Parsley Worms Eating All My Dill

The larvae of the Black Swallowtail butterfly are known as "parsley worms" because they feed on members of the Apiaceae family, which includes parsley, dill, fennel, cilantro, carrots, and parsnips. Last year I planted a lot of parsley, and figured it would be enough for both me and the swallowtails. Right now it's starting to flower, and I plan on letting it drop its seeds and regrow.

So did I get parsley worms on my parsley? No, of course not! Instead, they are completely ravaging my dill and fennel, when I only have a few plants of each.

Here's a large one chomping away. They do have really cool markings. Interestingly, you'd think they'd really stand out, but the striped pattern actually breaks up their outlines and helps them camouflage among the feathery foliage.

 

This picture shows how they look when they're smaller (on the left) compared to a larger one on the right.



I was going to let my dill drop seeds too, but at the rate they're going, there will be no dill flowers left to make seeds. They seem to like the flower heads the best.

Now the flower heads have almost nothing left. So much for saving dill seeds this year.

Except I just don't have the heart to do anything to them. They've become like my pets. I know, it's prejudice, because I have no problem killing tomato hornworms.

Guess I'll just have to accept that I'll have a much bigger crop of butterflies this year instead of dill.

Potato Harvest 2014

I dug up the potatoes on Monday before we got the rainstorm. It was a little disappointing, but that was my fault. I planted a lot of my potatoes in November, thinking I could get an extra early harvest. Instead, most of them froze to death. I planted a second batch of potatoes in January, and those were the ones I harvested this week. So once again I didn't get that many potatoes, and will have to save most or all of them for planting next year.

Now I know that potatoes should not be planted in Texas before January!

I ended up getting 2.8 pounds of Red Pontiac and 2.0 pounds of Purple Viking. I'll save these to replant next year, and maybe buy another variety or two to try.

Fava Bean Pasta

Here's one of the things I did with some of the harvest of nice green spring vegetables I got in April and May.

I didn't grow any hardneck garlics this time, but I did grow Elephant garlic, which makes some nice fat scapes.

Here is the Swiss chard before it started bolting. I like this "perpetual spinach" type variety with it's small, tender leaves.

But the star of this dish was the fava beans. I've never even eaten fava beans before, but they turned out to be really easy to grow over the winter, and they're really tasty. They are a little bit of a pain to prepare in the kitchen, though. First you have to get them out of their pods, then blanch them in boiling water for 2 minutes.

Next you need to peel them. The seed coats of fava beans are really tough and inedible, so you have to take each bean individually and pop them out of their skins. At least the beans are pretty big, about the size of a large lima bean, so you don't have to peel too many to get enough for a meal. In the picture you can see the peels on the left and the peeled beans on the right.

Then I sliced up the elephant garlic scapes into small pieces.

Sautéed the scapes in a pan with some prosciutto and olive oil. I wanted to use pancetta, but couldn't find any, so I used prosciutto instead, torn up into little pieces.

Meanwhile, I cooked some pasta.

The cooked pasta, peeled fava beans, and chard were added to the pan once the prosciutto was starting to get a little crispy. That was stirred around until the chard wilted.

To finish off the dish, I added some cracked black pepper, a little of the reserved pasta cooking water, some shredded parmesan cheese, and some heavy cream to make a nice sauce. A splash of white wine would have been nice too, but I was out. It was still really good without it.

So this dish used three ingredients from my garden. It can be tweaked too. Some fresh green peas would be good instead of or in addition to the fava beans. I would think any kind of green could work in place of the chard. Garlic cloves could be used instead of garlic scapes, but garlic scapes have such a nice mild flavor.

Next year I'm growing a lot more fava beans!

The Greening Moon

Once again, the Greening Moon lives up to its name. Yesterday we got over 4 inches of rain, which was the most rain we've gotten since October. It cut our rain deficit for the year in half.

In fall, I sprinkled a mixture of wildflower seeds in our cactus garden by the driveway, but the Indian Blanket was the only species that came up. They're doing really well and have added a very cheerful touch.

In the front vegetable garden, the artichoke has almost opened. A second bud also grew and is starting to open as well. That one went a lot faster, maybe because it's warm now.

The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are all looking good, except most of the peppers are still very small. It looks like starting the seeds in fall does work better after all.

The tomatillos are already starting to make fruits. I have six plants left after two of them died when we were away because of my dad's illness. I hope I still get a good crop.

The Swiss chard is bolting. I'm not sure if I'm going to let it go to seed, or if I won't bother with that and will pull it up and plant something else there instead.

The okra is also doing really well. This is Beck's Gardenville okra, which I plan to save seeds from. It's a local heirloom named after my favorite garden center in town.

I had time to harvest the potatoes and some of the garlic before the big rainstorm. Here's where the potatoes used to be. I'll put up another post about how that harvest went.

And here's the garlic. I harvested the S&H Silverskin and Red Toch, but the other varieties look like they need a little more time.

I tied the harvested garlic to a piece of bamboo, and now it's drying in the garage. The bulbs were a little on the small side, but I got a lot of them, so it looks like I won't have to buy any more garlic for a while.

In the back garden, the peas are about finished. I'm letting the few pods I missed dry out completely, so I can use them for seed to plant.

The pole beans are just starting to climb up their bamboo teepees. I planted Calico Lima, Red Noodle Yardlong, Rattlesnake, and Purple Podded Pole.

The favas are about done too. Here's what's left of them. They did well, and I'm going to buy more Aquadulce favas from Baker Creek to plant this fall, since they did slightly better than Broad Windsor.

The squash, melons, and watermelons have all been planted and are settling in nicely. They really liked all the rain we got.

I have everything planted for summer except for the sweet potatoes. I ordered a few more varieties to try from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and here are the ones from last year that I'm growing slips from. That one Molokai Purple is growing like crazy. They're going to go in where the garlic is now, once that's all harvested.

So now almost all the spring crops have been harvested, and it won't be too much longer now until summer crops start coming in.

The Grackle Moon

I missed the Bluebonnet Moon, so here's an update on my garden to show how it's been coming along in the two months since I last posted. A lot happens this time of year.

I just started harvesting Tall Telephone peas. They didn't do so well this year because of the strange weather and they're not in a very good spot, but I'm still getting a decent amount of peas.

I also just started harvesting fava beans and haven't eaten any yet. I planted to varieties from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds to compare: Aquadulce and Broad Windsor.

They are pretty close, but I think it turns out I like Aquadulce better. It seems to have longer pods with more beans per pod, which makes shelling easier. The Broad Windsor has more pods, but several that only have 1 or 2 beans each. Aquadulce is from Spain, and Broad Windsor is from England, so I wonder if Aquadulce does better in warmer temperatures. On the other hand, I'm not sure yet if I will end up getting more beans total from BW than Aquadulce since they're still producing.

Broad Windsor is by far the most common fava variety. In many catalogs it's the only fava they have. Carol Deppe suggests that when doing a trial of a standard variety vs. a rarer variety, if they come out pretty equal, or even if the standard is only slightly better than the rare variety, you should grow the rare variety to preserve more genetic diversity. So in this case I think I will order more Aquadulce next year. There really is only a slight difference between the two varieties.

I also planted a bunch of beans around bamboo teepees in the back garden that are now sprouting: Calico Lima Beans, Chinese Red Noodle Yardlong Beans, Rattlesnake Pole Beans, and Purple Podded Pole Beans.

This is the mess where my broccoli and cauliflower plants used to be. They never got very big and ended up bolting, and are being overgrown by weeds. I'm going to till it up and plant squash there.

I have four Moon and Stars watermelon plants next to the beans now. The M&S watermelon seeds I got in a GardenWeb trade had really lousy germination last year, so I planted all the rest this year, and this is what I got. They didn't do well last year, so I don't have very high hopes for them, but we'll see.

In the front garden, the garlic is looking really good. The Elephant garlic is starting to put up scapes. I hope this means I'll get a good garlic harvest this year.

The potatoes I planted later are doing well too, while the ones I planted earlier are almost all dead. So I guess that shows that it's better to wait until at least January to plant potatoes around here. In the foreground are the multiplier leeks that are also doing well. The biggest ones are putting up scapes. Can you eat leek scapes? I don't see why not.

I need to start harvesting this Swiss Chard. This is a perpetual spinach type variety that's doing really well. I've never had luck growing spinach, so I use chard as a substitute, but I've only grown Fordhook Giant and Rhubarb chard before. This chard is specially bred to be more like spinach.

The tomatillos are mostly doing well and are flowering a lot. I lost one when I had to leave when my dad was dying and they didn't get watered enough while we were gone, and another one is hanging on but doesn't look very good. But the other ones look fine.

The tomatoes have a lot of leaf curl going on. I'm not sure what's causing that, but I think it's because of a few really cold nights we've had where temperatures got all the way down into the upper 30's. That's not enough to kill tomatoes, but they don't like it.

The eggplants have just been planted and are doing well. The peppers are not doing as well. I think starting my pepper seeds in the fall was a good idea after all. My pepper plants are still really tiny and dry out fast.

My artichoke plant has an artichoke on it! That was fast. I think I'm going to let this one bloom, since what's the point of having only one artichoke? Maybe after that it will make more buds and I can get several at a time.

Still waiting to be planted are squash, okra, cucumbers, and cantaloupes. I planted them in pots while I figured out where to put them. The okra plants are getting pretty big and need to be set out soon. I think they'll go in the front garden since they're pretty.

I also started an assortment of basils. I went ahead and planted some of all the different varieties I have, but some of them germinated much better than others. I have a lot of Ms. Burns Lemon Basil, for instance. That stuff grows like crazy.

My Dad: July 3, 1949 - March 27, 2014

My dad lost his battle with cancer last week, which is why I missed posting a garden update for the last full moon and the spring equinox. That was around when he took a turn for the worse and was hospitalized, and he only lived a few more days after that. I was able to travel up to the DFW area to be with him when he died, so I'm grateful for that.

While all this was happening, the irises my mother-in-law gave me about two years ago finally bloomed, and the bluebonnets are out in full force. As you can see from the picture, the irises are so heavy with flowers we had to stake them up. It seems strange for him to die in the midst of all this new spring life. The spring equinox is usually one of my favorite times of year.

Homegrown Tomato Soup

It's getting close to our average last frost date of March 5, but even though Saturday was 85 degrees, on Sunday another Arctic cold front came down and plunged us back into the mid-20's last night. I'm worried about some of my plants that were starting to grow back new leaves for spring that just got frozen out there.

But now that it's cold again, it seems like a good time to let  you know what I've been doing with all those paste tomatoes I grew last summer and put into gallon-sized freezer bags in the chest freezer. I was thinking of making pasta sauce or salsa with them, but finally decided they were too good for that. I wanted to put them in something where the tomato is the star, and not something that's a condiment on something else.

So I've been making them into tomato soup, which is very simple and easy to make and wonderful comfort food on a cold day.

Like most of my "recipes" on this blog, this is not very precise. Feel free to tweak it to your own taste.

Ingredients:

• Tomatoes - if you don't have homegrown saved up in the freezer, canned will work
• Chicken broth - preferably homemade from chicken bones you've also been saving up in the freezer, or vegetable broth if you're vegetarian
• Onion and garlic
• Butter - a little bit to cook the onion and garlic in
• Herbs - optional, but good if you have some, especially basil
• Heavy cream - if you want the creamy version

Directions:

Thaw the tomatoes, drain off excess water, and then puree in the blender until as smooth as you can get them.

I've found it's easier to strain the puree if you simmer it a bit first. I think it makes the flesh of the tomato come off the skins more completely or something.

 



Strain the puree in a food mill. I went for a long time without a food mill, but since I got one for Christmas, I've used it to make tomato soup and hot sauce, and it works great. I'm sure I'll find many more uses for it in the future.

Turn the crank back and forth until you have nothing left but skins and seeds. This is also good upper-body exercise.

Next you will need to cook some onions and/or garlic in some butter until soft and caramelized. This is optional but gives the soup a nice sweetness. You can even run the cooked onions through the blender too, so your finished soup will be perfectly smooth.

Add the strained tomato puree back to the pot and simmer to thicken the soup.

While it's simmering, you add chicken broth. I'd say about an equal amount of tomato puree and chicken broth, but it's all to taste. The broth dilutes the tomato puree a bit, because otherwise it would be like trying to eat a bowl full of marinara sauce. But taste as you go and put in however much broth you want until it tastes good to you. Also add salt, pepper, and herbs to taste.

When it's as thick as you'd like it, it's time to serve. At this point you can also freeze some. This soup is easy to make, but takes some time to simmer it down, so it might be a good idea to make an extra big batch and freeze some in serving-size containers for later.

If you want your soup creamy, add some heavy cream at the last minute when you serve it. Don't add cream if you're going to freeze the soup for later, because it will curdle the cream. Also, once I tried to use half-and-half instead, and it curdled, so now I either use heavy cream, or no dairy at all. I've found that with basil and heavy cream, it comes out very similar to the tomato basil soup served at the La Madeline chain of restaurants, but better because it's with my homegrown tomatoes.

And of course you serve it with some crusty bread, or even better, a grilled cheese like in the picture! That ought to keep you warm until it's 80 degrees again in a couple of days.