September 19, 2021

After a busy week that included an oral argument to the Iowa Supreme Court, I am back in the garden, just a little frustrated by the lack of rain....again. We hit the two week mark since the last measurable rain Friday. At one point yesterday afternoon I walked out to the backyard. I was struck by the overwhelming sensation of dryness. The paths themselves felt dry. 

I am watering the front yard annuals. I do not remember a year when we we had such swings in moisture. But it is what it is. And no matter how many times I look at the weather radar I cannot make it rain. 

So I continue with garden cleanup, and begin to think about the great plant migration. That is the migration into the house to avoid the big cold coming. My mother always recommended bringing plants inside when the outside and the inside were about the same temperature. That she said avoided temperature shock. That is good advice,  but  she did not have quite so many plants.  I am not quite ready to bring plants inside yet. I have begun to watch the forecast for lowering temperatures. I think there are several nights in the 10 day forecast with temperatures in the 40's.

It is also getting to be the time to start thinking about which plants will need younger muscle. I think I have just added one more plant to that list. This week I received a very large and very old night blooming cereus. It was too big for the donor to take inside every year. 

Someone wrote me last week about how much there was to know about gardening. We learn stuff no matter how long we have been doing this. Here are two things:

I am in the process of potting up black eyed susans for the sale. Actually I want that sunny place for other plants, such as primroses, and one special daylily. Well, in the process I learned that black eyed susans propagate by runners. Who knew?  So do Mayapples but I knew that.

Then there is the fact that a certain vegetable we regularly eat, has male and female fruit (using fruit in the broadest term.) What? It turns out that the female "fruits" have more seeds and are therefore not quite as tasty or desired. Which one? The answer appears in the odds and ends section.

It is that time of year to think about tree peony seeds. The seeds had ripened with the pods opening.

So I harvested the seeds, this year getting some from a neighbor who had large pink plants.

I read up on what to do with them and started this weekend. 

Here is an article from the people at Cricket Hill, perhaps the best place for tree peonies in the country. In fact the parent of the big white ones I grew from seed came from Cricket Hill many years ago.

https://www.treepeony.com/pages/starting-peonies-from-seed

Yesterday I tried that planting them in a pot and burying the pot technique.

I should add that about 6 of the first year seedlings made it through this difficult gardening year. They will be carefully marked to watch for their sprouts in the spring.

Here is the sprouts from the one second year plant I have at the moment.

I pronounce the sequencing of the calla lilies a success. Here are some of those beauties this past week. I planted them in July, with the goal of having flowers in September.

I was going to write a but about toad lilies. I will save that for next Sunday.

A few more pictures from this last week

This next picture is a little berry from the pink dogwood.

Julia's recipe

Zucchini pancakes

In zucchini season, one looks for new things to cook beyond zucchini bread or cake, on the dessert side, or zucchini baked eggs or ratatouille, on the main dish side. Zucchini pancakes are a side dish, kind of like potato pancakes without the applesauce. The technique is the same as with any watery vegetable - salting and weighing down and then wringing. This recipe is from the NYT cooking website and is reputedly Turkish. Okay. The pancakes are served with a yogurt/garlic sauce. Nice use of a sometimes maligned vegetable. 

The ingredients for the pancakes:

3 medium squash (green or yellow) to yield 4 cups grated;

3 eggs; 

1/2 cup (or a little more) flour;

5 (or so) tablespoons olive oil;

1 cup shredded feta cheese;

1/4 cup chopped scallions;

1 teaspoon baking powder;

salt and pepper.

For the sauce: 

1/2 -1 cup plain yogurt;

1/2 teaspoon (or so) smushed garlic;

1/2 teaspoon salt. 

I used the grating function on the food processor to grate the squash, ending up with about 4 cups. No peeling; just washing and cutting off the ends. 

I put the squash in a colander; set the colander in a smaller vessel so that liquid would run into the vessel; sprinkled about 1 teaspoon of salt on the squash; mixed it in; put a slightly- smaller-than-the-colander plastic lid on top of the squash and balanced a flour canister with about 5 lbs. of flour on the plastic lid. 

This combination of salt on the vegetable and weight squeezes out liquid. 

While the zucchini was being squeezed, I chopped the scallions and shredded the feta.

I also smushed the garlic and mixed it with the yogurt and salt, as I expected not to have time to do that at the end. 

And I prepped the salmon for the oven. 

I let the squeezing apparatus be for about 30 minutes. At that point, maybe 1/2 cup of zucchini juice had accumulated.

I transferred the zucchini to a clean dish towel.

Next, I squeezed the living daylights out of the dish towel, draining the squash of even more moisture. 

When the liquid stopped flowing very much, I was done and dumped the squash into a bowl. 

Later I apologized to the dish towel, rinsed it out in the sink and put it in the laundry.

First, I mixed in the egg, then added the flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, the shredded feta, chopped scallions and some black pepper. I mixed all that, then added the baking powder and mixed some more. The batter looked a bit loose to me so I added another tablespoon or two of flour. Judge for yourself. 

The recipe called for dill. I did not have dill and I am not crazy about dill in anything but pickles. If you have dill and like dill, finely chop and add about 1/4 -1/3 cup. 

Final mixing. 

I put 2 skillets on the stove, each with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. I used medium heat. 

No need for 2 skillets. I was feeling impatient. 

When the oil was hot enough to shimmer a bit, I used a small disher to plop scoops of the mixture into the skillet, leaving some room. 

The disher delivered about 1-2 tablespoons of batter. 

Pancakes cooking on the first side. 

Pancakes flipped over. I pressed them lightly to flatten slightly and make sure they cooked through. 

It took several minutes to cook all of the batter so we put the cooked pancakes on a rimmed baking sheet in a 250 degree oven. I have a double oven which allows me to cook salmon and keep zucchini pancakes warm at the same time. 

And here's dinner, a platter of zucchini pancakes and a bowl of yogurt sauce. Plus what I suppose would be thought of as one of the usual weekly rest-of-the-menus: salmon (this time with a coating of mayo and chili-garlic paste), corn salad, tomato salad and berries with yogurt. 

 On the plate. 

The leftover pancakes were surprisingly good. 

Odds and Ends

I saw this interesting article about goats. We saw them in operation in the neighborhood this summer. Well...someone is thinking big thoughts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/business/wildfires-goats-prevention.html

The  vegetable with male and female "fruit" is the eggplant. Who knew? If you did, you would be ready for the "strange garden facts" category on Jeopardy.

https://www.almanac.com/fact/what-is-the-difference-between-a-male#:~:text=Answer%3A%20Male%20eggplants%20have%20fewer,an%20irregular%2C%20less%20smooth%20end.

Be safe. It can be a scary world out there.

Philip