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Yes, that is indeed the name of these blue climbers. I wasn’t sure when asked before but just reconfirmed. Ipomoea purpurea or something close.
For some reason they waited until the fall to unfold their big blue blossoms. Perhaps didn’t want to compete with the summer skies?  
Let them eat kale! Is that what Marie Antoinette’s real programme was for fixing the world? And an unfortunate hiccup made it sound like “cake” leading to all sorts of misunderstandings? Alright, alright I make joke… But seriously, how many times have you heard lately that kale is a new miracle-food? It has been a staple of German cuisine for ages, braised with bacon, onions and/or ham (see Grünkohlessen) – delicious! — but now it has become ubiquitous. There are even kale smoothies… Is there literally no wrong way to eat it? I can think of at least 2 such ways, both found at your local WholeFoods. One is the tasteless and unchewable version presented in the prepared foods section as “steamed” or “wilted” kale, and the other manifests itself in the magnificent assortment of kale chips which are, I’m sure, delicious but for some reason all cost $8.99 a pack… Unless kale is subject to the New York City cigarette tax, I cannot find a good explanation for this price! Alright, now I joked and I ranted — and am finally ready to move on to the essence of this post. My latest favorite way to eat . . . CONTINUE READING → Raw Kale, Carrot & Kohlrabi Salad  2 comments - (Comments are closed)  kale, leafy greens, salad, the feral chef  carrots, kale, kohlrabi, raw, salad, vegan, vegetarian 
White Halloween? Yes, it snowed yesterday in New York! But not at all in a magical Christmas way… Here’s a glimpse of what we had to deal with pretty much all day long. According to a city official, the last time New York had a such an early snowfall was 140 years ago, when in 1879 “the earliest accumulation of at least one inch of snow in Central Park” occurred on November 1st (Read more in this NYT article). The situation upstate, predictably, was even more severe. According to my sources, there was snow in the garden already on Friday, and yesterday the ground was covered by 16 inches of it. Needless to say, I’m very happy that I did my garlic planting last weekend. Why was I doing it in October anyway? You see, garlic is a biennial plant, which means it takes 2 years to mature. If you planted a garlic seed in the spring, it would grow into a single little bulb — not a cluster of cloves that we’re used to buying in the market – by the end of the year. Over the winter that bulb would split into individual cloves that . . . CONTINUE READING → Garlic & Halloween Snow On Friday we were due for our bi-weekly garden visitation. However, James had to travel to California; so, I drove upstate by myself. With several How Stuff Works podcasts entertaining my curious mind and with the Taconic wowing my weary eyes with foliage landscapes at every turn, it turned out to be a lovely drive. With green rapidly fading from the scene, the garden still had a couple of green surprises for me: the last batch of green tomatoes, string beans, the relentless shishito peppers, 2 radishes and even 3 cucumbers! (Which brings the total number of cucumbers I harvested this year to 5. Ok, maybe to 10…)
Generally, I don’t allow myself to feel proud that often – but yesterday I did. And here is the reason:
This is what you might call a perfect carrot — I immediately thought of Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh and his garden — long, straight, thick, and totally blemish-free. Full of excitement, I ran to James to ask him to take a photo of me with my new best friend.
James was just as fascinated by the giant orange tuber as I was and insisted that Carrot and I pose for a whole series of silhouettes.
7 comments - (Comments are closed) baking, carrots, salad, the feral chef, tubers, vegetabilia atomic red, carrots, deep beds, harvest, Japanese, kale, kohlrabi, pie, pride, salad, salmon, tubers It is that magical time of the year when everything turns orange. The air itself must be tinted — just look at this photo. We don’t get to observe the setting sun directly from our windows but its bright orange reflected light provides some truly dramatic lighting for Midtown skyscrapers in the fall.
Where have all the flowers gone? – you might ask this New York’s leading florist… Well, obviously, they have all turned into pumpkins.
4 comments - (Comments are closed) animalia, deer, flowers, insects, pretty pixels, pumpkins, vegetabilia bumblebees, Fall, marigolds, nasturtiums, orange, pumpkins, sunset I planted them kind of late (mid-July) and kind of ferally (just a few seeds here and there on an undeveloped part of the slope), and still they grew!
They aren’t gigantic, these butternut squashes of mine — some are rather petite, to be honest. But I’m still pretty impressed with the harvest. I picked almost all of them, except for the tiniest/greenest ones, because it’s getting too rainy and they will otherwise rot. Or get eaten by one of my furry competitors. Lined up on the counter, they looked very cute, sort of like Russian nesting dolls that haven’t been painted yet… A new Halloween tradition, perhaps? — Instead of carving pumpkins, make some Matryoshkas out of butternut squash? The photo below came out overexposed and i really liked the effect, so I’m posting it too. Although the first one is true to color.
Favorite butternut squash recipes, please? 8 comments - (Comments are closed) butternut, pretty pixels, squash, vegetabilia butternut, matryoshka, nesting dolls, photos, squash Last time I lamented that half of my rainbow chard was consumed by an unknown wild beast. Guess what: yesterday, while we were either sleeping or touring the County Fair at the neighboring Hancock Shaker Village (which was great and I’ll post a photo report shortly), the intruder(s) returned and cleaned out the rest.
Comments are closed animalia, chard, deer, leafy greens, pests, vegetabilia chard, deer, Irish Spring, rainbow, soap, who's ruining my life, zoo
Main item on the agenda — harvesting the rest of the potatoes — proved unattainable today due to heavy precipitation, and therefore I took to the internets to celebrate the Atumnal Equinox and embrace the spirit of the Eleusinian Mysteries in a less muddy fashion. Before retreating to cyberspace, I only had a few rain-free minutes to quickly inspect the garden. What I found (in addition to a few more tomatoes and quite a few butternut squashes) was a really disturbing crime scene!!! Someone ate half of my rainbow chard and sorrel! But wait, the most mysterious discovery was waiting for me at the bottom of the garden: a medium-size beet, pulled out of the ground, dragged downhill a few yards from its original location and left for . . . CONTINUE READING → Autumnal Equinox and a Not-So-Eleusinian Mystery Comments are closed animalia, harvest, hortus2culture, pests, sorrel astronomy, Autumn, beets, Demeter, earth, Eleusinian Mysteries, Equinox, Fall, Greek mythology, Persephone, sorrel, space How much do I love potatoes? Just look at this happy punim. They’d be on top of my desert island foods list, any time.
If you let them ripen, you can, theoretically, use . . . CONTINUE READING → Potatoes, mon amour 4 comments - (Comments are closed) animalia, feral trivia, potatoes, tubers, Uncategorized, vegetabilia desert island foods, earthworms, feral, harvest, potatoes, toads, tubers, zoo |
 
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I spent some time on Friday afternoon cleaning up in the garden. It gets dark around 6 now, so I didn’t have that much time. The dusk’s sudden advance interrupted my activities; I raised my eyes from wilted tomato plants I was pulling out of the ground and suddenly saw a gleaming beam of red light shooting out from the woods. It looked almost like the tail of a meteor — but, in fact, it was the tail of a rainbow. 
In the morning I thought to myself: Wait, I forgot to include carrots in my previous Orange post! What a scandal! But then I unearthed this specimen and was happy about this oversight. In my opinion, this carrot fully deserves its own post.
Which turned into an entire photo shoot. Have I missed my calling as a carrot model?
Last year I, too, planted some pumpkins and was very excited about cooking all kinds of stuff with them. They grew big and pretty but turned out to be completely inedible. So, this year I decided not to plant any; yet, this one somehow grew on its own!
And I’m very happy it did. First of all, it proves that my feral gardening method works. And secondly, even though it isn’t large enough to turn into a carriage or round enough to be carved into a jack-o-lantern, it 
We still don’t know who did it but judging by dental imprints (and occasional hoof prints around the garden), I suspect the deer.
It might be time for a fresh bar of Irish Spring soap! (Last year, local professional gardeners recommended hanging a bar of fragrant soap as an effective deer deterrent. You’re supposed to hang it on a string, unpacked, in the box. According to them, deer have a special aversion to Irish Spring brand, for some reason…) The old one that’s been hanging there for over a year has, evidently, worn off.
Here’s the same bed of my beautiful and delicious rainbow chard back in 
As Persephone (or Proserpina, as she is known to the Romans) made her upsetting but carefully negotiated (six pomegranate seeds and all) return to Hades today, following the Autumnal Equinox and accompanied by the pouring-rain tears of her mother Demeter (who cried a lot in New York today), I made my return to the garden, after another two-week-long absence.
And that’s why I saved the best for last. I’m talking about the latest photo quiz, of course. Those green cherry-sized tomato-like berries, as correctly identified by both Kristik and Husband, are the proper fruit of the potato plant. Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) and tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) are basically brothers (or sisters); so, if you confused them in the quiz, it was for a good reason. Just make sure not to confuse them in real life: potato berries, according to my sources, are poisonous and contain toxic compounds glycoalkaloids, that affect the nervous system and can cause weakness and confusion. (Wait, am I sure I haven’t been eating them? Because that would explain a lot…) These toxins are also present in other nightshades, like tomato and eggplant, especially in their foliage, and also in the potato tubers that have turned green due to photosynthesis. Wikipedia assures, however, that potato poisoning is quite a rare occurrence.
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