Garden is Now Really Blossoming

The springtime garden at our place in Cozy Corner blossomed in the past few weeks.

The tomato vines are loaded with fruit, and a few just started ripening. I’ve picked a few banana peppers already. (I’ll tell a little side story about those banana peppers later.)

I should be getting zucchini, but my early crop got attacked by disease and squash bugs. I think that’s because I planted it in the same spot where some squash grew last year. Lesson learned, I guess. I planted a late crop of squash about a month ago, but they’re not in production yet.

My onions have mostly matured, and we haven’t to buy any from the grocery store in weeks. Hopefully, the onion crop will last us until we grow leeks in the fall. We’ve been eating beets a-plenty, along with a few green beans. And most of my spring fennel has headed. I grilled some baby fennel a few days ago, and what a treat that was!

But best of all, it’s potato harvest time. Most of the plants are turning yellow, and a few have died back completely. I don’t have a lot of storage space for my potatoes, so I’m keeping them in the ground as long as possible. I dig up the plants whenever the foliage turns yellow or brown and falls to the ground.

If no rain is predicted, I like to leave the potatoes on top of the soil for a day or two.

This toughens the skins for better storage. Freshly dug, the skins easily peel away. Whenever I bring them inside for storage, I don’t clean the soil off them right away. The soil helps them to store longer without rotting. If you stack a bunch of clean potatoes closely together, they’ll quickly rot wherever they touch each other. The soil provides a slight barrier and may also help regulate moisture in the storage environment.

Right now, I’ve only been harvesting enough potatoes to last us a few days, then I dig up some more. But eventually, when all the plants completely die, I’ll need to harvest the entire bed. We usually keep our potatoes in wooden crates or paper bags inside a dark closet underneath the attic staircase.

Ideally, potatoes should be stored at temperatures between 45 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit. At higher temperatures, they dehydrate and begin to sprout. I have no way of keeping the temperature that low in my storage space. So I just have to deal with it. We usually attempt a fall crop of potatoes each year. If we haven’t eaten them all at that point, I can always use the sprouted ones for seed potatoes.

I tell people all the time: if you’ve never grown a garden before, potatoes are one of the best crops to try first. They’re easy to grow. They just take a long time – about 90 days. But they taste so much better than store-bought potatoes. That’s probably because they haven’t sat in cool storage for half a year or longer like the store-bought ones. The time and cool temperature change the chemistry of the starches in potatoes. You’ll notice it when you cook them. Fresh garden potatoes get soft after just five minutes of boiling. If you boil them for 10 minutes, they might start falling apart.

The taste is different, too. Garden potatoes seem creamier to mee. I hardly ever bother peeling them, because the skins are so tender.

The other night I fancied myself a French chef and made some potatoes au gratin. My wife Janessa said they were the best she ever had. Almost every ingredient came from our garden. First, I made a bechamel sauce using some raw milk from the Jersey Barnyard. Not to brag, but I no longer measure the ingredients for bechamel. I believe I used a half a stick of butter and two tablespoons of flour, which I cooked together into a blonde roux in a pot. I slowly added the milk, probably about a cup, and brought it to a simmer. I then poured some more milk into the pot while it was simmering to the thickness of a light gravy.

Once the roux was done, I thinly sliced four or five large potatoes using a mandolin. I also sliced one onion from the garden on the mandolin.

I chopped a handful of parsley, a few sprigs of thyme along with two cloves of garlic and combined them together. I grated a cup and a half of an Irish cheese called “Dubliner” – white cheddar would probably work as well. I also grated a quarter cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Now it was time to stack everything together inide a cast iron skillet. I spread some of the bechamel at the bottom of the skillet. Then went down a layer of the potato slices, followed a shake of salt and pepper. Next I stacked onion slices and a sprinkling of the herbs, garlic and cheese. Spread some bechamel on top then stack another layer. I think I had enough for five layers. I smoked it uncovered on my Traeger grill at 325º F. I think it was done in about an hour. If you grew some potatoes this year, give this recipe a try and tell me what you think.