint and moved my plants to a shadier spot, but that summer I was on the verge of adolescence so I just rolled my eyes and left my plants exactly where they stood.

By some miracle, my youthful arrogance was vilified that sweltering Ontario summer as the mystery plants thrived in their sunny location growing to almost 3 feet high. Crammed as they were between so many flowers, it took quite a while to realize that the mystery plants unexpectedly had produced lovely little green bell shaped peppers. Having no idea what to do with them, they stayed on the vine and soon turned a deep, assertive red that begged for attention. Fortunately their efforts were worthwhile since our Italian neighbours spotted them and, at our prompting, picked the peppers we didn’t know what to do with and enjoyed my bountiful crop.

Tips for Growing Peppers:
Sweet peppers (Capsicum annum) are native to the Western hemisphere so they thrive in any part of Canada where other warm season annuals grow well.

In Canada it’s best to sow seeds indoors and transfer plant seedlings that are 6 to 8 weeks old or at the three-leaf stage outdoors when it’s warm enough. Seeds should be germinated in moist but not soggy soil. Once started, the plants ideally should be planted in soil that is warmer than 65 F and has a PH balance of between 5.5 and 6.8.

If you live in an area where spring comes late, you can accelerate the warming of the soil by loosening and covering it to increase the temperature or by planting peppers in raised beds. Because peppers thrive on restricted root growth, they can also be planted in 8 or 9 –in (20 to 23-cm) containers, which can be moved indoors when the nights are still cool.

Plant peppers about 18-inches (45-cm) apart in full sun and thin the seedlings to the two heartiest plants as they mature. Later, pick a few of the first green peppers that emerge to increase production. Water peppers well during flowering and fruiting and spray the flowers with tepid water in evenings if you can. The entire growth cycle should take between 60 and 95 days depending on both the local weather and the colour of peppers you want.

Dana’s Big Gardening Adventure continues: plant a pizza garden

Photo credit: thepizzafarm.com

If you’re looking for a way to teach kids (or adults) about how food goes from farm to fork, planting a pizza garden may be an ideal summer project.

At it’s most authentic, a pizza garden is a place where all the elements of a pizza are grown and transformed into a pizza pie. Places like the Pizza Farm in California and ‘R’ Pizza Farm and Restaurant in Dow, Illonois, epitomize the concept. At ‘R’ Pizza Farm and Restaurant, a 2-acre pizza shaped plot is used to grow organic produce and livestock (chickens, pigs, herbs, tomatoes, peppers). Each wedge of land is large enough to grow a single crop or to pasture a goat, a cow or another animal that can be milked to make cheese or raised and processed to make meat-based pizza toppings such as bacon and pepperoni. The on-site restaurant at ‘R’ sells pizzas made only from the grain, vegetables cheese and meat raised on the property. It’s a wonderful place where people can see where the food on their plates comes from. ‘R’ Pizza Farm attracts about 4,500 visitors each summer.

Although I don’t recommend raising goats in the backyard (unless you hate your neighbours and enjoy visits from by-law officers), you can still plant a pizza garden at home. Simply make a round shaped bed, divide it into sixths or eighths and plant your favorite sauce and vegetable topping ingredients.

Use the following info to help you create a plant list and to get the most out of your pizza garden as the season progresses:

• Basil: If you pinch the stems frequently, your sweet basil will grow bushy and full.

• Eggplant: When harvesting, cut each eggplant off the vine leaving about an inch (2.5 cm) of stem remaining on the fruit.

• Garlic: Plant garlic in the fall. Where winter is mild, plant cloves 1 inch (2.5 cm) deep, root side down; where winter is severe, put them 2 to 4 inches (5 to 8 cm) deep and mulch lightly.

• Onions: Spacing the plants widely apart will maximize air movement and help reduce the time that leaves are wet, resulting in less risk of disease.

• Oregano: Don’t begin to harvest the leaves and stem tips until the plants are 4 to 5 inches (10 to 12 cm) high.

• Parsley: Try soaking the parsley seeds for 24 hours in room temperature water before planting to accelerate germination. For large parsley plants, thin sprouts to about a hand-span apart.

• Roma tomatoes: Commercial tomato growers in California are now planting four tomato seedlings in the same hole since trial has shown that the stress caused by the four plants competing for the same amount of moisture, fertilizer and space causes them to bear more heavily.

• Rosemary: As the seedlings become established, pinch the tips to prevent the rosemary from becoming leggy. Once plants are well established, begin to take cuttings; however, never harvest more than 20 percent of the plant at one time.

• Sweet and hot peppers: Peppers of all kinds like hot sunshine, warm nights and moist soil. Stakes can prevent branch breakage when the fruit is heavy.

• Zucchini: since water on the leaves can lead to powdery mildew, water these plants at the roots. Zucchini dehydrates quickly so mulch the soil heavily but leave some room around the main stem to prevent rotting.

Dana’s big gardening adventure continues…

I’m getting ready to plant at last! My test kitchen is in a house that has a large, unused backyard. The people that owned the property previously had a wonderful, large vegetable garden at the back of the yard. They split the garden into smaller sections with interlocking brick paths so that even if the ground was wet you could walk through the garden easily.

When we took over the place, there was a lot of yard work to do and the whole family came to help. My dad brought in a skid steer loader which really helped Martin and I to move around things in the front yard so that we could expand the parking area and to help move out the junk that had accumulated in the backyard.

Having no intention at that point to use the veggie patch, we drove over the garden with the machine and piled up brush and stuff there until John, my mom’s boyfriend, could bring in his a wood chipper. Needless to say, all that activity in the garden moved the bricks all around. Now, after several years of weather and compost being spread over this space, the bricks were well disguised, making the garden a veritable mine field for a rototiller.

I enlisted the help of two 11-year-olds (my son and his BFF – it’s amazing what the promise of Dairy Queen can do to motivate kids!) and we set to work searching out the buried rocks. See that pile in the picture above? The three of us unearthed the top five rows on Saturday afternoon. To be honest, although it was hard work it was also fun.

Now obstacle free, it’s time to let John come in to rototill the space so that I can get the seedlings and seeds planted on the long weekend! Wish me luck. My big gardening adventure is finally ready to kick into high gear!

What’s happening in your gardens? Have any of you been brave enough to plant yet?

PS: Here’s a blog I discovered that has some good gardening tips. Kalyn’s Kitchen.