Bee & Artichoke

Bumble Bee on an Artichoke flower.

I sort of lost track of my artichokes and missed my opportunity for harvesting a few of them. They went to flower. No matter though, the bees love a nice big artichoke flower. I spent a few minutes watching a bumble bee explore this artichoke flower in the morning sunshine.

A few other visitors came by while he was at it. Another smaller bee, a long horn bee, was sort of bothering the bumble bee. He kept landing on the bumble bee. Not sure why he was doing that.

A long horn bee pestering a bumble bee on an artichoke flower.

I uploaded a new HD video to vimeo today. You can press the play button to watch it from within this window.


Bee & Artichoke from Jen Hill on Vimeo.

You can also click the enlarge icon on the lower right hand corner to make it full screen.

If you would like to see the video in HD, click here. I highly recommend viewing the HD version.

They're Baaack

Imperial Star Artichoke, 2007 growing season.

I must admit, I am a bit fascinated by artichokes. It's not quite to the point of obsession, like I am with tomatoes, but I find them more interesting than many of the other vegetables I grow. I think that stems from the fact that they are not really widely grown in this part of the country. So it's a bit of a challenge.

Last spring/summer I grew my first artichokes, Imperial Star Artichokes. They produced flowers (that's the part we eat) their first year, which is a plus, since artichokes are a perennial that produce (most of the time) in it's second year. However, it was questionable if they would survive the winter here. Actually, they are only supposed to be hardy down to USDA zone 8 (even more detailed maps here) and we are in zone 6 here. What does all this zone business mean? Well, it's just a way for gardeners to gauge how well a given plant will survive the extreme cold of winter in a given geographical region. In theory, you'd want perennial plants (plants the come back year after year) that are rated to survive your zone or colder if you live in a cold area. The lower your zone number the colder it gets in the winter. It doesn't take into account how hot it gets in the summer, how long a growing season you have, or all the many other variables that go into growing plants. Many people get confused by the zone thing and think that if one lives in a higher zoned area, you must have a longer growing season, and vice versa. This is not so. Your growing season is determined by the number of frost free days you have and also how hot it gets in the hottest part of your summer. For example Dallas, TX is zone 8, as is Seattle, WA. Obviously the two have different weather and completely different growing seasons. If you lived in Texas, you might have a spring garden and a fall garden, because the heat of summer would kill your crops. While in Washington, it might be mild all through the spring and summer. To add to the confusion there are micro-climates within zones that can throw you for a loop. If you lived on top of a mountain, it might be much colder than down in the valley. So it would seem the zone system is flawed. But, if you use it simply as a way to determine how cold a temperature a give perennial plant can take, it should work for you.

Last summer I let some of the buds go to flower.

So back to artichokes. Once the artichoke foliage died back from the fall frost, I took measures to protect it from our cold winter. I cut back the plant and piled about a foot of shredded fall leaves on top of the plants and then covered the entire raised bed with a plastic tarp to keep too much moisture from rotting the plants. I weighted down the plastic tarp around the edges with large rocks and bricks. It stayed that way all through the winter. Rain came down, snow piled up, ice formed, the whole works. Then in spring it started to warm up. My other perennial plants started popping up. I figured it was time to uncover the artichokes. So the first week of April, I pulled back the tarp and pushed away the leaves. The leaves smelled earthy, a nice scent. The bottom few inches of shredded leaves had already turned into compost, a nice black crumbly layer. I removed most of the pile of leaves and left a few inches to feed the plants, and hopefully act as a mulch and prevent weeds from sprouting. There was just the tiniest bit of growth on three of the plants. Slowly, they are waking up from a long winter sleep. I have a good feeling we'll have quite the crop of artichokes this year. They are said to produce in abundance the second year.

By April 20 new growth appears on the old stump and increases each day.

It looks as though only three of the six plants have growth so far. I'm not sure if the other three are just slower to wake up, or they may be dead. I'll give them until May to do something. During the winter, I sometimes get carried away while looking at seed catalogs and websites. I bought some new artichoke seeds of Violetto Artichoke. The description says, "Beautiful purple heads of artichokes look like flowers (because they are) on these plants. Fruit is more elongated than the green globe type. There is some variation in the seed and the Italian supplier recommends removing any weedy looking seedlings before setting out. Start indoors for a mid-summer crop even in Maine." To me that sounds like the seed is not pure and may have come from cross pollinated stock. I guess I'll take my chances. These seedlings look quite happy and robust. Although I did start them kind of late. My first batch did not germinate. I don't know why, sometimes that just happens to even the most experienced of seed starters. I tried again and most of the seeds germinated. Now that I know my old plants survived, I will have to find a spot for these or give them away. I'm thinking about putting a couple in an Earth Box (I have 3) and then in the winter, storing it in the garage for protection.

Violetto artichoke seedlings. No weedy looking seedlings here! What are they talking about?

Now some call them weeds and some call them volunteers, but if you let a plant go to seed, you may have some seedlings that pop up unexpectedly. Such is the case in the artichoke bed. I found this volunteer yesterday. Funny thing is, it popped up next to one of the plants that hasn't started growing yet (possibly dead). Isn't nature a wonderful thing?

Look familiar? A volunteer artichoke a few weeks behind the ones started inside.

Eat What You Grow!

Within a few days, I expect to have a few more different tomato varieties to show. In the meantime, we've been eating the Super Bush and Azoychka tomatoes as they ripen. So far, we've been able to keep up with production.

Here we have dinner ingredients from a dinner last week. This is my first artichoke picked from my own plant! Of my six plants, all now have buds on them. Also included is a Super Bush tomato, six fingerling potatoes, and a bulb of garlic all from my garden.

Dinner ingredients scrubbed clean and looking pretty.

Gardening isn't all pretty pictures. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty before you can taste the fruits of your labor. I had extra seed potatoes left over after I had filled my designated areas for planting potatoes this spring. I decided to put them in a container that I drilled drainage holes into and filled with soil. After the plants started growing, I filled the container further with straw. These containers are much easier for finding "new" potatoes when the urge strikes.

Those aren't my dirty fingers! Although they do resemble them, they are fingerling potatoes, aptly named.

Here is the dinner I made with those ingredients! Chicken stuffed with tomato and garlic, pan cooked potatoes with lemon and olives, and a steamed artichoke for sharing.

More ingredients than not are from my garden. Satisfying in more ways than one.

Here we have our tomato salad for dinner last night. This is my new favorite! For this I used Azoychka and Super Bush tomatoes, basil, Italian flat leaf parsley, and garlic from my garden. It's a concoction made with balsamic vinegar that is reduced down to a syrupy consistency. The reduction produces a thick sweet sauce. While that cools, mix olive oil, garlic, green and black olives, basil, parsley, black pepper and capers. Spoon the olive mixture over sliced tomatoes. Then pour the balsamic reduction over the whole thing. I let this sit at room temperature after assembling it before serving. It's sweet, it's salty, it's tomato heaven.

Tomato Salad... delicious!

With 1.5 pounds of Viva Italia Tomatoes, I was able to make Roasted Tomato Soup. A family favorite, we rarely have leftovers. The only soup I eat in summer! We don't have a picture since my anxious dining companions were awaiting it's completion.

Viva Italia are paste tomatoes. A designation given to meaty, less juicy, less seedy tomatoes that are good for use in cooking.

Okay, I admit it, I'm an over grower. My eyes are bigger than my garden and I grow way more than we can consume. These tomatoes are easy to share with friends and neighbors. I picked another batch of cherry tomatoes the same size two days later. These extra tomatoes will get added to the pot when I start making sauce soon. There's no such thing as extra tomatoes around here.

At all hours of the day, we snack on the ever abundant cherry tomatoes.

Crudités For Two

This weekend, was sort of a busy one. We made good progress on the studio renovation project. Painted the walls and now it's looking more like a room and less like a construction zone. Next up is the floor installation, this coming weekend. So needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, I was busy. What to do with all those veggies I picked? I quickly threw together this crudité platter for the two of us and we munched on it with some ranch dressing for dip.

Pretty, and tasty too.

In between things, I always have time to check on my garden. I discovered that this artichoke plant is growing it's first bud! That makes three out of six artichoke plants that have buds. I think my experiment might be a success! But I won't really know for sure until I taste the results. Still waiting for that first artichoke to get a little bigger before I pick it. I was surprised that this one was the next to flower as there is another plant that is bigger than it. I guess you never know about these things.

This tiny bud first appeared on Saturday, but the photo was taken today.

This has been one wet July. Another 1.75 inches of rain registered in my rain gauge yesterday. The corn is still standing! Still looks good too. I have to wonder if the wet weather is helping the artichokes. I've noticed that they really don't like to be dry. Some plants will tolerate a little drying out, but not these. I learned early on, when the 'chokes were still seedlings in 20 ounce cups, that they did not appreciate being dry whatsoever, as they would shrivel at the drop of a hat. So I paid extra attention to keep them watered ever since, but not as much as this rain has been giving them, mind you.

Most US artichokes are grown in Monterey County California. The central California climate is an ideal growing condition for artichokes. The summers are cool, moist and foggy. A quick check of weather.com indicates that the next ten days will be 69-70 degrees and partly cloudy in the artichoke capital. Hmm... That may be why we're seeing some artichoke growth here during these wet days. Okay, I confess, I had this hunch and that's why I thought to try artichokes this year. I read about where most of them are grown and recalled how wet and cool our summer was here last year. Thought I'd give it a shot.

Another surprise this weekend, my peas are flowering again. Peas usually flower once and then that's it. The heat of the summer usually kills them and it's best to just pull them out and plant something else. This time last year, my pea plants were long gone having yellowed and dried out on their own. Well, I have been wanting to cut off a few tendrils and do some photos. Hoping I'd have my studio space ready soon to set up some lights and do it right, I never pulled the plants. I think, maybe this rainy, not so hot weather has spurred them on to produce another small crop. Lucky me!

Take the Bad with the Good

Rain is a good thing. It makes things grow, the garden gets a good watering without my intervention, and the wild animals get a fresh water supply. The bad part, for me anyway, is that when it comes down as hard and as fast as it did yesterday, plants get flattened. Two and half inches registered in my rain gauge from yesterday alone. Some lettuce got knocked down, but not all. My hardy hibiscus got droopy and made a U turn once the sun came out, so it looks a little funky, but still quite healthy.

Now, I'll admit, the majority of my garden got through it unscathed, so it's not all that bad. That's what I told myself when I looked at my beautiful little stand of corn, absolutely horizontal last evening. A bee buzzed around, trying to figure out how he was going to get at these tassels. The bees love the corn pollen. Flat corn wasn't exactly a new experience for me. Last year, my corn got droopy from a hard rain, although not completely flattened to the ground as it was this time. Those stalks from last year managed to perk back up when the sunshine came back. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case this time. The sun came out today, things started to dry out, but that corn stayed flat.

Flat corn, will it bounce back?

Once I had free time, I went out to see what I could do to help the corn. It kind of had a domino effect, each row flopped over on the one next to it. I gingerly picked up a stalk, it made a terrible ripping crunchy sound and rain water spilled out of all it's crevasses all over my arm. I tried several methods to hold the corn up, but these stalks were heavy. The only option was to stake each stalk individually. One by one, I placed a stake by each stalk and tied it up. Sometimes I used one stake for two stalks if they were smaller ones. Henry and Clarence stopped by to say hi and give me a nuzzle. They know how to cheer me up. After a while, I went inside and got my iPod shuffle so I wouldn't have to listen to the crunchy sound of standing the stalks back up. The music lifted my spirits and I whistled while I finished my staking. The corn is finally back to a vertical state, although looking a bit rag tag now. I don't know if it will be okay and continue to grow. I'm sure if I were a farmer, I'd have to just let it go. But for my little patch of garden, I don't mind at least making an effort to save the corn.

Resurrected corn stalks.

One good thing about all that rain, the artichokes seem to love it. They're happy to get a good deep watering. I have six artichoke plants that I started from seed in my basement in February. Artichokes are a perennial and usually flower in their second year. I attempted to trick the plant into thinking it had gone through a winter in California, by exposing it to cold, but not freezing weather outdoors in early spring. Today, I discovered that one of my artichoke plants has three flower buds on it. Another has one bud. The flower bud, is the part we eat. If you leave it alone and let it mature, it will open to a big magenta flower, though I doubt we'll ever see one in my garden. We love artichokes.

Can you spot the third and smallest bud on the lower right?

An artichoke plant that has not flowered yet. Will it flower this year?

I picked some other veggies for tonight's dinner, as the artichokes still have some growing to do. Harvesting always makes me happy. So do these cute little guys. Whenever I'm in the garden, they come in and see what I'm doing. Clarence likes to stick his head into whatever garden bed I'm working on and see things up close. Sometimes, friskiness ensues when his brother shows up too. I have a strict no wrestling policy in the garden beds, but a little lax about it in the aisles.

Henry and Clarence always take time for a bit of wrestling, despite my no wrestling policy in the garden.