Salad Table

2012 Spring Garden Begins

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Fig tree cuttings and salad table

The Spring gardening season began this weekend in our garden plot. My husband did most of the work since I started back to full-time work outside the home a few weeks ago.  My husband pruned the fig tree, prepare the soil in our salad table, cleaned 45 small containers and planted pepper, tomato and eggplant seeds in the containers.

I enjoyed watching his gardener heart at work.  Only a true gardener would…..

1.  Wrap some fig tree cuttings with moist paper towels, bundle them in a plastic bag and place them in a warm spot on top of the refrigerator.  He has high hopes of starting more fig trees.

2. Give some fig tree cuttings to neighbors who also like to garden.

3.  Turn and work together our smelly kitchen compost and seed starting mix with bare hands and a smile.

4. Create a mini greenhouse in our basement with sawhorses, plastic drop cloth and a small space heater.  Our newly planted seeds are warm and cozy under the plastic blanket tent with warm air circulating around them.

Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart.  ~Russell Page

The Greens Mystery Solved

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This summer, my husband brought home a surprise for me.   Not a bouquet of flowers, but some brown wilted plants in moist paper towels.  He knows I prefer plants over cut flowers.   The plants were starter greens from his co-worker.   I planted them in our salad table.  I assumed the plants were romaine and green leaf lettuce because one had smooth broad leaves and the other had curly thin leaves.   When the plants reached mound size, I questioned their identity.  The leaves felt tough and tasted bitter.   My husband told me it was endive.   A quick search through gardening books and the internet solved my greens mystery.   It was escarole and curly endive, something I never grew or cooked before.

Highlights of what I learned about endive:  1.  Curly endive has the frilly leaves and Batavian endive or escarole has broad leaves.  2.  Endive can grow in winter and is less bitter when grown in cooler weather.  3. Blanching endive can reduce bitterness. Curly endive is blanched by covering it with a porous pot.  Escarole  is blanched by wrapping it with string so the outer leaves will block light from inner leaves.  4.   Endive is  used in a lot in Italian cooking including soups and saute.  5.  Endive is high in vitamin A,B,C and contains Calcium and Iron .

I wrapped my escarole plants with string to blanch the inner leaves hoping they will be less bitter.  I plan to make Escarole Bean Soup and Curly Endive and Bean Soup with my hearty mystery greens.    Do you have any mysteries growing in your garden?

Growing in Our Mini Plot

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Mini Plot Salad Table Made by My Husband

My husband built a salad table one Saturday afternoon this past spring.  He followed the plans for the Salad Table from the Grow It Eat It Network.  He built it from wood piled in our garage.   After he completed it,  we had a little more space in our garage and a mini plot on our deck.  A variety of crops grew in our salad table this year.  In early summer,  swiss chard, romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce and arugula grew in it.   My son helped me pick  the tender leaves.  The table is the perfect height for him to reach and pick without bending over or standing on his toes.   We ate lots of mixed salads and swiss chard this summer. I sautéed the swiss chard in olive oil with garlic, salt  and pepper then tossed with pasta.  Swiss chard is good in minestrone soup, too.

Wild Fennel

The fall crops are now growing in the salad table.  Recently, this wild fennel shoot popped up unexpectedly.  I learned that wild fennel can be an  invasive plant.  It does not have the celery-like stem of sweet fennel.  Its delicate leaves have a strong anise  or licorice flavor.   Clippings of fennel leaves in a salad are a happy surprise to taste buds.  Along with the wild fennel there is spinach, radishes and two mystery greens growing in the table.   The mystery greens are transplants from my husband’s coworker.   Our mini plot’s first growing season was a success.  It grew some gregarious greens!