The Inadvertent Gardener

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Apparently, over the winter, someone decided to throw approximately 1,000 small twigs into my garden plot. It’s lucky that, although I definitely have areas in which I exhibit great symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the garden is not one of those areas. Therefore, on Sunday evening, I picked about 428 of those twigs out of the garden before giving up and just deciding that the remaining ones provided some interest, and also a good challenge for the seedlings to come. The really strong ones, after all, ought to be able to push the twigs out of the way, right?

Don’t worry, Master Gardeners. I’ll pick more out in the next couple of days.

Besides the twigs, I needed to remove the clumps of grass that had infiltrated the plot over the winter, which is miraculous, because how the grass was able to be all sneaky like that underneath 20 inches of snow baffles me considerably. I also yanked any dead plants that would have come out if said snow hadn’t snuck up on me itself before I had time to clean much up last year.

But there were signs of life. Besides the garlic and the aforementioned baby spinach that is just coming up all on its own, it appears that one of my sage plants is resurrecting itself. There were some green baby leaves that are destined to become tasty treats sooner rather than later.

I yanked the rest of the sage plants as carefully as I could so I wouldn’t disturb the newcomers, and took all the dead plants over to the compost pile. Then I set about turning over the soil, unearthing all manner of worms who were not particularly thrilled to see me hanging out. Then I got moving on dropping in seeds in my normal, laissez faire manner, starting with the chard, which has bony little seeds that I loved from the moment I saw them.

After the chard, I moved on to the rest: spinach, rosemary, sage, Italian parsley and some green beans. Once I had put far too many seeds in, as usual, ignoring the wise advice of the back of the seed packet, I covered everything up. Then I stepped back from the garden plot, the sun setting behind me, and nodded. Oh, tasty spinach. Oh, tasty chard. Oh, delicious herbs. I hope some of you come up soon, despite my best efforts to plant you incorrectly.

I have been struggling with a distinct lack of gardening momentum. The weather finally kicked into gear and warmed up, and yet my garden plot sat, in the backyard, untidy and neglected. Sure, there’s some garlic poking up through the ground, but the rest? Home to dead sage, dead Texas Tarragon, dead rosemary, dead greens…well, you get the idea.

I never even put in a seed order. How ridiculous is that? Every other gardener I know spent the miserable winter ordering seeds willy-nilly, but I couldn’t even get myself to imagine that far in advance, so I skipped that whole process. I mean, yeah, I did buy those Italian seeds back in February, but that doesn’t possibly compete with all those gardeners who spend time plotting out their gardens on graph paper long before winter winds to a close.

On Sunday afternoon, though, after reading the Michael Pollan article I mentioned on Monday, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I took a walk over to the co-op to get a few things, and availed myself of their rack of Seed Savers seed packets. Thank you, New Pioneer Co-op, for not only providing me with a source for my favorite single source honey and a prodigious amount of wine, but for also allowing me to be utterly lazy about planning my garden yet still buy really quality seeds from a cool source.

I went for things I could plant this early in the season, because it looks like we still have some fairly chilly nights ahead. In other words, I did not pick out basil, but I did grab spinach, chard, green beans, rosemary, sage and Italian parsley.

I headed home again, seeds in my Inadvertent Gardener tote bag, glad that even though I’d procrastinated into the late afternoon, there was still plenty of light out in the garden. As I walked down Washington Street toward home, imagining how I’d lay out the seeds I just bought. Who needs graph paper, anyway?

Not long ago, Kalyn of Kalyn’s Kitchen posted a fabulous-looking recipe for chard stems. It had never occurred to me to cook chard stems separately from the rest of the chard—while I realize they’re tougher than the leaves and require a slightly longer cooking time, I’ve always circumvented that issue by just cooking them first, then adding the leaves later.

I’ll admit a little laziness is at play, too. I’m not one to spend the time actually slicing the leaves from the chard stems. I tend, instead, to take my bunch of chard and chop it up almost like I’m chiffonading basil—I roll it into a monster log of leaves, then slice narrow ribbons by cutting perpendicular to the log. It’s effective, albeit unorthodox.

When I have worked my way through the leaves, I just chop up the part of the stems that stick out at the bottom, and keep those in a separate pile. I usually trim the bottom quarter-inch or so of the stems, just to keep the raggedy pieces out of whatever I’m cooking.

When I actually get to the cooking part, I usually toss in the stems and garlic (in the case of the garlic photographed to the left, it’s garlic I actually grew in my very own garden, and therefore I swear it’s that much more delicious…) at the same time—that seems to create just the right balance of cooking time. In this case, I mix spinach and the chard leaves, and put them in later, and generally cook them just long enough to wilt them down. The result? Perfectly cooked stems, perfectly cooked leaves, and a delicious side dish that I could eat just about every day.

Sautéed Swiss Chard and Spinach
(Serves 4 as a side dish)

2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
3-4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 10 oz. bag baby spinach leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Wash and dry the chard, then remove the stems from the leaves in any method you deem appropriate (To do this IG-style, chop the stems off at the base of the leaves, and be sure to trim the very bottom parts). Chop the stems into 1/2-inch lengths and set them aside.
2. Roll the leaves together into a big log, as if you were making a chiffonade of basil, and slice thin strips by cutting perpendicular to the log.
3. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large sauté pan, and when it is hot, add the garlic and the chard stems. Sauté, stirring often, until the garlic just starts to brown and the stems are softening up.
4. Add the sliced chard leaves and the spinach a few handfuls at a time, stirring the mixture until what you’ve put in is cooked down enough to make room for the next handfuls. Once all the chard and spinach is in the pan, put a lid on it and wait for about a minute or two.
5. Remove the lid, stir, add salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

This is my post for Weekend Herb Blogging, which is being hosted this week by Ramona from the Houndstooth Gourmet. Stop by Ramona’s place on Monday to see the full round-up!

I did, after my extended stay at O’Hare, finally arrive home over the weekend. I’d been gone for 12 days on what felt like the longest business trip of my life, including stops in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

When I left Iowa, the snow had indeed begun to melt, but was still shoulder-high and causing trouble. I returned to a mostly snow-free landscape, although the disappearance of the white has left Iowa khaki-dreary—no blossoms, no green grass, no growth. This happens every year—there’s always a period of time between winter and spring (and by spring, I’m not talking about the post-equinox season, but the actual reappearance of color) when the landscape offers nothing to the eye other than wide swaths of blandness.

In my backyard, a small patch of snow survived in an area of the yard that’s shady most of the day. But the garden is, once again, uncovered, and what a mess it is, although it’s a mess that’s going to feed the garden nicely once the growing season starts up in earnest. Most of the bed is matted with leaves and decaying plants that I never pulled up before the snow brought any hope of that abruptly to an end, and I think I can probably just turn that stuff under so last year’s plants and leaves give this year’s plants a little bit of boost.

But on one end of the garden, garlic is already sprouting through the layer of mulch I put down when I planted it last fall, and when I crouched down to take a look, I noticed something particularly exciting. Not only is the garlic getting its grow on, but there are some baby spinach leaves coming up out of the ground.

I suspect my poor gardening practice of letting the spinach bolt and not dealing with it in a timely fashion has resulted in some inadvertent reseeding, and that means I’m all set up for fresh greens without any work on my part whatsoever.

Rock on.