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Seeds from Italy News
Vol 2, # 3. September 2002
We publish four times a year 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.
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. 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. There are some duplicates (typically if you requested a catalog, then ordered). I made some efforts at cleaning it up and should have got rid of most of the duplicates (and triplicates in some cases)
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.
Contents
1. What is new
2. Price Changes
3. Win an Italian Garden
4. Endorsements
5. Growing Tips, chioggia beets, cima di rape
6. Summer Trials: tomatoes, pole beans, borlotto beans, cima di rape in the summer, growing onions from seed
7. Recipe-Grilled/roasted Tomato with cheese & basil
8. Looking for contributions
9. Web site of the Quarter
1. WHAT IS NEW FOR NEXT YEAR. (actually they will be in toward the end of September). I am bringing in another fifty or so varieties this year. New items include beans:
canellini, and two more shell beans-stregonata and signora della campagna, plus chick
peas(cece); a lot of new chicory including cutting chicory spadona, zuccherino di trieste and bionda foglie
as well as five new Franchi special selection radicchio. Also have a root chicory. We have another melon
(ananas, a casaba type), roma tomatoes, pascal celery, romanesco zucchini, Orlanda
valeriana, another eggplant, more herbs-anise, senape bianca; a light green chard; a round cucumber/melon; more flowers including sweet pea, stella alpina (edelweiss), and calendula, a couple of more lettuce, and finally a small (10 varieties) selection of certified organic seeds. May have mushroom spawn (4 varieties) if I can get them through the USDA. On the bad news front, looks like I will not be able to bring in garlic and fava beans: USDA rules make it so expensive to do that it makes no economic sense to even try.
2. PRICE CHANGES. For the past two years, I have sold all seeds at a single price, $2.50 even though some varieties cost twice as much as another. Effective with he new catalog (Early December or so), the price of some seeds will change and reflect more closely actual costs. Most seeds (85 %) will stay at the old price of $2.50. Beans & peas will rise to $2.65; the reason for this is they are incredibly expensive to ship from Italy. For example, 120 packs of peas costs the same to ship as do 240 basil or 360 tomatoes. Finally, Franchi Special Selection varieties and hybrids will rise to $2.95. The reason for this is that they cost me twice as much as do regular varieties and I am now carrying more and more of them. Finally, shipping & handling charges will change, again more accurately to reflect costs. Previously I had charged $1.50 S&H, no matter what the size of the order. I will be going to a tiered system again effective with the new catalog. Up to $15 will be $1.95; $15.01-$40. will be $2.95; $40.01 and up will be $3.95. The good news is that S&H will be the same price for Canadian customers since there really is not all that much difference in rates.
3. EARN/WIN AN ITALIAN GARDEN. Prize is ten packs of seeds: San Marzano tomato, Genovese basil, cultivated
arugula, parsley, all lettuce misticanza, Violetta Lunga eggplant, marconi bean, zucchini, romaine lettuce, and a corno di toro pepper. How do you do it. Simple. Send along the name, address and telephone number of a potential retail outlet for Franchi Seeds. If we get the outlet as a customer, you win. I promise that I will contact all recommendations.
This is a description of the ideal outlet. Large busy Italian market which sells both produce, meat, and things like oils, pasta, specialty items, etc. Small corner deli usually does not work. The other ideal outlet is a medium or large garden center that services an area where a lot of the customers are of Italian origin.
My own retail outlet area is New York, New Jersey, New England. There are also Franchi agents in California, the mid-west and probably Pennsylvania. However, even if your suggestion is outside of these areas send in your recommendation. I or other agents can sell in another area as long as there is no other Franchi agent.
4. WOODCHUCKS PREFER FRANCHI VEGETABLES FIVE TO ZERO.
Now I realize this is a bit of a left handed endorsement, but you have to take things as they come. You also need a bit of background to understand this. First, I live in a suburb of Boston in a two hundred year old farmhouse on an acre or so. The end of the property drops off steeply and this is followed by several hundred feet of woods-perfect woodchuck habitat. They live just in the woodline and have lots of lawn & garden to graze on. To date this year my little plot has been home for nine (now ten) woodchucks. That is probably a world record.
My garden area is fenced and I allow my tenant (the old farmhouse is huge and one wing is an apartment) a piece inside the fence. Unfortunately, she prefers seeds from a competitor in Maine.
As usual, I managed to hold off the woodchuck assaults until early July when the young chucks left their moms and moved out on their own (all of course came to my yard). The first chuck must have noticed the garden when he was munching my Franchi Sementi Dwarf Sunflowers which lined the fence. I can just hear him: "Mama
mia! Will you look at that! Zucchini, peas, beans, parsley and, can it be, broccoli di
calabrese? And look. This dope dug his fence down into the soil six inches, but forgot to do it at the gate." Five minutes later he was in and walked right past the tenant's Sierra Lettuce, sugar snap peas and chinese vegetables(all of these from a seed company in Maine) and went right to the the Broccoli Calabrese. Since he was small and had not much of an appetite (full of sunflowers) he left some intending to come back the next day. He never noticed the trap and went into exile. He later admitted that he never even saw the other lettuce and chinese cabbage.
However, before his departure he must have told his partner, chuck #2 about the bonanza behind the fence. #2 simply climbed over the fence. While he did sample the zucchini, he went right to the remains of the calabrese broccoli, finished that and the Purple Sicilian
Cauli. During a rigorous interrogation after capture, he admitted that the sicilian cauli was the most awesome food he had ever eaten. "I never even looked at that Sierra Lettuce", he said. He too went into exile.
The next day # 3 showed up. To big to climb, he simply worked on the fence until he broke through. Problem was broccoli was gone. Beautiful Purple Sicilian Cauli was gone. What next. Sierra Lettuce & chinese cabbage. No way he later confessed. "I smelled the Franchi misticanza and had eyes (and mouth) for nothing else. What a salad. Some nice soft misticanza (all lettuce mix) and misticanza Four Seasons for a little zip. Flavor it with some lovely Parsley of Napoli and you have the perfect light lunch. Problem was the Franchi vegetables were so good that I ate too much (would a woodchuck really say that) and was a bit careless and got caught. But it was worth it".
Two weeks later the broccoli had recovered and was nicely sending up side shoots. A new arrival (woodchuck # 4) climbed the fence and went right to the broccoli and munched it down to nothing. He too noted that he had gone right past the vegetables from 'the other seed company" and only had eyes for Franchi Sementi vegetables; since his eyes were busy with broccoli, he never noticed the trap and also went into exile.
So there you have it. Four out of four are satisfied Franchi Seed Customers.
Post Script - from mid August. # 5 showed up. What did he eat after he broke in. The fall crop of broccoli calabrese (great flavor, he noted. Never even looked at the crops grown from that seed company in
maine. Cabbage verza verona was quite nice, but not as good as the calabrese broccoli, he said.)
5. GROWING TIPS
CHIOGGIA BEETS These are probably the best tasting beets I have ever eaten and if you follow these tips, they will look as pretty as they taste. Plant seeds every two inches and thin to the strongest plant every four-six inches (beet seeds are actually fruit and will produce multiple seedlings). Space rows at 10-12 inches. You can also grow them fairly successfully from transplants for early beets in the spring. I put 2 seeds per cell (72 cell trays), thin to one and set them out when they are about five-six weeks old. Keep well watered. Here is the trick. When you weed, (I use a stirrup type hoe), drag some soil alongside the beet plants. Make sure the tops of the beets are covered with soil. If you do not do this, the top of the beet which is exposed to sunlight will get a bit "corky" looking. While this does nothing to flavor, it will change the color of the beet from that beautiful red/white stripes to kind of an off white. If you have cracking at the bottom of your beets, it is almost surely a boron deficiency in the soil. Beets are very sensitive to boron. You can get a soil test to check on this. The remedy is fairly simple. Just sprinkle a bit of borax soap in the area you plan to grow beets. Don't spread it over your entire garden, however. Some plants (beans for example) do not like lots of boron.
CIMA DI RAPE IN THE SUMMER. The usual advice is that you should only grow these in the spring and fall. However, I did a trial in mid-summer and had a very successful crop. This was, by the way, during the hottest month on record here in Massachusetts. Twenty something days over 90 F. See below in the summer trial results as to techniques used.
6. SUMMER TRIAL RESULTS.
Trial busts. The melon and winter squash trial was a disaster. A local farmer who who was growing the melons and squash reports that a herd of 12 deer visited the field where they were and the melons and squash are no more. The broccoli & sicilian cauli trial was also a disaster due to woodchucks, but it may be that a few of the broccoli will recover. More in the fall.
Tomatoes. Red Pear sel Franchi. This was the tomato standout. Huge red 'pear shaped' fruit weighing between 8 and 18 ounces. They had heavy ribbing. Some more pear shaped than others. Plants were huge and incredibly prolific; I would suspect somewhere on the order of twenty to twenty-five plus pounds per plant. They were also very early for such a large tomato; first ones ripened in about 70 days from set out. Contrast this with my brandywines which were probably 85-90 days. The only earlier tomato was the cuor di bue which began to bear ripe fruit in sixty or so days. Best of all, the Red Pear has a really great taste and texture. This will be a regular in the tomato patch.
Pole beans. Used the tripod system to grow supermarconi (green roma type), meraviglia di venezia (yellow roma type) and Yellow Anellino (curved). Planted 9-10 seeds around the base of each pole; beans were planted @ 25 May after the soil had warmed up well. thined to six. (This is too many; next year I would leave a maximum of four). By the end of July I could not see the poles, the beans were so thick. Picked the first beans
(supermarconi) around 4 August. As of this date (25 August) they are all producing very well. Supermarconi and meraviglia di venezia are interesting beans. They remain tender even when they get huge; I missed some in the thick foliage and did not pick them until they were 10-11 inches long. They were still tender with no strings. All are great producers with excellent taste. No problems with disease (and thankfully no bean beetles this year).
Borlotto bean vigvano. This is a bush borlotto bean. Planted toward the end of May, one bean every two inches in rows 12 inches apart. Good germination. Beans were ready to pick as fresh shell beans in sixty or so days; (cook them in water with some sage, let them cook and serve with a drizzle of nice olive oil) they were ready to pick as dry beans about 20 August (80 days). There was excellent production, and each pod held from five to eight creamy white beans with red mottling. Excellent taste.
Cima di Rape in the middle of the summer. Planted quarantina (40 day) and novantina (90 day). Both were planted on 11 July. Technique for quarantina was to broadcast seed attempting to get seeds 1-2 inches apart. Seeds were up in two days; harvest was on 8 & 11 August. Plants are small (8-10 inches with small heads & leaves and fairly thin stems. Taste was excellent. Using the broadcast technique did two things. First, it kept the soil under the plants cool (critical since the end of July and beginning of August had 20 something days with temps above 90F. Also kept the weeds down. Once the quarantina began to make heads, they quickly bolted. Technique is to harvest just as they are making heads.
Novantina was planted on 11 July in rows 12 inches apart with plants spaced at 4-5 inches. They germinated and grew quickly. Plants at maturity were 14-16 inches tall with huge leaves and rather small heads (this is not Andy Boy cima di rape). Stems were thick and tender. Excellent taste. Plants were ready to harvest by 20 August (40+ days!). A small percentage (5% bolted early, but most did fine during one of the hottest summers New England has experienced in many a year.
Moral of the story. Plant your rape whenever you want. Make small plantings every week or two and have a continual supply all summer.
ONIONS FROM SEED IN ZONE 5 & 6. The conventional wisdom in the north is to plant onion sets or grow your own transplants. That is still good advice, but it is possible to grow Franchi onions from seed. On april 20 I seeded barletta (small white pearl type onion) and on May 15th seeded Lunga di Firenza and Genovese onions. The barletta germinated very well (too well, in fact. I had them too close together) and made rapid growth. Was eating onions with the last of my peas in the beginning of July (you have not lived until you have eaten fresh peas
(provenzale), barletta onions and a bit of pancetta cooked together. The tiny barletta were not quite ready so they did not even have to be peeled; simply pinch off the root. They were finished growing by the end of July. All in all, they were very successful from seed.
Genovese and Lunga di Firenza were a bit less successful. Germination was spottier (it got quite hot and it was difficult to keep things moist), then it got very cool and damp in early June.) As of this date (26 August) growth is just about finished; onions are a bit small, but very tasty. Those that I had thinned enough to give them plenty of growing space grew to normal size. If I had my
rathers, I would probably have started these as transplants, simply because of the weed issue. However, they work reasonably well from seed.
Major problem with all of these was weeds. Keeping the beds weed free was a major task.
This fall I am doing a radicchio/chicory/escarole trial and a misticanza trial. More in the fall newsletter.
7. RECIPE. As usual, there is a story with the recipe. Tomatoes were ripening faster than I could eat them or give them away. My wife said, "why don't you roast some". So, I picked out two mid size (one pound) Franchi Red Pears, cut off the tops, removed a bit of the core, and added some fontina cheese, genovese basil and maybe a half T of olive oil. Roasted them for 20 minutes or so at 350. They were good, but nothing all that special. Then I thought what about the grill. Turned the grill on low, put the tomatoes in one of those grill pans (the ones with the high sides and small holes all over it), put them on the highest shelf and did them for 20-25 minutes or so. Those were amazing. Great taste & texture. Even my teenagers loved them and that is quite a compliment since their idea of a vegetable is the pickle on a Big Mac. Some other variations are: add some chopped black olives and some capers (amazing); substitute thin slices of parmesan reggiano cheese; add a few chopped anchovies and red pepper flakes. I think the key is the red pear tomatoes. Not too much water but real nice taste and texture.
8. LOOKING FOR CONTRIBUTORS TO THE NEWSLETTER. I would love it if some of you folks would write up your experiences growing & eating Franchi vegetables, herbs & flowers. First, it would save me some time. Secondly, it must be boring hearing about growing in the North. What about you folks with the 10 month or more growing seasons. If you do send in something, let me know if you want me to include your name and perhaps an email address.
9. WEBSITE OF THE QUARTER. If you are interested in Italian food and living, it is definitely worth checking out www.italiancookingandliving.com These are the folks who publish Cucina Italiana and Italian Cooking & Living magazines. Both of these, but especially Cucina Italiana are definitely worth a read. They also do an Italian cooking show. The site has a nice recipe archive, information on olive oils, wines, travel, etc. Very worthwhile.
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