Seeds from Italy News
Vol 7, # 2, June 2007 2007
We publish four times a year (usually) and include information on all aspects of Italian vegetables, herbs and flowers: selecting, growing, harvesting and storing and cooking. We would be happy to receive and if space permits, publish your experiences in these areas.
If you have a friend who is interested in all things Italian (at least for vegetables, herbs & flowers, please feel free to forward this to them.
1. Privacy Policy
2. Back Orders from 2007
3. Defective Seed
4. WHAT IS THIS THING. WILD ARUGULA.
5. Building & using an unheated hoop house to extend the growing season.
6. Extending the season: Plan B
7. Why are there no seeds in my pack of seed?
8. A customers recipe for escarole.
9. What can I grow now.
10. Padron Peppers
11. Seed Varieties for 2008
12. Newsletter: subscribe or unsubscribe
The newsletter is on line. You can read it there and view photos of the various things mentioned below. If you want to read on line, go to: http://growitalian.com/new_page_9.htm
1. Privacy Policy. A number of people on their order forms asked me not to sell or divulge their personal information: address, telephone numbers, email addresses, etc. I want everyone to understand that I take privacy very seriously. I never disclose any customer information to anyone under any circumstances. I have been bothered by too many telemarketers, received too much junk email to do that to anyone else. I don't even keep credit card numbers: a number of customers who reordered and told me to use their credit card number on file were surprised when I told them I do not keep them on my computer, nor do I have access to them from the credit card authorizing service.
2. Back Orders. All of the backorders should have gone out long ago. Should, however, is the operative word. I always miss some given my 'system' which is that if I am out of something, I circle the item, then place the copy of the order in the 'backorder box'. When the items come in, I send them out. Problem is that during the crazy season of February & March, I sometimes put them in the wrong box. If you did not get a back ordered item, you can either let me know and I will send you a refund or you can take a credit next year (just write it on the order form if you mail it in or put the credit seed you want in the 'comments' section if you order on line.
3. Defective seed. I am especially interested in little known regional varieties from Southern Italy and am always trying seed from small seed companies. The good part of this is that I have come up with some amazing finds. The bad part is that not all of these small seed companies give a priority to seed quality & quality packaging. They also have an annoying habit of sending me substitutions if they are out of what I ordered. This year I had some problems with a few of the peppers from southern Italy (especially the barese peppers. Also, one lot of cocarde lettuce was absolutely dead. The 'wild cardoon', which did not get here until March, also is problematic. The pack I opened had lots of chaff and not much that looked like seed. I put the entire mess in some pots and have yet to see a cardoon come up. So, if you got seed that did not work, again please understand I am trying my best. Of course, I will either provide a refund or a credit. Just send me an email.
4. WHAT IS THIS THING. WILD ARUGULA. (rucola sylvetta) Wild arugula is a perennial green. It is a completely different species from the more common cultivated arugula. Cultivated arugula is eruca sativa mill; wild arugula is diplotaxis erucoides. It is an extremely hardy green that matures in 60 or so days and can be picked throughout the growing season. It has a more assertive taste than cultivated arugula. Some of it has jagged leaves (common in central & northern Italy) and some of it is a smooth leaf type (sel. liscia[smooth] or ulivo [olive leaf]. It will grow back the following year and if you do things right, it is fairly easy to establish a wild arugula patch much like a strawberry or asparagus bed.
If you want to establish a wild arugula bed, do the following. Prepare a bed. In early spring, drop 3-4 seeds every three or so inches or so (this is easier said
than done since the seeds are pretty small). Make your rows eight or so inches. Cover lightly or just press into the soil. Keep well watered. They will be up in 7-10 days. They are fairly slow growing and you have to be vigilant about keeping the weeds out, so weed well. After fifty or so days, you can start picking. You can either cut the entire plant or just pick the tender leaves. If you cut, you should get at least three cuts a year. Stop picking some of them about five or so weeks before the first frost & let them make seed heads (you can keep picking the others). The next spring, you will get new growth both from the plants from the previous year and also from the seed dropped by the plants you let go. This is a photo of my trial wild arugula patch taken on May 8th, 2007. The big plants are from last year. All the little green is mostly new arugula from seed (with a few weeds mixed in); I will thin it out later.
Using/cooking wild arugula. It is most excellent in salad. A perfect salad is wild arugula, cherry tomatoes, salt & pepper, olive oil. It does not get much better than that. You can also cook it and serve it with pasta or just cook it and serve it with a squeeze of lemon and some good olive oil.
5. Building & using an unheated hoop house to extend the growing season. I have written about these in the past, but since my old hoop house finally fell apart
(after 8 years) I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about building and using one of these again. These structures are cheap to make, durable, will extend your growing season at least three or four weeks on each end, and serve as an ideal place to grow out your tomato, pepper, eggplant, etc. starts. They even look pretty good (so says my wife who usually has less than complimentary words about my gardening esthetics.)
Building a hoop house. If you hunt around, you can make one of these for several hundred dollars or less. I recommend keeping an
eye out when you visit your local transfer station to drop off the trash or
recycle your papers and cans.
SIZE. Size is what you happen to need. Mine happens to be eight feet by fourteen feet. That was the space that I had available. I would recommend that you keep them not much more than twenty feet long; bigger than that, you begin to need something mechanical to ventilate them.
Tools needed to build a hoop house. You need a saw, a hacksaw or sawzall with metal cutting blade, a hammer, a level, a box cutter or razor knife and a screwdriver (but preferably a battery powered drill or an electric drill with a very long extension.)
FRAME. I make my frame out of 2x 8 lumber. I use non-pressure treated wood. While I understand that the wood will rot, it will
take six or seven years and by then, I am ready for something else. The technique is to level the area where you are going to place your
hoophouse. Nail together some 2 x 8 lumber (as I mentioned, I used 8 x 14 as my dimension.) You can also screw in some 90 degree metal brackets to reinforce your nails. Level the frame (important for later) with a carpenters level. To keep the frame from moving (or the entire hoophouse from blowing away during the first big wind storm), drive some two foot pieces of metal pipe into the ground alongside the frame. Attach them to the frame with some metal pipe clamps and screws. I think I used three each for the sidewalls, none for the end walls.
HOOPS. For hoops, I have used twenty foot long lengths of 1 1/4 inch pvc water pipe. These are cheap, strong and incredibly durable. Mine are on their second greenhouse and have lasted well over eight years. Twenty foot
lengths are not easy to find; they are not at home depot. Check the yellow pages for 'plumbing supplies' and call them and ask if they have them. If not, then plan B is to go to one of the big box stores and buy ten foot length pieces. Buy a 30 degree coupler, some pvc cleaner & pvc glue and glue them together.
[you can see in the picture above where I repaired some of the hoops] Get some 1 1/4 inch pipe clamps while you are there along with some 'rustproof' deck screws. Clamp one hoop
loosely at each end. This will give you a height to build your end walls. Measure up from the top of the frame to the bottom of the hoop, deduct 3 1/2 inches (you are going to put a 2 x 4 on top of that to hold up your hoops) and build your end walls.
BUILDING END WALLS. This is not rocket science or precision carpentry. You do not need to hold up much of a structure and your cuts do not have to be fancy or exact. The primary purpose of the end walls is to give you something in which you can put a window for ventilation, a door so you can get in, and a place to fasten the plastic covering you put over the finished
hoop house.
[As an aside, take a look at the picture of the window and you will notice
that nothing is straight; this is what happens when you do not level
your frame] You can use pieces of plywood gussets (1/4 inch plywood is fine) to reinforce any sloppy joints. First thing you need to do is to buy
some 2 x 3 lumber and you need something for a door and window. (ventilation is very important; these things will get really hot and you absolutely have to have good ventilation.) For a window, I had an old storm window hanging around. That became my window. If you don't happen to have one hanging around, visit your local transfer station; they will. If you get desperate and can not even find one out in the street awaiting pickup, you can always go down to your favorite box store and buy one. If you get a standard size, they will be fairly reasonable, but scrounging is always better. You could also just make an opening, make up a window out of pine and plastic and attach it with hinges (this is what I used for the first
hoop house). For a door, you could make up a square out of three or four inch wide pine. Fasten it together with plywood gussets. Screw on your window or even easier, a piece of plastic. (Mine is made out of a very large piece of plexiglass I found at the transfer station.) Now that you know your opening sizes for windows and doors, build your end walls. Make the frame for the window/door opening first, then the rest. For the angle cuts, you can either
'guestimate by laying your piece alongside or get a bit more scientific and use the adjustable angle squares
you can buy anywhere for a few dollars. Nail everything together. Use your level to make the end walls level and hold them that way by screwing some pine bracing to the frame of your greenhouse and your end walls.
The braces do not need to be anything fancy as the picture on the left
demonstrates. Put a piece of 2 x 4 lumber on top of the end walls in the center. If you can not find one long enough, attach two of them together with some pine gussets. Put up the remaining hoops (I space mine every three feet or so-my 14 foot
hoop house has five of them.)
Attach your windows and doors. If there is a lot of space between the door and frame, use some 1" square pieces of pine (or whatever you have) for door stops.
Plastic covering. For covering you have two choices. You can go down to the local greenhouse supply store and buy some greenhouse plastic. It is six mil thick and treated to resist uv rays from the sun. It will last a good five years or more. The problem is that it is expensive and usually comes in fairly large sizes (farmers do not make 8 x 14 greenhouses). Ask them if they have some remnants around that they will sell cheap. If that does not work out, plan b is to go to the big box store. They sell 20 x 100 foot rolls of six mil plastic. It used to be quite inexpensive (I think I paid forty dollars for a roll the last time I got some six years or so ago). This is enough to cover my 8 x 14
hoop house five times. The only problem with this stuff is that it is not treated; if you leave it on over the summer, the
probability is that it will be destroyed by the sun. I usually take my plastic covering off during the summer since it gets too hot in there anyway. If you use the inexpensive plastic and leave it on during the summer, then replace the cover before the winter sets in.
Installing the plastic cover. Cut a length long enough so that you can wrap it around and cover your end walls and place it over the hoops. Get some wood battens (if you have a table saw, you can cut some plywood or pine into 1" strips; if not, back to the box store and buy some inexpensive strips of pine or spruce. Sandwich the plastic between the long length of your frame on the ground and the batten and run some screws in. Go to the other side, pull the plastic fairly snug & place your batten over the plastic & screw into the frame on that side. Pull the remaining plastic around the end walls and attach it with battens so that everything is snug. If there are any sharp edges on the wood, cover them with some old rags or extra pieces of plastic so you do not tear the plastic. Trim any excess with a plastic knife. If you happen to tear anything, a roll of 2 or 3 inch tape will fix all.
Using the hoophouse. They are pretty handy structures. Here are some of the things I have done here in zone five (Massachusetts).
a. Extend the growing season. Depending on where you live, you can extend your growing season from a minimum of three/four
weeks on each end to being able to grow year round. Here in Massachusetts I pick lettuce through November and if I do things right, begin picking lettuce here in April. This photo is of lettuce from Franchi lettuce mix sown in November 2006. It didn't grow too much over the winter, started going when the sun came back to life in Mid
February 2007 and this is what it looks like in early May 2007. You can grow lettuce,
arugula, parsley, chard, carrots, spinach, etc. Anything that will take a frost & survive is a candidate.
The lettuce and arugula bed on the right was sown about April 7th. This
is what is looks like on May 10th. Ready to pick. After this batch
is gone, I can start eating the arugula & lettuce mix sown outside.
Into the vacant space will go some early tomatoes.
b. Use the hoop house in the summer for crops which need hot weather. For example, I can not grow anise with any great success, but I suspect it would thrive in a
hoop house. This year I am going to put some tomatoes in the ground inside the house in early may. Maybe tomatoes by the fourth of July.
c. Give your transplants the perfect starting environment. Like most folks, I start my tomatoes, peppers, etc inside and keep them under lights. They do OK, but it is a chore and also I soon run out of room. Take a look at the pepper & tomato transplants, celery
and all sorts of flowers. I have twenty or so trays of starts out there and they love it. What I do is start them inside, when it is time to transplant them, take them outside to the
hoop house. I can use it from mid April on here in Massachusetts since I am pretty sure it is not going to freeze inside the
hoop house after that date.
These transplants on the left are about as good as they
get. From front to back are peppers, a tray of Greek
basil for my neighbor who brings them to the her Greek Orthodox Church
Festival, tomatoes, marigolds, more peppers, some zinnias and behind
everything, a tray of Paquito sunflowers.
The best source of information for using unheated hoop houses are the books written by Elliot Coleman from Maine. I highly recommend them: check your public library for his books.
6. Extending the season: Plan B. Remay cloth (aka insect barrier, row cover, agricultural cloth, etc) is another simple and effective tool to help you out in the garden. It provides several benefits.
a. It provides a microclimate for your transplants or to help germinate direct seeded varieties. Temperatures under it are several
degrees warmer than the outside. Equally important, harsh winds will not damage your transplants. Plants thrive. This is a photo of some transplants I put outside one year in mid April. The photo was taken in the middle of May. Those plants are pretty far along for that time of year in New England. This year I am going to use row cover over my tomato transplants: my hope is that not only can I put them out 10 days or so early, but that the row cover will keep the flea
beetles off the plants when they show up in early June and also it will prevent rain from splashing dirt on the plants which encourages foliar disease.
b. It keeps the bugs off. Row cover over your cucumbers should keep the cucumber beetles away until the disappear in late June. No more pepper maggots and the peppers will appreciate the heat.
Using remay cloth. Some people just lay it on top of the plants, but this is not a great idea. Much better if it is supported by some sort of hoop. Some people use wire, but I have found out that half inch pvc water supply pipe makes the perfect hoop. It is cheap, will last for many years, is easy to store, never deforms, and will never tear your row cover. I just cut a bunch to whatever length works for the width row cover I have, (cut them the width of your row cover plus twelve
inches [you are going to sink them in the ground six inches] and put them in every three or four feet. Hold them down with rocks, bricks, etc. I use bricks on one side, some old zinc pipe on the other side so they are easy to lift the cover when I need to get in there and weed, harvest, etc.
Where can you find it. Lots of places sell it. Search on google for 'row cover" and you will find lots of places that have it. The 83"
width row cover is perfect for gardens laid out in raised beds, but you can find it wider.
They come in various thickness. I bought a thousand foot roll of lightweight row cover quite a few years ago and am still using it. Compare prices. If you are buying an entire roll, try and find someone close to you since big rolls are expensive to ship.
7. Why are there no seeds in my pack of seed? From time to time I get a letter or email from a customer which begins like this: "I bought some seeds and they were delivered quickly. I am very satisfied with the seeds, although when I opened the pack of
******, there were no seeds in it...." I always apologize, replace the pack with one with seeds in it, and try and explain how this could have happened.
So how did it happen. Simple, technological advance did it. I buy the vast majority of my seeds from a company called Franchi Sementi, an old Italian seed company located in the town of Bergamo (in Lombardy). Founded in 1783, until recently Franchi was located inside the old town; anyone who has been to an Italian town knows what this means. It is up on top of a hill, has a lot of rocks, narrow streets, steps, small stone buildings right next to each other. Here are some pictures of the old Franchi facility in the old town and their seed storage and packing facility. Seeds came in and where put
where ever they could be fit. Looks like my seed storage area in Winchester, although a bit more organized than me I think. Here is how they used to pack seeds. The ladies of Bergamo take a spoonful of seeds, put it in the appropriate envelope and pass it on to the person with the brush and glue who does the package sealing. No empty packs here.
When they ran out of room in Bergamo, they moved down to the valley and built a new facility. Now seeds are pretty much packed completely by machine. For the doppia busta packs (double bag which are the ones with the sealed aluminum foil packs of seeds inside) they first fill the little aluminum packets. Say you have a packet of arugula with 10 grams of seed per pack. You load the machine with 100 kilograms of arugula seed which should be enough to fill 10,000 packets. Someone makes sure the machine does not run out of seed (usually) However it gets a bit trickier when you do something like one of the hybrids which may only have a tenth of a gram of seed. Maybe that is only 20 seeds. It gets harder to predict how much seed you need and if the machine misses one, it is harder to detect. So, an empty packets subsequently gets loaded into one of those pretty envelopes and I get contacted by the customer. When I take a pack which I know only has a small amount of seed for a customer order, I try to squeeze it and make sure there is seed in it. Sometimes, however, I forget and if the pack is one of the empty ones (one in five thousand perhaps), someone will let me know.
Below is a picture of the new facility down in the valley and one of the seed
packing machines.
8. A customers recipe for escarole. This was sent in by Katherine Hughes from Los Altos, CA.
I have grown the escarole Bionda a cuore pieno for the last two years, planting in November, and harvesting all winter, until late April or May. It is very reliable, does not bolt until late, and makes large heads. The leaves are very tender, and possibly because I am growing it in the winter when it is cool, it is not bitter at all. I put it in salads, mixed in with the lettuce, most of the time. Only late in the spring, when our weather warms up, it gets a bit bitter and that is when I am more likely to cook with it.
So I would recommend it as a cool weather crop--I think the taste is better.
We had a week of nighttime temps from 27F to 23F (daytime only to 50F or so, not really warming things up), and the escarole survived just fine, no damage at all. It is quite cold hardy.
Gourmet Magazine, Feb 2007, had a recipe for Escarole Stuffed Pizza. I tried it with the
Bionda, but I skipped the blanching step because the Bionda is not bitter at all. It was very good. This is my modification of the recipe:
3 lb escarole (about 3 heads), tough outer ribs discarded and leaves thinly sliced (20 cups loosely packed)1 lb pizza dough at room temperature, 5 tablespoons olive oil, 2 to 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped (depending on your tolerance for garlic), 10 oz chilled Italian
Fontina, coarsely grated (2 cups)
Special equipment: a 9-inch iron skillet, well seasoned
Put oven rack in lowest position and preheat oven to 450°F. Heavily oil the skillet with 1 tbsp olive oil. Cut off one third of dough (keep remaining dough covered with plastic wrap) and pat into skillet, covering bottom. Brush with 1 tablespoon oil and prick all over with a fork. Put skillet on stovetop, on high heat for 2 minutes, then put in oven. Bake until golden, 8 to 10 minutes. Let crust stand in skillet on a rack.
Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then sauté garlic, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 30 seconds. Add escarole, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and sauté, stirring, until escarole is coated with oil, about 4 minutes. Transfer to a large strainer or colander and use a wooden spoon or spatula to press any extra liquid out. Then place in a bowl and stir in half the cheese.
Spread 1/2 of the remaining cheese over the crust in the skillet leaving a 1/4-inch border around edge, to form a cheese moisture barrier as you might call it. Then spread the escarole filling over that, and then the remaining cheese on top. Roll out remaining dough into a 10-inch round (on a lightly floured board if it sticks). Transfer to pan, covering filling and tucking edge under bottom crust to form a flat top and completely enclose filling (stretch dough if necessary). Press edges to seal. Brush top with remaining tablespoon oil and bake until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.
Run a sharp thin knife around edge of pan. Invert a rack over pan and, wearing oven mitts and holding pan and rack firmly together, flip pizza onto rack. Turn pizza right side up and cool 15 minutes before serving. Slide pizza onto a cutting board and cut into wedges.
Cooks' notes:
If you can't find Italian Fontina, substitute domestic fontina or regular mozzarella and mix in 1/4 cup shredded parmesan. Or, use 1/4 cup soft goat cheese and 1/2 cup shredded parmesan to stir into escarole, and use 5 to 6 oz grated fontina for the top and bottom cheese layers (the cheese you spread on the crust first, and the cheese you top the escarole with).
Makes 4 (main course) servings.
9. What Can I grow now? I am
writing this in mid May. Tomatoes will not go out until next week.
However, I am already thinking of how much space will be free in mid summer when
I want to put in fall crops. How much space will I have after I harvest
garlic? Will the bush beans be done so I can plant escarole &
radicchio? If not, where can I find some space for them. Some good
crops to consider for mid summer planting for those of us in the north
include: savoy cabbage, escarole, radicchio & green chicory like
pugliese, the purple or green cauliflowers from Sicily (the purple one has great
color in the fall); fennel; frilly endive; and kale. If you live in the
North, you want to be planting them sometime from early July on; further
south you can plant even later and those of you folks who live in frost free (or
frost infrequent) areas can do them just about anytime.
10. Padron Pepper. Padron pepper, the famous tapas pepper from
Spain, is becoming increasingly popular. They are pretty easy to grow
and the information below on growing and cooking Padron is from one of the
masters of Padron peppers here in the United States, Adam Mackie is a farmer from New
Mexico. He sells at the Los Alamos Farmer's Market. I asked him to write up something about them and his report is
below.
Pimientos de Padron
Padron is a village in Galicia, near the pilgrimage site of Santiago de
Compostuela in NW Spain, and is the home of this tapas pepper that is wildly
popular throughout Spain. I first ate them in Barcelona, at the bar at Cal
Pep.
Start the seeds like any Capsicum, in late March or early April, indoors.
I sow them in rows in flats and set them on heat mats until they germinate.
Pot up to 2" pots when they have some leaves, and plant them out after
frost. For me that is the very end of May or early June. I use 100'
beds
3' wide, and each bed takes about 150 plants in a zig zag pattern (it makes
picking easier)18" apart in both directions. Plant them a little
deeperthan they grew in the pot. The stems are brittle and may break in
the wind.
Here in the mountains of New Mexico the nights may still not be above forty and
a bit through June, so I do not expect much if any fruit until the end
of July or early August, but then they produce well until frost. I will
pick each of my 500 odd plants at least once a week for market. Take the
peppers before they are larger than a little finger. The seeds should be
very soft and the core undeveloped. Keep them picked. Toss the
larger
peppers to your chickens, they do not taste good.
At market each week I demonstrate how to cook them and offer samples. The
key is a searing but not smoking hot skillet. Add a teaspoon of olive oil,
and a handful of whole peppers, in a single layer so they can move as you shake
the pan. Shake the pan as they cook. Keep the heat brisk, they must
sizzle not stew. A customer from Mexico told me this style of cooking is
called toreado, because the movement of your hand is like that of a toreador
teasing a bull. It describes it well. Watch the peppers closely, and you
will see them start to brown in spots, not blacken. I know when they are
done because they puff up like little balloons and lose their wrinkles. Sprinkle
with a pinch of sea salt (only sea salt, nothing but sea salt) and
serve at once. Your guests should already be seated, with a cold beer.
Pick them up by the stalk, and bite off the whole pepper. Like shrimp tail
eaters, some eat the stalk too. The peppers will all be tender (you picked
them small, right?) and flavorful. Now and again one will be hot enough to
get your attention, but it is a flash, not an inferno. It is part of the
fun. If you are not convinced, try cooking jalapenos the same way.
They have a monotone slightly bitter flavor, and a persistent heat. No fun
at
all. Done right these are habit forming. My customers come back each
week for a large bag, and some ship them to their friends all over the country.
There are only two other commercial growers I know of in the US, Andy Griffin of
Mariquita Farm (California), and Bob McClendon in Phoenix. He
first tasted the peppers at my market stall in Santa Fe.
If you just cannot take any heat, the Japanese pepper "Shishito" is
similar but generally milder. The seed is as hard to find as the Padron.
Good
luck.
Adam Mackie
Talon de Gato Farm, Dixon, NM.
On the left is a picture of Adam frying up some peppers at the Los Alamos Farmers Market in
Los Alamos, NM; on the right are some of his freshly picked padron.
11. Varieties for 2007. I am thinking about varieties for 2007 and
welcome your suggestions. Many of the new varieties I have taken on the past few
years are the result of customer suggestions. If you have experience
with a variety you found in Italy and think it is something that is really good,
let me know about it. I will look around for a source. Give me as
much information as you can.
12. If you received this newsletter and you do not want to be on the subscription list, just click on the unsubscribe link below. http://www.growitalian.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=list&l=GrowItalian
Good growing. As always, may your garden be woodchuck and deer free.
Bill McKay