Garden Chat By Jean Lundquist
Seeds to sow, stories to tell T
he winter hiatus from this gardening column has been a chance to connect with some very special and interesting people who also garden. But before we get into their stories, I want to catch up a bit with you and what is needed for us who live to garden. If you haven’t yet started your peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, Brussels sprouts and broccoli, it’s not too late. But with that said, you don’t have a moment to spare. I always strive to start my seeds by the Ides of March (the 15th day of the month). The Ides fell on a Saturday this year, and I had a great day. Now onto the interesting people and gardeners I’ve met since last we met here: I’ve tried to grow sweet potatoes for several years, but always ended up with thin, spiky tubers that looked like witches’ fingers. The vines would grow out from the original planting and, at every node, set down roots that wanted to grow up to be sweet potatoes but never did. My friend and fellow Master Gardener Barb Lamson called me last fall to come and witness her success with sweet potatoes. I’ve never seen such beautiful things, even in the aisles of a grocery store. Had I not seen them with my own eyes, I would have said a sarcastic, “Yeah, right.” But there they were. Such beauty to behold on her patio table! So, of course, I pressed her for the secrets to her success. Thankfully, she was more than willing to share. “You need to make sure you start with Beauregard roots as the variety,” she said. “Only Beauregard will do.” Barb gets her roots at a nursery when she visits a brother in Missouri, but I also found Beauregard roots this spring. Her next secret is to lay down black landscape fabric, so the nodes cannot root when they spread. Barb is also not averse to cutting off runners when they stray from her landscape fabric. “No fertilizer, no water,” she says. Just dig up in the fall, she said, and you’ll be amazed. I must say, Barb shared some of her sweet potatoes with me to convince me of their quality. If my Beauregard roots don’t perform for me as they did for her last year, I might need to ask her to convince me again. Yum! I told you last fall about how much I love watermelon, but cannot find any way to make it stay good through the winter, or even to enjoy all of it while it’s fresh. Ken Schmitt of Mankato has introduced me to a new way of enjoying and preserving watermelon. He traces his heritage to 1700s Russia, where his ancestors relocated after unrest in southern Germany. In the Ukraine, his ancestors found land fertile for growing watermelon, and a tradition was born. That tradition? Pickled watermelon. But Ken’s pickled watermelon is not sweet and cloying rind. His watermelon pickles are the red meat, and include garlic, onion, red peppers and dill. And they stay crispy. 40 • April 2014 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
Barb Lamson’s impressive haul of sweet potatoes and Ken Schmitt’s pickled watermelons are just two of the garden secrets I learned in the offseason. | Photos courtesy of Jean Lundquist Ken’s dad and grandparents emigrated to the United States in the 1890s. He came to settle in South Dakota, where Ken said his father used to submerge whole watermelons in salted water as part of the pickling process. “When they came to the top, boy would they smell!” he remembers. Yet somewhere along the way, Ken became convinced of the value in pickled watermelon. Ken’s aunt, Erna Doerr, gave him the family recipe for the pickled watermelon sometime in the 1940s, as he recalls. Her recipe said to put the jar of watermelon into a sink full of hot water for 15 minutes, then drain water and refill sink with hot water for another 15 minutes. He doesn’t do that, choosing instead a boiling-water bath until the watermelon rises in the jars. His pickles are outstandingly good. Here are his proportions: Cut red part of melon to bite-size pieces Boil together: 6 cups water 1 cup sugar 1 cup white vinegar 4 level teaspoons salt Wash jars and put in each: Dill, garlic and a small hot pepper (or pepper flakes to taste) Put watermelon in hot jars, and cover with juice. If you run low on watermelon, add one cucumber to each jar. Ready to eat in two weeks. I don’t know how long it takes for the watermelon to lift in the jars yet, but I do know Ken’s watermelon pickles are like none other. M Jean Lundquist is a master gardener who lives near Good Thunder.