GRAFTING TOMATOES // the local food report

From the top, it looks like an ordinary tomato plant. But this is not your average Mountain Magic. The fruiting scion has been grafted onto disease resistant rootstock to make a super plant—a tomato resistant to soil borne diseases and late blight, but with glossy, round sweet fruit.

The plant belongs to our friend Joe Leghorn, lawyer by week, gardener by weekend. He's always trying out new things in his Orleans plot, and this year's project is perfect tomatoes. He read about grafting in the New York Times and The Atlantic—the practice is relatively new in the U.S., but has been taking off around the world since about 2011. The idea is the same as with grapes and apples—graft a plant with tasty fruit onto a hardy rootstock, and you get the best of both worlds. 

Joe ordered his rootstock seed from Johnny's, where depending on which kind you buy, a packet of 50 seeds sells for about $25. It's more expensive than regular seed, but based on the literature, it's worth it. Plants tend to produce 30 to 50 percent more fruit, and they start producing earlier. They also produce later, because they don't succumb to the host of diseases most tomato plants do by early fall. When Joe was getting started he read to expect a 75 percent attrition rate for a first timer, so he planted 96 rootstock plants. Instead, after grafting he had a 75 percent success rate, so he gave away his surplus seedlings to gardening friends around New England. In return, they're reporting to him on their success, and how the grafted varieties compare to the regular varieties in their gardens this season.

The grafting process itself is fairly simple. (There's a great tutorial from Johnny's over here.) You plant the seeds. You wait until the stems are about 2 millimeters in diameter. Then you cut the rootstock plant, cut the fruit plant, and use a plastic clip to hold the stems together. The critical period lasts about seven days, during which time the plants need to be kept very humid so that the vascular system of the upper plant doesn't try to draw too much water through the healing scar. If the plant lives through this time, you're in the clear. 

Joe says he picked up a few tips through trial and error—he learned to plant the rootstock and fruit plants at different times, because they grow at different rates but need to be the same size for grafting. He also says he lost about three weeks in his planting schedule from the project, so next year he'll start that much earlier. Finally, he learned to plant the scar of the plants above ground, because you want only the rootstock plant growing roots. 

He also found out you can graft eggplant seedlings onto disease resistant tomato rootstock, so that may be next year's experiment. In the meantime, he's eagerly awaiting the harvest. We'll check back in come August to see how the fruit turns out! Have you ever planted a grafted veggie plant?

CREAMY SPINACH & MUSHROOM ENCHILADAS // liz

Do you ever clip a recipe and then let months, maybe years, go by before you actually get around to making it? I'm afraid that's a specialty of mine. I clipped this one from a 2001 (yes, that's right) issue of Cooking Light and finally made it three days ago. It was so good we made it again last night, for our good friend Bob, who's visiting from Ohio. He liked it as much as we did—which is saying a lot, given that Bob is mostly a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. The recipe is easy, quick, and delicious—and eminently open to modification, which is yet another plus. It's also vegetarian, although it doesn't have to be. 

I was inspired to make it because of all the spinach we got with our first CSA pick-up last week. I was also looking for another vehicle for our favorite tomatillo salsa, which comes from Buckwheat Blossom Farm in Wiscasset. We're addicted to the stuff and buy it weekly at our Saturday farmers market.

There are so many directions you could go with this recipe. I'd love to try adding peppers, sautéed onions, or black beans; kicking up the spices; and using different varieties of mushrooms, for example. The one thing I absolutely wouldn't change is the corn tortillas—their flavor and texture are key to this dish. 

I think we've hit on a new regular in our repertoire. I hope you enjoy it too!

CREAMY SPINACH & MUSHROOM ENCHILADAS

This recipe is adapted from one that appeared in the October 2001 Cooking Light. The enchiladas get broiled, not baked. If the skillet in which you cook your spinach and mushrooms is ovenproof, you can broil in that. Otherwise put the enchiladas in a medium-sized baking dish; I prefer this option simply because I find it easier to take out of a hot oven. The recipe below serves four.

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
8 ounces sliced mushrooms
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 ounces (~ 6 cups) fresh spinach or comparable greens
2 tablespoons cream cheese, cut into several smaller chunks
2 cups green salsa, divided
8 corn tortillas
1/2 cup (or more) grated Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 cup sour cream or Greek yogurt
1/4 cup diced cilantro
1/4 cup diced chives

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, chili powder, cumin, and mushrooms and sauté about 5 minutes, until the mushrooms are soft. Add salt and spinach and stir for about 1 minute, just until the spinach wilts. Add the cream cheese and stir until it melts. Set mixture aside.

Heat 1 cup of the salsa in a saucepan over medium heat. Using tongs, dredge both sides of each tortilla in the salsa and stack them on a plate.

Spoon a heaping tablespoon of the spinach-mushroom filling into each tortilla, fold in half, and arrange in the skillet or baking dish, overlapping slightly. Top with remaining salsa and the cheese and broil for 3 to 5 minutes—until the cheese has melted and the tortillas are lightly browned.

Cut into wedges (it will be virtually impossible to separate the individual tortillas, but that doesn't matter), top with sour cream and a garnish of cilantro and chives, and dig in.

THE MARKET GARDENER // elspeth

Hi there. I've never done this kind of thing before, but today we're going to have our very first book giveaway! 

Way back in February, the growers behind this book contacted me about giving it a read. It took me a while, but a couple weeks ago I finally sat down and started paging through. I'm so glad I did. While the book is really geared toward small scale farmers who want to make a living growing for farmers' markets, it's also full of information that's useful for home gardeners. I picked up some good tips about weeding (put a tarp over a weedy area of the garden and let it sit for a few weeks before you plant—this gives the weed seed time to germinate and then kills the plants because they can't get sunlight), row spacing (48 inches from row center to row center is considered standard, which means hand tools are usually manufactured to work 30 inch rows with 18 inch walkways in between), and how much to turn the soil over (as little as possible). I also liked the idea of putting together a calendar that you can use for many years where chores are marked by the season.

But for any of you out there currently operating or thinking of starting a market garden, there is so much more. The premise for the book is that it's possible to operate a financially successful small-scale market garden business with very little mechanical input and careful organic practices. This means lots of hand tools, a strong focus on soil health, plenty of face-to-face interaction with the plants, and low start-up costs. The introduction ("Small is Profitable") lays out the argument and then each chapter delves into a different aspect of making the business work. Text and illustrations cover siting and designing the garden, using appropriate machinery, fertilizing organically, starting seeds, weed management, insect pests and diseases, harvest and storage, season extension, and crop planning. The crop planning section includes detailed charts that I think would be especially helpful for beginning growers unsure of how to organize their farm. I know I've tried planning rotation crops, and just in our small garden it's a daunting task.

If you're interested in a copy, leave a comment on this post with your email. We'll choose a winner at random and send it along! Happy growing, everyone.

Update 6.13.14: The winner has been emailed. Thanks to everyone who participated!

FINDING FARM LAND ON AN ISLAND // the local food report

Nantucket has a reputation. Beautiful, definitely. But also pricey. As of 2011, Nantucket County had the highest median home price in the United States, and the only one in the seven digits. ($200,000 more on average than Manhattan!) 

Of course, that's excellent news if you're a homeowner. But it's terrible news for wanna-be farmers. Part of the reason for the sky-high prices is that Nantucket is an island, which means there's a finite amount of space. In addition, roughly half the land on the island is owned by the community land bank and is preserved as open space, which is excellent for conservation but also drives up demand and prices even further. But when it comes to food production, there's a big silver lining to this equation: the possibility of partnerships.

Land use partnerships are something non-profit Sustainable Nantucket has been looking at for a while. The organization's tagline is "Cultivating a Healthy Nantucket," and the focus of this effort is the building and strengthening of the community's local food system. The most recent news is the development of a community farm on a 2-acre land bank parcel. The idea is that the farm will serve as an incubator, where beginning farmers can start a business with very little overhead cost. In this way it's different than a community garden, where by-laws prevent growers from selling what they produce—the whole idea with the farm is to foster commercial growers. The parcel will be divided into sixteen plots each 1/8th of an acre, and Sustainable Nantucket will raise money to put in an irrigation system, pay any fees associated with the use of the land, and put up fencing. Growers, in turn, will pay a small fee to cover these costs. And the hope is that growers will be able to graduate to other land partnerships if their business gets to a size where they need more space. 

It's pretty exciting—especially for an island that less than 200 years ago had about a hundred farms and is now down to somewhere near a dozen. New growers Carl Keller and Tori McCandless (pictured up there) of Boatyard Farm say they have tons of friends who are interested in growing, but that everyone's always thought of it as something you can only do off island. Hopefully, that will change soon. Sustainable Nantucket is working right now to finalize the site plan, and interested growers will meet regularly over the next year to research soil and amendments, sustainable energy options, greenhouse options, and business plans. If all goes well, the first farmers will get started on the farm in the spring of 2015. 

Does your area have anything like this? One of the most exciting aspects about it seems like all the potential for working together. I'd love to hear about other examples of this sort of community growing! 

MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM // elspeth

Good morning. You will not be seeing a picture of mint chocolate chip ice cream today. I'll leave it up to you whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, because the reason why is that we ate it all so quickly that there was no time to stop and document. It was that tasty. And as soon as my mint grows back, we will be making more. Maybe I could snap you a photo then?

In the meantime, I wouldn't wait around. I would go to your herb garden or the closest farmers' market and get yourself some fresh mint, and I would make this ice cream ASAP. There are very few things I like better than mint-chocolate desserts, and this one—homemade, with homegrown herbs, dark chocolate chunks, cream and milk and maple syrup—tops the list. The recipe comes from two places—I got the mint to cream ratio and infusion steps from this mint chip ice cream recipe by David Lebowitz, and the other proportions come from my standby easy ice cream from Patricia Wells. But what emerged is fairly different from both. It is both simple and decadent, and easy enough to fit in between finishing up a pile of paperwork and putting together dinner and clapping for the upside down tricks that now rule the space between the couch and the coffee table.

Also, it's pretty. After a few hours of steeping, the mint infuses the cream not only with its flavor but also with a stunning pastel green color, a hue that is nothing like those bright green mint chocolate chip ice creams you often see at scoop shops. The flavor's different, too—subtler, more earthy. All in all, it's not something you want to miss.

MINT CHOCOLATE CHUNK ICE CREAM

I have long been addicted to Green & Black's Organic dark chocolate bars infused with peppermint oil. I have a square almost every day after lunch. But this recipe might be it's true calling—chopped into bits, some fine and some large, it complements the smooth, sweet cream perfectly and brings out the flavor of the fresh mint. Note that this recipe takes hardly any hands on time, but it's best to start in the morning or after lunch so that the mint has time to steep and the ice cream has time to chill before dinner rolls around.

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup maple syrup

2 cups fresh mint leaves, packed

4 ounces dark chocolate, chopped (see headnote)

Pour the cream, milk, and maple syrup into a medium saucepan. Add the mint leaves, stir, and warm slowly over low heat until the mixture begins to steam. Cover and steep for at least an hour at room temperature, then put the pot in the fridge. When the cream is cool, strain out the mint leaves, wringing carefully over the pot to get out any extra flavor and cream. Pour the cream mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturers instructions. When the ice cream is almost done, add the chocolate. Scoop into a container and chill for another hour or so before serving.

TOMATO TIME // the local food report

Andrew Spollett is in charge of sixteen acres of tomatoes. Sixteen! I am responsible for ten plants. He's the vegetable production manager at Bartlett's Farm on Nantucket, a farm famous for his tomatoes. So when I visited the island a few weeks ago, I decided to ask him about all things tomato—what varieties he likes, where to plant them, and how to take care of them once they're in the ground. Here's what I learned.

For varieties, in general he likes heirlooms. He says they tend to be juicier, prettier, and in general more flavorful than hybrids, which are often bred for vigor, blight resistance, producing a lot of fruit, and long shelf life. These are all good qualities, but when it comes down to it, he picks beauty and flavor. (For a full discussion of the differences between heirlooms and hybrids, check out this article.) His favorite varieties are Cherokee Green and Cherokee purple, both with low acidity and a smoky flavor; Brandywine, a slicing variety that yields huge pink fruits; Sweet Orange Cherry (the name pretty much says it all!); and Celebrity, a hybrid with excellent disease resistance that Andrew says is perfect for stewing and canning.

For obvious reasons, Andrew likes to keep careful track of what varieties do well and which plants are in which fields. But he says this is also what makes gardening interesting for him. He tracks which varieties perform the best, what the flavor is like, how much fruit he gets from them, and which ones have problems with diseases or pests. He says even in a home garden, this kind of record keeping can tell you a lot. (According to my records, at least the photographic ones, Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes are consistent winners in our house. They produce a lot, and are clearly appreciated by consumers big and small.)

Finally, he has some planting tips. Tomatoes like full sun, so a nice sunny spot is important. They also like to get some fertilizer when they go in the ground—compost or a fish emulsion are both nice. You want to stake them—good, high cages are best to support clusters of fruit. (I have yet to spring for these, but one of these years I am going to either buy or build a 6 foot cage. The 3-4 foot ones simply aren't high enough!) And finally, he says you really don't want to water tomatoes from above. Getting the leaves wet is a good way to encourage fungus and blight, and it's only the roots that need the water. The best system is some sort of drip irrigation or soaker hoses, but if all you have is a sprinkler, he says just water in the morning instead of at night so the sunlight dries off the leaves over the course of the day.

Now's the time to plant—soil temperatures on the Cape are averaging about 65 degrees, which is well above the 55 degree minimum that tomatoes like. If you didn't start your own plants, I've seen tons at local farmers' markets and nursery centers, so it's not too late! And just think: only two months til the first fruits are ready for harvest.

KALE RAAB & ASPARAGUS PIZZA // liz

I'm crazy about kale raab. Have you tried it? Quick, run to your farmers market and see if there's still some left! It's available only for a month or so in early spring, and we're getting close to the end of its run. I love to sauté it lightly with onions, then finish it off with a grind of sea salt, a dash of red pepper flakes, and sometimes a little grated Parmesan and lemon juice. So easy, so good.

I've also discovered that kale raab is a fine substitute for asparagus, including in my all-time favorite stir-fry. The stalks have a consistency surprisingly similar to that of asparagus spears. Happy day! Armed with this newfound knowledge, I knew just what to do when Anna and I were salivating over a Smitten Kitchen recipe for shaved asparagus pizza recently and didn't have enough asparagus: we used half kale raab and half asparagus. The result was excellent. What's more, I think we could easily have used all raab and had something just as tasty. 

The discerning eye will notice two discrepancies between the recipe and photo below. Where are the scallions, you ask? We had them all ready to go—and they were gorgeous, straight from the farmers' market that morning—but forgot to add them before we took the photo. Gah. More important, where is the mozzarella?! We'd just bought a beautiful, fresh ball, handmade in Vermont, but it turned out to be bad (a first, in my experience). Alas, we didn't discover this until we were ready to put it on the pizza and I happened to steal a nibble. A few expletives later, we were on our way with Plan B: a combination of feta and grated Parmesan. The pizza was delicious, but let's be honest: it would have been even better with mozzarella. Some days that's just the way things go. Fortunately, we know there will be a next time.

KALE RAAB & ASPARAGUS PIZZA

We tinkered with Deb Perelman's original recipe—of course. (Isn't that what recipes are for?) As for the dough, the sky's the limit. The recipe below is super quick and easy, but feel free to use whatever your own favorite is. As for the raab and asparagus, you can obviously use all of one or all of the other. I'm sure any other raab (broccoli, for example) would also work nicely.

First, the dough:

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

1 teaspoon honey

1 cup warm water 

2 1/2 cups bread flour (I use half whole wheat)

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

In a medium-sized bowl, dissolve the yeast and honey in the warm water and let stand until it's nice and bubbly, about 5 minutes. Stir in the flour, salt, oil. Knead well or beat in a stand mixer with the dough hook (hello, e-a-s-y!) until smooth. Cover and let rest in a warm spot while you prepare the raab and asparagus. It's also time now to turn on your oven, to 450 degrees F.

Now, the rest:

1/2 pound total of asparagus and/or kale raab

2 teaspoons olive oil, plus a few extra teaspoons for drizzling on the dough

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

several grinds of black pepper

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

1/2 pound fresh mozzarella, sliced or cut into cubes

1–2 scallions, thinly sliced

Using a vegetable peeler and holding each asparagus spear by its sturdy end, peel the spears into thin shavings. (I was tempted to take a shortcut here and just dice it. Anna barked that I would not be doing that, and she was right. This is not the tedious task I thought it would be.) Gather your raab into a bunch and trim just the teeniest bit off the ends, then slice through the bunch at roughly 2-inch intervals. Put the asparagus shavings and raab in a medium-sized bowl and toss with the olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper. 

Roll out your dough and move it onto a lightly oiled or cornmeal-dusted baking pan or stone. Drizzle the dough with a few teaspoons of olive oil and then put on the mozzarella. Add the asparagus and raab and sprinkle with Parmesan. Bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the cheese is just how you like it. Especially if your crust is all or partly whole wheat, be careful not to overcook or the crust will be too dry. Sprinkle with scallions, slice, eat, and happily say mmmmmmmmm.

WALDORF HOOP HOUSE // the local food report

Kim Allsup has been teaching gardening at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod for ten years. Last spring parents helped put up an unheated hoop house, and this year for the first time, the kids were able to grow food for the cafeteria year round. Several other schools in our area have had the same idea—to get kids' hands in the dirt all winter with an enclosed growing space. You can listen to this week's Local Food Report to hear more.

Over here, though, I wanted to share an essay from Kim on a special variety of kale the Waldorf students are growing. 

MAXWELL'S KALE

By Kim Allsup

It was late-September when Maxwell, a dark haired third grader with a thoughtful demeanor, handed me a tray of three-inch tall kale seedlings. "My neighbor gave these to us for our school garden," he said eagerly.

I looked at the tender plants that I would have loved to transplant in May and was incredulous as I heard my own voice say, "Thank you Maxwell, these look great, we can plant them later today," all the while imagining the plants frozen and wilted by mid-November.

But Thanksgiving came and went and the kale braved frosts and asked for more. The bed of plants still looked cheerfully green in December, but then, in January, most of the kale succumbed to the freezing temperatures. Still, a few plants at the southern end of the bed were clearly alive.

Winter gardening classes were held indoors where we folded origami boxes and then planted tomato seeds in them. But the garden was not out of sight. Each day we walked by the garden on the way to recess, and sometimes I would lead the line of well bundled children through the paths between the 12 foot long wooden beds just so we could check the kale poking green leaves through the snow. "Look, it's still alive," the children proclaimed, taking a few moments for amazement on their way to playtime.

By early March the surviving plants looked small, limp and barely alive. Then, as March drew to a close, and the rains of April soaked the garden, the blue-green leaves with ruffled edges and a reddish center stem began to grow again. While we planted and tended our spring crops we witnessed the kale putting out new leaves and then little yellow flowers. The children who worked with me in the summer gardening sessions saw the development of three-inch long green seed pods. By late summer some of the now-brittle silver pods burst open, raining tiny black balls across the garden bed. Soon, little kale seedlings sprouted around the parent plants.

We thinned these plant and continued into a second year of kale production from the same parent plants. But the next winter was colder, and, when the blanket of snow disappeared, the bed was empty. However, some of the seeds that had fallen on the bed had waited to germinate with the spring rains, and, again, Maxwell's kale came back. 

I often thought about the moment when Maxwell handed me that flat of seedlings, of accepting the gift, knowing not that they would begin the permanent kale bed. Life is sometimes defined by such moments, when instinct wins the battle against logic and we find ourselves traveling a wonderful path we had never anticipated. I also thought about Maxwell, who had left the school when his family moved at the end of his fourth grade year.

When Maxwell's class was in fifth grade, our school moved to a new campus fifteen miles away. We moved the entire garden in the fall—beds, soil and kale. Again, the kale lived through the winter and this time, in a sunnier location, it grew into a few three-foot tall bushy plants that appeared to hold court in the new garden, older and wiser than the baby corn, pea and lettuce seedlings that poked their noses out of the damp earth.

Maxwell's classmates, like all the students in our school, kept the same teacher for up to eight years. Just before their sixth grade year, this teacher stopped me in the hall and said, "You will never guess who will be returning to our class. Remember Maxwell?"

I smiled. Just like his kale, Maxwell would be coming back.

Kim Allsup teaches gardening at the Waldorf School of Cape Cod. She says to this day, all of her kale seeds come from these seedlings. The students call it "Maxwell's Kale" and often they walk into the building after playtime munching on kale. 

RHUBARB CRISP BARS

Hey there. Things are busy here. The restaurants are open, the farmers' market is up and running, and in the meantime there are radio shows to make and a garden to tend and a very small wild woman to take care of. But I wanted to pop by and say quickly that if you haven't tried this recipe for strawberry rhubarb crisp bars, they're worth a go. 

A few notes: I used all rhubarb instead of half strawberries, as they're not in season here yet, and I recommend not skipping the step where you line the pan with parchment paper, as the bottom will stick. Also, I think you could cut the brown sugar in the topping a bit, especially if you double the recipe, which I did. 

That's all. Happy rhubarb season, everyone.

STURGIS SEED LIBRARY // the local food report

Last week on the Local Food Report I learned about seed libraries. This week, I visited one—one of the first of its kind in our area. This March, a group called the Cape Cod Food Hub put together a seed catalog at Sturgis Public Library in Barnstable, and another one at the Brooks Free Library in Harwich. So far the two libraries have about 60 participants planning to grow and save seed this summer.

Tara Laidlaw is one of the organizers, and here are here top three picks for home gardeners from the seed library this year, in her words.

Rattlesnake snap bean — Green pods have streaks of purple, beans are mostly tan with purple-brown flecks but some have the opposite coloration. They have a vining/climbing habit so they're great for smaller garden spaces, as opposed to bush beans which take up more real estate in a garden bed. They have good drought tolerance which is great in our fast-draining sandy soils.

E.H. Note: We planted these last year and loved them, both for their taste and their looks. Their vining habit also makes them great candidates for a bean teepee! We just put our structure up and are planning to plant as soon as the soil warms up to about 70 degrees F. Thank you to Gail Ferguson who recently showed me how to get reports on Cape Cod soil temps here by clicking on the Current Landscape Message in the upper right corner. You can check out the temps that different plants like for germination on this handy chart.

Goldie ground cherry — Large sprawling bushes bear a ton of yellow-gold fruits in their own little lantern-shaped husks, and when the husk is dry and papery (not green and leafy) you know the fruit is ripe. They have a pineapple-tomato flavor and make a great crumble/crisp, preserve, or chocolate fondue dipping item. They'll self-sow pretty prolifically. Seeds are slow to germinate and need lots of warmth.

Red Russian kale — I promise I'm not just suggesting this because I have so much seed!! Overwinters great on the Cape, I didn't even mulch in the fall and they popped right up last month. Beautiful purple stems and veins in green leaves. Makes a great full-size leaf in the fall, produces sweet leaves from frost til serious snow (and sometimes even through a layer of snow!), looks dead through the deep winter, then comes back with delicious tender baby leaves in the spring. They were the first green thing in my garden this year!

There's also a new seed library at the Brooks Free Library in Harwich and a seed swap at the Truro Public Library. Happy planting!