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Seeds from Italy News
Vol 1, # 2. October 2001
We publish four times a year and include information on all aspects of Italian vegetables: selecting, growing, harvesting and storing and cooking. We would be happy to receive and if space permits, publish your experiences in these areas.
This newsletter is sent out to all people who purchased seeds from Seeds from Italy as well as anyone who requested a catalog and included their email address. I still am having problems with the automatic
subscription/unsubscription, so if you want to unsubscribe, simply send me an email: send to
bmckay@growitalian.com in the subject line just put unsubscribe. Conversely, if someone you know wishes to subscribe, do the same but put subscribe in the subject line.
Contents of Vol 1, # 2
1. What is new
2. Summer Trials: tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula, beans
3. Some New (and not so new) Italian Cookbooks
4. Growing basics: garlic
5. Saving seeds
1. What's new. We are getting ready for next years growing season and plan on bringing in another forty or so varieties to supplement the 125 varieties we already carry. The new selections will include more zucchini, beans, tomatoes, another basil, more herbs, flowers, and a bunch of other less common varieties. Details will be in the next newsletter; the new arrivals should be up on the web site by the beginning of November when they will arrive from Italy.
Christmas Packs. We have put together a "christmas pack" which would make a great gift for a gardening friend. There are two different packs: an essential Italian herb & cutting garden
(genovese basil, parsley, cultivated arugula & a misticanza (mesclun) mix, either all lettuce or lettuce and radicchio. The second pack is an essential Italian garden mix: a zucchini, a roma type bean, a tomato, and a romaine lettuce. These come packed in an clear acrylic box (so you can see every pack) with a ribbon. Included in each pack is a sheet with growing instructions and another sheet with recipes. The cost of either gift pack is $10.49 each; as usual, shipping and handling is $1.50 no matter how many you order. These should be up on the web site by October 9th. We can also mail one off to someone you designate and include a card with your name on it and whatever greeting you may choose. Shipping and handling would be $1.50 for each separate address.
2.Unscientific Trial Results
Tomatoes. Grew Cuor di bue, Costuluto Fiorintino and Pantano Romanesco. All were earlier than I thought they would be (70-75 days). The Cuor di
bue, like all oxheart types the foliage is very whispy; they are the perfect tomato to grow on the teepee type trellis Italians tend to use (see Vol 1, # 1 for a description of this method of staking). The cuor di bue is an interesting tomato; most are shaped like an
oxheart, but some are round. They tended to be 8-12 ounces with a few smaller. Nice taste for fresh eating or in a salad, but they are nice to cook also. They are really prolific and produce over a long season; mine are still producing in the garden as of 3 October. Italians like their tomatoes on the green side and these are really tasty in a salad when the color still has some green showing. Pantano Romanesco did not have the green shoulders shown in the seed pack photo. They were 10-12 ounce beef steak types. Very tasty and reasonably early. Costuluto Fiorintino's are a deep red with considerable ribbing. The tomatoes do not have a lot of water in them and they tend to be a bit soft when really red ripe. They are ok for fresh eating, but really are perfect for cooking. Their texture allows you to cook them only for a few minutes so you maintain the fresh tomato taste, yet they pretty much break down so that your sauce can be absorbed by the pasta.
Quick tomato sauce with costuluto fiorintino tomatoes. Boil some water and pour it over a couple of pounds (4-5) tomatoes. Let them sit for a minute, pour off the water, cut out the core of the tomato and peel off the skin. Squish the tomatoes over a colander and let them drain for a few minutes. Put some water for pasta on. When boiling, add some penne, or some other short pasta (or a long pasta if you like). In another pan, put in some good olive oil and 1-2 cloves of garlic sliced. Let the garlic cook a bit until it begins to turn color. Remove the garlic, add the tomatoes. Add @ 1/2 cup diced (or torn up) genovese basil and @ 1/2 cup chopped parsley. Cook a few minutes. When the pasta is @ 3/4 done, drain (reserve @ 1/2 cup water) and add to the sauce. Turn up the heat and finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. Add salt & pepper and serve. No need for cheese, although you could use some if you want.
Beans. Grew Brittle Beurre (yellow bush french type), Boby Bianco (green bush french type); romano and Vigevano borlotto bean. The bush beans are all @ 55 days and very good producers. Pick when small for best taste. Beans produced for about two weeks; actually I could have let them go longer but I had been planting every two weeks so I had a steady harvest all summer. Really nice bean taste on all of them. You need to pick at least every two days; if the beans are allowed to get too big, they get a bit tough(like all French types); the opposite side of the coin is that when picked at the right stage, these are probably the best bean you will ever eat. Not sure if I had a favorite. The first ones ready were the romano beans and I thought they were the best; then I ate the Boby Biancos and thought they were the best.
Simple three bean salad. Pick some of all three beans. Cut off the tips, but leave whole. Cook in water until about 3/4 done, remove from heat and run under cold water to stop the cooking. Add some good olive oil and good red wine or balsamic vinegar. Put in the refridgerator for a couple of hours. Take out and let get to room temperature before serving.
Great taste, very pretty color contrasts.
Borlotti Beans. Grew Vigevano bush borlotto bean. Grow them just like a regular bush bean. One seed every two inches with rows sixteen inches apart once the soil has warmed up well (perhaps the same time you put out tomatoes or perhaps a week earlier). Keep well watered until they germinate. Weed with a stirrup type hoe when the first weeds emerge and perhaps two weeks later; that will take care of any weed problems. They are ready to pick as fresh shell beans in about 70 days (pick them when the pods are plump, but still show some green streaks along with the red streaking). For storage type bean, wait until the pods have turned completely red & white and then the color begins to fade. Pick, shell and store.
Recipe. Like all good Italian food, this recipe is based on two factors: great tasting fresh ingredients cooked simply. Pick some beans at the fresh ripe state above and shell (they are a bit of a chore to shell at this stage but worth it). Get six or eight sage leaves, put in a pan with some water and the shelled beans and cook until soft (ten minutes or more, depending on the state you picked them). Let cool. Drain. Drizzle with some good olive oil, add some salt and pepper and enjoy.
Arugula. Grew both cultivated and wild arugula. Prepare a small patch (1-2 feet X 1-2 feet as if you were planning to seed a lawn. Thinly scatter seed (try and get a seed every inch, but dont overly fixate on spacing. Just put some seed in your hand and scatter it. Draw a rake over the bed lightly; tamp down the soil. Water it once or twice a day until it germinates (3-4 days usually). Make plantings every 2-3 weeks. The cultivated arugula will be ready in about 35 days, the wild in about 50 days. The cultivated arugula is larger whereas the wild has very thin and heavily lobed leaves and has a sharper taste. Both grew well throughout the spring and summer and both were remarkably resistant to bolting. In fact, in one batch I grew too much cultivated
arugula. I left it to see how long it would take before it flowered and went to seed. The patch I put out in early July is still going strong (about 25% has gone to seed); it tastes a bit sharp, but is still ok.
Try arugula with focaccia bread (homemade pizza is even better if you are up for making the dough). Get some focaccia and cut it in slices (freeze what you do not plan to use). Put some arugula on a piece, grate some nice cheese on top, drizzle a bit of olive oil on top, and bake at 450 or so until the cheese melts.
Cucumbers. Grew Tortarello Abruzzo, Bianco Primaticcio and Beth Alpha (I will be carrying that next year). All were grown on a trellis, although you could grow them on the ground if you wanted. The Tortarello is actually a cucumber/melon, kind of like an Armenian cucumber. They run about 10-12 inches long, when small have a lot of fuzzy stuff that looks like hair but this goes away when mature, and are very sweet and firm. They take about 75-80 days to begin producing but the wait is worth it. The Bianco Primaticcio is about five inches long and ready in 60 or so days. It is incredibly prolific and seems to have some resistance to diseases spread by cucumber beetles (which fortunately stayed away this year). The cukes are excellent in salad and make a really nice pickle. Pick them when they still show a trace of green; if you wait until it is completely white, the seed cavity may be a bit too large for many peoples taste. However, if you are going to pickle them, let them turn completely white. The Beth Appha is probably my favorite. It is a middle east type cuke and like all of that type is very early, sweet, no trace of bitterness, prolific, and produces over a long season (they are still going in the garden even though one of the winter squash overran the cucumber trellis). The cucumber is about six inches long when it should be picked, althought they will get larger if you let them (don't).
3. Some New (and not so new) Italian Cookbooks. Three of these are new; the other two are just a lot of fun. All have recipes from the various regions of Italy and all have some really outstanding vegetable recipes. All of these should be available at your local libraries.
Pino Luongo, A Tuscan in the Kitchen: Recipes and Tales from my Home. 1998. The stories are worth the price of the book. There are some great suggestions for using greens and a really nice recipe for Tuscan bread salad.
Susan H. Loomis, Italian Farmhouse Cookbook, NY, WOrkman, 2000. Really nice regional recipes, great stories about the people who supplied the recipes. She has outstanding information on different Italian ingredients. When, for example, can something be labeled Parmigiano reggiano cheese; types of olive oils; etc. This might be one of my favorite Italian Cookbooks.
Biba Caggiano. Biba's Taste of Italy: Recipes from the Homes, Trattorre, and Restaurants of
Emilia-Romagna. WIlliam Morris. 2001. She was born here and has some great regional recipes. Nice photographs and great stories also.
Mary Ann Esposito. Ciao Italia - Bringing Italy Home: Regional Recipes, Flavors, and Traditions as seed on the Public Television Series Ciao Italia. St Martins
PRess. 2001. Recipes from four or five regions including Lazio (rome),
Campagna, Tuscany (I think). Her description of the christmas 'tort' made with escarole had me remembering Christmas Eve as a child (half of me is Italian). Nice recipes and interesting discussion on the food of the regions.
Giuliano Bugialle, Bugialli's Italy; Traditional Recipes from the Regions of Italy, Wm Morrison, 1998. Regional recipes by one of the masters of ITalian cooking. Great vegetable and bean recipes.
4. Growing basics: garlic Garlic is really easy to grow and home grown garlic tastes infinitely better than the supermarket variety.
Type garlic to grow. If you live in a area with a long cold winter & wet cool spring
(eg, zones four, five, six and perhaps seven), stick with hardneck type garlics
(rocambole, purple stripe or porcelain types). If you live in an area with warm winters, little or no spring, then stick with soft neck
garlics-(artichoke types which are the kind you usually find in the supermarket) and
silverskin. Otherwise the general technique is the same.
Preparation of area. You are probably better off using raised beds (nothing fancy-just prepare a three foot wide bed, rake some extra soil on the bed and voila, instand raised bed). Add some well composted manure if you have some, otherwise spread a few handfuls of 5-10-5 fertilizer for every foot of bed. In the north, plant after the first frost but before the ground freezes-here in Massachusetts that is some time around the end of October. You want the garlic to start making roots, but you do not want it to really start growing and send up a shoot. In the south with softneck garlic, you can plant as late at the end of December, but you are probably better of planting around the beginning of November or perhaps a bit earlier.
Planting. If you have full heads of garlic, carefully separate the cloves. Plant one every six inches in your bed (make about a two inch deep
hole-e.g., index finger) and drop in the clove. Water and cover with a good mulch. My favorite is a mixture of ground up leaves and grass clippings. Put at least three inches of mulch on top. The mulch is critical and will do several things. In the fall it will keep the ground moist and warm (in the north); in the south it will help keep things moist and cool). The garlic will make roots, but will not send up a shoot. The mulch will also keep down weeds in the spring. If you do it right, you might have to pull one or two weeds from an entire bed of garlic. Once you have your mulch spread, leave everything over the winter.
SPring. In the spring, you will get shoots poking throught the mulch in early spring, usually about the time you would plant peas. Fertilize again. Let your garlic grow. If the spring is dry, provide supplemental irrigation. With hardneck garlic in the North, the main shoot is going to curl and have a single seed at the tip. These are called
scapes. I always cut them off when they form, since I am convinced that you get larger cloves if you do this. In addition, the scapes are delicious braised in a bit of olive oil. In the North, your garlic will be ready sometime in late June or early July. It is ready when the lower leaves start to turn brown. Dig it up, store in a dry well vented place for several weeks to let it cure. Store permanantly in a cool dry place and do not let it freeze. Save some of the bulbs for planting next fall. Softneck garlic will be ready much earlier, perhaps as early as April. Dig and cure it the same way.
Sources of garlic. I have a small amount of rocambole type available for $4./half pound and $7 for a full pound. Shipping is $1.50. This is not from Italy, but rather is a garlic I have been growing for years. I plan to trial some garlic from Italy this year and if it works out, I plan to have it available next year. Johnnies Selected Seeds (they have a web site) is a good source for hardneck garlic, but there are a million places that sell garlic bulbs. If you are a northern gardener, dont try growing supermarket garlic. It probably will not work(but it might).
5. Saving seeds. By saving seeds I am not referring to the practice of harvesting seeds from vegetables you have grown and using them the next year. That is a subject for another newsletter. Here I am referring to extra seeds in a packet of seeds you may have purchased. If you purchased our seeds, you will probably have some extras since the quantities of seeds in a pack are quite generous. The two questions are (1) if I have seeds left over can I use them next year and (2) how do I store extra seeds.
With the exception of parsnip, most seeds will remain viable for several years at least if properly stored. Last year I started some 10 year old heirloom tomato seeds; I had about 35% germination. What is proper storage. This means avoid storing your seeds in a damp area and avoid extreme heat (don't leave them on the radiator). All of our Franchi seeds (except the legumes) are double packed, so with these simply close up the aluminum foil envelope. For any others just leave them in the packs. Store in a cool dry area. Dry is more important than cool. Some people put them inside a jar in the
refridgerator. I guess this would be better than just leaving them somewhere, but make sure any non gardening partner is ok with this.
If you are unsure whether the seeds are still viable, test them. Wet a paper towel. Put 10 or 20 seeds on the
towell, put the towel in a plastic bag and seal the bag. Leave it in a warm place for a week or whatever the period it is supposed to take for the particular seed to germinate. Open up the bag and count the number of seeds that germinated and figure out the percentage.
You can compare this to the minimum germination rate on the package. With our Franchi Seeds, the germination rate is on the back of the envelope
(ger. min. and %). You will also see a date on the back, for example 6.2004. That means the germination rate is guaranteed until that date. |