The eating is good in the garden
One warm afternoon last week I dropped by a friend’s house in
Hollister after work. He came to the door wearing a broad straw
hat, gloves poking out of his pocket. He’d been gardening and on
that balmy early evening, the garden seemed like just the place to
hang out.
The eating is good in the garden
One warm afternoon last week I dropped by a friend’s house in Hollister after work. He came to the door wearing a broad straw hat, gloves poking out of his pocket. He’d been gardening and on that balmy early evening, the garden seemed like just the place to hang out.
Part of the back yard is more traditional, a lawn of mown grass surrounded by deep beds spilling over with flowers. Tucked behind the roses are a few fruit trees among the ornamentals.
But behind a gate artfully crafted from recycled lumber and found materials, on what was once a concrete slab, are verdant beds crammed with vegetables.
The beds, too, are mostly built of recycled materials. Unlike most raised beds, these bring the produce almost up to the waist. Gardening is easier, and the beds warm more quickly in the spring than the surrounding ground, while offering good drainage.
Unlike more traditional garden layouts, my friend’s loathing of convention dictates the layout of his vegetable patch. Chaos reigns, and it’s beautiful.
Strawberries peek around a clump of broccoli. Japanese red mustard declares its presence boldly here and there. Radishes sprout where they can.
This is a hard time of year for most of us. It is the season of The Wait. We’ve all been plucking radishes and mowing lettuce for a while. But now tomato vines begin teasing us with yellow blossoms, and the long wait for the first ripe tomatoes begins. We’ve had enough hot weather to put the peas out of the game, but enough cool weather that beans and squash are not doing much.
If you’ve had the foresight – and the patience – to put in some asparagus crowns, you are probably not enduring The Wait. Now is asparagus time.
If beds are prepared well, and asparagus gets the minimal care it demands, it will come back from the same roots for several years. As the season nears its end, the spears left to develop leave a ferny border that lasts through summer.
My favorite time in the garden is high summer. Fresh tomatoes can be eaten warm from the vine, garnished with a little basil. A piece of crusty bread, toasted and rubbed with a clove of garlic and then rubbed again with half a tomato is heaven on a plate.
Until then asparagus will remind us of what good produce we have available to us in every season. Starting this week, it’s more easily available to all of us, even those among us who don’t have a vegetable garden. The Hollister Farmers Market will appear every Wednesday afternoon until fall, on the lawn at Fourth and San Benito streets. See you there.
Roasted Asparagus
1 bunch asparagus
Drizzle of olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Cut the bottom inch or so from each stalk in a bunch of asparagus and peel the lower thirds with a vegetable peeler. Arrange in a single layer in a shallow pan. Drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste. Enough wash water should have been clinging to the asparagus to leave about a tablespoon in the bottom of the pan. Cover with foil and place in the middle of an oven preheated to 450 degrees. Roast for seven minutes, and uncover, returning the asparagus to the oven until it is tender and slightly browned around the edges.
That’s it. The oven concentrates the flavor to essence of asparagus.
