Bountiful berries and blooming beans We are smack dab in the middle of our summer growing season in Duluth and a lot is happening both inside and outside the garden right now. Vegetables that love the heat seem to jump up overnight and climb inches each day, like my pole beans that have already passed my height, their vines twining over each other and reaching past the top of our fence, searching for something else to grab. They have tiny white flowers starting to show, and I am so excited to pickle them with my flowering dill for cool refreshing jars of crunchy dilly beans. Outside of the garden, wild berries that I never knew about before moving to Duluth are bursting into ripeness. Friends who have called Duluth home longer than me already knew about all of these delicious fruits; how to identify them, where to harvest them, what they taste like. I was lucky enough to accompany a friend on a berry picking expedition last week (OK, I actually begged her to take me along). For a harvesting container I found some old Folgers coffee cans, drilled a couple of holes in them, and strung each with a piece of twine through the holes for tying around the waist to create a berry bucket belt for hands-free harvesting. We started with June berries (also called saskatoon or service berries), which grow on shrubby trees, and seem to enjoy growing on rocky slopes with a view of the lake. We moved down the trail onto blueberries, which I would not have even noticed if someone hadn’t pointed them out to me; they grow very low to the ground and hide their berries with their leaves. Once you do find these in the wild, you will have no doubt about what they are because they look exactly like miniature versions of grocery store blueberries. We harvested respectfully, not taking more than we can use and leaving some for other critters to collect or eat. It was a gorgeous way to spend an
next year. We ended up ripping out all of our broccoli plants, and buying some beautiful heads from local farmers at the Duluth Farmers market instead. Since our zucchini has been doing so well with the heat, we decided to roast the two vegetables together with an entire bulb of fresh garlic, then toss with pasta, olive oil and parmesan for a light mediterranean-tasting vegetarian dinner. If you can stand to have the oven on in the summer, roasting is a great option for cooking most of your garden produce if you’re not sure what to do with it. Use the recipe as a guide, and have fun with it! Happy Gardening!
HAPPY GARDENING HALEY DIEM
26 July 30, 2020 DuluthReader.com
afternoon, and now that I know where they are and how to identify them, it feels like the whole world is offering up a sugary snack for me on my hikes. The walk to our garden along Chester Creek has shifted in my perspective into a long thimble berry patch, and it takes me twice as long to get to the garden now that I have to stop and gobble them up every time I see a bright red round berry beckoning with its tart and sweet concentrated raspberry flavor. The July heat that made these berries ripen and the beans bloom is the same heat that causes stress to cool weatherloving crops in your garden. You may have noticed that your lettuce can never seem to make it through July without shooting up a tough large central stem, starting to flower, and becoming very bitter to eat. This process in the plants is called “bolting” and happens when the plant becomes stressed, and tries to quickly reproduce and make seeds because it senses its life is coming to an end. When I notice my lettuce starting to bolt, I usually harvest the entire head and eat a big salad before it turns too bitter. However, I have heard of some people having luck with harvesting lettuce “haircut” style, where instead of continually picking large outer leaves
as the lettuce grows, you shear off all the leaves equally about an inch above the ground, and allow it to grow back before giving it another “haircut.” This method may allow your lettuce to keep growing and avoid bolting, but I haven’t tried it personally. I have resigned myself to just eating lettuce in the spring and fall. This bolting process happens to a few other plants which become very stressed in hot and dry mid-summer weather that you may have noticed, like cilantro, spinach and broccoli. Some plants you can slow down the process of bolting by pinching off the start of the flowers, like with basil, which once the lead flower is pinched off will then start to direct growth to its side branches instead. If you are vigilant about picking off the flower buds, you can get your basil to last all summer long. Cilantro and spinach can be delayed for a little while by pinching off flowering stems, but I find that it’s best to just harvest them completely when you notice they are starting to bolt. As for broccoli, the Duluth Community Garden Program’s Vegetable of the Year, it has been bolting in our garden nonstop, and I am thinking that I will need to buy a seed that has heat and drought tolerance bred into it
Easy Sheet Pan Roasted Broccoli and Zucchini Ingredients: 4 cups broccoli florets 2 medium zucchini, halved and sliced into ½ inch pieces 1tsp minced garlic 1 tsp Italian seasonin 4 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice salt and pepper to taste Preheat oven to 425°F. In a large bowl place the broccoli florets, zucchini, garlic, olive oil and Italian seasoning. Toss to coat. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Transfer to a baking sheet. Roast in preheated oven for 25 minutes or until lightly brown and tender. Remove from the oven. Drizzle with lemon juice and serve. Haley Diem is the One Vegetable One Community Coordinator for the Duluth Community Garden Program.
