Traditional Holiday Seasonings

Garden sage on the left, Biergarten sage on the right, both have the traditional flavor.

Ever wonder why we have a taste for certain flavors at different times of the year? For example, why do we look for foods like pot roast, baked turkey or boiled ham in winter? Why do foods like spicy chili, corned beef and cabbage, beef stew or chicken pot pie not appeal to us in the summer? The answer has a lot to do with our body’s metabolism. In warm weather we crave foods and flavors that help cool us. In winter, our cravings turn to foods that warm us and give us more fat - a bit like a bear before hibernating.

The herbs considered by many to be, traditional holidays seasonings include rosemary, thyme, savory and sage. Not surprisingly, those are all warming herbs, seasonings that not only give our body a warm feeling, but actually add a warming effect. Those seasonings were traditionally used with the heavy, fatty winter meats. Roast goose, a seriously greasy food, was traditionally seasoned with hyssop, winter savory, onion and thyme. Those herbs helped cut the greasy taste while still warming the meal.

The same holds true for pork. Back in the days when most people raised their own pigs and butchered, putting up pork loin, pork roast and bacon, all had more fat left on than you will find today. If you buy a pork roast now and it will be trimmed of most of the fat, but back in earlier days, people believed fat made flavor and left it on. Rosemary, thyme, savory, sage and hot peppers went into sausage, seasoned roasts and was used in mixes for curing the meat.

Our tradition and tastes for the traditional holiday dressing or stuffing, the seasoning in the gravy and in roast turkey, all come down to us from those olden days. Poultry seasoning, a must-have in the traditional dishes is a mixture of sage, thyme, rosemary and savory. Even though today the modern turkey isn’t fatty, our yearnings for seasoning are still there. What would a pan of baked turkey dressing be without sage? What a bland dish the turkey and gravy would be without the herb flavors.

Bed with several varieties of thyme.

Several years ago I chose to go to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. The meal was advertised as a, “traditional” family-style dinner. I love dressing, maybe as much as turkey, so imagine my surprise at my first taste of the dish. I almost spit. I don’t know where the restaurant chef was trained, but it isn’t traditional to have cilantro instead of sage in turkey dressing! I looked around the restaurant and saw that everyone else was leaving a pile of cilantro-seasoned dressing on their plate, too. No, the flavors we Ozarkers crave for the holidays is traditional sage, rosemary and thyme, just like our ancestors used.

Rosemary has a warming, robust flavor, perfect for winter dishes.

Winter Cold Frames

Swiss Chard grows well in a cold frame.

Ozarks Gardening

I grew up reading Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News magazines. As early as the late 1950s, my mother was composting kitchen scraps and garden debris, turning it into rich soil from the directions in Organic Gardening. I remember stories in both magazines about Helen and Scott Nearing, a couple who retired and moved to the Green Mountains of Vermont in 1932 to establish their self-sufficient farmstead. In the articles they wrote, they explained how they were able to grow vegetables the year around, even in the harsh Vermont's winters by using cold frames.

This is over a raised bed, 3 1/2 ft x 30 ft. long.

Eliot Coleman was another pioneer in the use of cold frames and wrote for the magazines I've listed. In 1968 he moved to moved to a farm in Maine, on land purchased from the Nearings. He used a simple hoop house made of bent pvc pipes, covered with 2 layers of plastic. You can see more of what Eliot promoted and his simple but effective methods here.

Over the years I have used the Nearing’s and Coleman's methods for growing winter produce by constructing simple cold frames in my own gardens. Our Ozarks climate is definitely milder than the mountains of Maine, and the methods are simple and even more productive.

The most simple cold frame I’ve used many times is a rectangle built of bales of straw. One bale laid on its side makes up one end and 3 bales laid the same way make up each side, 8 bales in all. I till up the space with a hoe, smooth the soil and plant rows of lettuce, spinach, even onion and radish seed. (Mustard greens, kale, lots of other greens grow well, too). Then I lay down a little loose straw for mulch over the seed bed and cover the cold frame bed with an old window. Some years I use a couple of layers of clear roll plastic and hold it down with scraps of wood.

On sunny, warm days I open the cold frame any time it’s above freezing. At night I pull the plastic or window cover over the top. Even in the dead of winter, when the ground is frozen and snow is piled up, I can go out to the cold frame, open it up and harvest greens and vegetables for the table. And the nice thing is, there are no bug pests in winter!

This year I’m using a somewhat different cold frame, more like Eliot Coleman's menthod. I used 8 ft. sections of 1 inch plastic pvc pipe, bent into hoops over a raised bed. The bed is 3 1/2 feet across and about 30 feet long. I braced the hoops with a single pipe at the top of the peak, held in place with duct tape, then covered the whole frame with 6 mil. clear plastic. Currently I have spinach, cilantro, 3 kinds of lettuce, carrots, onions and radishes growing. Using this method you can replant and grow vegetables all winter long, just like the Nearings did on their farmstead in Maine.

The bent-looking pipe in the foreground is intentional for the slope of the end of the cold frame.

This is a bit like Eliot Coleman's method except that I'm using a single layer of plastic rather than the double layer he used. Since I'm in the Ozarks and not in Maine, the extra insulation isn't needed. Rolled plastic has gotten somewhat expensive, too. I paid $68 for a roll of 100 x 16 ft plastic and about $2.50 each for the 8 ft lengths of 1 inch pvc pipe.

Ready made cold frame folds up and stores flat in the off-season.

Here's a read-made cold frame, above, I bought last year and have used it for 2 seasons. It's too small, but the nice thing is it easily comes apart and stores flat for the summer season. I can grow small amounts of greens without much work.

Plenty of greens, salads and onions all winter.

Green Tomato Pickles

This week I've been picking as much of the garden produce as I can before a killing frost comes. We've had 2 light frosts but even the basil plants haven't been hurt much. Yet. After a summer of drought and heat and low tomato and pepper production, those plants have gone into high gear, trying to catch up on production.

Adam, who I have written about here many times, left us with a fabulous fall garden. Too bad he didn't get to enjoy such lushness during the summer when he was farming the garden and selling at local farmers markets. (Adam left in mid September to work on a farm in Maryland for the winter; that farm sells at the DuPont Circle farmers market the year around).

Ten pints of fish house green tomato pickles.

I've spent the day today, putting up some of the excess produce. With all the green tomatoes, I wanted to use the smaller ones for fish house green tomato pickles. They're a favorite in the catfish restaurants in the South and it's a great way to use up some of the tomatoes. Josh plans on making green tomato mincemeat, too, for pies this winter.

Tomatoes ripening in the window.

The larger green tomatoes will simply stay on the kitchen windowsill where they will slowly ripen over the next couple of months. (I've used the wrap-in-newspaper method, which is a hassle, also the put-in-the-basement method, also a hassle to check every couple of days; on the windowsill, where I see the tomatoes every day, is the easiest and simplest and works just fine. Some years we have the last of our summer's ripe tomatoes on Christmas Day).

You can use green tomatoes in any recipe that calls for ripe tomatoes, too.

Here's the recipe in case you want to use up your green tomatoes:

Catfish-House Green Tomato Pickles

2 quarts quartered green tomatoes
2 cups chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped hot peppers
1/3 cup chopped sweet red bell peppers
2 cups sugar
3 Tablespoons salt
3 cups apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon yellow mustard seed

Combine ingredients in a large cooking pan and bring to a slow boil. Let simmer for about 5 minutes. Ladle into hot, sterile jars, wipe lip edge of jars, screw on hot, new jar rings and flats and lightly tighten. Place into a boiling water bath, with at least 1/2 inch of water above the jar lids. Bring to a boil and keep slowly boiling for 15 minutes (for pints). Remove and cool on a towel. Don't tinker with the lids, they will seal in a few minutes. Let cool overnight then label and store in the pantry. These are best after the flavors have matured, about 2 weeks or more.

Hot sauce with a kick, and green tomato salsa are from a single recipe. 

I also made a batch each of green tomato salsa and one of green tomato hot sauce. If you'd like the recipe for those, visit my recipes blog. Both are a combination of varieties of hot peppers and it's a tasty hot sauce with a real kick.

Planning a Different Kind of Garden Next Year

Lettuce is a crop that thrives in cool weather and does great in a cold frame - even in January!

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

Planning Now for Next Year’s Garden

I have gardened in the same spot for 32 years and in that time I have seen a constant warming of our summers. In 1979 when I planted my first garden here, the winters were colder, frost dates were earlier in the fall and later in the spring. Warmer zone crops, like figs, were only a dream. Not only can I now grow those (two figs for breakfast this morning), but muscadines, another warmer-climate fruit, are doing fine. Amaryllis and gladiolus bulbs once had to be dug, now I leave them in the ground the year around. Texas tarragon, once only an annual in my garden, now thrives as a hardy perennial. The same holds true for a good many tender, annual crops, that I now grow as established perennials.

This is one of my garden beds from August, 2011. Sad, really sad.

With the disappointing experience of this past summer fresh in my mind, the stinging heat that was too hot for tomatoes, peppers and eggplants to set fruit, the hot winds, the lack of moisture for nearly two months, and the hordes of insects that attacked every food crop, I’m making changes for next year. It didn’t matter what the crop was, or how much water we poured on the garden, there was a lull between the first of July and the end of August. No plant produced like it should have, most barely survived to be alive. The same was true for last year, as well.

What I’ve learned from this recent experience it’s likely we’ll continue having severe summers and disappointing gardens for some years ahead. With that in mind, I am planning for a very different garden next year. I will plant an early spring garden, some of it in waist-high cold frames (you can see photos on my garden blog). They’re cheap and easy to use. That provides an early season crop before bugs are a problem.

This simple cold frame is nothing more than 1/2 inch pvc pipe bent to support clear plastic.

I’ll still plant a few tomatoes and peppers, but not as my primary crop. Instead, I’ll plant more of those in late June rather than late April, and aim for a later summer crop. We have the best garden of this season right now, in October, with more lettuce, carrots, green beans, beets, squash and eggplant, better than anything we produced during the summer. Another good thing about planting a garden in mid to late August for fall crops, is you avoid a nearly all of the insect pests. Squash bugs, stink bugs, Japanese beetles and potato bugs, are past their cycles and the crops they attack are thriving now without bug problems.

This is early April and the coldframe is full of spinach and lettuce.

While it’s too late to plant a fall garden now in October, you can still plant things for spring. You can plant onion and leek seed now, lettuce, spinach and kale can still be planted and kept over with just a little protection like a sheet of clear plastic or a simple cold frame. It’s not too late for garlic and shallots, as well. Poppies, larkspur and cilantro can also be seeded into beds this month. Cover crops like buckwheat can be planted in the garden beds for winter, then plowed in next spring, adding fertility and organic matter.


You might enjoy my book, How to Grow and Use the Ten Most Popular Herbs, available from my website.
Happy gardening!

Better Gardening Next Year

Ozarks Gardening; Sep. 1, 2011
Jim Long

My cousin, Bonnie and husband, Ernie, who live in Seattle told me they are still waiting on their first ripe tomato of the season. It’s normal for the Pacific Northwest to have moderately cool summers, but generally they pick their first ripe tomatoes about the third week of July. Not this year, with daily temperatures staying in the low 70s.

This past week I made my annual trip to the Garden Writers Association conference, held this year in Indianapolis. The trade show is a large part of the event, along with lots of speakers and workshops about the business of writing. I was there promoting my book, How to Eat a Rose, in conjunction with the International Herb Association’s designation of the rose as the official Herb of the Year for 2012.

Josh Kirschenbaum with the Mighty 'Mato brand of grafted tomatoes.

At the conference I visited with Josh Kirschenbaum, the PR guy for Territorial Seed. They’re the seed company who introduced the Mighty 'Mato brand grafted tomato plants, with 2 different tomato varieties grafted onto one stem. He asked how the two plants he’d sent me back in May were doing. I admitted I hadn’t seen specific results, good or bad, since every bug in the Ozarks had attacked all one hundred of my tomato plants. And how there was just no control for the weeks of temperatures in the early one hundreds.

Josh had brought along tomatoes from Territorial’s trial gardens. They’d collected their first ripe tomatoes, near Portland, Oregon, on August 21. What he brought, which he described as the entire crop of ripe tomatoes to date (on 60 plants) could be piled into two cupped hands. The tomatoes were small, ping pong ball to golf ball size, and those were Better Boys! Like Seattle, Portland has been plagued with chilly days and even chillier nights and tomatoes don’t like that any more than ours have liked the heat.

The tomatoes produced, they just were dwarfed.

I visited my friends up near Osceola, Missouri a couple of weeks ago to check on their experiment with tomato grafting. As you know, tomatoes in Missouri or Arkansas, in mid August, should be over shoulder high and lopped over, hanging downward. You may recall their grafting experiment was with 2,000 grafted tomatoes, growing beside 4,000 non-grafted ones.

Big tomatoes off of little bitty plants.

My friends took me out to the field to see the tomatoes, saying I should prepare to be shocked. When we got there on the 4-wheeler, I admit I stood with my mouth hanging open like I’d been struck dumb-stupid. The scene before me were acres of tomato plants, no more than knee-high. Each plant was full of large 6 and 8 ounce tomatoes, about a bushel per plant, but the plants were dwarfed. They explained that every plant was that way, regardless of whether it was a hybrid or heirloom, grafted on not. The tomatoes had been irrigated regularly and all received the same fertilizer, but simply had not grown to full size. I inquired whether they could draw any conclusions about the grafted vs the non-grafted tomatoes and my friend, Lonnie said, “The one thing I’ve learned from this experiment, is that this was not the year to do experiments.” I think it’s a pretty good observation. Don’t judge your gardening talents by this year’s results, nothing was going our way this season, for anyone.

Better gardening next year!

Water Regularly to Keep Your Plants Alive

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

Water to Keep Your Plants Alive

My father had a theory about watering plants. He said that once you start watering plants in a dry season, they come to depend on it, therefore, he wouldn’t start. Of course he was right, once you start watering garden plants, they do start depending on you. But the alternative is to let your plants die, or wait so long to begin watering that they are so completely stressed they won’t recover.

Here are some suggestions for keeping your plants alive. With trees and shrubs you planted this spring (or even last fall), they need a minimum of 10 gallons of water a week, allowed to soak in slowly. It’s better if they have two 10 gallon buckets full a week, soaked in slowly. Don’t make the mistake of soaking them every day, too much water is almost as bad as not enough; the roots will sit there in the wet and not grow at all. If you paid out good money for the tree you planted back in the spring, then weekly watering to keep it alive is a good investment in a shade tree of the future.

With lawns, 3 waterings a week, about 2 hours each time, should keep the grass green. However some varieties of grass will go dormant in dry weather. Bermuda grass, for example, will survive the heat and drought and when it starts raining again, will commence growing again. Bluegrass or similar turf grass lawns, by contrast, need a constant supply of moisture, so it’s best to water those every other day.

Roses and tomatoes both do best if watered in early morning. If you are one of those folks who likes to take the garden hose and spray down your roses or tomatoes late in the afternoon, wetting down the plants and shooting a bit at the roots, then you are doing more harm than good. Both roses and tomato plants are prone to fungal problems, and fungus spores love a hot, wet environment. That method of watering insures you will have blackspot and mildew on your roses because the leaves stay wet overnight. It insures your tomatoes will develop wilt faster, and spread quicker, as well. A much safer and more efficient method is to use a soaker hose in your row of tomatoes and soak them for about an hour, twice each week. Or, use the garden hose without a nozzle, and soak around each tomato plant (or rose bush) for 2 minutes, move on to the next one then come back and do the first one again. Aim only at the root area, don’t soak the leaves. If you must use an overhead sprinkler, use it in the early morning so that the air and sunlight evaporates the moisture from the leaves quickly.

For herbs of most any kind, along with beans and carrots, they are less picky about how they receive water. Overhead sprinklers are fine, soaker hoses work well, too. But with peppers and eggplant, they also do best if watered early in the morning rather than late in the evening. Peppers, eggplants and tomatoes are all distant cousins and while peppers and eggplants don’t suffer from as many fungal problems as tomatoes, keeping their foliage dry when you water the roots is best.
The important thing is don’t use my father’s advice. He would let his garden plants suffer until they couldn’t be revived with water. The better method is to water your plants on a regular basis, not daily because the roots need to go a bit deeper. But 2 or 3 times each week, soak the roots of all your plants well and they will have a very good chance of making it through this persistent drought.

Click the “Follow this blog” button, and you will receive a notice each time a new column appears. Stay cool and keep your plants healthy.

Worst Garden Year!

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

“Worst Garden Year, Ever”

This week I was in upper Michigan, between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The temperatures should be fairly mild there, but instead, were in the mid-90s. Not nearly as bad as the 105 degrees we had in Taney County, MO the day I left, but still hot for those folks.

My reason for being there was to speak at the International Herb Association conference, which draws people from as far away as California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Florida and Texas. The big topic between events and in the evenings, was how difficult a garden year this is. For everyone. I kept hearing, “this is the worst garden year ever!”

Hearing people from across the country telling their garden woes, somehow eased a little of my own discouragement. This is a tough garden year, for everyone.

First, we had too much rain, too little sunshine and longer cool temperatures than are ideal. From the chilly, wet spring we went directly into heat, wind and drought. Plants in the spring didn’t put down deep roots due to the excess moisture. Then when the rains quit, plants suffered from too shallow roots, which in turn, stressed out the leaves and tops.

When plants struggle, like tomatoes, corn, kale and other crops have in these past few weeks, insect pests launch their attack. Insects can sense when a plant is under stress, and they start chewing.

This year we’ve been struggling with squash vine borers for the first time, coupled with cucumber beetles and squash bugs. Fortunately, Japanese beetles are fewer this year in our garden, due in part, I believe, to the Milky Spore Bacteria I’ve been applying spring and fall. It takes awhile for that to have an effect, but it seems to be doing its job.

We’re getting crops of tomatoes, beans, peppers and more, but not in the quantities we’d expect. When temperatures climb over 90 degrees, tomato plants start dropping their flowers instead of setting fruit. We have soaker hoses in most beds, lots of mulch on everything and using all the organic methods we can to keep plants alive and happy, but it’s hard to do anything about the intense heat.

So, if it’s any consolation to your gardening woes this summer, you’re not alone. Lots of us are in the same boat and gardens everywhere are struggling.

Here's what a friend told me he uses for squash vine borers and says it works pretty well:
When you see the hole at the base of the plant where the squash vine borer has entered, stick a crochet hook into the hole and pull out, and kill the borer. Then pile up soil around the wound on the squash stem. The squash will send out roots into the new soil above where the borer was, and the vine will be saved.

He also sprinkles several moth balls around the base of squash plants just as they begin to bloom. Evidently the moth that lays the egg of the borer doesn't like the smell of moth balls and avoids most of the squash!

Happy gardening!