Gardening during time of plague - End of the season summation

 Our kitchen garden was a great success this year, although it took some watering to make it happen.  Our successes were tomatoes, Asian eggplant, sweet peppers, zucchini, and basil.  Notice that there is a culinary theme here, and as such we ate well particularly in a Mediterranean sense. It helped to have a new herb and spice store whereby we could get really good harissa.  And even better, most of the garden kept producing until late September and early October.  A late crop of basil allowed for considerable  production of pesto much to Mrs. Phactor's great delight.  A special semi-vacation  new potato and green bean pesto to reprise a Ligurian dish  along with a very nice Tuscan wine. 

There are only two of us, so the zucchini don't have to be awesomely productive to be quite adequate.  The same with tomatoes.  A quart of cherry tomatoes every 3 days is more than enough, but we had some nice little tomato recipes.  The eggplant was nearly our match, and while not large, 6-8 a week is more than enough and fortunately a seared eggplant tinga was originally for zucchini, so it expects you to be nearly over whelmed.  The cucumbers decided to stay male most of the summer and then finally became monoecious in September as sort of a surprise.  Usually cucumber succumbs to a bacterial wilt, but vine survival made for a late crop success, then a friend inundated us with cucumbers and they became a very tasty relish.   

Unfortunately  our Michigan apple source closed because of the family could no longer stay in the business, and we have not yet found a replacement orchard for our supply of Northern Spies. Let us know if you have any orchard suggestions.

The pandemic has not been much of a bother, although we had to cancel travel for two family weddings, and a trip to Scotland.  Mostly we gardened and it not only gave us something to do, but it paid some garden type dividends.  We traded red buckeye seedlings for green dragon seedlings, a good deal we think.  

Apple evaluation

With October looming, it was time to get out the baskets and ladders and harvest the apple crop.  As this was the first of what is hoped to be many crops (and perhaps a larger crop also), the correct harvest time is unknown, but in general the Urban Apples are varieties that are mid-season type apples, and as the risk and worry of losing the entire crop to tree rats increased, the crop was picked as these types usually are ripe in late September, although it has been so warm that many apple varieties have stayed quite green.  So color may not be a good guide to ripeness.  Another part of the reason was that yesterday the Phactors foraged successfully for squashes and apples, and as a result had Jonathon, winesap, Jonagold, and northern spy apples on hand for tasting and comparison with our Tart lime urban apple. Our evaluation was that the apple was perfectly ripe, firm and crisp but not hard.  It was juicy, with a nice apply sweet tart flavor. Not as complex perhaps as the spy, but certainly not bad.  The F1 was quite impressed and our overall finding for the Tart Lime Urban Apple was highly favorable. Just so you know, the Phactors like firmer, tarter apples than many people, who seem to prefer softer, sweeter apples.  As kids a macintosh was fine, but our palate matured. 
And it's the same with apple cider. It isn't and shouldn't be just apple juice. It needs some of that tartness and maybe just a hint of cold-stored fermentation to be any good.  Got some grocery store cider that was just too sweet apple juice, and to sweeten and flavor a curried squash soup it was fine, but no good to drink.  Maybe it needs a pinch of champagne yeast and a week or so of cold curing? 

Apple doughnuts!!

Fried dough dusted in sugar and cinnamon is a wonderful confection, especially if you ignore the unhealthy quibbles about fat and sugar. So what can be better than fried dough with tart apple bits included? The answer is nothing! One of the great things about having a supply of great cooking apples (Northern spys) is that you can make apple doughnuts. Totally terrific!

Apple quest 2015

A local failure of our favorite variety of apple (Northern spys) provided some motivation to drive 3.5 hr to SW Michigan to the Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm. They grow a couple of hundred varieties of apples, and you can taste many of them so you will certainly get to try something you've never had before. Now this is not exactly a selfish action as a number of our friends are counting on us to import enough apples for everybody. Last year the Phactors made the same trip and it was cold, wet, and completely miserable, and the apples were not their best so picking wasn't easy. "Apple pickin' weather" according to a senior member of the Mendus family. This year was a nice fall day and dry! And the apples were in much better shape and the trees were loaded so picking was easy. If any of our N. Spy friends are reading this, you will get apples, a few. A brief discussion with the apple patriarch turned to the Holiday apple, a variety TPP was unfamiliar with. This is a fabulous apple! The flesh is pure white and very crispy, but bursting with juice. The taste is a complex sweet tart combo. Excellent. According to the description this is a hybrid between a Jonathon and a Macoun developed in Ohio. Travel suggestion: the route to this orchard will take you close to Three Oaks which is worth a visit. First and foremost is Drier's Meat Market. The sawdust on the floor will be fresh. Try a ring of bologna or liverwurst; you will not be disappointed. Further down the street is an old corset factory that now houses a theater, a restaurant, and the Journeyman Distillery. The quite peppery rye whiskey is special. The white whiskey is (think fancy moonshine) is surprisingly fruity, and strong!  Everything is 100 proof. For an October afternoon, the joint was jumping. So think apples, sausage, and whiskey, all in a one day trip! Success!

Happy posts!

September is a nice time of year when you are not a student or faculty member for whom the month is quite hectic. Enjoying September is a great side benefit of retirement. And it includes TPP's birthday and his annual birthday celebration of cooking for his friends a once a year special dish. This tradition began with the idea of not doing birthdays any more, but just doing "fish soup", but now the number of fish soups has begun to add up too, so to continue the enjoyment of September TPP has been staying away from depressing blog topics which abound!
Middle Eastern Conflicts/Refugee Crisis - Didn't any of these world leaders play Risk while growing up? Depressing.
T-Rump, Fe-fi-forina, Sanctimonous, Chucklebee, and all the rest remaining. The GOP's view for America is deeply, profoundly depressing.  Cymbalta please with a side dish of Citalopram.
Discrimination called religious freedom. While you are free to believe as you wish, you may not impose those beliefs on others especially if you have a government job or run hospitals like St. Whatever's. Sad and depressing.
Garden fatalities - It was a tough year for a lot of plants especially because they got either too much water or not enough. A long-time garden resident, a bristle cone pine looks to be in a fatal decline, as do a couple of small Japanese maples.  The golden chain tree suddenly died early this summer, and after looking great last year a small cluster of Oregon grape bushes (Mahonia) crashed. Some replacements have been purchased and now must be planted. Nothing like yanking out dead trees and digging big holes to brighten your day. Did get a nice bottle of wine from the local nursery and a keep up the good work card.
Apples. Local source of Northern Spys had a crop failure for that variety, but the Jonathons are superb this year. Eh, that's farming.
However on the bright side and to keep from ruining the good September mood, the Chi-town Cubs are still winning more than losing and usually by mid- September they would have been in the sub-basement of the league for at least a month. TPP doesn't really follow them, but so many friends do that the Cub's success is brightening the moods of many friends and colleagues.
Bernie Sanders' candidacy. Don't know it he would be a good president or not, but he makes TPP smile. Just going to Liberty University was a political tour de force. He's like a T-Rump antibody.

Book report on apples

Frazz is one of TPP's favorite comic strips, and today's strip (Sept. 13, 2015) was a classic because it hit TPP right in the wheel house. Caulfield presents a report on apples, and nails it, especially the analysis of the "dreaded, mealy Red Delicious".  This variety happened because of selection on its parent, the Delicous, for better color and especially better storage life. The Delicious was actually a good tasting apple, but it's so rare now only a few apple affectionados still raise this variety. A good old boy in SW Michigan surprised TPP with some Delicious a few years back, although our top 4 list still wouldn't include that variety, it did demonstrate how selection for other characters damaged its taste and texture. 

Any help with apple experiment?

TPP is ready to begin a new apple experiment; the last one was a failure. With limited space, TPP has been looking at the columnar dwarf apple trees, basically a central shoot with lots of flowering spur branches. These are probably not ideal, but worth a try. The applke varieties that originally came in such columnar forms have not sounded particularly good; the descriptions make them sound like soft-fleshed apples of the McIntosh sort. A decent apple until you grow up. A local nursery had some very stout looking trees of the Colonnade trademark and a apple variety called Flamenco, which is described as a tart-sweet, crisp late-season apple.  Now this sounds pretty good, but that's the only variety they had. "What about a pollinator? asks TPP. The blank silence that followed indicated that TPP was the only person there who knows that most apples require a pollinator. The so-called Urban Apple trademark says to plant at least 2 varieties, and they had three. Perhaps one of these (Blushing red looked the best, but they gave no description of the apple! This tells you something and it isn't good.) could pollinate the Flamenco. So before this experiment goes too far does anyone out there have any experience with growing any of these apples? Remember TPP thinks Northern Spy is a great apple. Give me your wisdom. Give me your advice.

Apple quest

After a week of unseasonably warm weather, a dousing of nearly three inches of rain, the weather has turned a bit unseasonably cold. Yes, you can average our weather, but the great mid-west of North America never gets average weather. So Saturday was going to be a bit cool and maybe a bit wet, and this is a university town, so football, and homecoming, so best to get out of Dodge. All in all, a good day for an apple quest to southeastern Michigan. Locally the early varieties of apples did well, and the Jonathons and Jonagolds were excellent, and the Phactors recommend you try Crimson Crisp if you get the chance, but the later varieties just did not fair so well. Thus if the Phactors were to have Northern spies, it would take a quest to the Tree-Mendus fruit farm in Eau Claire, MI. They have over 200 varieties of apples under cultivation, quite amazing diversity, and you get tastes! The Phactors managed to beat the homecoming parade out of town, and then it drizzled on us all the way to Michigan. Hungry and hoping the rain would let up, the Phactors stopped for lunch in an Applebee's. But it didn't. Still you don't drive 4 hours to get your favorite apples and just give up. Perhaps you have gathered that most of the apples are U-pick, and nothing quite like a cold, drizzle to make it an adventure. The dear woman working the orchard outpost should get a medal for remaining cheerful doing a rather miserable job while someone else got to make the mulled cider by the barn's fireplace. Not to be deterred by the cold and rain, the Phactors picked apples, 4 half-bushels and fortunately northern spies are largish apples so you don't have to pick so many to fill a bag. Now here is the question. If you were picking some of these apples for friends, how much above the purchase price do they owe you for the transportation and picking in miserable weather? As the trip neared it's end the rain finally stopped. So checking the score, the Phactors are squashed up (from a field trip 2 weeks ago) and appled up for the fall and winter. Next up, what you do with this bounty.

Apple biodiversity - so much and so few

TPP recently blogged about apples, a favorite topic.  After all he owns the two volume Apples of New York (1905) the definitive reference about heritage apple varieties.  At the time that was written over 1600 varieties of apple were grown in NY state.   TPP grew up not far from Geneva NY, the home of apple biodiversity.  Today "90 percent of the apples sold within the U.S. are from only 11 varieties, including McIntosh, Rome, Fuji and Red Delicious."  Go here to read more.  This is quite sad because many people just don't know what they are missing.  Yesterday, TPP cut up a Northern Spy, a long-time favorite, and when you take a bite you understand why you must go out of your way to get these apples.  The complexity of flavor in this apple is just superior; it makes a Red Delicious seem like plain white bread with the crusts cut off, a kid's apple.  Hey, TPP loved McIntosh as a kid, but you grow up, or not.  So how does someone as young as Layla Eplett (the author of the Sci Amer piece) come to appreciate heritage apples?  Why she sounds interesting! 
HT to Agricultural Biodiversity blog.

Apples

The Phactors took an excursion yesterday to the Wolfe orchard just east of Monticello IL.  Since this is just a "hobby" orchard they only have 350 trees and about 66 varieties of apple for sale, 33 were available yesterday.  And most importantly, one of those varieties was northern spy, our favorite apple, so we bought half a bushel.  This variety originated as a seedling around 200 years ago just about 50 miles west of where TPP grew up in upstate NY.  A few new varieties were on hand.  One was Kandil Senap (image), a variety of Turkish origin with Orange Pippin parentage.  It's a very oval apple, quite crisp, but a bit dry.  Among the heritage varieties are Baldwin, spitzenberg (probably a parent of Johnathon), golden russet, Ben Davis (no harder, drier apple exists, but it stores well), smoke house (tart), and winter banana (a pale yellow apple that will taste better after some storage).  They also have a variety called buff from a relative's farm in western North Carolina, a big apple with a crisp white and juicy flesh; it performs well for making pies.  Here's the best thing: they'll let you taste every apple they've got.  Wonderful!

Desperate measures, expensive measures

When you get desperate enough, cost becomes no object.  Well, price is an object, but you don't mind spending a premium price to get what you want if there's no other way to get it.  In this particular instance TPP and most especially Mrs. Phactor want Northern Spy apples.  Usually we can get some at a boutique hobby orchard about 50 miles away, but this year an early warm spell followed by a freeze doomed the local apple crop almost totally.  Our favorite source in Michigan had a poor crop of this variety and are sold out of what they had.  So some online shopping identified a source not too far from where TPP grew up in upstate New York, some real apple country.  Now it may sound ridiculous to pay $100 for a bushel of apples, but these are Northern Spys, and if you think  you know quality apples and haven't tried one of these, you are in for some revisions.  They are crisp, firm, juicy, sweet-tart, and have a complex apple taste.  They store well and stand up well to baking.  They are Mrs. Phactor's favorite pie apple.  Of course if you think about the alternatives, the price isn't so bad.  Alternative one: do without.  Not a good alternative.  Alternative two: drive to Michigan on an apple quest.  Estimated cost: fuel $80, meals $60, lodging $80, apples $35, two days required.  Now of course there are other pleasant things associated with the trip (wineries), and the load of apples would be considerably larger than a bushel, but in general TPP is feeling pretty good about this purchase, its delivery to his door, and a piece of apple pie will make him feel even better.  BTW the Northern Spy has been difficult to grow, but now a dwarf variety is available, the Nova Spy, and the apples have retained the Northern Spy quality.

The Non-browning Apple Non-controversy

The Phactor has never considered the browning of apple flesh after exposure to air (oxygen) to be much of a problem, but then again, my attitude is sufficiently old school that the purchase of pre-sliced apples and other pre-butchered produce is considered not at all appropriate. After all knives were invented way before plastic bags, but solutions to this non-problem are in the news. The oxidative enzymatic reaction that causes apple flesh to brown is strictly a question of aesthetics; nothing else changes, not taste, not texture, so eat the damned thing. Ah, but we want our pre-sliced apples, although thoroughly butchered and in a bag, to maintain the pretense of freshness. Does it occur to any of these morons that apples with their skin intact do not turn brown? Apple slices can be treated with any number of anti-oxidant chemicals like ascorbic acid (lemon juice) and the USDA has approved a long list of chemicals that prevent browning. Now a company from the Great White North has produced a variety of apples in which the enzyme polyphenol oxidase has been silenced, rendered non-functional, so the flesh of these apples does not brown. Now again, this seems to be something no one needs in the first place, but watch what will happen, two groups will strongly oppose this GMO apple: the companies that drench apple slices in chemicals (generally quite harmless ones) to keep them “fresh” in appearance and the anti-GMO crazies. Already one group has raised concerns about “cross-pollination” of regular apples with pollen from non-browning apples. Oooo, scary! So what would happen if regular apples were pollinated by GMO apples? Nothing. The apple is the maternal genotype. The seeds would be hybrids, but we don’t eat them and we don’t use them to propagate apples. Could someone please point out the problem here? Well, it comes down to money and anti-science attitudes, and not once does anyone considered the obvious conclusion that you don't need non-browning apples of any sort.

Growing Apples - Japanese style

Having grown up in the apple country of upstate New York, apple farming is something the Phactor is very familiar with, and it bears virtually no similarity to apple farming in Japan. The amount of hand labor used in Japan to produce big, perfect, pretty apples would price apples right out of the market virtually anywhere else. First you hand pollinate the flowers, than you cull the crop so the tree produces fewer but bigger apples, and then you double bag to flowers to protect from insect pests and damage, yes, that's right you bag each and every apple. Near the end of the season the opaque bag is removed leaving an innter translucent bag so that the cream colored apples with ripe into a uniform color. The only fun thing about this is applying an opaque stencil to the cream colored apples will produce a pale design in the apple's skin (image borrowed from the link above), and even this is done in the USA in a few boutique orchards, and as a special sales item. The apples produced by all this attention and hand labor are big, perfect, and beautiful, but is it really worth it? The Phactor wouldn't have time to do all this even to his mighty two tree orchard let alone hundreds of trees. So does this end up being decided by the consumer, whether you want to pay alot for a few perfect apples, or whether you'd want more apples for less money, and ignore the uneven coloring or a few blemishes? Even in Japan this may not be a sustainable form of agriculture.

Age - It creeps up on you.

Another anniversary of my birth has crept up on me sort of arriving unexpectedly, not that the date was unknown, but that it got here some quickly, even suddenly, after the end of summer, and once again the Phactor is older than he has ever been before. This generally doesn't bother me, but the disparity between my mind, which still feels quite young and vigorous, the result of continual exercise, and my body, which definitely feels older, grows. Of course when you buy yourself a nice big ornamental tree as a present (a cascading white pine), and then have to heft it down out of a pickup truck bed, and it's considerably heavier and more difficult to heft than it seemed when the two young fellows at the nursery put it in there, you especially notice that while your mind may say "nothing to it" the back more often says "I'll ache for you all night". Still we appreciate that the alternative to older age is considerably more dismal, and the smell of an apple pie baking, the acid test of our Nova Spys, a birthday pie made out our own apples for the first time ever, does wonders for your attitude.

Tale of two trees

Gardening is one of those enterprises where you always have some successes and some failures. One of this years successes was the first crop of apples from a relatively new tree of a relatively new variety, a Nova Spy. As the name suggests this is a new variety of dwarf apple tree that supposedly captures the singular apple quality of the Northern Spy, an apple of some renown for more than a century. So it was with considerable anticipation that the first apples produced by our three-year-old tree were harvested, and how nice it is to report that the apples are true to form, largish somewhat irregular in shape and green with streaky red, very recognizable as a spy, and it has the spy flavor, that sweet tart taste with all sorts of fruity highlights. How fantastic that this new variety seems to have solved the spy problems of being big, slow-growing, full-sized, slow to bear trees as the only source of a superior apple, so maybe this excellent apple will become more popular again, and more avidly sought by people other than a few apple fanciers. But in the negative column on the same day as the apples were harvested, a 3-yr-old Japanese maple up and wilted, a nearly certain sign, given the time of year, of verticillium wilt, and the consequent death of the tree. A redbud died a couple of weeks earlier in a similar manner. So that's the long and short of it.