Wonderful Weeds

Stringing the words “wonderful” and “weeds” together in the same sentence will get you strange looks in agricultural circles. And frankly, we spend too much time and money around here trying to get rid of them. Still, weeds play a vital role in the health of the farm, springing up to cover bare soil, pulling nutrients up from far below ground.

The wonder of weeds is really that they set the stage for something else to come along and replace them; most of them only thrive where the soil has been disturbed, and different soils will spawn different kinds of weeds. In the greenhouses, where the soils have been intensively augmented with compost, the weeds are predominantly pigweed and lambsquarters, typical indicators of high fertility. Adjacent fields still sport plenty of buttonweed (that’s the one you see alongside all of the corn fields where the herbicides have just missed), but we are seeing more and more pigweed and lambsquarters as we loosen and enrich those soils. Looking at the differences in root structures can provide some insight into the unique suitability of each weed to its situation: buttonweed just goes straight down, looking for minerals that are absent in the topsoil; pigweed also has a substantial taproot, but puts more effort into sending roots throughout the top layer of soil, using what’s there.

We generally try to deal a deathblow to weeds before they get up to size, but we don’t panic if a few get ahead of us, as long as they do not negatively impact the crop. We figure that the weeds are just doing their job, and we can make good use of them by mowing and tilling them into the soil.

My favorite weeds are the perennials, like quackgrass and thistles. Although they are hard to control, I am continually amazed at their ability to survive and thrive through the worst we can throw at them. Both spread by sending roots under ground to a new location. Thistles go deep, typically ten to twelve inches, before spreading laterally. The roots are often spindly and weak; where they stop growing laterally and head for the surface, the shoots snap easily off from the main root where the plant stores its energy. (The trick to pulling thistles with your bare hands is to know that the thorns don’t grow in darkness—just move a little soil aside and grasp the roots.) Quackgrass spreads more shallowly, but I have seen the roots grow right through carrots and potatoes if left unchecked. On one occasion, I pulled up a single rhizome that was over six feet long! Now there’s a weed that knows how to move.

In Kim's Kitchen

We harvested these Carrots last week to keep them from rotting in the waterlogged soil. We’ve never seen so much mud in the packing shed!

After a summer’s absence, Bok Choi reappears this week. A type of Chinese cabbage, it is closely related to turnips. The broad stems have a nice crunch, and the tender leaves have a mild, mustard-y flavor.

Soy-Glazed Baby Bok Choi

2 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound baby bok choi, chopped 1 inch pieces
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon fresh ginger
1/4 cup onion, chopped
Glaze:
1 1/2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar

Toast the sesame seeds in a dry non-stick skillet to golden. Set aside. Add the olive oil to the skillet and let heat on medium high. When it's hot, add the bok choy. Let brown for 3 - 4 minutes. toss and cook a minute. Transfer to a platter. (While they're cooking, assemble the glaze ingredients in a small bowl.) Add the garlic, ginger and onion to the skillet, let cook 1 minute. Add the glaze ingredients and cook til just beginning to thicken, about 1 minute. Return the bok choy to the skillet, and cook for a minute or two. Return to the serving platter, top with sesame seeds. Serve immediately.

Flat, red Cipollini Onions have a more well-rounded onion flavor than your average onion. Onions have more than forty different sulfur compounds that make a distinctive onion flavor; cipollini have a more complex range than regular yellows or reds. We like to use them in places where we want to feature the onions, such as alongside a roast, or just roasted along with some rosemary sprigs. Sometimes we do this with the onions in their skins, sometimes we peel them first.

Our Round Red Tomatoes have really slowed down in the greenhouses, so we don’t have many to offer this week.

Sweet Peppers have come on in relative abundance. We eat a lot of these just standing out in the field. We don’t eat a lot of the smaller, hotter Jalapeno Peppers standing out in the field! Our jalapeno variety falls in the middle of the hotness range. You can make them less hot by stripping out the veins and seeds, or leave them in for a hotter flavor.

Fruit Salsa

This salsa can be made with nearly any fruit: peaches, nectarines, plums, or mangos and makes a nice sauce served with pork.

11/2 cups fruit, cut into small diced pieces ( last night we used plums and peaches)
1/2 fresh jalapeno, seeded and minced
1/4 cup minced red onion
1 tablespoon minced cilantro
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients, including salt and pepper to taste, in a medium bowl. let stand for 15 minutes to allow the flavors to blend.

The second crop of French Petite Green Beans looks like the nothing crazy ever happened with the weather around here, and they taste fantastic.

Potato Green Bean Salad

2 Tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
2 Tablespoon sesame oil
1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon grated ginger
1 small clove garlic, pressed
dash honey
1 tablespoon finely chopped sage
1/2 pound potatoes, quartered if large
3/4 pound green beans, trimmed

In a small bowl, whisk the tamari, sesame oil, vinegar, ginger, garlic, honey and parsley together. In a large pan of boiling salted water cook the potatoes until tender, Transfer the potatoes to a bowl and add the beans to the boiling water and cook until tender yet crisp about 2 minutes. Drain and pat dry. Add the beans, and dressing to the potatoes and toss Serve warm.

Like the carrots, this is the muddiest Edamame crop we have ever seen. So muddy, in fact, that we actually had to pressure wash the pods to get them clean. Just boil these in the pods for about five minutes, salt the pods, and squeeze the beans right into your mouth.

We know it’s September because Sage sales have picked up. Sage goes great with almost any savory dish, including beans and roasts, but I especially enjoy it with my morning eggs.

Farm News

We seriously considered canceling CSA boxes this week. It’s been pretty rough around here, with the weather and all, and we don’t have a whole great variety of stuff to offer, but during our Monday morning field walk we found a lot more stuff ready to harvest than we thought we would, so here we are again.

We finally made it back into the field on Saturday, and began spreading fall fertilizer, tilling ground, and planting cover crop seeds. The cover crops will suck up the nutrients from the fertilizer and make them available to the cash crops in the spring.